Two pieces of news, guys—both bad for you. First, my final college semester is about to start, so obviously, the frequency of chapter releases is going to drop. Second, I got into an apprenticeship program; I'll be working four days a week, and on Fridays, I'll have an in-person class in another city. That means my free time has shrunk even more. Plus, I've got a Machine Learning course coming up—oh man, I am so screwed with the projects ahead... I think it's going to be tough to post chapters from here on out.
//
The crowd of addicts didn't rush in like a coordinated military unit; they swarmed forward like a chaotic pack of hungry dogs, weapons raised.
Luki didn't draw his blade. He didn't need to... beside the fact he left it at Blue Pharmacy.
"I'll teach you a lesson, brat!"
"Nobody messes with the Soma Family!"
Seeing the attacks coming, Luki stepped inside the spear's reach, grabbing the shaft of the weapon with his left hand. And with a twist, he spun the guard around like a top, completely throwing him off balance.
At the exact same time, Luki's free right hand whipped across the guard's waist, unbuckling and yanking his leather belt clean off his trousers.
"Die!" the second attacker screamed, jumping in immediately with a horizontal sword slash to exploit Luki's exposed back.
Whoosh! Luki dropped low, ducking underneath the blade smoothly.
Moving with lightning speed from his crouched position, he looped the confiscated leather belt around the second guard's ankles, pulling it tight.
"Whoa—hey! My feet!" the second man sputtered, his legs instantly locking up.
Luki didn't waste a heartbeat. He stood up, casually walked around and delivered a kick directly on the backside.
"Aaargh!" The second man went flying forward, completely unable to break his fall, crashing heavily right on top of the first guard who was still trying to recover his footing.
They both went down in a tangled, shouting heap of limbs in the grass.
But before the dust could even settle, a third fighter announced his presence, swinging his weapon with a wild grin. "Take this!"
Whoosh!
Instead of crouching down as before, Luki leaped—higher than any Olympic athlete from his past life.
"What the...?!" The guy gasped, surprised to have caught nothing but air.
Instinctively, he raised his head and was met with a dropkick right to the face, falling to the ground screaming in pain.
"There's no escaping now!" Someone shouted while thrusting his spear.
As if anticipating the move, Luki twisted his body in mid-air as the enemy approached with his spear, landing a kick that knocked the weapon aside, followed by a kick to the midsection just as he was about to touch the ground.
Pa! Luki broke his fall by landing on his hands, leaving his head just inches from the ground.
"Fuuu..." He let out a breath he hadn't realized he was holding; strong or not, those kinds of aerial moves are still tough to pull off.
Of course, that mere instant was all he needed for his burning muscles to recover—the pleasures of being nearly tireless.
"HAAA!!!"
"HUOOO!!!
Luki snapped out of his reverie upon hearing the war cries; he "looked up" to see two warriors approaching from opposite sides.
Luki furrowed his brows.
"Yup!" He flexed his arms and gave a little hop, quickly planting his hands on the ground and dropping into a fierce breakdance flare, spinning his legs in a wide, sweeping low kick.
Swish! Snap!
The sweep caught the two guards clean across their shins to knock them down, then two more kickz to knock then higher in the air. Then he launched himself high and sent them flying way, striking one with each leg.
He finished by standing up seamlessly, in perfect balance.
Luki cracked his knuckles, tilting his head with a mocking, amused smile as he surveyed the groaning men on the ground.
"Oh my," Luki chuckled, his voice dripping with playful sarcasm. "And here I thought you boys knew how to throw a proper party. If you wanted to dance with me, you could have just asked politely instead of tripping over your own feet."
He stretched his arms casually, eyes gleaming. "Though, I must say, your performance so far is a bit... tragic. Shall we try for a second act, or are you all too tired?"
The playful, chaotic rhythm vanished in an instant. The remaining members of the Soma Family finally realized they were being treated like absolute jokes, and their frustration turned into pure, suffocating malice.
"This bastard! He's playing with us!"
"Don't let him catch his breath! Surround him!"
A spear thrust directly at Luki's chest from the right. Smiling confidently, he sidestepped the steel point, letting the shaft slide past him, before somersaulting backward a few times to create some distance.
But after he finished his feat and turned around, he found himself staring down a wall of three more swords slashing at him. Forcing to take a hard step back, his heel skidding over the green grass.
Before he could reset his stance, over a dozen men closed the distance simultaneously, forming a tight, unbroken wall of meat and steel around Luki, pressing in from every single angle.
Shlooop! Whoosh! Spears thrust and swords slashed inward in a tight, overlapping cage of sharp points.
Luki dropped his weight completely, rolling frantically across the hard ground as a blade shaved the hairs off his arm. The mocking smile was entirely gone, replaced by a tight, strained expression of adrenaline-fueled focus as a single drop of sweat flew from his forehead.
He was actively forcing his body into desperate, impossible contortions on the stones to "survive."
Clang! Swish!
He twisted his spine at a sickening angle, a spearpoint pinning his shirt into the grass. He rolled over his own shoulder, pulling his knees tightly to his chest as blades sliced through the exact space his torso had been. It was an brutal scramble for survival inside a claustrophobic meat grinder.
"L-Lili... are you sure he's going to be fine?" Miach's disembodied voice whispered right beside her ear, his tone trembling with a nervous stutter. "There are just so many of them... Maybe—maybe we should step in and help?"
He waited for an answer, but was met only with absolute silence.
"Lili?"
The invisible god shifted his stance, turning toward the spot where the girl stood.
Lili was staring intensely at the chaotic brawl. Her eyes were wide, locked onto Luki's every move as he rolled and contorted through the deadly circle of blades. Miach didn't find her silence strange; it was only natural to think she was simply paralyzed by fear and worry for her boyfriend's life.
"Lili...!" Miach whispered a bit louder, finally snapping her out of her trance.
"Ah! Mi-Miach-sama?!" Lili cried, caught completely off guard as she tore her eyes away from the courtyard for a brief second.
"Should we intervene?" the god asked again, his worry palpable.
"No, Miach-sama don't need to worry about him at all," Lili replied, a soft but incredibly steady confidence returning to her voice. "Luki-sama can do anything."
As she spoke, she turned her gaze back to the fight, a small, almost proud smile spreading across her lips.
Miach remained deeply uncertain, but he chose to trust her judgment and simply observe for now. After all, if things got truly out of hand, he could just snap his fingers, deactivate his invisibility, and use his divine authority to put an end to the brawl instantly.
Lili, however, wasn't thinking about Luki's dangerous situation at all.
'Oh gods... he is so, so incredible...' Lili's thoughts raced, her inner voice practically drooling as she watched Luki execute those impossible, dynamic, powerful martial movements.
During the chaos, a rogue spearpoint had caught the fabric of Luki's shirt, tearing it open. The rip perfectly revealed his tightly sculpted chest and his striking six-packs, every single muscle glistening brightly under the courtyard light, slick with a fine sheen of sweat.
Lili's cheeks flushed a deep, burning crimson, her heart hammering against her ribs for a completely different reason now.
'I seriously can't wait to finally get my hands on him...' she thought, a wave of intense excitement rushing through her body as she bit her lower lip.
She was practically vibrating with anticipation for the moment she would finally become a woman.
...
Looking from the outside, one person going face-to-face against roughly fifty others was absolute suicide. Even with a massive disparity in individual strength, the sheer volume of attacks was incredibly dangerous.
Luki was not immune to blades, and on the surface, he didn't have his supernatural recovery active. Now he was just a Level 4 adventurer who was hyper-aware of his surroundings.
To make matters worse, he wasn't actually trying to kill them. Every single one of his moves was strictly to subdue, not to permanently incapacitate or murder. Because if he wanted to, Luki could have easily snatched one of their weapons, or even grabbed one of the guards by the ankles and used him as a human nunchaku to end the entire story right then and there.
Hell, he could just smash their skull into paste and be done.
But Luki wasn't about to butcher the gang of the exact guy he was trying to please. Doing that would completely ruin his standing in the negotiations to come. So, even against dozens, he held back—a luxury that only someone far stronger than them could afford.
Luckily, he wasn't fighting all fifty at once, but rather just a few units at a time. In this cramped, uncoordinated circle, he only had to worry about eight directions. And that, he could manage.
Whoosh! Whoosh! Clang!
The steel came from everywhere, crisscrossing around his body in tight, dizzying vectors. It was terrifyingly claustrophobic, as if Luki were trapped right in the middle of a deadly, razor-sharp game of cat's cradle. The points of the spears and the edges of the swords passed mere millimeters from his skin, weaving a chaotic web of death, yet never managing to actually touch him.
From his low, semi-kneeling position, Luki saw a brief opening beneath the chaos. He dropped his torso even lower, letting one spear slice through the empty air right between his head and his shoulder, while another thrust passed directly through the bend of his raised elbow, slamming harmlessly into the paved stones beneath him.
With his arms now locked into the gap of their weapons, Luki drove his elbow forward with explosive force, burying it straight into the midsection of the nearest swordsman.
"Argh!" The man doubled over, the air completely blasted out of his lungs.
Without breaking his momentum, Luki rolled over his shoulder across the grass, narrowly avoiding a heavy vertical slash that cut a deep line into the turf where his back had been. As he rolled, he whipped his leg out in a brutal, sweeping low kick, catching the ankle of a spearman and twisting his weight with a violent snap.
"GUUAHHH!"
Another agonizing scream pierced the courtyard as the guard's joint popped out of place, sending him crashing face-first into the stones.
Crack! Thud! Bam!
The tight cage of blades completely shattered. Luki wasn't just surviving anymore; he was accelerating. Every micro-movement of his body became sharper, faster, and terrifyingly efficient. He blurred through the remaining guards like a phantom, shifting into a relentless machine of human demolition.
"Aaargh!"
"Gah!"
"Oof!"
A chorus of agonizing screams erupted simultaneously across the courtyard. Luki didn't waste time with single exchanges anymore; with every twist of his torso and every short, explosive snap of his limbs, multiple men were subdued at once. He deflected a sword with his wrist, channeled the momentum and drove a palm strike that sent three guards crashing backward into each other like bowling pins.
"GIIIAAAH!"
Another scream pierced the air, but this one didn't stop on the ground.
A guard was lifted completely off his feet by a devastating uppercut to the ribs, his body launching high into the air and flying clean over the heads of the inner circle before crashing heavily onto the paved stones outside the fray.
Then, the true storm began.
Moving in a continuous, explosive chain reaction, Luki tore the formation apart from the inside out. Every single strike he delivered sent another body airborne.
A sweeping kick launched two spearmen spinning into the sky. A backhand punch propelled a swordsman upward, smashing him into the balcony railing before he fell back down.
Crack! Thud! Bam! Whoosh! Thwack! Snap! Pow! Crunch! Clang! Swish! Whack! Bash! Slam! Splat! Boof! Smack! Rip! Boom! Pop! Smesh!
Body after body was flung out of the circle, painting a chaotic arc of screaming, flying guards across the courtyard. It was an absolute, one-sided slaughter of martial supremacy.
Within seconds, the tight wall of meat and steel wasn't pressing in on him anymore—it was exploding outward, leaving nothing but broken weapons and groaning men in its wake.
KABOOM- CRAAASH!!!
The final blow was catastrophic. The last man standing had frantically raised his spear in a desperate bid to defend himself, but Luki's fist tore through the defense like iron through paper.
The impact completely shattered the thick wooden shaft of the spear into a shower of splinters before burying itself deep into the guard's chest. And the man was launched violently backward, skipping and rolling across the paved stones multiple times, his bones fracturing and skin scraping raw against the hard ground until he finally lay still.
"Fuuuu..." Luki slowly exhaled, releasing the breath he had held through the immense physical exertion.
He kept his fist extended for a lingering second, and incredibly, a faint wisp of steam rose from his knuckles, as if his skin had grown boiling hot from the sheer friction and speed of the battle.
"Ughhh..."
"Ghh... my ribs..."
"A-Ahhh..."
A chorus of pitiful groans and broken whimpers echoed across the estate.
The courtyard, which had been filled with wild, ferocious warriors just moments ago, was now a desolate wasteland. The proud members of the Soma Family lay scattered and broken across the green grass and paved stones, looking like a pile of discarded, torn ragdolls after a hurricane.
"H-He's a monster..." a trembling voice cracked from the edge of the yard. "How... how can anyone be this terrifyingly strong?!"
The man choked out the words, his face pale with absolute horror, desperately trying to crawl out from underneath the body of his unconscious comrade.
He was one of the very few still functional, mostly because he had stayed on the absolute exterior of the circle, merely shouting and pretending to collaborate from a safe distance—but he certainly hadn't expected to be flattened by one of his own flying family members.
And he wasn't the only one. There were several others just like him—cowards who thought they were being clever by not putting any real effort into the brawl.
Now, they were pathetically dragging themselves away on their stomachs, making high-pitched squeaks of pure terror, eyeing Luki as if he were the literal incarnation of death itself.
Luki looked around, taking in the absolute destruction he had single-handedly caused.
He took another deep breath, consciously forcing his racing heart to slow down, bringing his neural perception back to a normal rhythm.
He had to admit it. This was fun.
A satisfied, cocky smile slowly spread across his face as he looked at his steaming knuckles.
Clap...
Clap...
Clap...
A slow, rhythmic sound of clapping hands shattered the heavy silence of the courtyard, echoing coldly from the main building's balcony.
Luki tilted his head up, his gaze locking onto the figure who had been quietly observing the entire spectacle from the high balcony for some time now.
"Magnificent! Truly, an exquisite performance!" The man chuckled, leaning over the stone railing with an amused grin. "I must admit, the rumors in the streets didn't do you justice at all. Such form! Such violence! It's almost a shame my men are too dense to appreciate fine art."
With casual indifference, he stepped over the edge of the balcony and dropped down, landing lightly on the paved stones below—a simple feat for an adventurer of his level.
Without casting a single glance at the dozens of broken, groaning underlings littering his path, he began to walk smoothly toward Luki, casually stepping over a pair of legs.
"To what do I owe the immense pleasure of having the incredibly famous 'Lover of Hestia' wandering through my gardens?" He asked, his voice dripping with polite, venomous sarcasm.
Luki stood his ground, observing the man now standing right in front of him.
He was a tall, lean man with dark hair, sharp features, and a pristine white suit that contrasted sharply with the filthy state of his followers. He wore a pair of thin-rimmed spectacles, giving him a mansa, intellectual appearance.
Looking at him, Luki couldn't help but make a mental comparison to his past life; the man looked exactly like the stereotype of a sleazy, high-society corrupt lawyer or a white-collar con man.
And as if to prove that factual instinct, Luki's spatial hallucinations bled into reality, reflecting the man's true, dark nature.
In his distorted vision, Zanis wasn't human. He was a creature of darkness—a twisted, orange-skinned elf donning a flamboyant purple suit and a tall top hat. A wide, entirely fake, and inviting smile split across his face beneath narrowed, mocking eyes. It was the perfect caricature of a courteous demon, a polite devil waiting to trick you into a contract.
Luki stared back passively, his voice level. "You are Zanis Lustra, correct? The real one in charge here."
"The pimp of this gutter?" Zanis chuckled, adjusting his spectacles with a slight tilt of his head. "Well, although I am technically the Captain of the Soma Family, I prefer to consider myself more of a businessman."
He then leaned slightly to the side, his sharp gaze cutting past Luki's shoulder to look at the solitary pallum standing a few paces behind him. He recognized her instantly.
"And I suspect," Zanis continued, a slow smile spreading on his face, "that you came all the way here to do business with me."
Luki narrowed his eyes. "Why don't you think I came here for revenge on Lili's behalf? I just beat down your entire guard."
"Oh, them?" Zanis waved his hand dismissively, barely even glancing at the bodies in the grass. "They are not important. They are disposable, completely replaceable—just a pack of addicted animals on my leash. I don't care about them in the slightest."
He admitted it with absolute, shameless honesty. The worst part was that Luki's sense could see right through him: Zanis was being totally sincere. There was no hidden malice or hesitation behind those words; he genuinely viewed his own family members as tools.
"Besides," Zanis added, his eyes turning back to Luki with a calculating gleam, "you clearly possessed the strength to kill them all, yet you chose not to. That tells me you didn't come here looking for a permanent conflict. I presume these fools didn't make the best first impression, so please, forgive the failure of my hospitality."
He turned his body sideways, extending his arm toward the heavy wooden doors of the main mansion in an elegant, inviting gesture.
"What do you say we go inside, have a drink, and talk things over?"