Chapter 169: Things Have Changed
Uhtred’s POV
"Ugh. I had forgotten just how weird this sensation feels," Uhtred muttered under his breath as his body rematerialized into a solid form from the teleportation travel.
Beside him, Zara did not even blink. Her spatial attunement allowed her to adjust to long-distance teleportation instantly, while Uhtred needed a second or two to clear the mild disorientation.
Still, compared to the first time he used a teleportation circle, he was several times better off, most certainly due to how much stronger he had become.
As his vision cleared, Uhtred looked around his territory, and a slight frown immediately colored his face.
This was his territory, alright, but over the course of the month he had been away, it seemed there had been some slight changes.
He turned, scanning the surroundings. He could already sense several foreign essence signatures, but he focused on the familiar ones first. He looked to the side and saw Minh Quan and...
John Allen?
What the hell is he doing here? Didn’t he go to the trials? Uhtred thought in surprise. Hold on. Now that I think about it, I actually never saw his name on the trial rankings...
Uhtred clearly remembered giving Minh Quan the directive to allow John Allen and whoever else he vetted to use his territory’s teleportation circle. But it seemed something had happened for the young soldier to have stayed back on the main continent.
Uhtred observed the expressions on both John Allen’s and Minh Quan’s faces. The two looked extremely relieved to see him, Minh Quan most especially. Something had definitely happened.
As the old Vietnamese soldier dashed forward to greet Uhtred, Uhtred immediately noticed a significant detail. His eyes locked onto Minh Quan’s right hand, or rather, the stump where his right hand should have been, and the slight frown on his face deepened into a cold expression.
Minh Quan saw the look, and the excitement on his face died down slightly, replaced by a heavy look of guilt.
"Boss..." he spoke tentatively, his eyes flitting past Uhtred toward the rest of the crew: Zara, Diya, and Dennis.
All three of them had completely changed. The aura radiating off them was terrifyingly heavy and dense, far beyond anything Minh Quan had ever felt. And it wasn’t just about how dense their auras were alone. There was a deeper layer to their change, as if they had all become completely different people.
Zara stood like a statue of ice. Dennis, the calm and collected man, also had a strange air of coldness to him. Even Diya, the cheerful, bright girl who used to smile at everyone, looked at Minh Quan’s missing arm with a flat look that carried zero warmth.
Minh Quan, as a war veteran from pre-integration Earth, recognized that look very clearly...
That was the look of someone who had seen the horrors of war. The deaths of many. Except, this looked deeper than anything he’d experienced.
Subtly, without even realizing it, he took a slight step back. It was then that Uhtred finally tore his gaze away from Minh Quan’s arm and looked him dead in the eye.
"Who did this?" he asked.
By this point, Vanezzi and the men who had been with him near the dungeon entrance were walking over toward Uhtred. They tried to put on an air of nonchalance, but the terrifying aura emanating from the four figures at the forefront hit them like a wall.
It was not just Vanezzi. The two men behind him felt it more harshly, their lower levels not providing the same tolerance Vanezzi had. Without needing to be told, they became meek and polite, stepping forward cautiously.
Vanezzi still tried to put on a brave face, but it was obvious to anyone that he was feeling extremely tense as he approached Uhtred. He stopped at what he clearly thought was a safe distance, making sure not to step anywhere near Uhtred’s personal space.
"So you are the great Uhtred," he started. "It’s an honor to finally meet—"
"Minh Quan. Who did this?" Uhtred asked again, cutting off Vanezzi entirely, not even bothering to acknowledge his existence. His eyes were trained solely on Minh Quan with a calm quality. The coldness had even left now. It was obvious he had deduced who the culprits were. He was just waiting for Minh Quan himself to speak with his own mouth.
Minh Quan suddenly dropped to his knees, a torn expression on his face.
"Boss... I failed! I failed the task you left me with! I couldn’t prevent them from forcing their way in! I couldn’t stop them from using the dungeon as they liked!"
"Minh Quan. Who did this?" Uhtred asked again, not replying to Minh Quan’s tearful words.
The old Vietnamese man finally looked up at Uhtred again, and this time his teary eyes changed from self-loathing and inadequacy to a burning thirst for retribution.
"It was them," his gaze turned to Vanezzi and his men standing to the side.
"O—Okay, Uhtred... Listen to me, let’s be reasonable," Vanezzi stuttered, trying to redeem himself as the attention shifted to him. "We just wanted to use your dungeon. Broaden our experience. But your man was being difficult. The familia cannot take such disrespect, so I was ordered to—"
Before he could complete his sentence, Vanezzi suddenly felt his perspective shift.
While still completely conscious, his head slid off his neck, severed so cleanly that he hadn’t even realized what had happened until his head was on the ground. It was only then, as his consciousness faded in his last moments, that he seemed to process having felt a slight sting on his neck when it happened.
Behind his still-standing body, which had turned into a blood fountain, the two men flanking him suffered the same fate. The air attack Uhtred used sliced cleanly through Vanezzi’s neck, then continued to behead the other two men as well. Their deaths were even worse. One, who was shorter, was bisected from the middle of his head, while the taller one was sliced from the shoulder up.
John Allen, despite his experience as a soldier, couldn’t help feeling a deep chill at how easily and brutally Uhtred had killed those men. Minh Quan, still on his knees, was also taken aback at how easily Uhtred killed the three men. But he recovered, and his shock quickly morphed into a deep, satisfying sense of vindication.
Perhaps most surprising were the hundred newcomers behind Uhtred and the crew. They didn’t look the slightest bit fazed by what had just happened. They had all seen horrific deaths back in Australia. The Trial of Hunger, in particular, had made many of these people commit acts even more heinous than this just to survive.
As for the rest of Uhtred’s crew: Zara, Dennis, and Diya. They looked even more unfazed.
Zara turned and focused on the dungeon portal a short distance away. "There are more of them inside the dungeon. About a hundred or so."
"I’ll take care of them," Diya said, heading for the dungeon as if she were going to deal with a minor nuisance.
"Don’t kill them all," Dennis said, being the voice of reason as usual, though it wasn’t out of sympathy at all. "We might need to interrogate some of them."
As the crew began moving into action, Uhtred leveled his gaze at John Allen and Minh Quan.
"So, can someone please tell me what the fuck is going on here? Why the hell are there hostile parties moving freely inside my territory? Grinding inside my dungeon?" He looked at John Allen. "And you. How are you even here? I thought you were somewhere in the trials?"
John Allen sighed.
"Things have completely changed since you all left, Uhtred..."