Farmer or Cultivator? Why not both?

The Marina spies had maintained a safe distance. Most people should not have been able to sense them out here, but Ren was not most people. Hunter Sense was a passive skill, active at all times. Ren knew the difference between leaves stirred by wind and leaves stirred by a person. The skill multiplied his senses more than fivefold, sharpening everything around him into something closer to a second sight. He had picked one of them out the moment they shifted position, and that was all he needed.

Rokku clucked loudly. The spirit animal had not known what was in Ren’s mind, but he understood the moment three black-clad, hooded figures crept out of the brush. Rokku could sense that these men carried a modicum of mana, and they had refined it well enough for what they were, but they were no cultivators. Not even close.

Their cover was blown. Now it was either run or fight. They chose to fight.

They surged forward, bodies burning with mana reinforcement. Two went for Ren, one of them closing in with a flying kick. The third broke off toward the spirit animal. They could kill Ren if they had to, but a spirit animal was far too valuable to simply slaughter, and capturing it might ultimately prove more important than learning how Ren produced the blue milk.

Ren held his ground and raised his arm to meet the flying kick. A collision of energies, but it was the spy who recoiled from the impact, not Ren. The second came in right after, pulling a dagger and driving it toward Ren’s abdomen.

Fast. Ren swept his arm and caught the spy’s wrist, pulling him forward and burying a punch deep into his gut. The spy’s eyes went bloodshot instantly and he staggered back, giving way for the first to press the attack once more.

Ren almost chuckled. They truly were not cultivators. Knight-level at best, with enough proficiency to channel ki into their bodies for reinforcement, but nothing beyond that. Did they not understand that mana reinforcement alone could never bring down a cultivator? No amount of sheer physical force crossed that gap. It was like throwing stones at a wall that kept growing thicker.

They actually think they can win. This is pitiful.

The first spy proved to be an enthusiastic kicker, throwing roundhouse after side kick without pause, relentless and mechanical in his rhythm. Each one carried enough force to fell a tree, and under different circumstances against a different opponent, it would have been an impressive display. Against Ren, he simply brushed each one aside, slapping the kicks away as though swatting at a slow and predictable thing.

"Who sent you?" Ren asked, his voice even.

The spy said nothing.

"Then you are of no use to me." His eyes took on a cold, flat glint, the kind that settled into a person who had made a decision and felt nothing complicated about it. He had his reservations about killing, but it was difficult to extend mercy to someone who had come to his home with the clear intention and ability to take his life. His cultivation made the whole thing easier still. There was a distance to it, a remove, that he had not felt before he reached this level.

The spy roared, loaded up his fist, and drove it straight at Ren’s jaw. It was a bold attack. Had it landed cleanly, Ren would have lost teeth without question.

But it was not fast enough. Ren caught the punch, and the spy went very still as the full reality of his situation landed on him all at once.

"This is how you throw a punch." Mana gathered around Ren’s fist, bright and dense, coiling tight. He drove it forward with a speed and force that broke through the spy’s ribcage entirely, crushing inward, opening a hole in his chest that should not have been possible from a single blow.

The man’s legs surrendered immediately. He folded to the ground and did not move again.

It had been almost too easy. Ren had not fully grasped the true extent of what his cultivation had made him. By cultivator standards, he was considered average, somewhere in the middle of a long road that stretched far ahead of him. But the gap between a cultivator and someone who simply was not one was so wide that it barely resembled a real fight. It was closer to a demonstration.

The second spy saw his companion fall and went rigid. Fear crossed his face openly, and for a moment he looked like a man who was about to make the sensible decision. But he did not run. If anything, watching his comrade die drove something harder into him. His mana surged. He did not have enough to project an outward aura, but the atmospheric energy around him stirred in response to it all the same, reacting to the pressure of his intent. Ren stood still and watched with quiet patience, observing.

The spy launched himself forward with both fists swinging fast and wild, throwing everything he had with relentless, furious energy. He was not technical about it. He was angry, and he hit like someone who had decided that anger alone might be enough. Stopping each strike came easily, but the spy was constant and unrelenting, not leaving Ren a clean opening to end it.

"I am not killing you," Ren said, almost conversationally. He caught the spy’s arm mid-swing, pulled him cleanly off balance, and brought a precise chop down on the back of his neck. The spy dropped without a sound.

Rokku had already finished with his.

The spirit animal had no accurate gauge of his own strength and was nowhere near skilled at restraining it. He had never needed to learn. The spy who faced him had made the mistake of underestimating him, which was an easy mistake to make. A large rooster standing upright on two legs, however unusual, did not project the image of something particularly dangerous. It looked like a novelty. Something strange and out of place that had wandered too far from a farm.

The spy went on the offensive without much hesitation, launching himself forward with confidence. He was the largest of the three by a significant margin, broad through the shoulders, and he moved like someone who had spent years learning to use that size as a lever against smaller opponents. He dipped his right shoulder and drove forward, intending to stab through and grapple the spirit animal to the ground.

Rokku did not move a single step. His expression, as always, remained exactly as it was, stern and unreadable and utterly unbothered.

The blow landed, but Rokku did not fall. Instead, he charged his aura outward in a sudden burst, and the spy was flung backward from the sheer force radiating off him, stumbling and catching himself before he could tumble entirely. He looked up with wide eyes, recalibrating. Then Rokku swung his arms once, almost casually, the way a person might wave something away, and two energy blades cut clean through the spy, slicing through his torso and both arms with a precision that left no room for survival. The spy was dead before he reached the ground, before he had even processed what had been done to him.

Rokku looked down at the result without visible reaction.

"What a mess." Ren surveyed the scene. His clothes were stained dark with blood, and two bodies were sprawled across his lawn in a way that was going to require some attention before the day was done.

[The god of war loves your brutality. You have earned +2 favour points.]

Yeah, yeah. I am entertaining, I know.

He walked over to the one still breathing, lying unconscious in the grass.

"Now for some intel."