Chapter 239 | Killing The Thugs
"Please..."
Dexter stopped in front of him. "You remember me?"
The man trembled. "I... I was wrong."
Dexter crouched down. "Oh... you were wrong?"
His voice was frighteningly calm.
"You came into my home."
He grabbed the man’s collar, twisting the fabric in his fist.
"You robbed me."
He lifted him off the ground with one hand, holding him suspended like a puppet whose strings had been cut.
"You threatened my wife."
His eyes became cold, colder than the void between stars and merciless like a demon.
"Beat me up and you thought you could do it again?"
The man’s entire body trembled in fear and suddenly, his grey pants turned dark as his bladder let go, soaking his pants, and dripping on the floor.
He wanted to beg, find mercy from Dexter but found nothing.
Dexter looked down at the ground as the water stained his floor.
"Disgusting."
Dexter immediately threw him aside.
"BOOM!"
The man crashed through the coffee table, shattering it into splinters as he lay there, broken and bleeding, whimpering like a wounded animal.
Two were frozen by Mira’s pressure. Their bodies locked in place, eyes bleeding, mouths open in silent screams that would never be heard. The worst part is they were aware if everything but but utterly incapable of doing anything about it.
And only one was left.
Dexter looked at him with a dark smile as he took a step forward. Before his feet could touch the ground, he flashed and appeared before him.
"Crack!" "Crack!" "Crack!"
The thug’s neck rotatated twisted three times around his head as the flesh of his neck bulged and looked obscene as he stood there for three seconds.
His face was pale with fear and even as he was dying, fear and horror could be seen in his face as he fell to the ground.
He didn’t die immediately but he lost all motor fiction as he lie there.
Dexter walked over to the one with the cracked chest.
The one who had suggested selling his wives.
"You’re the one who wanted to sell my wives aren’t you?"
Dexter smiled as he bent down, picking up the man’s arm.
"Crack!"
"Ahhh!!!"
The man screamed in pain and agony as Dexter broke his arms inch by inch.
The screams became even more high-pitched and piercing as Dexter finished twisting the entire right arm. He turned to the left arm and did the same. Making sure every inch of the nine was broken.
The man fainted and Dexter immediately woke him up with a slap.
"Now now, don’t sleep on me, we are now done."
Dexter did the same to his legs.
Breaking them inch by inch. Placing his legs on the man’s balls.
"Pop!" "Pop!"
Two popping sounds echoed through the entire place. And the man screamed even more as Dexter tortured him.
Until Mira said, "Noisy."
With a whoosh, flames erupted from her arm and landed in the man as shs burnt him with her flames, which made him scream even more horrifyingly than before.
The burning was slow, too. Deliberate. It consumed his clothing first. Then his skin. Then the tissue beneath. Layer by layer.
Dexter blinked. It seemed her flames could actually affect the soul. He watched the particular, faint, barely visible distortion that appeared around the man’s body as the flame consumed him.
When he was done burning, silence descended over the room. The particular, absolute, ringing quiet that followed the removal of all sound sources. What remained on the floor was not a body but an outline.
He then went to the two beside Mira and killed them too.
They collapsed without a sound.
Kreg was barely conscious. His arrogance was completely gone. His gold tooth was missing. His confidence was gone.
"What... are you?"
Dexter walked toward him. "You don’t need to know."
Kreg tried to crawl backward. His hands scrabbled against the floor.
Dexter grabbed him by the throat and lifted him effortlessly. Kreg’s hands clawed at Dexter’s wrist. His legs kicked uselessly. His face changed color. From red to purple. From purple to blue.
"You should have stayed away from my family."
Kreg’s eyes widened. "Wait—"
Crack.
Dexter’s grip tightened. Kreg’s struggling stopped. His body went limp. The particular, quiet, definitive sound of a trachea being compressed past its structural limit.
Dexter released him, allowing the body to fall to the floor.
One by one, he finished off the remaining members of the Red Fang Gang. When the last of them stopped moving, Dexter stood silently in the middle of the room.
His expression was cold.
He looked around. At the bodies. At the ash outline. At the blood on the walls. At his living room—the space he had spent three weeks cleaning, repairing, painting, and protecting. At the Pure-Air Fragrance Artifact that still hummed on its shelf, doing its job regardless of what had happened in the room it was filtering.
He walked to the front door. Unlocked it. Opened it.
The morning air came in.
Dexter stood in the doorway, closed his eyes and breathed.
The five men who had entered his home were now dead. The Red Fang Crew was finished.
And Dexter Ashford was still standing.
After Dexter killed Kreg, he looked around.
Lyra was still on the chair, her eyes closed, still cultivating. It seemed she hadn’t noticed anything. Or perhaps she had noticed something and simply chosen to ignore it. Alternatively, she might have been cultivating so deeply that the violence in the living room had registered as nothing more than background noise.
Dexter watched her for a moment and the coldness in his gaze dissipated like smoke as he smiled at her.
’It’s time for clean up.’
Then he started to clean up.
He took the bodies of the remaining thugs—the ones Mira hadn’t incinerated, the ones who had died by his own hands—and stacked them in the backyard. Greg’s lifeless body went on top. Dexter carried them all as if they weighed nothing, his expression unchanged, his pace steady. The particular, casual ease of a man who had done this before and would likely do it again.