He could tell that they’d noticed that he did something. In turn, he grinned. His voice, which no doubt sounded slow and distorted from their perspective, sounded through the rain. “I agreed to fight you,” he said, conjuring a giant blob of blood metal, “but I never said I was going to lose!”

  “Start!”

  His perception of time instantly reversed. Now, everything was moving at half the speed, while he moved as quick as lightning. The sound around him pitched down. He could pick out individual drops of rain. Gravity halved its grip on his body.

  He threw the massive chunk of metal into the air before him and activated a double-starred Tsunami Strike, cutting his essence to under 100%.

  His right fist touched the metal. Instantly, it exploded. All the flesh was stripped off his hand, leaving nothing but cracked bones.

  He watched the effects of the attack transpire in slow motion. The cracks rapidly spread through the chunk as it shattered into pieces, a deafening metallic bang brutalizing his ears, the shockwave pushing raindrops away and sending the shrapnel in a widespread area towards his enemies.

  Many projectiles, spells, and other abilities were flying at him, but as they collided with the storm of bloody shads and the incoming shockwave, most of them were shattered and redirected, and the few that made their way to him skittered against his scales, leaving little more than a scratch in their wake.

  The bulk of the attack hit the unprepared CEO of Strata head-on. Freddy had been aiming at him. With the Boundless Vitality tempering technique, life-affinity archs were the perfect target for his talent. And this man wasn’t prepared for the sudden turn of events. The attack washed over him, pulverizing his body into gory chunks, and the influx of healing was enough to reconstruct Freddy’s lost hand.

  Then, the rest of the shards reached their targets. The sudden, overwhelming burst of vitality and essence was enough to know that many had died in the attack, and even more were injured.

  The sight cleared a bit, and he realized that all the three-stars were still holding their guards up. Before they dropped them, he leaped forward, activating Hydraulic Flex with both stars and conjuring shimmering, gold-threaded Knuckle Blades on both fists. He aimed straight for the leader of Lapis, who had been the closest to the now-deceased CEO, and had failed to repel all the shrapnel. Her blue robes were a bit bloody around her hip.

  He saw her expression morph into shock as she spotted him running at her at what seemed to be an impossible speed.

  The Umbra leader shot out his throwing dagger, using shadowy tendrils as a sort of sling to send it flying at blistering speed, and the weapon stabbed right into Freddy’s skull, sending a blinding flash of pain through his head, but it failed to penetrate deeply enough to seriously injure him, and it did nothing to slow him down.

  Numerous tendrils of shadow followed, but they weren’t fast enough to catch up to him or stop him. The Lapis leader reacted immediately, freezing the surrounding air, making the snow beneath their feet harden and the rain turn into icy tears, and then aimed a perfect sword-swing at Freddy.

  The blisteringly cold ice essence washed over him, trying to pierce his skin and slow his movement, but it was momentarily buffered by the Crimson Dragon Scales, just long enough for him to raise the forearm shield to defend himself from the sword attack. The suppression of rank kicked in, and even with the blocking function of his shield, the sword still cut halfway through his arm. But it stopped at his bone.

  Judging by her expression, which was slowly morphing into that of pure terror, she had expected the swing to cut all the way through him.

  With a wide grin, he activated the impact function on his knuckle blade, and his whole body appeared to accelerate forward even faster, and while she tried to move out of the way, she was nowhere near fast enough. The impact landed right on the mask of ice—suppression of rank and some concept within worked together to minimize the damage, but with Freddy’s weight and the speed behind the attack, it was enough to break through, stabbing her in the eye and killing her instantly.

  He swiftly conjured Sanguine Avenger, which glowed as parallel lines of golden yellow shot up and down its length, and turned to run at the CEO of Grand West Enterprises. He swung his sword, and in that moment, his boost expired. His sword slowed down, allowing the man to raise his macabre weapon to defend himself. Just from the contact with the wood, a notable crack spread across the sword’s edge.

  Without looking, Freddy dashed to the side, relying on Hydraulic Flex to redirect his momentum, and it was just in time to avoid a mass of shadowy tendrils that would have cocooned him had they hit.

  There were still a number of people remaining among the two-star fighters, but few among them were in any state to fight; hell, most of them didn’t even seem to realize where exactly he was. Even those who weren’t critically injured appeared dazed.

  Most of them were used to trampling those below them or fighting in tightly regulated matches. Thus, the psychological damage of Freddy’s wanton destruction had hit even harder than the shotgun blast.

  He refocused on the approaching Umbra assassin, who was now charging at him with lethal speed. The man sent out another mass of tendrils, and Freddy swung through them, cutting them up with his sword, but they stuck to the blade like living glue, dulling the edge and crawling towards his hand. Simultaneously, he defended himself from the other man with his forearm shield, which was already mostly cracked.

  The jagged, messy spikes of the bludgeoning tool broke right through Freddy’s defense, doing enough damage to crush his left arm, even with his incredible durability.

  The blood spilled from the attack released its essence, which slowly shifted towards Sanguine Avenger. After such a devastating blow, Freddy felt his sword keen with excitement, ready to pay it back.

  He allowed a few of the black tendrils to coil around him as he used the opportunity to swing the sword in a massive downward chop. The man raised his club to defend, but the force behind the overbearing sword was greater than he’d expected.

  Freddy could feel through his talent that the blow had sent a painful shock through the man’s body, and given that he ejected bloody foam out his mouth, it was enough to stun him. The Sanguine Avenger suddenly broke in half under the force of the impact against the talent-conjured weapon, and Freddy activated Tsunami Strike, smashing his left foot right into the armor shielding the man’s liver.

  His foot exploded, together with the old boot on it, and the man was sent flying away at a comical speed, smashing into a tree with nearly enough force to topple it. The essence notified Freddy of the man’s death.

  Finally, the Umbra leader reached him, leaping with an intense focus, aiming the shortsword straight for Freddy’s neck. He landed the attack, cutting a critical artery, and immediately got to sending insanely precise and sharp strikes at every exposed weakpoint, each one leaving Freddy loaded with toxic essence and spreading tendrils across the surface of his body, slowing him down and tying him up.

  Try as he may, Freddy was unable to recover or pull back. The damage had piled up. Somewhat desperately, he hardened a bunch of blood, encasing his entire, still-broken left arm, and then used it as a shield against the man’s attacks—or he made it look like he did. In reality, as soon as he angled it in a way that the man wouldn’t notice, Freddy launched a Tsunami Strike with his right arm, striking the mass of hardened blood encasing the left.

  His entire left arm exploded, sending shrapnel flying right at the Umbra assassin, shredding through the thick mass of shadows protecting the man. It was enough to strip the man’s defense and reveal his whole body.

  And then, with both his hands useless, Freddy did the only thing he could do. This time, he made sure to create a mask of blood to protect his mouth. His eyes shot wide open, and he began chanting, and as soon as he did, the experienced assassin reflexively sent a mass of black tendrils to shut him up. They impotently collided with the mask protecting Freddy’s face.

  For a brief moment, and for the first time since they started fighting, the leader of Umbra froze in panic.

  “Leviathan’s Fury!”

  The jaws of bone closed around the Umbra assassin with a crunch, breaking all the bones in his body and killing him on the spot.

  And with that, the final three-star was dead. But the fight wasn’t over.

  What bursts of healing weren’t enough to outweigh the damage Freddy had received. His body was mostly being held together by the fraying, pink tissue of first aid-quality healing.

  A woman shouted behind his back, and a moment later, a pale sword poked into his back, failing to penetrate his scales. He swung around with Hydraulic Flex, hitting her with a blind backhand and breaking her neck. But she wasn’t the only one. An arrow clinked off his scales on his hip, and a fireball exploded against his chest, sending him tumbling away.

  You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

  Rage. Tears. Shouts of indignation. He was surrounded by people who had lost their leaders and friends.

  His essence was extremely close to being depleted. His hands and left foot were nothing but a lumpy mass of fraying tissue. He couldn’t even ball his fist. Slowly, he formed a bladed extension to his right arm. And then, he charged forward.

  Many of the muscles in his body were damn-near useless, thanks to Leviathan’s Fury. But he still managed to step around a sword to cut a robed man’s head off.

  From what all the people around him could see, he was just a walking corpse. Push him over, and he would die. Heavily outnumbered and mortally wounded. It was already over.

  Abilities slammed into him. Arrows struck exposed flesh, nearly bowling him over with the momentum behind them. Martial artists slashed away at him with freezing blows, and tendrils of darkness coiled around him.

  And yet, no matter how hard they hit him, he just wouldn’t die.

  Not even bothering to avoid the incoming slash, he swung his bladed arm, effortlessly bisecting the man behind the sword. Then, as if regaining another bit of his mobility, he turned around, stabbing through a woman’s head. And then again, he moved faster once more, nimbly skipping back and kicking a black-robed man in his midsection. The kick resounded with a sharp crack of bone and sent the fighter tumbling away

  With every kill, his body put another small piece of him back together. It wasn’t much. It was only 1% of the damage he did, after all. But it was enough for his enemies to notice.

  It was enough to shake the spirit of everyone standing in his way.

  The attackers got more desperate, their abilities becoming more intense, with the flashes of double-starred attacks sparking all around him.

  A large fireball struck him, launching him into a mass of shadowy tendrils. Several arrows and javelins impacted against his body. A thick layer of ice encased him, and everyone with a weapon used the chance to stab into him, poking a number of small holes in his body.

  For a long moment, the attackers just watched with bated breaths. They waited for something to happen. But Freddy appeared to be unmoving.

  A wave of relieved sighes washed over the crowd.

  And then the ice cracked.

  “No way…”

  “How!?”

  “Keep attacking!”

  “Wait!” a black-robed man urged with a raised hand. “Let’s do it in order! First, ice casters!”

  The remaining blue-robed fighters nodded. They focused, and then, with what essence they could afford, sent a collective chilling breeze over the ice. It resolidified, with an instant layer of heavy frost settling over the frozen shell. Every raindrop that touched it immediately joined the ice.

  No movement came from the imprisoned Freddy.

  “He’s got to be dead by now,” someone said.

  Inside the ice, Freddy struggled to move a muscle. He could feel the ice slowly piercing through what was left of his crimson scales, and if he didn’t act now, he would freeze. It would be too late.

  He couldn’t speak, so using Blood Sacrifice was impossible. Thankfully, all the killing had replenished just enough essence for a desperate last resort.

  He cast Tsunami Strike. The target? His left shoulder. The water in his body gathered into a single point. He moved just a little bit, just enough to push the shoulder against the ice.

  In the next moment, his shoulder exploded, completely removing the rest of his arm and obliterating the ice keeping him captive.

  “Shadows!” the interim leader shouted, his voice cracking in panic.

  Before Freddy could take another step forward, a mass of tendrils enveloped him, trapping him in place. He fought against it, somehow managing to tear a large chunk off, but not before several large fireballs struck him. The explosion lifted mud, dust, and smoke into the air.

  Such excessive, large-scale attacks couldn't go on forever. Few among the fighters were at the peak of the second star. Their essence reserves weren’t unlimited.

  A nervous air settled around them as they watched in trepidation.

  A moment later, a gored Freddy walked out of the smoke. His scales were little more than char barely clinging to his seared skin, and his face was nearly peeled off, with all his teeth visible on one side where a big chunk of his cheek was missing. His left shoulder was completely gone, and so was the rest of his arm. “Thanks for warming me up,” he said as he took another step forward, raising his bladed right arm to continue fighting.

  “Fucking monster!” someone shouted. “I surrender!”

  “I also surrender!”

  “Stop! Me too!”

  Once the first few gave up, the others soon followed.

  Out of essence and frightened out of their minds, they raised their hands and lowered their heads.

  However, Freddy simply stopped for a moment. Then, with a nasty grin, he said. “Adjudicator. The fight goes until mutually agreed surrender…right?”

  The man briefly smiled. Then, he nodded.

  “Then, I refuse.” He charged back into the fray.

  He was fronted by shouts of indignation, people shouting to the adjudicator for help. “We surrendered! You can’t do this! This is plain murder!”

  For his part, Freddy just laughed. “Murder!? What exactly do you think you motherfuckers were here to do!?” He slashed, cutting a man black-robed man across his chest. “Now that you’re eating shit, you want to back out? Fuck off!” He kicked the man in his chest, knocking all the air out of his chest and crushing his sternum.

  A woman he was charging at simply stared at him blankly, completely frozen in terror. He beheaded her and continued walking.

  One by one, he culled the remaining survivors. They fought until their dying breaths, but with little essence, there was barely anything they could do.

  A few of them tried to run.

  A shard of crystallized miasma followed after, killing off the deserters before they could get far. The adjudicator emotionlessly chanted again, “For violating the agreed-upon terms…”

  In the end, there were only three people remaining. Three people Freddy had intentionally left alive. The traitors.

  The man whose name he just barely remembered—Charlie King—fell over in fright and reached out with a hand. “Please! Stop! I… I was threatened.” A wet spot appeared around his crotch.

  “Oh, I’m sure you were,” Freddy said. He dropped the bladed extension and conjured Gore Knuckles. Then, punched the man right in the stomach. The concept of pain was clearly quite potent, since the man immediately started screaming so hard that his eyes looked like they were about to pop out of his skull. A moment later, he lost consciousness.

  Then, Freddy got the rush of ether. “He died from that? Pathetic.”

  The other two men looked absolutely mortified, simply standing there with blank expressions on their face, unable to muster even a shred of fighting spirit.

  Freddy looked over to them. “Two should be enough. I accept your surrender,” he said. “Now run on. Tell everyone what you saw here today.”

  The two of them nodded vigorously and then turned around.

  “Sleep with one eye open,” he added.

  They briefly froze, and then broke into a sprint.

  Freddy cracked his neck. “Well then. That’ll be it.” He turned to the adjudicator, who was watching him intensely. “Thank you, Adjudicator,” he said.

  He was beyond exhausted. The amount of foreign essence still loitering in his body was excessive. He could still feel his body temperature gradually dropping.

  The adjudicator nodded with a smile. “It was my pleasure.”

  Sighing, Freddy looked around him. He looked down on his left hand. Both his Blood Ring and the storage ring had been flung off to who knew where when he decided to turn his arm into an improvised claymore. Thankfully, he had a connection to the Blood Ring through Blood Sacrifice, so finding it wasn’t too challenging. The storage ring wasn’t too far from it.

  Note to self—don’t blow your left arm up.

  He collected the remaining pieces of his missing arm, too. Putting it back together from scratch would be a royal pain.

  “Mr. Cliff,” the adjudicator called.

  Freddy stiffened, then turned to look at the man.

  Frankly, he was far from happy at the man’s presence. But he grinned and endured it. There was nothing he could do to this man, especially not in his current state. Still, he was ready to activate Blood Sacrifice if the man as much as farted suspiciously.

  “First,” the man started, bowing slightly, “I would like to offer my congratulations. Now, if you will, I have a few gifts for you.”

  Freddy quirked an eyebrow. “Gifts?” He cocked his head. “What kinds of gifts?”

  “I will get to that in a minute. Before I hand you your presents, I would like to admit that you would be doing me an immense favor by accepting them. So on top of the gifts, I will owe you a personal favour.”

  Freddy growled at that. “What’s the catch?”

  “Catch?” The man chuckled. “Well, I will get a promotion if you accept my offer.”

  “What happens if I say no?”

  “I will be quite disappointed.”

  “That’s it?”

  The man nodded. “That is all.”

  “And what happens if I say yes?” He squinted.

  “You get something very nice.”

  Freddy groaned at that. He felt that this man was being purposely vague. “Can I at least see what you’re offering?”

  The adjudicator enthusiastically nodded. “Of course.” The man pulled a storage ring from his pocket, focused on it for a moment, and threw it at Freddy.

  Freddy picked up the ring and took a peek inside. There were several bottles of luminescent liquid, a powder of sorts, and a bottle of pills. The storage ring itself was quite large, too, about 0.8 cubic meters.

  “Some medicine,” the man said. “Given that you’re acquainted with Mr. Skull, I presume you will get proper treatment, but I would still like to ensure you recover as much as possible. This was quite the intense battle, and it would do nobody any good to have you suffer permanent consequences.”

  Freddy nodded. “Thanks.” He stashed the storage ring into what was left of his pocket.

  “And for your second gift, you are officially free to leave the Northern Belt.”

  Freddy’s eyes widened. “What? Really?” He panicked a bit. “Do I have to?”

  “No, no, absolutely not. Nobody is forced to leave before they reach the peak of the third star. Such is the law. You are simply free to go whenever you wish. Just pay me a visit, and I will arrange it for you. You are also hereby invited to an extensive list of Imperial organizations, but, well, we’ll go more in-depth on that when you finally decide to leave.”

  “Uh-huh. Well, thank you, I guess. Is that all?”

  “No. There is one more thing you’re due,” the man said, gesturing vaguely to the side. “Repentawa.”

  Freddy raised an eyebrow. “What about Repentawa?”

  “It’s yours.”