“Oh no,” Randidly said as he paused mid-stride and glance around. He was unable to resist the urge to deliver his words in deadpan. “An ambush.”

Todd immediately paled as he spun to face the kids were squirming out of the spaces between the surrounding buildings. Some were as young as Todd, but most were older, perhaps some even as old as seventeen. “Damnit. Even here, on the holy grounds of Kharon Academy?!?”

The ambushers didn’t bother to reply, swarming out of cramped alleyways and lining the nearby rooftops. There was coordination to their assembly. Randidly’s eyes slid sideways, cataloging all thirty of their attackers. While they were on the main skyisland of Kharon, they were outside of the area where classes occurred. As such, Todd had explained earlier that they needed to be careful not to linger too long. He had claimed an attack here was extremely disrespectful but possible.

Randidly shook his head slightly; this was clearly not a sudden act. Someone had expended quite a bit of time and effort to create this encirclement.

As the rank and file members of the teen gang pressed closer, the blonde Eileen Krouse stepped to the edge of a nearby roof and put her hands on her hips. It took Randidly a second to realize that she was striking a pose. “Hehe, that special heirloom will be mine, Toddler. I’ve already spoken to Damien about it and come to an understanding… and if you get yourself any more demerits…” Her smirk widened. “Will you be able to buy anything at all in the under auction? What a tragedy.”

“You…!” Todd scrunched his face until it was a crumpled newspaper. The surrounding kids took their time as they sidled into place, leaving about five meters of space around Randidly and Todd. The other students that had been wandering down the cobblestone side street were gone. Their ambushers looked at them with knowing grins; it seemed they believed this situation to be inescapable.

Randidly found the levity of the moment somewhat refreshing. A situation like this was almost nostalgic. He remembered fondly those early battles in the System, when he dodged acid-spitting frogs and antagonized Howler Monkeys to earn Skill Levels. It was funny to think that now, a casual thought could unleash a wave of horrifying images that would obliterate all of his past challenges in a single moment.

Let’s have some fun with this, Randidly’s mouth quirked at the edge. He turned to Todd and announced in a stage whisper, “We are gonna need to make a break for it.”

Todd clenched his fists and his crumpled expression eased. There was genuine thankfulness and warmth mixed in his frustrations. Meanwhile, the surrounding kids heard Randidly’s words and chortled, exchanging wolfish smiles with each other. But ultimately, Todd could only shake his head at Randidly’s words and sigh. “There are too many of them. I don’t like it, but… this just might mean… I can’t get the Ghosthound’s spear…”

That finally pulled Randidly’s attention out from the developing game of the scenario. “What?”

Above, Eileen had watched the developments with an indulgent air up to this point. When Randidly frowned in confusion, she raised her hand to cover her mouth as she laughed, like a two-bit villain. “Fufufu, you fool, you’ve defended this Toddler without knowing the depths you are swimming into? Pah! This concerns the greatest secret legacy that Kharon Academy possesses! Only a select few are allowed to bid for this item, earning that right through accomplishing a series of secret tasks~ And I’m here today… to make sure that treasure doesn’t end up in the hands of someone like Toddler here.”

“I accomplished the same stupid tasks as you! This isn’t fair!” Todd yelled up at Eileen. “Just because you are older-”

“You got lucky.” Eileen shrugged, her blonde pigtails bouncing. Then she clapped her hands lightly and the gathered kids pulled out uniform plastic baseball bats and began to creep forward. “And now I’m the agent of karma, here to take back the blessings that you don’t deserve.”

Randidly eyed the weapons the kids used. They were a clunky, oversized wiffleball bats, made so that they would be painful enough to fight with, without inflicting serious damage on the recipient. Ultimately, Randidly ignored them. Because while half of the kid stepped forward with weapons, the other half were raising their hands and summoning Mana. The rooftops buzzed with accumulating energy.

Meanwhile, Todd continued to explain in a quiet voice to Randidly. “Jeez, I can’t believe you don’t know about this! It’s a shattered spear, the one that the Ghosthound used in his first challenge against Donnyton. They say that when you hold it in your hand… you can feel it pulse with its spirit like it’s alive.”

Randidly struggled to keep his expression even at this revelation. He cast his mind backward. From the first Donnyton challenge…? I definitely had Acri at that point… if there was any shattered spear… it would have been Alana’s, when she manifested the valkyrie in the final attack… Wait, was that even the first challenge…?

All in all, it seemed pretty unlikely that the spear was actually his. Randidly tried not to grin as he imagined Alana’s reaction to hearing that her spear was being passed around as the ‘greatest secret legacy of Randidly Ghosthound’ at Kharon Academy. But then he rolled his shoulders and released a breath. Still, no reason not to join the fun. Let’s get this show on the road.

As the kids circled, Randidly patted Todd’s shoulder with his right hand and then pointed to his metallic left arm. “I didn’t tell you this before, but this arm has a particularly powerful defense. With it, I think we can push through, with your help.”

Immediately, Todd’s expression brightened. “I KNEW you wouldn’t just have a useless metal arm! How-”

Randidly picked Todd up with his right arm to keep him from wasting more time. Although Todd was a little big to be held like this, Randidly’s Primordial Nether Juju meant that he didn’t even feel the additional weight. But honestly, the problem wasn’t escaping, it was escaping without injuring any of these kids…

Or his newly acquired passenger, whose eyes, ears, and nasal passages would rupture underneath some of the momentum shifts that Randidly endured...

“Arcane Orb!” Eileen shouted out the signal to attack, releasing a rather impressive indigo orb from her hand. The projectile spun quickly down toward Randidly’s head. The eyes of the surrounding kids turned serious.

Randidly paused and briefly eyed the main antagonist in this situation. This ambush was a little cutthroat, but since she obviously wasn’t intending to harm Todd, Randidly forgave her for her methods. Competition like this was necessary to prepare the students for the real threats of the Nexus. And when he scanned her image, he could feel her determination and talent; she was a good seedling.

But then he raised his gaze. His emerald eyes flashed. Todd was waving his hand, hurriedly conjuring some sort of barrier to help defend against the Arcane Orb. In the meantime, a half dozen Mana Bolts and Fireballs sizzled through the air, making a mess of the airspace. Bodies surged forward and bats were brandished threateningly. Everything exploded into a chaos of energy and motion.

Yet Grim Intuition scrutinized and cataloged every threat. Randidly took a single, almost casual step forward. The ambushers were relying on quantity to ensure the encirclement was successful. And even with Todd keeping his movements to normal speeds, using such methods against him was… rather foolish.

Congratulations! Your Skill Chimeric Impunity (M) has grown to Level 402!

Randidly’s lips twitched. This isn’t going to be fair at all.

*****

As soon as Eileen Krouse unleashed her trademark ‘heavy’ Arcane Orb, she channeled her cool Mana into her hand and began creating another. Although Toddler wasn’t strong enough to overcome her in a one-on-one fight, Eileen felt slightly wary of this bodyguard that Toddler had managed to rope into his service.

This man with womanly-long black hair should be weak. Eileen surveyed him from the rooftop as her Mana quickly gathered in her palm. She couldn’t detect even the slightest sense of image from him, even as he scooped up Toddler and started stepping toward the aggressive encirclement. And yet, Eileen’s instincts somehow didn’t inform her that he was weak. Just that… he didn’t seem to possess any image.

He walked around, surrounded by stillness.

In addition, Superman Bennio had vehemently refused to join this ambush. After he said no, he didn’t even bother to offer an explanation but just ignored the rest of her messages. Apparently, this bodyguard’s punch had been pretty intimidating. Which just meant that Eileen had called on her connections to gather more ambushers. No matter how strong his punches were, he couldn’t punch everywhere at once. And as one of the few attendees of Kharon Academy who wasn’t an orphan, she had a natural advantage in terms of resources.

“Arcane Orb!” Eileen said for the second time. Her projectile joined the thick volley shooting toward the figure of the bodyguard and Toddler. And as she looked down, Eileen felt a sudden flash of fear. Did I… go too far? That’s a lot of Skills… If they take all of those directly-

“Mana Bolt!”

“Freeze Ray!”

“Fireblast!”

“Dark Dart!”

“Bubblebeam!”

Below, her subordinates displayed none of her hesitation and enthusiastically contributed to the bombardment. They picked and unleashed their favorite Skills in quick succession. Even worse, the first of the melee fighters were bounding forward, closing the distance with their weapons raised. Meanwhile, the bodyguard-

Eileen found her eyes oddly stuck to the broad shoulders of the black-haired man. He took another step forward, but there was something strange about the motion. There was a slight sway in his movements, as though he were a tall tree being lightly buffeted by a strong wind. Yet there was also a strange… unnaturalness to the distance covered as he moved.

That sway seemed to encompass that extended beyond tendons and sine.

After his first step, a Mana Bolt whizzed harmlessly past the bodyguard. Then he continued taking steps toward the melee encirclement. One of the burly young men Eileen had recruited raised a bat and swung it with all his power. The black-haired bodyguard stepped and swayed, that was all. He didn’t move too quickly, but he breezed forward past the whistling blow of the bat. Behind the man, Eileen’s first Arcane Orb smashed harmlessly into the ground.

BOOOOM!

Her Skill threw dust up into the air, but she could still clearly see the man’s bizarre movements. The melee fighters realized that something wasn’t right and responded quickly; several leapt forward to box him in from all sides. Yet he continued to take short steps and sway around the powerful Skills thrown at him.

BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!

The mage-types on the ground had to throw up some hasty shields to block the inaccurate Skills that their compatriots on the rooftops had thrown. For a brief second, the constant volley of attacks ceased. Meanwhile, the bodyguard paused in his constant movement to allow a vicious swing to pass only centimeters in front of his face. Then he was moving again as soon as the attack had vacated his path, stepping away from the attacks that were coming at him from behind. Meanwhile, Toddler began to toss out Volatile Orbs, which forced even more of the ambushing forces to back up and focus on defense.

Something abruptly occurred to Eileen. It looks like… he’s just dancing with them…

Her eyes flashed and she did some rapid calculations. At his current speed… Eileen raised her hand and aimed. “Arcane Orb!”

The projectile shot downward on the path she projected for the bodyguard. He swayed around Frost Blasts and tiptoed past Fireballs. There were moments where the black-haired man simply paused in his movements, leaving all of the bat-wielders to wildly swing their weapons and hit only air. It was like they weren’t even trying to hit them.

There were other times that the man raised his metal left arm and used only a finger to nudge a swinging bat to the side, usually resulting in that bat blocking another bat that was going to hit him from the side. He somehow made the entire thing look effortless. Other melee fighters were rushing to catch up to his back, but they had to pause to block all the projectiles thrown at him that missed.

Basically, the entire ambush didn’t manage to slow him down at all.

Honestly, Eileen was shocked when the man’s steady movements brought him perfectly to the spot that she had aimed earlier. Her Arcane Orb howled downward. The man paused and looked upward. Then he casually raised his arm and just grabbed her attack.

The Skill was quenched in his hand without any fanfare. The man lowered his gaze and took another step forward.

Eyes bulging, Eileen scrambled for any Skill to slow Toddler’s miraculous escape. Finally, she found one and activated it, despite her relatively mediocre Skill Level. “Entangling Roots!”