(Dark Sect Enclave Leader POV)

I fidgeted, my fingers pinching the edge of my cloak impatiently.

??

I have posted sentries on the road since yesterday night just in case the group we were after decided to travel through here under the cover of darkness but no reports of such an occurrence came in.

That means the group has yet to pass through here and even if they take their own damn sweet time to travel, they should already be here by now.

Yet, we've seen hide nor hair of them ever since setting ourselves up to wait here in the morning.

The others were already losing their minds from having to maintain their hidden position for several hours without anything happening and I was close to that state as well.

Seriously, where the hell is our target?!

Do you know how painful it is to just stand here and do nothing for several hours huh?!

If he was considerate enough, he would have appeared long ago already and let us shank him!

Damnit, if I get my hands on him, I'm gonna--

A huge explosion rocked through the forest, sending most of us tumbling to the ground from the shockwave.

"Boss! Our base!" One of my subordinates shouted, pointing towards where a plume of smoke was trailing out of the forest canopy.

"We posted two sentries there right?" I asked.

My subordinate nodded.

I cursed under my breath, inwardly hoping that it was just the two idiots doing some cooking gone wrong or something, but I already know a smoke and explosion of that size couldn't be caused by some minor cooking problems.

I rallied everyone to retreat back to our base, our current mission of hunting that little kid put aside for the more important crisis at hand.

About seventy of us hurried back to the campsite, finding it in complete disarray.

The whole place looked like a tornado had crashed through it, tossing everything everywhere before a rain of fire descended upon its remains.

The only reason why none of us had moved forward to try and put out the fires was the small figure sitting on top of the two dead bodies of the sentries, a smile stretching from ear to ear plastered on his face.

I recognised him immediately as the kid we were supposed to kill.

"Looking for me?" He asked, his grin not leaving his face.

In that split second, we all knew what must be done.

As Dark Sect Practitioners, everyone else is our enemy. If a normal Practitioner knows of our existence, there can only be one side surviving at the end of the day.

All of us are in the Dark Sect for various reasons of our own, be it for power or maybe even some estranged belief that whatever we do is for a greater good. Whatever the reasons were, we were rejected by the 'normal' society of Practitioners and were forced to become outcasts.

If this kid were to get word out that there was a Dark Sect enclave here, all the Practitioners in the area will definitely descend upon us and wipe us out.

We could run of course, but that would mean leaving whatever we found here behind and that was unacceptable.

The discovery we had here cannot fall into other people's hands.

I clapped my hands together while the others similarly readied their own Techniques, intending to end the kid right there and then.

None of us were doubting the kid to be a powerful Practitioner at this point.

If the kid was surprised by our actions, it did not show on his face.

Instead, it only made his smile wider.

"Not even a greeting? How rude. I even greeted the last Dark Sect group I came across before slaughtering them, you know? A simple 'hello there' would have sufficed, no?"

This brat!

"Dark Blaze!" One of my subordinates shouted out, casting a blast of black coloured flames at him.

The boy's grin turned into a sneer as he waved his hand in an arc, directing the blast of flames away from him and towards a group of unwary Dark Sect members, burning them to ashes.

"You got to do better than that."

A few of us roared in outrage as they sent their own Techniques flying towards him, intending to wipe him out of existence.

Damn fools! If he could deflect one of our Techniques, what's stopping him from deflecting everything else back at us?!

As though reading my mind, the little kid just smirked at me before disappearing from where he was, avoiding all the casted Techniques that came crashing down at where he had been.

"Illusion?" I heard one of my subordinates mutter.

"That's right," A voice answered from beside him, right before a spear of ice was impaled through his chest.

That subordinate gasped and clawed at his chest, collapsing onto the ground in a heap.

"Huh… I actually thought he had some form of protection Technique inscribed on him… Guess it was weaker than I thought?" The boy commented, inspecting the corpse with interest.

A cold drop of sweat rolled down the back of my neck.

He just killed off Mu Tou, who supposedly had the highest defensive Technique amongst all of us. His Technique was said to even be able to block a direct attack from a Master tier attack.

And an ice spear from him just broke through that defense like it was tofu?

"Hey… Just to make sure," The kid tugged at my sleeve. "You guys really are Dark Sect Practitioners right? I'd feel bad if I accidentally killed a bunch of pretenders."

The thought of denying that fact crossed my mind for a second.

"I'm just kidding," The kid laughed. "I already know you guys are Dark Sect Practitioners. So just die."

I felt a gust of wind blow past me.

The Sacrificial Bracelet that I wore on my right wrist broke.

It was something that can absorb a fatal blow for me once at the cost of it shattering after doing so.

All around me, the other Dark Sect Practitioners started to collapse lifelessly into the ground, their heads severed from their bodies.

"Oh? You blocked that? Interesting…" The kid scratched his chin with a hand.

If I don't do anything now, I'll definitely die!

I only managed to understand the summoning part and not the submission part but this will have to do for this situation!

I pulled out a purple orb from my own storage ring, this thing was the main reason why we were staying around here in the first place.

Having found this orb by chance in some unmarked ruins years ago, I managed to find that it was linked to a summoning stone that was built into the ground in this very clearing.

Using everything I had at my disposal, I gathered an expedition group from the Sect and formed an enclave here to study it.

I even had to bow my head to some dragon just to take attention off of us while we were here, how humiliating!

At least there was this father and son merchant pair corrupt enough to do business with us, so supplies were not a problem. But to think just because of a moment of greed we accepted their request to kill this kid will render our hard work entirely moot.

It was through months of dedicated study that I finally managed to uncover the summoning part of the stone. We haven't attempted to summon whatever the stone was linked to since I was still unable to guarantee the obedience of what was summoned.

Judging by the inscriptions I managed to decipler, it was supposed to be an exceptionally strong being that normal humans can barely comprehend.

Unfortunately, I don't have a choice now. This kid was too dangerous to be left alive, I'll probably get killed by the summoned monster but so will the kid.

Circulating my Quarks into the orb, I released the seals on it and connected it mentally to the stone inscription that I had become familiar with over these past few months.

Both the orb and the stone hidden under the rubble of a tent began glowing an eerie purple colour, the boy looking too surprised to do anything.

A portal immediately opened up above the stone, tentacles ripping apart the space to pull itself out of that portal.

The portal expanded slowly as a giant, black, oozing, slimey, multi-legged, hundred-eyed tentacle monster pulled itself out of wherever it came from.

That thing was frightening even for me.

It's presence alone was enough to send me to my knees, the air thrummed with its power, even the fires were immediately quenched by its presence alone.

The air got heavier and everything looked darker, I had to force myself to remember to breathe before I passed out.

Surely… Something like this could no doubt bring total destruction to our world.

My only regret was not being able to witness it.

"Oh, not you! Why is there even a summoning stone for you here?!" I heard the boy wail out in frustration.

Wait… The kid knows what that thing is?

Just who the hell is he?