Life Hunter

"What are you planning?" Night asked Arima while staring at the piece of paper summarizing the old goblin's stories. They had been given lodging after the chief finished to talk.

"Why are you saying it as if I'm going to do something bad?"

"So?"

Arima shrugged, "I don't know. I don't care about their petty war and I have no intention to stop it directly either. I've only come here to have fun, not to stop every war I come across. I'm kind, but I'm not that benevolent."

"Then what are you going to do?"

"Simple, now that I discovered that I can steal life force, I'm going to hunt the people who deserve it. But because it would create an imbalance between each side, I'll do it for the three of them." Arima casually explained.

"You aren't going to anything to the humans? That's not like you."

"Of course, I will bully them a bit. Enough for them to lose, but not slaughtered," Arima smiled and Night looked at him.

"Your new title really suits you after all."

"What is that supposed to mean?"

"When you're not kind, you're just a demon. That's what I mean."

Arima's expression darkened, "Can you stop that? In my world, being called a demon can be cool but to most, it's just embarrassing."

"That's true isn't it?" Night tilted his head, "When you're too lazy to help, you just think of a way to kill them in a way that won't disturb their fight. Isn't that terrifically demonic?"

"Yeah, yeah. If you want." Arima waved his hand, and chanted subject, "Where do you want to go tomorrow?"

"Why are you asking me?"

"Well, because I don't know where to go first. Even though we are in the monster territory, there are a lot of different places we can visit. So, I'll let you decide."

Night mused with his eyes directed toward the roof, "Then what about the Lilin territory? They are rumored to have quite a lot of life force and I'm slightly curious about them."

Arima smiled and nodded, "I'm curious as well. We'll go there first then."

******************************

The next day, Arima asked the goblin for a map of the continent. But unfortunately, they only had one for the monster territory.

"That's good enough," Arima uttered and memorized the map's content. He resonated with Night and directly flew off in direction of the Lilin territory.

That place is where the infamous incubus and succubus are supposed to live. Their position in the 'monster hierarchy' is pretty high because their racial abilities basically amount to controlling others.

Arima's target there was the succubus queen. Of course, if Arima chose her, it meant that she deserved it. That queen's hobby was seducing and enslaving anyone from other races and 'play' with them in any way possible until they die.

Lilin people are humanoid monsters with intelligence. Since birth, they are gifted with great beauty and inducing pheromones. Their appearance is human-like with a pair of bat wings and a tail. They are considered as monsters in this world instead of demons.

Their domain was a thousand miles away. So Arima calculated that he would take around forty minutes to go there.

While he was flying across the territory, Arima's eyes suddenly flashed with a strange light. He hastily turned his head toward a certain place and stopped flying. Soon, a huge wave of spirit swept over him. He did his best to conceal his aura and presence and stopped his breath. All with a stone face as if it was a habit.

"{What was that?}" After the wave vanished, Night questioned it.

"A scan. Someone just scanned the entire country as I did back then with 'World Index'." Arima responded after resuming his flight.

"{How strong was that?}"

"Above that sky dragon we met. I'd say that the user was at the tenth level."

Night kept his silence for a moment, "{Can you beat him?}"

Arima grinned, "I can't be sure. But if he ever finds me in his path, then I will gladly show him one of my strongest magic." He declared and flapped his wings, resulting in a blast of flames and lightning as he accelerated.

*******************************

Half an hour later, Arima spotted a gloomy forest on the horizon with a tall tower coming out of its center as if it was the biggest tree of all. Arima felt a detection array set-up across the whole area, so he landed outside of the forest and ended the resonance.

Arima and Night hid their presence and aura and went inside. The moment they stepped in the forest, the surroundings changed in a strange way, "Illusion, huh? That's fitting of them."

"How do we break that?" Night asked in his wolf form.

"We can't. If we break this, we'll be marked. We also can't see through the illusion and bypass it because there are mindless monsters wandering around and fights will reveal us." Arima sighed, "We only have one choice."

Arima started walking on the natural path that was offered to him and Night.

An hour later. "…It's a pain to infiltrate this place," He complained. They had walked in there for an hour already and only found more and more different paths. They had turned to the right or the left at least a thousand times.

When Arima was really considering breaking this damn barrier, he heard footsteps and voices coming from ahead. He swiftly hid behind a tree and Night ran after him.

The footsteps came from a couple of persons. One was a man and the other a woman, both greatly beautiful, with wings and tails.

Arima rejoiced interiorly, "(Lady luck didn't abandon me.)"

He wordlessly walked out from his cover and stopped in front of them.

The incubus and the succubus were surprised at first when they saw someone casually blocking their path. But when they realized 'what' it was, their face brightened.

"A human! How can one be here?" The woman exclaimed and waved her tail excitedly.

The other laughed, "Humans are pretty rare and this one is quite handsome, we could give him to the queen… What a shame, it's a man. He's yours."

"Hehe," The woman laughed coyly.

They talked, completely ignoring the human smiling in front of them. They treated him already as their possession. If they thought about it a bit, they would doubt why this human had purposely walked in front of them. But they couldn't care less about that at the moment.

"Hey little human," The woman approached Arima and spoke with a sweet voice and enticing voice. She clung to him and tried to charm him with both her magic and pheromones. She didn't realize the man she was trying to seduce didn't change his expression a single time.

Truthfully, Arima's eyes and mind just fazed for less than a millisecond. He didn't even bother to use magic to defend himself, just his powerful spirit was enough to destroy the work of that succubus.

Arima's eyes flashed with a cold light. He moved quickly and pierced the woman's chest with a spear hand and directly destroyed her heart, "Sorry, I'm not fond of people trying to fiddle with my mind."

The succubus stared in shock and the arm that was piercing her. She could still survive if she healed herself immediately, so she grabbed Arima's arm in an attempt to get it out of her chest.

"[Vita Venari]." But before she could do that, Arima stole her life force and she died almost instantly because of it.

The incubus behind was alarmed and immediately tried to flee. But Arima grabbed him by the throat with his bloody hand, "[Penitentia conspiciunt] (Penance Stare)."

Arima first checked the life force that he took, "It seems that it's the truth, their life force is something. Although they were weak so I didn't get anything significant, but it's sure that they have a superior life force."

After that, he looked into the memories of the incubus, "Are you messing with me?" He frowned with a darkened expression. To pass the barrier without being detected, one only needed to turn every time to the left.

"It's not a fucking labyrinth!" Arima snapped, "Well… to be exact, we have to turn left 99 times and then turn right… That's still bullshit."

Arima cremated the bodies and began to turn left at every fork. It took him ten minutes to arrive at a vast town surrounded by large and sturdy trees. The whole time he kept cursing under his breath.

"Can you stop already?"

Arima fell silent and looked at the town, "How do I go in?"

"Eh? What do you mean?"

"I'm a human, in case you forgot about it."

"Oh, yeah. I forgot about that. So, what?"

"…If I go in, I'll just be targeted and chased before I can do anything. They seem to be good with illusion so concealing my appearance is kind of hard." Arima glanced at Night, "And you don't help."

The wolf looked away.

"Can't you just go in my soul?"

"No," Night replied without hesitation.

Arima sighed and mused for a bit then his eyes became blank and annoyed, "I decided. I will just destroy the town first."

"Oi."

***************************************

In the end, Arima and Night resonated. Arima did his best to retract the scales without deactivating the resonance. The sleeves of his coat also restored in a second. Arima already had bound his clothes to his soul, so their enchantments had improved by a huge margin. After that, he used a projection magic, which is only a visual camouflage, and the best illusion he could use to change his wings.

"{What about the tail?}"

"Can't we just a grow a tail ourselves, a dragon one, and do the same as we did for the wings?"

"{Now that I think about it, we never tried to resonate the tail. We can try. It's worth a shot.}"

Two hours later, Arima now had a meter-long dragon tail, "That's cool. I could use that in a fight. It can be helpful in a lot of situations."

"{Yeah,}" Night agreed.

"But this one is too big to be concealed."

"{…}"

"…"

They took another thirty minutes to shrink the size of the tail and change it before entering the town. He didn't go through the main gate because they may ask who he was so he sneaked inside and blended with other people in the streets.

"This doesn't feel like a monster town at all," Arima remarked after looking around. The only thing that stood out were the members of other races following succubus and incubus as if they were some slaves. But, oddly, most of them had satisfied expressions.

Arima wandered around. People would look at him sometimes because he was a bit unusual but none of them realized he was human. Arima then arrived at the center area of the town and observed the tower which he had already seen before landing in front of the forest.

He estimated that this tower was around two hundred meters tall and twenty meters wide.

From what he learned from the incubus he killed, this tower was, as expected, the residence of the queen succubus and the king incubus and all of their children.

Arima put his hand on his chin and pondered whilst looking at the tower, "Although it was half a joke to blow up the town, this tower shouldn't be a problem."

"Half a joke? What do you mean by half? And why do you always decide to destroy the building if you can?" Night retorted and Arima shrugged.

"What? I'm serious. It can appear to be a bad move but it gives you the initiative and the first strike, which is the most important things in an assassination. But still, I don't want the queen and the king to die by that or it wouldn't be fun for me."

"If you're doing all of that just for fun then you're crazier than I thought."

Arima smiled, "I'm just a bit eccentric, not crazy."

"I don't think that's better. Even more if you admit it."

"At least, I think it's better than denying it. Anyway, tonight, I'll try something that I still haven't had the right opportunity to test." Arima turned around and walked away from the tower with a smirk of his face.