Hiro charged, axe raised high above his head.
CLANG!
He struck with all his strength.
But the “Haloy” he hit exploded into dust, scattering into the air like ash.
“What?!”
The real one appeared behind him, violet eyes glowing before instantly shifting to a vivid crimson.
Palm open.
BOOM.
A brutal strike to his back sent him tumbling through tree roots, his body bouncing across the ground.
“—HUK!” Hiro struggled back to his feet, spitting blood.
He charged again, refusing to give up.
The ground beneath his feet suddenly liquefied into thick mud.
Then instantly hardened.
His legs sank up to the knees, trapped.
“SHIT!”
Haloy walked calmly toward him, a smile on his lips.
“Too slow. Way too slow.”
He delivered a straight right directly to Hiro’s jaw.
CRACK.
The sound of bone snapping echoed.
Hiro’s head snapped violently backward.
Blood splattered the ground.
Hiro yanked hard on his legs, tearing his feet free from the solidified earth.
Chunks of dirt clung to his boots.
He heard Haloy running to his right.
The sound of footsteps. Fast. Precise.
He immediately pivoted and swung with full force in that direction.
Nothing.
Just air.
A voice whispered right next to his left ear:
“Wrong direction, kid.”
WHAM.
An uppercut of earth erupted violently under his chin, launching him into the air like a ragdoll.
His body soared high.
“GAAAH!”
Hiro crashed back down hard and rolled several meters.
He tried to stand, arms trembling.
“Amateur,” Haloy murmured.
He approached calmly and pried the axe from Hiro’s hands.
“My eyes hurt emotionally just watching how you use this thing,” he said, looking at it with disdain. “Seriously. You’re so bad with it.”
He examined it more closely, twirling it in his hands.
“Anyway, this isn’t even a combat axe. It’s a lumberjack axe. For chopping wood. Not people.”
Haloy had still been wounded by that axe during the fight.
But he felt like Hiro had absolutely no idea how to use it properly.
How the hell did I even get hurt by such an amateur? he thought, irritated.
Haloy suddenly noticed that Hiro’s wounds were healing—slowly.
Very slowly, but steadily.
Passive regeneration. Interesting.
The skill Restorative Blessing was a passive healing ability that continuously restored health over time as long as it remained active.
It wasn’t instant healing like a classic cure spell.
It consumed mana in proportion to the damage healed.
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The more severe the injuries, the greater the mana drain.
Hiro was patiently waiting until he was healed enough to throw himself at Haloy again.
But he had noticed that Haloy had noticed his regeneration.
Too bad. He figured out I can heal.
---
Lucia had just finished healing Cassian.
The hole in her stomach had completely closed.
Not a single trace of the mortal wound remained.
Just perfectly smooth, pale skin.
Lucia, watching Hiro struggle terribly against Haloy in the distance, asked Lena in confusion:
“Why are you staying with me instead of going to help Hiro? He’s getting massacred.”
Lena looked at Lucia calmly.
“I’m protecting you from any surprise attack. Healing Cassian severely weakens your protective barrier. If someone attacked right now, you’d be vulnerable.”
She cast a quick glance toward Hiro in the distance, taking hit after hit.
“Even if Hiro’s in trouble… I know he’ll never lose.”
“How can you be so sure?” Lucia frowned. “Look at him. He’s getting destroyed.”
“I’ve known him since we were children.” Lena gave a small smile. “Since we were little kids. I know what I’m talking about. I trust him completely. He never loses when it truly matters.”
She turned to Lucia, expression serious.
“Send every single buff to Hiro. Right now.”
“What? But if I buff both you and Hiro at the same time, the buffs will be split between you two. If I focus everything on him, you’ll be—”
“Everything goes to Hiro,” Lena said firmly, leaving no room for argument. “Absolutely everything. I’ll protect you and Cassian during the casting. Your barrier will be weakened for that time, but I’ll handle it.”
Lucia hesitated for a second, looking back and forth between Lena and Hiro.
Then she nodded with determination.
“Okay. I trust you.”
She began chanting in the sacred tongue.
---
On his knees, breathing heavily, Hiro scooped up a handful of damp earth and hurled it straight into Haloy’s face.
“TAKE THAT!”
Haloy instinctively closed his eyes for a fraction of a second.
Just enough.
Enough for Hiro to slam his shoulder violently into Haloy’s gut and hurl him brutally against a massive tree.
WHAM.
The impact was real. Bark cracked.
Haloy groaned in pain.
“You bastard… filthy bastard…”
Haloy slammed his heel into the ground with force.
BOOM.
A massive vibration ripped through the entire area like a localized earthquake.
Hiro completely lost his balance, staggering.
Haloy immediately followed up with a brutal downward elbow strike between Hiro’s shoulder blades.
CRACK.
He slammed face-first into the dirt.
“GAAH!”
Hiro endured the excruciating pain.
Then barely blocked a fist aimed at his temple.
He rolled desperately to the side and grabbed Haloy’s arm tightly, yanking him down with violent force.
They tumbled together down a slope covered in wet, dead leaves.
Rolling. Punching. Struggling.
Hiro miraculously ended up on top, forearm crushing hard against Haloy’s throat.
Haloy coughed, eyes wide.
“LET GO! LET GO, DAMN IT!”
Haloy thrashed violently, throwing wild punches.
Hiro held on for a few more seconds.
Then he grabbed Haloy by the shoulders and hurled him with all his strength against a jagged rock.
CRACK.
Hard. Violent impact.
Blood trickled from the back of Haloy’s skull.
Hiro followed up without thinking—a brutal headbutt.
Forehead against forehead.
BOOM.
The sound of the impact rang like thunder.
Both staggered back, completely dazed.
Stars danced in their vision.
Haloy shook his head to clear it.
Then he suddenly looked toward the girls in the distance.
Lucia. Lena. Cassian.
He understood instantly.
Too late.
He suddenly felt much weaker than before.
As if part of his strength had been siphoned away.
He looked at Hiro.
His eyes widened.
“Shit…” Haloy clenched his teeth in rage. “I should’ve taken care of the girls first. What a stupid mistake.”
Now he was really in deep trouble.
Hiro took a menacing step forward, smiling.
Haloy fled without hesitation.
He instantly created a massive pillar of earth that shot him rapidly upward like a rising platform.
Ten meters. Twenty meters. Thirty meters.
Hiro desperately leaped to try to catch the platform.
But it was already far too high.
It was rising too fast.
“COME BACK HERE, COWARD!”
Haloy, now fifty meters up, looked down.
No choice left. I absolutely need more power. A lot more.
He closed his eyes and drew mana directly from the bodies of the villagers of Lapithathon.
Instantly, a third of the village’s inhabitants were suddenly completely drained.
Drained only of mana.
Everything they had slowly and painfully built over the last decade—gone in an instant.
Vanished.
Haloy felt himself explode with power.
Immense. Overwhelming power.
Maybe even a little too much.
I clearly took way too much. But whatever.
Doesn’t matter.
Anyway, once the adventurers were permanently killed and buried, he would generously return the mana to the villagers so they could continue meekly developing his strength.
Like cattle.
Then the rising platform suddenly tilted dangerously.
“Huh?”
Haloy looked down in a hurry.
Hiro was systematically destroying the base with his bare hands.
Punching. Punching. Punching.
Huge cracks appeared everywhere.
The platform was completely collapsing.
Haloy grinned widely.
He didn’t need it anymore anyway.
He jumped without hesitation and dove headfirst, arms at his sides.
Like a deadly arrow.
His eyes instantly shifted to a blazing orange.
---
Hiro kept savagely hammering the base of the pillar.
WHAM. WHAM. WHAM.
Then he heard a cold voice right beside him:
“Detonating Singularity.”
It was Haloy, half a second before violently slamming into the ground.
BOOOOOOM.
Massive explosion.
A ball of orange and red fire swallowed everything.
Hiro was right in the middle of it, at the heart of the blast.
He had reacted without thinking, instinctively shielding himself with mana as best he could.
But it clearly wasn’t enough.
Not even close.
The heat scorched his skin. The shockwave shattered his bones.
Then he received a devastating kick that seemed to launch him far into the air.
At least, that was the deceptive impression it gave.
In reality, Haloy had a firm grip on Hiro’s legs, preventing him from flying away.
“Not so fast.”
He then brutally slammed Hiro back down onto the hardened ground.
CRASH.
Crater.
And right after, sent him flying much farther with a powerful spinning kick.
WHAM.
Hiro tore through the entire forest, ricocheting violently off tree trunks.
WHAM. WHAM. WHAM.
Each impact broke bones.
Before he even hit the ground for good, Haloy was already above him.
How?!
Three lightning-fast punches in exactly one second.
BOOM. BOOM. BOOM.
Each brutal impact created a massive circular explosion of compressed wind and pulverized bark.
Hiro was hurled toward the ground like a flaming meteor.
BOOM.
He struck the earth in an explosion of dirt and rolled desperately, narrowly dodging the next blow that would have definitely crushed his skull.
Haloy pulverized a massive boulder with his bare hands right where Hiro’s head had been a second earlier.
CRACK.
The rock exploded into a thousand pieces.
Hiro seized that tiny opening and swung a devastating straight punch right into Haloy’s jaw.
BOOM.
Haloy slid backward several meters, feet gouging the ground.
“YOU LITTLE—!”
The earth platform had now completely collapsed into rubble.
The devastating point-blank explosion Haloy had unleashed directly on Hiro had created an absolutely massive crater.
Easily ten meters in diameter. Five meters deep.
Hiro was objectively in bad shape.
Very bad shape.
His body was covered in burns. Cuts. Massive bruises.
But Restorative Blessing was still active.
The wounds were healing slowly.
On the other hand, his clothes and light armor were definitely not in the same condition as at the start of the fight.
Torn. Burned. Cracked.
Then Hiro noticed something glinting faintly on the ground.
A sword.
The unconscious adventurer’s sword.
Red-orange. Almost incandescent.
It radiated palpable heat even from a distance.
The adventurer lay unconscious right beside it.
Hiro broke into a wide, pure-joy grin.
He rushed forward and gripped the sword firmly in both hands.
“Sorry, man. Just borrowing it for the fight. I’ll give it back after, promise.”
The precise instant Hiro’s bloodied hands fully closed around the hot hilt…
Haloy felt an absolutely immense danger.
Primal. Instinctive. Lethal.
His eyes widened in pure terror and shifted to brown.
He immediately retreated dozens of meters and screamed at the top of his lungs:
“THE EARTH CLAIMS YOU!”
Instantly, in front, behind, to the right and left of Hiro…
Gigantic walls of compact earth erupted from four different directions and violently collided.
Meeting exactly where Hiro stood.
Leaving no escape whatsoever.
BOOM.
Haloy made a wide, desperate sweeping motion with his hand, retreating even farther.
In a roughly fifty-meter radius zone, the entire ground flipped completely.
Trees, rocks, plants—absolutely everything in that entire section—was brutally overturned.
And buried deep underground, several meters below.
As if the earth itself had swallowed everything that existed.
Haloy watched it all while sweating profusely, hands trembling.
Why… why was I so scared?
He tried to convince himself he had simply overreacted.
My body probably just misfired. It must be some weird side effect from absorbing way too much power way too fast.
Yeah. That’s probably it.
Suddenly, he distinctly felt a warm breath right against the exposed nape of his neck.
Slow. Deep. Controlled breathing.
Absolute terror flooded him instantly.
Even without looking, even without turning around, he knew exactly who was standing right behind him.
Because he could clearly see the sharp, glowing red tip of the sword down to his right.
Pointing directly at his body.
It was Hiro.
Breathing slowly and deeply.
Calm breathing.
Threatening.
Deadly.
