If I hadn’t had Impenetrable Defense up, that would have hit the soldiers. Luckily for them, Alisa and the other members of the hero’s party were safe in their own individual barriers.
“No way… You’re just a level 1,200 adventurer. How could you defend against my mana?”
That “1,200” was what I’d set my level as using Falsify Ability. Anyone below the level you set wouldn’t get any information, and the higher you increased the level, the bigger the boost it got, just like Conceal Ability. It could work even against people at a higher level than you. There was a limit to that, obviously. It didn’t work on people who were vastly higher than you, but I knew it’d work on Abel.
Compared to the other members of the hero’s party, Abel was in fact significantly more powerful in both level and stats. And that was it.
I rushed toward Abel and struck him with both my swords faster than he could react. He flew backward and crashed into the Impenetrable Defense.
“What is this? How can you move so fast even I, the hero, can’t react…?”
He was still able to get back to his feet, partly due to the recovery aspect of Heart of the Hero. The other part was because I’d held back so I wouldn’t kill him.
“You don’t know the answer to that, and you still think you can beat me?” I replied.
He relied too much on Evaluate. I used it all the time, but that wasn’t the only thing I used to gauge my opponent’s strength.
A month ago, when I’d snuck into the Ishtobal Palace, I hadn’t been able to see Abel’s level with Evaluate. Since I didn’t detect an overwhelming amount of mana from him, I suspected he might’ve been using a skill.
Today, I got the answer to that riddle. I was now able to see not only his level, but also his stats, skills, and spells, because I was very clearly a much higher level. A month ago, his level was still below mine, but I hadn’t been able to see that because of his skill, Protection of the Hero.
I had considered the possibility that his level was higher than mine, so I didn’t go to class for the past two weeks after getting back from the royal manor. I spent that whole time taking on the second extreme-difficulty dungeon, the Devil’s Prison, and raised my level.
It looked like I hadn’t needed to do that, but I was able to complete the Devil’s Prison solo, so that was good.
“Arius, I will not let you get away with underestimating me!”
His eyes filled with hatred, Abel swung at me again, his sword wreathed in massive amounts of visible mana.
But that didn’t matter if he couldn’t hit me.
I dodged Abel’s holy sword and hit him with my own mana-coated sword. This sent him flying, and I chased after him and struck again before he could stand. He couldn’t react at all, and his armor broke into pieces.
“Y-You broke orichalcum armor…”
Abel might have been a high level, but his mana manipulation was sloppy. He wasn’t as fast as his stats, and his movements were simple. Awakening as the hero might have raised his level, but he wasn’t fully utilizing his abilities. I’m not trying to sound full of myself, but I could have easily defeated Abel a month ago.
“Abel, will you let me leave now peacefully?”
“A-Arius, don’t be stupid… I’m going to kill you here!”
If he wouldn’t give up, then I’d have to treat him like Chris. I was perfectly happy killing him seeing as he was trying to kill me, but if I wanted to avoid that, I still had one resolution that just barely qualified as peaceful.
“This is very interesting to watch.”
Suddenly, a woman in all black appeared within my Impenetrable Defense. She had glossy black hair and jet-black eyes, and her smooth, pale skin was clad in a black velvet dress.
Objectively speaking, she was beautiful enough to appear as a rival to the heroine of Love Academy. She was so beautiful that she might actually just swallow the heroine up whole. But what drew my attention more was her overwhelmingly powerful presence.
✦ ✦ ✦
I was now on full alert. My Scan was still up, but I hadn’t detected her at all until the moment she appeared. My Evaluate couldn’t tell her level, and the mana my Scan was picking up was leagues above the final bosses in any of the extreme-difficulty dungeons I’d been in.
“Who the hell are you? Where’d you come from?” shouted Abel. He must not have realized how powerful she was because he went to grab her, but his arm evaporated before he could touch her. “M-My arm… I’ll kill you…” He then tried to swing his holy sword.
“You’re rather annoying,” she said with a cold glare. That was enough to freeze Abel in his tracks. “The hero this time has no manners, trying to attack a lady, and I only came to say hello. Not that you’re worth my time.”
As if responding to her words, ten fully armed demons floated down and placed themselves with their backs to my Impenetrable Defense. I had noticed them appear near the ceiling with my Scan at the same time the woman had appeared.
“I am Alanis Justia, queen of the demon country of Guardial. I’m the one you call the demon king. I assume you won’t mind if I kill this rude hero? Oh, that was just a little joke. So long as he doesn’t raise another hand against me.”
The soldiers were unable to do anything with Abel now a hostage. Rightly so, since each of the ten demons were well over level 1,000.
Demon King Alanis ignored the soldiers and looked at me with intense curiosity.
“Don’t be so on edge, Arius. You really are an interesting one. This level at your age… Apologies for the vague wording, but it would be rude to reveal your secrets to others without your permission, wouldn’t it? I can’t even imagine what you had to do in order to get to this stage at only fifteen.”
I didn’t know why the demon king knew about me, but right now wasn’t the time to be thinking about that. I had my two swords ready so I could move at any moment.
“What are you after?” I asked.
“I just said. I simply came to say hello to the fool of a hero who’s trying to put me down.”
I didn’t know how much of that was the truth, but if Alanis wanted to, she could kill every single person here. Not that I planned to go down easily.
“D-Damn you… If you’re the demon king, I’ll kill you…” Abel growled, his voice sounding like he had to fight some invisible force to get it out.
“Oh my, still a hero even if you are a rotten one? Unfortunately, I don’t plan on spending any more time with you, you boorish oaf.”
Alanis shot him another cold glance, and he looked away toward me. “Arius, you led her in here, didn’t you?! You’ve betrayed all of humanity!”
He was one hundred percent wrong, but it was terrible timing that she appeared. Nothing I could say would change anything.
“Hero, you seem to be mistaken,” Alanis corrected. “I could kill you at any moment without resorting to such petty tricks.”
She unleashed her mana, which poured out in a thick, raging torrent that engulfed everything around us. She’d still been concealing her mana?
“Wh-What in the… Th-This mana…” Abel cowered in fear, despite Heart of the Hero being activated. Even he wasn’t so dense that he wouldn’t notice her mana.
“I’ll let today slide as I only came to say hello, but the next time we meet, hero, I will kill you.”
The next moment, the world around me changed.
✦ ✦ ✦
I was in a building that was literally on a different scale from Ishtobal Castle. Massive pillars supported a ceiling more than a hundred and fifty feet above my head. It was almost as big as the space inside an extreme-difficulty dungeon.
Greeting the return of Demon King Alanis and her ten demons were more than a thousand more demons, each of them emitting incredible amounts of mana.
“If I’d left you there, things would have gotten troublesome for you, wouldn’t they? So, I brought you with me. Or was that a bit meddlesome of me?” she said with a teasing smile. “Arius Gilberto, welcome to the demon country of Guardial.”
Stats
Arius Gilberto (Age 15)
Level: 2798
HP: 29242
MP: 44698
STR: 11255
DEF: 11253
INT: 12659
RES: 11927
DEX: 11254
AGI: 11255