PATH OF THE STAR HUNTER

In any case, my profession as a magician and alchemist had only to increase my sensitivity to mana even more than given the current circumstances where Desmond was performing ability of which he had not fully mastered; These two factors basically allowed me to “See” Desmond’s internal flow of mana.

At this moment his mana was moving in a pattern that was incredibly similar to me as I had seen it at least a few dozen times in the last few days, from Desmond’s mana core located in the center of his chest, waves of mana emanated from the constant way; These waves were emitted with a constant length, frequency, and intensity and covered Desmond’s entire body.

From my point of view, this was identical to the exercise that Desmond did with the water mana, I could even see how his right hand kept doing that movement as if hitting the surface of the water with a finger, only now did I understand what Desmond had been doing all this time; he had been developing a magical ability from scratch. . . What kind of monster can develop a skill like that in just a couple of days?

With my understanding of the nature of mana and its behavior, I had a vague idea of ??what the new ability Desmond had developed was doing and soon realized that my assumptions were quite correct.

Desmond who had only taken a couple of seconds to successfully initiate his ability, sadly the bandits had failed to take the initiative while Desmond prepared and would now pay the price.

From one moment to another Desmond moved with impressive speed, taking by surprise the bandit closest to him who could not even react before Desmond cut his throat with the black dagger in his hand.

Without even stopping for a moment after killing, Desmond pounced on the closest bandit, this bandit was a little quicker to react than his predecessor but still useless; Desmond with his speed now greatly amplified slashed the bandit on one shoulder then quickly stabbed him through the heart.

The whole process had been smooth and fluid, at this moment Desmond not only moved faster, but his movements carried more force within them, the skill that Desmond was using this moment was a fairly advanced reinforcement type skill that allowed him to amplify his physical capabilities to a great extent on a constant and uninterrupted basis.

.....

One had to know that, although there are similar abilities in this world, the vast majority of them are not that strong and only last a couple of seconds at most, but from the way his internal mana flow behaved I knew that he was able to maintain this state for much longer.

Having killed three bandits so far Desmond turned around to face the remaining two, one of them the one closest to me tried to run in my direction hoping he could use me as a hostage to get out of here alive, but all he got was Desmond throwing his other dagger at him with enormous force.

The poor man was stabbed in the left side of the torso by the dagger, the force of the impact was enough to knock the man to the ground from where he would never get up again; not when now only the pommel of the dagger was visible outside of his body.

The leader of the bandits turned out to be the last man alive, but at this moment he was covered in a cold sweat from head to toe, he seemed to consider whether to ask for mercy and flee. . . but he seemed to find some courage when he saw Desmond throw the only dagger he had left; he probably thought Desmond would be less dangerous unarmed.

I could only feel pity for his naivety as I remembered the scene I witnessed of Desmond delivering the killing blow with his bare hands to one of the most dangerous beasts in the forest.

And I was right, Desmond appeared almost instantly in front of the bandit with his right hand covered in metallic mana giving him a dangerous and sharp appearance like that of a claw.

The bandit tried to attack Desmond with his sword, but how could he hit Desmond? who even with his base strength was already superior to the bandit, now with his strength amplified the bandit did not hit more than thin air; the once vicious bandit now had his face filled with horror as he watched Desmond rip half his chest apart.

It was an even more brutal scene compared to the times Desmond held the other bandits with his dagger, well compared to those poor men; the leader of the bandits had his rib cage open from the abdomen to the throat.

Splashes of blood spread several meters out as the bandit fell to his knees and his shattered internal organs began to spill out of his body; it was frankly the most brutal and bloody scene I had ever seen in my life.

And there was Desmond calmly watching as the life of the bandit in front of him was extinguished, the aggressive and slightly sadistic smile on his face was gone, now there was a completely different expression on him.

When Desmond turned in my direction and I could see him clearly I was surprised, his black hair before shiny like obsidian now gave a gloomy impression, his blue eyes no longer looked energetic as always, but they seemed a little lost and sad, the smile previously dangerous now seemed to mock no one but himself.

Some of the blood that it had splattered after he killed the last of the bandits fell on his face, a couple of drops ran down his chin leaving behind a crimson trail; from where I was standing it seemed as if they were tears of blood.

And so from one moment to the next Desmond stopped being a violent predator who had fun putting an end to his prey and now he seemed so incredibly vulnerable, looking at me with almost empty eyes he spoke to me:

′′ Do you see? We are all sinners. ′′ His voice was full of self-contempt as he spoke and only then did I understand a cruel and sad truth: I knew nothing about the man known as Desmond Astryd.

But when I saw the corpses of the people he had murdered I understood that there was much more darkness in Desmond than I had imagined and when I saw him in his current state I also understood that Desmond was far from being as strong as he had always seemed to me.