Sike! Ya thought she was....

"Muhahahaha! Muhahaha! Muahahahaha!" Daren sat on top of a tree while cackling away like a maniac. He was watching a spectacular firework show go off in distance.

The fireworks went up into the air and formed the image of a white skull with two large horns. Splitting the skull in half was an oversized, curved dagger.

The bright lights of the fireworks lit up the cloudy, sky and could be seen from every corner of the city. There was slight awe in the eye of every person that saw this spectacle.

In a world where gunpowder production was still minimal, fireworks were a sight that was never seen before. Daren could not help but laugh as he wondered what reaction would be on the faces of the people when they realized what symbol they were looking at.

It wasn't long until Daren's thoughts became a reality. The expression of countless citizens twisted as they realized they were looking at the Demonic Cult emblem.

Expressions of fear were followed by feelings of despair. It had only been about a week since the Demonic Cult had last killed a group of thieves. The thieves had stopped gathering and had become nonexistent during the nighttime. They continued to steal during the day but it was practically negligible.

The citizens were relieved when they got to know that the Demonic Cult had stopped their horrifying murders. This minuscule moment of peace did not last long as the glowing, white symbol of death was floating above their city.

"Mom, what's wrong?" asked a child. He was in the bathroom when the fireworks started. The child was a little worried when he saw that his mother was as still as a rock.

The mother turns around to look at her little boy. She had drops of tears flowing from her eyes and down her cheeks. She ran to her child and hugged him while kneeling.

"Why were you crying, mom? What were you looking at, mom?" The child was worried about whatever made his mom cry. The clueless wanted to ask his friends to get together and beat it up.

"It's nothing. There was just some dust in my eyes and there's nothing to look at outside. It's just the rain." The mother shielded her child from the horror of the outside world.

The child was completely clueless about what was happening. Little did he know, the thing he wanted to beat up was the cruelest and unrelenting organization to have ever been formed in the human realm.

The Demonic Cult. Every adult in the human realm knew what this group did. They would hunt down thieves, corrupt nobles, corrupt politicians, and even corrupt kings.

When they arrived in your town or city, the only thing that follows would be chaos. The government could not sit in silence when the Demonic Cult killed freely on their land.

There was never any guarantee that the people the demonic cult killed were truly criminal. There have been hundreds of thousands of times when the demonic cult targeted people that were only rumored to be corrupt.

Evidence would show up later to prove these people guilty but they would already be dead. Governments all over the realm actively hunt for any signs of the demonic cult because no matter how much they extinguish their lives, more would always be born.

In the fight between the demonic cult and the human realm, humans have never won and the demonic cult has never truly lost. It has been estimated that about 10 billion innocent lives have been lost as collateral in these hopeless struggles.

These people were all just your common bystander that wanted nothing to do with either side.

The Demonic Cult only brings more terror while the governments that hunt them down only bring greater suffering. The common people only ever lose.

Now enough of the exposition let's go back to Daren who was still on top of the tree.

'Better get going. Those souls won't collect themselves." he said while wishing away in the rain. When he got into the east wing of the Manupus brother's estate, he could see a young woman, kneeling in front of the burnt wreckage.

Daren could clearly see some burnt bodies that were pulled under the charred wood and stones. There were still some embers left but the rain did not take long to wipe them all away.

"Why? Why? Why?." the girl complained. She was smacking the dirt with full force sending some chunks flying over 200 meters. "I trained all those years so I could go on my first mission, complete it, gets tons of money from the family, and rise in their ranks. They would give me more resources and I would get stronger.

I would then do more tasks and then rinse in repeat. Why the f**************ck do they have to blow up as soon as they get here. Why? Why? Why? "

Daren heard the rambling of this young woman and it was all he needed to figure out who she was.

If the marquess had told him that this girl would have a mental breakdown so quickly, he would have set some C4 off at the building where the Half-Pigmen brothers live.

He knew that this was the young woman's first mission. Even the smallest of hiccups and the Manupus family would not let her take any mission for a long time. This would stunt her growth and make this girl miserable.

That's why he blew up her teammates. Having 99% of your team blown up without even settling down for half an hour was basically game over.

"Hehe. So that's her. I really want to fight her head on but a surprise attack sounds better. Which one? Which one should I pick?" Daren was not sure if he should wait for an interesting fight or just take her out from here.

"Just kidding! Why the hell would I take any chances." Did you really think that Daren would give up the chance for a surprise attack and take out his enemy without breaking a sweat?

Daren does not care about honor, pride, or any of those things that lead to death or near-death situations for those stupid MCs. He just takes the safest and most beneficial route possible.

Daren opens his inventory and takes out a carbon black sniper rifle. It had a digital scope with a zoom of up to 30x. The barrel was 1.2 meters long and a stock attached as well. The entirety of it was 1.6 meters long.

The rifle's barrel was in a square shape and had a small, square-shaped silencer attached. It was basically a futuristic version of the 50 cal sniper rifle that shot a highly concentrated beam of energy.

Daren withdrew from his position on the wall and went back 20 meters. He climbed up a tree, put the stock to his shoulder, Aimed down the sights that instantly locked onto his target.

Bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

The energy rifle charges up its shot and Daren keeps his eyes focused on his and then

Zwoooooop!

A blue laser beam that was 20cm long, broke past the sound barrier and landed straight on Arya's neck.

The shot was too fast for even someone with her strength. Even if she reacted with the help of luck, her body still would never move fast enough to dodge it.

She was as good as gone because Daren sniper, code-named "Silence With a Bang", could shoot at 3 times the speed of sound.

Daren was around 320 meters away from Arya when he fired. 3 times the speed of sound meant 1029 m / s. A third of a second is all it took.

Bang!!!

The sound barrier broke and a sonic boom happened right next to Daren's ears. Good thing that he had put on his high-tech noise cancellation and that he had a body of a cultivator or he would have been ripped to shreds by the immense force.

Back in the interstellar era, people could get these chemical substances that would pretty much halt aging and make humans stronger by many folds. They were known as "Geno Solutions" and were only available for a price at which only the wealthy could afford.

Daren looked around and put away his rifle. He then zoomed towards the wreckage of the servant's quarters and picked up a total of 98 human souls and apparently 1 horse soul.

"Horse soul? Did I kill a horse by accident? Ooops." Daren shrugged his shoulders and walked towards Arya's body.

He was just about to kneel and inspect it when he sensed that people were coming to check on the explosion. It had been almost 5 minutes since it went off so people had to come here and check things out.

Daren picked up Arya's slender, but muscle-packed body with ease and ran off toward the park. All the big estates, manors, and villas were on the borders of the city's central park.

This made it easy to disappear into the darkness under the cover of the trees.

Minutes later, Daren was at his shop's second floor and slowly creaked open the door to the room.

As expected, Celina was just laying down on their bed dozed off in the middle of the day. The shop was closed today with there being a sign outside that said ''Closed today only: Maintenance".

Daren tossed Arya's body right next to Celina and made her eyes wide open.

"What the heck are you doing!?" Celina asked as she was jolted awake from her 'beauty nap'.

"I told you that I was going to bring in a guest today," replied Daren.

"When did you say that?"

"During breakfast.... f*ck. I forgot you don't pay attention when you're eating." Daren was embarrassed. He had lived with Celina for over 3 weeks now but still was not used to her nonsensical habits.

Daren hopped onto the king-sized bed and looked at Arya's neck. Lodged deeply into it was a red-colored dart that signified a tranquilizer dart used for capturing animals.

Sike! You thought she was dead huh. Never mind, the title and my wording probably gave it away.

Daren had used the "Silence With a Bang" sniper rifle that wasn't used for killing humans. It was a sports hunting rifle that let people hunt alien beasts in the interstellar era.

These alien beasts were much faster in reaction time than earth animals so human's needed to use better hunting tools to catch them as a prize. That's when they came up with a rifle that would shoot 3 times the speed of sound but would disperse all of its energy into the air as soon as it was a millimeter away from the target.

The rifle did not shoot deadly bullets but specialized tranquilizer darts made from highly advanced technology. One drop of the medicine inside could knock out 50 adult elephants.

This was more than enough to knock out someone below the Core Condensation Rank. Body Strengthening humans would definitely not be able to withstand it.

You must be wondering how Daren took out 98 men and a horse with explosives. That's quite a simple story.

Daren was informed by there would be 100 humans without cultivation but strong and well-trained bodies, These 100 people would be highly skilled mercenaries that would assist one cultivator in suppressing Daren and serving as an annoying bait.

Some of these men would be sacrificed in the fight to guarantee that the cultivator kills him. Some of the survivors would accompany the cultivator to go back home while the rest would stay back to replace the ones that the 4 piggies lost.

'Since they were going to be sacrificing some anyway, why not send all of them together. This way, they would have people to talk to when they were going to wherever people went after death." is what he had thought.

Daren had some requests to make to the system. He had wanted 3 tons of RDX ( a type of explosive material used in the modern-day military) and a special sniper that he had personally used for hunting.

There was no way a non-super-powered human could survive a one-ton detonation of RDX. It was just easy kills for Daren.

Taking out the cultivator with his rife also worked well since he tested the tranquilizer dart on himself. He was knocked cold for 7 hours that day.

Daren then went ahead and scouted the Manupus Estate and figured out where the normal mercenaries were to stay. It would definitely be the huge servant's quarters that were 2 floors and could house 300 people in small, cramped rooms.

In the servant's quarters, he planted 2 tones of RDX under the floor panels and within the walls, He attached a remote detonation device on each of the packets. He planted the rest of the RDX right outside of the piggy's house.

He couldn't get in for some reason as he felt that there was an invisible barrier that kept him out. Daren learned later that this was a magic barrier formed by { FORCE } magicians. It kept people with ill intentions against the inhabitants, outside.

He had a plan for which the RDX outside their doorstep would play perfectly.

Now that I said all that, I guess the story wasn't that simple after all. All that's left is to explain why Arya is being kept alive.