Immersed as Sayanim was in his reading, he noticed the sound of the doors shifting. Someone had gotten into the corridor. The administrator wondered if it was the guards who had entered, or perhaps he had an unexpected visitor, but both scenarios were impossible. The guards would never make the mistake of coming into his house unannounced—that had never occurred before, and they could be severely punished for it—nor was he expecting any visitors. The only two people who might visit him impromptu were Ceyan and Uvamin.

He rose from his seat and pulled a curved sword from where it leaned in a corner of the library. He was suspecting assassins. That would not be surprising, considering his position, but who would want him dead? He was loved by virtually everyone in the upper echelons; he could not remember crossing anyone lately.

However the case might be, he was not going to leave without a fight. He had retained power for so long precisely because he knew when to dirty his hands and remove those who impeded his path. For a man as ruthless and unforgiving as he was, it was always a plus to be able to defend oneself.

Sayanim was a middle-aged man, with dark olive skin from years of exposure to the unforgiving suns of Enesh. He was lanky and tall, and he wore his hair long. His face was unexciting; he bore a thin mustache on his upper lip and kept a small, trimmed beard. In his library, he had his purple nightly robes on, and unprepared as he was for the encounter, the city administrator was not going to go down without a fight.

The spies that Ren had caught had divulged all they knew to the extent of their knowledge, but they did not truly know their master. They only knew what the city’s population knew—through no fault of their own. Sayanim knew how best to keep secrets, especially when such secrets gave him an upper hand.

He could hear the slow-moving footsteps. They were close now, his would-be assassin. He remained calm and collected, his face stern like that of a hawk, his blade held in front of him.

Ren stopped. What was this he was sensing?

Sayanim is a cultivator?

Ren paused. This mana he sense—although it was not as much as his own or Rokku’s—was still significant. In fact, it was the densest mana he had sensed outside of himself and Rokku. The administrator’s mana was even greater than Tuarine’s. Ren reached for the doorknob and hesitated. He was not hoping to capitalize on the element of surprise; he wanted the city administrator to see the man he had intended to kill and steal from.

Significant as it was, it was not enough to give Ren second thoughts. In fact, it was good that it was strong. It would make for an entertaining bout. Ren had begun to behave like a predator in that he liked to play with his food, his prey.

He turned the doorknob, and a pointy blade of energy broke through the door as he opened it. It came for Ren’s head, but even before the knob had turned, Ren had anticipated it upon seeing the mana gather in the man’s blade hand. It was difficult to catch an opponent such as Ren—skilled in Mana Perception and Mana Sense—by surprise. He arched backward, missing it by a hair’s length.

Sayanim did not stop there. He figured that if Ren could easily dodge that long-ranged attack, then perhaps a close-ranged attack would fare better. The projection attack had burst apart the door, sending splinters flying about, though Ren’s mana reinforcement made him impervious to them.

Sayanim swung the mana-coated sword down at Ren’s torso. The swing carried so much force as it fell that it seemed it would cleave Ren into two. 𝐟𝗿𝐞𝚎𝚠𝐞𝚋𝕟𝐨𝚟𝐞𝕝.𝕔𝕠𝚖

CLANG!

Ren parried the strike with his dagger, the recoil sending Sayanim stumbling back. Now there was a bit of distance between them, and Ren could see that the administrator was overextending himself. His mana, which had seemed copious earlier, had shrunk considerably, and the middle-aged man huffed and puffed where he stood.

I overestimated his mana levels. Impressive for a regular person, but clearly not enough to be a cultivator.

However, a cultivator was often loosely defined as a person skilled in the act of mana manipulation to the extent that they could project mana. If one was to go by that definition strictly, Sayanim could be regarded as a cultivator, but on stricter terms, he was not.

"So much waste," Ren muttered. The man had poured so much of his mana into that first attack, and it had not been deliberate. The administrator simply did not possess enough control to use his mana efficiently.

Not a cultivator, but if I was to gauge him, I would place him as an experienced, talented knight.

"Tired already?" Ren taunted, and it worked. Sayanim wore an angry frown in response. The administrator lunged with a cry of battle, his sword held high above his chest as he came upon Ren.

Ren smirked. Sayanim stood no chance, and he was going to make that clear to him before he killed him. He caught Sayanim’s blade as he swung it down with his bare hands, stopping it dead in mid-air. He looked at Sayanim, who was obviously stupefied by what had just occurred. Ren went a step further and crushed the sword with his bare hands. Sayanim staggered back, his lips quivering, but the words came out clearly.

"Who are you?" he asked.

"I am glad you asked. I am the farmer who you sought to steal from, the creator of the tasty blue milk." Ren took slow, deliberate steps forward, and Sayanim watched every step as if they were a call to his doom.

His eyes widened when he heard those words. A threat coming from Tunish certainly was not on his bingo card—it was the least expected of things—and Ren shocked him with this revelation.

"The spies I sent... it was you who killed them!" He managed to cough the sentence out, and it came laden with shock. In a million years, he never would have thought that anyone from that small, uneventful place could produce a person who would make him as afraid as he presently felt. He shrunk further and further with Ren’s advance.

The city administrator still had an ample amount of mana within him; he could still resist. But Ren had broken his spirit. He could only await what the man had prepared for him.

"Someone as greedy as you are should not have power over thousands of people. Your death will certainly send a message."

Sayanim shrieked in fear. Death was certain, it seemed. He fell onto his rump, moving back while still sprawled on the ground.

"Please! Please! Please!" he cried.

Ren had worn a cold, stern expression since gaining the upper hand against the administrator, but now a look of disgust crept across his face.

He shaped his hand into a blade, and ki took form around it.

"Now, you die."