Chương 598: Limitless Path Chapter Six Hundred Eighteen

He had tracked her slowly the rest of the evening. He had learned over the years, indulging in a few mistakes early on that almost ended very badly, that it was much better to be patient. He could barely count the number of times he had thought he had lost someone, only for them to stumble back into his path a minute or an hour or a day later, as if providence was looking out for him.

He didn't use any kind of tracking skills, having also learned that that was a rather bad idea; not only could those he cut recognize them, people got very concerned when they saw another sapient with a tracking mark on them. He only ever used a form of identification skill to determine their strength, having also learned that lesson when a beautiful canvas he had yet to use turned out to be far greater than they had first appeared.

He had learned, learned to recognize the strong and those who only pretended, learned to understand who to pursue and who not. The young woman he walked after had all the signs of being exactly the kind of artwork he liked; she was clearly very young. Her skin was flawless and her body extremely soft and supple; those who continued leveling could stave off or forgo aging entirely, but nobody ever hit that point when they were very young.

There were always signs, signs of the years they had undergone, even if they looked young and pretty to others, but he could tell. He always spent extra time and care to select the best possible canvas, having become a connoisseur of the flesh over the decades, and he understood how to tell that someone was truly young or that they were, through one method or the other, artificially young.

The only way around this rule were if a person were to start leveling when they were very young and that they would have leveled very quickly, undergoing rebirth after rebirth even before they hit their teens, but that was practically impossible. People didn't start that early, and the few who did, mostly beastly bonds, never leveled at anywhere near that speed.

Besides, the woman he was now about to perform his next work on had come back to his advanced identification skill as being at level one hundred ten on her first rebirth. That was always the absolute best time, when someone had just reached the point where rebirthing was possible but hadn't done it yet, wanting to gain at least a few extra levels.

He had even had people that he cut rebirth while he worked, desperate and not in their right minds; the sensation of their fear driven to such a point was so terribly satisfying. He couldn't afford to get distracted now, however, and he refocused on his pursuit. Some he had met over the years loved it, the thrill of the chase, but it had always been the act itself for him, the cutting, the slicing, the dripping of the blood, blood of many colors staining the floors and walls.

The pursuit was a thrill, but just a small appetizer, something that he could use to whet his appetite before he devoured the main dish. Despite the many hunts he had done here, his excitement was at a new peak; he was about to push his skill to a whole new level, the skill that let him cut so beautifully. He simply couldn't wait to create new patterns on new flesh, and this woman would be a final mark of his old art, sort of a penultimate piece to signify his growth and change.

He had watched her walk for a time, lost track of her, and found her again as the last of the light faded, thinking of how he would get her where he needed her, but that was never the hard part. Subduing somebody, even somebody who was expecting it, quietly and quickly was always the hard part. He had found the greatest danger came from others being meddling busybodies in his business when he was trying to work, particularly when he was trying to get a new object to cut.

That was one of the great part about this lake; it was broad and flat and had plenty of flat land with small hills surrounding it, the cabins and small establishments spread out and often not within stone's throw of each other. Nabbing people here had been far easier than his last four stops, and he might have gone overboard, just a touch, just a little bit, excited by having so much easy, fresh prey so close that he barely had to try to capture.

The woman had walked to a more isolated area, a place with only a couple large, highly spaced out cabins that were more like miniature mansions than real cabins, but the children and grandchildren of wealthy merchants so did enjoy their amenities. The cabin she chose was set back from the lake and behind a small set of hills that partially blocked the view from the lake and separated the building from any others in the area.

He had followed her at a distance and he waited a few minutes after she had entered before he approached, still careful of traps and tricks even though he was quite sure of his target this time. There was nothing in or around the mansion, and he couldn't detect anybody else in the area, no matter how hard he pushed his skills, grinning a bit manically as he could almost feel the first cut of the knife.

If people didn't want to become his canvases, they should take just a bit more care to not make so incredibly easy for him. He slipped between the hills, using one of the three skills he had that many infiltrators would be jealous of to approach the house unseen, getting right up to the wall and stopping for a moment to listen.

Not detecting anything out of the ordinary, he slowly slid around the base of the house, checking every window and opening, finding the wolf in a large sitting room with a fire going in the hearth and two lamps lit. It looked like she was reading something, or making notes in a physical notebook, slightly odd but some people liked the sensation of writing in a physical medium still. He could somewhat empathize, as he always did his greatest work in the physical world, or in the flesh, so to speak.

Convinced that there wasn't anybody else in the house, he used all of his skills and stealth to slip inside, not making a single sound or setting off a single ward, the door closing behind him without a whisper. He had several skills that could overwhelm a person without injuring them, his preferred method of acquiring new prey; it didn't do to cut them or make them bleed before the time was right.

Especially not considering that he got more power for two of his skills if he did it right, taking the time and effort to prepare the area that he was going to cut and slice and stab ahead of time and doing it in a certain manner. He would have to be careful in grabbing this one, as it did look like she had claws, and he had also learned that lesson a long time ago, a small scar on his back that had never fully healed right a good reminder that even prey could bite back, especially when cornered.

He observed the woman for another minute from just in the hall outside the room, seeing she hadn't reacted yet in any way or form, he finally stepped forward into the room. She took a second to notice him, but was on her feet in a moment, a slightly scared but mostly surprised look in her eyes. That was always the best, the shock at first a thrill for him almost in the same way as the fear that followed on after, the loss of hope as they realized they had been caught and that there was no escape.

She had backed up away from the hearth, perhaps a natural instinct to get somewhere dark and protected, something that beasts that were still young and at a low level did in an almost instinctual manner. She had backed up until she hit the other exterior wall, the third wall the one separating the room and the hallway he had just entered from and the fourth wall separating the room from a second room that housed a study, or a room meant to look like one.

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"W-who…who a-are you?" the young woman asked in a husky voice, the quaver of fear obvious as she spoke.

"There's no need to worry, my dear. Oh, no need at all," he said, smiling as he stopped and observed his prey, taking pleasure as the fear now showed on her face and in her bearing, though there was still some defiance. He had seen it literally a thousand times at this point; victims would be scared, but they would usually retain some courage, clenching their fists and often attempting to fight back, though it was always hopeless by that point.

Well, always except for that one time, a slight twinge from his back reminding him that caution was never unwarranted, even when he had the prey cornered and victory was in that moment.

"Y-you're not supposed to b-be in h-here," the wolf woman said, eyes wide and staring as she pressed back against the wall.

"Don't worry, I'm not going to hurt you," he replied, grinning as he pushed on one of the two skills he used in capturing targets, having already started lightly running it when he stepped in the room. The young woman staggered just a bit, slumping against the wall before straightening, taking a step to her left, halting and leaning back against the wall again.

This skill clouded the mind, not showing any exact or clear to the person he used it on, but it caused confusion, a lack of motor control, and a sort of general despondence. It was a very powerful skill that he had been lucky to get many, many years ago, back when the cutting was so much harder and when it was so much harder to get ones he wanted to cut.

He had worked on the skill for many years, getting it all the way into early Platinum, though it had slowed down considerably even before he upgraded it from peak-Gold. Using it only on other sapient beings, and ones far below his level of power, had not really pushed the skill all that much, but he had leveled it more than enough that he could even directly knock out weaker prey without using anything else.

If that wasn't possible, however, the prey having some type of mental resistance skill or something similar, then that was when he would deploy the second skill, used to directly attack and weaken the mind. The skill worked even better when the mind was already weak, which is why he started off by using Great Confusion to disorientate and weaken, and the finished knocking them out with Mind Slam if they were still awake.

He used the second skill after savoring her stumbling and rambling for another moment, not exactly surprised he got a slight backlash when he hit her with the first blast of Mind Slam. She clearly had some kind of skill to strengthen her mind, as nobody at her low level should have been able to resist what the confusion skill was doing to them with just raw stats and mana.

She didn't pass out from the first blast, which just confirmed the theory, and he had to hit her twice more before she slumped down to the ground, toppling slowly with a soft thump. He might have overdone it just slightly by hitting her with the third one, but he was keeping the lessons he had learned well in mind and not taking any extra risks.

He observed the tall woman for a moment, her body beautiful and lovely even in sleep, a perfect canvas for his knives to slice apart, making a new piece of art and giving him a new thrill. He walked after observing, being careful where he stepped before he leaned down, ready to gently grab her and disappear from this place, not wanting to harm the prey even now. It was that caution that saved him, that and his extraordinary senses honed over years of the hunt.

He straightened up with a rapid motion as she slashed out at him, just barely avoiding a claw swipe from her left hand, finding she had very long claws on every finger and that they thrummed with power. He quickly danced back, scanning his surroundings but finding nobody else around, calming slightly as he realized he had only miscalculated slightly.

That calm only lasted a few moments, however, as the woman was on her feet even before she had finished the attack, now staring at him with an entirely different look, a look he had not seen at all that often. He had, once or twice, failed to take a victim, and he was familiar with the look of anger, disgust, fear, and even pity that would distort an escaped prey's face. This wolf woman, however, didn't have any of that on her face. Oh no, not all.

Instead, she had a slight sneer on her lips and a dangerous gleam in her eyes, a look he well recognized, a look he had learned himself to be cautious of, even to fear over the years. It was the look of a seasoned hunter, not the kind of look he would have, as there was no joy or madness in her eyes, only the calm cold of a true killer, someone for whom the bite of the knife wasn't a thrill but foregone conclusion.

He realized in that moment that he had made a far greater mistake than he had thought when she had lashed out, not just having been resisted, but having been hunted himself.

"You knew," he said, statement much more than a question.

"Of course I knew," the woman said in her low, husky voice, rolling her eyes, a sign that she didn't even fear him enough to keep him directly in her sight.

"You made it so obvious, a child would have known. I don't understand how you had so many victims. Who else are you working with?"

"What? Who else? There's nobody else," he said, baffled before becoming angered.

"Nobody else appreciates the hunt, the art, the feeling like I do! Nobody else is worthy in sharing in what I create!"

"Yeah, let's not get into all that," the woman grunted, pointing at him before his rant could really get started. It was only years of hunts that saved him, diving to the side right as she was pointing, and still he almost didn't escape, a beam of some kind of dark red energy slicing apart the air where his chest had just been an instant before.

A beam that, now that he had a second to think, the woman just watching him again without attacking, smelled an awful lot like that liquid he loved so much, that glorious red paint that always adorned his canvases and himself. Even now, in such a bad situation, he couldn't help but grin, the woman giving him a slight frown and a disgruntled grunt as he giggled a little, realizing that she controlled and manipulated blood, his favorite thing in the whole universe.

"Looks like I really underestimated you this time," he said, giggling again.

"But, I still got to see a blood manipulator. Too bad I can't stick around, but the work still calls to me." He grinned fit enough to split his cheeks apart at the end before giving a little bow and having mana surge around him, seeing the lupine woman not even try to attack.

Good that she didn't, as this special teleportation item he had had quite a backlash for anyone else that tried to interrupt it, even Empowered, though it wouldn't have nearly the same effect on Enlightened, or those rare geniuses that had finished their Mana Physique while still in Empowered.

He giggled a little again as he saw her frowning face, her brow furrowed as she observed him, a little part of his heart feeling a chill at the look in her eyes, like she was a god observing a particularly foul insect crawling on the floor. It didn't matter, as he would soon be away, appearing in a far away place and then getting off the world as fast as possible. The item completed its cycle and there was a flash of light, the man starting to move before it even faded, though he froze after only half a step.

"What is-?" was all he got out before the lupine woman's hand was around his throat, the feel like a steel vise had locked around his neck.

"Idiot," she spat out the word, looking at him like a particularly dirty piece of trash.

"Don't kill him," came a voice from behind him.

"Not yet."