Chapter 20: This Blockhead Right Here Is Pretty Strong, You Know
Steven really wanted to refuse that good-guy card.
He wasn't exactly a pitch-black villain, sure, but being a "good person" wasn't exactly easy these days either. You could end up with a gun pointed at your head at any moment. Compared to that, being a carefree troublemaker was far more comfortable.
Still, the feeling of being trusted by someone was something Steven rarely experienced.
So after a brief silence, he smiled once more.
This time, though, there was no teasing in his expression. Instead, there was a faint trace of warmth.
"Just for that trust of yours, little inquisitor," Steven said lightly, "I'll grant your wish and be a good guy for once."
He stopped running.
Steven turned around—calmly, openly—to face the horrifying swarm of monsters charging toward him like a plague of locusts.
If you were going to live as a fun-seeker, then you might as well do whatever made you happy. Irene's words had genuinely made Steven feel good, so lending her a hand wasn't a big deal.
He had originally planned to see just how far this so-called inquisitor could go, and how people in this world wielded power. Now, it seemed that would have to wait until later—he could always ask her afterward.
Steven planted the Netherite sword into the ground, rested both hands on the hilt, and stood there leisurely, as if preparing to block the entire monster horde by himself.
Irene, who had been retreating, froze in place.
She stared at Steven's back—neither tall nor imposing when contrasted against the sea of monsters—and found her mind going completely blank.
She truly, genuinely did not understand what this man was thinking anymore.
She had clearly told him to leave first, yet here he was, voluntarily staying behind to cover their retreat.
"Are you insane?!" Irene shouted. "These things may only be trying to stall you, but if you just stand there like this, they'll bury you!"
She couldn't sense even the slightest fluctuation of Originium Arts from him. If she hadn't personally witnessed that lightning-fast sword strike earlier, she might have assumed Steven was simply throwing his life away.
Without relying on Originium Arts, even her teacher—a High Inquisitor—would never dare claim he could face this many Sea Terrors alone.
Ants could kill an elephant. That was common sense.
"I'm not standing around doing nothing," Steven replied calmly, waving a hand back at her. "I said I'd be a good guy and help you out. I'm not lying about that."
"If you really trust me," he continued casually, "then just stand behind me. Be good, and watch."
His confidence was absolute—so casual that it felt like the monsters before him weren't terrifying abominations at all, but nothing more than a swarm of insignificant insects.
"I'm tired of running anyway," Steven added, rolling his shoulders. "This spot's wide enough. Perfect place to send these guys on their way."
He glanced at the monsters, which had already closed the distance in mere moments, and bared his teeth in a faintly cruel grin.
"Even if you can do it," Irene insisted urgently, "once they stall you, there's no guarantee something worse won't be drawn out! Even if you don't care about yourself, shouldn't you at least think about your companion?!"
There was still a hint of doubt in Irene's eyes. If her intuition hadn't been screaming at her that this man wasn't exaggerating, she would have already grabbed Gladiia and left without hesitation.
"No, no—have you ever considered that this is exactly what I want?" Steven said casually. "My goal from the very beginning was to meet those so-called 'big ones' hiding behind the scenes."
He turned back and gently patted Gladiia's head. The girl had stopped as well when he did. Honestly, only this amnesiac little dummy would trust him unconditionally no matter what he decided to do.
"And besides," Steven added with a grin, "I don't think I ever told you, but I'm actually… pretty strong."
As he spoke, Steven slowly raised his right arm.
Fighting hordes of mobs was nothing special to him.
He'd survived Mobs Sieges stacked with Zombie Awareness before. Compared to that, this bunch of ugly creatures—whose only notable trait was being ugly—really didn't amount to much.
Irene was still trying to make sense of what he was saying when what happened next completely shattered her worldview.
A flash of light appeared in Steven's raised hand.
Irene instinctively thought he was about to activate some form of Originium Arts—but instead, a dull gray stone block, roughly one meter on each side, suddenly appeared out of thin air in his grasp.
Just… a stone block.
No matter how you looked at it, it wasn't fundamentally different from the stones on the roadside, or even the ones beneath her feet.
The only notable features were that it was far too square and far too large.
Steven held the perfectly cubic stone aloft with one hand. Just as Irene was wondering what on earth he planned to do with it—
He threw it.
Like pitching a ball.
BOOM—!
A deafening sonic boom tore through the air, like a meteor ripping across the sky. Irene couldn't even begin to imagine how a stone that large could be thrown at such speed by human hands.
By the time she processed what had happened, a vast open space had already been carved out in front of Steven.
Every Sea Terror along the stone's path had been pulverized into fragments. At the point where the block finally landed, a massive crater—more than ten meters wide—had been blasted into the ground, as if struck by a falling star.
The extreme heat generated by its high-speed flight scorched a blackened trail through the air, and the crater itself looked utterly burned—reduced to a patch of charred, lifeless earth.
What kind of monstrous strength did it take to produce an effect like this?
What left Irene completely speechless was that Steven, after doing all this, still wore that same relaxed, almost bored expression.
Then—somehow—he produced another identical stone block out of nowhere.
In her entire life, Irene had never imagined that someone could cause such a terrifying, awe-inspiring result simply by throwing rocks.
Words failed her. Shock and confusion clogged her throat.
Like she was dreaming, Irene rubbed her eyes—only to watch Steven transform into a human siege engine, hurling stone blocks into the sea of monsters at a rate of one per second.
Only Steven himself knew the truth.
If he could still use all those ridiculous mods, he wouldn't be reduced to throwing rocks like some backwater caveman.
Sure, strength solves everything was a universally valid principle, but even so, this method had zero elegance and absolutely no visual flair.
Seriously. A grown man, fighting by throwing rocks?
Embarrassing.
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Note: Character Illustration is in this Google Drive:
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1iuyfwNVFHzIi9H4rWNT_lAm7jTSiah_M