Traitor Of Humanity

Too tired to run, they simply surrendered.

Seth walked past Merab Zefer. He was going to leave the battlefield.

At that moment, he heard his father"s voice.

It was simply one word, spoken in a tone that neither held hostility, nor any kindness.

"Explain."

"...Don"t worry, father. I"ll give them to you later. Right now, I have to go search for the rest of her corpse... You know what to do now, right?"

Seth didn"t hear any reply. He just continued walking.

When he was further away, he heard Merab Zefer"s loud voice from behind him.

"The Bilin and Amnon families have fallen. Haradur City now belongs to the Zefer! Men, now we go to the Amnon family"s mansion to plunder!!"

The Zefer family"s soldiers erupted in cheers. They had been waiting for this!

"Ah. I forgot." Seth quickly turned around after he realized something. He yelled back into the distance, "Don"t touch the girls! They"re all mine~!!"

The soldiers" cheers quickly died down...

...

Before the day was over, the Amnon family"s mansion was already overrun. The women were all captured, and any men that resisted were killed.

The new eldest son of the Amnon family, Alexandar Amnon, directly surrendered. He didn"t plea for his life. He only begged for their family"s children to be spared.

Seth admired that. ...Then, he killed the man. He had promised to Karlan Amnon after all, that he would wipe out the Amnon family bloodline. He intended to keep that promise. He executed all the remaining adult men of the Amnon family, but left the women and children alive. Although this could not be considered a complete wipe-out, he is satisfied enough for now.

The new eldest son of the Bilin family, Klark Bilin, who had failed to escape, also surrendered. This one was even willing to swear loyalty to the Zefer family, not caring whether he would be treated as a slave or as a servant so long as he can live. He no longer has the power, nor the influence, to rebel.

For now, he was thrown into the prison to await his sentence. Merab Zefer was still wondering if he could find any use for him.

The surrendered soldiers were given 2 options.

Death or Servitude.

All of them chose servitude.

This was a great thing, as with the coming battle against the Wolfing gang, the Zefer family needs all the forces that they can get.

After Seth got home, he wrote out the martial skills that he had used in his battle against Karlan Amnon. These were, of course, for Merab Zefer. If Seth didn"t do this, his relationship with that man, might get a little annoying.

"I can"t fall into conflict with him until his use runs out..." Seth said while snickering.

As for where he got these martial skills, he"ll just lie and say he got them from that hobo at the city square. If Merab Zefer were to question that man, with their disparity in strength, he"ll just get beaten black and blue.

While writing the out the skill descriptions, Seth would deliberately put flaws in them before handing them over. Once mastered, their effects would only be slightly less than what he had displayed before. However, backlashes will occur.

After all, while some dance moves can attract the G.o.ds and grant you rewards, others can provoke the G.o.ds and grant you punishments. Enough of these punishments (backlashes) can lead to everlasting injuries, or even death.

Seth was never hesitant in giving out such self-injuring skills. He was even happy to do so.

...

The evening of the next day, while the soldiers were out searching the city for any escaped bandits, Seth held a small funeral in the Zefer family"s cemetery. The one buried was his sister, Mirun Zefer. Her mutilated corpse was placed in a coffin, and buried deep underground.

The only ones attending the funeral, were Seth, Nala, and one other boy around 14 years old. This boy was Mirun"s husband, Jamon Amnon, who Seth had brought out of prison earlier today.

Seth had explained what happened, to Jamon, who first went into disbelief. He couldn"t believe his grandfather would do something so cruel. He remembered what had happened the day before, when his father, Erland Amnon, suddenly arrived and took Mirun away in a haste, but he never expected the outcome of that would be... Then, he blamed Seth, and attacked him.

Seth didn"t dodge his punches. He even stopped Nala from interfering.

The one who ended hurt more was Jamon, whose fists had started bleeding. He felt like what he was punching wasn"t a human, but a rock.

Neither of the deceased girl"s parents showed up. When Seth had invited his mother, she just said in a melancholic tone, "Is that so. She died...", and then turned her head away. Seth didn"t even try inviting his father, as that would have just been a waste of breath.

By the time the funeral ended, two people had cried, while one had remained silent.

...

Starting the next day, everyone began preparing for the inevitable battle against the Wolfing gang.

After giving out an early warning, the gates to the city were closed. The citizen whom were unaware of the situation, were confused.

This was necessary to prevent any enemies from silently sneaking in, waiting to cause trouble during the day of the battle.

To increase their chances of winning, Seth made several suggestions to his father.

To be honest, their chances of winning are low. They became even lower when Seth killed Karlan Amnon, a peak 2nd stage cultivator who was supposed to be their ally.

What they will have to do to win won"t even be to defeat their enemy. All they will have to do is to hold them off for a week.

There are 2 problems though.

The first problem is their enemies" numbers, which will surely be much greater than theirs, while the second problem is their enemies" weapons, which will likely be of a higher quality.

Luckily, there are still at least 2 weeks left to prepare.

The first suggestion that Seth made to Merab Zefer, was to release the organ strengthening and bone tempering elixirs, to give to the soldiers that are more loyal to the Zefer family.

Actually, they didn"t even have to be loyal. As long as their families live in Haradur city, as long as they are unwilling to see their families murdered by the bandits that could overrun this city, it would be fine to give them the elixirs.

In the past, the 3 great families would be reluctant to directly give elixirs to their subordinates. That is because elixirs can help them reach the 2nd stage, and once that happens, there is a high chance that they will leave.

Contracts written under the G.o.d of promises aren"t absolute. That is because the concept of "promises", of "laws", was never really that powerful. People break laws and promises all the time, after all.

At most, by breaking those contracts, the violator would suffer some unseen damage. That isn"t enough to stop them. The true power behind contracts, always come from the strength of the parties backing them.

Thus, the contracts between the employers, the Zefer family, and the employees, the soldiers, cannot be counted on to make them stay behind after they reach the 2nd stage.

Seth didn"t see that as much of a problem though. Even without contracts, humans always have one or two things important to them. The easier it is to grasp those things, the more "trustworthy" they would be. As for the untrustworthy ones whose important things can"t be grasped? Let"s just throw them out as fodder.

After some hesitation, Merab Zefer followed that suggestion, allowing a good number of soldiers whom have been stuck at the peak of the 1st stage for a long time to finally advance.

For the ones whom were also at the peak, but still couldn"t advance after taking the elixirs, Seth just forced them into beating each other half to death, like barbarians, without any armor, and wielding only sticks and stones.

As far as he knew, the most important perquisite to enter the heroic bearings stage, is battle experience. The more deadly the fights, the greater the experience, and the higher the chance of overcoming that bottleneck. Elixirs only help to lower the amount of experience points required to break through.

The second suggestion that Seth gave, was to spread the martial skills that he had written out.

There were three martial skills that he had provided. One was an attack, and two were movement type martial skills.

The one he had said to spread, was only the attack type martial skill, which would directly increase the soldiers" attack power.

He didn"t suggest to spread the movement skills, because of the chance that after learning it, they"d only use it to run away.

The third suggestion was to abolish the slave trade in the city.

"Why should I do that?" Merab Zefer truly couldn"t understand. The slave trade business in Haradur city is actually quite big. Despite being such a shady business, they have always paid the taxes properly. They would even offer a little bit more, as "gifts" to the ruling families. Such a "nice" business, why should he get rid of it?

"Why? Simply because we need more manpower for the moat we"ll be building. Since forcing the citizens into doing that would have later repercussions, it would be better to just use slaves. It would lower our future revenue a bit, but our reputation would improve among the citizens, which could later attract more people to work for us. Besides, where do those slave-traders get most of their slaves from? Bandits. I doubt they"re very trustworthy." Seth wasn"t suggesting something morally kind like abolishing slavery itself. He was suggesting for them to take the slaves for their own use. Basically, he was suggesting robbery. Still, with that last sentence, he had sealed those slave-traders" fates.

The fourth suggestion was...

"We"ll need lots of oil, sharp wooden poles, catapults, and a truckload of chili peppers..."

...