The silence that ensued after my threat turned our battle into a contest of stares. A contest that stretched out for a while, only giving me more time to prepare for hijacking the local mana system of this place and the world in general.
"You are bluffing," the man spoke, the expression on his face turning ugly.
"Maybe I am, maybe I'm not," I replied while shrugging my shoulders.
To call my threat a bluff... Wouldn't be true. At the same time, though, it wouldn't be all that far detached from the truth.
After all, what I've described was the borderline scenario that was extremely unlikely to happen. But, no matter my magic expertise, the moment I forcefully attempted to adapt my skills to the magic of this world, the chance of something going awry was always there.
"What does even make you believe I'm loyal to those fuckers to lay down my life for them?" the man then countered, still keeping the ugly expression on his face, as he, once again, glanced up the ancient road.
I leaned my head over to my side while putting a mildly surprised look on my face.
"How about the fact that you are not only allowing me to stall for time but also doing it yourself?"
I wasn't blind or stupid enough not to notice it. And up to this point, I was perfectly fine with it, since constructing a relatively fault-proof spell took time even with all my expertise. But as my build neared its conclusion...
As my build neared its conclusion, I had to account for how there had to be a reason why this man was trying to buy time himself.
'Is it reinforcements?' I thought, only for a quick look into the road to disprove this theory.
Unless someone was crazy enough to get anywhere near this place from outside of the road while pretty much all the monsters in the vicinity have now gathered here... Then, no one was coming to help this man.
'Maybe he's trying to buy them time to escape?' I thought, taking another look, only to disprove this theory too.
Sure, they were moving at a steady pace and without a single stop, but they were way too slow to escape. As I could see deep into the road, there was still more than enough of a distance between the other group of cowardly adventurers and the nearest city for me to catch them before they could find a safe refuge from my wrath.
In the end, I failed to figure it out. And judging by the man's silence, he wasn't going to reveal his cards either.
"Well then, since you clearly have no plans to cut your head off as requested, shall we begin?" I asked, readying myself to use just a tiny bit of extremely condensed mana to puncture through not the barrier... but the very structure the barrier over this road was anchored to.
"Before we do that, can you tell me just one thing?" The man asked, lowering his hands from his chest and turning to stand in a fighting stance.
"And what could that question be?" Feeling fancy, I asked.
"If you are strong enough to go toe to toe with me, why didn't you protect the caravan yourself?"
I took in a deep breath.
"Because as you are about to witness, I'm not the same poor guy that the bandits killed back in that caravan."
"Wha..."
Before the man could even react, I pushed a condensed needle of mana out and thrust it directly not into the barrier, but into the stones of the road.
In an instant, like water from a punctured balloon, the mana infused into the road came rushing, only for me to interject it and then inject it into the spell structure I'd prepared in advance.
'Gate of Hero, open!'
The mana rushed forth... and filled the circuits of my spells, coalescing into an illusory form of the very body I sported during all of my ten lifetimes.
The world around me changed.
No, that's the wrong way to put it.
My perception of the world around me has changed. It no longer consisted of the road, the glittering lights of the barrier above, and the opponent ahead. It has now turned into an extremely, almost infinitely complex picture of different flows of mana.
Yet, despite how much more complicated and counterintuitive this sight was when compared to what human eyes were actually supposed to see, I finally felt as if my true self had returned.
"...t..." the man finally managed to finish his word, while his voice funnily stretched out in time while turning much lower than it should be.
'Now then...'
"Fifth layer, disperse."
Following my order, the illusion of my old body suddenly withered, as if someone removed all the details from it.
"Fourth layer, disperse."
The aura lost the shape of my old body, now turning into just a see-through illusion that appeared to be attached to every inch of my skin.
And then, finally...
"Third layer, disperse."
It wasn't my goal to just kill this man. If it was, I would simply reach out and squeeze the mana around his head, popping it like a watermelon someone dropped a heavy rock at.
No, this was too great of an opportunity for me to just remove it.
"Stand!" I called out while assuming a battle position myself.
The very next moment, the man jumped forth, once again proving that his extremely muscular and outright massive build didn't do his speed justice. In what would be a flash to any independent observer, though... turned into a crawl for me, with the changing flows of mana announcing the man's intentions long before he could turn them into actions.
Still, the man jumped forth, ready to swing his arm right at the bottom of my jaw. And for a while, I allowed his swing to go uncontested... Before leisurely raising my arm and gently tapping at the man's arm to slightly alter the path of his attack.
Whoosh!
The man's massive fist flew only about an inch away from my chin, followed by a gust of wind that then caressed my face. And in the back of my head, the annoying ringing took place again.
[Talent: A collection of basic weapon arts[5]: Novice(21)>Novice(32)]
My opponent didn't allow this failed attack to discourage him, quickly swinging at his hips in the other direction as he attempted to hook my ear with his left arm instead.
This time, however, I tried to be fancy. And rather than going for a simple yet effective dodge... I've raised my right hand to my ear just in time to block the strike.
Pac!
The very moment the attack connected, I allowed my upper body to swing around, executing a straightforward punch into the man's ribs with my left hand.
[Talent: A collection of specialized weapon arts[3]: Amateur (66)>Amateur(77)]
'So it works,' I thought, hardly feeling even the faintest hint of pain now that I had an aura of condensed mana flowing all around my body to cushion all the attacks that would otherwise reach my skin.
This was the reason why I dropped three out of a total of five layers of my Hero's Gate, the spell that allowed me to temporarily awaken all five of the heroic aspects that I've developed in my past lifetimes. A spell so damn complicated I could hardly use it in the middle of the fight...
Unless my opponent freely allowed me to do so.
Still, with all five layers giving me the might of all five heroic aspects, I would gain might on par with what I could wield at the peak of my strength during the anti-demonic crusade. Or, to speak plainly, it would give me enough power to cleave the man in half just by swatting him away.
Hero's Gate was by no means a practical spell. But in this particular scenario, it allowed me to power up just enough to outmatch my opponent.
And now that he became nothing more but a desperate ant in my eyes, what better opportunity would I get to easily raise my talents up a fair bit?