Chương 20: Pristine Aura & Lesser Oni

Nero overlooked the burning village from afar. The situation had escalated far beyond his expectations. He swiftly coated his Aura with Decay again, mainly to counter the miasma that the Vice Goblins were emitting. The village was becoming increasingly covered in that dark, smoky vapor of corruption. He'd read about this before, and had even witnessed it inside a Dungeon once. This miasma mainly spread when dungeon spawns defiled the sanctity of life through various disgusting means.

Hanging a human head over a spike, parading it around, rape and torture were the most common of these means. If one was exposed to this miasma for too long, their senses tended to dull—at worst, hallucinations followed. But as Sunny had taught him, simply flexing his intent mentally and ordering the aspect of decay that his gene talent held allowed it to take over the Aura or retreat from it.

And although this was the pure version of the Talent, the pristine Aura allowed for lesser mental energy consumption and worked to strengthen his physique. Right now, he needed to protect himself from the miasma, and the decaying aspect worked best to counter it. So he overlaid the Aspact on the pristine Aura. The snow beneath Nero's feet dampened as he forcefully ran through the fields, reaching the village within seconds.

Corpses of men littered the front, while women lay across the compound, stripped of clothing and bleeding heavily. He saw several goblins already tying up their captives, mostly female, readying to haul them away. Others kicked the children, laughing like maniacs, reveling in the agony of the helpless kids, who could only bawl their eyes out and cry for their parents in fear. A sensation of something hot rose from the pit of Nero's stomach. His body grew substantially hotter at the cruel sight.

Still, he took a second to gather all the information. There are about fifty goblins here, with no leader in sight. And based on the corpses on the ground, approximately sixty or so of these had already been killed by the villagers before they were overwhelmed and their lines broke.

"Now, enough calculating." He whispered to the carnage before him. Two nearby goblins, parading around the severed head of one of the village's men, burst into maniacal laughter at his arrival. They flung the skull from their spears straight at him, which he caught gently. Seeing Nero's expressionless face, their egos were wounded. They brandished their stone-tipped spears and broke into a wild charge. Nero simply and unhurriedly put the skull beside him.

With a sweeping of metal over coarse leather, he unsheathed his short sword, and dove forward, his Neonic Aura cutting through the very air of corruption. He closed the distance in two steps, and before they could strike him, he swept the blade through the right one's neck as a fountain of blood squirted downward. Spinning on his heel, Nero drew his dagger with his left hand and plunged it directly into the left one's neck, through bone and all.

The mixed sound of flesh tearing and searing came simultaneously, a result of the blade's sharpness and its decaying Aura. Wrenching his blade back from the four-foot-tall creature's neck with a brutal pull, Nero kicked it aside. By now, those who had been busy tormenting their victims had noticed the commotion. Seeing their kin get chopped and stabbed, their gleeful expressions twisted into fury.

They each seized their weapons, gripping them tightly, and charged at Nero all at once—some doing so only after kicking away the children they were playing with first. Nero made a beeline for exactly those, kicking one directly in the solar plexus as his short sword dug deep into the back of the goblin's legs. Its face twisted in agony as it howled in pain. Nero saw his opening, retrieved the short sword, and plunged it straight through its mouth and skull, pinning it to the ground.

The creature writhed and twisted, trying uselessly to free itself. He released the short sword and flipped the dagger to his left hand. Scanning the field, he saw the greenskins massing into a wave, surging straight for him—abandoning the villagers entirely, now focused only on cutting him down. He smiled at that, then turned to the nearest adult, a woman. He made sure not to look at her directly, and instead gave her a clear set of instructions.

"You there—stop crying, if you want your children to survive. Pick them up and take them inside the houses. I believe you've got water tanks beneath the house foundations—go hide there with everyone else." She kept crying, trembling in pain, his words seemingly failing to reach her. Understandable, but that wouldn't do. He sucked in a deep breath and yelled.

"Get up!" That jolted her out of her stupor. Seeing her rationality return, Nero breathed a sigh of relief and ran for the open fields behind the houses. The goblins followed him like a green tide through an ocean of milky snow. The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident. Once he'd put enough distance between himself and the villagers, he deactivated the ability for the time being.

Along the way, he'd also made sure to retrieve his short sword, stomping and crushing the skull of the goblin it had been pinned through. Now he turned back and faced the tide of forty-plus greenskins, each lusting after his life. He wielded the short sword in his right hand and the dagger in his left, and took his battle stance. The surge of the green tide reached him within seconds, the eyes of each burning bright red with bloodlust, saliva coating their mouths.

Nero swept his sword through the front line while stepping and leaping atop the head of one attempting a sneak attack from below. Taking to the air, he reactivated his ability—this time, only the pristine Aura—as a white glow suffused his body, shining bright above the sea of green and misty darkness. He recalled the Aura of Decay over the pristine white, cladding his weapons in bright neonic light while keeping the rest of his limbs suffused in the base Aura's amplification.

He rocketed downward like a falling meteor. With his amplified strength, he crushed the goblin beneath him almost entirely, like a watermelon. Then his blades lashed out in every direction—cutting, slicing, dicing—with the relentless consistency of fire tearing through a field of oil. Ferocious and unyielding. Nero found himself growing more and more absorbed, losing himself in the euphoria of taking life and decaying through the corrupted beasts.

In between strikes, the Aura flickered on and off as he remembered to reset his ability's charge and keep it from affecting him instead. The thing about the Aura of Decay and the base pristine Aura was the priority of amplification. The pristine Aura by itself was simply a means of amplification—it usually enhanced whatever it touched. But it could only amplify one thing at a time. Right now, with much of it focused around his physique, it amplified his strength greatly.

But the parts kept submerged in the aspect of decay caused the Aura to amplify corrosion instead, making each blow of his sword and dagger sear and melt through flesh, bone, and the very air like a hot knife through butter. Across the snow-covered white plains, bone-chilling frosty winds smashed and washed over Nero. The pristine Aura's amplified heat generation kept him from freezing as he sustained the charge, and even as his weapons dulled from use, his Aura of Decay kept them functioning just as well as before.

When he finally surfaced from his immersion in slaughter, Nero found the field around him empty of standing goblins, save for a few scrambling away, nearly tripping over themselves in their haste to flee. He deactivated his talent at last, breathing heavily. The rush of exhaustion struck him all at once. He slumped back onto the snowfield, sucking in breath after breath to steady himself as sweat ran down his skin. He pulled out the healing potion—completely frozen solid.

He was bleeding from wounds on his forehead, legs, and shoulder. He had yet to see the one leading these goblins. There was no way he could afford to remain injured, so he reactivated his ability to test a certain function of it. He applied the Aura around the bottle itself. The Aura of Decay was inherently warm; amplified, it could reach something close to the temperature of fire, if not quite matching it. He did exactly that, careful to keep any ill intent out of mind.

The Aura suffused the bottle as Nero pushed himself back to his feet with the help of his short sword. He slowly made his way back to the village, and by the time he arrived, the potion had returned to liquid. He took a sip and put it away. Inside the village compound, he scanned for anyone still remaining. He found no one, but in the snow, he spotted the tracks of carriage wheels. His lips curled into a smirk.

He sat down in one of the wooden chairs the goblins had thrown out of a house during the chaos, resting his back beneath the balcony of a house, half of which had been burnt to a crisp.

"Good, the old man followed my instructions well." He'd instructed him to come and collect the villagers while he distracted the horde. And sure enough, everything had gone according to plan. Although he hadn't expected quite so many goblins when he took on the quest, he'd still accepted it in the first place because of his knowledge of the Vice Goblins and the bits of experience he had with them.

"Although, it's a shame I won't be able to harvest the good parts anytime soon." For now, he'd have to rest up and slowly make his way back to the guild on foot. He could also wait for the old man to return, except he didn't quite trust the guy enough to expect that he would. He'd rescued the villagers—the old man could very well ditch him now, especially since, if he came back, he'd owe Nero extra for the rescue on top of the defense.

That hadn't been part of the contract; it was something Nero had done as an extra. He felt the urge to laugh at his situation.

"So much for taking it easy—""Get out of the way!" Someone's voice came from above him as he felt a surge of something dangerous bearing down. He promptly dove forward and out from under the balcony. Immediately after his jump, something crashed into his previous spot, bursting it apart as if a mana bomb had gone off, sending splinters of wood and shards of rock flying everywhere. Nero shielded himself by reactivating his Talent, covering himself in the Pristine Aura.

He slowly rose to his feet as the dust cleared over the now-obliterated house. Nero's eyes widened to twice their usual size at the sight of the creature atop the pile of destruction. A purple-skinned, lithe-built Oni, with eyes shining deep crimson and a single horn on its forehead sharp enough to pierce the heavens themselves. It carried a white-haired human girl slung over its shoulder. He took a step back at the sheer absurdity of the situation.

"What the hell…"