Victor swung his sword again, but the shackled mortal clumsily blocked the attack with his chain, lighting sparks at the point of contact.

"Hahaha, just like that!" the audience laughed.

"Sever his arm!"

"Pluck out his eye!"

Giving a quick wave to the audience, Victor landed a kick to the gut of the masked one, welcoming the thrilled roar from the crowd.

"We should execute the order Raj gave us," Jambavan stated, turning back.

"I wonder why he gave us such a strange order," I murmured, glancing at the letter I had received two weeks ago.

It stated:

On the day of the Rite of the Red Harvest, as soon as the Sacrifice is beheaded, Vyaghra must use his shadow skills to teleport the watchmen of Grade 1 and Grade 2 mines along with Victor's two bodyguards inside the cage.

Meanwhile, Jambavan and the allies he managed to convince need to launch an open attack on the guards.

I thought about it a lot but couldn't guess what Raj was actually trying to do.

His order was both mysterious and dangerous at the same time. The watchmen of Grade 1 and Grade 2 mines were at the Early-stage Spirit Warrior Realm, while Victor's bodyguards seemed to be at the Mid and Late-stage.

I wasn't as strong as I used to be, so teleporting four people against their will at those realms was troublesome for me as well.

So I replied with a letter informing him that I would atleast need two hours to set up the shadows in order to teleport these people smoothly.

Moreover, the order that Jambavan recieved was even more reckless.

There were more than three hundred guards gathered here, while Jambavan only had a mere dozen allies. If, at his current level, Jambavan struck the guards with these pitiful numbers, I wasn't sure even he could come out of it unscathed.

Being a God of Hunt and Stealth, strategies and planning always attracted my attention.

After nothing came to my mind, I sent a letter to Raj through the Senseless Dimension as my curiosity got the better of me.

I waited for a whole week, but strangely no reply came. So, I decided to visit him myself. However, when I reached the Grade 3 mines, surprisingly, Raj wasn't there.

I checked every corner of that place but still couldn't find any hint of him.

There was another way to find his whereabouts—by questioning the mortals he'd interacted with—but I chose not to. That lingering sense of mystery had already begun to thrill me.

I descended into the darkness and began preparing the teleportation skill on the shadows of the four targets.

My mind was a little restless at the thought of what would happen if the Sacrifice died before I could activate my skill.

Even ignoring the fact that they had bound the target with metallic chains weighing over tons, he was already critically injured and seemed half-dead.

Victor Kale was an extremely cautious mortal.

I didn't come to this conclusion solely by seeing the condition of the Sacrifice.

This person had never entered the Grade 2 or Grade 1 mines. His base was also located in the abandoned mine of Grade 3 Soul Stones where no Awakened slave was kept.

What plans Raj had made to hunt a person like this was already making my heart race.

It had been so long since I last had this feeling of having something to look forward to.

"Raj, I hope you don't disappoint me," I murmured and joined my hands, locking my eyes on the target from the shadows.

---

Taking a deep breath, I parted my hands and stepped out from the darkness as the targets were ready to be teleported.

"It has already been two hours," I murmured. "I hope the Sacrifice is still alive."

"Surprisingly, he is," Jambavan stated, standing beside me.

Tang…

Clang…

Victor's sword was repeatedly aimed at the vital points of the chained one; however, each time he managed to dodge it by a nail's length.

The floor was tainted crimson with the Sacrifice's blood, and his already injured body had turned disturbingly outlandish.

The blood-dripping skin hung from his body; his bones were bulging out from his shoulder where a huge part of his flesh had been sliced off.

All the guards who were previously laughing and enjoying the show had now started to murmur.

"It has been two hours," one of them whispered. "Why hasn't Sir Victor killed him already?"

"Don't tell me he's not as strong as the rumours made him out to be," another added.

"No, that's not the truth," one more spoke up. "I heard the Sacrifice this time is an infamous criminal who devoured over a hundred children in the Mainland. His best skill was surviving. Even after the Emperor ordered execution on sight for him, he managed to run away from the Mainland."

"So you're telling me that Lord Victor captured a criminal that even the Emperor couldn't?"

A wave of gasps went through the guards as they exclaimed, "Lord Victor — the man smarter than the Emperor!"

Meanwhile, Victor didn't spare an eye to the guards' flattery. There was an annoying bug in front of him that, no matter how hard he struck, just wouldn't die.

His eyebrows furrowed in annoyance; his grip tightened on the gold-coated hilt of the sword as he descended the blade with both hands.

Yet again, the Sacrifice survived, hurtling the iron sphere between himself and the blade.

"Huff… huff…" Victor breathed as exhaustion took him over.

Shoving the Sacrifice backward with a kick, Victor muttered in fury, "I've had enough of this cockroach."

A yellow aura erupted from Victor's body and wreathed the sword in his hand.

With a single move, he sliced through the iron sphere that the Sacrifice had been using for the past two hours to defend himself.

"Wait a second!" I exclaimed inwardly as a ridiculous thought came to mind.

I was about to put the pieces together, but then Victor announced in a loud voice, as his sword reached the Sacrifice's neck:

"Pay for your crimes, you filthy criminal."

Whoosh…

With an air-piercing swing of the blade, the Sacrifice's head rolled on the ground.

However…

The one who got sacrificed was the leader of the Forlorn City Mines—Victor Kale.

And in front of him, the chained one stood with a familiar greatsword in his hand.

He broke the iron shackles with his bare hands, took off his mask, and declared:

"The sinner has paid for his crimes."

Absolute shivers went down my spine from the shock as my eyes fell on the person behind the mask.

His hair along with his eyes radiated with intense crimson as he stood before the fallen body of Victor Kale.

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