Exactly one hour had violently passed.
The air in the center of Ashburg violently warped. A massive spatial rift tore open in the courtyard of the Dawinton Palace.
Rayn, Vespera, and the still-invisible Dawinton stepped entirely out of the void.
The palace courtyard had been completely transformed into an apocalyptic morgue. The cobblestones were entirely hidden beneath rows upon rows of butchered, bloody corpses.
Standing amidst the absolute carnage were Chandler, Freddy, and Victus.
Hiding behind Victus's heavy armor was a terrified, trembling young girl. It was Veora. She was the absolute only survivor Matthew had managed to pull from the residential slaughter.
As Rayn's heavy combat boots touched the blood-soaked ground, a completely frantic figure shoved her way through the surviving guards.
It was Catherine.
Her face was smeared with ash, her clothes completely soaked in dark, drying blood.
SMACK!
Catherine violently slapped Rayn directly across the face. The sharp sound echoed like a gunshot through the silent courtyard.
"You absolute fucking bastard!" Catherine screamed, her voice completely tearing her throat. "You are the exact reason those fucking bandits came into our town! You brought this apocalypse down on all of us!"
Rayn didn't even flinch. His head barely moved.
He didn't speak a single word. Vespera stood entirely frozen beside him, her golden eyes completely devoid of emotion. They both knew that the town was bleeding entirely because of their violent rise to power.
Catherine wasn't finished. She violently grabbed Rayn by the collar of his blood-stained robes.
She forcefully dragged the unresisting Conqueror toward a massive pile of mutilated corpses. She threw him forward, pointing a trembling finger at a brutally dismembered body.
It was her brother, Ben.
"Look at him, Rayn!" Catherine shrieked, collapsing to her knees in the bloody dirt. "You arrogantly looked down on us! You told us that our incestuous love was a disgusting crime! But at least when we were together, my brother was fucking alive!"
She violently beat her small fists against Rayn's chest, completely breaking down into hysterical sobs. "Because of your absolute arrogance, my brother is dead! You owe me an answer! Give me my fucking brother back!"
Rayn looked down at Ben's dead, lifeless eyes. He felt absolutely nothing. No pity. No remorse. Just the cold, mechanical reality of the weak dying in Aetheleon.
He slowly turned his head away from the sobbing girl.
A few yards away, he saw the grieving mother. She was clutching the orphaned baby tightly to her chest.
She was completely on her knees, desperately scooping up handfuls of blood-soaked sand from the exact spot where Chandler had buried her own headless child.
The orphaned baby in her arms was wailing hysterically, sensing the absolute, crushing aura of death surrounding them.
Victus was kneeling beside the broken mother, gently trying to pull her away from the dirt.
"Please... Victus..." the mother begged, her mind completely shattered by trauma. "My baby is down there. Please just tell her to come back up. It's too cold in the dirt..."
Rayn closed his crimson eyes. The emotional weight of the courtyard was suffocating.
He looked toward a group of surviving palace guards who were exhausted, carrying more mangled bodies into the courtyard.
"Guards," Rayn asked, his voice completely hollow and devoid of warmth. "Exactly how many people died in this attack?"
The lead guard swallowed hard, his armor completely painted in gore.
"Sir... we don't know the exact, absolute number yet," the guard stammered. "But the town is entirely decimated. There are only about 450 adults and roughly 150 children died in the entire domain and thousand of people were severely injured."
Rayn slowly nodded. Six hundred people died out of thousands.
"Take absolutely all of the dead townspeople," Rayn ordered coldly. "Bury them properly in the mass graveyard."
Suddenly, the surviving civilians in the courtyard violently turned on him.
The grief of losing their entire families instantly twisted into a blinding, irrational hatred for the new leader who had failed them.
"Shut the fuck up, Rayn!" a man screamed from the crowd, pointing a bloody weapon at him. "You weren't even fucking here when we were being butchered!"
"He is the reason the bandits came!" another woman shrieked. "The bandits only ever attacked the rich merchants on the roads! But the absolute second this outsider became our leader, an entire fucking army showed up! He sold us out!"
The mob mentality was entirely poisonous. The survivors genuinely believed Rayn was secretly working with the bandits.
Victus, Freddy, and Chandler violently tensed, their hands instinctively dropping to their Phase 6 weapons. They fully expected Rayn to violently slaughter the disrespectful mob. They knew Rayn possessed an absolute, demonic pride. He had killed men for far less.
But Rayn did absolutely nothing.
He didn't raise his voice. He didn't unleash his terrifying Conqueror aura. He simply turned his back on the screaming, ungrateful sheep.
"Guards. Bury the dead," Rayn repeated softly.
He looked at his captains. "Everyone. Meet me at the absolute top room of the Dawinton Palace. Now."
Victus, Freddy, and Chandler exchanged looks of absolute shock. Rayn's restraint was infinitely more terrifying than his violent outbursts. It meant his killing intent was completely concentrated on something far worse.
Rayn walked away, completely ignoring the insults hurled at his back. He moved purposefully into the heavily fortified Dawinton Palace.
His entire elite team immediately abandoned the courtyard and followed him in silence.
The top room of the palace was incredibly dark. The massive oak table in the center was covered in strategic maps of the surrounding domains.
Rayn stood at the head of the table. Vespera stood to his right, her golden eyes cold. Victus, Freddy, Chandler, and the terrified Veora stood opposite them.
"I want you guys to answer this," Rayn said, his voice dropping to a terrifyingly calm register. "How exactly did five thousand heavily armed bandits casually bypass our perimeter? And who specifically leaked the absolute fact that Vespera and I were not in the town?"
Veora, completely traumatized by her narrow escape, quietly spoke up. "Who was it, Lord Rayn?"
Rayn's crimson eyes violently narrowed. "It was the other two Division Leaders. They completely betrayed us. They shook hands with the enemy and slaughtered their own men. I am going to extract a terrifying revenge on every single one of them."
Victus violently slammed his fist onto the map.
"Rayn, I absolutely want to butcher the bandits who slaughtered our people too," Victus growled, his Phase 6 Gnosis flaring. "But the absolute truth is, we are catastrophically outnumbered. It is five thousand of them against the five of us! We have to make strategic arrangements!"
Rayn let out a cold, sociopathic laugh.
"There is absolutely no plan, Victus," Rayn said. "We are going to walk straight into their heavily fortified stronghold, and we are going to completely butcher them."
Rayn leaned over the table, his eyes burning with an unholy light.
"We are going to make an absolute, horrific example out of them. We will ensure that no bandit in any surrounding town ever dares to even fucking look at Ashburg again."
The captains looked completely terrified. It was a literal suicide mission.
"We need more firepower," Rayn continued smoothly. "So, I am going to call an old friend of mine to join us. He is from my original hometown, Whispering Pines. He is incredibly strong, and he was recently elected to the King's Palace as an elite Royal Guard. He is going to come down here and violently help us balance the scales."
Everyone in the war room was entirely shocked.
Whispering Pines was universally known as a pathetic, weak backwater village. But after seeing the apocalyptic power possessed by Rayn and Vespera—both supposedly from that same village—the captains realized they knew absolutely nothing about the true monsters hiding in that town.
No one dared to question his logic.
Rayn looked at the doubting faces of his captains.
CRACK!
Rayn violently brought his fist down. The massive, enchanted oak table was instantly, completely pulverized into absolute sawdust beneath his kinetic strength.
"Tomorrow," Rayn decreed, his voice echoing like the absolute judgment of a god. "We are all going to violently kill those motherfuckers. It is going to be the absolute last day on earth for every single person in that bandit coalition. I don't give a single fuck if it is a man, a woman, or a child. If they breathe the same air as the people who killed my town, they are going to violently die."
Freddy, despite the agonizing pain of losing his entire division, violently swallowed his fear.
"I want to completely annihilate them too, Rayn," Freddy said, his voice trembling. "But if we completely fail... if we die in their stronghold... there will be absolutely no one left to protect the survivors here in Ashburg."
Rayn thought for exactly one second. His demonic pragmatism took over.
"Okay then," Rayn said. "Here is the absolute roster. Me, Vespera, my Royal Guard friend, Victus, and Freddy. We are the five Executioners. We are the only ones going into that absolute hell."
He pointed a bloody finger at Chandler. "Chandler. You and the remaining palace guards will stay entirely within the town borders. You will protect the surviving civilians with your absolute lives. I don't want a single town member getting a scratch while we are gone."
Everyone heard his absolute, final words.
Their minds screamed against the logic. Five cultivators against an army of ten thousand heavily armed bandits was not just a battle; it was a guaranteed massacre. Even the late, great Matthew couldn't handle a fraction of that force.
But looking into Rayn's burning crimson eyes, they entirely accepted their fate.
"I will not announce exactly when we are leaving," Rayn commanded softly. "The element of surprise is our only absolute advantage. So everyone in this room, make absolutely sure you are heavily armed and completely prepared for the worst."
Victus, Freddy, and Chandler simultaneously bowed their heads.
The absolute bloodbath had officially been sanctioned.