”Why does no one seem to recall the seven members’ party? I mean, I would remember if I saw someone shady. And I did remember them as soon as Noah described them…” Zach muttered.
’Unless there is no one to spread the talk? Why are there no other victims or witnesses? Could it be that they killed everyone they scammed?’
Zach’s guess was right on the mark, but he still had to find them.
SIGH!
’I think I wasted a good thirty minutes looking for those thugs. Maybe I should head to the church and spend the rest of the day with the girls?’ Zach thought to himself.
’Come to think of that, if my guess is correct, that they don’t leave any victim or witness behind, then they would surely come to finish their job.’
’Then shouldn’t I be at the church instead? What if they tried to kill them— but well, I don’t have to worry too much. Victoria and Aria alone can handle a few thugs.’
Zach was on his way to church when a thought suddenly crossed his mind.
’Thugs and bandits usually hide in the forest. And the dungeon also happened to be near the forest. What are the chances that they are in there?’
Zach changed his route to the forest, but he was getting late, so he decided to run instead.
As soon as he entered the forest, he could hear people talking. He quietly listened to their conversations and couldn’t help but get enraged after hearing them.
”Hey, hey! We forgot about the rewards we get after we scam and kill everyone. Who knew there was an easy way to level up.”
”I know, right? If I had known this sooner, I would have killed a lot of players when they were still weak. Now, most of the surviving players are strong enough to fight anyone in a duel.”
”Levels don’t really matter in this game, you know? I am level 70 right now, yet, my physique is low as fuck.”
”ARGH! Don’t mention physiques! Freaking gods! They must have known that there would be players like us, and that’s why they introduced physique.”
They talked for a while and continued their conversation. Zach wanted to listen more as they were revealing information without any care, but when they mentioned doing bad things to Ninia, Zach snapped.
He summoned a wind sword in his hand— that was only the shape of the sword made by the wind— and released 5000 MP in it to make it concentrated.
SLASH! SLASH!
Zach simply swung his hand in the air, and all the surrounding trees were chopped into chunks. He purposely missed the seven players because he wanted them to see the face of their killer.
Once they fell to the ground and got crushed by the very branches they were sitting on, Zach stood in front of them and beautifully chopped their body parts but kept them alive.
Some of them were missing their limbs, while some were severely injured.
”It’s breakfast time, Cerberus,” he uttered in an emotionless voice.
Cerberus came out of Zach’s shadow and bowed down to him.
[My liege…]
”What’s wrong?”
[I don’t want to eat them. I feel like they will leave a bad taste in my mouth.]
”Fair enough…” Zach looked at the players with a lifeless glare in his eyes. “How sad. I wanted to see you all get eaten alive. But I guess you deserve an even painful death.”
Zach turned on the Phoenix Mode and burned all the players alive, including the trees around.
Cerberus also stepped back to make some distance between him and Zach because he didn’t want his fire to get in contact with the Phoenix’s fire.
[Leveled up!]
[Warning! You have killed a player!]
[Leveled up!]
[Leveled up!]
[Leveled up!]
[Leveled up!]
[Leveled up!]
[Leveled up!]
[Warning! You have killed players!]
[Warning! You have received seven negative Karma Points!]
Zach watched his name tag turn red, but he didn’t seem to care about it.
Zach switched to his normal form and let out a sigh in disbelief.
[…] Cerberus walked to Zach and uttered, [My liege, can I ask something?]
”Sure,” Zach responded without looking at Cerberus as he was enjoying the players’ bodies getting burned into ashes.
[Are all humans like this?] Cerberus asked in a low voice.
He could hear and sense everything, even from Zach’s shadow, so he listened to the conversation between the seven party members.
”Of course not. But some are. You can’t really tell the difference between them. They can be bad guys wearing a mask of good guys. Humans are… ” Zach sighed without finishing his sentence.
[Why do they do bad things? Do they get ordered by an evil god? Or whispered by a demon?] Cerberus asked curiously.
”Every human has their own life story. All of them go through some shit, but some just give up and choose the dark side. There are robbers, who could easily do any job, but they are too lazy to do that and instead choose to rob. There are homeless people who are often not truly homeless. They could use their body and knowledge to become someone greater.”
”Of course, there are also truly helpless, homeless people who need food and shelter. I would love to help those people. In short, humans make choices and do what they think is right, which is often wrong. Sometimes, they have no choice but to do certain things, but that’s not an excuse to become a worthless piece of shit.”
”Honestly, humans are beautiful creatures made by Aria and Erza. But I guess they also blame themselves if some of them turn out to be detestable,” Zach uttered in a disdainful tone.
[My Liege, why did you kill these players even though you knew you would get a red name tag? You could have asked me to kill them, and I would be glad to do so.]
”I am fed up with that. And I think it’s better this way.”
[What do you mean?]
”When a player reads another player’s name and sees the color, they feel relieved knowing they aren’t a bad guy. I want them to see my red nametag to know I am not the good guy,” Zach asserted in a solemn voice.
***
Total players in the game- 1,482,586
0 new players logged in.
7 players died.