A week after the assassination attempt on Klaus, his uncles went rogue and, for two solid weeks, they caused mayhem among those speaking ill of Klaus.
It was known that had it not been for Klaus showing up when he did during the Arcadian Mine Invasion, the city would have suffered much greater losses.
Many lives would have been lost—there was no doubt about it.
So frustrated by their failure to save him in time and their inability to locate the dark order, his five uncles directed their anger toward his critics.
Back then, many people panicked at the sheer brutality they unleashed. An entire mercenary team was wiped out simply because one of them said Klaus got what he deserved.
Panic escalated when they killed a sage—or, more precisely when Uncle Ziggy killed a sage who wasn’t even on the battlefield but was spouting all kinds of nonsense after the battle was over.
That incident caused widespread chaos. This led the Great Family, to which the sage belonged, to send twenty-four more Saints and two sages to hunt them down.
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None returned.
It was a great loss on their part but also a wake-up call to many, showing that Klaus’s uncles, like Klaus himself, were no ordinary warriors. If a sage could be killed with a single lightning bullet, what did that tell them?
They called on the War Goddess to intervene, but she was grieving back then so she paid no heed to their cries—not that she cared in the first place.
If it were up to her, every human would simply die so she could have peace of mind. Her hatred for humanity ran deep.
However, two weeks before Klaus woke up, the five uncles vanished and were never seen again. After Klaus regained consciousness, he searched for them for a few days, but finding no trace, he decided to stop.
He knew his uncles were abnormally strong; no one except perhaps sovereigns or Transcendents could pose a threat to them.
However, after Klaus and his sister returned from the genius gathering, he received news that his uncles were back. Without even changing his clothes, he rushed over to the tattoo parlor to meet them.
“Kiddo, glad to see you’re doing well,” Uncle Xian said, patting him heavily on the shoulder. “Last time we saw you, you were dead,” he added with a cheerful grin.
“The last time I saw you all, you were Saints. When did you become Sages?” Klaus responded, his expression shocked.
He was stunned upon arriving at the tattoo shop and finding that his uncles were now Sages. The last time he’d seen them, they were Saints.
Scratch that—even the first time he met them, they were Grandmasters. Then, just a few months later, they became Saints, and now they were Sages. All this in less than a year. That wasn’t how cultivation typically worked, even for prodigies.
“Brat, what are you trying to say? Don’t you think we’ve got the talent to become Sages?” Uncle Ziggy asked, a playful smile on his lips. The other uncles wore the same grin.
“No, no, I didn’t mean it that way. It’s just shocking to see you all became Sages in less than a year after attaining Sainthood.”
To rise to the Sage stage, one must first saturate their Star Core. This can be achieved through manual cultivation, using a cultivation technique to absorb the qi in the air. It’s a rather slow process, so most people skip it.
The next method is by absorbing resources rich in Spiritual qi; Mountain Dew is a typical example. This is common among the wealthy, but then again, a good warrior is usually wealthy. Selling monster bodies and cores is certainly a way to generate considerable income.
If neither of these methods is applied, then there’s the old-fashioned way: hunting and killing. The more you kill, the more experience points you earn. Absorbing monster cores is also a fast way to level up, so most people hunt to speed up their progress.
However, advancing from the Saint stage to the Sage stage typically takes at least six months for the hardworking and a full year for those who take it slow.
Then there’s the tribulation they must prepare for. It’s no exaggeration to say even prodigies need time for that.
For his uncles to move from Saint to Sage in under four months was just too wild. Klaus simply couldn’t believe it.
“We worked hard, kiddo,” Uncle Xian said. “By the way, what have you been up to lately?” he asked.
Klaus sighed, noting their change of topic. He decided to let it go; after all, he was a similar case. If it weren’t for the academy trials holding him back, he would have long attained Sainthood. His experience-point farming was hundreds of times faster than most.
“Just hunting the bastards who tried to kill me,” Klaus shrugged. “Actually, I’ve killed quite a few already and am now planning to kidnap a Sovereign Assassin, so you know, the usual.”
This time, it was his uncles who were shocked. They had spent a great deal of time hunting the Dark Order but had come up empty, while Klaus, a mere master stage expert, had already killed a few.
Some might have called his bluff, but they knew he wasn’t bluffing. So, how did he do it?
“How did you do it?” Uncle Jojo asked.
Klaus smiled and replied, “One of them came after me after I woke up, and, well, I got to him first and managed to break him. From there, I just followed the trail.”
“Don’t tell me you’re responsible for the disappearances of assassins in this region,” Uncle Jojo asked, looking both skeptical and curious.
“Let’s forget about those losers,” Klaus said with a smile. “The more important question is, where have you all been for the past few months? I’ve heard some things about your rampage.”
The five uncles just looked at him and smiled back. Clearly, their little brat had more revenge in him than they did—something that brought them great joy.
They seemed to relish it when Klaus killed his enemies.
Anyway, Klaus spent the next few hours learning more about what they’d been up to over the last few months.
It turned out that after their rampage across the eastern region and failing to locate the Dark Order, they had left for a Tier 6 Forbidden Zone somewhere in the Equatorial Union, previously known as Africa.
They had spent the last few weeks there, hunting and absorbing the cores of the monsters they killed. From the way they described it, they caused quite a bit of chaos in that zone.
After breaking through, they headed somewhere else they didn’t mention, but from the look on their faces, Klaus could tell it was a dangerous place they didn’t want him going anytime soon. He didn’t press them.
When he asked how they managed to remain unnoticed even though many were looking for them.
Uncle Mark activated a tattoo on his arm that transformed him into a completely different person. Klaus immediately thought of his own tattoo, but since he didn’t fully understand how it worked, he held back from asking further questions.
They gave him a few Devil cores, and, after making him promise to invite them when he went after the Sovereign, he left. The next day, he entered seclusion.
It was time for him to awaken the Slaughter Aura.