The members of the Saliver family reacted quickly.
The moment Caelum broke into the estate, they knew the attacker was a powerful enemy.
Not merely powerful in the ordinary sense.
None of them had ever seen a slash like that.
So they fled without hesitation.
The butler had gone to his death only to buy the Saliver family a little time.
All of it was pointless.
Caelum’s Observation Haki covered a radius of 30 km. No matter how they ran, there was no way they could escape his perception in such a short time.
Fear fell over the Saliver family like a shroud.
They rushed out of the mansion in panic, clambering over windows and fences with none of a noble’s dignity left.
At that moment, all they wanted was to live.
That was exactly what Caelum wanted them to feel.
Despair.
Terror.
"Run!"
"But our wealth..."
"What time do you think this is? Forget that. Staying alive comes first. The butler went to buy time. I hope he can hold the attacker back. Hurry up. Stop dragging your feet!"
A noblewoman with heavy makeup gathered up her skirt and awkwardly climbed over a fence.
Several men of the Saliver family led over horses and were just about to mount.
A slash tore through the air.
It arrived from the mansion in an instant.
The distorted air rushed into view, freezing despair and fear as the last expressions on their faces.
With one stroke, the raging impact shredded all thirteen Saliver family members into pieces.
Even the horses were cut in half at the waist.
Steady, unhurried footsteps echoed inside the mansion.
A fear enough to drive people mad pressed down on every heart.
Caelum was slaughtering his way through the estate.
Inside the study, a member of the Saliver family saw through the window as those trying to flee were cut down on the spot.
His face went pale.
With trembling hands, he took a flintlock pistol from the drawer.
Then he put it to his head and pulled the trigger.
The gunshot rang out.
A body dropped weakly to the floor.
"Quick, escort the lords out!"
A group of guards protected several Saliver family members as they fled.
When they reached the corridor, all they saw was red.
Across more than twenty meters of hallway lay nothing but bodies and blood.
The guards stopped at once.
Their hearts nearly leapt straight into their throats.
To be honest, they had seen scenes like this before.
It was only that in the past, they were not the ones dying.
One noble wet himself on the spot. Then he turned and tried to run back like a madman, without even the courage to cross the corridor.
"No. I do not want to die!"
"I do not want to die!"
Cold blade light swept past.
More than ten guards and three members of the Saliver family were separated from their heads.
The remaining force of the blade light did not fade. It cut through the mansion and flew into the sky before vanishing.
Before long, the entire Saliver estate sank into silence.
Only hideous slash marks remained, telling of the brutal slaughter that had taken place.
A young girl climbed down from a second floor window, trembling so badly she could barely move.
She pressed both hands over her mouth, not daring to make a sound, her face bloodless.
But when she saw the miserable state of her family members and the guards, she failed to hold back.
She fell forward and retched on the ground, tears running down her face.
"Ugh..."
"Miss!"
A maid followed after her, pulled the girl up, and ran.
As servants of nobles, people like them had been thoroughly tamed and enslaved. Their loyalty went so deep that they could give their lives for their masters.
To the nobles, however, they were only tools that could be discarded at any time.
There was not much difference between them and the commoners who could be hunted at will.
Yet before the two of them had taken more than a few steps, they stopped.
Caelum stood in front of them with his blade in hand, as though he had been waiting there on purpose.
The maid immediately shielded the noble girl behind her.
She drew a dagger and charged at Caelum without hesitation.
"Miss, run..."
Before she could finish, Caelum kicked her away.
The force snapped her spine outright.
The noble girl had not even reacted before Caelum grabbed her by the throat and lifted her with one hand.
Suffocation closed in.
Tears streamed down the noble girl’s face as she begged.
"I... I do not want to die. Please let me go. As long as you let me live, I will do anything you ask..."
A crisp crack sounded.
Caelum broke her neck cleanly.
At dusk, a group of people returned to the Saliver estate on horseback.
The Saliver family members who had gone out for the hunting game stopped outside the manor.
Their faces changed drastically.
Before they left, the Saliver estate had been perfectly intact.
Now flames towered into the sky, the blazing fire lighting half the heavens red like sunset clouds.
"What happened here?"
When they drew closer, they discovered a young man sitting leisurely on a stone outside the estate.
Their eyes immediately filled with caution, and they ordered the guards to surround him.
"Boy, what happened here?"
Crunch.
Caelum took a bite of the fresh apple in his hand.
His casual gaze swept over the people before him.
After waiting for so long, they had finally returned.
He did not answer their question.
"A family should be complete."
The scorching fire burned fiercely, reducing the Saliver family to ashes.
A noble family that had been inherited for several hundred years vanished just like that, leaving nothing behind.
Soon, the fire alarmed the local Army branch within the territory.
When a group of officers arrived, the Saliver family’s estate was still burning.
Firelight shone over their faces, each one ugly to the extreme.
One officer lit a cigar with trembling hands.
Without it, he could not calm himself.
"This is going to be a major incident..."
Within the Empire, nobles were often assassinated or killed in struggles for power and profit inside their own families.
That was nothing new.
It could not even be called a major affair.
But an entire noble family being exterminated was another matter altogether.
As the absolute ruling class of the Empire, nobles could never tolerate something like this.
Once ordinary people realized nobles were not beings who stood absolutely above them, once they realized nobles were also made of flesh and blood, that nobles could also be resisted and killed, the consequences would be unimaginable.
It would make the already turbulent Empire shake even harder.
As expected, once the Empire’s upper ranks learned that the Saliver family had been wiped out, the high nobles flew into a rage.
They swore to cut the culprit into a thousand pieces.
Those high nobles might not have had any real friendship with the Saliver family, but their position in identity and class was the same.
Their anger came purely from the fact that their rule had been challenged.
This was an extremely dangerous signal.
In less than a day, the military investigation produced a result.
At the Empire’s high level meeting, Caelum’s wanted poster was slammed onto the table.
"This is the culprit behind the massacre of the Saliver family!"