A Great Horn fell over, its head separated cleanly from its body with a single swing of Gaius’ Terminus. The dagger, other than being able to unleash a blast of destructive power in what Nexus called its Zeroth Release, was incredibly sharp…and didn’t need sharpening, apparently.

Behind him, Isabelle was flitting around with a rapier in hand. Her strikes were incredibly precise, and no matter how the Great Horns she targeted tried to escape, the barbed, vicious end of her weapon always seemed to home in on the enemy effortlessly. The barbs on her rapier apparently had the effect of rupturing whatever organ it touched, and although Isabelle wasn’t able to kill them instantly, the monsters she struck would simply stagger for a minute or two before falling over.

It was, in other words, a delayed-effect attack, a slow-acting poison. The bodies she’d left behind, however, was largely intact and cleaner, compared to the victims of Gaius’ onslaughts. The Dragoon, in particular, was rather indiscriminate about where it struck. The invisible blade of qi hacked at whatever it could see, which meant that some of the Great Horns had turned into nothing short of minced meat by the time the herd was killed off.

“Eww.” Gaius poked at a finely-sliced mound of meat. “It also sliced through the bones and what have you without any hesitation.”

“Brutal as always,” Isabelle replied. Her face was rather pale, but just like Gaius, she wasn’t showing any signs of physical exhaustion. Even without training in a cultivation mantra that focused on a body, cultivation in general improved one’s stamina and strength somewhat.

Gaius surveyed the scene. Other than the bloody and decapitated bodies that he’d created, the field was full of what seemed to be sleeping Giant Horns, courtesy of Isabelle.

Of course, the two of them weren’t going to carry these corpses back. The Guild had their own ways of bringing back the spoils of battle, which was the leaflet that Gaius had taken with him. Isabelle watched as the boy rolled the leaflet up firmly, before planting the bottom half of the newly created stick into the ground.

His hand flickered, creating a sigil that floated towards the top end of the stick, which began to burn as the sigil vanished. A steady stream of thick orange smoke, apparently unaffected by wind, rose into the air.

Gaius’ face twitched. It was a smoke signal, one that was used back on Earth to call down artillery strikes and whatever other long range attacks a military had. But to a person without any idea of what these signals meant on Earth, it was nothing short of an enthralling sight. Isabelle, who was captivated by the sight, was one prime example of how pretty these signals could be.

He didn’t know how the stream of smoke could float upwards without any deviation whatsoever, but there was a very convenient explanation for it, so instead of racking his brains over irrelevant things, Gaius sat down on a particularly lush patch of grass and pulled Isabelle down with him.

It was a beautiful sight, and the fact that the leaflet didn’t seem to stop burning added more points. Even though the whole thing was taking place in daytime, the view of coloured smoke rising stately into the heavens wasn’t weakened whatsoever.

After an hour, a small convoy of wagons had made their way to the lush fields where the corpses of the Great Horns were lying at. It was Gaius’ and Isabelle’s job to make sure that no one would take the corpses while the convoy was on their way here, or else their quest would fail.

“This request was accepted two hours ago, and it took us an hour to travel here,” said the leader of the convoy. “How did you two kill so many in less than an hour? Did you have other helpers?”

Yes, an invisible blade of qi that was hell-bent on cutting whatever it saw to minced meat. Gaius rolled his eyes and shook his head.

“Wow.” The man looked at a pile of minced meat and winced. “What kind of grievance did you have with this guy? And who the hell can cut both meat and bone that easily either?”

The small boy restrained the urge to snark out loud, and settled for the second-best option of hiding behind Isabelle instead. Thankfully, no one noticed his actions — they were too distracted by the clean kills made by the Knight.

“You didn’t use poison, did you? These guys look so…peaceful.”

Gaius stuck his head out and shook his head again. The leader clearly didn’t take his word for it, however, producing a small antenna-like artefact and waving it at the corpse. Nothing happened, and the man stowed the artefact back.

“Would it kill you two to speak?” He glanced at the silent duo, who looked back quietly.

“Argh. Fine, whatever. Do you have gold coins in your mouth or what? Man, you two are the quietest I’ve seen amongst the adventurers…” He muttered a few more choice words, and then started loading the corpses with the rest of his men. The field was cleared with methodical precision, and after scouring the field one last time for any stray corpses, the man pulled up the smoke signal and dumped it into a pail of water.

“Your quest is complete.”

The two nodded.

“Urgh.” He barked out a few more orders, and hopped onto the last wagon. The man glared at the two until he was out of sight, presumably in a bid to catch them finally taking to each other, but Gaius was too lazy to be bothered about that.

“That’s the experience, I guess.” The small boy stretched his body.

Isabelle yawned and rubbed her eyes. “Let’s go back. Nakama should be hungry by now.”

The two had left the little girl back in Sundown Residence, tasking her with the all-important task of upgrading Nexus’ body while the artificial intelligence was still unconscious. It was to make clothes for the wooden sculpture, something that Nexus had requested on the grounds that being too monochrome was boring while Gaius was still unconscious a few weeks ago.

“After lunch, we’ll bring her out to Kishi Gakuen. She needs to have a proper education, after all,” said Gaius. “The Crystal doesn’t seem that important to me right now, but I should start working on it soon.”