"Ah...!"
With a scream of agony, Sigurd's body slammed to the ground like a ball, bouncing several times before sliding across the ground, kicking up a cloud of dust, and finally lying there motionless.
The HP bar appeared, and from its full green state, it rapidly dropped down, leaving more than half gone and settling into the yellow warning zone, almost turning red.
Even in this condition, Sigurd's HP continued to decrease bit by bit.
This was because Sigurd had entered an injured state, with one of his arms completely severed at the shoulder. A wound effect shone from the area, spewing a blood-like visual effect that kept his HP trickling down.
Sigurd was utterly stunned.
"Sigurd!"
"No...impossible!"
The two Sylph players who had come with Sigurd were in shock.
It wasn't just them—every Sylph player around was struck speechless.
"Tap..."
With a faint sound, Rozen's footsteps touched down as he let his fairy sword hang loosely.
In less than a second, the two opponents who had been battling fiercely now stood in stark contrast—one calm and composed, the other lying on the ground in complete disbelief.
The onlookers watched in stunned silence.
Even Leafa, though well aware of Rozen's power, was startled by the scene.
The man who had once placed second in the Martial Arts Tournament, someone even Leafa admitted was formidable, with high-performance gear earned through hours of gameplay, had been utterly defeated in under a second.
"This is your strength."
Rozen's gaze shifted to Sigurd, and he gave a faint smile.
"So, what do you think? Not as strong as you thought?"
These words made Sigurd tremble.
It wasn't fear; it was disbelief.
"No...it's not possible..."
Sigurd staggered to his feet, clutching his severed arm, face full of shock.
"With my gear, even high-level Bosses can't take out over half my HP in a single hit. How could you...how could you...?!"
Sigurd clearly refused to accept the reality before him.
But...
"I told you to stop barking," Rozen said with a smirk. "I was already holding back."
This was the truth.
If he hadn't been holding back, Rozen wouldn't have just cut off Sigurd's arm and kicked him away—he would've pierced his heart in one strike, hitting his critical point.
With Rozen's current weapon's attack power, speed, and precision, even the training field Boss, the Fallen Fairy, would have been taken down in a single blow.
No matter how high Sigurd's equipment or defense values were, they couldn't match a wild Boss monster.
It was simply impossible.
So, Rozen truly had held back.
Of course, to Sigurd, this only added to his shame.
"Bastard!"
Sigurd's gaze on Rozen turned frenzied.
In SAO, losing an arm and weapon meant he could no longer fight.
But this was the world of ALO.
Here, there were no sword skills—only magic.
So...
"Zing!"
A glow enveloped Sigurd.
"————々·∧·∠·≮·≠————"
At that moment, Sigurd recited an incantation with furious energy.
In ALO, to use magic, players had to recite spells as if they were in a legend.
These spells weren't genuine magical words; they were nothing like SAO's sword skills.
In SAO, there were thousands of sword skills, each requiring precise movements and combinations. Without expertise, one couldn't design so many sword skills, so SAO's developers had hired martial arts experts to create them.
Thanks to this, even though they were in-game sword skills, they weren't without combat value.
Naturally, being a game, sword skills were also designed to look flashy, so true swordsmanship experts would view them as third-rate swordsmanship, perhaps second-rate at best.
Rozen combined SAO's sword skills with Mind's Eye, using the shortest, best, and most optimized moves, making SAO's sword skills comparable to first-rate swordsmanship. Even masters like Kurogane Ikki and Kanata Age couldn't find major flaws, only advising Rozen not to use overly dramatic moves and to focus on efficiency over aesthetics.
This proved that SAO's sword skills had merits.
But ALO's magic was different.
In this world, magic didn't really exist.
As a result, the incantations for magic were just fabricated words, lacking any mystical meaning. Rozen had confirmed this after examining spellbooks and analyzing each incantation's structure and purpose.
However, in this world, these were magical incantations.
Though Rozen, as a magus, was reluctant to call these things magic (since red magic wasn't like this), and much like his view of aerial combat magic in the other world, he could not accept it. Nonetheless, as Sigurd chanted, mystical words began materializing around him.
That was the magic of this world—casting spells with clear pronunciation at a certain volume, after which the system would recognize them and activate the magic.
As a result, a barrage of green energy arrows was released from Sigurd's hand, raining down toward Rozen.
"Wind attribute magic, huh?"
Rozen watched the attack, narrowed his eyes, and with a single flap of his wings, advanced instead of retreating.
"————∑·∈·≤————"
The next moment, Rozen chanted his own incantation, causing magical words to appear around him.
"Th-This…!"
Leafa, who had been watching, was taken aback.
Perhaps others wouldn't know, but Leafa did—Rozen had only entered the game a few hours ago.
In just a few hours, he had already learned to chant and cast spells?
This was too fast!
Leafa didn't realize that Rozen was an actual magus, holding an extensive mental archive of magical knowledge. These simple, meaningless game incantations were easy for him to memorize after reading the manual.
In other words, Rozen had already memorized all the spells in ALO.
Although his magic skill level was still zero, limiting him to the basic Sylph spells, that was more than enough.
Currently, Rozen was chanting a defensive spell, creating a gust around him.
Normally, such a basic defensive spell wouldn't be able to block Sigurd's high-level attack spell.
But let's not forget—Rozen possessed the Feathered Wing magic immunity ring.
So...
"Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom!"
With a series of explosions, every green energy arrow that hit Rozen detonated, leaving him unscathed.
Sigurd watched in stunned silence as Rozen's fairy sword began to glow.
"Splurt!"
With the second tear, Sigurd's other arm flew through the air.
"Ah...!"
Sigurd's scream of agony rang out again.