"Now let’s get on with it! [Flames of Dyrnwyn]!"

Without warning, the man lunged at me with lightning speed, slashing at me thousands of times in a matter of seconds. His blade flickered in the dark, cutting away at me in a lightshow of sparks and embers.

But it wasn’t damaging me.

I deflected each slash individually, my arms once again cloaked in a delicate purple glow. Our arms seemed to multiply, afterimage after afterimage colliding with each other and then receding into nothing. It was a fight between spectres, hundreds of hits coinciding, but never materializing any of their effects in the form of a clean blow. The man who claimed to be Amhar wore a delighted smile, drunk on the thrill of battle.

"You are formidable! Now try this!"

The man spun around with the grace of a dancer and slammed a side kick into my ribs.

Launched by the power of the blow, I skipped and bounced across the surface of the earth, eventually colliding with a thick tree at the edge of the forest, splitting it horizontally.

Then, as if I hadn’t moved at all, the man was already aggressing again, practically teleporting on top of me, grasping the split trunk of the tree in one hand and whipping it on top of my head where it split once more. In his other hand he held his signature blade, pointing it at me and gathering a magnanimous amount of mana into its enchanted metals.

"[Britannia's Inferno]!"

Blue-white flames erupted from the tip of his weapon, dousing me in an icy-hot shower of fire. The ground around me melted and then glassed over, only to melt once again. A pillar of flame shot into the sky, piercing the clouds above and forcing a rain with its sudden agitation. The sky poured buckets, droplets of precipitation catching ash and smoke in their trip back down to the earth.

…

I sat at the bottom of a glass pit, half a tree split over my head, armor scorched to a crisp, and acid rain falling on my head.

By all means, I should be dead. Very, very dead.

But I didn’t feel even the slightest bit of pain.

My body, completely intact, showed no signs of even a scratch to blemish my skin.

I was dirty, sure. That couldn’t be avoided. But hurt?

No, not even a little bit. It was like the man hadn’t even hit me at all.

"This is ridiculous." I said as I pinched the bridge of my nose.

I wasn’t entirely conscious during my first run-through with this power. But now that I had time to cool off and think, it was very apparent that whatever Hana had done to me was not natural.

Not that a Millennia old hero trying to kill me was natural, but still.

I tensed my legs and leapt from the pit.

My body felt weightless, effortlessly soaring from the bottom of the pit to the treetops above. Now well above the ground, I could see the hero strolling along, his back now turned to the monstrous crater he had made. It seemed he mistook me for dead.

I quickly took advantage of his complacency, kicking off thin air and barreling toward him with my fist loaded like a spring.

Sensing something was remiss, the supposed hero quickly flipped around, his face stained with surprise.

"[Aegis]!"

He hurriedly cast a spell, summoning a forcefield of hexagonal barriers that formed into a dome around him, but it did nothing to protect him from my wrath. I slammed a fist into it, shattering it instantly. Light refractions puffed into the air like glitter, sparkling and shimmering in the dim light. The man’s defense was a sand castle to the ocean of power splashing against its outer walls.

Landing amidst the glints of mana, I spun into the fastest tornado kick I’d ever performed. Carving through the air, my shin connected with the hero’s breastplate, crumpling it and sending him flying through the air at mach speeds. Instantly I matched my speed to his, taking to the air above his flying body and letting the laws of the world carry my momentum. Clasping my right hand over my left fist, I swung down my hands like a boulder. A meteoric blow rocketed into the already ruined breastplate of the hero.

Wind whipped, contracted, and expanded. Space seemed to fold in on itself as the strike connected, and Amhar’s body simply couldn’t take the pressure.

He instantly gibbed, guts flying everywhere and shards of bone embedding themselves in bark, rocks, and dirt alike.

Slamming my feet into the roughness of the earth, I grinded to a halt, leaving a thirty meter rut torn into the dirt. Pieces of his flesh slapped against my armor, marking me as the one clear murderer of the man.

'…'

It took me a moment to absorb the fact I had just murdered a man in cold blood. It took another to realize that truthfully speaking, I didn’t feel bad at all.

Even if he was a hero, I was attacked first, and even if he couldn’t technically hurt me, he could definitely hurt someone else.

It might have been better if he were dead. Crazy, overzealous people did not have the greatest repertoire in the annals of history, and the man certainly didn’t show me any mercy.

That being said, I would’ve liked to have gone without killing anyone in my lifetime. It looked like that was not going to be very easy from now on.

‘Oh well. My circumstances were justified, right? Surely anyone else would’ve done the same,’ I thought, reassuring myself.

I peeped over at the splattered remains of the former person. I winced a little bit.

‘Well, maybe not like that.’

The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

Already at peace with the "hero’s" death, I turned to leave the scene of the crime.

Even though he looked exactly the same, surely he couldn't have been the real Amhar. Maybe it was just some crazy coincidence. I know I had been powered up by Hana, but surely another hero wouldn't die so easily, right? That fight felt really fast. Like, really fast.

I decided to think about it later.

That guy had already wasted far too much of my time. I needed to make sure Hana and the rest of the survivors were in a safe place before I worried about anything else. The consequences of my morally ambiguous actions could be dealt with later. Steeling my resolve with that thought in mind, I took off as fast as I could, making my way back to Alonzia.

----------------------------------------

In a realm of divine and mythical beings, a dimension far removed from Prithvi’s grounds, a god sat perched on his celestial throne, observing the material world below.

He was a tall figure with hair like strands of sunlight, and eyes that held the very essence of mischief. Today, he had grown weary of the mundane offerings of the celestial realm and decided to seek entertainment in the form of mortal combat.

As in, mortals combatting. He wasn’t going to be doing any fighting.

Scanning through the various battles of the world beneath his reign, he eventually spotted two exceptionally powerful life forms exchanging blows. Interested, his divine eyes zoomed in on the conflict like a telescope.

His gaze fell upon a land scarred by a civil dispute between humans, where a legendary hero had been locked in combat with… some guy.

The first he knew. The legendary hero was a fierce warrior named Amhar, renowned for his unparalleled resilience and iron resolve. What was less known about him was that he was a bit of a meathead.

He was a human Mara had plucked from Earth back in the middle ages, a golden era of humanity's civilization that bred many brave and glory-seeking heroes. Amhar was certainly no exception, his accomplishments in battle as plenty on Earth as they were in Prithvi.

‘That she-demon does know how to pick ‘em,’ he admitted.

Now, for the other one.

The second man was an unknown martial artist, and despite his unproven reputation, he was putting up more than just a good fight.

These two warriors clashed on the battlefield, and the bout had proved entertaining thus far, so the god’s undivided attention had been captured.

With a smile, he leaned forward on his throne, his eyes following every little detail of the battle. His amusement grew with each passing moment.

Then, Amhar let loose a brutal onslaught of attacks, ending in a powerful flame blast that would leave any normal man broken or vaporized.

A billowing cloud of smoke erupted from the earth, telling of the martial artist’s almost certain demise. The abrupt end to the battle caught the celestial being off guard, and his laughter died in his throat.

The tall figure rose from his throne, his eyes dimmed with disappointment.

'Ah, so short. That is truly unfortunate.'

It felt like all of the good fights he had watched recently were of the short nature, which had really gotten on his nerves. The hunter in particular was quite concise, and the god sometimes wished he would play with his food a little more.

'Maybe he'll draw it out longer this week.' The god thought to himself. 'But that's a couple days away from now... what will entertain me until then?'

As the being contemplated what to do next to ease his boredom, he sensed the slightest of movement at the bottom of the crater. Immediately, the god spun back around, eyes glued to the massive, glassed over hole.

Then, the martial artist, completely unharmed, leapt from the billowing smoke of the pit and proceeded to shatter the hero’s magic shield.

The god was simply flabbergasted. He had seen that same [Aegis] shield block blasts from some of the most powerful of foes within Prithvi, and yet it had shattered like an eggshell underneath a man's fist. Not only that, but immediately afterward, the martial artist hit the hero so hard his body literally exploded.

This had all happened in a split second, and if the god had turned even a moment earlier, he would have missed it. How terrible a mistake that would have been.

He burst into laughter at the unexpected outcome, delighting in the unpredictable nature of mortal contests. One abrupt end was common, sure, but two abrupt ends? How rare.

‘Hah, what a show! That was wonderful,’ the being thought to himself. Mara’s champion never even stood a chance, how vexing!’

The being trained his vision on the victor, etching every detail of the man’s likeness into his memory. Jet black hair with green eyes, his skin slightly tan, of a medium build. He stood at one-hundred seventy-eight centimeters tall, and his skin glowed with a malevolent purple aura.

‘Aha! An ------- associate, I should’ve known.’

The god sat back down on his throne of clouds, content with the current state of things.

He would keep an eye on this fighter.

In fact, for a moment, the immortal had considered siccing his own minions on the man to expedite the entertainment, but quickly brushed away the thought.

If the one he defeated was one of Mara’s champions, the martial artist already had more than a few problems heading his way. His colleague was not a graceful loser.

And he would be there to watch when she acted.

‘I await great things from you, martial artist.’

The god’s knowing cackle echoed throughout the realm, filling the space with a nefarious tone.

----------------------------------------

Slorp, slorp, slorp.

Somewhere, deep in the forests, the cries of countless slimy, viscous beings sung out and then dissipated into unheard vibrations. Their gross, wet noises were so small and so insignificant, they hardly counted as sounds at all. But they were there, nevertheless; and they were very, very pissed.

‘What in the blazes was that thing? No one ever told me the hero had a bodyguard!"

Hero Amhar was in a deep state of denial. After he had been blown to smithereens by Sun, he had been ever-so-slowly inching the many separate pieces of his body back together. From an omnipotent's view, it would look like a million slugs all decided to congregate at the same place. Unfortunately, no slug shared the same distance, size, sea level, or sense of urgency.

The only thing still intact about Amhar was his mind, which had been separated from his body and infused with his soul long ago by the church of Umbra. The church wouldn't let him keep something so important as his conscience within the fragile confines of a human brain.

Those rats, keeping him hostage in his own soul! He would be furious if not for how much he actually enjoyed being immortal!

Well, he wasn’t enjoying it much at the moment, but usually it was pretty great. All he had to do was keep a low profile, not tell anyone his real name (oops), and occasionally do favors for the church. Other than that, he had free reign the rest of the time to just frolic among the commoners, disguised in a powerful glamour of his choosing.

This time, though, the church really made him miserable.

Disguising himself as a statue for a week was one thing. He fancied himself a patient man.

He could also convince himself to kill the newest hero to be summoned in this age, given the right reason, and the motive he was supplied by the church seemed legitimate enough.

But being thoroughly obliterated by some random peasant was not on his to-do-list as a former hero and prince of Brittania. This was blasphemy of the highest degree! He hadn’t even a chance to slay the she-hero! Never shall he know greater shame than to lose so miserably to demonspawn of that level. He might have been the weakest out of the fifteen heroes by several square acres, but he wouldn’t lose to anyone that didn’t hold his title.

He never lost!

His resilience would persevere, as it always had in the past. Even the Demon Lord of his time was eventually was worn down, having killed Amhar several hundred times.

But Amhar had won the 756th time, and that was what mattered.

Amhar Pendragon, son of Arthur Pendragon of Brittania, swore a grave vengeance to enact upon Sun, and it would be nothing less than a fiery one.

...

As soon as he was back in one piece.

‘Can my body heal ANY FASTER?’