Chapter 25: Bonus Chapter
Suddenly, the man noticed Lili's presence, and his eyes sparkled with hope. Was that rat still alive?
"Hey! Rat!" He shouted at first but then corrected himself. His voice changed to a friendly one. "No, no... Support. Help! Help me, please!"
Lili didn't move. She didn't want to. "Rat." He had called her that a thousand times. But now, in desperation, he tried to soften his tone, as if the word hadn't torn her apart every time he used it. As if it had never pushed her to death only minutes before.
Disgust rose in her throat. The guy was lying on the floor, pretending to be nice.
'Have you forgotten that you used me as cannon fodder? Do you think I'll forget your smiling face as you watched me fall among the ants?'
"Come on... You're quick, right? You just have to help me up. I'll pay you back! I swear it! I'll pay you back what I owe you!"
'Pay me back? Now you're talking about repaying me? After all you've stolen from me, all the times you've left me without a valis?'
It was insulting. It was pathetic.
Their eyes met, and for a second the man tried to smile. A fake smile, of course. But Lili was motionless and unmoved. She looked at him like someone looking at an insect crushed on the ground.
And then the man's expression changed.
"Fucking scumbag!" There it was. His "kindness" vanished in an instant. The mask cracked and his face twisted in anger. "You're worthless! You always have been! You're just a filthy rat! Help me now or I swear I'll make you pay! We'll never pay you a coin, not even if you crawl to us!"
Now that he knew he would not get what he wanted, his true nature came to the surface. This was his reality. A coward. A traitor.
Lili allowed a bitter smile to form on her lips.
"Pay me? It doesn't matter anymore."
The ants swooped down on him and bit his arms and legs.
The man was still screaming, but Lili no longer heard him. He no longer existed.
More important than anything else was her life.
In situations like this, survival was everything. But even she could see that in this scenario her life was hanging by such a thin thread that it was impossible to imagine how she would make it out alive.
The swarm of killer ants descended upon her.
"This is the end."
She closed her eyes with these resigned thoughts.
But then something happened that she had not anticipated.
There was a commotion in the ranks of the ants. The swarm suddenly stopped. The jaws that sliced through flesh and bone stood still for a moment. And then something flew through the air.
The head of one of the ants was thrown magnificently into the sky. Then another. And another, and another. The ants who had been enjoying themselves recoiled in bewilderment.
Everyone's eyes―the ants' and even Lili's―followed the trajectory of each decapitated head as it fell to the ground, rolling several times before coming to a stop.
"Huh...?"
Lili was surprised. Adventurers usually had a hard time killing an ant, let alone cutting it off with a single blow. Only an experienced adventurer or someone strong enough, at least level 2, could manage to cut off its head with a single blow.
She turned her head to see who was responsible for this unexpected turn of events.
Someone was there, standing in the middle of the ants, while silence filled the place. Lili narrowed her eyes. She tried to make out the figure in the dust raised by the battle. The person was holding a strange weapon, something she had never seen before in Orario.
A curved blade, as sharp as a mantis scythe, was attached to a long chain in his hands.
"What is that...?"
Then the stranger moved. He spun around his own axis, and as if followed by this action, the chain traced a wide arc around him. Lili barely managed to follow the movement before the blade decapitated one of the monsters. It seemed impossible that someone could wield such a weapon with such mastery and speed.
This person was picking them off one by one... suddenly, he went a little crazy and accelerated even more.
No, it was more than that. This person did not lose control.
For first, a pale blue light enveloped his figure. And then, this person started to move faster and even became stronger.
"Did he level up... In the middle of the battle?"
If Lili had to give an example, as ridiculous as it sounded, it was as if that person had leveled up in the middle of the battle.
Lili, who was watching this person, looked incredulous. After all, in this world, leveling up wasn't something that just "happened" that way. Not in the middle of battle. But there was such a person in front of her.
"No... I'm thinking too much. Maybe he's just using his ability."
There were Development Abilities that temporarily increased an adventurer's strength. Maybe because she was too afraid of death, her brain was working badly and she was thinking something silly.
In any case, she stared at the adventurer's back.
"Who the hell is that...?"
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Lightning struck the wires in my house and broke some of my stuff, including my pc. Well, it was old, but it was still expensive. It got worse and worse ugh