Watching him walk up and mince that beast kin. It made her stomach churn, knowing Jeffrey, this didn't seem like something he'd do. Ever.
His eyes seemed clouded, and the pressure he exuded kept anyone from moving. Like sleep paralysis, she could only watch on.
She didn't take Jeffrey as being a racist.
…
Pushing against the crowd, a certain Hero arrived at the crime scene. Glancing over at the suspect, his eyes were immediately drawn to the bloody mosaic by his feet, dyeing the snow red.
"Urg," he puked. Despite being the Hero, he had never been exposed, nor conditioned to anything like this. A heavy sense of dread overcame him. Alais too, stood stock still in stunned silence.
However, he quickly composed himself.
"Appraisal,"
Appraising the criminal before him, he looked at his status sheet.
[ Jeffrey
Rank - Silver Strength
Class - Semi Brave
Race - Heretic
HV - 530 / 530
EV - 445 / 445
STR - 53
DEX - 48
CON - 54
INT - 67
WIS - 24
CHA - 14 ]
"Brave? Heretic?" He had never heard of these classes or races before. How could heretic, simply be a race, if anything it was a class. And semi brave? Brave what? His class was missing something.
Not to mention his broken stats! He worked his butt off just to raise his stats to fifteen, yet this guy already had stats over triple his!
At least I have more charisma than him, Yamada thought to himself.
As his thoughts diverged from reality, he snapped to focus as soon as another System notification screen appeared in front of him.
[ Warning !
You have encountered a member of the Heretic race. As the Hero, it is your duty to slay all members of the fallen races ! ]
Fallen races? That sounded vaguely familiar, but he couldn't put his finger on it. Nonetheless, he might as well ask the System.
[Fallen races are the enemies of the gods. It is the duty of all races to slay the Heretic before it escapes ! ]
[Grade A Quest Received!
Inquisition !
Slay or capture the Heretic !
Reward: Inquisition + 180 Free Status Value Points]
The System just issued a really hard quest, it was grade A, truly showing the difficulty of completing it. It really wanted him to kill the dude, huh?
Well, it didn't seem unjustified in the slightest. The guy just straight up murdered and mutilated a citizen in public as well as commit slavery and numerous other unsavoury actions. Not to mention the quest itself offered some sweet rewards. Inquisition sounded like a neat skill, and the 180 stat points would add for a solid addition to his overall strength.
…
What the hell? What did I just do?!
Looking down at his bloodied hands, he felt like a monster. Yet his subconscious shifted him from truly feeling any guilt from it.
Is this what it means to turn to the dark side? Did that trip to Hell make me go insane?
This was a highly plausible reasoning, travel between realms wasn't all that safe, although there would be no physical ailments, the same could not be said about the mentality or psyche.
"Heretic!"
As Jeffrey turned his attention toward the voice, he saw a Hero staring him down.
No kidding, why was this guy always so intent on harassing him? And was he calling me the heretic? Surely not.
"I'm speaking to you! Foul scum!"
Oh, so he was talking to me. But what was with the name calling? How immature.
Taking this short silence, the Hero charged up his essence, formulating a haphazard conglomeration of numerous types of essence, taking a spherical shape. The Hero was obviously not aware that just mixing an assortment of different low quality essences together was not enough to bring about a high quality change to the outcome, than if one were to simply just simply use a single type of essence. After, not all the essence would neatly combine with each other and increase the output, no, instead they would eat away at each other and cause the whole concoction to be unstable. In some cases this could mean the whole thing backfiring on the caster, and blowing them to high hell. Though it was part of the Hero class to be a jack of all trades. Like a rogue but better.
Once the maximum threshold the Hero could handle was reached, the Hero chucked the 'spell' at Jeffrey. Surprisingly enough it didn't implode itself on the Hero and instead was launched in the general direction Jeffrey was in. The sphere of essences didn't disintegrate themselves either but rather reacted to each other violently like throwing a block of sodium in a pond, it was going to unleash its energy in a devastating explosion.
Perhaps, this was what the Hero was aiming for? Maybe he wasn't such a sped after all…
The shot was a bit off, but it still devastated the plaza, even implicating a few civilians and a couple patrol teams in the process. Okay, that previous statement is retracted. The Hero is most certainly a sped.
Jeffrey had cleanly dodged the essence ball, but the same could not be said about the surrounding populace. Seemingly ignoring the mayhem he created the Hero charged at Jeffrey, sword drawn. He swung it around flashily as did a predictable vertical overhead strike against Jeffrey.
However, as Jeffrey anticipated to dodge the strike it was however intercepted by Savage.
What a lad! This guy, he's a true friend.
"I don't know what shite you got, but you'd better explain later," Savage growled as he parried the Hero's attack and exploited the opening it caused. Forcing the Hero to make distance.
As the two sides glared each other down. An arrow whizzed by from the sidelines, directly pinging the Hero in the chest, putting a large dent in his chest plate and leaving him winded. The arrow itself was coated with layers of essence paint, making it quite a strong piercing projectile. Normally, it would have been enough to shred through any ordinary steel, it goes to show how much the Moonshine Kingdom invested in this 'Hero.'
"Tsk!" In the direction of the arrow, a green hooded figure could be seen on a rooftop. Nocking another arrow, he signalled his comrades as he released the arrow.
A new foe has appeared !