69 - Devil Has Come

Since that day, several weeks had passed as Illyan moved in the direction that the aborigine had given him. Once in a while, he slowed down to replenish his nourishment, which his body was devoid of. It took him a while to replenish it, even with his regeneration, but just one day to lose it all. It was kind of frustrating.

But at the same time, it was thrilling. After his third attempt, he felt significantly better. Not only that, but his regeneration was also slowly coming back. His left arm, which was missing, had already started to grow back, and it almost reached his elbow. It seemed that during his time in the ice cocoon, his ability gained a significant boost.

Despite that, he still felt that his arm was much weaker than before, and it would probably take him several years to properly recover. But he wasn’t impatient, as he had swiftly become accustomed to having only one arm.

Instead, it was still the chill in his bones that was bothering him.

Unfortunately, he usually performed the technique only every fortnight, as his body wouldn’t be able to keep up otherwise. The aborigines probably had it even worse since they did not have his gift and could perform this technique only rarely.

But this time, even though Illyan felt that he could once again do it, he didn’t. He felt that he was close to his objective and didn’t want to be in a weakened state.

Moving like a shadow, he kept jumping from one tree to another without leaving any traces and listened to any sounds in his surroundings.

The closer he got, the more aborigines he met along the way. But he didn’t touch them. That would alarm them immediately. He tried to listen to their conversation to try to catch some information, but he didn’t have much luck and didn’t hear any words that he knew.

The problem came with the bags and black rods he was carrying, as their existence made it easier for him to be discovered. And so, Illyan found one tree that was unique and started to dig a hole next to its root.

He put everything inside and took only a small portion of dried meat since he couldn’t hunt in this vicinity and one small pouch filled with unknown substances.

Then he turned his head in the direction of the clan, and with a cold glint in his eyes, he once again disappeared from his place and hurried on his way.

......

Thearas Clan’s village was at the moment peaceful. Ever since they moved, they had to put all of their minds on recreating the entire village. Fortunately for them, they discovered a young Firestorm Herb that hadn’t been taken by other clans. Thanks to that, they created the village around its sanctuary and made themselves its guardians.

Even though there were more Firestorm Herbs than there were clans in the alliance, there were still many clans who weren’t fit to be guardians. It was usually the strongest clans that occupied all those Firestorm Herbs. But since they were far apart from each other, they had to send sentries to look after them once in a while. However, they weren’t worried since no animal would eat the Firestorm Herb instead of the ones surrounding it.

Thearas Clan managed to recover after many years of hard work, but unfortunately, their clan suffered another misfortune.

Many strong clans were not satisfied with how Thearas Clan managed to profit from the misfortune and even seize one of the sanctuaries. That was why they united to pressure Thearas Clan years ago to send reinforcements to Frozen Valas Tundra.

Because of the turmoil in the far north, an enormous migration of tribes towards the south gave the Blood Crow Alliance the opportunity to collect a high amount of sacrifices.

And Thearas Clan was chosen as one of the clans who would send its people to the tundra to hunt those tribesmen under the pretext of ‘knowing the place the best’.

Because of that, many strong and young, together with their leader Triston, ventured to the north, while the weaker ones stayed in the village. Unfortunately, vultures rallied soon after and took advantage of their village.

They couldn’t steal the Firestorm Herb, as that was a sin towards their Lord, but they stole almost everything else. Not only that, but they also kidnapped several children who were young enough to be raised as part of different clans.

During that time, Thearas Grand Shaman was wounded but survived. They expected a cruel revenge after their people returned, but reality was harsh.

Their people and even their leader perished together with the entire group that ended up in Frozen Valas Tundra.

This was a blow that brought Thearas Clan to their knees. Since that day, they didn’t even dare to show their bitterness as they were recovering. After that, they were regularly raided by other villages with their children being kidnapped.

However, Thearas Clan couldn’t do anything.

They could only choose the best candidate as a new leader, and the shaman also took a new disciple from a new batch of children that managed to avoid kidnapping. This disciple would replace him the moment he passed away.

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Because of the trauma of his injury, the shaman got weaker over the years but still held on. Many members of their clan and even members of the entire alliance expected him to peacefully breathe his last during sleep.

What they didn’t know was that there was a shadow sneaking around the village for the last few days, waiting for the best opportunity to turn this peaceful place into that of a wasteland devoid of life…

......

After Illyan buried all his stuff, it didn’t take him long before he finally found the village. It wasn’t hard because, as always, there were more human skulls impaled on pikes the closer he got to it.

Unfortunately for him, despite finding his target, he couldn’t just storm in and end this. While he already recovered some of his strength, he was still far weaker than at his peak. That would still allow him to take care of a few of the aborigines at the same time but not the entire village. That would be impossible even before.

Not to mention, his arm was missing and his weapon was inferior. So Illyan had to make a plan. During the next few days, he got to the village; he only observed from the shadows and didn’t touch anyone.

The reason why he got so good at sneaking lately was thanks to his breakthrough in the ‘Nature Breath Method’ he used during the entire time inside of the iceberg. While still far from the realm where you could literally merge with nature itself that Kaoran told him about. Of course, Illyan took it with little salt. It was just theory and probably even Ancestor Bakur didn’t reach higher levels of proficiency in this method.

But Illyan’s accomplishment was still enough for him to dilute his aura, which made it harder to feel his existence.

He used this newfound ability to watch all members of the clan and assessed the danger. Be it the elderly, young adults, or children, he was observing them all with a cautious look.

If possible, he didn’t want to kill the youngest ones as he hoped they were still salvageable, but he had the foreboding that everything wouldn’t go as smoothly…

......

In this manner, he waited for the best opportunity. And he didn’t have to wait for too long. One day, a few hunters brought two wolves, and others started to cheer. The sight was familiar to Illyan, who was once part of the same event.

His eyes turned even colder when he remembered the pain he went through because of them.

But he didn’t let his emotions take over him, and in the moment when most people ran towards the altar where the sacrifice would happen, he went towards the place where their well was.

It was normal for villages to be built near a source of water like a lake, but when it came to Guardian villages that were built around Firestorm Herbs, they had to dig a well to find the source of water underground.

And that was the place that Illyan was looking for. Since the source of water was secondary in their case, they could only hope that there was either a lake or underground water near the sanctuary.

Fortunately, Illyan didn’t need to look for it at this moment since he already spotted it days before during his observation. Like a ghost, he walked within the shadows and was careful to not meet anyone, even if most people left for the altar already.

Once he got to the well, which was decorated with bones, he took out the pouch he made and dumped its content into the well.

Then he retreated and waited.

......

This time there was no burning at stake since those were just normal wolves and not ‘devil’s spawn’ like he was labeled. Instead, they slit their throats in front of the container and then put their dismembered body parts on the altar.

There, he saw the shaman who was guiding some child through some rites. Just one look was enough to confirm it was the same man that put Illyan through so much suffering.

However, Illyan was happy to see him. He didn’t know how much time had passed, but since the guy still lived it meant it wasn’t that much time. Not only that, but he was also itching to kill the man with his own hands…

After that, the celebration began. Horrifying screams and laughter of people filled with madness permeated through the air as they danced or ate food. Some of them were even kneeling on the ground worshiping their lord as their knees started to bleed while others started to procreate on the ground in their birthday suit in front of everyone.

It was a tangle of madness that deeply disturbed Illyan. He already saw something similar once, but his body was in a state of shock back then, and he didn’t even consider the atmosphere.

However, seeing this all now when he was an adult with a cool mind, he was disgusted beyond words.

He was even more so when he saw the children proliferating in the crowd, making weird noises as they were stained with mud and probably some of their body liquids. He was also surprised that most children were at least one decade old. Illyan didn’t know the reason why there was such a lack of children.

But their age didn’t correspond to their behavior. They were wild and seemed to have language problems, making them even more pitiful in Illyan’s eyes.

He was glad that the powder that he prepared before wasn’t deadly but one that would only paralyze the muscles. He used that poison because of the jarring weakness of those aborigines. They sacrificed their own flesh, which included their muscles, for the sake of their blood, which makes their muscles more susceptible to this kind of poison.

As for where he learned this from?

He created it himself. Everything had two sides, and nothing was just black and white. Especially when it came to medicine.

He learned the secrets of the body and learned the methods that could save lives. But the opposite was the truth too. The more he learned, the better he was at understanding how to harm the human body, be it in close combat or through some poisons.

But he usually didn’t use poisons as he didn’t have a reason to. Until now.

He was waiting for them to use the well so he could end them later on. He wasn’t sure how long it would take for the poison to start working, but he was a little worried that some of the older ones who performed the ‘Blood Feeding Technique’ would take longer because of their blood and thus their bloodstream being different.

Using something for the first time was always full of uncertainty, but everything was for the first time one day in the end.

Fortunately, it seemed that Illyan was too worried as once the sun disappeared beyond the horizon, everyone was slowly losing strength in their bodies.

After a long celebration, most of them were dehydrated and had to fill themselves with water.

Then when they started to lose strength, they attributed it to fatigue since the celebration was intense and went to their huts to sleep.

Only some of them were still up, acting as guards, but even those were swiftly losing their ability to move muscles.

There were also some who didn’t drink anything and were still strong, but they were in the minority.

And so, it was no wonder when Illyan descended upon them with murder in mind, they couldn’t muster up any resistance.

While everyone else slept peacefully in their beds, Illyan assassinated every guard outside without a strain.

“Prepare yourself. The devil you feared so much has come to collect the debt of blood.”

With winds taking his whispers away, Illyan was prepared to show them what the real devil was like.