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Chapter 216: Milking Out Loot

“Let’s start the second round, shall we?” Argentum said with a light chuckle, a stark contrast to the fear and anxiety the humans felt from how easy it was for the Wind Spirit, which they sought out to capture, to kill them. In actuality, disregarding what Argentum was portraying on the outside, Argentum was feeling incredible shock and surprise from the attack he had just made.

‘Although [Lesser Wind Magic] is only at the C-grade Mortal level, to think that it has enough power to pierce through the head of a Rank 0 Animate without a problem…’ This was the thought that came to his mind, recalling how the wind bolt he threw pierced through that man’s head like butter. Thanks to this, he felt a bit more confident in his power to kill them in one hit.

‘Then again, that arrow was incredibly close. If it was aimed at a slightly curved angle, it would’ve definitely hit me, even in my current form,’ Argentum thought to himself as he inwardly let out a sigh of relief, remembering how close the arrow was to hitting him. ‘Of course, even if they hit me, I would still say they missed regardless.’

After he was finished pondering, he then focused his sense of vision back to the six remaining humans out of the seven, with all of them looking at the recently killed human with bated breaths. The words said by Argentum a while ago seemed to serve as a wake-up call to what was happening to them right now, prompting them to focus their trains of thought back to the game, huddling together once more to talk about the second person to attempt the game.

Unlike before, the discussion between the six did not go so peacefully since they were now aware of what would happen to them if they did not hit or graze Argentum. Surprisingly, even though that was the case, the six of them eventually chose a human to participate in the second round, who was one of the four archers hidden a while ago when they thought they would be able to capture Argentum without a problem.

Then again, Argentum heard the discussion between the six of them as they chose on who was going to participate in the round, with that human only agreeing to participate after being offered a lot of rewards in exchange. Thanks to that, the confidence the human had in successfully clearing this second round was quite high as he recalled the additional rewards he would obtain if he succeeded. But that did not stop him from recalling what had happened a while ago, his confidence slightly wavering in exchange for fear and anxiety.

Nevertheless, that human moved in front of the six with a bow tightly clenched. Seeing this, Argentum went ahead and shouted, “Are you the one that’s going to participate in the second round?”

In response to his question, the human nodded, to which Argentum replied, “Let us begin the second round, then!”

At the very instant Argentum was finished speaking, the human soon started to move, with Argentum going ahead and telling him whether he was near or far from Argentum. Of course, while Argentum was doing this, he could not help but snigger inwardly as he thought, ‘Although these humans know where I currently am thanks to the first round, I’m going to mislead them into thinking that I’ve moved to another tree, even though I haven’t.’

‘As long as their heads turn around to look at the human running away from my attack, I could keep up this facade until the last human dies under my bolt,’ Argentum thought to himself, thinking that it was quite a genius plan.

And so, a few minutes have passed, with the verdict being Argentum leading the human to believe that he was in a tree slightly far away from where Argentum currently was. Hearing those words, the human’s confidence slightly increased as he recalled the rewards he would get after this, pulling back on the string of the bow to its limit before letting it go, creating a slightly louder twang sound than what was made by the first human.

Whoosh!

Accompanied by that sound, the arrow passed through the tree at a significantly higher speed, only for it to go past its leaves without Argentum saying anything. At this point, the human’s confidence was instantly replacing with gradually intensifying fear and anxiety. The human’s legs were trembling, not wanting to imagine what would happen to him.

Just as Argentum was about to state his verdict on the second round, the human went ahead and ran as fast as he could away from Argentum. In response to this, Argentum’s voice resounded throughout the area as he sighed, saying, “To be honest, I was planning to spare you on the second round, but since you’ve decided to run away, we’re back to painless deaths.”

“[Tempest Awakening].”

“[Lesser Wind Magic: Wind Bolt].”

Whoosh! Bang!

And just like that, the wind bolt hastily made its way towards its target once more, this time aiming at the human’s throat. Thanks to the status boosting buff applied on the attack, the wind bolt easily pierced through the human’s throat, making a hole large enough that even turned the man’s arteries to shreds, leading to a gushing blood fountain coming from his throat as he tried to close it up with his hands.

Unfortunately, the amount of blood he was losing was severe, eventually leading to his death as he fell to the ground with his hands clutched around his throat. Looking at the fate of the second human in their group, the remaining five’s fear and anxiety towards Argentum had reached a higher level, wondering if the Wind Spirit they were up against was so strong that any part it hit from them would lead to their death.

Of course, Argentum wouldn’t tell them how strong he truly was.

After the death of the second human, Argentum went ahead and shouted, “And with that done, let us now move on to the third round!”

Unfortunately for Argentum, just as he thought that the humans were going to obediently follow his rules and proceed with the third round like some servant, one of the humans went ahead and cried out in response to his words, “This game is rigged! You attacked from the location you were in on the first round! Doesn’t that mean that you intentionally said the first person missed while you misled the second person to their death?”

Hearing the human’s words, Argentum could not help but ponder as to how they found that out. While Argentum was pondering over it, the other remaining humans looked at the human that shouted out and mustered their courage to say that the game was unfair to Argentum. It did not take long for all of the humans to have their fear be replaced with what seemed to be conviction and pride. As to whether this pride came from their higher existence level or from the idea that they found out what Argentum was doing, no one would ever know.

Seeing that their fear towards him had changed into something else, Argentum changed his train of thought from a while ago. He was now pondering whether he should persuade them to continue the third round with their subconscious fear towards him or change it into something else, making the humans feel like they’ve won, even though they ultimately did not.

As he thought about these two choices a bit more, Argentum seemed to lean a bit more towards the second choice, thinking that he would be able to extort a lot more items from them when compared to the first one, where the rewards he would obtain from them was only their bodies and the items on them. It was then that a flash of inspiration appeared in his mind, instantly making Argentum favor the second choice as he laughed inwardly at the thought that he had just formulated.

‘With this choice, I would not only be able to obtain their items, but I would also be able to obtain their knowledge as well!’ Argentum thought to himself. The flash of inspiration that appeared in his mind was that of the knowledge of humans, or to be more specific, the knowledge of skills they had. He was thinking of making them surrender in exchange for giving them all of the information they had about skills, as well as the important items they had on them.

With this in mind, he could not help but look at the two bodies he had killed and muttered, “Now that I think about it, two Rank 0 bodies have more than enough energy for me to undergo the first Power Baptism, so why should I go ahead and kill the others without obtaining more rewards from them?”

At this point, the humans thought that Argentum’s silence was a way of telling them that they had won over his wits, that he was going to give up the game. Unfortunately for them, Argentum’s voice resounded once more, breaking this illusion they had in their minds as he said, “You know, I could just say that I was actually in the tree the second human was at a while ago, but moved back to the first one to attack and none would be the wiser, right?”

In an instant, the humans’ confidence and pride had crumbled, reverting to fear once more as they thought that the game they were playing was going to continue. But after hearing what Argentum said afterward, this fear had turned to that of slight relief.

“But sure, I’ll admit to it. I wasn’t in the other tree in the second round,” Argentum said.

Just as they thought that the game was now over, Argentum continued to talk, removing the relief they felt a while ago in an instant.

“We’re still going to continue the game though. Let’s just say the first two rounds didn’t count,” Argentum uttered as he chuckled with a malicious tone. It was at that instant that something inside one of the remaining humans broke as that human shouted, “Do you plan to torture us one by one with this game? Isn’t the conclusion just all of us dead? If so, just kill all of us at once, for fuck’s sake! I’d rather die right now than go through a game like this again!”

“Calm down there,” Argentum said, slightly bewildered by the response of the human. He then continued, “I was actually thinking of giving you five a choice to choose.”

Hearing that the Wind Spirit that killed their brethren without a problem was seemingly giving them a chance to live after what was done to them, the five of them could not help but think that their ears were clogged up with wax or something. Ignoring what they were feeling, Argentum continued talking, “You have two choices. One, we continue the game and all of you die off one by one…”

“Or two, surrender all of your valuable items to me, as well as the knowledge of every skill you know. If you do that, I’ll set you free,” Argentum added, to which the five humans looked at each other.

To them, the choice was incredibly obvious. By choosing the second option, they would be free. Skills and items were just material objects they could regain in the future, there was no problem with that. But then, just as one of the humans was about to speak up and choose the second choice, the human that shouted a while ago yelled once more, saying, “Huh?! Give up our skills and items?! I’d rather die than give it to a lowly Pseudo-Animate like you! What are you going to do with it anyway?! Use it as some sort of—”

Bang!

Even before the human could finish saying what it was trying to say, a bolt of wind had pierced through the human’s chest without a problem with great force, destroying its heart in an instant as blood gushed from both sides of the human’s body. It did not take long for the human to die from blood loss like the previous human, the expression on its face filled with disbelief and regret.

The four remaining humans looked at the human that was killed off just now with intense disbelief. Just like that, the human that was with them a while ago was now dead thanks to a bolt of wind. All of them could not help but wonder about the same thing.

‘How strong is this Wind Spirit? And we actually had the balls to try and catch it?’

Just as their thoughts were about to gradually wander off, a bolt of wind collided with the ground a few decimeters in front of them, jolting them back to reality as Argentum’s voice soon resounded.

“So…have you four made your choices?” Argentum asked them.

In response, the four remaining humans looked at each other before looking at the tree where Argentum was. They then simultaneously nodded their heads as all of them said not long after, “We have decided to choose the second choice.”

“Hehehe.” Argentum chuckled in response to their answer as he said not long after, “Truly a wise choice.”