The remaining leaders of Ashburg stood rigidly in the center of the Dawinton Palace.
Rayn stood before them, his crimson eyes glowing with an absolute, dictatorial authority.
"We are going to violently make them pay for what they have done to our town," Rayn decreed, his voice echoing off the stone walls. "We are going to make them realize that the absolute worst mistake they ever made in their pathetic lives was messing with Ashburg."
The captains violently saluted.
"Yes, Lord Rayn!" they shouted in unison. "We will protect the town with our absolute lives while you battle out there!"
Dawinton—now entirely trapped in his youthful, heavily muscled disguise as "Peter"—stood quietly in the back. He watched the captains bow to the young Conqueror.
I want my older son to completely become a leader like this kid, Dawinton thought, a sad smile crossing his new face. A man absolutely respected by everyone around him.
But Dawinton was entirely foolish. He completely failed to realize that the absolute devotion the captains were showing Rayn was not born out of respect.
It was born out of sheer, unadulterated terror.
Rayn turned his cold gaze to Victus. "Victus. Call the palace guard. I want the absolute master map of this country brought to me right now."
Victus immediately bowed and rushed to the heavy oak doors. He barked an order to the surviving guards in the hallway. A few moments later, a terrified guard ran back from the architecture room, clutching a massive, rolled-up parchment.
"Come in," Rayn commanded.
The guard quickly stepped into the room, his hands trembling as he handed the heavy map to Rayn.
"Leave," Rayn ordered. The guard didn't hesitate, bolting out of the room.
Rayn violently unfurled the map directly onto the surviving edge of the wooden table. He gestured for everyone to step closer.
The map explicitly detailed the borders of the King Slay Country. It showed the massive, sprawling domains of four surrounding kingdoms. Ashburg was incredibly small in comparison, sandwiched between two larger domains.
But right in the absolute center of the three towns was a massive, heavily forested valley.
"This absolute blind spot," Rayn said, pointing a blood-stained finger at the dark valley. "It is officially known as 'The Treachery'. This is exactly where the bandits are hiding."
Rayn made sure to explicitly point it out to Dawinton, brilliantly maintaining the illusion that "Peter" was a complete stranger to the geography of Ashburg.
Peter smoothly nodded, playing his part. "The five of us are going to attack an army of ten thousand men. But the absolute truth is, we cannot fight them all at once. We have to violently execute a specific tactic."
Vespera tilted her head, her golden eyes narrowing. "What exactly is the tactic, Rayn?"
Rayn flashed a dark, completely sociopathic smile.
"If I completely explain the strategy right now, the bandits might discover our plan," Rayn whispered, his eyes scanning the corners of the ceiling. "Because right now, even the walls have ears. I will reveal the absolute strategy the second we land in that valley."
He rolled the map up and shoved it into his spatial ring.
"The Treachery is incredibly far away," Rayn said. "Marching there will completely waste our energy. So, we are going to utilize a highly functional, absolute aerial insertion."
Victus and Freddy exchanged a terrified look. "What method, Rayn?"
Exactly ten minutes later, the five Executioners were thousands of feet in the freezing air.
It was a completely absurd, terrifying human chain. Vespera was utilizing her supreme spatial flight, soaring rapidly through the night sky. Rayn was firmly holding onto Vespera's waist.
Dangling directly below Rayn, gripping his ankles with terrifying Phase 5 strength, was Peter. Hanging desperately onto Peter's legs was Victus. And gripping Victus's heavy boots for dear life was Freddy.
The freezing wind violently whipped against their faces.
Looking down at the terrified Victus clinging to his legs, a dark, violent thought crossed Dawinton's mind. I could completely drop this pathetic bastard right now. He brings the bad name to our family and brought nothing but absolute ruin to town.
But Dawinton violently suppressed the urge. He knew Victus was highly useful as a meat shield for the upcoming war. He tightened his grip, silently vowing to kill Victus another day.
They finally arrived directly over the massive, sprawling jungle of The Treachery.
They violently dropped from the sky, landing heavily on the thick, ancient branches of a colossal redwood tree.
Rayn and Vespera looked out over the endless canopy. The jungle was absolutely massive. If they didn't have Matthew's exact coordinates, it would have taken them months to locate the hidden camp.
Victus violently caught his breath, leaning against the massive tree trunk.
"Okay, Rayn," Victus gasped. "You said there was a plan to completely eliminate them. How do we violently dismantle an army of ten thousand?"
"The absolute truth is," Rayn explained coldly, "if we directly charge their fortified base, it is guaranteed suicide. But these massive coalitions always have operational patterns."
Rayn pointed down into the dark, freezing jungle.
"They have specific batches of men constantly leaving the base to violently hunt for food, gather supplies, and loot merchants," Rayn said. "We don't fight ten thousand men. We violently butcher their hunting parties, one by one, and use their corpses to break their sanity."
Victus and Freddy finally looked relieved. It was a flawless, cold-blooded assassin's strategy.
But Vespera loudly scoffed.
"This is completely unnecessary, Rayn," Vespera said, her spatial Gnosis flaring arrogantly. "I can just casually fly in and slaughter all ten thousand of them at once."
Victus's face went entirely pale. He violently turned to Vespera.
"Vespera, you are an absolute, terrifying monster, and you absolutely could survive that!" Victus pleaded desperately. "But I am only a Phase 6 mortal! If you completely aggro the entire army, Freddy and I will be violently butchered in seconds! Please, do not interfere with Rayn's plan!"
Rayn held up his hand. "He is absolutely right, Vespera. We don't know exactly how many high-tier commanders they are hiding. We stick strictly to the absolute slaughter plan."
Suddenly, Rayn held up a single finger. Absolute silence fell over the branch.
Crunch. Snap.
Heavy, rhythmic footsteps echoed through the freezing mud below.
Rayn peered through the leaves. A massive hunting group of exactly thirty elite bandits was marching directly beneath their tree. They were heavily armed with profound bows and thick iron broadswords.
They were collectively dragging a colossal, dead beast on heavy iron chains. It was a Phase 7 Mountain Boar, easily the absolute size of a small house. Its massive belly was large enough to fit at least 20 people.
Rayn gave the violent signal.
The five Executioners silently dropped from the massive tree like falling shadows.
It was an absolute, blinding massacre.
The thirty men were violently butchered in exactly ten seconds. Rayn instantly recognized the absolute Gnosis signature of the only magic user in the group. Before the bandit could even attempt to cast a defensive spell, Rayn's speed completely shattered the sound barrier.
SHING!
Rayn cleanly severed the magic user's head, the hot blood violently splashing across the frozen mud.
Freddy and Victus hacked the remaining bandits to pieces, entirely releasing their absolute grief. Peter violently crushed skulls with his bare, Phase 5 fists.
When the bloodbath was entirely finished, Rayn wiped his blade. He slowly looked at the thirty butchered, mutilated corpses scattered in the mud.
Then, he looked at the massive, empty belly of the dead, house-sized Mountain Boar.
Rayn slowly turned his head to look at Vespera.
They both shared a dark, completely unhinged, demonic smile.
Rayn summoned his freezing Ice Sword. With a violent, incredibly precise upward slash, he completely ripped the massive Mountain Boar's stomach entirely open, dumping its innards into the mud.
"Executioners," Rayn whispered, his eyes glowing with absolute malice.
Exactly ten minutes later.
At the massive, heavily fortified iron gates of the Bandit Coalition's base, Vanzant—the Supreme Leader's personal assistant—stepped outside to check the perimeter.
He stopped dead in his tracks.
Sitting entirely abandoned in the mud, completely completely out of nowhere, was a colossal, freshly killed Mountain Boar.
"Sir!" Vanzant violently shouted, running back into the camp. "There is a massive, incredibly fat boar sitting directly outside our gates!"
The Supreme Leader walked out of his tent, wiping expensive wine from his beard. He looked at the massive beast and laughed arrogantly.
"I assume one of our elite hunting batches proudly dropped it off and immediately went back into the woods to hunt more!" the Leader declared loudly. "Perfect! The men are starving! Haul it inside, heat the massive bonfires, and cook the entire fucking thing! Feed it directly to the camp children and the captured women first!"
Following the absolute orders of the Leader, Vanzant ordered fifty men to violently drag the colossal boar inside the gates.
They erected a massive, heavy iron spit over the absolute largest bonfire in the center of the camp. They violently tied the boar's thick legs to the wooden stakes and began entirely roasting the massive beast whole.
For the next two hours, the absolute, mouth-watering aroma of roasting meat completely filled the massive bandit stronghold.
The mercenaries laughed and drank, entirely unaware of the absolute horror cooking over the flames.
Finally, the boar was entirely cooked. The skin was completely charred and crispy.
Vanzant proudly walked up to the massive beast with a heavy, sharp cleaver. A massive line of starving camp children, captive women, and drunken bandits formed in front of the fire, holding out their wooden plates.
"Alright, you hungry bastards!" Vanzant laughed loudly. "Let's absolutely see what cuts this fat pig is hiding!"
Vanzant raised the heavy cleaver and violently sliced directly through the thick, roasted belly of the boar.
SQUELCH.
The stomach completely split open.
But it wasn't cooked organs or beast fat that violently spilled out onto the dirt.
It was a horrific, sickening cascade of cooked human body parts.
Roasted, severed arms with melted flesh fell directly onto the plates of the waiting women. Heavily boiled human legs, completely stripped of their skin by the heat, tumbled into the mud. Mutilated, charred human torsos violently spilled out in a sickening avalanche of gore.
Finally, a heavily burned, cooked human head violently rolled directly out of the boar's stomach, stopping perfectly at the feet of a small bandit girl waiting with her wooden plate.
The camp went entirely, completely dead silent. The music stopped. The laughter was completely extinguished.
The little girl slowly looked down at the burned, cooked head sitting in the dirt. Her eyes widened in absolute, catastrophic horror.
"This..." the little girl whispered, her voice violently trembling as she dropped her wooden plate. "This is my dad..."
Absolute, mind-shattering psychological terror violently erupted through the camp. Women began screaming hysterically. Grown, heavily armed mercenaries violently collapsed to their knees, aggressively vomiting up their wine as they stared at the cooked remains of their own thirty elite hunters.
Vanzant violently dropped his bloody cleaver, his mind completely snapping in half from the horror.
High above the camp, sitting perfectly concealed on the thick, dark branches of a massive redwood tree overlooking the walls...
Rayn entirely watched the chaotic, horrific psychological breakdown of the 10,000-man army.
He leaned back against the bark, entirely consumed by the absolute darkness in his soul, and completely, quietly laughed.