Heroine-Saving System: Reborn In A Third-Rate Manga As The Protagonist-Chapter 68: Attacking The Thieves Band [II]

"That was quite disastrous." Koya muttered as he looked at the destruction spread out before him.

The cannisters were also destroyed in this attack, their gas already dissipating into the air, so it was only a matter of time before the monsters got here. "Alright, we won’t cause any more damage to the property but try to defeat the people coming outside."

They were well-hidden up above on the rooftop and from the attack, he was sure that people would start storming out to investigate.

So from there, he would simply kill them. Not only was he looking to eradicate these perverts that were spying on them, but he was also trying to test his current strength.

"Okay Master." She nocked one arrow and they waited in silence.

A group of them came outside holding weapons... swords, clubs and even a few spears. They were all looking ahead at the destroyed front gate and collapsed wall. Koya pressed both palms together, reaching mana mode and using Blood Burst as Yuna’s arrow knocked one in the head.

The member fell over, his head completely burst open like a crushed melon and Blood Burst hit another one who tried deflecting it with his weapon.

However the mana-infused Blood Burst chipped up the blade before breaking it completely in half and then Koya dipped his hand to the left, increasing the convergence to up the sharpness of the skill.

It cut through the man that had tried defending against it and several others, while Yuna sniped the rest. The group was down and Koya breathed out, retracting his blood burst.

"That was easy." He muttered under his breath and Yuna nodded in agreement, she hadn’t believed that she had actually killed all of these people.

’Am I really strong...?’ She thought, staring at her hands that had just killed multiple people without hesitation.

Up until becoming Koya’s slave, she hadn’t been able to use her weapons properly. She was the clown of the Archer’s band, the one everyone mocked and now that she was with him, she had ranked up so much in just days, became so much stronger than she ever thought possible, killed Iron class monsters and actual people without freezing up.

’Master is amazing... He saw potential in me that I didn’t even see in myself.’

Before she could continue her thoughts, Koya scooped her up in his arms without warning and leapt off the top of the building.

"Brace yourself..." He said and as he jumped through the air, the building behind them detonated throwing particles everywhere however he landed on one of the rubble and merely used Speed Burst to land at the front gate.

Once he arrived and his feet touched solid ground, he let Yuna go gently and she looked back at the destruction with shock.

Her bow and arrows had been completely lost in the explosion, buried under tons of rubble and debris; however a sword appeared in his hand from his storage ring and he handed it to her, looking forward toward the estate with focused eyes.

She took the blade gratefully and looked forward as well, gripping it tightly.

Two people had walked out of the place now, stepping through the rubble and debris.

Honestly Koya was expecting them to attack the two of them immediately, rushing forward with weapons raised... However, the duo on the other side, which was a man and woman who looked remarkably similar and they just looked at him with matching expressions of confusion and growing anger.

"Howth dareth youteth attacketh theth thiefth bandth, haventh youth hadth noth shameth?" The guy said in the strangest accent Koya had ever heard and both him and Yuna blinked in confusion while the woman on the side of the man hit his head with her hand hard enough to make a loud smacking sound.

"None of that gibberish here, you idiot. You need to focus. We have to kill these intruders before they get any deeper..." She hissed at him. "The boss is sleeping now, if he wakes up to see that we didn’t kill these fools and let them destroy the front of our base, then he’ll be very mad at us. You know what happened last time."

Both of them trembled visibly as they remembered what he did when he got angry and they raised their matching swords in unison.

「You have received a new side mission」

「Kill the Funk twins to prevent the Ice Incident in the future」

「Reward: 10 000 FP」

’Right, I remember this from the manga.’ He thought as he quickly scanned through his memories.

These twins had inadvertently frozen an entire Supercity with all the people inside with the help of some experimental technology that they had nabbed from a government facility during a raid.

It was one of the minor arcs that happened in volume 8 or 9, though he was surprised that he was actually seeing them here in the flesh, alive and active.

’I guess this is nice... to prevent some more problems in the future. Better to deal with them now before they become a real threat.’

"Yuna, take on the woman and don’t hold back... I’ll take on the man, if you think you can’t beat her then call my name and I’ll help you out immediately." He said.

Both of them were four-liners after all and experienced fighters and three-liners were weaker than four-liners after all.

Yuna nodded and broke off from him while approaching the woman while Koya approached the man.

"Cometh for all that waits is your deateth!" The man yelled out in that ridiculous accent and the four of them clashed. Koya activated all of his skills... Fighting Spirit, Enhanced Strength, Enhanced Speed, Sensory and he could sense the Boss on the inside of the building.

He was stationary in a lying position which meant he was still sleeping soundly, so he could focus all his attention on this guy.

Koya pushed away from the sword clash and the man came down with another overhead slash aimed at splitting Koya’s skull.

Koya parried it cleanly, deflecting the blade to the side. The man was left wide open, his guard completely dropped however Koya knew otherwise and moved back immediately.

The man’s stomach turned into wooden spikes that extended outward suddenly, reaching where Koya had been a moment ago. If he had committed to the counter-attack, those spikes would have impaled him through the chest.

"Aha I must commendeth you for your performance howev—" His words were cut short as Koya who was charged by Mana Mode which was poured into his sword alongside Fighting Spirit cleaved him apart vertically with one devastating slash.

The wood, flesh, and all...

He fell into two perfect halves that toppled in opposite directions and the screen chinged with a notification.

’Honestly... this wasn’t so hard.’ He thought as he flicked the blood off his blade.

It was pretty refreshing seeing enemies weaker than they were in the manga, especially if they were light work that he could dispatch quickly. The manga had made them seem more threatening...

Next he focused on Yuna’s battle to make sure she wasn’t in trouble.

Hers was bound to be a lot closer than his had been.

Yuna and the woman engaged immediately.

Both of them were not as adept in swordsmanship as the men which meant their stances were looser and their footwork was less refined however the other twin was obviously better than Yuna.

She had years of experience that showed in every economical movement but Yuna was keeping up by her simple mastery of the basics of parrying as well as slashing, exactly as Koya had drilled into her over the past few hours.

During the clash, she saw an opening and carved the woman across the chest. Blood sprayed but before she could follow up, she twisted and slashed again, catching the woman across the waist.

The woman should have staggered back but ice materialized over the wounds instantly, cauterizing them with a hiss of freezing air and the woman grinned through the pain.

Yuna was caught off-guard by the ice regeneration and the woman capitalized immediately, lunging forward with a vicious slash.

Yuna got her blade up but not in time... the sword carved into her leg, cutting deep into the muscle. Her mobility reduced instantly and she gritted her teeth against the scream that wanted to escape.

She was barely blocking the strikes now, her wounded leg making her stance unstable.

Each parry sent jolts of pain up her thigh. The woman’s blade kept finding openings making nicks across her arms, followed by a slash across her ribs and even a cut on her shoulder. Blood sprayed from them and her bodysuit was getting torn apart piece by piece.

"Aww, is the little girl struggling? Maybe you should have stayed home and let the adults handle this!" The woman teased, her voice dripping with mockery.

But Yuna was furious for another reason entirely.

This wasn’t about the pain or the wounds... this was something her Master had bought for her. He had taken his time to choose it, had made sure it fit her perfectly, had spent his crowns on making sure she looked professional and this bitch was ripping it apart.

The woman stomped her foot and dust spread all over the battlefield like a smoke screen, obscuring vision completely. Yuna heard the whistle of a blade cutting through the air and it seemed like the twin aimed to finish her off while she was blinded but she had sound now.

She could hear the displacement of air and the scrape of the woman’s boot against stone so Yuna was able to tell the exact angle of the incoming strike. She ducked under it at the last possible second and thrust her sword upward with everything she had.

The blade punched through the woman’s chest and they both fell over together. Yuna landed on top and didn’t stop... she pulled the sword out and stabbed again... and again... and again.

"This—"

STAB

"Was—"

STAB

"A—" 𝓯𝓻𝒆𝙚𝒘𝓮𝙗𝓷𝒐𝓿𝙚𝒍.𝙘𝓸𝙢

STAB

"Perfect—"

STAB

"Suit!"

STAB

STAB

STAB

Blood pooled beneath them both.

The dust cleared and she stopped... looking up at him with teary eyes, she was afraid that he would be angry that she had ruined her body suit.

"Why are you looking at me like that? You still have two more pairs. I’m not offended but I’m glad you managed to win the fight, you did really well." He said while throwing her a vial.

She gave him a nod thankfully and caught the vial, it was healing fluid... a concentrated kind meant for field use, it healed wounds a lot easily however the dose would lose effectiveness each time it was used and by the time that one would consume the fifth dose, it would lose its effectiveness entirely and you had to wait five days before the dose would have full effect.

She swallowed the liquid and her flesh wounds began knitting back as she took her sword and walked back to her Master.

"Go nearer to the gate... the guy is waking up." Koya said and she did it, running close to the gate. She was just a three-liner, there was no way she wanted to face a red crest user head on.

Just then the window on the second floor burst open and the boss of the Thieves Band leaned out, expecting to see his boys getting jiggy with some underwear, trading panties, living their best perverted lives.

However all of them laid dead on the ground in pools of blood, limbs at unnatural angles, the front of his base completely destroyed.

"Huh?!" He leaped out of the window in a single bound and landed on the ground with a heavy impact that cracked the stone beneath his feet.

The guy was on the ground now and Koya got a good look at him.

It seemed all red-liners except for Mio were really buff. This guy reminded him of Tetsuya with his physique... he had a massively muscular body, arms thick as tree trunks, and a bald head. Except on this guy’s head, there was a pair of women’s panties wrapped around it like a headband. His red crest went from his lower lip to his chin in a jagged line.

"Yo... are you the one that did all this damage?" He asked while looking at Koya with surprising calm. "And aren’t you the one that took our panty supply? As well as our monster supply that we stole from the Archer’s Guild? Aren’t you also the one that killed every member of the Archer’s Guild and made us lose an eternal supply of their wonderful undergarments?"

"I guess..." Koya blinked. Was the only thing on this guy’s mind panties? He guessed he expected too much from someone with literal panties on his head as a fashion statement.

Veins popped up on the man’s face and he gritted his teeth and his muscles tensed.

"Well fuck you! I wanted to come over to your camp spot eventually but thankfully, you’ve come over to me and saved me the trip! I’ll make sure to kill you and take everything you own!" He yelled out and Koya threw his mid-grade sword at the man.

On pure instinct, the red-liner caught the blade out of the air with his bare hand and Koya sighed internally.

’And that’s that...’ He thought as the man crushed the blade completely in his grip, the fragments of the steel sticking to his skin and embedding into his palm.

This was the one that he had applied poison to before the fight even started. The battle was already over before it began.

It was the poison of a Silver rank monster, sure it would take longer time to take out a relatively new red-liner, maybe longer minutes, but it was done.

The poison was already in his bloodstream.

"Oho... I seemed to have crushed your main weapon. Sorry it was so weak and brittle unlike the other items I have stolen over the years." He said while tossing the fragments aside and Koya charged forward with Speed Burst, closing the distance between them in an instant—

However the ground below him suddenly lost all grip. His feet couldn’t find purchase. It was like running on ice... no, worse than ice. Absolute zero friction. The man moved out of the way casually, leaving Koya sliding helplessly toward the opposite wall.

Koya timed it properly and bounced off the wall with his legs, using the rebound to land back on solid ground in a crouch.

"What was that?" He asked, already knowing the answer but buying time to think. He charged forward once more with Speed Burst however the grin on the man’s face never faded.

The ground turned back to being slippery mid-sprint. It was like his friction had been stolen. He could no longer stop and his momentum carried him forward uncontrollably and he was coming straight for the red-liner who had cocked his hand back for a devastating punch.

Koya leaned his face and body to the side at the last possible instant, the wind from the punch whistling past his ear. He stabbed forward with his sword aimed at the man’s exposed ribs—

The blade slid off his body like it was water with no resistance, it was just steel gliding across skin without leaving a mark.

’What the hell?’

The man bellowed with laughter and threw another punch. Koya caught it despite the surface being impossibly slippery... he poured Fighting Spirit into his grip, using raw willpower to hold on where friction failed him.

The man grinned as stability suddenly returned to the ground beneath them. "My power is Friction Manipulation! I can make anything I touch frictionless or sticky as glue! Your blade can’t cut me, your feet can’t grip the ground, and there’s nothing you can do about—"

Koya snapped his fingers.

SNAP!

The burst of psionic energy sent the guy flying backward like he’d been hit by an invisible truck but Koya held onto the man’s hand, attempting to use the opposing force to rip the limb clean off at the shoulder.

However all the guy had to do was lower his free hand enough to touch the ground even while being blown backward.

The instant his fingers made contact, he increased the friction to maximum... his hand stuck to the earth like it had been welded there.

The psionic force reversed. Koya was yanked forward and then both of them were sent into the air, spinning wildly.

The psionic burst stopped as they tumbled through the air and they let go of each other separating quickly.

The man threw his fist at Koya mid-air and Koya leaned out of the way, dodging the whistling strike by millimeters, and drove his knee into the guy’s head with all his strength.

It slid off. His knee just glided across the man’s bald scalp without any impact.

Zero friction meant zero force transfer after all.

The guy grabbed onto Koya before he could create distance, locking up his arms from behind in a bear hug then he flipped them around mid-air, angling them so Koya was facing the ground. They were falling fast now and accelerating...

He was going to spike Koya into the ground head-first.

Koya threw his head backward with Fighting Spirit enhancing the strike. His skull cracked into the man’s nose and the grip loosened.

In that instant, Koya twisted his body, grabbed onto the guy’s leg, and filled his entire body with Fighting Spirit... not just his hands, but every muscle, every tendon, everything that he could enhance.

Even if the man made his body frictionless, Fighting Spirit didn’t rely on friction. It was pure force.

Koya spun in mid-air like a hammer thrower and slammed the red-liner into the ground with devastating force, throwing caution to the wind.