Olivas burst into cruel laughter. Seeing the girls of the Astraea Familia obediently halt their movements, the white-haired fiend tightened his grip on his hostage and taunted them.
"As expected, this is the best way to deal with you idiots who are always spouting justice and righteousness."
He dragged his sharp nails down the trembling woman's neck.
A stark, conspicuous line of crimson blood welled up against her pale skin.
"Stop! You fiend!" Ryuu shouted, her voice tight with anger.
Alise's knuckles turned white as she gripped the hilt of her sword, her heart pounding with heavy anxiety.
Kaguya desperately wanted to use her shadows. However, the distance, the uneven terrain, and the harsh lighting completely ruined the strict conditions needed to activate her ability.
'Damn it.'
She cursed bitterly under her breath.
"If you dare to resist, I'll kill this woman right now!" Olivas wore an utterly twisted smile.
Pure joy, raw ferocity, and deep malice mixed together to form a chaotic mask across his face.
He turned and commanded the surrounding members of Evilus.
"Attack them, but be careful not to hit too hard and accidentally kill them. I want to see whether these righteous fools choose justice or death!"
The dark-robed cultists stepped forward, cracking their knuckles with menacing grins.
The Astraea Familia had always given them an incredible amount of trouble in the past.
Seeing these powerful girls now too scared to fight back sent the cultists into a sick state of euphoria!
"You damn Elf, you're the one who cut off my ear!" one of the Evilus men snarled.
His eyes locked onto Ryuu with venomous hatred. "Let me pull off your long ears and feed them to you myself!"
His vile approach made Ryuu feel a deep sense of revulsion.
The sickness clawed at her both physically and mentally.
"Don't... don't come any closer!" Ryuu's hand instinctively gripped the hilt of Haineko as she watched the man advance with a wicked grin.
Catching the subtle movement, Olivas ruthlessly twisted his hostage's arm, snapping the bone with a sickening crack.
"ARRRGHHHHH."
The poor woman let out a terrified scream.
Her piercing shriek tore right through Ryuu's mind, forcing the Elf to stop drawing her sword.
The Evilus thug closed the distance, stopping a mere two meters in front of her.
At this close range, every disgusting detail of his face was clearly visible to her eyes—the dark spots on his skin, his coarse pores, and the malevolent gleam in his eyes.
Ryuu squeezed her eyes tightly shut in fear.
"Hadō Four: Byakurai!"
A voice laced with cold fury rang in everyone's ears.
A crackling bolt of white lightning shot through the air, completely obliterating the thug's remaining ear!
"Aaaaaahhh!!!" The man clutched his bleeding head and collapsed, screaming and writhing in agony on the dirt ground.
Ryuu's eyes flew open at the sound of the man's tortured screams.
What she saw standing protectively before her was the familiar back of a young man.
"Rayleigh!" Alise, Kaguya, and the rest of the girls felt a massive wave of relief wash over them at the boy's timely appearance.
"Were you planning to touch her with this hand?" Rayleigh asked, his cold voice cutting straight into the man's mind.
The thug struggled to lift his head, desperate to see who had attacked him.
However, the bright sun positioned directly behind Rayleigh blinded him.
All the man could see was a radiant silhouette that somehow emanated an astonishingly sinister aura.
Silence hung in the air for a fraction of a second.
Swish!
A severed hand suddenly fell heavily to the ground right in front of Rayleigh, landing with a dull thud.
'A severed hand... but whose was it?'
"Is... is that mine?"
Tears and snot streamed pathetically down the man's dirty face.
"My hand! Aaaaaahhh!!!"
The thug fell fully to his knees on the ground.
He clutched the bleeding stump of his arm with his remaining hand, making a desperate, futile attempt to stop the heavy bleeding.
The white-haired fiend flew into a blind rage at the sight of someone daring to make a move against his men.
Olivas lifted the terrified woman in his firm grasp and shouted across the battlefield.
"Stay put! Watch it, or I'll... Huh?!!!"
Olivas's vision blurred just as he prepared to bellow the rest of his threat.
The heavy weight in his hands completely vanished into thin air.
When his senses caught up to reality, he stood completely stunned. The hostage he had been holding just a second ago had mysteriously disappeared.
He frantically looked around the chaotic battlefield.
He soon spotted Rayleigh standing a full ten meters away, gently setting the rescued hostage down on the safe ground.
'What?! What just happened?! Why is that guy standing all the way over there? And he has the woman!'
'What exactly did he do? How did she disappear and reappear so fast?'
Olivas subconsciously reached a hand out toward them.
"Spurt!"
A hot spray of fresh blood shot out into the air.
Olivas froze in absolute confusion. It wasn't just the hostage who had disappeared.
His own forearm was gone as well!
"Aaaarghhh!!!" Olivas howled in sheer agony.
His frantic agitation caused thick blood to gush from the smooth cross-section of his arm, spraying outward like a crimson fountain.
His body swayed unsteadily on his feet for a few moments before he collapsed heavily onto the ground.
"Rayleigh's so fast! Even I could only see a blurry shadow!" Alise exclaimed in pure astonishment.
Kaguya's eyes, however, lit up with realization.
She could tell at a single glance that Rayleigh was no longer a Level 2. He had successfully become a Level 3 Adventurer, standing right on par with them!
But witnessing this display was almost too demoralizing.
Setting aside his terrifying leveling speed for a moment, they were also trying to learn that special movement technique he called Shunpo.
Their progress, however, remained incredibly slow and difficult. Their clumsy attempts were nothing like Rayleigh's flawless, effortless execution.
The Shunpo he had just demonstrated operated on a level far beyond their current reach.
Furthermore, he had achieved this astonishing feat right after leveling up.
Once a person's previous stats converted into a level up, all their basic abilities reset back to I0.
'To possess such a speed with a mere I0 in Agility... if his Agility stat eventually surpassed A or even reached the pinnacle of S, what terrifying new heights would his speed evolve to?'
'Honestly, as his sparing partner, I should feel a little sad about being surpassed so quickly.'
'But when dealing with a monster like him, I can only accept my fate.' Kaguya thought to herself.
He had arrived in Orario just over a year ago as a complete novice who knew absolutely nothing except forging swords.
In a mere three hundred days, he had transformed from an ordinary rookie without a Falna into a powerful Level 3!
Such raw potential was truly jaw-dropping!
At the same time, it felt utterly hopeless to try and compete with him. That kind of monstrous efficiency easily robbed a person of the courage to even try catching up with them.
Reaching Level 3 in a single year was a visible goal, but the sheer distance to achieve it was simply too vast.
No matter how hard a normal person tried, that massive gap could not be closed.
It remained an unattainable dream for the rest of the world.
"Damn you, what did you do to me! Was it Magic?! How dare you do this to my arm..." Olivas roared from the dirt, his pale face fully contorted with rage and pain.
Rayleigh tilted his head slightly at the accusation.
He asked in a dry, rhetorical tone, "Magic? I didn't use anything like that. But I see the real issue now. You simply couldn't see my movements."
He looked down on Olivas with undisguised contempt.
They were both Level 3 Adventurers, yet Olivas couldn't even catch a single trace of his Shunpo.
Olivas Act, The Fanatic.
The nickname certainly sounded intimidating to the masses, but as it turns out, he was just a pathetic fraud.
Rayleigh slowly shook his head.
His deeply disdainful expression made the bleeding fiend grind his teeth in humiliated fury.
"Don't get too cocky, you little brat!" Olivas spat.
Faced with the man's rage, Rayleigh simply raised a single finger and wagged it at him in warning.
"Watch closely. Don't blink. Concentrate your eyes. Don't let your mind wander for even a fraction of a second. I'm telling you right now, you'll need to use absolutely everything you have just to dodge this next strike."
And so he moved.
Rayleigh's figure vanished from sight.
Within a hundredth of a second, Olivas realized the boy standing before him was completely gone.
Another hundredth of a second passed in a blur as a devastating fist materialized directly in the center of his field of vision!
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