Red lightning appeared on Akeru's body as his purple cloak started becoming red.
His speed increased to ten-fold of his current speed.
This spell was recently created by Akeru.
It basically enhances his nerves to increase his speed.
However, it comes at the cost of damaging his body and specifically nerves.
The red color of lightning is not due to cinematic effect or something else, but due to his blood going in it and vaporizing.
'It fucking hurts,' Akeru said while running away from the devil.
He bolted in a different direction than Kirsch due to not wanting the devil to go after him.
"Your flames don't even burn, they are shitty just like your face," Akeru taunted while running away.
The devil, though being intelligent, saw through his simple strategy at a glance.
However, he still did what Akeru wanted due to one simple thing - Pride.
"I will fucking kill you slowly, that guy who ran away and all those who you hold dear," the devil threatened while spewing out multiple green blitz of small condensed fire at him.
'Let's try this.' Despite so much pain, Akeru could still have some sort of cognitive process going due to foreseeing most of this before.
His Mana Zone - Viscous Hush started to not uniformly slow down all objects, but rather do it in selective small areas in multiple regions of his whole domain.
As Akeru expected, the devil couldn't disable all of those areas and thus not all of them reached him.
However, one green beam of fire did penetrate his gut and one through one of his legs.
Akeru crashed down on the ground.
Due to his previous momentum, he skidded on the ground for a few seconds and travelled nearly a kilometre like that.
'Fuck, It hurts, I can't feel my limbs at all, I calculated that I should be able to last it for nearly a minute, but those two shots killed my focus. I messed up.'
Due to the complexity of the technique, one second of lost focus was enough to damage his body by a considerable amount.
The devil appeared near his body in the next instant.
"I was going to torture everybody you hold dear in front of you, though I could feel your life-span deteriorating, it should be enough to at least torture those Vermillion-haired brats in front of you,"
He said while chuckling and looking Akeru in the eye.
Akeru didn't change his facial expressions as he didn't want to give the devil the satisfaction of seeing him broken.
'I am sorry Mimosa, because of me you have to face this, if only I had killed those two immediately, then again, it's not like I could have predicted that they are summoning something and a freaking middle-class devil of all things.' Akeru didn't berate himself.
Though he was on his last leg, he didn't lose hope and continuously thought of various strategies and tried to find blue lines on the devil.
'If I am going out, then I will go with style.' Akeru activated his focus spell and the world slowed for him.
The green-eyed devil didn't like the look in human's eyes.
Suddenly, from his view, the facial expression of the lowly human changed.
Akeru had deactivated his spell.
He was looking at the devil with a shit-eating grin.
"Y-" The devil suddenly froze.
"We can't have you torturing kids here now? Though I am curious how much is your ability to resist torture," the devil heard from behind.
---
"Why were we called here anyway?" Yami asked while taking a drag from his cigarette.
"Kekeke, How about I cut you?" Jack said while making blades.
"Yeah? How about we see that?" Yami said while lifting up his katana.
"Calm down you two. Though I don't know the exact reason, it's probably related to the diamond kingdom, they are becoming more restless day by day, and I believe that they are going to send some of their forces soon," Fuegoleon calmed them down.
"How disgraceful," Nozel shook his head.
"Pathetic Men," Charlotte said with disdain. 'Why am I sitting again beside Yami!?'
"Is that so?" Yami put his katana down.
He really hated waiting, especially with this bunch of people.
"Also, why are you sleeping?!" He shouted and looked at Coral Peacock's captain.
However, she was unresponsive to that.
"Yami-san, you should calm down," Rill was sitting beside Yami.
Yami looked at Rill. "Your age reminds me of another monster kid I encountered 2 years back."
"Oh, Who?" Rill asked curiously.
He had a hard time making friends due to his status, and those people who can match his status - mostly present in this room only, are too old for him.
Yami's face suddenly went blank.
"I never asked his name."
"..."
"..."
"..."
"..."
Everyone who heard their conversation was speechless.
"Oh, are you talking about Akeru? He did mention to me that he met you around 2 years ago," Fuegoleon remembered Akeru mentioning this fact when he first met him.
"The kid with average looks and mostly used mana-only applications along with basic applications of water? He should have gotten his grimoire by now right?" Yami suddenly asked for confirmation.
'Have you looked at your face in the mirror?' People wanted to say that, but they didn't.
Nozel's attention was also piqued. He did hear that his siblings were humiliated by the kid, but he didn't bother to do anything due to being busy.
Plus, it did motivate them to train harder.
"Haha, yes him, he quite recently did get a grimoire," Fuegoleon laughed at his description.
"Right, so what was I saying again?" Yami forgot what he was going to say due to remembering the kid's appearance.
"You were saying that he is a genius," Rill continued his statement.
"Yeah, this kid refined his Ki sensing in a few minutes," Yami said.
"Oh, You did mention Ki is a combination of instinct and prediction, I didn't really expect it to be learned by anybody other than you," Rill said honestly.
"Are you trying to imply that it was all in my head and I was spouting bullshit?" Yami asked while putting his hand on Rill's head.
"I never said that! Anyway, how strong is this Akeru now, Fuegoleon-san?" Rill quickly changed the conversation while trying to hide his lie.
He was successful as Yami's attention also went to Fuegoleon.
"I am also curious, I did give the kid the goal to reach Captain level by now, so did he reach it?"
"Isn't that too ridiculous a goal?" Charlotte asked, her bafflement quite evident.
"Nah, He probably could have if he broke his limits again and again," Yami said while taking another drag of a cigarette.
Nobody bothered to argue with him and looked at Fuegoleon instead.
"Well, I did spar with him seriously one year ago, at that time his strength was around third-class Senior Magic Knight, though now I would estimate that he is between the Grand Magic Knight realm and first-class. Though there is still quite a gap between him and a captain, he could easily defeat an average Vice-Captain in a few seconds," Fuegoleon honestly said his thoughts without divulging Akeru's exact magical abilities.
"..."
"..."
"..."
"..."
Everyone was shocked to the core.
"I want him in my squad," Rill suddenly said.
Everyone else wanted to say the same thing, however, Yami beat them to it.
"Hehe, Too bad, I already recruited him," Yami had a smug smile while telling this.
This shocked even Fuegoleon who was unaware of this fact.
Before somebody could voice out any complaints, Julius entered the room with Marx.
"Sorry to keep you guys waiting, but something came up," Julius said and took his seat.
They started discussing dealing with invaders of Diamond Kingdom and using this event to raise the morale of the kingdom by showing up with all magic knight captains.
Suddenly, during the meeting, loud beeps of an artefact could be heard from Dorothy's pouch.
Even while asleep, she brought out the communication device and answered it.
"A Mid-ranking Devil is broken free at my location, Myself Kirsch Vermillion and one more Vice-Captain level individual - Akeru would stall it as long as w-" The transmission's voice was cut.
Dorothy Unsworth - Captain of the Coral Peacock's eyes opened wide.
***
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