Chapter 22: Taking care of trash

His men watched in shock, seeing a blade stuck into the chest of their leader. The strongest man in their group had been taken out like that.

The leader looked at me with shock in his eyes.

"Y...ou bas..tard!" He groaned as he spoke. He raised his hand and swung at me with what strength he had left. I blocked the attack and skidded back.

He groaned and grabbed onto his sword, pulling it out with all his might. His blood stained the floor, pouring out right there.

"I’ll kill you, I’ll..." He tried to make his words, but I watched him cough blood and collapse to the ground.

[You have gained 100EXP, 10SP]

His men looked at him in shock. A smile formed at the tip of my lips.

"Sorry, seems I got carried away and killed your leader. He really pissed me off," I said and then pulled my sword out of his chest and pointed at them, a black flame coating the blade.

"You guys are newbie hunters, right? You attack those that are weaker than you who are new and try to get what they have gained."

"You brat, we will make sure that you suffer before you die," one of the men snapped and rushed in. He pulled his sword out from his waist, rolled it around his finger, and then swung upward diagonally. I stepped to the side and dodged the blade, eyes following it in a swift motion. I stepped around and got to his side.

I swung down. He spun around and blocked the attack. We were both pushed back. He launched at me again. I pointed my hand out and unleashed a stream of flames that slammed into his chest and pushed him back. I charged in after that. He tried to attack, I ducked under and slashed into his gut, spilling everything onto the floor right there.

He collapsed to the ground and bled out completely. The others watched as well, shock on their faces. They gritted their teeth in anger and all rushed at me.

This was one of the stupid aspects of humanity that made me wonder if there was still hope for the race. Why would you attack someone that killed your leader and one of your men? It showed that this person was somewhat stronger than you and capable of dealing lethal damage.

The reason why I could do this was because I knew the first floor mostly had people that barely had any abilities awakened. They used their physical abilities and weapons to survive. The first floor was really nothing special when it came to the adventurers, and that was why it normally had one of the higher death counts.

Most of the people that actually had some level of skill refused to be kept here and found their way to the second floor because that was the only place they could start getting some of the good stuff.

Before the men got to me, Lia moved. She made wings of flames and shot into the air and came down like a meteor. Her fist slammed into the ground, a massive explosion of flames shot out and slammed into the men, throwing them all back. That was my cue. I charged in, blade covered in flames as I moved.

I got to the first one. He tried to attack, but I dodged to the side easily and slashed through his guts. I spun around and dashed toward the next man, stabbing him from his back before he could react at all.

The next man got into a stance and was ready to attack. I kept his attention on me while Lia attacked from the side with a fireball. It slammed into him and burned him badly. I leaped into the air and landed a clean blow that ended him.

Now it was one man left. He gripped his sword and started backing up in fear.

"Stay away, stay away!" he yelled and backed away in fear, his eyes darting. He gritted his teeth and tried to find a way to escape, but the moment he looked away, I dashed in, moving fast and low. He could not react before my blade went right through his chest and ended him.

I pulled the blade out and slashed it in the air to throw the blood to the ground.

"I guess training in all those martial arts in my past life was actually worth it."

I looked over to Lia. She was heading my way.

"Seems we are better than the average adventurer," she said casually.

"Yeah, for sure. Especially with your bloodline awakened, I don’t think we will have an issue with any of the early floors."

She nodded in agreement.

I looked over to Leah and saw her standing there. She was not moving, as if frozen to the ground.

"Sigh, she is in shock."

I walked over to her and got on one knee. I did not have the time to start thinking of the right words to actually say and how to carve it into the right pattern, so I simply activated persuasion.

"You’ll be alright. They were bad people and would have hurt us and you as well. You should not have pity for those that are bad and want your pain.

Do you understand me?" I asked, and she nodded.

"Good, you’ll be fine," I said and got up on my feet. "Let’s have some food after here. First, let’s gather what cores they have. It should be enough for day one.

We should leave for the day. We still need to take care of Mira and prepare properly for actually entering the palace."

With that, we moved. All we had to do was either go back to the location we had come from, where we could find a gate, or head to the center of the floor, where the next return gate would be.

I decided that we should head to the center and use that. We had to fight a lot more monsters to get there.