Life Hunter

"The frontiers?" Lanya tilted her head.

Arima smiled, "The frontier is kind of a war zone if I'm not wrong. I'm quite curious to see it in person."

The frontiers separating the territories on this continent are in reality a huge war zone. It became like that because of the continuous skirmishes between the different races, both small and big.

"But why do you want to go there exactly?"

"For now, I just want to see what kind of battlefield it is. Let's go, it'll be quick anyway," Arima's eyes glowed and a magic circle formed below him. The trio disappeared in an instant.

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Meanwhile, in the beast territory, a massive land dragon was looking down from the edge of a cliff. Down the gorge, he could see a faint red light illuminating the abysses.

"What should I do? I can't stop this with my strength…" The dragon mumbled and then thought of something, "The person who released that intent, and also the pillar which destroyed that meteor. I cannot be sure of what kind of person it is, but if I can get his help then it's not impossible to resolve this problem. I don't think the monsters or the humans will help us after all…"

"I'll ask the old geezer if he can find him," The dragon turned around and jumped off to come back inside the forest.

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Arima directly teleported his group above his destination, around a thousand meters high in the sky. When they arrived, Lanya yelped in surprise because she didn't expect to suddenly appear in the sky.

Arima casually grabbed her hand and made her float with magic, "Hurry up and deploy your wings. I won't carry you the whole time."

"Y-yes," Lanya returned to her senses and deployed her silver wings. She regained her mobility and thanked Arima who was observing the ground below. The place was filled with death aura and lingering mana. It clearly was a battlefield when you saw the destruction, the remains, and dried blood covering the ground.

"That's interesting…" Arima commented but his expression didn't look thrilled at all.

"What is?"

"Look over there," Arima pointed down with his chin. Lanya and Night followed his sight and looked down. They spotted an assembly of strange creatures running around. They were red in color, didn't have any eyes, and most of them just had one giant mouth while a few of them even had multiple mouths. The reason why they were running all over the place was that they were busy eating the flesh of corpses laying around.

"That's… unsettling," Lanya frowned, "What is this? I never saw or heard about a creature like those."

"If I'm not wrong, it should be something like an 'error' creature," Arima responded and shot one of them with Ira to see how they would react. But as he expected, none reacted and just kept eating although one of them had literally blown up.

"Error?" Night was perturbed by the word Arima had employed. He always thought that Arima wouldn't care about what or who he would have in front of him, but now he actually called something an 'error'.

"Yeah, that's my thoughts. These things are probably born because of this place. They're also things that can hardly be called life forms. For example, those red ones are maybe born from the dead's blood, killing intent, mana, and the death aura which is freely contaminating this area. Basically, they're just a result of hate and death. It's even worse than undead," Arima explained and looked around, "I'm sure there are more of these things roaming this forsaken frontline, and possibly of different kinds."

Night casually hummed, "So, what do you wanna do?"

"Clean."

"Clean?" Night's expression twitched, "That's a questionable answer. What do you mean by that?"

"Simple," Arima extended his hand toward the ground so that his palm would be parallel to the horizon.

"[Una gutta satis est] (One drop is enough)," He chanted and a transparent drop of liquid condensed on his palm.

"[Ecce Panis exitium] (Bead of destruction)."

The drop fell from his hands and splashed on the ground. From where the drop fell, some changes could be observed. The earth was forcefully modified and a glass-like flower bloomed.

Lanya admired the glimmering petals of that flower and raised her voice, "What is that flower?"

"You'll know soon enough," Arima uttered and teleported the group away to reappear a thousand miles away, still in the 'war zone'. He used the exact same magic, and a second glass flower bloomed.

After that, he repeated the same process around twenty times. No matter if it was between the human territory and the monster territory or between the beast and human's territories, he went to all of the frontiers.

"…Hey, what the hell are you doing?" Night asked with a complaining tone. Arima kept transferring him and Lanya every minute and he was starting to hear a whistling in his ears as well as getting an annoying headache.

"It's fine. It's the last one," Arima said as he dropped the last bead. "Now, we need to take some distance and enjoy the spectacle."

"Spectacle?" Night and Lanya repeated that word. They couldn't feel any good vibes when it came from Arima who was wearing a really ominous smug smile. He teleported the three of them again and they were now inside the human country, still a few hundreds of meters above the ground. On the peak of a mountain to be exact.

"Stop with the teleportation already!" Night snapped.

"I said it's the last one," Arima retorted, "Well, to go down from this mountain, maybe we'll need to use it again."

"Flying down is good. Walking is fine too," Lanya immediately countered and Night nodded.

Arima shrugged, "If you want. For now, it's fireworks time." He smirked and snapped his fingers. A wave of magic spread out around him in a circular fashion. As if it was a sort of high-frequency signal, it would connect to everything containing Arima's mana in it.

At that instant, each flower he had planted in the war zone began to shine. Each one of them produced a semi-transparent while pillar that pierced the sky beautifully.

The flowers released a peculiar aura into the entire war zone. That aura wasn't really powerful but it possessed a strong destructive intent and also carried a spiritual message.

"A spiritual message? What is it?" Night inquired after he heard it from Arima.

Arima snickered, "Run."

Apparently, the warning worked as it was intended and most of the people who were wandering the frontiers started to run away toward their own territory. The reason for that choice wasn't only the message but also the twenty or so white pillars that triggered their survival instincts.

Ten minutes later, Arima nodded. "Good. If there are still people in the way, it's their own problem," He indifferently said and his eyes glowed along with the faint pattern inscribed in the depth of his pupils.

The twenty-two flowers reacted to their creator and a white ray of light connected each one of them together.

"[Flos Torque] (Flower Chain)."

The first flower that Arima had placed exploded and the semi-transparent pillar became dark blue and its diameter increased to twenty miles. Afterward, it was a chain reaction. Each flower exploded, one after another.

Ultimately, the twenty-two pillars moved at the same time and followed the white ray of light connecting them to each other. During the entire time, the ground kept trembling quite violently. When the pillars reached the end of their path and their position had been reordered, they flew off to the sky and burst into beautiful patterns.

Arima exhaled because of the slight exhaustion and smiled whilst looking at the sky, "See, fireworks."

Night and Lanya were staring agape in either shock, confusion, or possibly fear. Even Arima couldn't tell for sure what their expression signified.

"What the heck are you doing?!" Night shouted at Arima because of the mass destruction he had just caused.

"..." Lanya was silent.

"Calm down. I just created an effective frontier. That's all."

"An effective frontier, huh? You could have made a barrier or something! Why the fuck did you need to do this!?"

The trio gazed at what was supposed to be the frontiers. Actually, there were no frontiers anymore. What was dividing the continent was now a three-branched crevasse that was several hundred meters deep. And because it even affected the shoreline, a chaotic flow of water was slowly filling the hole.

"…Seriously?" Lanya finally spoke and it was for that. Arima had basically transformed one continent into three new ones. It was even possible that the three continents would now start to drift away from one another.

Night groaned, "Why did you do that?"

"As I said, to clean. And to temporarily stop their idiotic strife."

" 'Idiotic strife' he said," Night muttered and glared at Arima with dubious eyes "That's all? You said you didn't want to meddle in their war, why did you stop it?"

"Mh, that's saddening that you won't believe me," Arima shook his head in an exaggerated manner. "But I profited of the occasion to take this," He then said and a black sphere appeared above his hand. It seemed like there was something inside, ready to burst any moment.

Night frowned, "What's this?"

"Dark force. The one that comes from the death aura that was there. Well, there's also the life force of those strange creatures and the fools who didn't listen to my warning," Arima casually said.

"What is dark force?" Lanya asked as she had never heard about that term.

"Basically, it's the opposite of life force. As you know, the latter is something that every living being has since birth and it's something that can be trained through the magic circuits. Dark force is not really well known in this world from what I can see. I found out about it when I started to use 'Life Hunt' on dead targets."

"To explain it to you in a simple way; the more life force you have, the 'more alive' you are. While the more dark force you possess, the 'more dead' you are. Koden was an undead but he wasn't deceased per se. He had quite a vitality actually since he could live eternally. It all depends on the perspective. Dark force is stronger the more time you spend dead. Yeah, I know it's an odd way to say it. This battlefield's aura acted as a sort of freezer for the dark force to grow stronger without being damaged."

Arima smiled and juggled with the black sphere, "In the end, for people like me who can absorb it, this place was a gold mine. Well, I can't use it right now. I still need to stabilize the life force I got from Koden. So, I'll keep that for later," He declared and the sphere vanished, "Anyway, let's go. The Republic is next on the line. I'll tele-"

"We'll fly back," Night interrupted him with a blank expression.

"But it's fast-"

"We'll fly back," Arima was interrupted once again, by Lanya this time.

He was speechless and gave in. He turned into a black light that rushed down the mountain at the speed of sound. Night and Lanya looked at each other and laughed before following him.

They flew together toward the closest city. When they landed, the trio realized it was one of the main cities, the beast-men's capital.

"Well, let's visit this place before going to the spirits' city," Arima told and walked toward the gate whilst yawning. He hadn't slept for a while at that point and his fight with Koden badly exhausted him. He was planning to take some rest.

A wolf-man soldier welcomed him and politely asked for his identity, "Hello. Your papers, please. If you don't have any, I will demand you to come with me to get registered."

"There's no need," Arima handed the two guild cards. "Here it is for me and the wolf over there."

The soldier inspected the cards and trembled because of Arima's rank, "Are you really an S rank?"

"Yes," Arima smiled. "At least that's what is written on that card, isn't it?"

"Kind Demon…" The soldier mumbled and Arima's face twitched. The wolf-man nodded and gave him the cards back, "What about this lady?" He followed and looked at Lanya before blushing a little. Lanya was certainly beautiful so it was normal. Someone like Arima who would just blink once when looking at her was really rare.

"Here," Lanya took out a card from her storage and gave it to the soldier. The man looked at it, nodded and returned the card, "Thank you for your understanding. You are welcome to our city. Please enjoy your stay."

What Lanya had just given him was a card which she got when she was younger. Her rank was set at the B rank since it was quite a long time ago.

The trio passed the gate and entered the city. Once inside, surrounded by passerby on all sides, Arima clapped his hands, "Alright, I'll look for a lovely candy store and maybe rent a place to sleep. You can go wherever you want. Take this," Arima uttered and handed a purse of money to Lanya before leaving her alone with Night.

She blinked and stared at Arima's back until she lost sight of him. She turned toward Night and titled her head, "What do we do Master?"

Night sighed, "Let's just visit randomly. I and Arima are able to sense each other's presence no matter the distance. We can reunite at any time if we want to."

"I understand," Lanya smiled and followed Night who was walking ahead. He was looking around and observing the citizens.

"Although it's the beast-men's city, there's still a lot of people from other races, huh?" He commented, assuming that Lanya was behind him.

"Hey, Lanya…?" Night called her and turned around but she was nowhere to be seen. His eyes scanned the entire street and he spotted her entering a clothing shop. His expression darkened for a reason he couldn't even comprehend, "…Why do I feel extremely uncomfortable right now?"