Chapter 214 - Night Attack

It was currently midnight and Cecil was not in his room sleeping. He figured that Lucia was purposefully staying with him to keep tabs on him, but today's activities had thoroughly exhausted her and she was currently in a deep sleep.

Cecil had switched into a darker garment. He was currently jumping from rooftop to rooftop, making a beeline towards the forest areas that served as the Orca-Anglarian border.

When he got past the city's walls, Silver, who was perching on top of his head quickly jumped forward and transformed in mid-air. Cecil flipped on top of him and the two flickered into the distance.

"Let's make this quick Silv...we'll crush those bastards and give those fools targeting us a warning. Good thing I've got Nature's Shift."

Cecil inwardly thanked the World Tree for giving him such a convenient ability. The technique allowed him to move around without leaving behind any trace of his mana. This way he was able to shake off the eyes that were observing him for the past couple of days.

It was unsettling at how covert those people were. Even when he spread his senses out, they were able to detect him doing so and quickly disappear from his radar.

Whatever technique or tool they were using for counter-reconnaissance, it was without a doubt effective against Cecil's Mana Sense.

He couldn't even move freely during the past few days since he arrived at the city. His enemies were playing around in the dark while he was in the open. Cecil took the safe approach and heeded Lucius and Lucia's advice, taking precaution in whatever he was doing.

He never strayed too far from his friends, but now he had grown tired of it. This was because of the previous event where Lucia and the rest had to dirty their hands because of a couple of fools who didn't care for their lives and only wanted to sow discord between the Empire and Kingdom.

In Cecil's opinion and personal deduction, the Empire had played a hand in the current ruckus being caused at the borders.

Since they wanted to sow discord, Cecil thought that he might as well just wipe out the mediums causing the discord.

Cecil and Silver quickly arrived at the border areas and the two dived straight into the forests. The boy quickly dispersed his senses into the surroundings and picked up on a band of people.

Judging from their gear, numbers, and the fact that they were all beastmen with no visible cargo or trade goods, they were the enemy.

"Let's clean them up..."

Silver howled and rushed straight towards the direction Cecil was telling him to go to. What the boy was doing right now was without a doubt radical and extreme since he was going to go hunt for the lives of people who may or may not be innocent. People who may or may not yet have committed any infractions towards the kingdom.

It wasn't like he felt any sort of radical patriotism for the Anglaria Kingdom, but it was some kind of inexplicable gut feeling, like this was the best and only course of action for him to ensure his safety.

He wasn't only doing this because of some shallow reason like Lucia and his friends tainting their hands with the blood of others. That'd be too narrow-minded of him. No matter what, in this world where power reigned and the person with the largest fist had the largest say, Cecil and his friends will one day with no shred of doubt, have to dirty their hands...

The real reason he was doing this was because ever since he's left the trial, there was a constant nagging feeling in the back of his head. Like an itch he couldn't scratch.

At first Cecil couldn't figure out what caused this, but whenever he trained and was practicing using the World Tree's Thorns, the nagging feeling would suddenly grow exponentially stronger whenever he held onto Providence.

Then there was that one time during training while he was using Providence and he had suddenly blacked out during the middle of it. Cecil then had a clear dream of something...bad happening to him a week later.

To others, they wouldn't actually call this a bad thing, but in the dream, Lucia and Serilla were going to slip into the bathroom while he was bathing and do something weird to him. At first, Cecil thought that it was only a dirty dream. After all, he was already at that age where a boy's imagination would run wild because of hormones. However a week later, his dream, or nightmare, had actually come true!

It was a good thing that he had quickly escaped using Nature's Shift just before the two girls could latch onto him.

Cecil experienced a couple more dreams like this. Of course, it wasn't only bad or lewd things that he dreamt of, but some good things like that one time when he dreamt of picking up someone's lost MID. The MID turned out to be Fina's and she had accidentally dropped it while walking in the blazing heat of summer.

Or the dream where he was sparring with Ainz and he was suddenly caught off guard by a new technique that Ainz had secretly developed in order to surprise him. When the actual event happened the next day, Cecil was able to successfully counterattack the new skill.

This caused Ainz to be thoroughly dejected. Even with a new secret technique he still couldn't even lay a finger on his friend. Cecil apologized secretly because Ainz's secret wasn't much of a secret since he had dreamt of it already.

It was then that Cecil had found out that the dreams were like visions of future events that would most likely happen. The dreams weren't all accurate though! There were some events that didn't enact precisely like it did inside his dreams, but this was only about 10 percent of the time. The other 90 percent would most likely happen and Cecil had begun taking those clear, lucid dreams seriously ever since.

It was most likely one of the abilities he gained from the World Tree's blessing that came from the Providence.

This time, while in the Darkfang Estate, Cecil had a dream of him being tied onto a chair inside of a dark room and he was currently being tortured by someone. He couldn't see who it was, but he definitely knew that the person who was on the chair all tied up was him without a doubt.

Ever since then, the nagging feeling grew stronger and stronger as the days passed. It grew particularly strong and alarming just today, while the party was out patrolling the borders.

It soon died down when Cecil regrouped with his friends to help with the cleanup. It grew strong again during the evening, especially during the time when he was about go to sleep in his room with Lucia.

He was able to persuade the girl to go sleep in her assigned room instead of his. Naturally, Lucia pulled him along because she didn't want to leave him alone. This time, Cecil didn't even complain and just followed along.

When Cecil spread his sense into the room, he couldn't find anyone inside, but he felt that if he entered the place, something bad was seriously going to happen to him.

The feeling disappeared when he entered Lucia's room, but even then he couldn't fall asleep and had kept his Mana Sense activated. Lucia had hugged him to sleep, but Cecil didn't mind this. He instead hugged her back strongly before disappearing with Nature's Shift.

His Nature's Shift had grown much more powerful as he kept training with it using both his Mana and Ki. When he activated it, Cecil now had the ability to leave behind a trace of his Ki inside the clone that he left behind after using the skill. The left behind Ki was able to sustain his clone for a long while before it would then crumble into a heap of dried wood.

With this, he was able to sneak out of the Darkfang Estate and quickly spread out his Mana Sense into the surroundings. Luckily for him, this time he was able to catch a glimpse of the people observing him.

They appeared to be beastmen wearing dark colored gear. He also noticed that there was some sort of insignia imprinted on the left shoulder that had a mark of a grey colored fang. Cecil didn't know what this meant, but he knew, that these beastmen meant trouble.

After he had activated his Mana Sense, it was like these people had picked up on it and they quickly disappeared. Cecil naturally chased after them, but they had disappeared suddenly.

The last known direction he sensed them going to was the border forests. He returned to Lucia's room and ensured that the girl was sound asleep before heading back out with Silver.

******

Cries of fear and screams of pain rang throughout the border forests. Tonight was bound to be the bloodiest night in all Anglaria and Orca history. A massacre was currently being conducted inside the border forests.

This wasn't only the border forest near the Darkfang Territory, but throughout all the border forests. Cecil and Silver were indiscriminately killing every beastman or beastkin group that he deemed were suspicious.

Anyone that didn't have an adventurer's or mercenary's badge on them was killed and traveling beastmen that didn't own a space ring or weren't escorting any cargo was also killed.

The grim reaper was roaming the night and he was currently out for blood. Cecil didn't understand how, but for some reason, he felt no remorse for killing all those people. Some of them might have been innocent and some might not have been, but regardless, Cecil didn't feel any tinge of repentance or regret from doing so.

Just remembering the dream where he was being tortured fueled his irrational desire to kill those people that might play a part in him being captured.

"...I won't let that happen to me...I'll kill them before they get to me..."

Cecil strongly gripped onto Corruption and continued roaming around the border forests while using Nature's Shift. All the bodies of the people he had killed in the forest were dragged into the ground by roots and vines with the help of his plant manipulation.

He made sure to not leave a trace of the bodies behind, but he left all the signs of struggle and blood alone. The bodies were gone, but the battlefield was still full of evidence. Since Cecil had Silver help out with the massacre, the people who would eventually come across the scenes of carnage would most likely attribute it all to monster attacks.

After cleaning up another battlefield, Cecil moved on. He spread his Mana Sense as far as he could, and when a group came into his radar, he'd teleport over to observe them first before taking any action.

Silver followed after his master, but his eyes were filled with worry. Why was his master acting so irrational? Silver couldn't help, but grow wary whenever he stared at the wooden sword in his master's hands.