Ethan stood in a small plaza at the center of the city, surrounded by stalls selling various sundries.
An Amons peddler was arranging shriveled fruits on his stall; the skins were wrinkled and their color was dark.
A few elderly people crouched in front of the stall, picking through the wares, their haggling voices weak and listless.
He looked up at the sky above.
The sky was blue with white clouds, and the sun was shining brightly.
Then, he raised both hands.
Emerald-green light poured from his palms, trickling down his fingers and dripping into the gaps between the stone slabs of the ground.
The elderly people who were still picking through the fruit stopped what they were doing.
The peddler looked up, a flash of confusion crossing his amber eyes.
The children who had been chasing each other at the mouth of the alley also stopped. One of them tilted their head, looking at the pale-blue-skinned outsider in the middle of the plaza.
Ethan pressed his hands downward.
"The harvest... begins."
The stone slabs beneath his feet exploded.
Vines erupted frantically from every gap between the slabs, from every patch of exposed soil, and from beneath the foundations of every wooden house.
They thickened, lengthened, and grew denser at a speed visible to the naked eye, their dark brown woody bark gleaming coldly in the sunlight.
The peddler was the first to be ensnared.
A vine climbed up from his ankle, coiled around his knee, and tightened into his waist and abdomen.
He opened his mouth to scream, but a vine had already wrapped around his neck. It tightened. The scream was crushed in his throat, leaving only a short, sharp gasp of air.
The elderly people picking fruit were dragged down from the stall.
Their withered fingers clawed at the ground, nails sinking into the cracks of the stone slabs with an ear-piercing scraping sound. The vines dragged them toward the center of the plaza, leaving trails of pale blue blood on the ground.
The two children at the mouth of the alley turned to run.
Before they could take two steps, the stone slabs beneath them cracked. Two vines shot out simultaneously, coiling around their ankles and hoisting them into the air, hanging them upside down.
The children's screams pierced the entire street.
The city instantly descended into chaos.
Screams, cries, and the sound of breaking bones mixed together, erupting from every street, every wooden house, and every corner.
Vines crawled over the entire city.
They bored through the windows of wooden houses, squeezed through door cracks, and burst out from beneath the floors. Before the people inside could even try to flee, they were ensnared by ankles by vines surging from all directions, dragged down, and strangled. The walls of the wooden houses creaked under the pressure of the vines, wood splintering, roofs collapsing, and tiles clattering to the ground.
An elderly Amons man knelt in the middle of the street, hands raised toward the heavens, chanting a prayer. Vines surged from all directions, starting from his raised hands, coiling around his arms, tightening into his neck, and wrapping around his torso. The prayer came to an abrupt halt.
At the same time, dense sounds of breaking earth echoed outside the city.
One Green Vine Guard after another erupted from the ground.
They burst forth from the hillsides outside the city, from the soil at the foot of the city walls, and from the cracks in the stone slabs at the city gates.
The first.
The tenth.
The fiftieth.
The hundredth.
...
Green Vine Guards grew simultaneously from all directions outside the city, lining up in a dense formation, shoulder to shoulder.
Time passed minute by minute.
After an unknown amount of time, the entire city fell silent.
The last wooden house collapsed with a roar under the pressure of the vines, wood chips and tiles crashing to the ground and kicking up a cloud of dust.
The last corpse was dragged underground by the vines. The stone-slab ground became smooth again, with only the residual pale blue blood in the cracks proving what had just occurred.
Ethan withdrew his hands.
The emerald-green light dissipated from his palms.
He stood in the center of the plaza, which was now piled high with books and scrolls.
These knowledge carriers, plundered from the entire city, formed a small mountain. Some were stained with pale blue blood, some had torn edges, and some remained open.
Vines reached out from the ground, coiling around these books one by one and sending them into his storage ring.
Ethan glanced at his interface.
【Current Life Energy: 81,245.】
Not bad. Over ten thousand elderly, weak, women, and children. Although they weren't warriors, the Amons were naturally stronger than Humans, and they had contributed a significant amount.
The vines stuffed the last bundle of scrolls into the ring, and Ethan turned and ran.
Committing atrocities and then fleeing was quite the rush.
The mountain forest rapidly expanded in his vision.
Ethan plunged into the dense woods without looking back.
For thirteen consecutive days.
Ethan did not stop.
Every time he found a city, he acted immediately.
Vines erupted from the ground, wooden spikes pierced through stone slabs, and flying leaves filled the streets. The time it took for the Amons in the cities to go from screaming to silence, and from resisting to becoming corpses, was never long.
In the first city, the garrison had only about a hundred warriors, while the rest were elderly, weak, women, and children.
He spent half an hour harvesting them clean. The books and scrolls in the city were swept up by vines and stuffed into his storage ring.
In the second city, there were even fewer guards—less than fifty warriors. Fifteen minutes.
The third city was undefended. Ten minutes.
The fourth, fifth, and sixth.
By the time he reached the seventh city, just as he had withdrawn his vines, an emerald smoke cloud exploded in the sky above.
The smoke cloud condensed and lingered in mid-air, visible for a hundred miles around.
Immediately after, a second cloud of smoke exploded in the east, and a third in the west.
In less than half a day, such signals were everywhere in the sky.
All Amons who could see these smoke clouds now knew that the outsider who had massacred the Green Das Tribe was in this area.
Ethan stood atop the city wall he had leveled, looking at the signal clouds on the horizon and muttering something to himself.
He turned and ran, plunging headlong into the mountain forest.
But this time was different from before.
Just as he crossed the third mountain, he sensed a massive presence of life force ahead.
There were no fewer than thirty thousand of them, with over a dozen auras that were exceptionally strong, far exceeding the level of Priests and Sentinels.
Ethan did not hesitate; he turned and fled.
After running for an hour, another life force presence appeared ahead.
Again, no fewer than ten thousand, again with a Second-Tier lifeform presiding over them, and again with that familiar fluctuation.
He changed direction again, only to be blocked once more.
Another change, another blockage.
Hundreds of thousands of Amons were closing in from all directions, sealing off the surrounding ten thousand miles completely.
The corner of Ethan's mouth twitched.
He had stayed underground for several months before; now it seemed he had to go back down.
With a stomp of his foot, vines erupted from the ground, coiled around his body, and pulled him down.
Soil and rubble churned as he vanished beneath the surface.
The hole above was filled with vines and covered with moss, blending perfectly with the surrounding rock wall.
After waiting underground for three days, the footsteps and shouting above finally faded away.
The vines moved again, pulling him out of the ground.
Ethan did not linger and continued running toward the east.
He constantly changed direction along the mountain ranges, sometimes plunging into dense forests, sometimes diving into riverbeds.
Vines grew continuously from beneath his feet, leaving a few new roots on the ground with every step to mask his trail.
He traveled through the dense forest for seventeen full days before finally shaking off the last pursuer in a range of deep, continuous mountains.
After confirming there was no Amons presence for a hundred miles around, he turned north and headed back toward his Wizard Tower.
Three days later, Ethan finally returned to the underground space.
Sitting cross-legged on the vine bed, Ethan opened his interface and took a look.
【Current Life Energy: 474,225.】
Ethan's mouth twitched.
After slaughtering so many cities and killing so many Amons, he had only accumulated this much.
He really needed to find higher-tier lifeforms.
"Tsk. This past year, for the sake of staying hidden, I've only been slaughtering cities and haven't looked for any of this world's demon beasts. I wonder how much Life Energy they have. Forget it, I'll deal with that later. Unlock passive."
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