Ch. 26
Chapter 26
“Crack—”
Luo En reached out and effortlessly crushed the man’s jaw.
It wasn’t a move any warrior should know.
Yet the man with the shattered jaw didn’t scream. He just laughed.
As if he couldn’t feel a thing, he stretched out his arms to embrace Luo En.
But Luo En shifted his shoulder for leverage and slammed him to the ground.
The noise drew everyone’s attention in an instant.
“How could you do that?”
“You’re using violence against us?”
The freed townsfolk approached Luo En at an unhurried pace, their voices eerily calm.
But if you could see the evil god’s face beneath their clothes, you’d recognize the fury twisting it.
Veins bulged at their temples and foreheads. Their bodies didn’t blaze like Drian’s had, but each step sent tremors through the earth.
Some seized nearby lampposts; the metal buckled under their grip right away.
Luo En stayed ice-cold calm in the face of it all. He knew exactly how to handle them.
His left hand—the one that had ripped the evil god from Drian’s chest—still bore burn scars mingled with crusted blood, now faded into a subtle pattern.
It wasn’t some royal power or forbidden magic. Just a mark the evil god had left on him.
A warning to all of them: Luo En could kill Them. He was a deadly threat.
After hurling the nearest townsman down, he drove a fist straight into the spot where the evil god lurked.
Blood soaked the man’s clothes—this time, Luo En didn’t even have to tear the thing out. The blow ended it for good.
In Luo En’s presence, they weren’t immortal anymore. Fragile as newborns.
The line reading
But like his mentor had said, it was all borrowed—knowledge and experience handed down.
Now he had every trick for taking down evil gods, plus the Death Herald’s signature
That
Once he’d unlocked the Death Herald path, he’d realized “warrior” and “Death Herald” weren’t real classes. Just what people called him—what they agreed on, how they sized him up.
A rasping cry came from the bloodstained clothes. The man with the broken jaw shrank before their eyes, collapsing limp to the ground.
Luo En tilted his head at the evil god’s pitiful wail, then turned the same technique on another approaching townsman.
No turmoil stirred inside him. He’d seen scenes like this a thousand times.
And why not? The Death Heralds’ lore on slaughtering evil gods didn’t come from playground scraps.
Luo En should’ve had to live through it all to learn. But he’d lucked out, inheriting the full package.
No guilt over it, though. Not for him.
Pies don’t fall from the sky for nothing. Anything that seems free comes with a steep tab.
Luo En had always believed the “free” stuff was the priciest in the world.
He shook off the madman’s blood from his clothes and exhaled deeply, the chill in his bones easing a bit.
The snow-white squirrel perched on his shoulder hopped to a clear patch of ground, watching the whole thing with bright, alert eyes.
It would be the sole witness to the carnage.
Or not carnage, exactly. Gazing at Luo En’s wounds, it preferred to think of it as battle.
Your death or mine. That simple.
......
......
Time lost all meaning, but eventually, only corpses ringed Luo En.
He looked less like an adventurer now and more like a butcher.
Anyone stumbling on the horror in the town square would want to turn him in.
What kind of lunatic slaughters a crowd like that and doesn’t even flinch?
[Task System Update.]
[Quest Name: Brave Battle]
[You face a life-or-death crisis now, but you’re the future strongest being on earth. You won’t back down here—even in death, you’ll take them with you.]
[Task Content: Kill Evil God Spawn (23/12)]
[Your outstanding...]
The system wrapped up the data refresh and started to chime in again, but Luo En cut it off. “Shut the fuck up right now.”
He’d always prided himself on his even temper. He didn’t swear unless he had to.
Except when he just couldn’t take it—like now.
Propping up his exhausted body, Luo En dragged Drian and the mayor’s corpses away from the heap of bodies.
The squirrel stuck close to his side the whole way, curious about his next move.
He hauled them back to that first little cabin and fetched an iron shovel.
In this endless stretch of time, Luo En dug their grave at a steady pace. “I played along with your twisted family drama, and what did I get? Nothing. Feel the shame down in hell.”
The evil gods’ brute strength had cracked plenty of his bones, so when the pain got too sharp, he paused to catch his breath.
Sensing the utter stillness of time, he found himself understanding the mayor, in a way.
Stick around a place like this long enough, and anyone would break down that far.
If it’d been Luo En? He’d have snapped right there on the spot.
But what did any of this have to do with him? He wasn't going to spend the rest of his life cooped up in Winterless Town.
"And that damn Lady Mercury—if she doesn't give me a territory, I'm definitely filing a protest!" He cursed to himself, lost in his own tirade.
The area around him was vast and empty, save for that one squirrel—no one else could hear Luo En's rant.
Even so, he kept muttering curses here and there, venting every bit of frustration he'd built up since crossing over to this world.
"Evil God!? All of you, get the hell out!"
"I don't even know what Vandall is, but someday, I'll make sure you get lost too!"
Even though it hurt like hell, he shoveled the snow with everything he had.
The snow flew up into the air before settling on the side, splattering the squirrel's head with flakes.
By the time he'd buried that father and son, Luo En was wiped out.
He set the tombstone he'd carved himself upright on the grave, then slumped down in the spot where the mayor usually took his breaks.
He had no idea why he'd bothered helping bury the pair—hell, it was just a spur-of-the-moment thing.
Luo En let his mind go blank, staring straight up at the sky.
Until today, he'd never really taken a good look at the blue expanse overhead. Faint fragments dotted it here and there.
Those fragments linked up, forming what looked like a massive ring encircling the entire Bicolor Realm.
"It's actually kinda pretty." That was Luo En's one and only take on it.