Moving room to room, the brothers continued their massacre. They proceeded to kill each sleeping target on the left side of the Grand Staircase; before moving on to the right, leaving a total of 13 corpses in their wake before they stopped to rest with only two rooms remaining.
Along the way, their assassination technique didn’t differ much from their first attempt. Cynrik would deal the first blow to their target by slitting their throats, while Brance, who was now thoroughly coating the removed hidden blade with Wind Mana, would forcefully slam the blade fully into the target’s head.
They only had to adjust their strategy in one of the rooms where a naked couple was sleeping. They had split up and attacked separately; Cynrik dealt with the woman while Brance used his sword to cut off the man’s head in one swing.
With each kill, they continued to receive double rewards since every target was at the minimum level 13 and the highest so far being level 16. Even though their targets were of a different Tier and higher level, it didn’t matter. A sleeping target was a defenseless one. Seeing how easily they could kill these people who were stronger than them, Brance and Cynrik both swore to never sleep heavily for the rest of their lives.
The simple thought that someone significantly weaker than them could reap their lives when they went into slumber unsettled the brothers greatly. Their only saving grace was both their high VIT and their Body Tempering. When they acquired the BOD TEMP stat, Tobs had explained its benefits to them. In Vinestra, beasts had a naturally more robust defense than most beings, and their BOD TEMP stat gave them a similar physique to a beast with the corresponding Tier. Currently, with their BOD TEMP being at Tier 2, they would only suffer minor injuries from someone in their Tier. At the same time, the damage from Tier 1 beings could hurt them, but they were more resistant.
That’s why Cynrik had come up with this plan. He was well aware that if push came to shove, they could at least survive long enough to escape. But hurting someone of a higher Tier was a different story. Every time he attacked one of the Tier 1 beings, he could feel the resistance from their skin. So unlike when he killed the people in the basement who were all Tier 0, he found himself having to exert a lot more force to slit their throats. This resistance was why he told Brance to coat the blade in Mana to add extra damage.
While Cynrik had given his younger brother a hard time for being unable to kill their first opponent instantly, he couldn’t fault him, and thus after his little skit, Cynrik didn’t mention it again. Brance understood why he couldn’t kill the first target with his initial strike and subsequently adjusted with the second and saw a noticeable difference.
Room by room, they swept through silently like reapers, killing its inhabitants without waking them. The result was a massive amount of XP. 35,900 to be exact, which raised both of their levels to 7, 24 Stat points, 12 Tier 1 Codex’s, and more than a dozen storage devices.
Letting out a tired sigh, Cynrik proceeded to scroll through his gains from the assassinations. Looking over the Stat point increases he had received, Cynrik didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. He had acquired 4 DEX, 6 INT, 4 STR, 4 AGI, 2 MIND, 4 VIT, and 24 KIN. Although he was glad to see his stats increase, he was depressed that it had messed up his well-thought-out build. Aside from leveling up to level 7, the biggest gain, in his opinion, was the KIN points. Upon reaching 10 KIN he had been notified that he received a skill.
-Your Killing Intent Attribute has reached 10 points. Therefore, the host will now be able to unleash an intangible and invisible force equivalent to 1.5 times Vinestra’s gravity on an opponent.-
At 20 it increased to 1.75g, and at 30 it reached 2.0g. Seeing that every 10 points added to his Killing Intent Attribute only led to a 0.25 increase in the force he could exert made Cynriks heart sink, and when he saw that leveling up didn’t increase his KIT like the rest of his Stats, he couldn’t help but let out yet another sigh.
Eventually, after staring at his Stats panel for a few minutes, he decided to throw caution to the wind and dump all 8 of his newly acquired Stat points into his AGI, increasing it to 64 and making it his highest Stat. Once finished, he sent his new Stat profile over to Brance before standing up and stretching.
: Status :
: Cynrik Jetlensr:
: Human Male:
: Age-7:
: Soul Age-36:
: Level: 7 :
: Essence(XP): 4800/65000:
: Distribution: 1 Per All :
: Mana Codex Tier: 1 (Proficiency= 20.0%) :
: Mana Cycles: 300 (Proficiency= 20.0%) :
: Mana Circuit Tier: 1 (Proficiency= 20.0%) :
: Gravity Resistance: 3g (Proficiency= 100.0%) :
: Body Tempering: Tier 2 (Proficiency= 0.0%) :
: STATS :
: HP 460/460 :
: Mana 221/221 :
: Stamina 230/230 :
: Stat Points- 0:
: Skill Points- 80 :
: Strength- 29 :
: Dexterity- 57 :
: Agility- 64 :
: Intelligence- 27 :
: Vitality- 46 :
: Mind- 35 :
: Killing Intent- 33 – 2.0G :
: Affinity :
:(SAG)Dark-Tier 0 (Proficiency= 10.0%): :Expand:
:(BG) Fire-Tier 1 (Proficiency= 10.0%): :Expand:
:(BG) Wind-Tier 0 (Proficiency= 25.0%): :Expand:
Brance, who just finished going over his Stats, sent his new profile to Cynrik before reading through all the new boosts his brother had received. The only thing he was currently regretting was that he had already capped out his VIT Stat. Because of that, he lost out on 4 points that his brother had received from their earlier kills. This fact alone gave the brothers a valuable piece of information. However, Brance, against Cynrik’s advice, still decided to push his VIT up to its new cap of 70.
: Status :
: Brance Jetlensr:
: Human Male:
: Age-6:
: Soul Age-35:
: Level: 7 :
: Essence(XP): 4400/65000:
: Distribution: 1 Per All :
: Mana Codex Tier: 1 (Proficiency= 20.0%) :
: Mana Cycles: 300 (Proficiency= 20.0%) :
: Mana Circuit Tier: 1 (Proficiency= 20.0%) :
: Gravity Resistance: 3g (Proficiency= 100.0%) :
: Body Tempering: Tier 2 (Proficiency= 0.0%) :
: STATS :
: HP 700/700 :
: Mana 211/211 :
: Stamina 350/350 :
: Stat Points- 0 :
: Skill Points- 0 :
: Strength- 55 :
: Dexterity- 40 :
: Agility- 35 :
: Intelligence- 27 :
: Vitality- 70 :
: Mind- 25 :
: Killing Intent- 30 – 2.0g :
: Affinity- :
:(SAG)Light-Tier 0 (Proficiency= 10.0%): :Expand:
:(BG) Earth-Tier 1 (Proficiency= 10.0%): :Expand:
:(BG) Wind-Tier 0 (Proficiency= 25.0%): :Expand:
Both of them had both agreed it was best to spend their newly acquired Stat points instead of saving them. Upon seeing that his brother had pushed his VIT back up to its cap, Cynrik couldn’t help but frown and open his panel. He still didn’t have a single capped Stat, but that was by design. He had long assumed that there would be no way around the caps Tobs put in place and had worked around this fact.
[Alright, two rooms left. Thankfully each time we level up, our HP, MP, and STAM all recover; if not, prolonged battles at our level would be a pain in the ass; it’s a good thing we are both used to mental fatigue cause we’d be dead tired otherwise.]
Closing the panels Brance had sent him, Cynrik cracked his neck and rolled his left arm a couple of times before moving towards the door.
BANG
Just as Cynrik was about to open it, a loud bang came from the room next door, freezing him in place as he immediately activated Mana Sight and looked to his left.
He could see into the last two rooms they needed to clear from where he stood. But, to his dismay, Cynrik watched the person in the next room over sit up from their bed and angrily look around in confusion.
While Cynrik was concerned by the room next to theirs, Brance’s face contorted in rage as he witnessed what was happening in the final room they were supposed to attack.
He watched as an adult mercilessly stomped on one of the two small children; this person was waving their arms around while the child was curled up in a ball, receiving kick after kick to his body. Behind them, a second child was on the bed quivering in fear.
Making up his mind, Brance pushed Cynrik aside and went for the door, only to be stopped by his brother wrapping him up in a full nelson and holding him in place. [STOP, ONE THING AT A TIME BRANCE, WE CAN’T JUST RUSH IN!]