The Night of Slaughter
Above the corpse of an early Golden Core cultivator, the Wheel of Slaughter Tribulation spun. With every full rotation, spiritual energy unraveled from the shattered Golden Core like threads of silk and wound itself around the wheel.
Under normal circumstances, spiritual energy drawn onto the Wheel of Slaughter Tribulation like yarn onto a spinning wheel would be dyed in slaughter and become one with it. But right now, the wheel was rolling to the left.
Even without a spiritual domain, dyeing a cultivator who had reached a proper realm's Golden Core in slaughter tribulation allowed the slaughter-tainted spiritual energy to spread in secret.
And far more widely than any spiritual domain—all at once, no less.
Alright. Time for the long-awaited event.
"Nice. If this were a system message, it'd be a massive misfortune! Something like [The Night of Slaughter Descends upon the current map.]"
The moment slaughter-laced spiritual energy blotted out the sky over Muam Fortress and the ominous gaze of the blood-red star turned upon it with interest, the slaughter fiends inside Muam Fortress all went berserk at once.
I could feel the little wheels rolling.
I wasn't even the one turning them, yet I could sense them this clearly—so clearly that instead of relief that everything was going according to plan, a flicker of unease crept in.
The slaughter tribulation swelled exponentially.
As countless NPCs stationed inside Muam Fortress were slaughtered by the fiends, the wheels multiplied, pouring even more slaughter tribulation into the cultivators already claimed by it.
It was already too late for the cultivators to band together and fight back. Once someone became a slaughter fiend, they abandoned all regard for their own life and simply charged at anything living, hell-bent on killing it.
And cultivators—the ultimate endgame bosses of pure self-interest, the kind of people who only ever cared about living long and living well by themselves—were never going to lock arms and shout one-two-three, heave! in a situation like this.
"Alright then. Time to go harvest."
I approached a neutral NPC who looked like a guard, currently trying to hold off a slaughter fiend that was indiscriminately spewing techniques and spiritual energy at every living thing around it, and hit him with a surprise attack first.
"What the... hell?!"
"Auto-Battle."
Victory in Auto-Battle.
Even a guard, after burning through techniques and spiritual energy fighting a slaughter fiend, getting backstabbed, and then getting hit with Auto-Battle on top of it—yeah, of course the overwhelming tag popped.
"KRAAAAAAAAGH!!!"
I crooked a finger at the slaughter fiend howling as the tribulation swallowed it whole, and pulled out my wheel. The moment it spun hard to the right, the fiend's slaughter tribulation came pouring straight into it.
"So this is auto-hunting."
Scooping up the auto-hunt loot felt a little tedious, sure—but when you're freeloading this hard, a little inconvenience is a price worth paying.
The wheel settled at my back, spinning slowly, automatically reeling in slaughter tribulation while granting me the power to fly. Feeling it take hold, I rose into the sky.
"There's a flight ban in place—how are you flying?"
"Beats me?"
A flight ban? What, like a "No Flying" zone?
Anyway, once I was airborne, I had a perfect view of the fortress turned into a complete mess. Cultivators fleeing. Cultivators fighting back after being attacked. Slaughter fiends rampaging everywhere.
Yeah. Absolute chaos!
A few of the weaker wheels had been destroyed by powerful cultivators, but the slaughter tribulation itself had already spread through the fortress and simply returned to me. Recovery rate in those cases seemed to be only about half, though.
Even so, compared to what I'd invested, the return was dozens of times over. Still, waste not, want not—I started moving fast to reclaim the remaining wheels.
Weakest wheels first!
I hit the cultivators from behind as they gathered power to finish off the weaker wheels, killed the half-subdued slaughter fiends alongside them, then ambushed and killed the cultivators who were just starting to relax. I killed the fiends chasing cultivators, then killed those same relieved cultivators in one go, stacking more slaughter tribulation—and just like that, my level shot up by eight.
Eight whole levels! And I was already level 268! I'd only gained a measly three levels after surviving the early-game crisis, for crying out loud.
And I still hadn't even reclaimed the two slaughter fiends carrying the most grown wheels!
"Which one do I harvest first..."
They looked about the same, but one was still spinning furiously while the other wasn't turning nearly as much.
The first meant it was currently having a blast committing slaughter. The second meant it wasn't managing to stir up much tribulation at all. Naturally, I went for the latter first.
I tracked it down to see what the hell it was doing, and found it locked in a life-or-death duel with a cultivator. Oh—looking at the border over its head, it was a boss mob, and it was holding up surprisingly well.
So the opponent was a field boss. Field boss or not, with the NPCs belonging to the Muam Fortress map dying and deserting in droves, its power had plummeted to a level that was honestly embarrassing for a field boss.
Even so, it still had enough strength to handle a slaughter fiend gone berserk on tribulation, so I jumped into the fight before it was too late and finished the fiend off.
As the saturated slaughter tribulation was sucked into the wheel at my back, refined, and converted into experience—I felt myself gain a level.
"...So it was you. The one behind all this."
"Oh, busted. My bad, senior."
I tilted my head crookedly at the fortress lord, who blocked the chopsticks I'd casually flung with his own dharma treasures, then generated even more chopsticks and hurled them.
"How'd you figure it out?"
"You're walking around right in front of me reeking of murderous slaughter aura that thick—how could I not—"
Tougher than expected. Even after burning power fighting the slaughter fiend, he really had been a field boss in his own right. Shame I couldn't use Auto-Battle because of the boss designation, but whatever. Didn't matter.
The wheel turned.
Refined slaughter tribulation condensed in my right hand. Chopsticks formed, fired, and fired again.
A near-endless barrage of chopsticks, moving as if alive, slipped past his dharma treasures and closed in from every direction, hunting for vital points and weak spots to snuff out a living being's life.
"Not a chance!"
As if he'd realized slaughter tribulation couldn't be blocked by spiritual energy alone, the fortress lord poured out dharma treasures to intercept the chopsticks' assault. From within that storm of chopsticks, Yu Hee vanished—then reappeared right beside him.
Slaughter tribulation coated the twin daggers in her hands, elongating them into red fangs. The blades were about to reach the fortress lord when a wall of talismans erupted from his sleeve and blocked them.
The daggers were stopped for only an instant. The talisman wall was shredded by the twin blades in a heartbeat—but in that same moment, the fortress lord activated a technique, and spiritual energy as brilliant as sunlight gathered in his hand.
"Muam—No Darkness!"
"Ptooey!"
"What—?! Every one of your senses should have been sealed!"
"That fucking hurt!"
It was the effect of the Mysterious prefix—resisting a debuff by taking it as damage instead. My HP had dropped, but the slaughter tribulation restored it almost instantly, so it barely mattered. I could have resisted it with resistance stats alone in the first place!
This was why it was one of the five garbage prefixes!
If the stat resistance fails, then you resist it. Why the hell would you resist first and take a damage check? Absolute trash prefix!
I must have put too much force into my hands out of pure irritation, because the fortress lord, struck by the slaughter tribulation, shattered into a spray of blood. Luckily, I'd spun the wheel in time and blocked it with slaughter before I got painted red.
Seriously, though. A field boss—the map owner, no less—who'd even gotten a field boss power-up mode, and the experience wasn't even enough for a level-up?
What a stingy drop!
Anyway, once I reclaimed the last remaining wheel, no NPCs were left on the minimap.
"You're not going to kill the mortals left in the fortress?"
"Huh? Why would I kill background props that don't even give exp? They're not NPCs."
Why bother with the hassle? No idea.
"Hee-a, what exactly is your standard for what counts as an NPC?"
"Whatever shows up on the minimap."
If it's an NPC, it appears as a dot. If it doesn't, it's just background. Why was she even asking about something that obvious?
"So it's a standard the star shows you, completely independent of your own will?"
"Beats me. Anyway, time to hit the next map."
Leaving behind the days in the fortress—where no events had triggered and my heart had been at ease—it was time to move on. I stuffed the loudly complaining Cheon Nan-cho into my inventory, then pulled out the wheel.
Spinning behind my head, the wheel granted me buoyancy.
I! Finally! Had! A movement skill!!!!
Savoring the pure joy of no longer being a ground-bound pedestrian, I soared through the sky and crossed the map in an instant, heading for the next one. My flight speed wasn't that high yet, but I decided to chalk it up to the side effect of cramming too many functions into a single movement skill.
If I used it often and leveled the proficiency, the speed would pick up!
Of course, thanks to the permanent debuff, combat would never grant any proficiency at all. But still.
A random stat permanently decreases by 3.
Goddamn it.
I scowled at the misfortune event that popped the second I left the fortress, like it had been waiting for me—then abruptly slammed to a midair halt and scanned my surroundings.
"What the fuck?"
Did I imagine that?