Nilus had already killed dozens of assassins just as he made a single step outside of the guild.

He kept the souls for Cale’s bone dagger to absorb as he siphoned away all the aura inside every aura weapon of every attacking assassin he came across. Their weapons will be later found as lifeless as them. It was not as nourishing as a soul and he could not keep all of them.

He still wanted to know how potent a soul was in making aura weapons. For Nilus, it was a simple test before he got to create his own aura weapon after he reached the next 5th stage. He still needed his own aura as the core for the aura weapon.

Aura wielders had no way of knowing how an aura weapon was created other than continuously infusing an object with their aura. What happen inside the object however could be seen by Nilus as he could see souls inside living beings, it was the same for aura weapons.

Aura weapons were in fact living but had no conscience. The core of energy created into them by aura wielders grew stronger as more aura was infused.

For an aura weapon to be completely in sync with its wielder they had to have a corresponding aura core. The aura core of the weapon must be that of the wielder. It did not matter the provenance of the aura after the core was created by the wielder.

Some aura wielders preferred to buy aura weapons of a higher stage than what they could create on their own. Others chanced upon them but in both cases, it meant that they could never be in complete sync with them.

Others created their own aura weapons and used aura crystals of various stages to feed it. It was faster than doing it on their own and since the aura core was the same as their own aura, it never hindered them.

Cale’s bone dagger was brought to the 4th stage by Nilus as he killed the 6 assassins in the morning, but now after a dozen kill it still had to show its aura of the 5th stage of weapon enhancement.

As Nilus sprinted, he saw in his 200 meter mind map that there were hundreds of pursuers after him. The streets had long been emptied by the city guards who already knew that a carnage was going to happen.

He stopped.

“I better get rid of them all. I cannot let all of them follow me to the meeting point.” Thought Nilus.

Then the carnage started.

His only trump card was that he saw them all coming. It did not matter that they sneaked on him at each kill he made.

Nilus would often take huge breaths that was misinterpreted as fatigue, but it was only him feeding the dagger.

He thought he looked silly when he remembered that night of full moon when that other soul eating guy just used his transparent hands to grab on soul. Nilus had to open his mouth every time.

As he became stronger, he could call multiple souls to swallow and non-aura wielders could not resist his soul eating power. Only aura enhancers needed a little beating to be fragile enough for the soul to be sucked out. It was difficult to pull a soul out as he battled higher stages starting from the 1st stage aura enhancers and above.

Aura enhancers were a huge boon for a soul eater like Nilus. They trained their own aura making it concentrated and rich in energy. A sword conjured out of aura from a 4th stage aura enhancer could fight evenly with 3rd stage aura weapon. Eating the soul of an aura enhancer was sometimes worth dozens of normal souls from aura weapon wielders and body enhancers.

He personally ate the souls of aura enhancers and left the rest for the dagger to feed on. After seeing that the aura weapons were costing him time to retrieve and siphon, he left them with their dead owners. He had already taken a few useful ones and that was it.

After more than two hundred kills, the assassin kept falling on him like rain drops. He was starting to show some real fatigue as well.

The good news was that Cale’s dagger had reached the 5th stage.

“Cale aura looks almost transparent. These assassins are eyeing it even more than me right now. Looks like a 5th stage aura weapon is more valuable than me. I cannot retract its aura since I am not its true owner. My experiment just turned itself into a high value target as well. ” Thought Nilus.

The assassin seemed to not mind the deaths of their comrades. Their greed had reached the stars themselves. They were ready to die just to get that last gold they could sit on for the rest of their lives.

The rules of the assassins were simple. As long as you got the kill, it was yours. The value of the target did not matter. If you wanted to claim a kill that was not yours, making all the evidence disappear was a good choice. If the Assassin guild got wind of treacherous behavior, it was punishable by death. That was how things were monitored by the guild.

There was no way of stealing a kill in this instance. There were hundreds of witnesses.

Adding the rule that the possessions of the target belonged to the killer unless it was part of the bounty, no one would attack the killer to steal from him. At least not while there were still witnesses.

Nilus understood human greed. When he used to raid facilities in which aura wielders were captured and forced to give away their aura as long as they lived, his heart had turned to stone immediately.

He told himself that as long as he had enough power, he could not allow such a thing to happen inside the city. The happy and thankful faces he got from the people he saved were enough to prove him right.

Since no one in the city cared about the weak, he let it be his mission to care.

He killed, killed and killed, until the assassins started retreating. The remaining fifty ones were the strongest ones. They had waited for the others to weaken him.

Nilus could tell from looking at their souls that they were all S rank assassins.

Nilus looked around and breathlessly said: ”Ladies and Gentlemen. Let’s call it a day shall we?”

“Of course not, you and that bone dagger are worth close to a million Gold coins.” A woman,s voice came out of the group.

“Come on. Give me a break here, I just killed almost 500 people already. My hero name is going to be tarnished by you all. Just divide their belongings and aura weapons. It should be more than enough to cover all your needs.” Nilus said as he pointed at the corpses dispersed in the area. He was right. If they collected all the aura weapons all over the place and sold them, it was enough for all of them to end up with at least something.

“We will do that after you are dead.” Said a man wielding a claymore as he was the first to pounce on Nilus.

He was just about to swing his claymore towards Nilus when a shadow appeared and kicked the man out of the encirclement.

“Not so fast. Just do what the Silent Owl said and scram.”Said the shadow who turned out to be an assassin from the remaining fifty.

The nearby Nilus was startled but then recognized the voice: “ Cale.” He thought.

“Dino. What is the meaning of this?” Asked Karl as he reappeared in the encirclement.

“Sorry, I am not called Dino. Do what I said and scram. I will not repeat myself.” Cale said.

“We do not care what your true name is. If you still insist on letting the Silent Owl escape, you are insane to think that you alone can do that.” The woman’s voice was once again heard.

Cale who was standing 3 meters on the front left of Nilus said without turning around : “ The fifty of them formed an alliance to take care of you. It is going to be hard to rid yourself of fifty S rank assassin on your own. I kind of knew the Shadow envoy would not resist in turning you in. Him and that other shadow envoy are lurking around as we speak.” He turned around and said:”I was wondering what had happened for you to be late and came back. It is a good thing I arrived while these morons were plotting on ganging up on you. Give me back my dagger so I can open the gates of hell for them since they refuse to accept my kindness.”

Nilus reluctantly gave the dagger back.

Cale took it and retracted the aura on it. He was too overjoyed. He did not show it. Not that anybody could see through his mask. He was thinking “He kept it a single day and it is already two levels above the initial 3rd stage. What a freak. But I am sure it has a lot to do with all these kills. Haha…hum? This is impossible…The 6th stage?...”

Nilus had assumed that he had reached the 5th stage because the aura was still around. But the aura could only stay around as he was not the owner and could not turn it down. He was oblivious to the fact that the dagger had long reached the 6th stage.

Only Cale the true owner could see the difference.

At the 6th stage, the aura weapon could start releasing aura to a short distance of three meters around itself, instead of the usual little aura that could be used to shield the immediate silhouette of the weapon.

It was also possible to release the aura as a projectile through the aura weapon itself.

Cale immediately turned around and asked Nilus, ignoring the fifty around him: “Do they need to be alive for you to do your soul thing?”

Nilus understood, but thought it was too much for a single person to handle. He said:” Three minutes after death is the limit or else they completely dissipate. But can’t we just run away it…”

“No need. Give me a minute.” Cale stopped him and said before the dagger shined a blinding light.

He drew an arc with his dagger and a corresponding expanding arc of an almost invisible aura was sent flying horizontally. Four assassins were cut in half. Some even had used their aura weapons to protect themselves but their weapons ended in the same situation as them.

Next, before they started running away, he skillfully sent arcs in all directions as he danced and evaded multiple attacks.

More were killed.

He used his speed to catch up to the rest and created a sword by augmenting the aura around his dagger and swung it towards any attacking assassin. It cut through everything like a hot knife cutting butter. None of the other assassins had something as strong as a 6th stage aura weapon or had their aura enhanced to the 7th stage to protect themselves. He killed almost all of them. Six assassins had taken their leave early as they realized that the situation was not in their favor.

“Stop daydreaming do your thing already.” Cale voice brought Nilus back from his reverie.

Nilus was watching the fight unfold before his eyes. He had never seen such skills being used in front of him. He had never thought that a little dagger was capable of such carnage in less than a minute. 41 assassins had died without knowing how it happened.

Cale, the wielder of the weapon himself used intricate ways to terminate them as swiftly as possible. He used multiple aura conjured weapons to kill according to the situation he was in. The dagger was just a multi purpose weapon in his hand. It had nothing to do with the self-taught way of fighting that Nilus used.

As Nilus absorbed all the 41 souls something bizzare happened.

His green soul core started burning with a green aura. The green aura expanded until Nilus was completely shrouded in a green aura.

“Oh…shit.” Said Cale as he ran to Nilus’s side.

“Don’t touch me. How do I retract it? Tell me fast before it eats all the souls of this part of the city.” Said the agitated Nilus. His aura had finally erupted but he had a feeling that if he did not find a way to keep it inside of him, the area around him would become its feeding ground.

“ Just think about it returning beneath your skin. That is how they teach kids how to control their aura.” Cale advised and added :”It listens to you. It doesn’t have a mind of its own.”

“Then why did it come out in the first place?” Asked Nilus.

“Every aura wielder is born with aura around him. Because babies sometimes find it funny or are scared of it, they can turn it of and on whenever they want. We all grow up knowing how to use it. You never had that chance and it is not a normal aura at that.”Said Cale.

“Do you have anything else? Your first idea is useless. It keeps increasing in quantity.” The green aura had now reached three meters in height.

“Just go back to they way you felt before having the aura inside of you. Think about your state of mind before that.” Said the helpless Cale.

Nilus calmed himself and closed his eyes. Trying to remember his state of mind before he was assailed by the green aura. It did not work. Then he thought about the 41 souls he had just eaten. Could he eat his own aura? He asked himself.

“It doesn’t hurt to try. I hope.” thought Nilus.

He inhaled with the ever-increasing green aura as his target.

It worked.

It was a stupid cycle of eating the aura and putting it back inside the soul core it came from.

After each cycle, the aura that came out again was less than before and stronger.

After he breathed in the green aura five times, it went back inside the core on its own.

From Nilus’s point of view, the soul core had stringent requirement when it came to the concentration of aura it used. The aura it stocked had to match its level. He reckoned that he had helped the soul core upgrade the aura to a satisfactory level, by inhaling it inside the soul core which would further refine it until it could not.

Cale who watched the whole thing was trying hard not to look surprised as he saw the green aura level up from the 1st stage to the 5th stage in minutes. Normal people needed at least 10 years to reach that level if they only concentrated on aura. For nobles, it took 3 years or more.

Cale himself had only strengthened his aura to the 4TH stage so far.

“Nilus. I wonder. What are you really?” Cale asked himself.

As Cale approached, Nilus was frantically looking through his backpack. There were a number of short weapons. Daggers, short swords, axes etc… any weapon he could get his hands on.

“Why keep such garbage? Go to the best blacksmith and get something custom made for you. With how fast everything around you level up, I trust that it not a problem for you.” Said Cale.

Nilus who discarded everything said: ”I was going to throw it all. The green aura they were caught in at the same time as me siphoned their aura away.”

“What do we do now that my aura has appeared?”Nilus asked.

“We still have to leave. Your bounty will skyrocket after this and you will have nowhere to hide in this city without being attacked by every idiot who thinks they are smart and strong enough to do you in. Well, there are idiots and then there are Shadow envoys and Asuras who will start coming after you.” Said Cale.

“Asura?” inquired Nilus.

“If your bounty reaches three million and plus gold coins, Shadow envoys and Asuras will definitely come for you. Shadow envoys are classified SS rank and Asuras are SSS rank. Asuras are almost at the 10th stage in all the three areas if not already there or higher. That is a huge problem for you. We need to get out of here before you infuriate anybody else. You have done enough. Give some time for these people to forget you.” Said Cale.

“Can we stay for a couple of days? I need something custom made for me. I have no weapon of my own.” Said Nilus.

“I know just the place. ” Said Cale.