Chapter 82

I reactivate my armor and go outside guiding the girl. I reactivated the armor because I can’t let others see my appearance, this girl is a special case.

Soon we are outside the house, I set everything on fire with magic to leave no traces, unlike other houses I spent a good amount of time in this one and I don’t know if someone could discover anything beyond having taken off the armor inside this house.

So I thought it was better to destroy everything.

Soon I turn to the girl and make a small shadow dragon, I still have no idea what the shadow dragons do.

I hand the little dragon to the girl who looks confused at me.

"What is this, goddess?" She asks, she’s so cute all soaked in blood.

"And the power I said I would give you" I have no way of really granting powers to others, so I’m going to give her a powerful shadow.

"This little dragon can grow to the size of a house and hide inside your shadow, just order it, it will obey any order you give it" I have no idea if this girl will survive, or if she will be able to accomplish what I asked.

But I don’t care.

[Mission complete report.

Skill unlocked = Chaotic Madness - When activated, it makes the target go mad, the target will obey your orders, if they don’t receive orders, they will start attacking everything they find in a crazy and uncontrolled way until they are killed or the effect wears off. (Works only on beings much weaker than the user)

You successfully converted a person into your follower, a being that was so desperate for help that they accepted to follow your path now decides to put others on the same path of death and destruction out of gratitude to you.

New follower acquired.

Number of followers = 1

New Title = Goddess - You have officially been consecrated as a goddess, you are now one of the goddesses of this world.

Description = Divine blood flows through your veins, as a divinity all you needed to truly be a goddess are followers, you have just acquired the true faith of a loyal follower, so the Primordial Goddess recognizes your religion in this world.]

’Wow...I’m really a goddess now...why did the Primordial Goddess accept this?’ I had no idea that to truly be a goddess I needed the approval of the Primordial Goddess, perhaps that’s why there aren’t any random religious cults, precisely because without prior approval a new divinity cannot arise.

"T-Thank you goddess, I will never forget what you’ve done for me" She says with a genuine smile while crying tears of joy.

Soon I say.

"I’ll eagerly await what you can do...besides, my little monster, this dragon has a hidden secret ability, maybe you’ll be able to discover it" it would be great to know what the shadow dragons can do, shadows in general are powerful.

But the abilities are what’s really interesting about them.

She kneels before me while joining her hands in worship.

"Yes goddess, I will make good use of it, and I won’t waste the chance you’ve given me, thank you so much for believing in me"

’Humans follow the goddess Elysia Luminos, I wonder if I can steal her followers’ All goddesses are worshipped by the races they created, but I haven’t created any race.

So I can only be worshipped by stealing followers from other goddesses.

’Wait...technically I created a race...’ The shadows are living beings that I create, so technically I’ve already created life, I just don’t know if they’re capable of worshipping me.

’I guess it doesn’t matter...I don’t even know the benefit of being a goddess’ I don’t feel any stronger, and I didn’t gain any power along with the title of Goddess, so I guess what really matters is having followers who will obey you.

"Now flee, get out of this city as fast as you can, don’t let anyone catch you" I tell the little girl, she nods determinedly.

Soon she orders the dragon to grow, it reaches a size of about 5 meters, which is large enough for her to ride, she quickly mounts it holding on tight.

’By the size it looks more like a Wyvern than a dragon...’

"Goddess...what’s your name?" She asks before taking off, she’s a pretty courageous girl, her desperation for acceptance and help was what really made me able to turn her into my follower.

"...In the future, when you go to the demon realm, I’ll tell you my name" I create a mana-crystallized gem with a message engraved on it, I toss the sphere to her.

"If you show this to the demons, they’ll let you pass" I doubt the demons would let a human enter demon territory.

I made this sphere so that only she could use it, so if she dies, no one else will be able to use it.

The sphere will show that it has a message from me granting her some minimal permissions, of course I wouldn’t give my name, it’s the same name I use in the kingdom, it would be terrible if someone found out.

"Thank you so much goddess, I will fulfill my mission, I will make everyone see that they must worship you, and one day I will come back to see you" She flies off while talking to me, she doesn’t even need to control the flight, just tell the dragon the direction to go.

I see the dragon’s flight path heading towards the forests far from the current kingdom.

"Pandora, I really don’t understand you, why help that girl but kill everyone else?"

"Destiny maybe?" I wasn’t going to let her live in the first place, the system just stopped me before I killed her, I didn’t care if she was sad and hurt, I just started a conversation because it seemed more interesting to use that approach.

"Do you believe in destiny, Pandora?"

"...Yes, I think so, although I also think it’s easy to break destiny" If I had killed that girl, I wouldn’t have gained a skill, but letting her live gave me a new skill as well as a goddess title.

"Let’s go, I’m bored, and they’ll probably be here soon" I tell Violet, although I always killed everyone who fled the houses with the shadows.

Unfortunately, many fled the houses because of the sound, so more than half of those I killed were killed on the street in instant deaths made by shadow blades.

’I’ll test some skills’ This place is near a dangerous forest, I’ll use that to my advantage.

I use the Abyssal Authority to try to order all the monsters in the area.

"I, the Demon King, command all the monsters in the vicinity to kill all living beings they encounter in this city, do not stop until there are no more living beings"

I notice a disturbance in mana, while several mana points begin to emerge from the forest.

Soon I enter the shadows to leave, it was fun but being discovered will be bad.

"Help here" I say while cutting down another monster, soon an ally comes to help.

"It seems this is the last group of orcs in the area, captain" My ally says as we finish killing this group of orcs.

"Gather the remaining troops" soon he leaves as I go to rest in my tent.

"Captain, here’s the report, we had no casualties, just a few injured"

"If there had been casualties, I would have had everyone train again" They were just weak monsters, ranging from goblins, imps, wolves, and orcs. The only problem was the high quantity.

"And the civilian casualties?" I question while drinking a glass of water.

"More than 15,000 deaths, sir...and among these deaths, some were clearly not done by the monsters, they seem to have been done by blades? Or something similar, and there are clear signs of torture"

’A killer...’

"And how many of those were tortured?" I wonder how many of the dead this killer made, maybe 3? I doubt it could have been many in the midst of the chaos caused by the monsters.

"More than 5,000, sir..."

"PFFF" I spit the water with that ridiculous number.

"More than 5,000 tortured?"

"Not all tortured, but clearly they were all killed by the same person"

’Demons maybe?’ We arrived quite late, the guild of this place was decimated, and when we arrived it had already been almost 7 hours, as the place is far and the kingdom doesn’t care much, we practically couldn’t come help.

’Demons...monster attack...they’re related, but demons don’t have the ability to control so many monsters...’ Demons may be able to train monsters, but all these monsters we fought are clearly not trained.

Strangely, the monsters did not retreat at all, even as they died they continued to attack, for Orcs this is somewhat normal, but goblins are cowardly, normally they wouldn’t fight to the death like this.

’Was it a skill? I need to report this to the kingdom, it was clearly premeditated...but what’s the reason behind it? This kingdom is poor and has nothing...’ They didn’t even go to the king’s palace in this country and nothing was looted.

So to me it doesn’t make sense, it’s as if the deaths were made randomly based on who was closest.

’The killer can’t have done this just for fun...it’s impossible for someone to kill so many just out of whim, there must be something we don’t know’ maybe the king has hidden something in the monthly reports, this is the only hypothesis I can think of.

"How do we proceed, sir?"

"...We’ll...go to the palace, we need to question the king of this country" if they hid something in the monthly report, it could be a sign of rebellion. It’s obvious to anyone that the central kingdom is an empire.

They just didn’t declare themselves an empire to give a false sense of freedom to other kingdoms. But all the kingdoms are controlled by the kingdom in the center, if there are signs of rebellion, they must be controlled as soon as possible.

’Besides, we have to find out who the killer was...’ I can’t say if it was a group or one person, but the deaths in the reports were all very brutal, based on the number of deaths, we can estimate that the killer if it was a single person.

Spent about 10 to 30 seconds in each house where they killed people, and spent 1 to 2 minutes in the houses where they tortured people.

’I think it was a single killer...’ All the deaths are similar.

’But the numbers don’t add up...how did this killer kill so many in so little time?’ There’s no way to kill so many people in so little time with that average of seconds, and I also noticed that many deaths happened at the same time.

’Maybe...the killer killed more than one house at a time? Maybe a skill that allowed them to attack multiple houses at once...’

’There are a lot of bodies on the street...So they didn’t kill house by house, they killed the people in the house while killing the people who fled because of the sound, so they had more time while preventing help from arriving’

I use my deduction skill to try to recreate the scene. This skill allows me to recreate scenarios based on logical facts, so I can connect points to reach a possible answer.

’So it’s a single killer, with great mana control, and some kind of skill that allows them to kill from a distance even while focused on something else...’ I’m not very strong, but I became a captain because of this skill I have.

’So the average of 10 to 30 second deaths must be around 10 to 15 people...that means that for each house the killer killed, they eliminated another 3 to 5 houses that fled because of the sound’

Based on the hypotheses I have related to the time of death and the bodies outside and inside the houses, I can only say that the killer knew very well how to prolong the time without allowing help to be sought.

’So I think the last house the killer was in was the one that caught fire first, from the bloodstained footprints I deduce that the killer was in armor... and the monsters were probably summoned by the killer’

The real question is who this killer is and what they wanted by causing all these deaths.

’I need help...I can’t figure out much more just with this’ My skill needs concrete data for me to formulate theories.

’I’ll just send a report and wait for help’