Kill as Many as They Send

“Flee?” She looked up at the gray sky in the distance.

“Talisha is gone. Everywhere is the same now. I will just wait for them at home.”

“To let them kill you?” Benita disagreed completely. “No matter what, you—”

Suren's voice suddenly turned sharp, like a piece of bamboo bent to its absolute limit before finally snapping. A fire burned deep in her eyes.

“I want everyone to know why I killed that beast! I want everyone to know that even nobles can die!”

“Well said!” Wu Yao clapped supportively.

Benita felt that Wu Yao was just looking to stir up trouble. She dragged Wu Yao aside and hissed in a low voice, “Do you even know what you're saying?”

Wu Yao found her serious expression highly amusing, so she straightened her own face and replied solemnly in a chilling, solemn tone, “I'll kill as many as they send!”

Benita felt her vision go dark.

She should have known. This sorceress could not be understood with common sense. What did she care about noble private soldiers, or the king's law and order? With such power at her disposal, what in this world could possibly stand in her way?

Benita quickly weighed her options in her mind and gave up on trying to dissuade Wu Yao in any way.

But she had to take Phelin away first. Phelin was still young; witnessing such a scene would surely give her nightmares.

“Oh, they're here.” A small cluster of rapidly moving character icons appeared on Wu Yao's mini-map. She looked in their direction.

Benita followed her gaze. A cloud of yellow dust rose at the end of the dirt path as the sound of galloping hooves drew closer, like approaching thunder.

She instinctively pulled Phelin behind her, her other hand tightening around the strap of her herb bag. Phelin clutched her mother's fingers, her eyes shining with a hint of curiosity.

“Lady Wu Yao, doing this here isn't very...”

“Don't worry,” Wu Yao waved her hand, cutting her off. “I won't make too much of a mess.”

Before Benita could realize what “won't make too much of a mess” meant, Wu Yao was already moving.

She took a step forward. Fine cracks spread out from beneath her feet like silent black lightning, racing along the ground toward the oncoming group.

Watching this, Benita quietly breathed a sigh of relief. At least there wasn't any loud, obvious commotion.

The next second, the entire dirt road collapsed, crashing down into a massive pit. The horses neighed in terror, their front hooves flailing uselessly in the air, while the riders tumbled into the sudden crater one after another like dumplings dropped into boiling water.

Cries of alarm, horses' whinnies, and the heavy thud of falling earth and stone blended into a chaotic din. Still unsatisfied, Wu Yao turned her palm upward and clenched her fist. Four earth walls erupted from the ground and slammed shut with a resounding boom, trapping the six men and their horses inside an earth prison.

“Done.” Wu Yao turned to Benita and raised an eyebrow, highly pleased with her own resourcefulness.

While she couldn't kill NPCs without health bars, no one said she couldn't trap them.

She refused to believe their health bars wouldn't show up after this!

Benita wished she could faint right then and there.

She froze in place, her eyes instinctively scanning the expressions of the passersby.

The women weeding in the fields, the elderly farmers carrying baskets on shoulder poles, and the young men hurrying along all stopped in their tracks. The expressions on their faces shifted from confusion to fear, and from fear to deathly pale.

No one dared to scream. They simply clamped their hands over their mouths, wishing they had wings to fly away.

One old man ran so fast that he tripped and fell on a ridge between the fields. Yet, he didn't even dare to groan. He scrambled back up on all fours and vanished from sight in the blink of an eye.

Benita closed her eyes. She remembered the day Hilna was dragged to the plaza. The crowd had worn those exact same expressions—fear, disgust, and a desperate desire to keep their distance...

No, they had actually been a bit more excited and thrilled than these people.

Why would they care what a sorceress used her power for?

They only remembered how powerful the sorceress's strength was.

A power so great that it made them feel utterly worthless, so great that it kept them awake at night. A power so immense that they felt compelled to burn its owner to ashes under the sun, in full view of everyone, just so they could go home and sleep peacefully.

“You...” Benita actually had no idea what to say.

She instinctively grabbed Wu Yao's arm with all her strength, as if terrified that someone would snatch her away.

Wu Yao easily shook off her grip and ran over to the side of the earth prison. She opened a small window in the outer wall so she could peer at the men and horses inside.

Several horses had broken their legs and could no longer stand. The private soldiers had just scrambled to their feet and were hammering on the walls with the pommels of their swords, muttering muffled curses.

The moment Wu Yao poked her head in, they seemed to find the culprit, and red health bars lit up above their heads one by one.

Just what Wu Yao wanted! They finally showed up!

“Mama, who are those people?” Phelin asked in a quiet voice, her eyes shining as she stared at the sudden earth prison. This was way cooler than the little firebirds!

“They're bad people,” Benita said. She didn't look down at her daughter's face, merely stroking her head soothingly, and thus missed the look of yearning in Phelin's eyes.

While she was at it, Wu Yao pulled the dazed Suren up onto the earth prison, thoughtfully creating a small platform for her to stand on.

“Look, the pursuers are all locked up,” Wu Yao said, pointing down at the loudly shouting and cursing private soldiers, her tone as cheerful as ever.

“I'll kill them all to keep you safe. Do you want to come with me?”

Suren's lips trembled. She looked down into the earth prison, which only had a single square opening. Muffled thuds and indistinct curses echoed from within. Six men and six horses had been trapped here so effortlessly.

A sorceress.

This was the power of a sorceress.

Suren felt a fear that seeped deep into her bones. She, too, had grown up listening to stories of sorceresses. They were monsters that stole babies, cursed crops, commanded the undead, and manipulated skeletons.

In those pamphlets, illustrations of sorceresses always depicted them with blue faces and protruding fangs, their hands stained with blood, and hordes of the undead and skeletons looming behind them.

She had thought she had nothing left to fear, but facing a real sorceress, her knees still felt a bit weak.

Yet this sorceress had said to her, “keep you safe.”

Why would a sorceress who could effortlessly trap six noble private soldiers be so gentle to an ordinary village woman?

Why would she care about the safety of a lowly peasant?

“Are you...”

Suren heard her own voice trembling, but she forced herself to look directly at the young woman in front of her. She wore a black robe, and the braid Suren had woven with her own hands hung down her back. The blue-and-white cloth strip looked like the simplest thing on her entire body.

“Are you a sorceress?”

Wu Yao nodded simply and added, “Or a witch. They're basically the same thing anyway.”

Suren's knees finally gave out. She knelt on the platform Wu Yao had built for her, resting her hands on the rough earth. She could smell the pleasant scent of herbs lingering on the sorceress.

“I'm not afraid of you,” Suren murmured, her voice so soft it was as if she were talking to herself. “You helped me... You didn't hurt me...”