Chapter 70: Round Two

Raive’s actions were driven by several factors.

First, the desire to verify the limits of the "kill and you die" rule.

Would he die if he dealt a fatal amount of damage but someone else landed the finishing blow?

What about using someone as a shield, causing their death indirectly?

Small questions like that.

Second, to figure out other rules he might’ve missed. If there’s any.

Third, to gauge the soldiers’ real strength. Given what they’d shown so far, capturing Shymine and the others should’ve been impossible. But the bodies on the crosses said otherwise.

Meaning someone among these soldiers had to be strong enough to have caught them.

And lastly... to vent his anger.

To teach these mindless masses what happened when they "coveted" what belonged to him.

A painful, unforgettable lesson.

Raive moved without hesitation.

He dashed forward before the soldiers could even fall into formation, chopping the limbs off everyone nearby in one fluid motion.

He made sure not to kill them outright, though he wasn’t sure how long they’d last with all that bleeding. Either way, without healing, their fate led only to death.

"E-Everyone, gather!"

"Attack! It’s an attack!"

"Spears! Shields! Ready!"

As the soldiers started to grasp what was happening, Raive began testing his hypothesis.

First, he provoked a few into stabbing at him, then grabbed someone nearby and shoved him forward by the neck, into the spears’ path.

The spears ran straight through, killing the man almost instantly.

But Raive kept moving. He hadn’t died. Meaning, the rule didn’t trigger.

Next, he grabbed someone already reduced to a limbless daruma and timed his attack precisely.

He hurled the body into an incoming spear, already past the point of no return, while swinging his own sword at the man’s nape.

A clean slash, cutting halfway through—fatal within moments regardless. But the next instant, the soldier’s spear punched through the man’s skull. Death, instant.

"..."

Still no change.

The rule hadn’t triggered again.

Piecing together what he’d observed, repeating the tests a few times, he reached a verified conclusion.

"So the rule only applies to direct killing." He noted.

As long as the opponent didn’t die from his own attack, he should be safe.

Running through more trials, he also noticed that the men he’d cut first had already died—some trampled underfoot, others cleanly only bleeding out.

Meaning his own attack had inevitably been the decisive blow.

And yet he stayed alive.

"...So a delayed death doesn’t count either." He added to his mental notes.

By the time roughly a thousand soldiers had fallen victim to his experiments, several powerful presences suddenly closed in.

They just appeared out of nowhere, almost like phantoms to his senses.

Raive’s eyes went wide, and he ducked.

A large javelin sailed over his head, slamming into the ground and kicking up a cloud of dust. A few soldiers unlucky enough to be standing there died on the spot, though the attacker didn’t seem to care.

"Demon who dares claim to be an agent of god. Prepare to die!" He rambled.

Raive turned toward the voice, frowning.

Five figures stood there, proud, their elaborate full-plate armor clearly a cut above even the officers. Something about them was fundamentally different.

Mostly, it was the strength radiating off them.

Each was roughly three times Hazel’s strength—enough to explain, at last, how the others had been captured.

Raive didn’t wait for them to finish talking.

He rushed in at full speed, a blink of light—crouched a distance away one moment, standing right in front of them the next.

"...!"

The knights reacted to his speed, but too slowly.

Three sword strokes—both arms off the first knight, the next cut clean in half. The remaining three dodged while thrusting their javelins toward him like spears.

Raive didn’t dodge. He let the attacks land.

But—

"As expected, you’re all weak..."

The javelins struck, embedding into his body.

They didn’t go through.

His muscles were tough enough that even a full-power thrust barely sank an inch.

Whatever strength they had, it wasn’t worth noting.

He felt disappointed.

He’d genuinely wanted them to be stronger.

But with a gap this wide—even though he was only moving barely twice as fast as them—it was enough to make the fight one-sided.

In under two minutes, the five strongest knights of the kingdom...

"AAAAAGH!"

...were reduced to armless, legless heaps of meat, screaming and writhing on the ground. Raive watched them and scoffed.

Still not satisfied.

So he headed to the most important place left.

The throne room.

He cut down every soldier in his path—some stronger than the rank and file, though none close to the five knights. Reaching the throne room, he found the king and his nobles staring at his bloodstained figure in despair.

"P-Please spare me! I’m innocent!"

"No... I don’t want to die...! I don’t want to die!!!"

"This is a dream... A nightmare... God, please let me wake up...!"

They all begged the same way, but their fates were already decided. No amount of pleading would change that.

Men, women, old, young—Raive didn’t discriminate. He cut them all down.

Until only the king remained.

Raive stared into his sunken, trembling eyes, feeding off the fear there, and smiled.

"Now then, dear king... let’s have a looooong talk, shall we~?"

To the king, the smile over Raive’s lips right then felt like the grim reaper’s.

The two of them were the last survivors left, anyway, so nobody would interrupt them.

And so Raive spent the rest of the night, until dawn, "talking" with him. Gathering all information that they initially lacked, and fulfilling his desire for "petty" revenge slowly.

When it was over, Raive stood beside the crystal they were meant to protect.

"So this is it..."

He whispered, as if his mind was already prepared.

He’d done everything he wanted to do. He’d learned things that would make the next run far easier. He was completely satisfied with this first attempt.

Without hesitation, he drove his sword into the crystal, and smiled.

His vision turned white.

[User’s Heart has Stopped Beating.]

[Please select which save slot to load.]

[Confirmed selection: First Slot.]

[Auto-Load activating...]

[Success.]

The same familiar message rang through his ears as his eyes opened again.

Raive took a deep breath, steadying his mind.

Breaking the crystal had killed him instantly. No pain, no lingering sensation of anything—almost like hitting the reload trigger himself.

"If every loop goes like this, that’d be great..."

Raive wasn’t a masochist. He didn’t like pain, and he liked the feeling of dying even less.

The fear of death still sat heavy in his chest, growing if anything.

But a painless death, at least, was easier on the mind.

"Now..."

Raive stood, fixing his gaze on the dark sky—on the countdown to the second trial, ticking slowly but surely toward zero—and smiled.

"Time for round two!"