(Risa POV)
"To the west." I muttered to myself, as I stepped out of the triple-barrier. "They're guarding the path to Blummund." I'd marked the bastard who'd killed Shion, so that I could track him everywhere he went, so long as he was on this side of the planet, at least.
Pushing bat wings out of my back, I flew over the street, directly towards the signal. He'd had enough time. Now it was time to hunt these bastards who attacked Tempest. Then, I'd go check in on Izzy and Sol at the Initiative Stronghold.
As I flew, I quickly laid eyes on their camp. They were still setting up tents around some sort of large crystal-structure. It was probably powering one of the barriers around Tempest.
I didn't care. Big Bro was the one who thought things like this through. I couldn't calculate exact odds and scenarios the way that he did, protecting everyone with such ease, so I bulldozed through with my Curiosity, doing everything that I could to add to Big Bro's repertoire and make his job just a bit easier.
That was just what I did.
"It's one of those monsters!"
"Shoot it down!" Immediately, bolts of magic came zipping at me from robed figures below. There were maybe around twenty mages and 30 useless knights, commanded by the bastard who'd killed Shion and the old guy beside him. I watched in silence as they chucked basic elemental magic at me. The old man watched impassively as well.
Out of the barrage, only about thirty percent actually hit my body, not that they did any damage. With how weak they were, I was able to instantly break the magic down the moment that it touched me, no matter how many there were.
"Stop. You're wasting your time." Finally, after they'd fired at me for about a minute, the old man commanded his troops to stop.
As soon as it did, I tucked my wings in, falling to the ground as I let gravity take over.
Despite slamming into the ground at nearly eighty miles per hour, the only effect my landing had on anything was a slight fluttering of my clothes. No crater, no dirt cloud, nothing, thanks to Champion's Dominion subtly bending the physical laws around my landing.
"This monster cannot be defeated with such little tricks. Folgen, ready your sword!" The mage declared. The bastard beside him raised his sword, pointing it at me with a shaking hand, as a hazy aura sprang out from his body.
"The Berserker skill. Interesting." I wasn't entirely certain that it was the same exact skill. The otherworlder's version had been specifically created for use in hand-to-hand combat, and I hadn't really seen it in action, but I'd gotten a good analysis of the skill, and it seemed too closely linked to be a simple coincidence. Either this guy had some ability to copy skills somehow, or his skill was linked to Berserker in some way.
Didn't really matter, though. Even if he had a thousand Unique Skills, something inside of me, beyond my Analysis skill, was telling me that he didn't have anything capable of beating either of my own skills, much less both of them powered with 500,000 EP.
The old guy was the same way. He had a lot of magicules. In fact, by now, I could safely call him a majin, a human who'd evolved the 'wrong' way, somehow gaining the same magical composition as monsters did.
He also had a densely packed bit of magicules inside of him. Some sort of high-powered spell, probably.
I didn't care, though.
"You have a high-quality analysis skill. Impressive, for a monster. I suppose you know why I'm about to do this, then." The mage began casting a spell. It took him but a moment. As soon as I saw through it, I chose to let his spell take effect.
Immediately, streams of fire erupted from the mage's outstretched fist. They passed right by me, each and every one hitting a Farmus soldier. In an instant, twenty-five Farmus soldiers were dead, the rest running scared.
"Only the worst garbage out there kill their own allies." I commented, unperturbed. I was going to slaughter everyone here anyway. "Really, I should have expected that."
"Quiet, monster! Die!" Folgen charged at me, sword raised.
In response, I raised my hand.
CLANG!
Folgen's sword bounced off of my skin. "Resist Poison… no, stronger than that, Resist Ailment. And your sword didn't break, either, so that's at least two Unique Skills." I analyzed aloud. Berserker raised physical strength, but it didn't do anything for his weapon, which wasn't even Unique Grade, and there was no chance that his aura was strong enough to compensate for that on his own.
Resist Ailment wasn't something that a weak-willed bastard like this guy could get by himself, either, which meant that it was probably a sub-skill of some other unique skill.
Actually, as I thought about it, I realized that even I had problems holding that many skills, before I merged with Izzy and evolved a few times.
But if they were simply data inside another skill, then the entire equation changed.
I smiled. Folgen jumped back on instinct, as a dozen nearly-invisible strings cut through the air where he'd been an instant ago. "They're weak." I said, "Weaker than the original skills, at least. You tried to compensate with Berserker's Soul-Collection, but it's not enough."
The old man and the bastard both flinched at my words.
Folgen gritted his teeth as he tried to control his bowel movements. Even with me suppressing my aura completely, thanks to Champion's Dominion, anyone who could perceive the miniscule traces of aura that I leaked was subjected to an amount of Lord's Ambition more-or-less relative to the bloodlust that I felt toward them.
And I was angry.
Folgen had always been confident in his powers. He'd been summoned by a young Razen with the unique skill Spearhead. That alone made him the most powerful otherworlder Razen had ever summoned.
And after that, Farmus and Razen had continued summoning otherworlders on a yearly basis. For twenty years. 17 of those summoned otherworlders, for some reason or other, had died before now. Folgen had killed ten of them himself, or at least watched them die. That meant that, alongside his original skill, he had access to ten extra Unique Skills, not including Berserker.
Most of them, like the Unique Skill: Painter, were entirely useless to Folgen, but others were incredibly helpful in battle.
The unique skill: Poison Master had nullified Risa's neurotoxin just now. The unique skill: Handheld made everything he held in his hands tougher and easier to control, which saved his sword from being destroyed when he'd tried to slash Risa.
But no matter which skill he used, his soul, for an otherworlder, was weak. Against my Curiosity, he was probably screwed. But against my Champion's Dominion, he was entirely useless.