Kill, replenish, repeat

In comparison to the courtyards where the strongest cultivator he came across was someone in Tier 3, starting from where the outer members of the Asta Family lived at, Tier 3 cultivators were all over.

Be it the personal guards for the particular courtyards, or the owners of them, Tier 3 cultivators were everywhere due to which Felix was forced to turn even more alert unless he wanted his movements to alert anyone and cause him a lot of trouble.

Still, due to the lack of any Tier 4 cultivator in his targets and how no one was expecting any sort of attack due to their status, Felix spent three hours killing everyone he came across.

And like this, his original kill count which was somewhere around three hundred, skyrocketed to more than a thousand.

After all, inside the bigger courtyards lived not just the outer members of Asta Family, but also their personal guards and servants due to which Felix killed so many humans in three hours.

As for Felix who did all of this, he was now in a situation where he didn't mind joking around about the silent massacre he was committing.

Similarly, he felt happy that unlike his black cloak the Sword of Kronos didn't retain the blood which covered it due to which it remained white in colour despite how many humans he had killed already.

Massaging his right arm while walking since it had already turned numb and was hurting due to how many times he slashed it in the past five hours, Felix looked at the time and threw away the idea of stopping for a while and resting a little.

Having jumped over the walls and entered the perimeter when the time was reaching 11 P.M, Felix now only had around an hour or two before people started waking up.

Therefore, he had no choice but to bear with the tiredness and continue.

Luckily for him though, the number of main members in the Asta Family was less than half of what the outer members made up of due to which he wouldn't be expending himself too much physically.

The same however couldn't be said regarding his Astral Force.

…

"Haaa…..Haaa….. That was close."

Pressing down on his stomach to stop the bleeding, Felix while gritting his teeth looked at the two corpses in front of him.

Kicking one of the two dead men away to quench his anger, Felix realised that he had been too arrogant due to which he almost died.

The same way he did before, Felix after entering the core region continued jumping inside the courtyards and used his Astral Sense very delicately to find out the number of targets he had first.

When doing this however, he was forced to be more delicate than before because every once in a while he'd encounter Tier 4 guards or members of the Asta Family.

While most of them were asleep though, Felix couldn't take the risk of being lax because they could possibly be awake and sense him due to which he spent almost thrice as time as before in just detecting his targets.

Like always, once he did that and marked all the locations and targets inside his mind, Felix checked the insides of his soul and frowned a little from seeing that he forgot to rest and replenish his Astral Force after using the Sword of Kronos against the Tier 4 guard he killed before coming here.

Still, considering that he had just enough to kill at least two Tier 4 cultivator, Felix who felt pressured by the possibility of running out of time chose to not stop for now and instead replenish his Astral Force after sweeping through this courtyard.

With such thoughts, Felix entered through an open window and quickly killed everyone he found while making his way towards the main bedroom.

And this was also where the unexpected happened.

Entering the room, Felix lazily raised his hand and swung the Sword of Kronos down as if he was chopping a cabbage when the sleeping man's eyes shot open and he sensibly rolled to the side.

After all, if he chose to use his hand or some weapon to stop the incoming blade, he'd have ended up dying anyway.

Getting to his feet, the man didn't bother asking any questions and lunged straight towards Felix while summoning a black gauntlet that covered his right arm.

At the same time, the tier 4 guard who was asleep in the opposite room woke up as well due to hearing the sound his master's foot made and darted straight over her.

Next, instead of attacking Felix or waiting for an opening, with eyes full of determination he jumped towards Felix and grabbed his waist tightly making it impossible to break free of his grasp and move anytime soon.

Seeing this, Felix instantly poured his Astral Force inside the Sword of Kronos and slowed time by four times on instinct.

Once he did that, everything turned slow while Felix who could still move like normal raised his sword and pierced it straight through the approaching man's forehead and dug his sword straight down the head of the man who was holding him.

And this was when things went south.

Around the same time that Felix finished killing the two men who were also the last survivors inside this courtyard, his smug smile froze as he turned pale for two reasons.

One, his Astral Force had been completely depleted, and two, the man who was lunging towards him continued moving despite having died and punched him straight in the gut.

Bam!

Thrown backwards from the force the dead man's punch had behind it, the black gauntlet unexpectedly shredded his clothes and left a gash so deep that a part of his ribs were visible through it.

Luckily, even though he was thrown back, Felix forcibly stopped himself before his back ended up being slammed against the wall due to which he was sure that no one should have been woken up.

Unfortunately, doing this caused Felix's injury to worsen as he coughed up blood and fell to his knees with a face full of pain.

Gritting his teeth and venting his anger on the dead man who had grabbed him, without whom he would've been able to sidestep and not let the man punch him, Felix took out a medical pill and consumed it after which he bared with the pain and applied some ointment on his wound which made him feel as if someone was burning his flesh.

Following this, Felix recovered his Astral Force, and swept the house dry of all the treasures inside it just like he did until now and left towards the next courtyard.

After this though, Felix no longer entered a new courtyard before replenishing all of his Astral Force.