"Hollow Special Operations Section 6, Hoshimi Miyabi. Please surrender and cooperate with our investigation."
With the cool, detached self-introduction of the Fox Thiren, Andrew immediately understood the identity of the person trying to disarm him the moment they met.
But... Section 6?
Why does it feel like I've never heard of them?
Is it a newly established department of the Hollow Special Operations Office from the last few months?
Seeing that the opponent didn't attack immediately, Andrew certainly didn't mind stalling for a bit of time to cover up the small movements of his left hand.
Thus, Andrew spoke up directly to return the greeting:
"What? It's getting close to the end of the year, has Section 6 already started arresting innocent citizens who do acts of bravery just to pad their performance quotas?"
Although his voice was very low and somewhat distorted due to the helmet's obstruction, the calmness revealed in the sound made Hoshimi Miyabi's eyes widen slightly in surprise.
Listening to the voice, could it be a very young male?
No, the age couldn't be judged due to the distortion, but at least the gender could be confirmed as male.
But soon, this trace of surprise was suppressed directly by Hoshimi Miyabi.
Regarding Andrew's retort, Hoshimi Miyabi continued to maintain her cold voice, speaking decisively without the slightest wavering:
"Section 6 will not arrest people without cause, but neither will we let real criminals go."
It wasn't just because of the intelligence that completely matched the current situation, but also the attack method that had just killed that monster with such tyrannical force.
Added to that was the opponent's combat style, which had never appeared in New Eridu before.
Hoshimi Miyabi stared tightly at Andrew's movements, speaking without hesitation:
"Any potential threat to the city must be thoroughly uprooted. This is the creed of the Section."
However, thinking of the strength the opponent had displayed earlier, Hoshimi Miyabi still offered a rare, detailed explanation.
After all, although Hoshimi Miyabi was itching to fight because she was a battle maniac, she was also clear that given her strength and that of the existence opposite her, the damage caused to this area once they started fighting would inevitably be terrifying.
So, if she could turn this battle from a slaughter into a spar, that would naturally be better.
"Please rest assured. Section 6 will only dig deep into your background details and then let you go. There will be no acts of bullying citizens relying on the status of an official organization."
Although for Andrew, not fighting was naturally the best option.
But after hearing the opponent's verification method if they didn't fight, Andrew instantly abandoned the thought of surrendering.
For a moment, he was a bit speechless.
Dig?
Was there anything around him in New Eridu that could withstand a deep dig?!
That fake citizen ID he asked Nicole to forge could already be considered the smallest problem. Meow-Da, who had just arrived in New Eridu not long ago, didn't even have an ID.
At the same time, let's not even talk about the unlicensed private sale of weapons and ammunition in the Seliana Smithy, or his daily unauthorized appearances in Hollows as a Proxy.
Could the private raising of the Silver Squad as an army in the Silver City stronghold in the Outer Ring, the equipment swiped from the research institute before, and those pieces of military gear be investigated?!!
Not to mention the true identity of his girlfriend, Belle, on the Proxy Net, and Evelyn's previous identity.
Some things were no problem when there was a tacit understanding with the Mayor.
But if they were placed out in the open...
As the saying goes, many things don't weigh much if you don't put them on the scale, but once they're on the scale, even a thousand catties wouldn't be enough to stop the counterweight.
If he really went to Section 6 to accept an investigation, Andrew would only have two paths left.
One was to fight his way out of Section 6, and the other was to find the Mayor.
If it's option one, why not fight here right now?
If it's option two?
Although finding the Mayor would definitely resolve this matter, owing a favor to that old fox of a Mayor whose true goals were unclear just for this kind of thing... plus, if he went to Section 6, his existence would also be completely placed in the open...
So, at least until it was absolutely necessary, Andrew would not make such a choice.
Moreover, it wasn't absolutely necessary yet.
Just right.
The small movements of Andrew's left hand were already finished, and what remained couldn't be completed just by stalling for time like this.
Unable to stop himself from sighing, Andrew finally opened his mouth to attempt a struggle:
"Although I can't agree, if I say I really am a good citizen of New Eridu who did a brave deed, would you believe me?"
Hoshimi Miyabi, who said nothing and merely gripped her sword tighter, had already made her attitude clear.
He couldn't help but sigh again. It seemed this battle was completely unavoidable.
With the shield in his right hand held horizontally in front of his chest, maintaining a semi-crouched defensive stance, the broad shield belonging to the Charge Blade directly blocked most of Andrew's upper body.
His left hand also slowly pulled the other most important part of the Charge Blade—the sword—out from behind his back.
It was only now that Andrew could be considered to have truly taken the weapon into his hands.
As they watched Andrew pull out the sword from his back, an invisible pressure spread instantly, permeating the entire field silently.
As the tip of the sword hit the ground, kicking up a patch of dust that obscured the line of sight, coupled with the fact that Andrew's physical presence was too strong, no one noticed the movement of Andrew's wrist.
A Paolumu dragon bone was flicked into Andrew's palm by the tip of the sword, and in the next instant, it was stored in the System's Item Bag.
Yes.
Andrew had actually been secretly using his left hand to collect the materials under his feet into the System's item box the whole time.
After all, from beginning to end, Andrew had never forgotten what his purpose for staying behind was.
And Hoshimi Miyabi, whose entire attention was focused on the weapon Andrew held upright in front of him and the pressure he constantly radiated, was completely unaware of this.
Relying on the cover of the intimidation, the two slowly paced, circling gently.
And wherever Andrew passed, the remaining Paolumu materials would always disappear silently.
As the stalemate continued.
Feeling the pressure constantly coming from in front of her, the expression on Hoshimi Miyabi's face also became extremely serious.
Although she hadn't found the reason, her intuition told her—she couldn't wait any longer.
Since she wanted to make an arrest, she couldn't succeed in arresting him by stalemating like this.
If the initial strike with the back of the blade was just an attempt to disarm because Andrew's specific identity was unknown, then after Andrew had refused to cooperate until now and was even prepared to resist with force directly, his identity had completely turned into an unidentified threat to New Eridu.
And because of the strength he displayed, this threat would only be higher!
Silently rotating the blade body, she no longer continued to use the back of the blade as a silent threat.
Waiting a moment, seeing that Andrew was still unmoved, Hoshimi Miyabi said in a deep voice:
"I'm going in!"
The next moment.
Hoshimi Miyabi's body directly turned into a dark blue afterimage. The speed was so fast that Andrew couldn't help but freeze for a moment.
But in the second after Andrew froze, the sense of crisis suddenly coming from his left side made Andrew's body move subconsciously.
Swish!
It was too late to turn and block with the shield horizontally; rather, Hoshimi Miyabi had chosen Andrew's left side as the attack target precisely because she saw this point.
Since he couldn't make it in time, he wouldn't use the shield.
Andrew directly repeated his old trick. The blade body, several times broader than a Hunter's Dagger, drew a perfect arc in the air, swinging toward the sword edge Hoshimi Miyabi was swinging over.
But, Andrew still underestimated Hoshimi Miyabi's speed.
Clang, Clang, Thud!!
Andrew's reaction was already very fast, but...
Hoshimi Miyabi's sword was faster.
In just a short instant, the two had clashed three times.
The massive collision sound brought an equally intense resonance. Even the dust on the ground that had just settled flew into the air again accompanied by the vibration.
The three collision sounds rang out almost at the same instant, but the third sound appeared vastly different from the first two.
Although Andrew successfully used the sword to block Hoshimi Miyabi's first two attacks, the third slash still broke through the defense of Andrew's sword edge, stabbing directly toward Andrew's body.
And that Thud was the sound made when the blade edge collided with the armor.
At this moment.
Andrew's lack of technique was exposed without a doubt.
Regarding Hoshimi Miyabi's third slash, Andrew had actually watched it chop onto his own arm the whole time.
It wasn't that he didn't want to intercept, it was purely that...
He couldn't keep up.
There was no deficiency in hardware related to physical fitness; it was purely a lack of experience in techniques for fighting against humans.
Accustomed to the moves of Dragon-hunting weapons and the wide, sweeping style of fighting against gigantic monsters, when facing an opponent of the same body size or even smaller...
The wide, sweeping attack techniques would instantly become redundant movements. Refinement was the best method.
And regarding this aspect, it was completely Andrew's blind spot of knowledge.
If he had faced an attack like Hoshimi Miyabi's when he first arrived in New Eridu, Andrew felt he wouldn't have even been able to stop the first sword.
Following the battles during this period with many human-sized existences, or Ethereals whose difference from humans wasn't large, Andrew's combat experience against small targets had already improved a lot.
It was just that, while he could use stats to compensate or even crush ordinary opponents, these bits of combat experience were still completely insufficient when facing Hoshimi Miyabi.
But facing Hoshimi Miyabi's attack, Andrew didn't panic in the slightest.
If the sword didn't stop it, that didn't mean the armor couldn't stop it.
Although Hoshimi Miyabi's blade edge chopped onto Andrew's forearm, that incomparably thick shell only sustained a fine white mark.
This slash didn't break through the armor's defense at all.
And relying on this slash, Andrew, who had directly taken advantage of the momentum to retreat two steps, also used his shield-holding right hand to conveniently store a piece of Paolumu meat into the Item Bag.
Meanwhile, looking at the battle results caused by her attack just now, Hoshimi Miyabi's gaze involuntarily narrowed instantly.
Looking at that shallow white mark on the armor, Hoshimi Miyabi herself couldn't quite believe this result.
Wuwei was an ancient sword passed down for generations in the Hoshimi family. Previously, no matter what kind of Ethereal it was, it was an existence that could cut them in two with one stroke. But when it chopped onto Andrew's armor, it couldn't even break the defense.
Could it be that the strength used was insufficient?
Not believing in this evil, Hoshimi Miyabi instantly increased the strength of her offense by a few degrees, attempting to launch several rounds of attacks again.
But in front of Andrew, who was already on guard and using the shield to guard against her at every moment, the subsequent few rounds of attacks all had to strike upon the shield on Andrew's right arm.
Clang! Clang! Clang! Clang!
Hoshimi Miyabi's attacks were like a rainstorm—rapid, lethal, and endless.
But.
The Charge Blade's shield was like an insurmountable fortress. That massive defensive surface area could block all these storm-like attacks outside the shield.
After all, compared to the tit-for-tat of blocking with a sword, a shield that purely blocked was different.
So although the rhythm of the offense had always been in Hoshimi Miyabi's hands, and she could maintain the state of suppressing Andrew's attacks, she was unable to cause any threat to Andrew from beginning to end.
The sharp blade light could only occasionally bypass the defense of Andrew's shield.
But after the vast majority of attacks were all blocked by Andrew using the shield, these scattered attacks were even less capable of achieving a breakthrough of the defense of Andrew's already incomparably sturdy armor.
It was just that.
In the eyes of bystanders who didn't understand the specific situation, this battle looked more like Hoshimi Miyabi crushing one-sidedly.
Meanwhile, the small movements of Andrew's left hand scooping things up from the ground had never stopped.
And on the other side.
As the talks between Andrew and Hoshimi Miyabi collapsed, the battle belonging to this side also started instantly.
However, what was the same was that Tsukishiro Yanagi and Soukaku were also somewhat helpless against Meow-Da, who was scurrying around with a shield on his head.
Although it looked like a shield made completely of wood and iron rings, its defensive capability was so strong that no matter how they attacked, they couldn't achieve a breakthrough.
If they clashed head-on.
It simply wasn't something Tsukishiro Yanagi's Remnant Blade, "Flawseeker," which usually needed to find weak points to attack, could achieve.
If Flawseeker's blade, which was light and agile for the sake of easy concealment and maintaining sharpness, were to forcefully clash head-on, there was a ninety-nine percent probability that Flawseeker would be the first to snap.
At the same time.
Even though he was such a small size, Soukaku's War Ghost Blade Banner, whose attacks could directly fan an adult human flying, couldn't affect him in the slightest.
It looked like that wild wind was as ordinary as a breeze brushing against the face.
Neither of their attacks could do anything to Meow-Da holding the shield. Under their helplessness, the situation turned into Meow-Da slipping away everywhere with the shield on his head, while Soukaku chased hard from behind holding the War Ghost Blade Banner.
The two directly began to run laps around this small field.
Seeing that they couldn't successfully take him down for a while, although a bit unwilling, Tsukishiro Yanagi still looked toward the battlefield belonging to Hoshimi Miyabi.
After all, as long as Hoshimi Miyabi could take that man down, then with Hoshimi Miyabi's support, the current problem would no longer be a problem.
The ice-blue blade light constantly cut through the air, leaving cold arcs in the sky, as if it wanted to slice open the very space itself.
The blade light that occasionally broke through the defense line indicated that Hoshimi Miyabi wasn't returning empty-handed like their side; the man's constant rolling and retreating showed that Hoshimi Miyabi's attacks were very effective.
In Tsukishiro Yanagi's view, this battle was undoubtedly Hoshimi Miyabi holding the upper hand.
Looking at this situation, perhaps they could successfully subdue that man very soon. After all, that man looked like he couldn't fight back at all from beginning to end.
At that time, once that man was subdued, catching the small one without support would actually be easy.
It was just that regarding this battle, Tsukishiro Yanagi always felt something wasn't quite right...
It was as if she had overlooked something.
Tsukishiro Yanagi, who was extremely confident in her own senses, instantly had her expression turn serious. Subconsciously pushing up her glasses, she carefully observed the battle over there.
Until, after one of Andrew's rolling dodges, the portion of flesh and blood originally on the ground vanished along with him.
This bizarre scene made Tsukishiro Yanagi's eyes widen involuntarily.
This... what was this situation?!!
Devouring? Or?!
Regardless, this was no longer ordinary heresy. We must strike hard!
____
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