The Devil's Cage

Huuhha! Huuuhha!

The trial-goers stared at Kieran with their twisted expressions, breathing heavily.

Under the influence of the island, they had forgotten the fear that lingered, all that was left was greed and envy. It was like the poison ivy that grew in their hearts, the vines grew longer throughout the period and even sprouted buds.

They were in an empty state of mind, forgetting who they were and being dominated by their desires completely.

ROAR!

Thirty of them roared like fearsome beasts, unlike their human voices. The formation that they were maintaining crumbled within an instant when the frenzy took over.

They dashed out crazily at Kieran.

Wuuung!

The dark red greatsword was glimmering. Kieran then dashed forward and swung his greatsword in a flurry which looked like a glimmering whirlwind.

Arrogance! Untamed!

As the greatsword was creating heavy whistling sounds with its movement, [Arrogant Word] again displayed utmost resonance with Kieran’s movements.

A forward horizontal slash brought out the bewitching red from its body. It became the focus of that particular space. The heavy red from the sword overwhelmed the sunset’s reddish shine and the fresh red blood of its victim.

The first frenzied trial-goer couldn’t even react to what happened and he was slashed in half.

After death took his life, his torso remained in the posture of charging and grazed Kieran’s side, falling to a further spot.

He was the first one and thus started the massacre.

Kieran made a quick cross step and dodged the spear lunged at his chest, [Arrogant Word] then charged forward like the peak that pierced through clouds.

The spear was torn apart, the wielder was pierced by the dark red sword tip but more deadly weapons were lunged at Kieran from left and right. Behind him there were more slashing and thrust strikes.

Kieran didn’t want to dodge the incoming strikes, he gripped his greatsword tight and moved forward three steps with the body on the greatsword tip.

Then, a series of swords and blades clashed, producing a messy clunking noise as they missed their target.

The spear wielders behind even pierced their peers in the opposite direction. The slashes and thrusts hit the ground instead of Kieran.

Wuung!

A flip of his palm, Kieran pulled out [Arrogant Word] from the half-torn body and spun it around. After a perfect roundhouse slash, sounds of flesh and bones being torn apart followed.

Blood splashes across the place, a couple of torsos were sent flying upwards by the slash’s force.

Kieran’s movements was fierce like tiger and agile like monkey. He became an unstoppable force, rampaging and slashing in every direction among trial-goers.

All of the trial-goers fell like grass under the sharp edge of [Arrogant Word].

Broken limbs and punctured organs flowed across the bloody stream, yet the couple of remaining trial-goers had no intentions of stepping away.

Their twisted heart made them even more agitated, frenzied against death. Under the domination of their desire, they didn’t mind dying with Kieran.

The remaining ones even strapped themselves with explosives, grenades, charging at Kieran while roaring their lungs out.

The terrifying manner would strike fear in every man’s heart if they were the target.

Orgeton and Fenix has been waiting for the golden opportunity to finally make a move.

However, their target was not Kieran but the wooden cottage behind him!

More precisely, the scroll in the wooden cottage.

Their eyes were on fire when they saw the cottage. It blinded them to not notice the unusual behaviour of the other trial-goers behind them nor did they noticed anything unusual around the wooden cottage.

When the explosion went off and a two-headed snake sprung out from the ground, only then they noticed the situation they were in but it was a little too late.

Orgeton was swallowed by one of the snake’s heads.

Fenix relied on the blade aura that he fired out at the lunging snake, thus escaping his demise.

Though he was quickly chased down by the two-headed snake and was overwhelmed by its power.

A swipe of its tail sent Fenix flying towards Kieran like a baseball. When he was before Kieran, the downward slash from [Arrogant Word] welcomed him.

Instinctively, Fenix raised the longsword in his hand to parry Kieran’s greatsword.

CHANG!

Amidst the clunking, the long sword that Fenix relied on the most had a crack on the point where Kieran’s [Arrogant Word] struck down. The crack was getting bigger by the second.

"No!" Fenix cried in shock.

However, his cry couldn’t alter his dying fate as his sword broke into pieces.

UGH!

A line of blood appeared on the spot between Fenix’s brows and extended downward rapidly.

When blood gushed out from the line, Fenix was sliced in half!

An orange glow appeared on one half of Fenix body after and Kieran clearly saw that it was the broken blade.

[Name: The Slicer (Damaged)]

[Type: Sword weapon]

[Rarity: Rare]

[Attack: Strong]

[Attribute: 1.Blade Aura Type I; 2. Blade Aura Type II]

[Effect: None]

[Prerequisite: Sharp Weapon, Long Sword (Master)]

[Remarks: This is a treasure that Fenix got accidently which changed his life forever!]

...

[Blade Aura Type I: Firing blade aura according to the user’s Strength. Different levels of attack ranging from Weak, Average, Strong. Attack range could reach 5 meters, 10 meters, 15 meters respectively.]

[Blade Aura Type II: Charge up for 5 seconds and fire out a wave of blade aura with Powerful attack, 30 meters in range, 1/day]

...

Quite a decent Rare weapon, if it wasn’t damaged though.

"Because it was destroyed before, when it dropped, it presented itself as Damaged state?"

After wondering about some of the rules of equipments and items dropping, Kieran raised his hand to his [Serpent Spirit] and one of the snake’s heads opened its mouth, spitting a potion out.

Kieran grabbed the potion and glanced over its details.

[Name: Perfected Raging Blood IV]

[Type: Blood]

[Rarity: Great]

[Attribute: Power Raging]

[Prerequisite: Constitution D]

[Able to bring out of dungeon: Yes]

[Remark: It was crafted by a third generation alchemy enhancer, its tremendous power was halved but so does the side effect!]

...

[Power Raging: Strength +3. Agility +2, Constitution +2, Spirit -1, Intuition -1, for 15 seconds. After the duration ended, a Constitution authentication not lower than D+ will occur, user who passed the authentication will be Weakened for 10 seconds, failure will result in 20 seconds Weakened state. Another Constitution authentication not lower than E+ will occur again, user who passed the second authentication will recover from Weakened state after 30 minutes, failed will result in Moderate damage to the user.]

[Note: When Constitution is higher than C, immune to all debuffs.]

...

"The descendants of the alchemy enhancer?"

Kieran was shocked over the remarks of [Perfected Raging Blood IV].

Suddenly, he related it to the government of the current dungeon world.

After the Blood Moon war, the forces and authorities that were built over the rubbles of the previous kingdom never seemed to give up the thoughts of enhancing human beings through alchemy.

There was Marco previously at the station and now some random trial-goers.

[Mutated Raging Blood III] and [Perfected Raging Blood IV].

These two items were enough for Kieran to speculate more.

Kieran didn’t believe that the dead trial-goer before him was some stranded descendants of the alchemy enhancer and coincidentally discovered by the Sanctuary, thus inviting him to the trials.

It was too much of a coincidence!

Kieran never believed in coincidences. The coincidences that people mentioned so much were nothing more than a delicate arrangements.

While using that sole fact as point of speculations, the identity of the remaining trail-goers were something worth ruminating over.

"Is this the Sanctuary trials as well? Or...?"

For a moment there, Kieran became doubtful about the purpose of the Sanctuary in organizing the trials.

While doubtful thoughts lingered in his mind, he continued on picking up the other six more low tier Magic rank items and signaled to Schmidt that coast was clear.

What was the Sanctuary after? He had some vague guesses but what did their goals have to do with him?

He was there to complete the trials only.

As for the other matters, he would rather not be involved.

But...

Things will never change according to one’s honest will.