Claire's red hair, caught in a rough grip.
[Hidden Trait: No Violence! (Endurance: 740/1000)]
A gaze directed this way through half-closed eyes.
A trembling hand, barely waving them away.
[Hidden Trait: No Violence! (Endurance: 755/1000)]
Four men surrounding Claire, spewing vile words too terrible to even utter. No—not men, but beasts.
[Hidden Trait: No Violence! (Endurance: 770/1000)]
To take in that sight and yet walk forward with heavy steps was, in and of itself, an act of endurance.
Because he felt that if he rushed in now, he wouldn't be able to endure—trait or no trait.
"Let go. I really want to kill you."
At the low voice steeped in killing intent, the Doris gang's eyes turned toward Hio.
"What's with that guy."
Startled for a moment, but only briefly—smiles spread across the four faces once they recognized him.
"Isn't that the weakling?"
"He followed along, calling himself a man."
"Is he like her real husband or something?"
While their mouths cackled in mockery, Doris's eyes quickly swept the surroundings.
Nothing.
Not a single sign of the villagers.
The bastard had really come alone.
Having confirmed this, Doris grabbed Claire's hair even more fiercely and yanked.
"Did you come looking for this bitch? But what to do? She says she likes us."
Doris brought his face close to Claire's and smirked.
Even though he was pulling her hair wildly like that, there was no sense of resistance.
It was because Claire's consciousness, which had been holding on to its limit due to mana depletion she was experiencing for the first time, had finally faded and she had passed out.
"Damn... Too bad. If she were awake, she would've gotten quite a show."
Noticing that Claire had fainted, Doris let go and rose from his spot.
"Well, I guess you'll have to do as our punching bag instead."
Doris didn't harbor even a shred of doubt.
The guy was just an ordinary inn employee in an ordinary country village.
A weakling idiot who couldn't say a word to their rampage and just took the beating.
That was why it was incomprehensible.
His appearance, approaching without a single word in reply.
"Hey, are you crazy? Can't you read the situation?"
Had his mind gone crazy with anger?
When he should be trembling and begging to be let go, his dead-serious expression was extremely out of place.
"Well, this wench does have a face worth going crazy for......"
Doris glanced down at the fainted Claire, convinced himself, and nodded.
A face that any man couldn't help but be entranced by.
Among the crude women in this backwater village, she must have been even more overwhelming, so he could roughly understand why the guy had lost his mind and rushed over here without thinking.
"Brat, so you're a man after all? Fine, I get it, so stop there and beg for mercy."
At Doris's words, Haman and the others, who had been cackling, chimed in from the side.
"Who knows? If you beg real nice, we might let you off?"
"Hehehe. We're pretty riled up at this bitch, so it'd be hard to let you off with just an ordinary show."
"Depending on how you do it, we could play around with her for about a week before sending her back."
Doris's gang had no way of knowing that with each and every such word, Hio's Endurance was stacking up bit by bit.
[Hidden Trait: No Violence! (Endurance: 773/1000)]
Despite words filled with all manner of mockery and threats, Hio walked on without a single change in expression.
At Hio's attitude, which seemed to ignore them without any response to their words, the four faces twisted wickedly.
"This bastard, we're being nice here..."
Paulo stepped forward as the representative, gripping his sword.
Unlike Haman and Folke, who had injured legs, Paulo had only been scorched, with no particular injuries.
"Boss, this bastard seems completely out of his mind. Shouldn't we just kill him quickly and go?"
Paulo, who had been walking out to greet Hio himself, turned his head and spoke to Doris.
"Doesn't seem like we'll get much amusement out of him."
The guy had undoubtedly lost his mind to anger.
Otherwise, there was no way he could approach so fearlessly alone.
So he had looked back at Doris to ask for permission to just kill him quickly, but......
"......Pa, Paulo......."
Doris's reaction was somehow strange.
No, not just Doris—the reactions of Haman and Folke beside him were exactly the same as Doris's.
Pupils hugely dilated, as if they had seen a ghost.
Gazes directed behind him, not at himself.
Steps slowly backing away.
"Huh? Boss?"
He could say with certainty that this was the first time even Paulo had seen such an expression on Doris.
How many years had they spent together?
How much experience did they have doing all sorts of dirty deeds as mercenaries?
Things that could surprise those hardened veterans were extremely rare.
'Huh? Come to think of it, when did it get so dark?'
The brief moment when Paulo stopped walking forward and turned around.
In that short time, less than ten seconds, the surroundings had darkened as if the sun had set.
Doris, staggering back in surprise.
The sky that had suddenly darkened.
It was only natural that Paulo turned around again.
"......!"
He too, just like Doris, could do nothing but stop in his tracks and gape.
Dark clouds swallowing the sun.
Sparks flashing between them.
Striking lightning and
BOOM—!
One person beneath it.
Seeing that person walking toward them with heavy steps, with the same expression and gait as before, Paulo found himself stepping back unconsciously.
And for good reason—around the man, sparks like the lightning flashing in the sky were blazing brilliantly, as if gone mad.
"Wh-what!"
He had never even heard of a skill like this.
A human who changes the weather and drops lightning?
Could something like that even be called human anymore?
"B-boss... what in the world is this......?"
Faced with something beyond common sense, Paulo habitually turned his head toward Doris, but.
"B-boss?"
All he saw was the back of Doris running away at full speed.
"I'm going t-too...!"
The moment Paulo hurriedly tried to turn his steps to follow behind him.
"Hey."
A low voice devoid of emotion was heard right behind him.
Feeling goosebumps break out all over his body, Paulo slowly turned his head.
"Hieek!"
Seeing Hio pushing his face right up against him from directly behind, he collapsed onto his rear.
"Th-that...... I-I'm wrong......"
Was that truly the form of a human?
Sparks constantly flared around his body, and his eyes blazed pure white, as if dyed by lightning.
In the sky visible behind him, lightning poured down like rain.
CRASH!
Startled by the thunder that rang out just then, Paulo's body shook violently.
"I want to kill you. What should I do?"
Watching Hio tilt his head as if seriously contemplating, with lightning brimming in his eyes, Paulo could only beg.
"S-spare me...... I was wr-wrong......"
Just being near him made his body tingle and tremble.
Before he knew it, sparks were spreading and crackling across his own body.
If just being nearby was like this, touching that body would surely turn him into a handful of ash, not even leaving bone dust.
"I-I'm sorry...... p-please......"
The sparks crackling across his body made it hard to even speak.
His pants were soaked—perhaps from the tingling and fear—but that wasn't important.
This bastard was not human.
He was a god of lightning.
If not that, it made no sense.
A human who changes the weather, wields lightning, and emanates it from his body.
Such a thing could not exist.
As a mercenary, he had trod countless battlefields and completed countless commissions, and seen countless Awakened.
Paulo could realize that even such people were nothing but ordinary humans compared to the monster before his eyes.
"Is that what you called begging with style?"
Along with that voice like the Grim Reaper.
BOOM—!
Lightning struck once more.
Paulo's body flinched greatly—needless to say.
"I-I'm so-sorry...... My body is ti-tingling so I ca-can't speak well...... I-I'm sorry......"
Hio brought his face right up to Paulo, who was trembling and bowing his head.
Meeting those blazing white eyes, Paulo, tears streaming from fear, planted his head into the ground.
He was crazily afraid that his body might touch that body.
Because the moment they touched, he would turn to ash alongside terrible agony.
"......Scram. That worthless life—if you want to keep living it, don't ever show your face again."
"Y-yes. Th-thank you...!"
Paulo didn't dare meet his eyes and crawled backward before staggering to his feet.
His legs gave out and he fell midway, but he gathered all his strength to rise again and ran away at full speed.
He didn't know why such a nonsensical monster was cooped up in this backwater village, but that was a true calamity.
BOOM—!
"H-hieek!"
Feeling as though that lightning would fall on him at any moment, Paulo grabbed his soaked pants and ran away madly.
* * *
Hio quietly watched Paulo's back as he fled with all his might, trembling, then muttered shortly.
"Fuck. That surprised me."
What kind of thunder was so loud?
If Paulo hadn't been bowing his head, he would have witnessed Hio flinching in surprise as well.
"Ah, shit... It's damn noisy, I tell you."
A trash skill where sparks merely flew in a fixed radius around the body.
However, when it came to effects alone, this trash skill was insane.
'This is a method that works because this isn't recognized as violence.'
He hadn't wrapped sparks around himself with the purpose of harming the guy, and this Hidden Trait was a flexible one, treating this sort of thing as non-violence.
It was similar to the logic that accidentally bumping into someone and injuring them wasn't an act of violence.
"......Well, anyway, they probably won't think of coming back."
Thanks to that, he had raised his Endurance significantly and protected Claire too.
Though, he was worried about the villagers who must have been startled by the sudden lightning strikes......
"They'll make a fuss for a while again."
A sudden abnormal phenomenon would be a great terror to simple folk.
"For now...... shall we head back?"
Hio carefully lifted the fainted Claire in his arms and moved his steps toward the village.
As if a thunderstorm had never raged, the sky had already cleared.
* * *
As expected, the villagers had gathered in one place and were buzzing, so it was easy to sneak the fainted Claire back inside.
He laid her on the bed, pulled over a chair, and sat beside her.
'Those guys, they were somewhat injured.'
He knew well the power of Claire's skill.
A skill that couldn't yet be called great, merely capable of starting fires.
But with just that, she couldn't have inflicted such injuries on them.
If so, there was only one thing to think.
'In that short moment...... did she grow?'
The time from when Claire met them until the battle couldn't have been very long.
To realize and grow on her own in such a short real battle......
'Should I look for a way to send her to the Academy?'
With this level of talent, even if her skill's ceiling was low, she could develop it to the extreme herself.
And a skill developed to its extreme would never lose even to top-tier skills.
'Claire......'
A name he had never heard in the days when he enjoyed Venteal as a game.
This place was not a game.
It was reality.
As such, there would be many people like Claire.
"The Abyss will appear soon."
Whether other rankers were preparing well.
Whether they had found a solution for the Erosion. He was curious, but this was hard to find out even through Jason.
"Well, for now, growing stronger is the priority."
Endurance, the closest goal, had finally entered the late 700s.
He was truly approaching the target value now.
'......I've endured for two years, so please let me safely reach my target.'
How futile would it be if an accident suddenly happened and he lost all of this.
As he sat there praying alone with his hands clasped.
"Mmm......."
He snapped out of his thoughts at Claire's sudden stirring.
"Don't come...... coward......."
Claire's figure, frowning as if having a nightmare, came into his eyes.
"Go...... please go away......."
When he gently brushed aside her red hair, Claire's expression became much more peaceful.
'......Praying my ass. Not like me.'
He had never believed in gods or anything like them.
What he had always believed in was only his own ability.
That was Lee Hyeonseung before he became a cripple.
And even now, he himself was a perfectly able-bodied man.
What if an accident occurred and he lost all his Endurance and skills?
So what?
If he had no Endurance, he just had to gather it again from the beginning.
If he had no skills, he just had to pick up a damn sword, didn't he?
"Coward Hio...... I have to protect you......."
Because if he simply stayed still, only the destruction of this world awaited.