"How?" Faris asked.

"So you're on board?" I looked for confirmation.

"Yes," Faris answered seriously, and I cancelled the summoning of my dagger that was out of Faris' vision.

"Okay, we'll have to be careful about this. We can't just go around slitting throats?"

"Huh, why?" Faris asked in a confused manner.

"If you slit someone's throat, they will gurgle on the blood and fling their arms and legs around like madmen until their brain runs out of oxygen. It's necessary that we kill as many of them as possible before they all wake up," I explained.

"What do you mean before they wake up?" Faris asked with furrowed brows.

I gave Faris a questioning look. "Do you think that they'll all sleep through all the noise we're going to make?"

"Can't we do it silently?" Asked Faris.

"Well, there is a way we can minimize the noise, but someone is still most likely going to wake up and when they do the real bloodbath will start."

***

30 minutes later, the desert was completely silent, except for the sound of Faris'and my footsteps. We walked towards our group members with our soul weapons in hand. I started from the right and Faris started from the right, so that we wouldn't get surrounded as easily, if we got caught.

I squatted down next to a young man who was sleeping soundly on his right side and located an indent at the base of his skull. Next, I put my hand on the man's head to hold it still and stabbed my dagger extremely fast into the indent in a 45-degree angle. The man's medulla oblongata was destroyed, and the man's motor skills were immediately cut off. It made some sound, but not enough for anyone to wake up.

I repeated this process over and over again and started to feel much stronger, faster and my fatigue was starting to fade away. Everything was working well, but then there was a scream of terror. Faris had woken up somebody.

I looked into the direction the scream came from, and locked eyes with Faris who's eyes were wide. The scream was cut short by Faris' sword cutting the man's head off, but the damage was already done.

"What is... EEEEEEK!" A girl let out a shriek of terror, after waking up.

Faris and I looked at each other, and I nodded expressionlessly.

The real bloodbath had begun.

I ran in the blood soaked sand and cut down the people who had summoned their weapons. I sliced throat after throat, and I pierced heart after heart. There was blood on my weapon, clothes, skin, hair, and some had flown into my right eye.

I ducked under a saber that was aimed at my head and slit the throat of its wielder. After having dealt with him, I turned around to find a sword aimed at my left side of my head. I blocked the sword with my dagger and kicked the man on his left side.
I felt some ribs crack in result of my kick and the man flew over 5 meters to the left.

I was going to finish the job when a large-framed man swung a battleaxe at my head. After noticing the attack, I ducked under the swing, dashed at the man, and thrust my dagger into the submental space under his chin.

The man's eyes flew open, and he dropped dead after I removed my dagger.

Suddenly, I sensed something behind me and turned around. My left hand instinctively caught the arrow that had been aimed at my heart. I looked up at the archer and saw Devon with a frightened look on his face.

I was surprised he hadn't run. Maybe there was a part of me that had wished he would have, but that didn't matter. He was here, and there was no running with those shaking legs.

"Why are you doing this?" Devon managed to mutter.

I was pondering if I should answer, when I heard a katana cut the air above my head. I quickly moved to the right and managed to avoid the katana completely. The woman who had swung the katana was in the air, so I grabbed her by the throat with my left hand before she could land and thrust my dagger into the woman's heart. Immediately afterward, I dropped her and found an arrow flying at my head.

I blocked the arrow with my dagger and rushed at Devon, who was in a panic trying to think of ways to survive.

"To ensure my survival," I answered the question Devon had asked me earlier and thrust my dagger into his heart.

I wasn't sure if Devon heard my answer, but that didn't matter. Not only that, but I wasn't even sure why I had even answered. Devon collapsed, and my already soaked shoes got more blood on them.

***

"Haah... haaah...haaah." My gaze was directed upwards, as I breathed heavily.

The bloodbath was over. There were corpses all round me, I was drenched in blood and had accumulated multiple wounds on my body.

Faris, who seemed to be unscathed, threw up on, most likely due to the horrid smell in the area. Though, it could have been just because of the truly foul sight.

Sand fell from the sky and I moved my head out of the way. The sand fell onto the sand below me and slowly got dyed red.

"We should get moving," I said, unfazed by the horrid smell the corpses gave off.

I said and started walking away from the corpses.

"Wait, no, no... this isn't what I wanted. This isn't what I wanted. It shouldn't have been like this." Faris started holding his head and muttering while looking at the bodies beneath him.

'He's losing it,' I thought.

"Are you regretting your actions?" I asked.

"What?" Faris asked as he looked at me. "I... no... it was you. You said we had to do this. You said we would die, if we didn't." Faris said loudly, trying to blame his actions on me.

"No, I didn't," I said simply and innocently with crystal clear eyes.

"Yes, you did! It was you!" Faris said with a shaking voice.

"I don't know what you're talking about," I said and turned my back to him, starting to walk away.

Faris's bloodshot eyes flew open in rage. It didn't take long before Faris had closed the distance between us and swung his sword at me horizontally.

I turned, having expected such an action, managed to dodge the swing that would have cut me in half by jumping back.

Even though Faris' mind was on the verge of breaking, his sword skills were as good as ever.

He continued attacking me, but I couldn't find any openings I could have taken advantage of. On top of that, Faris had killed even more than me and was much stronger as a result. I couldn't win in a fair fight, so the only way to win was to damage his mental state.

When furious people experience some kind of boost in strength, it's just them using their body more recklessly, and that was just what I needed. One reckless swing was enough for me to end the whole thing. All I had to do was to wait.

During our battle I had already received multiple shallow cuts on my body and that number would only increase if I didn't get a good opportunity to strike.

I ducked down and Faris' sword cut the air above my head at too high speeds for me to see. I saw an opening but didn't take it. Everything came down to one move. I kept running away from Faris' attack until we were tens of meters away from the area where the massacre had taken place.

"Fight, you sick bastard!" Faris yelled furiously and executed a vertical slash.

I jumped backwards to avoid the attack and opened my mouth.

"Please stop this. You're too weak to defeat me anyway."

Faris seemed to have snapped and ran at me full speed, but then abruptly stopped and preformed a reckless full-force horizontal slash that aimed to split me completely in two.

'Now,' I thought, and I ducked under Faris' attack.

I moved to the right since it was Faris' weak side and threw my dagger from my right hand to my left hand that caught the dagger in a reverse grip, and then aimed it at Faris' pterion. My dagger sunk into Faris' skull effortlessly, and he collapsed onto the gray sand that immediately started being dyed red by all the blood that was flowing out of Faris' head.

I felt a strange sensation and my attention was turned to my dagger that was covered in blood. It was evolving and so was I.

I shook the blood off my dagger and could feel my body getting stronger, as the large and simple golden runes morphed into much smaller and more complicated runes that almost looked like some kind of ancient language. I inspected the dagger and found that there was a symbol on the bottom of the golden pommel. I had seen the symbol multiple times back on earth.

It was the yin symbol.

As soon as I saw the symbol, a question emerged in my head.

'Even after all this,' I thought in disbelief as I looked at all the surrounding corpses and my expression twisted into one of pure hatred, 'you're still alive, you pathetic disappointment?'