Chapter 28.1: Forest Hunters Part 1/3

Mira, Maria, and Vulcan traveled throughout the Dark Moon Forest for some time now. Night Hawks kept attacking them constantly, but Mira just forced Vulcan to deal with these pests. They would never attack Vulcan even if he was small. The Night Hawks must've been able to sense a faint danger coming from him. The reason she made Vulcan deal with these things was she hated dealing with them and also to stimulate his beast instincts. For some reason, they would always dive bomb, Mira. When Mira told Vulcan that he will take care of these birds and that she doesn't want to have to deal with them, a Night Hawk almost hit her and she had to block it. After she dealt with the Night Hawk, she grabbed Vulcan, knocked him out, and launched him in a random direction in the forest. Then Mira forced Maria to run off with her. It took Vulcan a week to catch up to them. He also had to deal with a constant stream of beasts and had to decide to spend time-fighting them or running to catch up. Most of the time he fought because they would just chase him if he ran.

When he finally caught up, Mira just looked at him with cold eyes. All he could do was put his head down, but Maria would constantly provide him love and warmth which he loved. He then dealt with every Night Hawk after that. He didn't feel like being launched to some random area in the forest unconscious, forced to find them somehow again.

Mira would fight any Low-Stage Rank 2 that came her way. After her breakthrough and body tempering, these Low-Stage Rank 2 weren't much but they did help in consolidating her foundation in her new realm.

Maria was incredibly bored. All she would do is run with them and cultivate. Since they haven't completely entered the inner region and are just near the border, most of the stronger beasts don't have a need to come here.

Something unexpected happened after around 2 weeks. They stumbled across a base of some sort. It had large wooden walls, made from the trees in the area. It was like a large village. Mira guessed that it probably had a few hundred people living in it.

Mira felt something was off though. Villages usually aren't this deep into the forest and if they are powerful enough to stay here then they might as well live in the city. Mira told Maria that they will camp out to see what was going on.

After waiting a while, they saw people bringing in a bunch of unconscious women. Mira was able to confirm her thoughts. This must be the Forest Hunters that killed her parents when she was little.

Mira clenched her fists and muttered, "I guess it's time for a little revenge. Rest easy Mother and Father, your unfilial daughter still remembers to take revenge on your behalf."

"Maria, we are going to attack this base. This is a bandit group called the Forest Hunters. Most will probably be in the Body Tempering Realm with probably quite a few in the Qi Condensation. I have no idea what realm the leader of the base is at. Your goal is to slaughter." Mira commanded.

"Eh? But I've never killed someone before, much less a bunch of people. What if I can't bring myself to do it?" Maria said a little unsure.

"Then I guess you'll die or worse. Better to get your first kill early on like this than save it for later. Rationalize it however you want. It's not like these people are good people. I don't care if you only kill one person, but I'm not letting a single one escape. Vulcan, don't join in this fight. I'll have you wait outside and kill anyone that tries to run away." Mira said to them and they just nodded.

"I don't think it really matters what time of day we attack, but let's wait until daytime."

"Why daytime? Wouldn't it be better at night?" Maria asked a little confused.

"Not this time. Bandits often attack at night. This goes to say that a lot of them probably sleep during the day. Not to mention a lot of beasts are less active during the day, they probably have fewer people on guard." Mira explained.

"I see. Thanks for explaining." Maria said and Mira just nodded.

They waited until daytime and then started their attack. Mira thought of several ways to attack, like attacking the strongest first or sneaking in and silently killing a bunch of them until they noticed, but ultimately decided on a much more straightforward approach.

"*Yawn* I hate guarding the base during the day. Nothing ever happens. Why do we even need to be here?"

"Not true, we often have to deal with stray beasts or beasts looking to get into the camp. Even if it doesn't happen every day, it is often enough to warrant this."

"Yeah, but still. I don't want to be the one to deal with that stuff. I just want to h--"

Mira put on her mask and snuck up on the 2 guards at the entrance of the camp. They were just Body Tempering bandits so she easily decapitated the first one.

"Huh? Bro are you okay? Why'd you stop-AH! ENE--" Before he could finish that sentence his head flew.

Mira and Maria then entered the base. It was relatively empty right now as it seemed a lot of people were asleep. There were around a hundred houses and a couple of large buildings that seemed to be something akin to a public housing building.

Mira silently entered the individual houses and found that a lot of them were stronger Body Tempering Realm People or Qi Condensation. She entered the first house and found a guy sleeping with a girl chained up, but asleep. Mira walked over to the bed where he slept and cut off his head and left the girl and the body. The girl woke up when she was leaving and looked towards the masked woman that did this.

"Wait! Help me, please!! I'm begging you! Can you remove these chains?! I want to get out of here!!" The girl started screaming, pleading, and crying for Mira to help.

"Later. I can't have you running around notifying everyone." Mira said then left.

She continued walking into houses and decapitating them. A chained-up girl would always be in the room with them or maybe in another room that used for some other purpose to fulfill their sick desires. Sometimes the girl would wake up and beg and plead. Sometimes they would stay asleep and not notice and sometimes like this time they would wake up the guy before she could kill them.

"You dare disturb my sleep you bitch!?!" The man yelled and hit the chained-up woman. Then he noticed a masked woman with a scythe in the room. He also noticed that she was only Stage 1 Qi Condensation while he had just reached Stage 2. He smiled lewdly.

"You want to come into my room to kill me with your meager strength? HAHA! I will forgive you if you do a little something for me hehe." The man licked his lips.

Mira just ignored the man and walked toward him. After closing the distance a bit she then dashed.

"Tch. Stupid bitch. I guess I'll have to teach you a lesson first and make you understand."

He grabbed his sword and blocked her swing, but Mira sent 2 ice needles towards his feet. He didn't even notice them and one shattered his ankle and the other one went through his foot.

"ARRGH! You'll pay for that you bitch!"

The man could barely stand now so his sword swings were lacking by quite a bit. Mira blocked his slash and twirled her scythe and had the spear end cave his chest in. The man dropped his sword and was about to fall to the ground until Mira spun her scythe and cut off his rod... Well, she tried too. She ended up cutting his body in half separating his lower body from his upper body. Then he fell to the ground.

"AAAARRRGGGGHH!!!" He screamed in pain.

Mira then shoved the spear end into his mouth and through the back of his head, killing him.

The woman that was chained up was about to start screaming until Mira quickly moved and covered her mouth.

"Just shut up for now. I will come back later, but I can't have you running around the base and wake everybody up." Mira said and waited for her to calm down then removed her hand and left.

This scene played out numerous times as Mira entered the homes. These people had no combat experience and only kill the weak. Even if one of these guys has higher cultivation than her, they have no battle sense or strategy. They only swing their sword around, hoping to hit something.

Mira finished up her side of the houses and didn't see Maria. She decided that this is a trial that Maria needs to face by herself. If Maria can steel herself and kill the people in those houses or can only kill one person before her mind doesn't know how to react to what she just did doesn't matter. As long as she can kill that one person this will be a worthwhile experience.

Mira shook her head and ran to one of the public housing buildings that seem to hold the weaker people. When she entered there were over 100 people living in this building. She started her massacre.

This time she didn't have the luxury to decapitate all of them as she just wanted to kill that as fast as possible so the scene before her was disturbing, to say the least. Mira kept twirling her scythe, keeping her momentum going. Both sides of the scythe were a deadly weapon. Every time she made a half-revolution with the scythe there was a death. The blade would cut people in half, sometimes they would just lose their head, but other times they were sliced in half diagonally from the neck to the side of their body. Whenever this happened there was a fountain of blood. The spear end had a sharp point at the end of it and could also be used as a staff due to the weight of the scythe. Their heads would explode into a bloody mess when she hit people with this side of her scythe. After killing around 40 people or so, some of the people began to wake up and after tens of people died again they finally noticed they were being slaughtered mercilessly.

"ENEMY ATTACK!!"

"ENEMY ATTACK!!"

"ENEMY ATTACK!!"

Most barely got the words out before they died. It only took her another minute to kill the rest of the people in the building, but their noise alerted the others in the base. The people that were still alive began to wake up from their sleep and run out to check what was going on. Mira had already left the building and was killing anyone who stepped outside. She only stopped killing when the boss of the base came out and blocked her attack.