The Ruined Death Knight

Outside of the tavern...

"Hey, you! Wait!" One of the men wearing the union uniform yelled at the suspicious cloaked figure, who the latter blatantly ignored his command.

"This bastard, hey! We are chasing after him! He seems suspicious!"

Nodding to his partner, they began running after the cloaked figure.

The cloaked figure glanced at them before moving into an alleyway to the left.

But to their surprise, once they turned left to the alleyway, the cloaked figure that they were chasing had disappeared without any signs to see.

"Where did he go..."

"Ugh! Dammit, he might have been our leader for the bounty!"

"He might have run through the alleyway. Should we chase after him?"

"Idiot, we were just a few meters apart with him. If that guy is someone so fast we two wouldn´t even stand a chance."

"But if we do that-"

While the two were arguing with each other. they failed to notice the figure who was stalking them from above the buildings.

Blending in the night, the figure jumped behind the duo.

Once his feet touched the ground, the sound of him landing to the ground never appeared, making the two who argued completely miss the figure who was a head taller than them.

Stepping a step forward, the figure wrapped his hands around their shoulders as if they were old friends.

The two who got startled by that wanted to fight back against the unknown cloaked figures' apperance.

But it was sadly too late.

The figure cold gauntlets were pressed at the two mounts with such strength that the two felt their jaws breaking.

"Mhmm!"

"Mhmm!"

"You two are an annoyance." The figure who was Danzel said with a chilling voice to the two,

Making them subconsciously tremble out of fear.

"You better off death..."

Hearing Danzel's ultimatum, that being the declaration of their death. They forced their legs that has became jelly to stand firmly and to withdraw their swords to fight back.

Though the two were too focused staring at Danzel, they failed to notice the dark green glow at the end of the alleyway coming their way.

Once they noticed because of the sudden brightness, it was too late.

"Mhhhhm!"

"Mhhmm!"

As the screams were being suppressed by Danzel, the two looked at their chest in confusion and horror.

With blood staining their uniform, a short dagger was pierced through their heart that was being held by some dark green hands.

As weakness overwhelmed their entire body, the men gave up resisting.

[You received 8000 XP]

[You received 7500 XP]

"Thanks for saving me some trouble." Danzel said stored the two dead bodies together with the daggers that his [Hand of Mana Affinity] were holding.

"Well done you two." Giving both of those hands a high five, he made them dissipate.

"Killing is indeed the faster way to increase my strength. Too bad that doing that would bring too much trouble..." Shaking his head out of the bloody nature of the status. He rested his back on the wall of the building while staring at his wallet.

[XP: 4 102 725]

"Sigh...on the past I would have thought that I was rich. But now I feel like I am the poorest undead that there is..."

For reference, the current upgrade for his next level was on 3 000 000 XP in total!

For him to achieve level 100 in the first place, he needed a total of 12 750 000!

If it wasn´t for the fact that he hoped to reach his next evolution, he would even have gone and spent his XP on the classes that he had or some of the skills.

Working towards the required XP would take him many months of work.

Which Danzel currently didn´t have the luxury to waste on training his swordsmanship. Even if he hadn´t got much used on the [Death Guarding Swordmanship], the knowledge printed in his mind was for him good enough for the time being.

"I don´t know how long the tighter security in the borders will be lifted, but I might have to circle around..."

Moving towards under the roof of a building, Danzel looked at the map that he got from Hanson in deep thoughts.

"Hmm...? This river is..."

Staring at a large river that was so large that went out of the borders of Arcana a few km away opposite to the mountain, Danzel was struck with an idea.

"Yeah...depending on how deep the river is, I could just walk under the river. It's better than hoping for those two kingdoms to finally take a breather. While I am at it, I might as well go look for those supposed bandits in the mountain."

Putting the map on his storage ring, he started to walk in the rain towards a large mountain.

"Has been about two whole years the last time I did some public service for a community..."

The last time he could remember was when he had killed some kind of a group called bold heads or something.

It was such an insignificant part of his almost three years after he rose from the cursed lake that he couldn´t remember those guys that sought death at him.

In his eyes, they were just a bunch of fools that were no different than XP bags walking towards his own wallet.

`I am sure that someone would complain if I were to make those bandits the essence of raising my strength even further beyond my current self.´

"First I got to find them though..." Danzel mumbled to himself as he slowly disappeared through the distance.

****

Early morning the next day in the mountains.

Danzel who was searching like a predator would for prey in the mountains was running all around the mountain that was a par forest.

Since he was an undead that didn´t tire at all, running at top speeds significantly increased the area that he covered in his search.

He was so fast in fact that the beast who would claim with pride to be predators to be scared and hiding in small holes so that then cross path with Danzel.

Fortunately for those predators, a small echo gained Danzel's attention.

"Hehe, Found you...!" Dashing towards where the echoes came, Danzel soon found out a small cave that was surrounded by people with rough faces and to what Danzel would consider quite dirty.

Hiding around a tree and some bushes while using [Presentless Steps] to hide better

"Hey, Hey! Come one! Don´t you dare fall on me!"

"If you fall I will cut those legs of yours!"

The people in question seemed like they formed a half ring around a duo of people. One of them only had some rags covering his private areas and looking heavily malnourished while the other with bulging muscles was beating the living daylight out of him.

Each punch that the man with the muscles gave made the blood of the other come out.

The man who had many bruises and was hit once again by the man in front of him couldn´t take it any longer and fell to the ground with his whole body shaking from the pain.

"Dammit!"

"That´s our number two after our boss! He sends that rag doll a whole 5 meters away with a single punch!"

"Hey you over there, you lost your bet. Now hand those coins to me already!"

"Never!

"What-"

...

Looking at that sight, Danzel stared solemnly at those guys.

Currently, he was observing in cases if they were any dangers or not.

As for the poor man who was shaking to the ground, Danzel didn´t give him much of a glance as he didn´t care about what would happend to him.

As much of how cruel this sounded.

"Hmm...that guy should be near the end of the 2nd-tier. If what that guy said was true, then expect their boss who is supposedly a 3rd-tier. That guy should be the strongest." Danzel mumbled to himself.

After staring for a few seconds more to see if there is something that could be a variable, he guided the mana in his body towards his body.

"Alright..." Drawing his longsword out, Danzel dashed out from his hiding place at incredible speeds.

"Hmm?" One of the bandits who was staring at the forest absconded-minded got started when he saw a cloaked figure dashing at speeds that made him first believe he saw an illusion.

But once Danzel run to the first of the bandits and cut his head off, the bandits realized that this wasn´t an illusion.

"Enemy!" The bandits screamed to their fullest.

Unfortunately, when every bandit noticed that there was an enemy, six people had already died.

"Who is that bastard!"

"Doesn´t matter! Kill him!"

Picking their weapons up, the bandits dashed towards Danzel with the intent to kill.

Only to shortly realize that they were being killed before they had the chance to throw a single swing at Danzel.

"Bastard! I will kill you!"

As the bandits were about to run out of fear of death, the man with the bulgy muscles dashed towards Danzel with mana surroundings his fist.

"Hahaha! Gerkan went serious!"

"That guy is now dead!

But as soon as Gerkan, the strongest of them all second to the boss throw his punch on the cloaked figure.

The cloaked figure moved slightly to the left, dodging Gerkans fist who was known to break the stone itself in pieces and had pierced with his longsword through the heart of Gerkan.

"Ugh..." with a pained groan, Gerkan fell to the ground without showing any signs of moving.

The whole fight between Gerkan and Danzel took less than 2 seconds.

And that alone terrified those bandits.

"Run!"

"He is a monster! We can´t win!"

"Call the boss!"

Dropping their weapons to the ground, the bandits dashed towards the cave as if it was their only hope.

"Where are you guys going? I haven´t finished with you all quite yet." Said the chilling voice and the originator of their current fear.

With his mana traveling through the ground, a stone wall blocked the entrance of the cave, together with the bandit's last hope.

"Magic!?"

"Break the wall! Quick!"

"Dammit! We shouldn´t have thrown our weapons."

Well, even if they had their weapons, breaking through the stone wall before the being behind them get them to meet their death was from them, the biggest dream in their whole life.

"Aghhh!"

"Spare me!"

"Please!"

No longer than a few minutes, the bandits who were cheering and having jokes with each other were now dead to the floor.

"Mm, not bad." Danzel commented on his work.

Using the rune on his sword to make the stained blood marks on his sword become more of a liquid form and swung to the air, making his sword now clean from any blood.

"Sigh...Veren was much better." Grumbling to himself, Danzel heard a small groan coming from behind him.

"Ugh..." The malnourished man groaned while staring aimlessly at the sky.

Walking towards him, he stared at him in silence.

"You will soon die." Danzel said solemnly at the man.

"I know." The man answered with a bitter smile.

The man's wounds were too severe to survive.

And Danzel wasn´t going to let him live anyway.

"I see..." Danzel answered slightly confused, not too sure if the man was referring to the former or the latter.

Pointing the longsword towards the man's heart, Danzel looked at the man who looked at him with a bitter smile

Unsure if he was thinking of ending his misery or that his life was about to end.

"Don´t worry, I will have you receive your revenge." Danzel said as he pierced the man's chest with his sword.

"T-Thank you..." The man said towards Danzel, with tears on his face.

Those were the man's last words.

"..."

Standing in front of the man's corpse in silence for a few seconds, he pierced his sword to the ground while raising his hands to the air.

The next moment, dead mana came out of Danzel's body and shot towards the nearby corpses.

"Be made to serve~"