PATH OF THE STAR HUNTER

It was supposed to be an easy job, one more chore, one more achievement in my long military career, a favor, and a way to climb the ladder of high society. All I had to do was assassinate a nun from the neighboring country; using the chaos generated during the invasion to come, it shouldn’t be too difficult.

I still remember how happy my wife was when she heard that maybe I would be given a baronial title after this. For a simple warrior with no background like me, that was an infinitely tricky thing to achieve; however, it was already within reach of my hands.

At first, everything went smoothly; the invasion of the capital city of Serith went smoothly, although it was to be expected given that we had help from someone on the inside. Due to the festival, the streets were crowded, and the response capacity of forces in the city suffered greatly.

I usually didn’t much enjoy killing innocents, people who couldn’t even defend themselves, but orders always came first, and I had better things to do than worry about a bunch of strangers in a foreign kingdom.

My squad and I met up with our inside contact, who gave us instructions on where to find our target and an idea of ??what kind of resistance we would encounter.

With my trusty heavy sword, I cut a path of blood towards our target, and no matter how many people I slain, how many lives I blinded, the edge of my sword never showed a dent; I guess it was to be expected, I paid a lot to get the magic steel used in it.

The city of Serith was as vast as the rumors said; even with the bit of resistance we encountered along the way, it still took us a few minutes to reach the orphanage where our target was located.

The invasion was fast and unexpected; even minutes after it started, the alarms in the city had not been activated, so our target was not alerted.

.....

And there she was, more beautiful than words could describe; she was pious, without a doubt the most beautiful woman I had ever seen. Unlike the nobles I knew whose marriages were made out of convenience, I had married Mireya out of love; she was the woman of my dreams, and the night she told me yes was the happiest day of my life. Still, seeing the goddess in front of my eyes, even my heart couldn’t help but tremble and doubt the beauty of the woman I had married.

Greed was born in my heart, I knew important people wanted her dead, but they never asked me for a way to confirm her death and just wanted her out of the way. Since my own men weren’t really privy to the details of our mission, it wouldn’t be hard to convince them that it was about kidnapping the woman.

If I told my men that an important noble wanted her, I’m sure even the most lustful of them would think twice before trying something funny; after that, I just had to leave the city with her and take her home. Once she understands that I saved her life and that she has nowhere to go, I’m sure she’ll have no choice but to accept me as her man. As for my wife, I am not going to give her up; although my dear Mireya is not as beautiful as the woman in front of me, she is still the love of my life, and I am sure she will not object to my having a second wife; I’ll soon be a baron after all.

Immersed in my fantasies, I made a mistake, letting the Priestess’s supposed guardian to step in front of her to protect her, but that didn’t matter too much to me. I knew her guardian was strong, to the point of being able to hurt a holy church knight, but even one of those church dogs wouldn’t stand a chance for a unit like mine with three knights at the front.

As if that were not enough, the knight who protected the Priestess committed the enormous stupidity of wasting his mana by creating a vast defensive barrier to protect the orphanage’s children.

I almost wanted to laugh at his stupidity, but since everyone had his own convictions, I realized his futile efforts were at least brave.

I also didn’t dare to underestimate the man; I felt the terrifying fluctuations of mana emanated from him before, and I wouldn’t make the mistake of believing that he was weak. Not after seeing him catch two arrows in midair and shoot them back at my archers, it was only an instant, and I had already lost two of my men.

Soon the Priestess’s knight found himself fighting my men, his inexperience soon showed, and I didn’t waste the opportunity to try and finish him off, but my luck proved slim when my sword missed.

I was forced to acknowledge how strong the man was when my sword completely missed him. Luckily, the man failed to dodge the heavy energy around my attack and flew away, accompanied by the swing of my sword. However, to my surprise, the man was much more resilient than I could ever have hoped, and he hardly showed any injuries, counterattacking the next instant.

I had never seen someone so fast; in an instant, he was there, and the next, his fist was digging into my side. Worst of all, he was not looking to hurt me but to get me out of the scene.

My vision blurred, and I found myself buried in rubble the next instant; it was annoying and painful, to say the least, and it took me over a dozen seconds to come out of my burial.

Emerging from the rubble, I joined the other knights in fighting the Priestess’s defender; it was a tough battle even with the support of nearly a dozen soldiers. The minutes passed, and our opponent seemed cornered; it was my chance.

Without hesitation, I put all my weight and strength behind my sword in a mighty swing, trying to cut the man in two, but the man seemed to have eyes on his back. He bent his back to an unnatural degree, avoiding my attack entirely, and that wasn’t the worst part.

Priestess’s knight, standing on his hands, took strength from somewhere to kick the flat back edge of my blade. The force behind his kick was immense, and it not only redirected my attack but also took away any chance of withdrawing it.

After all these years together, fighting tirelessly on the battlefield, I never thought that Julian would fall under the edge of my own sword. He did not even have a dignified death, and parts of him were scattered on the ground, staining the foreign land where he came to die, turning to mud.

My mind blurred for a few seconds, anger and disbelief clouding my thoughts; it took me seconds to regain my sanity; only to find three more dead bodies at that man’s feet.

I felt intimidated, his blue eyes were colder than steel, and his black hair seemed so ominous, but worst of all was his smile; he seemed to treat the death of my men as entertainment.

They say that anger is the bravery of fools; I had never understood it until now. It didn’t matter how much we attacked that bastard, with the colossal water barrier within arm’s reach of him; it was useless.

And that was just the beginning of our pain; as soon as Priestess joined the battle, it all went downhill. I had never seen such a solid and robust mana barrier, and I had no confidence in taking it down.

As if that wasn’t enough, Priestess’s knight, who seemed to have been on the defensive all this time, turned like a beast unleashed. He didn’t even seem like the same person; he was simply too strong, and no chance to resist was given.

It was only seconds, barely enough to take a couple of breaths, but now all my men were on the ground, defeated, some even drowning. Only knight-class warriors were left standing, but what difference did that make?

I was already taking every ounce of mana I had just to avoid being chained like an animal; my companions were not so lucky. The chains never stopped trying to penetrate my defenses, each time heavier, each time more solid; It was only a matter of time before I was like the rest.

But the man was not finished; strange verses kept coming from his lips, and the chains that bound us became more than a restraining tool and became a weapon of execution.

The tension relaxed for only a brief moment, but no hope was born in my heart. How could I when that man’s smile was so sinister? Then hell came.

Seeing each and every one of my men dismembered, torn to pieces alive, their limbs and organs raining down from the sky, was more than I could bear. My sturdy defenses and armor helped me survive, but that didn’t bring any relief; with my limbs broken and dislocated, there wasn’t much I could do to avoid my fate.

I once heard of a story where the hero died in the rain after giving everything to protect his beloved. It was a very popular story among the women of my nation, and even I thought it was a very romantic way to die.

Would it have been the same if it was blood that rained down on the man’s face? If he had died because of his greed and not for love? Who would want to tell the story of a pathetic man who died kneeling on the filth generated by the brutal death of his men?

My mind felt fuzzy, I didn’t know if it was the pain or something else, but I felt like I was losing my mind; the only thing I could hear were footsteps on the water. One after another, steady footsteps on the water, I could almost feel the small ripples generated in the water hit the outside of my armor.

Then my mind cleared up, and the full ice blue was what I saw, a pair of blue eyes that looked at me mercilessly; that smile on his face was never so broad, and he couldn’t hide the enjoyment that the massacre had caused him; what an awful creature.

“You endured to the end, but it doesn’t seem like you can do anything else either. I guess I could still give you a reward for your efforts. How about dying with a complete corpse?”

Fear had already overwhelmed all my senses and thoughts, but I could see that the man seemed to be enjoying himself. My death, agony, and end only served to entertain the man in front of me.

I felt my helmet being removed and the man holding my face in his hands; his face was so close to mine that this could have been mistaken for a romantic gesture between two men in a different scenario. However, the growing coldness let me know that my end was near.

Mana threads spread, covering the man’s arms, and soon I felt metal touching my face. I knew what was coming; I had seen the man do something similar in the past. Why did I end here? Why did I give in to greed? I should have stayed home with Mireya, retired, and raised our children.

“Any last words?”

“Mireya, forgive me.”

“I see; it looks like someone is waiting for you at home. You can only blame yourself and the cruelty of war.”

The man seemed to be apologizing to me like he felt sorry for my circumstances, but I could feel it; he wasn’t sincere at all. His face got closer to mine; I guess he felt my consciousness fading, and he wanted me to be able to hear what he had to say.

His whisper was soft but unable to hide the man’s pleasure at that moment; he was almost seductive. “Goodbye, sir knight.”

Dragging every word that came out of his lips as if he wanted to record what he said in my mind before he finished me. “<Leviathan\'s Wrath – Resonance>.”