"I'll kill you!"
The shout came from one of the traitors, a man wielding a round, medium-sized shield who lunged forward to intercept my path. He moved with the confidence of someone who thought his bulk could anchor me.
"Humph, in your dreams," I spat.
The moment his feet left the ground for the tackle, I mirrored his movement, jumping with a precision that made his attempt look amateurish. I twisted in mid-air, evading his collision path entirely. As I landed behind him, I pivoted and drove my sword into his waist with a sickening crunch of metal and bone.
"Ahh!"
He screamed as the blade bit deep. I didn't give him a chance to recover. My second sword flashed out, striking him square in the chest. Like everyone in this elite cell, he was wearing a heavy chestplate, but my forty points of Strength didn't care about Tier-One armour.
The steel cracked like ice, and the force of the blow sent his body sailing through the air. He hit the ground with a loud thud tens of meters away, his chest caved in.
"You are next," I muttered, my eyes locking onto the two remaining shield bearers.
Tactically, they were my primary targets. In a group fight, shield bearers are the anchors; they can pin a high-mobility target in a limited area, creating a "kill box" for the others to exploit.
Thud!Thud!
The two didn't stand a ghost of a chance. I moved through them like a reaper. It was now clear that the traitor I had killed first—the one who had anchored the Ball of Protection—was their peak defender. These remaining guards were pale imitations of his resilience.
"Form lines!" the leader barked from the rear, sensing the immediate collapse of his front guard.
"Damn! Magicians and archers!" I hissed.
I spotted a group of fifteen specialised units at the rear of their formation. They held various-shaped staffs and recurve bows, already beginning to chant or draw their strings. In a wide-open park, a concentrated volley of magic and arrows was the biggest annoyance I could face.
But that wasn't the only problem. As I prepared to charge the backline, the traitors at the front—nearly thirty of them—synchronised their movements. They drew secondary shields and began a bloodthirsty advance, closing the gap to prevent me from manoeuvring.
"Hit him!" the leader shouted from his safe position among the ranged units. "Kill him! If you can't kill him, limit his movements! Pin him down!"
"Tsk, this doesn't look good," I assessed the situation.
In a heartbeat, thousands of records from my past life—memories of legendary battles and desperate last stands—emerged in my mind. I knew exactly what happened to warriors who got surrounded by a shield-wall while under fire from mages.
"There is no other way," I decided. I stored Angelica's sword back into my inventory to free up my off-hand, then jumped to the side just as the first volley of spells arrived.
Boom!Boom!
Violent elemental attacks slammed into the spot where I had been standing a microsecond before. A massive cloud of dust and pulverised sod rose into the air. Through the haze, thirty armoured traitors marched forward, their shields locked, looking like an unstoppable wall of iron.
"Whoosh!"
"Do you think you are the only ones with shields here?" I growled. I pulled a heavy shield from my own inventory, bracing it against my shoulder.
Boom!Boom!
The impact of the incoming arrows and spells felt like being thrown into the centre of a sea of fire. Even with my Strength, the sheer kinetic pressure of the combined volley forced me to retreat, my boots carving deep furrows in the grass.
I knew my shield wasn't enough to sustain me here. I wasn't a tank, and I wasn't planning on winning this by playing defence. I had only bought the shield to survive the opening salvo—precious seconds to facilitate my final evolution in this quest: the speed stat.
"Convert all the coins I have into stat points!" I roared internally.
I didn't hesitate to burn my remaining fortune. Adding my new points to the ones I already had in reserve, I had more than enough to push my Speed attribute to the absolute limit allowed by the System for this stage.
[Notification: Forty thousand coins are converted into twenty stat points to allocate.]
"Add them all to the Speed stat! Do it now!"
I didn't even have time to navigate the menu manually. I had to frantically jump away as lances and swords aimed for my neck, the traitors drawing closer with every staggering step I took.
"Keep hitting him! Close up! Don't let him escape!" the leader kept shouting. He saw my retreating jumps and mistook my tactical preparation for a desperate attempt to flee.
Who said I was going to retreat? I thought, a cold smile touching my lips. After everything I've done tonight? Humph!
Suddenly, the world changed. I felt my body becoming impossibly light, as if the very air had lost its density.
[ATTENTION! You have reached the limit of the Quest Speed Stat.]
I still had a few leftover points, but I ignored them for now. I turned my head to look at the traitors. The effect was surreal. Increasing my Speed stat to the cap hadn't just made me faster; it had altered my perception of time.
The charging traitors, the flying arrows, and the swirling spells were all suddenly moving in sluggish, agonising slow-motion, like a movie played at a fraction of its intended speed.
I could see the individual droplets of sweat on their faces. I could see the vibration of the bowstrings. To them, I was about to become a blur. To me, they were already dead.
"Humph, stay here, bastards," I muttered, though to their ears, my voice probably sounded like a thunderclap echoing from nowhere.
I didn't waste another breath on the front line. I ignited my movement, surging toward the distant cluster of archers and magicians. I didn't just run around the melee fighters; I ran through them.
Anyone standing in my immediate trajectory was hit with the force of a high-speed projectile. I felt the impact as I shoulder-checked five traitors, sending them flying high into the air like discarded dolls before they slammed fiercely into the ground, dead before they even realised they'd been struck.
"S…t…o…p… H…i…m…"
The leader's voice reached my ears in a distorted, stuttered drawl. To my accelerated perception, he sounded like a malfunctioning recording.
I could now see the sparks of magical skills being fired at me—bolts of fire and arcane energy that moved through the air as slowly as fluttering birds made of flame. I simply stepped between the gaps of the spells, weaving through the "deadly" projectiles as if I were walking through a gentle rain.
"Die!"
I reached the magicians' position in a heartbeat. I stored away my heavy shield, the metal clattering as it hit my inventory, and drew my twin swords once more. Wielding both blades, I began to weave the deadliest dance this park had ever seen.
"I won't let you kill them all!"
Just as I prepared to decapitate the first mage, the world seemed to "snap" back into focus. It felt like my high-speed effect had reached a momentary cooldown or a sensory plateau.
The leader of the traitors, remarkably fast for a melee build, moved in with his sword and shield raised. He was trying to anchor me, desperate to buy even a few seconds for his remaining archers and magicians to reposition.
"F*ck off!"
Before his shield could even settle into a blocking position, I surged again. I experienced a brief, jarring "lag" in the movement of everyone around me—a momentary freeze in time as I blinked behind his back.
I pivoted on my heel and struck him with the full weight of my forty Strength points, sending him tumbling through the air. The sensation of the world freezing and then shattering back into motion was disorienting, but I didn't stop.
"Boss!" "I'll kill you, bastard!" "Run! Run and hit him with skills!"
The melee traitors I had bypassed were finally catching up, their boots thundering against the dirt as they shouted in a panicked frenzy. Behind them, the archers and magicians were scattering like a flock of startled crows, trying to gain distance.
"Who said you can escape here?"
I didn't hesitate. I kicked off the ground and engaged my speed again. Anyone I targeted was sent flying without any resistance. These were specialised glass cannons—people who had prioritised Intelligence and Mana over physical resilience. The archers likely had a higher Speed stat than the average survivor, but compared to my capped stat, they were standing still.
Thud!Thud!Thud!
The battle changed drastically into a scene of absolute chaos. I was a wolf in a pen of panicked sheep, running down the terrified ranged units while the heavy melee traitors chased my shadow from behind.
They had high Strength and Defence, but their Speed was pathetic; they couldn't even get close enough to swing their lances before I was already harvesting their teammates.
"Gather here!"
One of the melee traitors, showing more tactical sense than his fallen leader, shouted a command. He realised they were being picked apart individually. He wanted to gather the remaining magicians and archers in a tight cluster, forming a defensive layer of shields and spears between me and the "glass" units.
It was a solid idea, honestly. A turtle formation was the only way to counter a speed-based predator.
"This won't stop me," I said, coming to a halt and standing in front of the enraged wall of traitors. They held swords, shields, and lances in a jagged line, shielding a small group of six terrified archers and mages behind them.
"You won't touch any of us anymore," one of the shield-bearers spat, his eyes burning with rage. "Surround the magicians and archers with a group of ten! Others, follow me and—"
"Don't tell me you forgot about me here?"
A cold, melodic voice cut through the tension. It was a voice that hadn't spoken for the past hour, a presence I had almost forgotten in the heat of the slaughter.
"Angelica!!! You damn traitor…"
"Just die!"
Angelica suddenly appeared from the shadows behind the traitor formation. She had cancelled her Ball of Protection, choosing this exact moment of their distraction to strike. She moved with a sword in hand, her eyes cold as she began carving through the unprotected magicians and archers at the back.
"Good timing," I said, an evil grin spreading across my face.
The traitors' perfect "turtle" formation was now a death trap. With her attacking from the rear, I had nothing to worry about from the ranged units anymore. All that was left were the melee fighters in front of me—men with no ability to pose a threat to my capped Speed.
"Thud!" "Thud!" "Thud!"
My two swords acted like grim reapers, carving a path through the remaining traitors with effortless cruelty.
To my accelerated perception, their every attempt at a counter-attack was agonizingly slow; I could see the muscles in their forearms tensing, the shift of their weight, and the terror in their eyes long before their blades even began to move.
They couldn't even react in time to the sheer velocity of my strikes. Every contact resulted in a body sent spiralling into the air, dead before it hit the grass.
"Gather around!" the man who had been desperately trying to patch their lines shouted once more. "Come together! Form a tight circle! Shields up!"
Thud!Thud!Thud!
They scrambled toward a nearby patch of elevated ground, interlocking their shields to form a massive, jagged ball of metal. It was a pathetic sight—the last-ditch effort of a cornered animal. With Angelica's sudden intervention from the rear, we had already liquidated more than half of their original numbers before they could manage this final regrouping.
"I never thought I'd survive this," a voice said softly from beside me.
I didn't turn my head as Angelica walked slowly through the field of corpses to stand by my side. She was covered in the blood of the magicians she had just executed, but her breathing was remarkably steady.
"And I thought you lost your sword and brought it for you," I said, motioning toward the blade she was currently wielding. I had been carrying her original weapon in my inventory, but it seemed she hadn't been as defenceless as I'd assumed.
She let out a dry, short chuckle. "I have three other swords. You can keep that one if you want."
"Cool," I replied, my gaze returning to the "iron ball" of traitors. "But that won't pay back even a hairbreadth of what you owe me for this night's work."
She didn't answer. I could feel her silence—a heavy, contemplative weight. I knew she was calculating the cost of the answers I was about to demand. She had been part of this traitor cell, a high-ranking member by the looks of it, and I had a thousand questions that needed burning through.
"I'll smash them in one go," I said, my grip tightening on my hilts. "Is there anyone worthy of keeping alive?"
"They are all trash," she said, her voice dropping to a glacial temperature. "But leave one for me. The one who kept shouting and acting as their leader."
I gave a curt nod. I knew exactly which one he was.
The next moment, I ignited my movement. I didn't dance or weave this time; I ran straight at their shield-wall, channelling almost every ounce of my forty-point Strength into a single, devastating overhead strike.
"Brace yourselves! We'll survive this together!" the leader inside the circle screamed, trying to bolster the crumbling morale of his men.
He was mistaken. He had spent the last hour watching me, yet he still fundamentally underestimated the sheer physical pressure of a capped Strength stat.
Just one hit.
That was all it took. The impact of my sword hitting the overlapping shields sounded like a thunderclap. The "iron ball" didn't just break; it detonated. The shields they had raised to defend themselves were thrown into the air like scrap metal, and before the traitors could even process that their defence was gone, my second sword flashed in a horizontal arc.
In that single sequence of violence, I deprived them of their protection and slaughtered over half of the survivors. The remaining few shook with a visceral, paralysing fear.
They tried to turn and retreat into the darkness of the trees, but my blades were faster. I claimed their heads one by one, moving through them until only a single man remained—the leader.
"He is yours," I said, stepping back and letting my blades hang at my sides.
I stayed rooted to my spot, watching as Angelica moved toward the trembling traitor with slow, deliberate steps. Her gait was strong, radiating a cold, focused intent.
"Damn you, Angelica! This isn't over!" the man shrieked, collapsing backwards as he tried to crawl away. "They'll come and hunt you till you are dead! You can't survive them! You can't survive us!"
"Stop talking bullsh*t," Angelica replied. Her tone was devoid of emotion.
Her sword moved in a clean, silver blur. The traitor's head was severed instantly, rolling away across the blood-stained grass until it came to a stop in a patch of wildflowers.
I stood there in the aftermath, surveying the brutal remains of the fifty-man cell. It was a massacre that would have been impossible for anyone else at this stage of the apocalypse. Angelica turned to face me in the silence. Slowly, almost tentatively, she reached up and unlatched her helmet, pulling it away.
What a goddess you are! I was fascinated, struck by a rare moment of genuine awe. Her hair was a cascading waterfall of fire—long, smooth, and curling slightly at the ends.
It was a red so vibrant it looked like a sun shining on the grey, dying earth. Her eyes were equally striking—a unique, bright red that looked both strange and captivating. Her skin was flawless, possessing the translucent clarity of pure jade.
"Now I'm all yours," she said softly.
She walked toward me, stopping just a few inches from my face. I could smell the ozone of the mana and the faint scent of her perfume through the metallic tang of blood.
"Anything you want, I'll comply," she added, her eyes locking onto mine with an intensity that made my heart hammer against my ribs. "From this moment onward, I'm all yours."
Holy sht!!!*