"Who are you?" asked the lion. Like the previous Evies he has encountered, its voice sounds like it went through a synthesizer.
'But Seraselbes wasn't like that... I still don't know how they spend their day-to-day lives.' For Kisuke, not knowing their enemy's day-to-day life was a sign of a serious lack of information.
Kisuke had no intention of talking to him and he'd already revealed more than he had to. Even though he changed his voice, it only reduced the risk and did not negate the chance that someone might have some unique ability to trace him through that. He couldn't even use his Kidou(Spirit Arts), Zanjutsu(Swordsmanship), Hakuda(Hand-to-Hand Combat), Hohou(Fast Movement), or Hollowfication for the reason that his combat data might have already been in the hands of high-ranking officials of both the Evies and Etouldes, 'The limit is one inconspicuous move. If I can't do it after that, I'll give up.'
He could only use Tiamat because no one had seen her yet aside from a few trustworthy people.
The lion waited for him to respond and was disappointed when he didn't answer, "A low-ranking Etoulde like you dared to face me? It looks like becoming a successor to one of the Luxeux went straight to your head. Allow me to show you reality."
'I look like a low-level Etoulde to him?' Kisuke thought and saw the lion opening its mouth. In an instant, a beam of plasma ejected from its mouth and Kisuke had to dodge to the side. If he reacted slower, he would have been fried, '...That was fast.' And even if dodged, a bit of his arm was still scorched.
Naturally, the lion's attack didn't end there and sent a couple more high-density plasma beams on his way.
But instead of retreating as the lion Kisuke would do, he started flying towards him at high speed.
The lion smirked at him and increased the frequency of his attacks, likely lowering their intensity. And at just a few meters from him, Kisuke finally couldn't dodge and got hit by multiple heat projectiles, "Idiot."
At the same time, the lion felt something poking his side and he remembered that there was still Grenlan's sword bothering him. The lion, however, momentarily froze when his plasma attacks just went through Kisuke as if they hit nothing, and simultaneously, he felt another poke at the very same spot where the 'shadow' sword had to attack him.
Knowing his own weakness, the lion shuddered and hurriedly retreated while closing his mouth.
From where the point of the attack came from, he saw the strange Etoulde standing casually while taking back his sword. A second later, he disappeared again as he entered the 'shadow' sword and reappeared beside Grenlan.
Kisuke figured that he won't be able to defeat the lion in his current state on top of holding back most of his abilities so he returned to the siblings' side and sent a telepathic message to Stralit, [Let's see each other again in the future, Luxeux-san. And please do give my regards to your good friend. It was she who informed me of your plight.]
He didn't wait for any reply and directly opened the Teleportation Circle.
"W-wait!" Stralit tried calling out to him but she was ignored and 'John Smith' escaped while destroying all the information about his Teleportation Circle to prevent any pursuers.
But before Kisuke completely disappeared, he felt something strange and turned his head. There he saw the black-haired woman and smirked at her, 'Nice try, young lady~'
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Alicia was passively leading the Luxatos against the modified enemy Abtors. And despite the latter's apparent advantage in terms of ability and number, Alicia was able to create a 'stalled' battlefield where both sides are just exhausting their energy with nothing happening good or bad on both of them. She didn't want both sides to be put into a disadvantageous position. For her, stalemate is the best stance in the current situation where there are many complicated movements happening beneath the surface.
However, a strange man appeared and destroyed her carefully crafted chessboard.
Nevertheless, she just quietly watched while fixing the mess he made. Of course, she made sure that it was not obvious and she doesn't care if she were to be branded as incompetent if she couldn't win after being given a huge advantage.
The same as Navot, she thought that the strange man was just a low-level Etoulde who became a successor and was in possession of a strange but powerful weapon. And this judgment of hers didn't change until the end even after he used an unknown technique to replace himself with a clone, but only until that.
When the strange man tried to leave, Alicia couldn't let the unknown variable go without any way of a follow-up investigation. With that in mind, she used one of her abilities to conjure a tiny and invisible spider out of her own Spiritual Power and attached it to the man in an attempt to track him.
Alicia was very confident of her spider which had anti-tracing abilities, especially when the counterpart was just a low-level Etoulde. She watched the spider fuse and meld into his skin and join his stream of Spiritual Power.
Nonetheless, it didn't end as she hoped as she suddenly saw an image of a 'skull' in her head. Normally, this wasn't a problem to her since she's an expert in this field, but the unknown origin of this 'skull' that suddenly entered her mind caught her off guard as it bit down on the thread that was connecting her to her spider. But because the skull was strongly emanating the idea of 'Death', she couldn't do anything to stop it nor even approach it. The feeling that someone was closely watching her and was ready to slice her head off gave her quite a scare.
As the strange man's body was slowly turning into motes of light, he turned his head towards her. Even though he's wearing a mask, she has a feeling that he's smirking at her.
"Alicia, what happened?" A familiar voice suddenly asked her when the man completely disappeared. When she turned her head, she saw the Luxeux siblings approaching her, "Your nose is bleeding... And you're crying tears of blood."
"Eh?" Alicia touched her face and looked at her hand. Indeed, there's blood on it, 'I have very strong protection against mind attacks but I was still punished to this degree?' It was only then that she realized how dangerous the situation was for her.
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Kisuke returned to the grounds of the Ouroboros Academy and had already dispelled his disguise. The first thing he checked upon returning was the small piece of armor only spanning around a millimeter wide that he was able to nick from the Evie, 'My guess was correct. It had a reactive armor that explodes upon reaching a certain threshold. I was only able to nick this because I took advantage of the gap between reactions.'
However, that wasn't the part that's extremely concerning for Kisuke, '...Almost instantaneous and direct conversion of Magic Power to other forms of energy. It seems that this is a basic ability for all the high-ranking members of Evies. How terrifying.'