Damn it, damn it, damn it!

For the first time in his long life, Tack was fighting at the backfoot. There were a few–no, plenty of things that were getting in the way, but the main one was the otherworlder bitch he was fighting against.

This chick was, in no pleasurable terms, a pain in the ass. At first glance, she seemed like one of the dozens of women who decided to pick up a weapon and think they can be better than any man with the same one.

With their thin bodies and dexterous mobility, surely they can strike faster than a man as long as they had a weapon. Well, Tack kept reminding every female target that just because they got a weapon, it doesn't change the hierarchy between them.

Men are stronger, faster, smarter, and overall better than women in terms of physical and magical might. Women sacrificed all that to help procreate to make more men in the future, as well as women to help those men make more men. That's just how life works.

If there was anything his father taught him, it is that women are weak and that it is a man's job to take care of things.

So why the hell is it taking so long to take this bitch down? If anything, it felt like she was a man herself.

Her sword strikes were so chaotically annoying. Each hit felt like a greatsword landing a hit on him even though Tack barely made them graze him. Then all of a sudden another attack felt like a boulder hit him, putting him off balance and unprepared enough to handle the blow.

But he could get used to that. Then she would pull out different types of weapons from her storage pack and hit him with them. From swords to hammers to even arrows from bows–she can't make up her mind to choose which one.

Tack hated to think about it, but perhaps this chick was crazy enough to take on as many weapon mastery skills as possible and somehow made them work. And even more strangely, her main sword can replicate those aspects, which strained him enough to keep fighting defensively.

Even putting aside his Assassin based class, Tack had enough experience to handle a drawn out one-on-one battle. But this was becoming too much to bear.

He specialized in bringing suffering to others after hitting them hard and fast at the first start of a fight. That way, he can completely take control of the flow of battle before it even began in earnest. That's just how he, a top assassin, managed to do so for all these years.

But not only is this woman's instincts were too damn accurate, even his Slime sub-race wasn't able to handle her strikes. He even got away from multiple high level knights and adventurers at once with his racial skill, Trans-Morph.

It was his greatest skill in his arsenal, capable of landing him many kills in his time as an assassin, and it was also his greatest trump card for running away from dangerous threats.

Now that the Null Void vanished, he could use his skills again, but she knew enough of his basic fighting to be on his ass in the most frustrating way possible.

"Stop running from me, you coward! Face me like a man!"

Her taunts were not easy to handle either as it was already grating him. Who the hell wouldn't run away from a crazy lady who could actually cut a part of these giant trees with one swing of her sword?

Sure, it didn't even go to the half of the tree, but it was deep enough for Tack to consider not getting in the way. Worse yet, this woman was just level 65, while he was already at level 92.

I hate bad match-ups, Tack thought to himself, figuring that if he's keeping this lady away, the others must have already slaughtered every single otherworlder there. Otherwise, he's going to make a complaint to House Corran.

By that, he meant taking every women captive from the House and doing whatever he wanted to them in recompense.

Then a giant pillar of blue and green light reached all the way to the fake sky. It traversed throughout the sky and caused large shockwaves which blasted everything in the way and caused the trees to break apart and scatter everywhere.

Taking the chance, Tack decided on the one thing to do in any bad situation with a crazy woman–get the hell out of there.

Sure, he would definitely want to teach this woman a thing or two by sucker punching her, then doing all sorts of humiliating and depraved things to her, but he can always do that while he was alive. He can't do that if he died from whatever the fuck this system thing was doing.

So he slipped away from the chaos, using Trans-Morph to turn into a sort of liquid and travel across the dense forest before the chaos could reach him.

However, he failed to realize that one of the many trees that were broken apart was landing right on top of him after entering into his liquid form.

He got so preoccupied trying to get away from all this that he failed to see where the trees could land, and unfortunately in his form, it would take a while before he could turn back into his physical form and make a proper getaway.

Everything went dark when the trees cluttered and fell all around him, trapped in his form with no way out.

The only thing in his mind was that he wished he could send a message back to the guild, telling the truth that the Janet girl was a damn otherworlder this whole time.

Ahh, if only he could see her face smeared in panic and fear just once…

…..

Mikella didn't even notice the disappearance of her opponent just seconds after the explosion of light occurred. In fact, the entire fight had disappeared from her mind entirely.

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

Because what she saw wasn't just some random pillar of light. It could only belong to one man who she knew had the power to pull that off.

"Zeke?"

It doesn't take Zeke that much effort to take down those clowns trying to attack the unarmed otherworlders. Especially with Saang and Kote on his side. Lyle and Janet were proving capable of holding on as well, so that was double the chance that the attackers wouldn't do much.

But she knew that the trial quest was nothing to sneeze at. And to see the pillar of light now meant that he was pushed to his breaking point. The pillar of light grew and became more refined. A figure appeared who she knew from long ago that caused so much chaos and devastation.

It was made of the colors of blue and green, slowly formed into that of a man. However, unlike the figure of a thin like man with only a head similar to Zeke along with his uncombed hair and giant circle-like eyes on his face, the figure turned out to be something else.

First off, it got buff. The thin like man transformed into that war-torned veteran warrior. Despite the figure being the same turquoise light as before, tattoos began to glow brighter than the original color at the same placements as his original body.

As the tattoos covered his entire body, then came his head. It still had the same plain like non-face as before, with his hair to boot. This time, it had sharper ears relating to his Soul Elf race, but his eyes…

His eyes grew sharper, more… dense than before. They felt like pressure incarnate. Just one look was enough to send shivers down her back, reminding her of the times when Zeke was using his attunement in small amounts.

What made the change? There were two things that came to her mind. First was his attunement's rank, which increased by one after the last time that happened due to Zoan's intervention and getting eaten by the power. But that happened during his transformation, so she wasn't sure.

The second, more easily discernible, was his advancement to Journeymen. With the elf ears and the tattoos, it made even more sense. In other words, this personification of Zeke's attunement was stronger than it was before.

Stronger and bigger than before. Hell, it grew even bigger than the skycraper like trees surrounding her, so it wasn't hard to see it. Especially since the trees were broken apart, revealing the figure in total.

Just as she figured anyone who could face such a thing would be running away in fear like before, a figure did approach the giant Zeke form. It wasn't a man, she was certain even with how far away it was and how small it is compared to Zeke's form.

Then that small, almost ant-like creature caved into Zeke's form, causing the entire giant to be lifted off of the ground and flying into the air, as though it got an uppercut right in the torso.

"...What?"

Mikella couldn't believe her eyes as the incredible, almost god-like form of Zeke was punched so easily by the ant-like monster he was facing against. Without any hesitation, she dashed towards to the fight, hoping and praying that everyone was alright.

If not… she just wasn't sure how she could handle it.

…..

It barely took Lyle a moment before slaughtering all of the attackers that attacked the otherworlders. It happened in a moment, all while Lyle was pushed to his limits with his Beast Soul skill.

The last time Janet saw Lyle like that was during the tower, where he used the skill without any control and used the form of a wolf that they had taken down before to attack the mini-boss at the time. After it was killed, however, Lyle went straight after Janet while still lost in his bloodlust.

Needless to say, it took a fair bit of time for Janet to bring Lyle back at the brink of death. She didn't blame him, but he certainly took it as a sign to never use his skill to its limits.

He gained a lot of control since then, but he always took things at a slow pace. The only time he would go out was during their assassination attempts, but he always remained himself at the time, putting a sort of limiter on himself.

But after seeing the attackers try and kill their defenseless comrades, he no longer held back his reservation. Once the slaughter was over, blood splattered across every part of the forest as though a bloody rain fell upon them. Janet got the other Journeymen to follow her to detain him if he were to lose control.

Lyle would've wanted this, even if Janet felt reserved for doing so. Still, the closer she got towards her partner still in his demonic beast form, she let out a breath of relief once he turned back to her with the same sanity as before the fighting started.

"Sorry, just… give me a minute," Lyle said. His voice was still bestial, but it had that calm and mature tone he always had. "My head is still…kinda fuzzy."

Janet nodded silently, instead telling Saang and Kote to check up on the otherworlders. They were obviously distraught as, whether good or not, the attackers got some of them pretty good.

The first one that got dealt a nasty blow was curling his arm in pain, his eyes tearing up as though that was the first time he was close to death. The others got hit as well, some got nicked and others almost been strangled by the more desperate knights wanting some sort of contribution. It was disgusting to look at, which made all the otherworlders around her retreat into themselves.

Janet had to take all of this into account. The rampant despair and anguish coming from the otherworlders felt too similar to how she first got to this world. But that was also why she wanted to look out and protect them. Zeke and Mikella felt the same, and her respect for them only increased after realizing that they will continue to try and help their people survive in this world.

But for now, she made sure that Lyle was alright. Then, she went back to figuring out what the hell she was supposed to do to leave this place.

A giant pillar of light came, causing Janet to panic that more attackers were coming, but this pillar of light was different than before. A giant pillar of bluish and green light soon formed into a man unlike anything she had ever seen. It took the shape of an adult male with muscles fitting a fighter, tattoos that glowed even deeper than its original turquoise color, and eyes that seemed to pressure everything around him.

She couldn't believe what she was seeing, but she had to. After all, pretty much everyone around her was staring at the figure themselves with gaping mouths.

"What the fuck is that?!" Someone shouted. She was pretty sure everyone with a brain was thinking the same thing. He was the only one that gave voice to it.

The more Janet looked at the figure, however, the more it–or rather he–looked similar to someone she knew. Realization quickly hit her as it could be none other than Zeke, considering that he, just like her, also had a high-realm attunement.

In his normal form, Lyle approached Janet by her side, looking up at the figure himself. "That's Zeke, ain't it?" He breathed almost reverently. "It's just like when you lost control… only way, way bigger."

Janet agreed completely. She wasn't sure whether this was Zeke's own attunement at work, or because he was at Journeyman stage, but it was clear that his attunement was way stronger than her own. Granted, it was at Tier 2 compared to her Tier 1, but there was way too much of a difference that even Saang and Kote looked at the figure in awe.

She noticed, however, a rather small dark speck of a creature, probably the dark knight that was the trial's creature that he was fighting against. It jumped up to where the giant form of Zeke was.

It caved Zeke's stomach in, causing the giant form of a man to fly up into the air as though he got an uppercut by a boxer.

Janet and Lyle's mouth gaped wide open.

"...You're fucking kidding me," Lyle said, his eyes just as wide as Janet's. "Just what the hell is that thing?!"

Once again, giving voice to what everyone was thinking about, they watched as the two figures fought with one of them having an overwhelming advantage.

And it wasn't the giant fuck ton of Mana that were on their side.

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