"Charge, my mount!"

I had to say it.

The lizard looked back at me for a second, and I could swear that it rolled its eyes at me, before charging.

As it impacted the enemy lines, it tore through them like they were made from wet paper, instead of trained soldiers in heavy armour. Seeing how well its initial charge went, the lizard roared again and began to happily rampage.

Some of the archers had the brilliant idea to shoot arrows at Soea and I, who were calmly standing on the lizard's back.

Soea made a sound that I had never heard her make before, an animalistic snarl which made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. She jumped in front of me, moving rapidly and fluidly, and caught the incoming arrows.

With a quiet exhalation, she spun around and threw the arrows back at the archers who shot them, killing them with their own projectiles.

 

I gently placed a hand on my angry companion's shoulder. She looked over at me, the fierce expression on her face melting back into her normal sweet smile, "My Lord?"

Returning her smile, I pointed at the army, "Do you wish to fight them?"

"If my Lord wishes it."

I could see the excitement and slight bloodlust in Soea's Draconian eyes, and obviously excited, her breathing sped up, she nodded enthusiastically.

"Have fun, my pet."

Soea's smile turned vicious as she flared her wings, jumping up and separating from the Salamander King and I.

I noticed that her first target was the remaining archers from the squad that had attacked us.

Upon landing, she left a crater.

With an snarl, a red light appeared in her reptilian eyes, overwriting the blue of her natural eye colour.

Then she charged.

Soea used a combat style, that while not officially a martial art, it was efficient. Every hit broke bones, shattered skulls, or liquefied internal organs. Her crystalline claws could tear through plate armour with ease, plucking her targets out of their pesky shells.

For some reason, I found this version of her to be very attractive, wearing a red satin dress and dancing among enemies, bathing in their blood.

As the corpses fell, she started laughing, her teeth turning into razor sharp fangs. The crimson highlights in her hair overtook the raven-black, turning it a deep sanguine, as her hair floated in the air around her, her aura was released.

She had absorbed the instincts well and could fight as though she had been killing for years.

Something about this struck a chord in me.

Maybe I am just strange.

While she seemed to have entered a state of bloodlust or berserking, she stayed within sight of me, and she would give up on killing enemies if they were too far away.

The lizard was rampaging around happily and breathing flames, slaughtering as I calmly sat on its back.

It was surprisingly enjoyable to ride on the Monster's back as it rampaged, the enemy soldiers screamed and ran from the flaming typhoon of death caused by the lizard.

Even the wind caused by the Salamander King slashing around with its human-sized claws could maim, or kill if the enemy was unlucky. The ground was shaking with every step it took, and with every slam of its massive scaly tail.

The smell of blood and gore, of cooked people, of death, drove my killing instincts into overdrive. It had been so long since I had been on a battlefield, yet I was ready and able to easily kill. It reminded me of my many battles, both as a Hero, and when travelling with Master.

There were the usual highly unpleasant smells of blood and sweat, the relaxing bowels and exposed organs.

When they all combined, I felt the overly familiar, and slight nostalgic, feeling of wanting to throw up.

I could feel the excitement getting to me, from watching Soea and my mount having so much fun.

Then I saw a familiar figure wearing overly opulent golden armour.

He was surrounded by his own personal squad of Archmages.

Without thinking, I initialized a telepathic connection to Soea, and I sent a message.

<Soea, be safe... There is someone who I need to kill, personally. Please do not come near me when I fight them...I may enter a state where I lose control>

At my words, Soea glanced over at me.

She seemed to have felt something through the connection.

I was barely managing to keep my calm, after seeing this man.

Standing up, I barely felt the wind brushing through my hair, caressing my horns.

When I took one more look at Soea, she looked back at me, there was something strange deep within her eyes. Unsure what it was, I looked away and back towards my target.

Spreading my wings, I allowed the impact to knock me off the Salamander King's back, and after gliding for a few seconds before flapping my wings to fly towards the enemy.

Spinning in place, I flapped hard and glided over the heads of the squad of Archmagi.

Seeing me, they had begun firing all kinds of Magic towards me.

Because of my passive resistance to Magic, as well as my automatic Wards, the hostile Magic was canceled before it could even reach a meter away from me.

To remove the annoyances, I fired some Magic arrows, each shot killing a single Archmage.

They were all dead before my feet had even touched the ground.

Standing before me was an old man in overly ostentatious golden armour, he had a Mithril sword in his hand, on his waist was a jewelled scabbard. A shocked look slowly covered his face as he stared at his dead bodyguards.

A well made, and intricate, overly large onyx crown sat on his head in place of a helmet.

I could sense that Soea had stopped fighting, she was standing in place while watching me, only moving to defend herself. She was a small distance away.

It was then that I realized that I had forgotten to disconnect the mental connection, I could feel her worry.

When I tried to terminate the contact, it didn't work. It seemed that she didn't she didn't want it terminated, and it was possible that I didn't want it either on a subconscious level.

With a soft sigh, I decided to leave the connection active and hope that it didn't influence her too badly.

I quickly turned my mind back to the old man in his ridiculous armour.

Standing before him, I folded my wings tightly against my back.

As my eyes met his, I unconsciously felt a massive surge of killing intent.

"Your majesty." My tone dripped sarcasm and malice, the hatred in my voice causing him to flinch.

"Heretic, you dare stand before this king?! God will punish you, he will kill you if you dare to touch even a single hair on my head. Stand down!"

Even though he had been surprised seeing me easily slaughter his entire squad of Archmages without even the slightest effort, he still had an incredibly arrogant tone in his voice.

He didn't seem to realize that he was in danger, he seemed to believe himself untouchable.

I felt an almost uncontrollable urge to unleash all of my strongest spells at once, but I didn't want to kill him so quickly, I wanted to kill him slowly and with my own hands for what he had done.

"No, I don't believe he will."

To my surprise, the rage was obvious in my tone, he could easily make me lose control of my emotions. My hatred for him was more extreme than I knew, but for some reasons, I still engaged in banter, "I will kill you slowly... Apologize to your daughter in your next life."

The old man, the king, widened his eyes for a second, then he sighed, "Heretic, you corrupted my daughter. You are the cause of her death, so why would I apologize?!" He was shouting madly at the end of the sentence, spit flying from his mouth.

Ahh, there it was, the rage that I had believed buried long ago, lancing through my mind.

I quickly shielded the connection between Soea and I the best I could, while I still maintained my rationality. She would feel a much muted version of my emotions, but it wouldn't overwhelm her, no matter how much the berserker rage or agony took over me.

This was the most important thing, to protect her.

Everything seemed to slow down, I felt like ice was running through my veins.

I had to keep calm.

He obviously wanted to piss me off, to make me show a weak spot.

"You, don't you regret what you did to your daughter?" I felt the need to know the answer to this question, I never got to ask him before, and it had gnawed at me.

"Of course, I do, any father would. But she deserved it for betraying our God. She deserved it, for corrupting our people...for picking you over our God!"

I saw a slight sadness in his eyes, for less than a second, but the last half of his sentence stoked my rage even more.

Without a word, I gestured, placing two Spatial Runes, one above the king and I, and one below us. As the Runes activated, space distorted and all outside noise stopped.

He looked shocked at this magic, it was more powerful than anything that he had seen before.

Arre had also made Spatial Magic taboo, since Spatial Magic's highest level spells could injure even gods.

Without any fancy moves, I punched towards the king. Well, I say punched, but my fingers were extended. I believe that it is called a 'spear hand'.

When my spear hand impacted his armour, my fingers penetrated it as though the plate was composed of paper mache. With almost no resistance, my hand went straight through his stomach.

I didn't want to kill him, just not quite yet, he needed to suffer a fair amount.

He let out a gurgling scream, folding around my arm.

Pushing him back with my free hand, I extracted my other hand.

I kept my left hand on his shoulder, holding him upright as I punched forwards again.

He lost consciousness by the third time I drilled a hole through him.

I cast a healing spell on him, restoring him to full health. Though the pain and fear wasn't wiped from his memory.

For some reason, the torture that I had long dreamed of putting him through, wasn't as fun or as emotionally releasing as I had hoped.

Maybe I wasn't a sadist?

He had caused me years of suffering, but he did this under the control of Arre, even now his mind is twisted.

It didn't help assuage my hatred at all...

My rage and pain, they froze my insides, but even now I was in control. I had the feeling that Kirrin wouldn't have wanted this, she was kind, she would have wanted me to end him quickly.

With a sigh, I decided to let his pain end.

Though I had healed him, that didn't mean that I wasn't going to kill him.

"Stop this! I command you!" He had regained his consciousness and coherence, so he shouted at me with his normal arrogance. Even though he wasn't physically wounded, his mind was telling him that he was still in pain.

Still arrogant?

This man was incorrigible.

"You command me? How long has your mind been broken for, old man?"

He looked shocked as he heard me speak to him like this.

After sputtering for a while, he managed to regain his temper, "You dare speak to God's chosen like this?!"

"I would speak to the bastard himself like this."

This man would never apologize, never see the error of his ways.

I sighed.

The hatred that still froze my heart, never fully thawed even after all that had happened with Master and the others, but it was still much less than originally.

After four years I now mainly felt pity for this insane old man.

He had been corrupted by Arre, his mind had been broken long ago, he seriously believed that what he did wasn't wrong.

I could never forgive him for what he did, but I could let go of a lot of my hatred and grant him a quick breath.

With another deep sigh, I plunged my hand into him one last time, this time into his chest. Closing my fist, I extracted both his heart and his soul.

I rapidly burned away all of his soul power, until just his Divinity area remained. Holding the core of his soul, I looked closer. It was strangely injured, there were shadowy tendrils winding their way through it.

While Gods couldn't easily destroy Divinity Areas, they could infiltrate it while the person was still alive.

Of course, this would be all cleaned up once his soul returned to the hands of the God of Reincarnation.