Sylas felt like he was scraping his claws against the world itself, as though Four had become so resplendently perfect that even the universe wouldn't allow her to be harmed.

A flashing warning sign and a pulse of danger changed the beat of his heart, his body disappearing in a flash as a figure appeared with his back to him, a pair of youths he had never seen before appearing as though bodyguards between Four, the man, and Sylas himself.

One of them had the character for Three on his lapel, and he hardly seemed like a man at all. Or, rather, he was more tree than man. Vines and roots wrapped around his body, his head looked like the thick foliage of shrubbery and greenery, overlapping leaves as large as his head draping down and hiding whatever features or eyes he might have had, and there was a very peculiar cane he leaned on that somehow looked like it should be flexible, yet carried all his weight.

The other had the character for Two on his lapel, and he was simply enormous. The young man must have stood at what was at least 10 meters tall, every inch of him filled to the brim with an overflowing power and pulsing wave of strength.

His body should have been blue, but it was covered in such thick and bright lines of white tattoos that the blue only came through in tiny slivers that almost made it look like they were the tattoos while the unnatural white was his actual skin.

Two had a beard formed of diamond, and he stood stark naked for some inexplicable reason. Well, his crotch was actually covered in a shield of diamond as well. The problem was that it was completely see-through and it left little to the imagination—if that was something someone would have wanted to imagine in the first place.

Though, to Two's probable lament, imagination would have certainly suited him better. While his member was larger than any male human could ever hope to have, it wasn't even remotely proportional to what it should have been for a behemoth of his size, making him look ridiculous.

Unfortunately… this wasn't exactly Two's choice, and given how straight he stood and how seriously he protected One's moment with Four at his back, it became quite obvious whose choice it was with a single thought.

One didn't look back at Sylas even a single time. He carefully propped up Four's head with a palm, pouring something into her mouth with the other. He spoke soft, soothing words, almost as though the words he spoke alone could bring her back from the brink of death.

"… I'm sorry that I was so late. Blame me… Blame me…" he said again and again, his voice hardly carrying a hint of anger at all. It was filled with nothing more than a gentle wellspring of love and affection that poured out in steady waves.

Four weakly reached up. For a moment, it looked like she was going to stroke One's cheek, but her hand fell and grabbed at his collar instead, pulling him closer.

"Kill him… and I will marry you…" she said weakly.

Her voice came out in wispy gasps, her body slowly regaining some strength from the healing elixir, but not nearly as much as she should have.

One gently grabbed Four's hand and smiled. Their gazes met, and despite the gentle push in their words, their eyes hardly seemed to carry the same love at all.

Four wasn't a fool. While One, Two, and Three had been occupied, it wasn't to the extent that they would be so late, nor to the point that they would only come at such a convenient time.

One, Two, and Three had been working on their breakthrough into the B-tiers, but they had only just begun and they were certainly not at a critical point yet. Judging by their auras, they were very much still at the C-tier.

So, there was logically no reason for them to have taken so long to arrive.

The only way something like that would have happened was if One had done it on purpose.

It seemed that he had finally grown tired of her delays, and without Four's elders here to protect her, this was the best chance he would ever have to suppress her and paint her into a corner.

However, Four's hatred for Sylas burned far brighter. Her marriage to One was inevitable, she already knew that. She had only been delaying it out of some faint hope that she would not only find someone she loved, but also someone who happened to be stronger than One… but that person probably didn't exist, not only because she would never have the time to find him with One watching her every move, but also because…

One was simply unfathomable.

At the same tier, she simply couldn't fathom a person ever being able to defeat him.

One smiled and then gestured to a woman amongst the geniuses hovering in the distance. She quickly came forward and took Four from One's arms. 𝚏𝐫𝚎𝗲𝕨𝐞𝐛𝕟𝚘𝐯𝚎𝗹.𝕔𝐨𝗺

"Make sure no more harm comes to my fiancée."

"Yes. Yes." The woman said quickly, not daring to be slow even in her response.

One clasped his hands behind his back as he watched them float into the distance, a light smile on his face. Then he turned to face Sylas, his presence the embodiment of perfect. Handsome beyond words, well-mannered to an extreme, an etiquette so untouchable and regal the plants bowed in his wake… or, they would have had there been any present.

As he walked forward, past the shoulders of his two "friends" turned guards, his smile slowly faded until there was little more than an icy expression.

"You have harmed my fiancée—."

Sylas looked away from One as though to tune out his words, his gaze landing on a particular location in the distance. When he looked back, One was standing so close to him their noses almost touched.