"Oh! Bishou-sama sure knows how to have fun!"
As soon as Bishou finished speaking, all kinds of lewd laughter and teasing words came from all directions. The soldiers were all excited and looked closely at the square.
In contrast, Stella bit her lip tightly, her eyes full of struggle.
As Bishou had said earlier, battles between Blazers heavily depend on compatibility. Bishou, as a Reflector, could absorb and reflect all attacks.
The power Stella prided herself on suddenly vanished.
What should she do? Does she really have to take off her clothes?
There was also Nene from Shizuku behind her. As long as Nene stepped forward, she should be able to buy more time.
But Stella didn't know how long it would take for Shizuku to set up the water barrier.
She had to stall as much as possible.
*BANG*
Suddenly, the sound of gunfire rang out.
A bullet exploded from an assault rifle, slicing through the wind and grazing Bishou's face in an instant.
The smile on Bishou's face abruptly ceased.
At the same time, all the lewd laughter from around them halted, like a dying drake.
Then, everyone turned and looked at the tall and skinny soldier.
"Ruen, are you crazy? How dare you shoot at Bishou-sama!?"
The comrades beside him also looked at him in disbelief, but they hid behind their masks, so nothing could be seen.
"I intentionally missed."
But from behind the mask of the man called Ruen, a very young voice could be heard, with an inexplicable cold tone.
"This voice... you're not Ruen! Damn, when did you arrive?"
The comrade beside him gasped, raising the assault rifle in his hands warily, pointing the muzzle at him.
"Who are you?"
"Just a passing Blazer, remember that."
The man removed the gas mask from his face, revealing a handsome face that stunned everyone present.
'This line is so cool!'
"Blazer?"
Stella stood up from the ground on trembling knees and turned around in surprise.
It turned out that when Nene said, "he has another plan." Hoshiharu intended to blend in with the terrorists?
"...It's another Student Knight. How foolish of you to take turns competing one by one."
The smile on Bishou's face faded, his expression darkened, and the tattoo on the left side of his face twisted like a wriggling caterpillar.
"As long as you kept hiding, you might have been able to create a deadlock situation by taking me hostage. What were you thinking by revealing yourself in this situation?"
He had almost been shot just now!
If the projectile had deviated slightly more, it might have hit and killed him. Surviving this disaster left him extremely displeased.
"I am a strong advocate of pure love, and I will cut down NTR perpetrators with a single slash."
Hoshiharu seemed to completely ignore the gun muzzles pointed at him and merely sneered.
"Don't use your limited brain capacity to try to understand my thoughts. It's your fault for bringing me down to your level. How do you know that I can't take you hostage now?"
"What?"
Bishou's smile gradually faded.
"I'll kindly inform you, my Noble Arts is <>, meaning I am definitely faster than my opponent."
Hoshiharu held the assault rifle in his hands, pointing the gun directly at Bishou's face across from him.
"This means, my speed in pulling the trigger and the speed of the bullet exiting the barrel is definitely faster than yours and the people beside me pointing their guns at me... In other words, if you give a reckless command, I don't know if you'll survive, but you definitely won't."
This was a lie.
Hoshiharu could only set one target at a time.
In other words, if he set himself to be faster than Bishou, he couldn't be faster than the soldiers beside him.
Of course, if Bishou himself was faster than the soldiers, then Hoshiharu, who was faster than the opponent, would naturally be faster than the soldiers.
"If you don't believe me, you can look it up online. I just defeated the former third-ranked Blazer in the world ten days ago. There should be videos on the Internet, and they've been widely circulated."
To prove his words, Hoshiharu proactively clarified his record.
Bishou immediately signaled the soldier next to him. The soldier quickly pulled out his phone. Soon, his expression changed, and his voice began to tremble.
"Is this...true?!"
He found the video Kagami Kusakabe had uploaded to the Internet. Although the resolution was not high, from the facial features, the person in the video was entirely consistent with the man in front of him.
There are websites on the Internet that specifically collect information about Blazers. As long as you enter these sites, you can probably find the information you're looking for.
At this moment, everyone present was terrified by him.
Stella looked around.
Everyone's attention was focused on Hoshiharu, and no one was paying attention to the group of hostages.
Nene seemed to give a thumbs up, signaling that her Junior Brother was impressive.
Stella also quietly retreated without informing anyone, leaving the situation to Hoshiharu, but she remained alert, ready to respond.
"Ha... So what if you defeated the former third-ranked Blazer in the world? I have the ability to—"
"I've read books, and you clearly can't deceive me at an elementary school level."
As Bishou's face gradually stiffened, Hoshiharu spoke again.
"Reflector isn't a Noble Arts that can be activated all the time. It doesn't activate passively when facing enemies. It's an active ability and must be actively activated to be effective—"
Most Blazer abilities are active abilities.
Bishou's Reflector ability couldn't function like an Accelerator using his superpowers. He could apply a reflective layer to himself to unconsciously reflect back any attacks to successfully activate it.
When Hoshiharu was lying in bed, he spent time reading. He was familiar with the characteristics of Noble Arts, and Bishou clearly couldn't fool him.
"After all, how do you know that my speed can't be faster than your activation speed?"
Hoshiharu's final words made Bishou gradually lose his composure.
Faster than activation speed?
Is that even possible?
If the other party truly had such a powerful ability, wouldn't he already be invincible?
90% of the world's Blazers need to actively activate their abilities before they can launch an attack. If the enemy's attack is always faster than their activation speed, wouldn't all attacks be nullified?
If the young man could really do that... If he could fire a bullet at <> before the ability activated—then Bishou would die!
In fact, Hoshiharu's statement was indeed true—
But it wasn't entirely true.
Activation speed—this speed indeed exists, but the speed of this speed depends on a person's neurological reaction speed.
Neural response speed varies from person to person.
For ordinary people, it takes about 0.3 seconds. A trained sprinter can reach 0.15 seconds.
In other words, as long as Hoshiharu makes an unavoidable attack within 0.1 seconds, he might be able to kill anyone with one strike. In fact, <> was created based on this principle.
However, the concept of speed doesn't stand alone. It is always linked to distance. Any behavior that talks about speed without distance is hooliganism.
For example, if the distance between the enemy and Hoshiharu is more than a thousand meters, even if he increases his speed to the speed of sound, it would take at least two or three seconds to hit the enemy, by then, the enemy would have reacted long ago.
Usually, Hoshiharu would use his intuition to judge the best distance to use <>. For instance, in his battle with Kurono, he activated <> at a distance of less than five meters, exceeding the neurological reaction speed in one move.
Therefore, some people would surely say, can't his speed be continuously increased to five times, ten times the speed of sound, or even directly to the speed of light?
That way, no enemy could escape his attack, wouldn't Hoshiharu become truly invincible?
To this, he could only say—
It works, but not entirely.
<> definitely is faster than "the other". This "other" is an independent concept and must be something that truly exists around it.
Fortunately, the object set isn't limited to people; it can also be sound, light, etc.
Driven by curiosity, Hoshiharu once tried to set "light" as the transcendent object.
But at that time, his intuition gave him an unprecedented warning of death, causing him to subconsciously cancel the experiment, and he never tried again.
Facts proved that Hoshiharu's <> could indeed be activated with light as the target.
But if he wants to gain the corresponding speed, he must bear the consequences.
If nothing goes wrong, once his speed is faster than light, he would instantly vaporize into plasma, leaving not a drop of blood or a single cell.