Arin’s senses were heightened to an unbelievable degree. He was even more keen in this battle than anything he had ever faced before. Without holding back, he took out his own Fragment. This pen had lost its functionality to control Malum but its toughness was second to none.

“Your defective Fragment won’t help you out. There’s a reason why the academy turned a blind eye when you used it.” Fiona raised her hand as this questionably eerie blob of mass started growing above it. “A Fragment that has lost its ability to use Malum is worthless.”

This amorphous blob had the same shade as the illusionary armor piece that was covering Fiona’s body. Arin could very well recognize what it meant. She had already begun to master her control over Malum.

When Kian enveloped himself in a black tar, his body was covered in a solid thick armor. Pure power was emanating from him as his very being caused everything around him to struggle to move.

Now, Fiona had almost mimicked that very ability. It was infinitely close yet at the same time so far away. She only had the form and didn’t fully possess the power of this manifestation.

This eerie power that she held in her hands started to condense, turning a slight sliver of her index finger into a more solid form. She pointed her finger at Arin, directly aiming for his head.

The sensation of death brushed past Arin. Before anything could’ve happened, Arin ducked. His body had reacted before he even managed to realize what he had just done. A bead of cold sweat flowed down his brow.

He didn’t need to look back to realize just how deadly her attack was just now. The screams of the surrounding spectators were all Arin needed to know. If he didn’t dodge that just now then he would’ve died.

After Fiona finished her attack, the ephemeral armor piece covering her, glowed less brightly. It seemed as if that attack had caused her to expedite some power that she was using to retain this form.

A battle of attrition. Arin immediately stomped on the ground, causing rock shards to go all over the place.

However, it did nothing to Fiona as they all pathetically stopped an entire meter away from her. What made it even worse for Arin was the fact that her range seemed to be an entire dome around her.

This was a drastic difference from when Fiona faced Viener. She could only protect herself a few inches from her body and could only form a small area of protection. She wasn’t an unrivaled monster for no reason.

Those rock shards weren’t what Arin was aiming for. A cloud of smoke appeared for a brief moment that blocked Fiona’s vision. She unhesitatingly waved her hand, causing an incredibly strong gust of wind to clear the area.

When she did so, she couldn’t see Arin at all. Instinctively, she looked right behind her yet couldn’t find anything. Immediately, her gaze was placed on the bystanders. With how cruel Arin was, a hostage was par for the course.

She then immediately tried to scout his possible whereabouts yet didn’t manage to catch a glimpse of him. It was then that the voices roared out from the audience finally reached her ears, “Above you!”

Fiona calmly looked above her. There, Arin was rushing down from above her with his Fragment in hand. He was using all his body weight, trying to use the Fragment that he had in his possession to pierce through her defenses.

A mad look appeared on Arin’s face as he was banking on this catching her off guard. Even if he knew that this wouldn’t work at all, he still had to try.

Her empty expression made it seem as if she was dealing with a weakling. She didn’t even bother making a move as she fully trusted her barrier to protect her.

Arin’s Fragment had met contact with her dome. As expected, Arin was stopped in place, unable to even breakthrough. Seeing that his initial attack was an entire meter away from Fiona, he gritted his teeth.

Using the momentum from the impact, he jumped off and immediately dashed back in. He very well knew that his greatest chance was this Fragment in his hands. No matter how unrealistic, he would try to pierce through her defenses.

One strike, there was no change.

Two strikes, still nothing.

Arin’s hands were blazing fast as he continuously struck Fiona’s barrier. With nothing but his instinctual battle sense, he managed to complete this flurry of attacks using nothing more than a fountain pen.

After twenty strikes, Fiona’s expression still had that calm look to it.

She started walking forward. Oddly enough, the point of the barrier had not changed at all. The distance between them was getting smaller.

Fifty strikes. One attack after another, from one of the spectators’ view, Arin’s movements were just a flurry of blurry motions. He could barely tell what he was doing at such speed.’

One hundred thirty strikes. Fiona had taken a mere five steps for Arin to strike that many times that fast. His speed was undeniably inhuman. Her casual steps contrasted with Arin’s frantic attacks just made it clear how vast the difference in power was.

Two hundred strikes. After reaching this boundary, Fiona’s stone-cold expression slightly turned surprised. Something completely wrong happened, something she had never expected to occur managed to appear before her.

Malum could only be faced with Malum. For pure physical human strength to even slightly consume a tiny bit of her Malum made her surprised. This was beyond common sense.

It was the same concept as having a reinforced steel wall to be hit by cotton countless times. After a while, one would see a minuscule scratch on the wall. It was overall irrelevant but the fact that cotton could damage reinforced steel was just far too unbelievable.

She had to admit it, Arin would also grow to be a monster to the likes that even she would have to be careful around. If he could make her consume Malum without any Combat Technique or working Fragment then his potential for growth was just far too terrifying.

At this moment, Fiona recalled one thing that Arin had just said. Every single threat, I extinguish before it grows.

Just one inconsequential thing made Fiona see just how seriously she needed to take this. Other than when she tried to blow Arin’s head apart, she had been trying to keep herself from lashing out.

She couldn’t properly control her strength in this state. If she were to try and make a move with the mindset that Arin was a threat, she just might take a life. “You’re strong.”

Those were the last words Arin heard before he blacked out.

He opened his hazy eyes as he tried to make sense of what just happened. His arms were a complete mess, they were extremely bloody to the point that he couldn’t tell it there even a single patch of skin that was still there.

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He coughed out blood, trying to clear his lungs from the impact that he had just received. His blurry vision could see that he was sent through numerous walls. He could still somewhat make out how thick these walls were.

Loud voices that he couldn’t pinpoint earlier were starting to get clearer. “He got sent flying!”

Arin’s entire body was a grotesque sight. Some rubble had embedded his body and even his left arm was completely unfunctional. He had lost all feeling in his left arm.

He still had his Fragment in hand yet even moving slightly was causing him great pain. His mind still recalled that this fight was just beginning, he wasn’t going to back down just because he got hurt a little.

From the human-sized hole in the wall, Arin’s mangled body came out with a mad smile on his face. “You should… be…” The wall he was using to support his body crumbled, causing him to fall down.

“This strong…” Arin used his left arm to stop his fall. Using it in this way was just far too reckless. His legs were still working fine so he tried to keep going forward. His mind was still struggling to make out what was in front of him.

“Again!” Arin roared out. He looked at the Fragment in his hand and scoffed. “I started relying on this useless…” He unhesitatingly threw the Fragment away, not caring where it went.

With one limb completely useless, he raised his right hand in a stance, preparing for the next attack.

Fiona’s eyes became much emptier than ever before. It didn’t seem as if she was herself at all. “Very well.” Fiona clenched her fist and ran in, trying to finish what she started.

“Don’t die,” Fiona spoke in a brutally cold tone.

Arin couldn't even see it happen before he was once again sent back with even greater force than ever before. There was another hole right beside the first one but this time it was even larger than before.

Unlike before, Arin wasn’t knocked out and managed to properly react to being sent back. Bits of blood and flesh littered the floor. From this massive hole, an extremely bloody hand reached out from within.

“Hahahahaha!” Arin kept on laughing as his body was finally revealed to everyone once more. His left arm was barely dangling on and his right thigh had a massive chunk of flesh blown off. It was a miracle that he even standing here right now.

“One more time!” Arin shouted out from the top of his lungs. His body was already deteriorating but he had never felt this alive before. “Come on, Fiona! Put your back into it! Show me your resolve!”

Fiona didn’t have a change in her expression but the feeling of danger exponentially increased. As she had done before, she reeled in her fist and charged it up. The space around her looked extremely dark as her hand became clad in armor.

This was not typical iron, it seemed like fabric that was laced with metal. As flowy as it looked, the sturdiness wasn’t something any normal man could tear apart.

He was running on adrenaline right now. His very body was at the end of its rope. Arin took in heavy breaths as he was having trouble even standing right now.

“Be cleansed.” Fiona’s cold words made everyone in the vicinity feel as if those words were directed at them. Their body lost all their strength as they had trouble moving their bodies.

If it was already that bad for the people watching, what about Arin? Even being alive was a miracle for him already. Looking at him, he seemed as if he was an undead that came back to seek revenge. With the concentration of the attack, everyone could already see that Arin would die.

Fiona had already shown that she was entire leagues above him but now she was making sure that this was the attack that would send Arin to the afterlife.

“That’s it. I make an oath, let the world hear me! I will take your life and surpass you!” Arin screamed out like a complete lunatic. “Grow stronger than you are right now! Show me just what I have to overcome to rise to the peak! No matter where you are, no matter where you run, no matter what happens I’ll find you, and… I’ll rip your heart out.”

“You talk too much.” Fiona worded out as she appeared right behind him. Arin’s face was barely recognizable as his extremely mangled body tried to stand.

Her charged attack was about to strike Arin. With her enhanced physical capabilities, Arin shouldn’t even be able to react to it. She would finally take someone’s life for the first time. Even as she thought of this, her state made it so that she felt as if this was natural. Arin was objectively evil and cleansing the world of evil was her life’s mission.

As her body twisted, in trying to land her attack, she saw something utterly confusing. Arin’s body twisted in the same way, matching her posture, and was trying to use his own bare fist to fight back unparalleled power.

Her understanding of Arin’s power was already clear yet for some reason she still underestimated what he was capable of. He could still move like this despite his body already dying. Adding on the fact that Arin was madly smiling as he reacted and faced her attack with his own.

No matter how futile, Arin’s will wouldn’t allow him to fall down like this. He used everything and poured all his power into this one attack.

As Fiona’s dauntingly terrifying attack was about to meet Arin’s weakly prepared and ill-equipped strike, Arin viciously smiled and turned his fist into a wide palm.

Instead of meeting Fiona’s attack head-on, he decided to sacrifice everything to grab ahold of her arm. His hand was scorched from directly touching such a terrifying power without protection. Even so he didn’t care, he would injure her at the very least.

Malum didn’t only attack the physical world, it also attacked the mental world. Arin’s mind started to get plagued by Fiona’s Malum, corrupting his very thoughts. Trying to turn him into a mindless fool.

Her influence was one-sidedly attacking Arin’s mind. Her very ideals and beliefs were clashing with what held Arin together.

Arin laughed even louder, the voices inside him were trying to take over his body yet he wouldn’t let that happen without a fight. He reached in even deeper, getting affected by Malum even more, at this point still knowing who he was would already be a miracle.

He came closer to Fiona, not caring about the consequences of his actions at all. This completely suicidal move caught Fiona off guard, never had she expected that Arin would be so willing to throw himself to his demise.

His right arm had already been vaporized by the purely dense energy held within Fiona’s fist. His body was the next thing to be disintegrated.

Arin’s eyes were filled with evil thoughts. The only thing he wanted to achieve was to break her skin and see her bleed. He was coming in closer, her expression was calm yet her mind had been frozen in shock, filled with thoughts of how such a person could exist.

Despite such a hopeless situation, he was willing to keep risking everything again and again just for a single chance. A complete madman.

If not for this mental shock, Arin wouldn’t have been able to do it. He opened his mouth and bit her neck. He viciously bit down, expecting her to bleed out alongside him. His canines felt skin break apart as he tasted blood. Both of them would die here.

This would undeniably be the case except a certain entity intervened.

Arin had managed to bite down hard enough to cause her to bleed yet that was it. A man dressed in all black separated both of them before anything irreconcilable happened. He had been watching the fight, no, he had been watching Fiona ever since she had arrived at her residence.

Fiona’s calm expression shattered as she had tears flowing down her face. She bit her lip as she hesitatingly touched her neck. Not wanting to believe it, she held her neck which had a few droplets of blood pouring down it.

I almost died… This was a sensation Fiona had never felt before. The fear of death.

“Father…” Fiona weakly gazed at the man that separated both of them. “Dad…”

The man in black sighed. He nodded at his daughter as she passed out. Despite having so much power, she was mentally weaker than one would expect. The threat of death was enough to render her unconscious.

“Kian, your son’s barely breathing.” The man in black voiced out as another person similarly dressed as he showed up. It was apparent that his face was contorted in anguish at the fact he was seeing his son like this.

The man in black came to Fiona’s side and took a key from his pocket. He threw it in Kian’s direction. “Take it.” This key unlocks access to the numerous Trials that Fiona had the privilege to.

Kian took the key and came to rush to Arin’s help. “Have this.” Kian took out an extremely strong medicinal pill. It was completely infused with strong Malum yet for some reason it was easily digestible by Arin’s body. His mangled body slowly reformed as Malum started compensating for his flesh, regrowing it all back.

“Don’t be so emotional. He’s not going to die that easily.” The man in black took his daughter and carried her on his back. “This has been a good experience for both of them. Fiona should finally learn how to be more realistic while Arin… he should have a greater target now.”

He went off his Fiona on his back and carefully carried her to her room. In the language that only both of them knew, the man in black said, “You told him about the Sephirah Trials? You’re much more reckless than I thought. But I’m even more surprised at the fact that he managed to survive the Baptism. Nurture him well, he hasn’t shown why he’s special yet…”

Kian clenched his fists as he let Arin rest for now. Despite being a Labyrinth Solver, there was nothing he could do.

The upper layers truly are terrifying. If only we weren’t cut off… Arin might’ve been able to spread his wings. Kian thought.

Kian saw that Arin’s body had fully regenerated already. “As always, his compatibility with Malum is… unholy…”

What should’ve taken Arin an entire hour to regenerate only took him mere seconds. As for the effects of Malum mentally affecting Arin, Kian didn’t care at all. He seemed to have an innate resistance to any kind of mental corrosion, a skill that was unbelievably handy as a Solver.

He gave out orders to the shadows in the dark, making them take the Trials hidden in the basement. It was the first week of the academy, and things were just getting started.