This time Liam was not teleported smackdab in the middle of the village, so he carefully circled the perimeter first to make sure that there weren't any high-level enemies around.
He was not able to observe each and every single person in the village but he managed to observe enough to see that the inhabitants were mostly around level 20.
"Another low-level dark mage village? Hmmm… What is going on? This doesn't seem very natural. Shouldn't there be some higher-level mages at least in this group?"
After thinking about it for a few seconds, Liam sighed and got down to business. Either way, he was not going to learn anything by staring at the village.
They also had limited time here. So he might as well start his work. All he could do was search for clues and look around.
He then realized something and quickly opened his map.
This was in their world, a human settlement that too, so he could at least find out where he was and maybe try to find out about this area from an NPC back in the city.
"Yup, this should be the best option." Having decided on what to do, he quickly entered a hut at the end of the village after activating his [Stealth].
Slash Slash Slash
Three dark mages sitting inside lost their lives in an instant.
Liam collected the loot that fell out and quietly entered [Stealth] mode again.
He did not need his underlings to clear this group and quickly moved from one house to another, massacring silently in the silence of the night.
Coincidentally, he also found several black pearls in this settlement as well.
After a while, he did not even bother with the [Stealth] and simply moved around, clearing out all the mobs.
Since he acted personally, it only took him a few minutes and the entire village was cleaned out. "Are there more sitting in a circle somewhere?"
Liam did not leave immediately and continued to look around.
Just like he expected, there seemed to be some sort of chanting noise coming from an area.
He walked over to the huge well in the distance from which the noises emerged and near the well, there was a tombstone.
"Hmmm…" Liam squatted down. "The sound is coming from under the ground?" He then noticed that the tombstone was slightly moved from its position.
"Oh, there is a passage here?"
He pulled the tombstone revealing a set of stairs underneath.
Liam immediately activated [Stealth] again and walked down the set of stairs.
Underneath, there was another circle of humans wearing dark black cloaks that were pulled up to cover their faces.
And this time, they had all joined their hands together and were chanting something.
Liam stopped in his tracks and tried to make sense of what they were saying. Unfortunately, he could neither recognize any words nor understand the meaning.
He waited some more time and tried in vain, but there was no improvement.
"Well, whatever." He sighed, targeted the burning fire at the center of the circle, and sent out a humongous ball of fire of his own.
FWOOOSHHH
The fire at the center started raging wildly out of nowhere. It danced like giant serpents and shocked every mage sitting around to jump up in fright.
Liam quickly moved.
Using this chaos to his favor, he started cutting down one mage after another, all of them falling down like dolls to his over-powered strength.
He also used all his newly acquired crowd control skills, throwing out [Mana net], and [Swamp Vines] around.
The mages suffered terribly under his assault. They did not have any juice to put up a fight against him and all of them went down in just a couple of minutes.
"Ok, then." Liam wiped the blood off of his crimson blade and sheathed it back.
He collected the loot that was visible and was about to head out when he noticed a bunch of small children in the side.
They were all locked in a cage and there was a string of pearls on top of the cage.
Weirdly enough this set of pearls was rather white in color compared to the other ones that were pitch black.
"Were there guys doing some sort of live sacrifice? What the hell magic is this?" He took these pearls and stored them in his inventory as well.
His gaze then fell on the kids who were all unconscious. They looked like they were all elves and not humans.
They were not his concern so Liam was about to leave. Nevertheless, he stopped and unsheathed the sword to break open the lock first.
As he did that, one of the elven kids woke up and blinked her eyes looking at him. She was extremely adorable like a doll and stared at him with her big eyes.
Liam sighed and shook his head. "Bye. Runaway." He then left without turning back as he truly couldn't help those kids.
The portal would probably be activated again any time now and bringing these kids back to the nether realm was worse than leaving them here.
Also, now that he had somewhat understood what these dark mages were up to, he no longer felt the need to linger.
He hurried out of the tombstone, leaving it open just in case, and then once again started exploring the surroundings.
As he had personally visited all the poorly constructed houses in the past couple of villages and seen everything around, he now understood one thing.
This was just a temporary camp for these people. So there were surely plenty of camps around.
Liam started searching the place and he ended up finding three more villages like this. Without leaving a single one behind, he massacred all the dark mages.
Even for someone heartless like him, their method was sickening and abhorring so he slaughtered his way through without any reservations.
As he was just about to finish with the last village, the five demon lackeys ran towards him. "Boss, we managed to clear two more villages."
They took out the loot and handed everything over to Liam. The group continued searching but there wasn't anything else in the neighborhood.
A few minutes later, the invasion portal time also ran out and everyone was teleported back to the Thol city square without any surprises coming their way.
An easy and quick invasion!
"Huzzah! Huzzah!" All the demon lackeys cheered.
"Leader is awesome. It was worth waiting for our leader!" They all celebrated loudly, not minding the other tired and injured faces standing around them.
Liam, on the other hand, felt a little dejected.
He didn't know why but perhaps because he was dealing with dark mages who also pursued the dark element which was similar to the nether, he thought that he might stumble upon some clues related to his necromancy inheritance.
But in the end, he didn't find anything and was not able to get any clues even after clearing out all the groups in sight.
"It's fine. If not this, then the next." Liam clenched his fist and recovered his mood. He looked at his underlings who were still busy boasting and snapped his finger.
"You guys seem energetic. Let's go for another one."
"Y… yes boss."
"Yes, sir, leader."
All of them awkwardly quieted down and prepared themselves to enter the next invasion. Not a single demon looked troubled. Instead, they seemed to be even happier.
Liam chuckled at the group and then activated another portal immediately.
He did not care how many invasions he had to get through, he was determined to grab the inheritance for himself no matter what.
He was now more than sure that the inheritance was either in their world or in this nether realm.
Either way, building his rank and getting more soldiers under him seemed to be the fastest and most efficient way to comb through these huge landmasses.
In the end, this was a race and he would not be the one losing!
Meanwhile… back in the dark forests…
A couple of hours after Liam and his group left the spot, a group of black-cloaked figures arrived.
However, these were not low-leveled dark mages.
A very sinister and black aura emerged from these figures, something that the living could never withstand, something that could only be found in the nether realm, strands of thick nether.