THE second I got Jessica’s Message, I used Teleport to go to Carnell. Jessica wouldn’t tell me not to come to Carnell if things were fine, which told me things were a mess there. Though I didn’t have an exact idea of what was happening from her Message alone.
The first thing I saw was the crowd surrounding the Guild. There were armored soldiers around the building, and the door had been broken down. Inside the Guild, near the entrance, was a man in tacky gold plate armor standing in opposition to Jessica and her party. That must be the Chris guy she mentioned.
Jessica’s blue breastplate was half-shattered, and Allen’s full plate was rent deeply in the abdomen. Marcia and members of Gale’s party also looked like they were in rough shape, but their injuries seemed to have been healed. At least no one’d been killed.
“Sorry to keep you waiting, Jessica,” I said.
“Arius? Why…?” She looked at me like she wanted to cry.
“I know what you were trying to do, but it sounds like this guy’s got business with me. If that’s the case, then I’ll handle him. It’s my fault you had to deal with this mess.”
This Chris had vivid blue hair and deep red eyes. He sneered at me once we locked eyes. “Arius, I haven’t forgotten what you did to me, but I’m not who I was back then. Let me show you what it’s like going against someone in a totally different league!”
Had I met him before? I honestly didn’t remember at all.
I’d been in a party with Grey and Selena ever since I was a kid, and a lot of people said I was full of myself. There were a lot of other adventurers who started stuff with me, so maybe Chris was one of the guys I’d beat up after they tried to attack me?
But I wasn’t going to forget Chris meeting him now. I knew from Evaluate that his level was high and his stats were abnormally large. On top of that, he had a skill I didn’t recognize. That skill…
“You’ve really messed things up here, haven’t you, Chris?” I replied, my eyes fixed on him as I moved in front of Jessica. I was legitimately angry at this guy for tormenting her and the others.
✦ ✦ ✦
“It’s their fault,” Chris scoffed. “They wouldn’t tell me where you were. But that girl eventually sold you out to save herself. How’s it feel to be betrayed by your friends?”
“Jessica isn’t like that. She sent me a Message telling me you were looking for me and that I shouldn’t come to Carnell. I decided to come here anyway.”
“What? You little—! You lied to me!”
Jessica was unfazed by Chris’s glare.
“Tsk, whatever. It’s all the same in the end. You’re the one I have business with, Arius. If you’re a good boy and come with me, I’ll let the rest of these small fries off the hook.”
“Why would I need to listen to you?” I countered.
“I had a feeling you’d say that, so I’ll just have to force you to do what I say!”
He rushed me, swinging his sword at my head. I moved ever so slightly to dodge, then moved in closer and punched him before he could react. He quickly leapt backward to avoid taking damage, but there was a fist-shaped indent in the stomach of his armor.
“Arius, you bastard, don’t be cocky!” he shouted with unveiled rage. The blade of his great sword glowed an even shinier gold as he coated it with mana.
I realized that the sword was the Mystical Sword Ouroboros. That said, the whole “Mystical Sword” thing made it sound fancier than it was. It was just a magic item that dropped in the hard-difficulty dungeon, the Dragon’s Palace.
Jessica looked concerned. I met her eyes and nodded to reassure her that I was fine.
“You seem pretty confident, Arius. You better not underestimate me!” Chris shouted as he came at me. Ouroboros roared as it smashed through the air.
I pulled two swords out of my Inventory. Our swords clashed, mana against mana, causing energy to explode out. If we fought here, everyone was going to end up as collateral.
“Chris, let’s move this somewhere else,” I said, then cast Short Teleport to move the two of us to the sky above the Adventurers Guild. Even suddenly finding himself in midair, Chris was able to manage by casting Fly on himself.
The soldiers and the onlookers noticed us. Not that it mattered, so long as they weren’t interfering with our fight.
“Damn you, treating me like you’re better than me!” Chris shouted as he attacked with his sword that surged with golden mana.
I blocked with my right sword, then attacked with my left, and leapt backward to evade. Not only did he have high stats, but he didn’t move too badly either.
“Catastrophe Slash!”
Activating his skill, Chris’s mana erupted from his sword. Catastrophe Slash was one of the highest-level skills for great swords that massively increased destructive power by creating a torrent of mana.
Chris came straight for me and swung down. When I blocked the strike with my swords, Chris tried to push harder to overpower me, but we were in midair.
I let him push as I landed a side kick to his completely unprotected stomach, crunching a chunk out of the flank of his golden plate armor and blasting him sideways.
“You bastard! I swear I will kill you!” he roared, glaring at me as he pressed a hand over his bleeding side. “Don’t think this is enough to let you win. I’m about to show you which of us is really stronger!”
Suddenly, a massive amount of mana erupted from every part of him. The torrent of mana gushing from his sword grew even more powerful, doubling in length, and the wound on his side stopped bleeding.
Using Evaluate, I saw his stats had jumped even higher. I didn’t quite understand the mechanism behind how this worked, but I guess he was getting serious.
Having shifted into high gear, Chris unleashed a flurry of blows that I continued to dodge. His power and speed had significantly increased, and that was definitely not normal.
“Die, die, die! Die already, Arius!”
Veins popped out across his body, and his skin turned red, heating up so much that steam came off him. His eyes were bloodshot, and he grinned madly.
“So, Chris, is that your Heart of the Hero skill?” I asked. It was the skill I didn’t recognize when I used Evaluate earlier, and it didn’t seem very hero-esque to me either.
“How the hell—? Eh, it doesn’t matter if you know about that, because you’re going to die here! Gahahaha!” He let out a raucous laugh. “With this power, I couldn’t possibly lose to you!”
His speed and power were off the charts. With mana exploding from his sword, he struck violently at me over and over.
I dodged his attacks and countered, but the cut I opened on his skin immediately closed. Was that another effect of Heart of the Hero?
I continued to avoid his attacks and sometimes landed a counterstrike. We kept at that for more than twenty minutes until I finally received the answer I’d been waiting for.
“I see. That’s the sort of skill this Heart of the Hero is,” I said out loud.
It wasn’t like I’d been doing nothing but dodging his attacks. I’d been using Analyze to learn more about this skill of his.
The tier-ten spell Analyze could give you a detailed breakdown of the effects and structure of spells or skills. Its only flaws were that it could only analyze skills or spells that were currently active, and that took time. That’s why I had to keep Chris using his Heart of the Hero.
If Heart of the Hero were nothing more than a skill I just hadn’t heard of before, I wouldn’t have bothered to go to these lengths, but this seemed like a pretty nasty skill, no matter how you looked at it. Analyze told me it was definitely nasty.
“All right, Chris, I don’t need to spend any more of my time on you,” I said, then increased my speed so much that Chris couldn’t react as I slammed my two swords into him.
“Gah!”
My left sword shattered his while my right pierced his golden plate armor, opening a massive hole in his chest. He instantly died, and his mana dissipated as he plummeted to the ground.
I rushed down and caught him, took a black collar out of my Inventory and put it around his neck, then cast Full Heal. He started breathing again, so, guess that went well.
The collar was a magic item from an extreme-difficulty dungeon that sealed someone’s mana, rendering Chris skill-less.
I knew from Analyze that Heart of the Hero had an automatic healing effect and gave resistance to status effects. Once activated, it couldn’t be deactivated until either he killed everyone he considered an enemy or he was killed. I couldn’t keep him dead or let him continue to be a threat; I still had questions to ask. Even though I wasn’t certain if it would work, I was okay with him dying if it didn’t. He’d tormented Jessica and the others and was trying to kill me.