After he killed the last of them, Himo walked up to his four allies. “How should we divide the loot?”

“Divide?” Stunned, the four drifted their gazes over the thirty. Seji looked surprised. “But you did all by yourself! Shouldn’t you be the one to take all of it?”

Himo shook his head. “Thanks to your efforts, I got the violin. However, you didn’t get anything—I thought to divide this at least.”

They all fell in thought at those words, but none of them said anything.

Himo smiled. "For now, let's put the loot on the ground." He grabbed the storage ring from a corpse and emptied it, placing everything it had at the side. The others glanced at each other, nodded, and did the same.

A few minutes later, they had sorted out three piles. Weapons, treasures, and gold coins. The first two spanned from swords to katars and from weird stones to instruments. Storage rings were put in the treasure's piles. The last one, the gold coins, made up a small hill which reached the height of Himo's knees.

“Wow.” Seji swept his gaze on the piles, dwelling on the weapons’ pile.

Shela held her chin. “They robbed quite a lot of people! To have all this they might’ve assailed over a hundred disciples!” Both she and the siblings glanced at the treasures’ pile but didn’t linger on it too much.

With each having their own thoughts, they turned toward Himo. They believed it should be him who would choose how to distribute everything.

“So many!” Himo rolled over the gold coins, ignoring both treasures and weapons. Once in a while, he would pick several coins with both hands and throw them up, letting them rain down on him. A blissful expression covered his face throughout the whole scene.

The four were speechless.

“Ah!” After a minute, he stopped. Coughing, he tried to dispel the awkwardness. “I’ve seen their items and I don’t care about them, feel free to take all of them. I only want these gold coins.”

“Are you sure?” Shela raised an eyebrow.

“It’s fine, there is still something else I have to pick anyway.”

She tilted her head but didn’t make further questions. 

Himo put every gold coin in the storage, then looked upward. A smile grew on his face. Let’s see what there’s up there… As the four divided the remaining loot between each other, Himo ran up to the wall.

He placed a hand on the hard stone blocks. A finger breadth fissure divided each block from the other, giving a handhold to grab to. Its dryness and roughness gave no way to slippiness. Thus, he began to climb.

Stone block after stone block, he swapped between grasping the fissure with his hands to posing his feet in them, gradually climbing to a higher spot.

Watching him, the other four gasped. 

“What is he doing?” Reiji shot a glance at Seji.

“I have no idea.”

“Wait… could he be trying to…” Shela widened her eyes. “Take away the chandelier?”

Serdis nearly blacked out. “No way, that’s not possible… even he wouldn’t do… that…”

"He jumped on the chandelier." Seji stared at him blankly.

The four looked at each other, exchanging a deadpan expression. After a moment of silence followed by nods expressing mutual understanding, they took out a wooden torch each. Done that, they returned their glances upward.

“Ah! I had thought it was weird for a chandelier to make all this light!” The voice of the child on the chandelier reached each corner of the hall. But the culprit didn’t care about it.

Himo looked at five jewels in surprise while dangling from an arm of the chandelier. Each jewel stood in place of a candle, bright light coming from each of them. Their colour purple, yet the light lacked its influence, resembling normal sunlight.

[They are crystals.]

Crystals? Himo blinked.

[This information requires 1000 BS points to unlock.]

Himo rolled his eyes and climbed up the chandelier. Compared to its height which approached ten times his, the child seemed a small figure trying to climb on a huge luminous tree. 

Hanging from the top canopy, he pressed his feet on the ceiling and pulled. Veins emerged on arms and legs as his face reddened from the exertion, but the chandelier didn’t move at all. He narrowed his eyes and crossed his legs around the top canopy, freeing his hands.

Knowing that pulling would get him nowhere, he took out the scythe. Its tip pierced the ceiling around the chandelier, digging it out a bit with each thrust. In a few minutes, he reduced the area surrounding the ceiling into a mass of dug out holes, the chandelier held only by a thin line of stone.

The chandelier morphed.

Multiple blades stuck out of the column and spun around it, splitting everything on their path. And Himo stood on one of those blade’s path. Unable to dodge from his position, he could only block it. To do so, he needed a shield. A shield able to resist any attack, one that wouldn’t break no matter what it fought—

The violin.

Despite the momentum of the blade, the impact on the violin was no different from hitting a slab of the hardest steel, shattering the blade upon impact. Using the instant he gained, he slashed the thin line of stone with his scythe, severing it.

The chandelier began to drop—the light from its crystals vanished, replaced by darkness.

"Ah!" Thunderous wind assaulted Himo's eardrums like a ramming cascade. The floor neared on him. Wasting time meant falling to his death, he knew that too well. His gaze shot to the walls.

Grabbing the chandelier dropping at his side, he threw it in the storage. Then, he spread arms and moved legs slightly forward. Aided by his tail and past experience, shifting to the right position was easy.

His lips curled up.

An invisible platform coalesced under his feet—it thrust him to the wall. And a second one halted him at just an arm's length from crashing on it. Dropping parallel to the wall, Himo raised his hands.

He took out the scythe.

Slashing with the scythe against the wall, Himo grinned. Like this, my fall will be stoppe—what?! To his disbelief, the sharpness of the scythe cut through the wall so easily that his fall barely slowed down.

Why are these walls so squishy?!

[The User is clearly getting angry at the wrong thing.]

Now’s not the moment, let me focus!

Himo stared grudgingly at the ever-growing fissure on the wall. He shifted his balance and stepped over the scythe with both feet, holding it with a single hand. After taking a deep breath, he drew the violin with his free hand—and slammed its neck in the fissure.

While the scythe sliced easily through the wall, the violin’s larger thickness slowed down the fall to a speed where Himo could survive the impact.

“Haha! This is truly the greatest shield!” Laughing, he crashed on the floor. As a cloud of dust rose from his “return”, Himo waved at the four. “I’m back!”

Seji rubbed his temples as if about to explode. “Himo.”

“Yes?”

“Was that needed?”

“That?”

“That.”

Himo pondered for an entire second before answering. Then, he assumed a straight face. "Yep. It was fun."

Seji stared at him blankly. The remaining three, meanwhile, didn't even listen to the conversation—they had already given up on reasoning with the child.

[The User now possesses 3785 gold coins and 5 crystals. Considering the current status of the User, it is a surprising result.]

Oh, I never thought you would praise me lik—wait, what are you implying with that?! Himo frowned. Just how high are your standards? Didn’t you see how I killed all those disciples despite their higher cultivation level?

[The system is disappointed. Never would it have expected that the User would be satisfied by killing weak disciples of weak sects in a weak place of a weak world.]

Himo blinked. He wasn’t ready to hear so many consecutive ‘weak’. But something else then caught his attention. Weak world?

[The strength of the inhabitants on this planet is lower compared to most other planets. Further information on this topic is currently locked.]

Himo pondered for a moment.

And then broke into a smile. System, if you’re trying to foreshadow how I will visit other planets and force everyone to submit with but a snap of my fingers, you should try to be more subtle.

[The system never said any of that.]

Himo didn’t hear those words. He hadn’t paid attention to them at all—he was busy changing plans. The situation had changed, the ruins had become obsolete!

“Let’s go outside! We’ve lost enough time in this place!”

Outside? Lost enough time? Hearing those words, the four felt exasperated. Didn’t you say just a few minutes ago that we were going to conquer this remain to obtain power, fame, and status? What about all that?!

Filled with thousands of questions, the four could only follow as Himo strode to the outside. 

Walking back to the green plains, the sight of vexed elders and gloomy disciples displayed to their eyes. Some disciples cried, others stood at the side with a scowl. The somber atmosphere spread to both disciples and masters, with the latter consoling the former.

From the side, Jonhan and two additional elders rushed to the five.

“What’s happening? Why are all of them this… pathetic?” Himo couldn’t refrain himself from asking.

“What do you mean by ‘what’s happening?’, you didn’t get robbed?” Jonhan widened his eyes.

“Oh!” Himo snapped his fingers. “So that’s why! But is there a need to act like that?” His gaze swept over the crying disciples—even a twenty years old disciple was crying among them!

“It’s not surprising… most of the disciples here are sheltered brats who never left the sect.” Jonhan shook his head. “They met their first real challenge and got defeated. After a life of continuous victories, it’s normal if they are shook—but it’s also good for their own development.”

Himo listened to his words and found himself agreeing with them. But that didn’t mean he wouldn’t do anything. He took a few steps forward, looking straight at the crying disciples. After inhaling a heavy breath, he waved a hand.

“Attention!”

Imbued with his khenqi, his voice reached both disciples and elders in the area, who snapped their eyes toward him.

“Are you upset because you lost? Because you couldn't do anything as your foes took what was supposed to be yours? Because all you could do was pray to survive?”

Seeing the disciples’ frowns, Himo broke into a grin.

“So, are you upset? Well, you should be! Are you angry, frustrated, and irate? That’s also fine! It's great—even! Instead of looking at this loss as a permanent stain, think of it as an opportunity!"

The gazes of the disciples grew perplexed. Some tilted their heads in confusion, others stood still, trying to grasp what he implied.

"Someone who always wins will think of himself as a great being, hindering his own path. It's only with losses that we will be forced to improve our mentality and further strengthen our determination! Before this, you were but an egg who had never seen the external world, who had no idea losses existed. But now, now you have the potential to reach new heights—"

Their gazes turned heated at those words. Tears stopped flowing, turning into clenching fists and uncontrollable smiles.

"—Unlike your former fogged view, you can now see a broad, clear horizon, one filled with both enemies and opportunities!"

As a warmth grew in their heart signaling that their efforts might not have been wasted, each disciple heard Himo's next sentence, their focus entirely on it.

"Remember that you've been defeated on this day, and that this defeat will become your very first step to becoming greater!"