Luke was following after Lucia along a dirt road.

‘Crap, how can someone so beautiful exist? I didn’t even stop to think twice before deciding to follow her…’

Luke then imagined Alex shouting something out towards him.

‘[“Simp! Simp! Simp!”]’

Luke waved his hand and shook his head, trying to make his imagination go away.

‘What the hell is wrong with me? Ahh, might as well go along with this for now, I’ll just have to grow another pair of eyes on my back as well, so I don’t get backstabbed again.’

Luke followed after Lucia for a few hours.

Lucia turned towards Luke, made eye contact, and smiled.

“We’ve arrived!”

Luke nodded his head up and down repeatedly, like an obedient puppy.

They were standing in front of a huge marsh.

‘Maybe this was the Great Swamp that one of the Hunters mentioned? But this is definitely a marsh, not a swamp. It looks to be pretty shallow…’

The marsh looked basically like any run-of-the-mill marsh you could run into on Earth, except there was something going on here that would never be possible to see back on Earth.

Long brown worms kept jumping out of the marsh and then burrowing back underground. This cycle kept repeating as dozens of worms kept popping out.

Some of the worms were even curled up around a couple of the shorter trees that were sticking out of the marsh, appearing to be resting.

The dirt below Luke’s feet started getting softer and mushier the closer he got to the marsh.

Luke didn’t want his shoes to get dirty, so he used his wind elemental.

It appeared as if Luke was floating a few centimeters off the ground, but his legs were actually just surrounded by a thick layer of wind.

Lucia sneakily glanced at Luke’s feet while he wasn’t paying attention and sneered.

Luke then glanced towards her, and the sneer instantly turned into a wide smile, as if she was replacing one mask with another.

She thought that Luke was oblivious to this, but she couldn’t be further away from the truth.

‘She’s gauging my strength… She sneered so I can assume that she at least thinks that she’s stronger than me. But something is weird…’

The moment he looked into Lucia’s jade green eyes, his cheeks flushed red and his thoughts went down the toilet in an instant.

“Luke. You go first and I’ll follow right after you, okay?”

Luke smiled meekly and nodded.

He just looked like an innocent love-struck guy on the outside, but the inside of Luke’s mind was chaotic.

‘Shit! Why isn’t my body listening to me?! I’m sure now that she’s somehow charming me when we make eye contact!’

As Luke’s mind fiercely fought against the weird charm ability, he and Lucia went deeper into the marsh.

Dozens of Earthworms rushed towards the two, but Luke effortlessly cut them apart into slices using his wind blades, making sushi out of them.

These worms were around five meters long, and had tiny, round yellow eyes. Their exterior was light brown in color, but their bodies appeared to be pretty frail.

The main advantage that the Earthworms had while fighting were their speed and the element of surprise when ambushing their targets from undeground.

This would be of no concern if Luke was actually in control of his body.

‘This feels so wrong! It’s like I’m spectating a video game in VR! Stop moving goddamnit!’

As Luke was killing the waves of Earthworms, Lucia bit on her finger and seductively smiled, as she called out to him.

“Oh, Luke, you are so strong!”

“I will become your strength! Lucia!”

‘Shut the fuck up! Both of you!’

Luke’s words and thoughts couldn’t mismatch any more than this.

After an hour of fighting the Earthworms, Luke’s body grew tired, so he and Lucia took shelter on one of the taller trees.

Lucia grinned brightly as her eyes flared up.

“Luke. I’ve decided. You must become one with me!”

Horns started growing out of Lucia’s head, looking as if she was the devil’s incarnate.

Wisps of flame appeared on top of her left hand’s fingernails, extending to become claws made out of pure flames.

‘Crap!’

Luke’s mind entered into overdrive.

Many deaths forged Luke’s mind into a force to be reckoned with.

His constant struggle wasn’t in vain.

Just as Lucia was about to swipe her claws at Luke, he managed to regain control of his left arm.

He formed a wind blade, and swung it at Lucia diagonally upwards.

*Slice!*

Luke cut clean through her left armpit, successfully severing her whole left arm, and as the wind blade kept its momentum going, it cut straight through Lucia’s neck, beheading her in an instant.

This was possible because Luke's wind blades weren't simply sharp anymore, but were so condensed that merely passing through something as soft as human flesh was enough to cleanly cut it.

The eyes on Lucia’s dismembered head widened in shock, and her mouth flapped up and down, trying to say something in disbelief.

Luke regained complete control over his body, and made sure to hold onto the limp corpse that remained on top of the tree.

‘That was way too close.’

A red ball of light floated out of Lucia’s corpse, being around half the size of the mother Gleem’s wind elemental.

‘Score!’

Luke stretched his hand out towards the red elemental and it started floating along his arm and towards his chest.

The red ball of light entered Luke’s chest and a searing, hot pain assaulted Luke.

He was gritting his teeth and felt as if he was being burned alive.

Sweat poured out of every pore on his body, which was currently going through a complete cleansing.

Throughout this painful and arduous process, Luke tried keeping a straight face.

He has let go of the corpse minutes ago, and was struggling to keep himself from falling off the tree.

‘Breathe… Calmly. In through the nose, and out through the mouth. Breathe!’

Luke never expected that absorbing any elemental would be this painful.

After an unknown amount of time passed, Luke’s sweat started evaporating by itself.

Luke raised his hand and a red flame appeared on top of it, burning fiercely.

His eyes widened and he started laughing out loud.

“Ha… Hahahahaha!!! This must be the fire elemental!”

A stream of ideas on how to use this new power passed through Luke’s mind.

He smirked and unbuttoned his shirt.

The silver hourglass and the three whirlwind tattoos were now joined by a dark red tattoo.

The tattoo depicted a baby phoenix, resting on top of the hourglass, as if taking a nap and biding its time.

Luke grinned once again before buttoning his shirt back up.

He looked down at the marsh below him. More specifically, he was looking at the Earthworms.

‘Let’s get my new phoenix friend a nice and strong earth pillar to lean on.’

Luke started slaughtering the Earthworms, but he was soon very disappointed.

‘These guys… They don’t possess any elementals…’

Feeling slightly depressed, he made his way out of the marsh.

‘It’s a shame… Although I did have an unexpected reward at the end of the day.’

Luke started thinking about the bewitching woman.

‘That thing definitely wasn’t a human. I wonder how she could just wander around the city and even enter the Bounty Hunter’s Association without anyone batting an eye.’

Carrying his suspicions, Luke made his way back towards Millef.

 

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

 

Meanwhile, in the Bounty Hunter’s Association building in Millef, in the dead of night…

Moving along the shadows, a person clad in a pure black robe entered the building in a blink of an eye.

They were met by a middle-aged man with droopy eyes scribbling something down, not even bothering to look at the black robed person.

The black robed person quickly kneeled and lowered their head to the ground. A male voice sounded out:

“I pay my respect to the Association Head.”

Joseph curtly replied:

“Speak.”

The black robed man raised his head up and looked at Joseph.

“There was a… disturbance in the Association Head’s plans.”

Only a quill moving across a piece of paper could be heard.

The kneeling man continued speaking.

“The succubus has been killed.”

*Snap!*

The quill broke in two, as Joseph finally raised his head to look at the kneeling man.

“What did you just say?”

The man quickly lowered his head and looked at the ground. His face was frozen still in fear.

The wooden chair Joseph was sitting on started scraping against the floor as he pushed it away to stand up, releasing an eerie sound.

The kneeling man shivered.

He didn’t dare look at Joseph.

*Creak, creak, creak…*

Joseph was walking across the wooden floor and slowly made his way over to the kneeling man.

He bent down next to the kneeling man and whispered softly into his ear.

“How did she die?”

The kneeling man was shivering uncontrollably, prompting Joseph to ask again.

“How. Did. She. Die?”

The man started stuttering, his voice shaking.

“S-s-some m-man she w-wanted to h-hunt, b-broke free f-from h-her charm, a-and k-k-killed h-her instead!”

Joseph’s eyes narrowed. Only someone with an unimaginably strong mind can break out of a succubus’ charm ability.

“Do you know where that man currently is?”

“H-he returned t-to Millef a f-few hours ago!”

Joseph grinned wildly and his eyes narrowed even further into a slit.

“Good. Get rid of him.”

Joseph stood up and dusted himself.

He looked down at the kneeling man.

“What are you waiting for? Go.”

The kneeling man shouted out, his voice still shaky.

“Y-yes sir!”

Joseph put his arms behind his back, and looked at the robed man as he left.

“Useless trash…”

 

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

 

A few hours earlier…

Luke was running along a paved dirt road, making his way towards Millef.

He noticed something a while ago.

‘Someone is following me.’

Luke couldn’t exactly know who was following him.

After absorbing the fire elemental, his sensitivity to the presence of other beings was improved by a lot; if not for that, he wouldn’t be able to tell at all.

‘What I’ve noticed since arriving in Millef and the small village is that not everyone is using elementals. There are the poor peasants and the soldiers, equal to regular humans you could find anywhere, but then there are also the elementalists, like the people I saw at the Bounty Hunter’s Association building. A good example of a non-elementalist was the scrawny man that had killed me on my first night in the village. I wondered why I wasn't able to sense that he was sneaking up on me, but the answer is pretty straight-forward. That man possessed no mana. I can only sense beings that also possess mana, such as monsters and other elementalists. But even that ability is very limited.'

He thought about various things, but was still keeping his eyes open.

‘That person seems to be insistent. I’ll need to take care of them as soon as possible.’

Luke arrived in Millef within a few hours.

As the sun slowly died down, it was replaced by a silver moon.

Luke jumped up to the top of one of the bigger buildings that had a flat roof design, and sat down.

It wasn't that tall of a building, as Luke couldn't jump that high up, but the roof was spacious, which was what Luke needed in the first place.

‘This should be a good resting place. That person has also stopped following me as I approached the town, so it should be fine for now. I’ll call it a night and investigate tomorrow.’

He lied down on the flat roof, and tucked himself into a ball, slowly drifting asleep.

What Luke couldn’t have known was that he wouldn’t be waking up at the same place he fell asleep at.