This was not the first time he had been surrounded and outnumbered.
This was not the first time his opponents were stronger.
Being a Soul Reaper meant that whatever happened, as long as he was not actively dying, he would always be the last witness to death. The reaper in the graveyard.
'It always comes to this...'
Rowan looked calm as the Demi-Saplings and Treants rushed toward him like a ravaging horde of zombies with monsters thundering behind them. A deadly wave that could wipe out even a group of D-rank hunters caught in the open.
In a normal fight, injuries would pile up until they went down one by one.
But for Rowan, this was probably the most ideal situation he could ask for.
And that was the tragedy of the man cursed to bear the Soul Reaper class. The stronger he became, the more it cost someone else.
"I'm sorry," Rowan extended his hand and cast a stolen skill.
A grey barrier formed in his palm, but instead of taking the shape of a shield, it shifted into something else entirely.
He did not want to limit Lee's imagination for his own future, so he had never told him directly.
Most people did not know this, but magic, like physical skills, could be learned and mastered.
And Rowan, having used hundreds of skills already, had mastered the use of magic even without a dedicated skill for it.
[Magic Barrier (E): Creates a magical barrier.]
Scythe mode.
A translucent scythe materialized in his hand, formed entirely from a barrier spell.
If a barrier could stop an incoming attack from reaching its caster, why could it not stop a head from staying on its shoulders?
While others might mock the use of a scythe, dismissing it as a farming tool rather than a real weapon, this was the age of hunters. Supernatural humans were no longer bound by the physical limitations of the past.
Think outside the box.
With one thrust, Rowan cleaved through a fraction of the Demi-Sapling horde, splitting them clean in two.
That motion resembled a spear.
He quickly moved and swept around himself, carving out space chunk by chunk.
That one resembled a large axe more than a scythe.
Blood splattered as bodies flew. Rowan did not even need [Soul Devourer] to land a finishing blow.
With space opened up around him and more pouring in, Rowan was not afraid.
His grip shifted from tight to loose, and then he spun.
By twirling the scythe in hand he killed both within its arc and beyond its cleave, mowing down everything around him like they were weeds and not half-monsters.
"HOOM!!!"
A Treant came at him with a ground-shaking slam but Rowan's body dispersed into thin air and reappeared behind it. With a swift spin he brought the scythe down hard.
"As I thought..." His magical weapon could not pierce the Treant's thick bark. And worse, he could not use [Soul Devourer] through a magic construct.
He was forced to pull his scythe back as another Treant came from behind.
A single punch from one of them was enough to carve a massive crater into the ground where it landed.
But they were too slow for Rowan. They were nothing more than a constant, looming annoyance.
The other threat was the boss itself.
A vine snapped free from the building and whipped toward him as he drew close. Rowan dispersed into Spectral Form and slipped through it, reappearing beside a Demi-Sapling that had been waiting in the gap. One swing and it came apart in pieces.
That was why evacuation had been the first priority. With no one left to protect, he could focus entirely on killing.
The only way to defeat Rowan, let alone kill him, was to drain his SP reserves completely.
If you could not do that, it did not matter what rank you were.
You were going to die.
Rowan looked out at the horde cramming the street as every innocent soul caught in the break turned and came swarming toward him.
But for the other hunters who would soon arrive, he had to kill them all first.
He did not doubt their firepower, nor their skill. But he did not want them to feel the pain of cutting down other humans.
Hunters should focus on killing monsters.
The burden of putting other humans down should be carried by a reaper.
[Dash]
With each swing, Rowan split human bodies apart without blinking. From one to ten, to a hundred, as blood and viscera painted the street.
His white shirt turned red. His body was drenched in it.
Children, women, old men. Everyone who had turned was a monster that needed to die.
One after another Rowan dashed through the horde like a ghost, scythe in hand, collecting the dead with every cleaving spin, without wasting a single second.
The mobility of a spear with the reach of a greatsword.
That is what a scythe was in Rowan's hands.
[SP: 600]
[SP: 872]
[SP: 963]
[SP: 1,064]
[SP: 1,176]
As his SP count kept climbing, bodies piled up until there was hardly any street left to step on.
People who lived in the city were packed close together.
Imagine walking down a road where everyone was dead.
What had once been a crowded street became a silent graveyard.
With one last swing, a woman wearing a baby carrier on her back dropped to the ground, her blood joining the rest as it ran toward the drain.
[SP: 1,178]
Just another one. Another body added to the mountain he had climbed over.
No different from the rest. Neither monster nor human anymore.
The Treants, too slow to keep up with him, lumbered forward. But Rowan was finished.
All the Demi-Saplings were dead. There was no sign of life left in the area.
The scythe dissolved from his hand. In its place was the shotgun.
He slid out the buckshot magazine and replaced it with dragon fire rounds.
Treants kept walking toward him, nearly a hundred of them, advancing in a line.
[Soul Devourer]
[SP: 1,176 → 600]
The shotgun came alive as the magazine ignited with a vengeful blue flame.
And with a single pull of the trigger, the cries of all who had died became a sea of fire that cleansed the world.