Chapter 37: He Was Having Fun

The factory was full of people. Dozens of robed figures stood among the dead machinery and along the catwalks, surrounding Reinhard from every direction. Some carried swords, others daggers or spears, and several already had mana gathering around their hands.

The moment the first weapon came up, Reinhard’s grin widened. "Well, this is a lot more than I expected."

A voice rang out from somewhere in the crowd. "Kill him!"

The assassins surged forward, and Reinhard laughed. "Now we’re talking."

He vanished.

The first swordsman barely had time to realize Reinhard was gone before a hand closed around his wrist. Reinhard twisted, ripped the mana-coated sword out of his grip, and snapped it over his knee, then drove his fist into the man’s chest.

The assassin flew backward and took two of his companions down with him.

Another came from the side with a spear already driving toward Reinhard’s ribs. Reinhard leaned away and let the spearhead slide past in front of him, then stepped in and struck the man in the stomach.

The blow folded him in half, and Reinhard caught his shoulder and threw him straight into the path of the next attacker.

"Your footwork is terrible," he told the spearman as he flew past. "You’re telegraphing everything."

A third assassin shot toward him, his body glowing with reinforcement. Reinhard Air Dashed sideways in the middle of a step, and the man sailed past him into empty space.

Reinhard dropped out of the air above him and drove him face-first into the floor, and the concrete cracked beneath the impact.

Someone behind him fired a Mana Blast. It hit him squarely in the back, and an explosion swallowed him whole, and for a moment the assassins nearest to him stopped moving.

When the smoke cleared, Reinhard was still standing. His shirt was singed at the shoulder, and otherwise he looked completely unharmed. He looked over at the man who had fired it. "That’s it?"

The man’s face went white.

Reinhard was gone again. He moved through the crowd faster than most of them could follow. One assassin was punched into a support pillar, another was kicked across the factory floor, and a third went crashing into a stack of metal shipping containers. Attacks kept coming from every direction, and Reinhard kept moving through them without slowing down, striking one opponent and turning to the next the moment an opening appeared.

An assassin lunged out from behind a container, blade first, clearly certain he had timed it perfectly.

Reinhard stepped aside before the lunge even started, and the man stumbled through the space where Reinhard had been and turned around, staring at him in disbelief.

Reinhard smiled at him. "Were you trying to surprise me? That’s adorable."

He grabbed the man by the collar and threw him across the room.

Another assassin began gathering mana for a blast. Before he could release it, Reinhard had already stepped out of its path, and the Mana Blast tore through empty air.

The man froze.

He hadn’t even finished forming it.

"Too slow," Reinhard said over his shoulder.

A handful of assassins suddenly melted into the shadows around the factory. Reinhard stopped in the center of the floor and let his eyes drift toward an empty balcony. "Seven."

Every hidden assassin went still.

He looked up at the ceiling. "Three on the rafters above me." He turned toward a wall. "Two behind there."

His gaze moved to a heap of broken equipment. "One of you is pretending to be dead." He tilted his head toward a pillar near the back. "And the seventh is holding his breath so hard I can hear it."

The assassin in the equipment pile sprang up. Reinhard was already beside him, and his fist sent the man through a wooden workbench.

The rest burst out of hiding all at once, and Reinhard laughed. "You guys really aren’t very good at this."

A translucent barrier snapped into existence in front of him as one of them threw up a Mana Shield. Reinhard looked at it curiously. With his Mana Sovereignty sharpened, he could see the mana flowing through it, where it gathered and where it thinned out. He picked the thinnest spot and punched it.

The entire shield shattered.

The assassin behind it stared at the fragments. "How did he..."

Reinhard was already in front of him. "Your shield has a weak spot on the left side. You should get that looked at." One punch sent him flying.

Another assassin raised both hands and spun a complicated web of glowing mana threads across the room, meant to snare anything that passed through it.

Reinhard watched it for a few seconds, his eyes tracing the pattern. Then he raised his own hand, and mana flowed out of his fingertips into almost exactly the same web.

The assassin’s eyes bulged. "He copied it?"

Reinhard examined the threads between his fingers. "Huh. That’s useful. I’m keeping it."

"You can’t keep it!"

"Watch me."

He let the web go and charged.

The factory dissolved into chaos. A dozen attacks came at him at once, and Reinhard opened a Space Tear, and every projectile vanished into it.

A second tear opened behind the attackers, and their own attacks came roaring back at them. Most of them scattered in time. One didn’t, and his friend’s spear came out of the air beside him and sent him skidding across the floor.

"Come on," Reinhard called. "Keep going!"

An assassin hurled six daggers at him.

A tear swallowed all six, and another opened behind the thrower, and the daggers came back. The man twisted away just in time, and Reinhard stepped out of a third tear right beside him and grabbed his collar.

"Got you." He hauled the man through the distortion and threw him out the other side, directly into a group of approaching assassins, and the whole group went down like bowling pins.

Another assassin turned and ran for the exit.

A Space Tear opened directly in front of him, and he stumbled through it before he could stop. Reinhard opened another one high above the battlefield and kicked him back through it.

The assassin came flying out of the ceiling and hit the floor hard.

Reinhard laughed. "This ability is getting better and better."

The remaining assassins began to give ground. They had come believing their numbers would bury a single C-Rank. Instead, they could barely follow him, let alone put him on the defensive.

Reinhard activated Veil, and his presence disappeared from their senses. Confusion rippled through the group as heads snapped left and right.

One assassin turned toward a faint flicker of movement, and Reinhard was already beside him, driving a fist into his ribs and sending him into the wall.

Another swung wildly at empty air, and Reinhard appeared behind him and kicked him across the room. A third tried to slip away down a side passage, and a Space Tear opened directly in front of him.

"Going somewhere?"

He grabbed the man by the shoulder and tossed him back into the factory.

Then an assassin burst in from his blind side and drove a mana-coated fist straight into Reinhard’s ribs. The blow knocked him sliding several meters across the concrete.

The assassin’s eyes lit up. "I got him!"

Reinhard slowly straightened.

The force hadn’t passed through him the way it should have. Counter Strike had caught it and was holding it inside his body, coiled and waiting, while the assassin celebrated.

Reinhard gave him a sympathetic grin. "You shouldn’t have done that."

He let the stored force go. The assassin was blasted backward through a metal railing and disappeared into the wreckage below, and the others stared at the hole he had left.

Reinhard rolled his shoulder, and his face lit up. "That one actually hurt." He sounded thrilled about it.

More attacks came from every direction, and he kept moving through them. He Air Dashed between strikes, cut across the factory, and hit anyone who came close enough.

Mana Blasts exploded around him and Mana Beams tore holes in the walls, and weapons shattered against his reinforced body. Whenever something came close to catching him, Danger Intuition warned him just early enough to move, and his sharpened senses tracked every step around him.

The assassins could no longer guess where he would appear next.

Reinhard, meanwhile, was having the time of his life as he landed on top of an assassin, and drove him into the floor. "Come on! You can do better than that!"

A group of four assassins rushed him in formation, and Reinhard raised his palm and let mana compress into a single blazing point. "Husband Beam!"

A narrow beam of light tore through the air, cut a line through the concrete between their feet, and scattered the formation in every direction.

One of them stared at him from the floor. "What did he call it?"

"Husband Beam," Reinhard said. "My wife hates it."

A spear passed so close to his face that he felt the wind of it, and he twisted around it and punched its owner through a stack of crates. He laughed again. "That was close!"

Another assassin came at him from the side with a strike that was fast, clean, and perfectly timed.

Reinhard Air Dashed around it and landed behind him.

"Okay, that one was actually pretty good." The man spun around, and Reinhard’s fist was already waiting for him.

The man collapsed.

By then, the factory had gone almost completely quiet. Bodies lay scattered across the floor, and the dozens of assassins who had surrounded him were unconscious or struggling to push themselves up.

Only a few were still standing, staring at him with blank disbelief.

"He’s a monster," one of them whispered.

"He’s only C-Rank," another said, swallowing.

Reinhard sighed as he walked toward them. "Why does everyone keep saying only? It’s very hurtful." He looked at the few of them left. "You’re the last ones? Good. I’d really like to be home before breakfast. My wife gets grumpy if I’m not there when she wakes up, and honestly, she’s scary when she’s grumpy, so..."

He took another step, and then another. They were almost within reach.

SHNK.

Blood splashed across the concrete.

Reinhard stopped mid-sentence. His blue eyes widened, and his hand rose to his neck on its own. His fingers touched something warm.

Blood.

Danger Intuition hadn’t made a sound. Predator Awareness hadn’t stirred. Nothing had warned him at all.

The last few assassins stared at him, frozen.

Reinhard stood perfectly still, his fingers pressed against the side of his throat.

And—