A few seconds later, Benjamin withdrew his hand.
The man collapsed to the ground. The other two men and the woman also fell one after another under the effects of the Soul Search sorcery.
In an instant, all four of their breaths stopped at once. Their pupils dilated, and their vital signs swiftly guttered out like candles with their flames pinched away.
Benjamin crouched down and searched through the four bodies.
Weapons meant nothing to him, but he did need this world's currency.
He found a leather money pouch containing several metal coins and a few banknotes.
Some of the coins were copper, others silver. The banknotes bore intricate designs, printed with various portraits and words.
It was not much, but enough to keep someone going for a while in an unfamiliar city.
He stowed the pouch inside his Internal Grotto-Heaven, rose to his feet, gave the abandoned settlement one final look, then turned and walked into the night.
The sphere of energy in his hand steadily emitted a soft white radiance, brightly illuminating a dozen meters around him.
The sense of being watched, lurking in the darkness, retreated far away beneath that light, not daring to draw near.
As Benjamin walked, he sorted through the flood of information in his mind.
These four were a type of bandit unique to this wasteland.
They had originally belonged to a fairly large gang, but the authorities had swept through it several days ago. Only these four had barely managed to escape.
And naturally, the most important information in that man's memories concerned anomalies.
The people of this world had practically coexisted with anomalies since ancient times, so they had developed a rather clear classification system for them.
Based on the maximum destructive power an anomaly could produce, the authorities of this