Those four S-rankers were more intelligent and likeable than other criminals that Rio hunted down, but they were ultimately still horrible criminals in the end.
Each one of them had committed an uncountable number of crimes and bad things.
He already knew most of their information, as Irvin had already provided him with enough proof to consider them guilty.
Rio is not cruel enough to torture innocent people like this; moreover, he does not even consider his way of carrying out his missions a torture method.
The main reason why he’s even doing this is because he wants to test out his skills and improve them.
Confronting many S-rankers brings him new inspirations, enriches his combat experience, and provides him the opportunity to learn new skills and techniques.
This is basically him treating his opponents as test subjects; there’s nothing else to it.
’I swear I am not sadist at all... Yeah, it’s all just for the sake of testing my new skills, yeah...’
"AHHHHHH!!!AHHHHH!!! gulp.. sob... twitch..."
"Help...me..."
As Rio kept pumping the entire area full of miasma, all four of the S-rankers slowly melted away in miasmic filth and got reduced to nothingness.
Their minds were slowly corrupted and shattered, their souls fell to miasmic corruption, and they died a horrible, slow, melting death by drowning in miasma.
The scene was so horrific that even an S-ranker would have fainted from fear after seeing it.
Rio didn’t even feel the slightest bit of emotion even after those four begged him for mercy and ran all over the area in horror as their body parts melted away.
’Sadist people feel pleasure from giving pain to others... I don’t feel anything, so I am surely not a sadist, right? ... hmm, such a difficult question...’
Rio shook his head and decided in his mind that he will not use this skill in front of Lia unless absolutely necessary.
’This kind of scene might not affect me but it might give a bad impression of me to Lia... I don’t want that...’
Rio didn’t care whether others noticed him doing horrible things; the only person he didn’t want to upset was Lia. Others didn’t matter that much.
’Oh... wait, what do I do with all this miasma now?’
A speechless look appeared on Rio’s emotionless face.
When he was using this skill and bringing out so much miasma in the area, he didn’t think about this problem and was purely using it to test out the effectiveness of his new technique.
Now that he’s done dealing with the experiment, a new dilemma has arisen.
Such a high amount of miasma is enough to wipe out an entire city; if Rio lets it spread around, this small border town will be wiped off the map in an instant.
’Hmm?’
Just when Rio was stuck in a dilemma, his sword intent reacted, and he remembered that there was another S-ranker who had escaped earlier.
’Hmm, that guy’s escaping towards a barren area... is that their secret hideout?’
The poor guy didn’t know anything about Rio; he had no idea that once you get close enough to Rio, it’s impossible to escape again.
Rio has ’Sword Intent,’ which is literally one of the most offensive types of legendary techniques in the world.
Whenever someone enters a close enough distance to him, Rio’s sword intent automatically memorizes their ’aura’ and ’soul fluctuations.’
Every person’s aura and soul fluctuations are unique to them and cannot be replicated; in other words, once Rio already knows your aura and soul fluctuations, it’s impossible to deceive him by faking your presence.
Rio’s sword intent can easily notice the presence of someone whom it has already memorized, so it’s impossible to hide from him.
Moreover, once you master sword intent to 99 percent and reach S-rank, it’s possible to ’mark’ a person with sword intent.
As an offensive-type legendary technique, sword intent has the ability to ’mark’ those it considers its opponents, and unless the marked person destroys the mark, Rio can keep tracking them.
’The maximum radius of my mark’s tracking ability is still only 500 kilometers, so it’s still quite small. I need to improve this skill more in the future...’
’Once I reach Rank SS, I will be able to track anyone I want to on the entire planet from anywhere...’
With such a powerful tracking technique, it’s near impossible to run away from Rio, especially when Rio himself is much faster than you.
This is exactly how Rio slowly drove his last victim insane to the point that he committed suic*de in the end.
He marked him with his sword intent, and the other party had no legendary skill or powerful enough ability to destroy the mark, so he could only suffer endlessly.
There was no way out of that hellish game of cat and mouse.
’Talking about being fast... Now that I am an S-ranker... should I try ’that’? ... I have gained enough control over my powers as an S-ranker through continuous battles...’
’So, I should be able to do that right... But before that, I need to deal with this miasma...’
Rio raised his sword forward and used his sword intent.
[Sword intent!]
[Sword Sage’s Enlightenment: Flood Container!]
Rio used the ’wind’ elementals, ’miasma’ control, and sword intent in sync to forcefully suck the entire miasma in the area and compress it.
All the sucked miasma was compressed to the extreme and swirled around Rio’s sword at an extremely fast speed.
’This technique is also excellent; I like it a lot. It came in handy before too...’
Rio has already fought more than a dozen S-rankers by now; one of them was a water-type monster terrorizing the coastal cities of the nation.
When Rio went to confront the monster, it created a massive tsunami to drown the city and cause major casualties.
The monster wanted to make Rio busy by forcing him to leave to rescue the citizens and then grab that chance to escape from Rio.
But the sea monster didn’t know that such a peculiar new type of difficulty was exactly what Rio wanted to face.
Rio created a new technique on the spot by using wind, water, and space elementals along with sword intent to suck all the water and highly compress it around his sword.
He erased that tsunami, and his sword drank away all the water like a whale chugging down tons of water in a single gulp.
The monster was so horrified by that move that it voluntarily bowed down to Rio in defeat.
But of course, Rio didn’t let it go; he dragged him underwater and experimented with various new water-type skills on the monster for a long while.
*SHRRRRRR!*
The immense amount of miasma was highly compressed in a matter of seconds, and Rio’s sword glowed dark black with crystallized miasmic corruption swirling around it.
Even the space-time fabric started to tremble around Rio’s sword due to the sheer compression force applied by Rio’s powerful sword intent.
’Okay, now I can try it...’
[Sword Intent: Maximum Output!]
[Sword Sage’s Enlightenment: Spatial Shrink!]
Rio used the condensed miasma as a power source, then used his sword intent at maximum output to boost the spatial elementals he gathered around him.
Rio used those powerful compressed miasmic crystals to forcefully mess with the gravity and bent the ’space-time fabric’ in such a way that the distance between him and that escaping S-ranker instantly became null.
Rio directly appeared near the poor guy who was just about to open the door to his secret hiding place.
"Yo! Long time no see! I literally messed with the space-time fabric just to be able to see you. How generous of me is that, right?"
The poor man was so horrified by Rio suddenly appearing near him that he even forgot to continue opening that half-opened door.
"M-monster..."