Olive had to think fast.

The opponent who got a hold of him was undoubtedly a high-level undead.

Therefore it got two major weaknesses.

Holy magic, and fire magic.

Olive thorough his life has ignored the holy magic - for the most part - since it was customary for the elven elders to be proficient in it, and he wanted to avoid becoming the elder at all cost.

But thanks to that he focused on other types of magic and gained the mastery of fire among other things.

In the situation he was in, using fire magic also seemed like the better option - even if he won't be able to finish off the undead, the forest fire he will undoubtedly alarm the hiding elves far more efficiently than some pillar of light going off into the sky, far away from the village.

As soon as he came to that conclusion, Olive deactivated the thought-acceleration skill and used the strongest of his fire spell while he was sinking into the ground pushed by the cold hand.

A spinning sphere of fire ignited around the elf and the undead and started rapidly spinning, sucking in the air around them, and constantly raising its temperature.

The magic flames turned from red to orange, to yellow, to finally become blindingly white.

Olive's clothes burned away within the first second of his attack while he was busy protecting just his body from getting turned into charcoal by constantly using a healing spell.

Even so, he felt his eyes were about to melt and his lungs were burning as all the available air was getting used to fuel the infernal fire.

Almost everything around the old elf evaporated or got crystallized.

Almost everything.

The grip that the undead had on Olive's neck didn't lessen in the slightest.

"?!?!?!"

Then the undead stopped pushing the old elf down and instead pulled on his neck, and the next thing that the elf knew, he was soaring through the sky.

*CRUSH*

Then a hit from below came out unexpectedly and propelled Olive even higher while breaking the elf's bones and bursting his internal organs like water balloons.

Another hit came from above, surprisingly enough, and send the elf back to the devastated ground.

Meeting with the earth was so abrupt and violent that the elf momentarily lost his focus while creating a crater that could hide an entire city within its diameter.

Only then did the fire spell deactivated and dissipated into the dried-up air.

"...fuck..."

Olive gasped shaking his head, trying to regain the clarity of the mind.

*RIIIP*

And he regained all of it thanks to the wave of the unimaginable pain flooding every inch of his body.

His opponent - the fireproof undead - had landed.

And the undead chose Olive's knees as its landing spot, which resulted in the elf's legs getting ripped in half...

The mutilated calves tumbled on the burnet ground.

"AAAAG-umpfh...!"

The old elf gave his all to scream even though his throat still hasn't healed properly after inhaling pure flames for a horribly long time - but his mouth was sealed by a cold hand refusing him even that.

Then the old elf was raised up to the eye-level of his opponent, and he saw his enemy's face for the first time.

An undead like he had never seen before.

If not for the deep blue color of his skin, he could easily pass off as a living man.

Long black hair falling loosely around his face, jet-black eyes filled with hatred, glowing with dark-red light, the tall muscular body that was missing half of the right arm...

Whether the missing hand was the result of the fire spell he had used or not - Olive couldn't possibly guess in his current state.

And then, although the old elf couldn't possibly see that from his perspective, was a single piece of clothing that somehow survived the insane heat that burned everything in the radius twice as wide as the crater that falling Olive has created.

Black trunks.

"Graough?"

The undead opened his mouth and growled aggressively.

He was either accusing the old elf or asking him something, but Olive couldn't possibly understand the groans, nor he could even let out a sound while having his mouth sealed by the undead's left hand.

"...graough..."

After not receiving the reaction he apparently hoped for, the undead sighed and let go of the elf.

...

Being caught and severely damaged altered Olive's plans quite a bit...

From Olive's position, he could now notice the smoke coming from the trees that his skill didn't turn into ash far in the distance - that surely had to alarm his brethren.

Now, his duty as a guard required him to occupy the intruder for as long as possible to allow others to escape safely.

Olive's eyes begun to shine when he directed all of his remaining mana and willpower into an illusion spell that had fooled an elder lich once in the past and...

/Skill failed

A message popped up for Olive and severely damage his spirit.

But the messages didn't stop there.

One much wore came right after.

/Player attempted to influence the owner of the superbia with an inferior skill

/Calculating...

/Player receives a penalty

MDF, MAT, LUC, -55% for the next 72 hours

(71:59:59)

(71:59:58)

The elf had received a penalty, and a timer showed up in the upper right corner of his vision.

"Su...perbia...?"

Olive managed to mumble with his dry lips.

He raised his eyes and attempted to focus his eyes on the face of the undead.

"Monsters aren't supposed to have the sin exclusive skills... You... are a high level... avatar of pride...?"

He asked while the passive regeneration skill was slowly but surely stopping the bleeding from his severed legs.

"Graough? Graough!"

The undead had tilted his head, frowned, and then suddenly waved his hand as if he heard a good joke and laughed.

Then the blue undead proceeded to walk over to Olive's side and crouched shoulder to shoulder next to him as if he didn't just trash the elf completely.

[My master is looking for someone. A black-haired female elf, named Lairs, that got kidnapped by the Envy family. Someone saw a black-haired elf around here yesterday, and we think it's her, but I don't sense her life signature anywhere. What did you do to her?]