Cleaver Of Sin

Chapter 566: Operation Wipe Out

Asher appeared in a silver blur within a group of trees, his feet landing on a large branch, and beside him stood one of his photon clones, the only one he had left behind before he teleported to the Logistics and Missions Operation Hall back at the Star Academy. As for why he had left the clone behind, he had placed his last position marker on a stone and handed it to the photon clone for safekeeping. After all, if he teleported to the Star Academy with the Villagers, how was he supposed to return here without a fixed anchor point?

With his arrival, the photon clone gave a silent nod, crushed the stone in his hand, thereby disabling the last position marker, and then vanished as it dispersed into invisible light photons that dissolved seamlessly into the atmosphere.

Asher remained silent as he gazed at the scene before him; around him, destruction had torn through the land with devastating force, entire kilometres reduced to nothing but smouldering ruin, the air itself thick, choking, and heavy to the extent that normal people would not dare to breathe here for more than a few seconds without collapsing.

Asher’s eyes shifted to the side, and there he could sense and faintly hear two individuals battling one another in the distance, one emitting pure, unrestrained malice that stained the air like poison, while the other simply emanated his overwhelming presence with brutal dominance; Asher did not need to be told to understand that the battle unfolding afar was between the Rank 6 Emovira and Debro, who was a Wavestar Life Ranker.

Asher’s gaze tore away from the distant battlefield as that clash did not concern him... not yet. His focus settled on the scene before him, and on this battlefield, or rather upon this wasteland of shattered stone and scorched earth, the battle had already concluded; the members of the organisation seemed to be gathering items from the crumbled remains of the building, salvaging what little they could from the wreckage with hurried precision.

Normally, the battle between these operatives and hundreds of Emovirae should have dragged on for a considerable length of time, and by all logical calculations, the Emovirae should have prevailed due to their overwhelming numbers and ferocity, but Asher could already deduce that Debro had likely wiped out every single Emovira, or at the very least the vast majority of them, with one massive ranged attack before his duel with the Rank 6 Emovira even properly commenced.

Asher’s mind could not help but drift back to moments earlier, to the instant when the father and son had committed suicide through self-explosion without hesitation, and the more Asher reflected upon it, the more irritation simmered beneath his composed exterior, anger not because of their deaths in a moral sense, but because he had lost four hundred thousand points; such a staggering amount had slipped through his fingers like fine sand in a storm, and any rational person placed in his position would feel a similar sting of frustration at such an avoidable loss.

Asher could not help but blame himself, and yet at the same time refuse to shoulder the entirety of that blame. He should have anticipated such a desperate measure, or rather, he had suspected the possibility earlier but had allowed it to slip from the forefront of his thoughts amidst the unfolding chaos.

The man from before had read him far too precisely to be an ordinary villager, and that alone should have served as a glaring warning sign; for that lapse in vigilance, he held himself accountable with cold honesty.

As for why he did not fully condemn himself, it was simply because this was his first experience undertaking a mission of this particular nature; although he possessed sharp intelligence and the capacity to plan several moves ahead like a seasoned strategist, experience remained an irreplaceable teacher that could not be substituted by mere foresight, and besides, if there was one immutable truth about plans, it was that they rarely unfolded in perfect accordance with expectation, no matter how meticulously crafted they were.

But make no mistake, Asher was not sorrowful for the deaths of those villagers; he felt no emotional fluctuation whatsoever, neither guilt nor grief nor righteous fury, simply an expansive void of indifference at their demise. Not because he was some emotionless machine devoid of humanity, but because he knew none of them well enough to evoke any genuine emotional resonance within him, and if there was anything he truly felt in the aftermath, it was not grief but a detached form of pity... a pity directed at the lost opportunity and the forfeited points rather than the extinguished lives.

With that realization, his gaze sharpened and his focus heightened to a razor’s edge; it was time for operation "wipe out," no more sneaking through shadows, no more careful hiding and patient scheming, from this moment onward, he would transform this forsaken place into a river carved entirely from blood and silence.

With that decisive thought, his equipment materialized in a controlled flash from his system inventory, his vambrace, greaves, and breastplate reforming around his frame in a seamless sequence; it was a new set, as the former pieces he had worn had been stripped from his body while he was unconscious, and once fully equipped, he jumped down from the branch upon which he stood and walked ever so slowly into the clearing that opened before him.

Step! Step! Step! Step! Step! Step!

His footfalls echoed unnaturally through the forest like the tolling of a distant bell, despite the fact that he walked upon soft grass, as though the world of Crymora itself were amplifying the cadence of his approach and attempting to warn his adversaries before they met their inevitable end without ever comprehending what had slain them.

Immediately, eyes snapped toward Asher as they registered the deliberate rhythm of his steps, confusion and shock flickering within the gazes of many as they recognized him almost instantly, for who among them could forget what was, without exaggeration, the most strikingly handsome face they had ever beheld.

The reason for their shock was simple and entirely justified; they had heard the explosion earlier from the chamber that had held the Villagers and the Adventurers, and the absence of corpses here had confirmed to them that every single human captive had perished in the suicide detonation orchestrated by their own infiltrators.

And yet, before them at this very moment, stood one of the individuals who was meant to be dead and erased from existence.

"Do you recognize him?" one man, who had not been among the guards assigned to the Villagers’ cell chamber, asked as he noticed the stunned expression frozen upon his partner’s face.

"Yes," the other replied, swallowing subtly, "he was the last Adventurer captured, but somehow he is alive and has all of his equipment intact," the man stated with finality, his tone laced with disbelief.

The others’ expressions hardened as various flashes of realization flickered through their minds and across their eyes while they pieced together a singular, unsettling conclusion.

"It seems we have found the reason for the chaos," a woman stated coolly as they all fixed their sights upon Asher, who had now come to a complete stop before them, his presence steady and unapologetically exposed.

They had all arrived at the same conclusion without the need for further discussion; none of them were fools, and none had survived within this organization by underestimating anyone.

Although Asher was but a single man standing alone before them, to every one of them he represented undeniable danger, for he had infiltrated their organization, dismantled their entire operation from within, and collapsed their structure without anyone realizing it until it was far too late, and they could already surmise that his capture earlier had merely been a calculated ruse within a far greater design.

So, despite him being alone, they would move as one to eliminate him together, decisively and without hesitation, determined that this time he would not slip through their grasp alive.