The Hidden Monster of House Vale

Chapter 102: Chapter - 102 - The Mortal Who Hunts Realm Masters

Erion had been born with only one great crime in the eyes of the world.

He had been born poor.

Half elf. Half human.

In this cultivation realm, where bloodline often decided a person’s worth before they had even taken their first breath, that alone was enough to condemn him to a life at the bottom.

His older sister, Elaria, was also a half elf. Unlike Erion, she possessed a talent for poison and had managed to become the Realm Master level through nothing but her own efforts. She had never received proper training or education. Because she was a half elf, the elves had denied her the opportunities given to those of pure elven blood.

Their father had once been the head of the city guards. He had been respected by the ordinary people and had spent his life protecting the city. Even Prince Rumil, when he was still a child, had often been under their father’s protection whenever he went out into the city.

Their father’s loyalty had never been questioned.

Until the day everything changed.

Prince Rumil had still been young, while Erion’s father was only in the early Body Tempering Realm. Compared to the powerful cultivators surrounding the royal family, he was little more than a mortal.

That day, a raging bull suddenly charged toward the young prince.

There was no time to think.

Erion’s father stepped between them.

He fought the raging beast with everything he had. When the bull broke through his defense and charged directly toward Rumil, he grabbed the prince with one hand and pulled him away, placing his own body between the beast and the child.

He endured the attack.

He fought until he finally brought the raging bull down.

But he was badly injured.

Erion had grown up hearing about that day. He had once believed it was a story about bravery. He had believed his father would be rewarded for saving the life of a member of the royal family.

He had been wrong.

After this incident, my father was called to the royal court. He was happy because he thought he might be rewarded for his brave act.

Erion’s expression darkened as he stood surrounded by the city guards.

But then they did the most unthinkable thing they could. My father was punished for simply touching Prince Rumil.

His hands tightened.

Prince Rumil was an elf, and my father was human. My mother was an elf too, but when she married my father, her status was dropped, and we were forced to live in the backward areas.

That was the world Erion had grown up in.

A world where blood mattered more than loyalty. Where saving a prince could become a crime if the wrong person touched him. Where being born half elf meant being denied opportunities that others received simply because of their blood.

His father had eventually been sentenced to death.

But before that happened, the old guard captain had made sure his children were safe. He hid Erion and Elaria away, doing everything he could to keep them from suffering the same fate.

Their mother had done everything she could as well.

She had tried to flee with her children.

But during their escape, a stray arrow found her.

The arrow had been poisoned.

She survived.

Barely.

Years had passed, yet the poison remained inside her body, slowly eating away at her strength. It was not impossible to cure her, but the poison was no ordinary poison.

It had been created using the astral energy of an Elven Realm Master.

Prince Rumil himself.

There was no cure for it within this realm. Only the person who had created the poison could completely remove it.

So the responsibility of their broken family eventually fell onto Erion’s shoulders.

He wanted his sister to become a powerful and well-known Realm Master. He wanted to cure his mother.

And he wanted revenge.

Elaria helped him however she could. Her knowledge of poison had become the only weapon available to them. She prepared poisons for him, studied them day and night, and searched endlessly for a way to keep their mother alive.

She worked eighteen to twenty hours a day whenever she could, spending years studying poisons and their effects.

Still, nothing was enough.

The problem was not knowledge.

It was power.

There was something required to cure their mother that Elaria simply did not possess the strength to obtain.

Erion understood that.

That was why he had chosen a different path.

He had no cultivation realm.

He was a mortal.

But he had become strong in another way.

Stealth.

Patience.

Poison.

He hunted Realm Masters when they were most vulnerable. He struck when they were alone, when their guard was lowered, or when they least expected an attack. One against one, he could fight almost any mortal.

But this was different.

There were nearly twenty-five guards surrounding him.

Several of them were Realm Masters.

Even for Erion, this was too much.

He had already killed several of them using poison, but his strength was running out. The bodies of his victims had been mutilated beyond recognition. It had been deliberate.

Fear was another weapon.

The sight of those corpses had spread terror throughout the city.

That was how Erion had earned his name.

The Man Eater.

And now, the city guards had finally cornered him.

”Give it up, boy. We know it’s you. You are the Man Eater. Now you’ll pay for your crimes,” said a city guard.

”You think you can fight all of us?” said another city guard.

”Listen, boy. You still have a future. Just surrender, or you’ll die at this very young age,” said the head guard, though he remained wary of Erion.

Erion laughed.

”Hahaah... future? What kind of future are you talking about, you bootlickers? Even though most of you are human and half elf, you’ll still try to defend that bastard Rumil.”

There was anger in his voice.

But there was something else too.

Disappointment.

He looked at the guards surrounding him and wondered how people who had suffered under the same system could still protect the people responsible for it.

”How dare you try to disrespect our prince, you murderer!” shouted one of the half elves.

”Guards, kill him and make sure not a single part of his body becomes recognisable,” said another guard.

The city guards were anxious.

They knew exactly what Erion was capable of.

But the rule was the rule.

Anyone who openly disrespected the royal family would die.

”Attack,” said the head guard calmly.

Several guards immediately began gathering astral energy. The others rushed forward, their bodies reinforced by armor formed from astral energy. Their fists carried enough power to crush an ordinary mortal.

They surrounded Erion from several directions.

Erion waited.

The first guard swung his fist.

Erion ducked beneath it.

Another attacked from his side.

Erion twisted away.

Three more rushed him at once.

Then Erion jumped.

His body rose into the air, and in the next instant, he disappeared.

The guards froze.

”Where—?”

Erion appeared behind one of them. His hand seized the man’s neck, and before the guard could react, a thin needle pierced his skin.

Erion released him.

The guard staggered forward.

His eyes widened as black foam immediately began spilling from his mouth. A moment later, he collapsed.

By the time the others realized what had happened, he was already dead.

Erion moved again.

Several guards began throwing astral projectiles from a distance, hoping to limit his movement.

It didn’t work.

His speed was his greatest advantage. He slipped between attacks, moved around bodies, and disappeared whenever someone tried to corner him.

The head guard watched carefully.

He did not attack immediately.

He studied Erion’s movements, following every step and every shift of weight, watching every direction in which Erion disappeared.

He knew there had to be a pattern.

Then Erion suddenly jumped toward him.

His leg swung toward the head guard’s face.

The head guard’s eyes sharpened.

He caught Erion’s leg.

”Got you.”

With a powerful motion, he threw Erion into the wall.

Bang!

Erion’s body slammed into the stone.

Pain exploded through his back.

He screamed.

For a moment, he could not breathe.

His body slid down the wall until he was sitting on the ground.

His back felt broken.

He was not a Realm Master.

He was still only a mortal.

No matter how skilled he had become, there were limits to what his body could endure.

Erion looked toward the sky.

The noise around him began to fade.

He knew.

This might be it.

His eyes slowly closed.

For the first time in years, his thoughts returned to the two people who mattered most to him.

His mother.

His sister.

What a failure...

His breathing became weak.

I was never able to become a good brother or a good son...

His fingers trembled.

If only I was a Realm Master...

Then he heard a voice.

”Erion, are you okay?”

His eyes opened.

Elaria.

She had come looking for him.

She knew her brother had planned to empty one of Prince Rumil’s vaults, and it had been getting late. Erion still had not returned home, and she had become worried.

So she had followed him.

And now she had found him.

Her younger brother was sitting against a wall, unable to stand.

Surrounding him were nearly twenty Realm Masters.

Elaria froze.

For one moment, she couldn’t process what she was seeing.

Then everything hit her at once.

Anger.

Sadness.

Fear.

Rage.

She wanted to destroy every person standing in front of her brother.

But she knew she couldn’t.

She was a Realm Master, unlike Erion, but her cultivation was not focused on direct combat. Poison was her path.

She had chosen that path for one reason.

Her mother.

She had spent years studying poisons because she wanted to find a way to cure her. But the poison inside their mother had come from Prince Rumil himself.

There was no cure in this realm.

The poison had been created through Rumil’s astral energy, and only the person who created it could completely remove it.

Elaria had refused to accept that.

She had kept her mother alive for years. She had studied every poison she could find. She had experimented, researched, failed, and started again.

Yet after all those years, the answer remained beyond her reach.

She lacked the power to obtain what was needed.

And now Erion was lying wounded in front of her.

Elaria rushed toward him.

”Erion, are you okay?”

She immediately tried to lift him onto her shoulders.

The guards became alert.

Erion looked at her with disbelief.

”Sister, you shouldn’t have... come here... Just run. Take care of mother. I’ll be a burden,” said Erion.

”Nooo, how can you be a burden? Because of you, we are so close to curing mother,” said Elaria.

Her voice trembled.

She wasn’t willing to leave him behind.

Not after everything they had already lost.

One of the guards stepped forward.

”Girl, your brother is a murderer. Move, or we will cut you with him.”

Elaria looked at him.

Her eyes were filled with fury.

”Nooo, if my brother is a murderer, then Prince Rumil is even worse than scum, murdering those who protect him. He is the biggest scum.”

The atmosphere changed.

Several guards stared at her in disbelief.

She had just insulted the prince.

Again.

”You bitch! It seems like these siblings have a death wish... Let’s just give them what they want—a death so brutal that people will fear just to badmouth Prince Rumil. He is our saviour. He is doing so many things for us half elves, yet these siblings are so ungrateful and have murdered so many,” said another guard.

One of the guards immediately stepped forward.

Erion’s eyes widened.

Despite the pain tearing through his body, he moved.

He pushed Elaria behind him.

His legs trembled as he forced himself upright. He spread his arms, placing his body between his sister and the approaching guard.

He could barely stand.

His back felt like it had been shattered.

But he still stood.

”You bastard! I’ll not let you hurt my sister as long as I am alive. Come.”

Four or five guards immediately moved forward.

Their swords rose.

Erion knew he couldn’t fight them.

He knew his body could no longer move properly.

Yet he didn’t step aside.

He didn’t run.

He simply stood there, protecting the only family he had left.

Then something happened.

The guards who had moved forward suddenly stopped.

Their bodies jerked.

A strange sound came from beneath them.

Shhk!

Bloody veins erupted from the ground.

They pierced through the guards bodies from below, twisting through flesh and armor with terrifying speed.

The guards didn’t even have time to scream.

Their bodies were torn apart.

Blood splashed across the ground.

Their remains collapsed as if something had sucked the soul straight from their bodies.

Silence fell.

Erion stared.

Elaria stared.

Even the remaining guards froze.

Then a voice came from above them.

”So noisy... Trying to kill an injured man who is just protecting his sister... That’s shameful.”

Everyone looked up.

A man was floating in the air.

He had blonde hair and a smile on his face.

Slowly, he descended.

His feet touched the ground in front of Erion and Elaria.

The head guard’s expression changed.

He had been uneasy from the beginning. His instincts had warned him that something was wrong.

Now he understood why.

His premonition had not been wrong.