[CoolNard]

"Blood traitors," comes the murmurs, stark and crude under daylight.

"Spies, like mother like daughter."

"At least we raped Aisha, that made us feel better, dinit?"

"Yeah, because of the outside world and the government... The dragon here does a good job of easing our curiosities!"

"Wanted to do Suzette too, it's her fault for bringing downfall to Shinkirou!"

"She shoulda stayed, that piece of half-dragon trash. No one's goina luv a mongrel like her."

"Hey, looks like her boyfriend's mad... Ha ha ha ha."

"Don't worry, he can't kill us, this is Aisha and Suzette's hometown! They wouldn't want anything to happen here, would they?"

"Listen brats, leave this place or be prepared to mourn their... unnatural deaths!"

I telepathize to Kamikaze. He's holding Suzette in an embrace, she's singing. Safely far, far away from Shinkirou. Good, I won't have to demonstrate mercy. I'll explain things to Aisha later. I want to kill them with the hideous expression I have forsaken for so long. However I don't plan on giving the village the honour of being razed in an instant by my full strength. Why should I, when I can take my time tormenting them and making a mockery out of them? I will skin them alive and make them pay with their blood and smash them into the bowels of death.

What is this? What am I thinking? Was I always on the edge of unrestraint? This is needless, yet... what is this intractable desire? Shouldn't I kill anyone who is against everything I stand for?

In midair, I place my hand on Zeus, unsheathe it ever so slightly and charge through their frontline of warriors from the thirty metre peak of my effortless leap. I must seem to disppear for a moment because I hear desperate shouts inquiring my location.

"Where is he?"

"Find him!"

In a second, I reappear behind them, my hand still unsheathing Zeus.

"There he is!"

"What a weakling! He runs away for an instant and hasn't done anything but squeeze out an inch of his blade!"

"That's it, we've assessed his strength, he's but a clown with a death plea!"

The second detail of the army, the assassins, begins sprinting toward me from the rooftops. The first line is also on the attack, catching me in a pincer-like formation, a standard military tactic. But it's useless. I smile, because right before they can even touch me, blood breaks out in small beads from the first wave's faces and they stop...

"What? Blood?"

... And their heads explode in a parade of blood and flesh. The rest of the military stand rooted to the ground as they watch their mutilated comrades collapsing, one by one, from the brutality that was too fast for their eyes. I know Tatsu must have seen the blood even before I struck. I can feel his glare on my back.

"ARGHH!!! Look! Look at their faces!!!" Someone screams. Eyeballs still connected to their tendons hang off their owners' sockets. The muscle and ligaments constituting their faces have dripped enough pools of blood to be made out.

"Then this...", an assassin says, indicating at little red, crumpled pieces of flesh littering the entire area. One has been caught on a nearby water pipe, with holes where the eyes and scrambled traces of other facial features should be.

"They haven't been decapitated... Their faces have been completely PEELED off!!"

"Without knowledge of someone's power, you show no knowledge of your own," I holler in fervent hysteria, the color of my eyes not losing to the sight it beholds. "You were right, I didn't unsheathe my blade fully... One inch and a second are all it takes to run by all of your necks and severe them as I severed their faces."

"No way... Even the warriors... Their Runestalz helmets were sliced through like butter, OI!! In a single blow! The hardest material in the world..!"

"We're doomed, the fall of Shinkirou is imminent! It's all Suzette's fault! If only she hadn't cursed us by defying Aegis!"

I'm... enjoying... this? I can't stop this frenzy. I am undoubtedly right. I AM right! Even if it pollutes my heart, a sin can only be cleansed by another sin - my sin. Enemies that go against me, Suzette and Aisha, the allies of the accursed dragons... After all they have done, the right to judge them I shall reserve! That can be the only reason why I'm allowing... Vengeance to rampage... This part of myself couldn't face Suzette otherwise... Why? Why does it feel... Wrong??

An authoritative voice suddenly echoes through the frozen fighters: "My brave and loyal soldiers! Don't fall back! I implore you to stand your ground! Don't give him a chance to rest! Mages and bowmen, you're our last line of defense! Warriors and assassins, surround him and push him back! No matter how strong he is, no human can overpower a full-scale military assault! Kill upon contact!"

I look up, a man clad wholly in gleaming diamond armor and a trident stands confidently on a steel horse-drawn chariot, the size of a small house. The afternoon sun reflects off his untainted vest and he is resplendent in the war. Despite his outward front, even I can't deny the metallic scent of battle he has - the iron smell of blood, the acclimatization to death and hardened survival instincts. He has a domineering composure and is gazing at the unfolding gory violence, as if a flower is blooming under his nose. He must be the commander of Shinkirou's cavalry.

"Kill him! Kill him!! Kill him! Kill him!" The soldiers chant. With a single word, he raised his subordinates' morale from the rock bottom? He must be no ordinary fighter. I'd like to have a go at his head...

Oh well, what fun would it be if it was this easy?

I'm always fighting with a leveled head, though not many would say I have it on straight now. All this time, I've been observing their military strength. There were twelve units in total: three platoons of warriors and another two of assassins, two of mages and one of bowmen, and a smorgasbord of male commoners worth four units. Each packs about twenty men, I've already shaved one warrior-squad off, so that would make eleven units with two-hundred-and-twenty men.

"CHAAARGE!!!" The word and stomps, in unison by the soldiers, shake Shinkirou and deafen anything else to be said. Legions of men lunge at me, heads bobbing up and down in the riot, mouths opened and eyes roll frantically, driving each other over the limit, to me.

The warriors, easy to distinguish by their big and lumpy features, stumble over to smash their Runestalz weaponry into me. Lightfoot. I close my eyes to give them a handicap. Yells of "Insolence!" and "Impudence!" and "Outrageous!" fill my ears immediately. The warriors encircle me and thrust their weapons at me. I dodge, from the sounds of swords, hammers, axes and spears whipping through the air, all at once and land on them, preventing the hulking knights from pulling them back. I open my eyes, and I see insane redness, which I know is from my barbaric excitment. I grip the centre of the tangled weapons, tug the warriors in, unlatch the dagger in my boot and spin my body with my legs outstretched at their heads. Red, sticky liquid and foam spurt out from their throats.

"Guess I wasn't color-blind, after all," I tease the standing corpses. Ten waves left. I hop away from the circle of dead men to see someone completing the job of lopping off their heads. Hm, was that a chain? Assassins and ninjas stand in a crisscross columns from me. Unlike the warriors, they wield chains, daggers, shurikens and kunai knives. They are smarter: Their columns overlap one another in complex, swarming labyrinths. They obviously are trained for contingency purposes. They also have plates of armor, smaller than the knights', but made of the same material nonetheless - although its hardness forces me to use more energy than expected, it won't save them.