The mage, seeing his meat shield teammates being flung back, contorted his face in fear.
"St-st-stay away you...."
Erik didn't even give the mage time to finish his sentence and dashed using his explosive muscles. He cocked his fist which had enlarged to the size of watermelons and easily gave the mage three quick jabs which shattered the mage's skull due to his poor defense.
With one mage down, the other one desperately tried to escape. She casted ice magic and Erik was encased in an icy block. However before the mage could give a breath of relief, Erik easily broke the ice prison, as if he was taking a stroll through the park.
The mage essentially had lost her mind and used all her remaining mana on various spells. Dozens of fireballs flung themselves at Erik, before the dust settled a huge wave of water hit followed by a minute sliver of lightning. Flinging spells upon spells, the mage did not dare stop flinging out spells. However as her rate of spells slowed down due to a diminishing mana pool, she realized something horrific. Even in despite of all those spells, Erik had barely moved an inch.
Patting off his clothes, Erik smiled as he approached the exhausted mage who had collapsed on the ground and wet her robe.
"What an entertaining massage. The spells really warms up my body."
The mage stuttered like he had frost bite.
"I-I-Impossible! Y-y-you may be stronger, b-but my attacks should have had effects. W-w-w-what kind of cheat is this?"
Erik finally arrived in front of the mage on the floor and squatted.
"Don't take it too personally. There is no trick. This is simply the gap in our strength. I am strong and you are weak. There is no other explanation or trick. I am sure your combat abilities are similar to a B Tier Adventurer, but tiers don't reflect everything. A lower tier can sometimes beat a higher tier or a higher tier could stroll while facing a lower tier, you unfortunately fall in the latter. In the face of absolute power, everything else is meaningless."
Erik cocked his fist and the mage let out a blood curdling scream, but the ending could not be heard. One punch swinging downwards and using the momentum to hit the mage's head while pushing it into the ground making the skull explode like a watermelon hitting the ground from a high height.
By the time the second mage had met the end of their life, the rest of the group had recovered only to have fear penetrating their minds. Both of their mages were dead and another member of the group was bleeding out impaled on a tree branch. Meanwhile their opponent hadn't even broken a sweat and didn't even look like he had gone all out. The only thing they could feel was the hopelessness of the situation.
The remaining seven bandits thought about making a run for it, however they could not due to a various reasons. One was their mission did not allow for such cowardice and the other reason was the fact that Erik, even with his immense size out classed all of them in agility and speed.
Only the leader could keep his senses, he took his halberd out of the ground and pointed it toward Erik.
"We only have one choice. We fight and hope the goddess of luck is on our side."
The word of encouragement could only get the bandits back into an attacking formation. The formation started to run towards Erik.
Erik started to walk at a leisurely stroll while smiling and said something to himself.
'Hmph, even if the goddess of luck smiled upon everyone in your group. It would be fruitless, nonetheless.'
The rest of the fight was simply a massacre, in fact one wouldn't even call it a fight but a beating. Erik merely tanked every attack and at the most had some slight cuts that had already stopped bleeding. Using his pure strength and size, Erik used his ferocious punches to slowly take out each member one by one. Blood, bones, and screams appeared across the road in the forest. The bodies started to slowly accumulate on the ground.
Panting with one knee on the ground as the leader was using his halberd to get up, he was the only one left now. He had long ago gone all out using his most powerful spells, which made his aura expand similar to a large version of the fire that candles had. The red aura set the grass it touched on fire and even scorched the ground. However the intense fire barely left soot marks on Erik, the leader knew he had no chance at killing the man. But he could only give whatever counter attack he could, the leader had lost faith at this point.
Erik slowly walked to where he was an arms distance away from the last man and even stood in the burning aura without batting an eyelash.
"Seems like you are the leader and the last one remaining, would you mind surrendering? This would make this easier and less of a hassle for me."
The leader clenched his teeth so tight that the muscles along his jaw line looked like stone.
'This man looks like he has been doing chores as he killed all of my squad mates. This is ridiculous.'
He shouted.
"I would rather die then give away in front of you!"
While the words sounded tough, the leader on the inside was really trembling at his impending fate. Erik on the other hand wanted to catch one alive and deliver it to the people in Orsini.
The leader charged, leading with his halberd which looks like a crumpled piece of sheet metal. The constant attacks from Erik had left the sturdy and high quality halberd looking like a soda can that someone stepped on. Swinging his halberd down with all his force, the leader grit his teeth and put his entire weight behind the attack.
Erik on the other hand merely used his fore arms to block and the halberd barely made it a centimetre into his arm. Before his opponent could make a move, Erik delivered a swift jab holding back much of his power into the gut of his opponent. The opponent still was thrown back even with the limited power of the attack. When he landed on the dirt floor of the road, he threw up as he blacked out.
Leon had watched all this unfold and his mind was racing.
'Wow. This is the first time I have seen Erik, yet alone an A Tier fight. It was completely one sided! Even the ten strong bandits couldn't do anything, this must be what power feels like. I must remember this fight, to picture what my goal and hope for the future should be.'