Chapter 339: Frustration
Over the next two days, Leo killed another twelve sandworms, while also successfully escaping from two that turned out to be Transcendent tier creatures far beyond his current means.
He didn’t bother pushing his luck with them, choosing instead to bolt to safety the moment they emerged before him, as he used a combination of [Storm Flash Traverse] and [Blade Switch] to run to safety.
It wasn’t until the thirteenth one, the last kill of the second day, that something truly shifted.
This time, after the battle ended and the beast lay eviscerated in the sand behind him, the feeling of bloodlust within him didn’t fade.
The blood-red aura clung to him. Not just on his skin or blades, but in the air around him, as it wrapped around his limbs like a second robe, flickering faintly like heat waves on a summer road, yet cold and steady in presence.
"Whoa... I’m covered in killing intent—" Leo murmured, turning his hand slowly before his eyes, as he watched the faint shimmer pulse and twist with his movement.
The aura covering him was different this time, it wasn’t just a post-battle rush or residual energy, but rather a stable state that he seemed to have achieved on his own.
The killing intent belonged to him now, and introspecting, he tried to understand why the change had occurred.
For the next two minutes, he tried his best to decipher the secret behind this feeling, however, in the end he couldn’t arrive at a conclusive result, and the blood red aura dissolved to nothing yet again, vanishing like a whisper swallowed by the wind.
"That’s the longest I’ve been able to manifest killing intent..." Leo muttered, as he exhaled through his nose and opened the codex once again, hoping to see some new text in it, something to guide him down the right path, and to his joy, new text had indeed appeared!
As he opened the manual, new text slowly appeared in gold, offering guidance in its usual ominous style.
—-------
> You no longer kill to grow.
You no longer kill to learn.
You no longer kill to test.
You now kill because you want to.
Because the act itself brings clarity.
Because the hunt no longer needs a purpose.
Your body remembers the rhythm.
Your soul has tasted the joy.
And now, the blood red refuses to fade.
> If you continue down this path, and indulge your desire to destroy to the extreme, a new world will slowly open for you.
A world where the red shows you where to strike and how to destroy.
However, once you reach that realm, there will be no coming back.
And your understanding of the codex will forever remain incomplete.
>For now, your understanding of the red is enough.
Explore the four other colors you are missing first, before delving deeper into the shades of red.
—-----
Leo read the words again.
Then once more.
And then frowned as he realized that the codex was asking him to pause his pursuit of killing intent for now.
"The fuck? Some Days you want me to understand killing intent more. But when I get closer to the truth you want me to stop? Just what the fuck do you want from me?" Leo complained, feeling justifiably pissed as the aura covering his body turned ’Maroon’ once more, displaying his frustration.
The codex was the most confusing cultivation manual to ever exist, as Leo could never quite figure out what it really wanted him to do?
The guidelines were vague.
The progress was difficult to gauge.
And eventually when he did reach close to a threshold, the manual asked him to take it slow and backtrack?
"How am I supposed to explore the other colors when you haven’t even told me what the others are?" he snapped, flipping back through the codex as if expecting it to give up more answers if he just stared hard enough.
"Am I supposed to guess? Meditate in the desert until they show up one by one like collectibles? Is that your idea of a fucking tutorial?" Leo cursed, as even though he knew that shouting would get him nowhere, he couldn’t help but shout as the frustration in his chest threatened to bubble out of control if he did not.
"FUCK!"
"What am I supposed to do now? Just stop killing until I figure out the other colors? But killing was the only fucking thing that brought me joy in life...." Leo expressed, as he clutched his fingers and balled them tightly into fists.
For a while, the maroon surrounding him grew larger and larger in size, until [Monarch’s Indifference] finally kicked in a couple minutes later and began stabilizing his mood and returning clarity to his mind.
As it wasn’t until he grew calm again, that he finally realized a key point that he had been unable to see for the last couple of days, ever since he began chasing the bloodlust like a madman.
’When was the last time I drank water?’ Leo asked himself, feeling the back of his parched throat, as he realized that he had not paused to rest or drink water in the last two days, and had also not slept a wink in the last four.
It was an almost relentless pursuit of the joy of killing, to the point where he absolutely forgot about everything else, including this world and his eventual goal of reaching the base of the mountain range, as he forgot about the mission completely.
Hence it wasn’t until [Monarch’s Indifference] kicked in, and he stopped blaming the codex for being so vague and instead asked himself as to why he was so irritated at the idea of not getting to kill for a few days, that the truth finally hit him.
He had grown addicted.
At some point, without even realizing it, he had entered a trance-like state where everything else faded away. He had been chasing the thrill of death with tunnel vision, letting the rush of combat consume him completely.
And now that he was thinking clearly, he realized just how dangerous that mindset truly was, as without even realizing, he had let himself be carried away by the bloodlust.
"Holy shit.... Maybe I do really need a break from killing—" Leo realized, as he finally understood the many dangers of trying to master the [Sevenfold Revelation Codex], where by constantly chasing a single emotion, one became blind to the fact that life was supposed to be a harmony of seven, and not the pursuit of one.