Just Gonna Walk Away?
The rendezvous point was Zone 3-23.
Until Leon arrived, there had been no pursuit, no ambush — nothing out of the ordinary.
The moment he reached the zone, though —
"Leon!"
He spotted Carotin sprinting toward him from the opposite direction, a cluster of cadets at her heels. Behind them, fifteen J-class cadets closed in, split into three-man teams of five.
"Tch."
Leon counted the A-class numbers and clicked his tongue.
One was missing.
"Ness, that bastard's dead."
That made three A-class dead in total. Twenty-two remaining.
"…Ha."
Dead? He was dead?
Killed by the enemy?
So I'm the only one taking losses here?
Heat flooded Leon's skull in an instant, and he bellowed at the top of his lungs.
"Hey! Kill every last one of them!"
He was talking about the J-class cadets bearing down on them. Of course, they weren't idiots either — the second they saw the numbers swelling behind Leon, they spun on their heels and fled.
Leon's eyes burned blood-red.
You pull this shit and then just walk away?
His body stretched thin for a heartbeat, then tore across the ridge in a streak of black, carving a dark line through empty air.
Shiiik!
In the span of a single breath he overtook Carotin's group.
"Follow me!"
He spat the words as he blew past them, then dropped low enough that his body skimmed the ground.
Paaang!
A short crack of displaced air, and he accelerated hard. He folded space itself, closing the gap on one of the J-class teams in the blink of an eye.
"Huh?"
"…Was he always that fast?"
"Did that guy just… fly?"
The A-class cadets trailing behind him gaped. They had watched Leon use the Heavenly Spirit Steps countless times before — but this was different. Very different. Extremely, massively different.
Never mind the absurd speed. The way he moved — smooth, light, gliding through the air as if it were water — drew involuntary gasps of awe.
It wasn't that Leon had been hiding his strength. The dense accumulation of experience and training, combined with pure rage, had jolted his consciousness into a sudden awakening. Without even realizing it, he had broken through to the next stage of the Heavenly Spirit Steps.
An epiphany. A leap in the mastery of his footwork.
But the man whose head had been scrambled by fury didn't give a damn about any of that. The only thing that mattered right now was catching those bastards and beating them into the dirt.
"Get over here!"
"Eek!"
Emily let out a short scream as Leon materialized right in front of her. Those pale eyes, shot through with blood vessels, those eyes drowning in madness — they looked uncannily like the demonic beasts she had fought in the demonic realm.
"Die!"
With that crude snarl, Leon unleashed a full-powered strike. Blazing blue sword energy sprayed outward like a dragon's breath.
KWAANG!
The force rivaled the mana bombs they had been hurling. No one took a direct hit, but it was more than enough to freeze their fleeing feet in place.
"Uwaaaaaaaaaaaaah!!!"
Leon howled like a lunatic and kept firing off every ounce of sword energy he could muster.
KWAANG! KWANG! KWAGWAGWANG!
"Hyaaaak!"
"Run!"
"He's insane — he's insane!"
The red-eyed madman had gone berserk. Explosions tore through the air without pause. The ground ruptured. Flesh trembled under the shockwaves. A thick killing intent pressed against every nerve, and sword strikes that could turn a person into meat scraps skimmed past skin again and again.
He looked ready to rampage until every enemy in front of him was gone. The word "surrender" rose unbidden to the tips of every J-class cadet's tongue.
"Blood!!! My blade needs blood!!!"
They had picked the wrong fight — spectacularly so.
"Hand over your hearts and tongues and I'll let you live!!!"
That… that guy was supposed to be a young master? Barbarian, berserker, drug addict — any of those labels fit better.
KWAAAAANG! KWAGWAGWANG!
Fsssssss—
It didn't take long for Leon's sword energy to sweep through the J-class cadets. He had poured everything into the assault without a thought for what came after — of course it didn't.
"Hoo… hoo…"
Leon caught his breath atop the devastated ground. Not from exhaustion — the excitement simply hadn't worn off yet.
"Good. Good."
A sinister murmur. The A-class cadets didn't bother asking what was good about it. What was there to say to a man whose eyes had already rolled back?
"Which direction did they come from?"
Leon asked Carotin while downing a mana recovery potion.
Gulp. Gulp.
Even the bob of his throat seemed to radiate anger.
Carotin scratched her cheek and answered.
"Well… they came at us in such a mess. If I had to pin it down, though — from the east, I think."
"That so?"
Thinking back, Jeniel had also come down from somewhere between the east and the north.
Clink.
Leon dropped the empty potion bottle.
"I was planning to sit tight until nightfall."
But if they were going to provoke him like this, sitting still was no longer an option.
"Yeah — why overcomplicate it?"
This evaluation was designed for them to beat the hell out of each other in the first place. Keep it simple.
"We push east. Straight through."
Leon's red tongue dragged slowly across his lips.
"Until every last one of them is dead."
Guerrilla warfare.
That was the strategy Jeniel had prepared alongside J-class. As martial artists who fought bare-handed with short reach, forming ranks and trading blows the way other classes did simply didn't suit them. It was inefficient, and frankly, they weren't good at it.
So this was what they had prepared instead.
Split into teams of manageable size. Pop out from every direction — hit, stab, harass. If things looked bad, pull out fast. Nibble away at the enemy's strength, bit by bit.
As martial artists, each of them excelled at movement techniques, and operating in small groups meant the risk never got too high. When they found mana bombs in a Grade-2 zone, they had nearly cheered out loud. Toss one of those right before engaging and the enemy would love them to death.
And then —
A-class, C-class, F-class, even I-class. A motley collection of enemies wandering around together, stumbled upon by pure chance.
It was absurd. Speechless-making, even.
An alliance to take down A-class? They had never expected much from that idea to begin with. They themselves had no intention of heading for the central zone anytime soon. Better to operate independently than team up with people who might turn on you at any moment — the same way they had survived alone in the Siruntel Demonic Realm.
But this? This was different.
If you were going to stick together, you shouldn't be sticking with A-class. How was anyone else supposed to win then?
The deliberation didn't last long.
"Hit them."
Knock a few of them out now and things would be easier later. See an enemy, attack. J-class operated on that simple principle. Waiting for internal conflict, fishing for an easy score — those options existed, but this class had no one who thought that way. They just went straight at it.
So J-class waited for the enemy to split, then struck — focusing on the smaller group. Opening with mana bombs worked beautifully. Without that defensive artifact projecting a barrier, the bombs alone might have taken out several of them.
In any case, against enemies reeling from the blasts, fists and feet did the rest. The targets had no choice but to take the beating.
…Though only managing to eliminate a single person still stung.
Even so, up to that point, Jeniel hadn't thought much of it. The plan was to keep hitting them until they were exhausted or dropped out entirely.
Yes.
Really — up until that point.
She had never imagined, not even for a second, that the situation would turn into this.
"Uwaaaaaaah!"
"Kiiiill them!"
"Give us your skulls and ears!"
Thud-thud-thud-thud-thud—
Starving cannibals? A pack of rabid dogs? Whatever they were, a horde of lunatics was charging straight at them. The will to even try fighting simply wouldn't form.
"Run! Run!"
Jeniel's face had gone deathly pale as she shoved the J-class cadets forward. She understood now. Every last one of those bastards was A-class. They weren't even trying to hide it anymore — charging in with their signature Bee Swarm Formation fully deployed. How could she not recognize them?
"Pay the blood price!"
"Uooooh! Our sworn enemies!"
"With their blood shall we soothe our fallen comrades' spirits!"
…No. Listening to this nonsense was more than enough.
Something surged up from Jeniel's chest, and she screamed.
"You only got one of us, you crazy bastards!"
Her side had already lost more than ten people! And every eastern zone they had claimed was long since stripped bare.
One sentence kept circling through Jeniel's mind.
We poked the wrong nest.
She should have thought it through a little more before attacking. This wasn't just stirring a beehive — this was kicking the entire hive down a mountain.
The enemy had driven up from the southern zones all the way through the east and was now barreling north. Not a single moment of rest. The frenzied chase never stopped. How the hell was their stamina this good? Her side was gasping for air, lungs burning — and those maniacs were only getting faster.
Looking at those gleaming eyes, the spit flying from their mouths as they ran — Jeniel found herself seriously wondering what, exactly, separated these people from demonic beasts. At least demonic beasts wanted to eat humans. You might not empathize, but you could understand the motive.
These guys? No. They were grinding themselves into the dirt over something that offered no real benefit, that only cost them effort and losses — all because it rubbed them the wrong way.
"Hahaha! Your footwork is getting shabbier by the second!"
"I can smell your fear! I can smell it!"
"Ahh! I can't wait to taste your tears!"
People usually called that kind of thing madness.
"Just leave us the hell alone already!!!"