POV - Tobias

Pleased to have found an excuse to prevent Sidney from escaping, I began heading back toward Rin.

This was an interesting detour though. I hadn’t expected someone would dare to follow us after I intimidated the villagers.

Well, not that it matters, he's extremely weak.

Interrupting my thought process, the man spoke behind me. “Tobias, I challenge you to a duel, if I win, You’ll let Sidney go.”

Stopping in my tracks, I turned back toward Sidney's not-boyfriend.

Is… is he serious?

He seems serious. Are you going to fight him?

God-hunter, that’s not the problem with this. Who challenges a kidnapper / villain to a duel? Is he mental retarded? Who would expect a villain to keep their end of the bargain if they lost?

Actually, it is a strange thought process to challenge a kidnapper to a honorable duel.

It didn’t take long to arrive at a conclusion. Assuming he wasn’t insane, there's only one reason that challenging me to a duel makes any sort of sense.

If he has an ability with abnormal activation condition, such as accepting a duel.

There are all sorts of weird and abnormal abilities that exist in this universe. Some have very unique activation conditions.

They can be useless before the condition… but, in certain circumstances, when the activation condition is completed, they become insanely powerful and dangerous.

For example, an ability could cause anyone who says the word ‘Red’ in a 50 meter radius to instantly die.

Okay, I’m exaggerating quite a bit with that example… but, the point stands. Being careful against such abilities is far more important than anything like pride.

Who knows if he’s someone with a strange ability or power? It would be utter stupidity to accepting a duel from a random person.

Anyway, I absolutely cannot agree to duel him. Not under any circumstances.

Straight up refusing would leave a bad taste in my mouth though… It would completely ruin the evil villain act that I’ve got going on. Let’s just ramp up the evil villain act and force him to back off.

Sent a cold calculative gaze over him, before speaking in a cold uncaring voice, “Let’s suppose that I’m interested. What would you bet to make the duel have equivalent stakes?

The man seemed somewhat stunned by my response, “What do you want?”

I pondered aloud… “Your freedom? No, I don’t really care about that… What could you have that could possible be worth it?”

Pretending to think about it carefully, I eventually decided my image had become dark enough and spoke in a light-hearted voice unlike my cold gaze. “How about your soul?”

This should be enough to frighten him off. His soul doesn’t have much value to me though.

The only person frightened by my proposal was Sidney, who urged him to not agree. 

Meanwhile, not-boyfriend seemed enraged by my proposition, he argued, “How is that an equivalent bet?!”

Wow, he does seems pissed off. In this case, I completely agreed with him though. It would've been a shame if he’d accepted the proposition.

“Now that I think about it, you are absolutely right. Your soul is nowhere near the value of Sidney’s freedom. I’ll think of something else.” I conceded and agreed to increase the price.

Do you find it fun to tease these weaklings?

Oh, it is very fun. Anyway, I should end this farce.

“If you want to duel bring a void flower’s petals. I’ll bet her freedom in exchange for it.” I said before walking away. Stopping after a fair distance, I added, “Or you could just trade her for the void flower’s petals for her… I don’t care.”

I thought you weren’t interested in getting a void flower anymore?

Pftt… I’m not. As Rin said, it’s a deathtrap. I’m only trying to get rid of him. Unlike Sidney, who should be ready to face Hell Difficulty when we reach the Residential Zone, he’ll never be able to get it.

If you don’t need the void flower, why are you continuing to train Sidney?

That…

I hadn’t really thought about it. I guess it has already become a habit.

Anyway, I’ve already accepted her as my disciple, regardless of whether she acknowledges it. I can’t have her embarrass me by wandering about incredibly weak.

Besides, it’s not like I have anything better to do. I can always ask her to get another object from the Hell Difficulty Zone.

Actually, she might be able to acquire the Notebook Lost in Time for me.

What’s that?

Huh? Oh, right… you were a crying baby when I encountered it. Long story short, it’s a notebook that would allow me to save information across Rin’s restarts.

That sounds useful... Is this a good time to mention that man is charging at you with a sword?

Hearing his footsteps as he rushing toward me, I continued walking while stealthily creating a barrier ward directly behind me.

God-hunter, let me know when he about to strike me. If we time this right, it will look extremely impressive.

5… 4… 3… 2… 1… Now.

Releasing the barrier, the barrier managed to appeared moments before the sword would have descended onto my body.

Hearing the dull clang sound behind me of the sword bounced off the barrier, I felt impressed with God-hunters timing.

That definitely looked cool.

Turning around slowly, I suddenly felt my clothes were lacking for the occasion. If I had black cloak or some sort of dark clothing, I could have swooshed it around and looked even more impressive.

When I get chance, I need to get someone to make some proper villain clothes for me.

The unprovoked aggressor had been trapped inside a barrier and wouldn’t be leaving until the barrier disintegrated in… around 24 hours.

“Hmph, daring to strike at me. I should kill you.” I disdainfully stated, completely lying as I didn’t actually care. If anything, it allowed me to pull of that impressive stunt and, even if the sword hit me, it wouldn’t have done any damage.

Staring at my nervous disciple in the distance, I decided to simultaneously brush up my imagine with her while providing a convenient excuse to leave him alone. “Sidney, what do you think his punishment should be? Should we kill him?”

Unlike her normal arrogant and unbending self, Sidney was far more meek and mellow pleading, “Tobias... don’t kill him.”

Mahwahaha. You’ve played right into my hand. Now when I spare him, it will seem like I’m giving you face.

Are you finished playing with your food? Can we get back to accomplishing stuff and stop torturing these weaklings?

Gah, you have no appreciation for theater and drama. This is a quality storytelling.

A dark villain kidnapped a girl. A brave hero rushes in to save her, only to be knocked down and trapped by the evil, unbeatable villain. About to be put to death, he is saved by plea of the very girl he was trying to rescue. In the process of saving him, she makes concessions that worsen her overall situation.

The chances of this happening are normally slim to none. Scenes like that simply can’t happen in normal life.

It takes effort, drama, and planning.

This opportunity would’ve been completely and utterly wasted if I didn’t play the part of a proper villain.

Sighing to myself… If I had a black coat and evil clothing, the scene would have been perfect. The tone of the scene is probably completely ruined by my normal looking clothes.

It’s a shame. I’d always wanted to do something like this… Well, I'd imagined myself as the hero standing up against that unbeatable villain.

However, playing the villain is fine too.

“Are you willing to properly become my disciple and stop running away?” I asked to finally finish up the scene.

“Yes…” Sidney replied in a quiet voice.

“Hmph… Boy, you can count yourself lucky. The barrier will disperse in a couple hours. Never show your face before me again.” I disdainful stated, gesturing for Sidney to follow after me.

And when I say a couple hours… I mean 24 hours. I’m sure he won’t notice the difference. Who would bother counting the exact number?

Oh, yes. He definitely wouldn’t notice the difference between 4 hours and 24 hours. You’ve only added a single digit to the number. (Heavy sarcasm.)

Shush. It’s part of my evil villain routine.

Ah, yes. An absolutely diabolical plan, Sir. Shall we go murder some kittens to completely establish your imagine as a villain?

How dare you be so bold as to assume I haven’t already done so! Dear madam, you insult me and my entire family by your accusation.

Sir, you have my most sincere apologies. I was unaware of your kitten murdering tendencies. I shall draft a formal apology and avoid such presumptuous behavior in the future.

I managed to barely suppress my budding laughter from our sudden and pretentious skit.

A fortuitous event as, had I laughed aloud, the image I managed to build up with Sidney probably would have been completely ruined.

On the walk back, Sidney was deathly quiet.

Finally, I couldn’t take it any longer and asked. “How was my evil villain routine? Convincing?”

Sidney looked as though she’d eaten something sour and briefly gave an affirmative response, “Very.”

Tapping her shoulder, I insisted, “Loosen up. You met your not-boyfriend again, received an amazing mentor, and have an opportunity to be far more powerful than you could have ever hoped for.”

“What’s a void flower?” Sidney cautiously asked, completely changing the subject. Probably unwilling to refute my shamelessness due to her ‘not-boyfriend’ still being trapped within that barrier.

Attempting to explain it in the simplest way possible, I mentioned the information she would care about. “It’s a dangerous flower from the Hell Difficulty tutorial that I was initially going to have you acquire… However, I have since decided that acquiring it would be too dangerous.”

“So you sent him to acquire it?” Sidney said clearly annoyed and worried because of my antics.

“Relax. He won’t even be able to swap over to Hell Difficulty. It’s impossible. Swapping difficulties is a major ordeal. The whole thing requires being in the residential zone, utilizing a specific system command, and inputting a low-level administrative password. Basically, it’s completely impossible for a normal person.” I said, layering out the various difficulties. I am confident that, for normal people, changing difficulty levels is completely impossible.

Sidney had a questioning gaze and asked, “How do you know how to do it then?”

Unwilling to speak further on the subject of my secrets, I said the first excuse that came to mind. “That’s classified.”

“By whom?” She countered, digging for further information.

“Classified.” I stated simply repeating the excuse again to avoid coming up with a name.

I’m beginning to see why governments love the word. It’s the answer to literally every question you don’t want to answer. Additionally, no one can even ask further questions on the subject because the only response they’ll get is ‘classified’.

Mmmm… I think I have a new favorite word.

Despite my lacking answers, Sidney still opened up and began asking me various questions (and most were, at least partially, answered).

The topic Sidney was most curious about was warding and I ended up answering a variety of questions on the subject. Theoretically, if she managed to remember all the principles (which I doubt as it took me far longer to remember them all), she should be able to create wards in a similar manner to me.

Although I also explained that warding wasn’t anything more than a joke at the moment. Most of the older and more powerful spells no longer worked due to changes in the environmental mana.

The only topic that hadn’t been particularly damaged by the environmental changes is the trigger mechanisms. Resulting in a weird situation where I can effectively make wards trigger in any situation I’d desire, but the wards themselves are useless in most situations.

Happy with our ongoing conversation, we ended up chatting until we arrived back at the temporary basecamp in a relatively short amount of time.