BANG.

J Dog went skidding across the ground with a single kick.

"You have a couple seconds before I lose the rest of my temper and I start killing. Get that bitch Amunet here. My fist has a meeting with her face."

Roars and attacks were the response that Grey got in return.

An arrow burned to ash on arrival as though entering the atmosphere in a speeding blaze. The other attacks were snuffed out by puffing lines of black light that eviscerated them at their very core.

"The hard way it is." Grey said coldly, raising a hand.

BANG.

Something fell through the ceiling, but Grey grinned. His head casually swayed out of the way of a thrusting rapier. Without missing a beat, he kicked up.

His heel drove into Amunet’s chin, her pretty little head snapping back. Wisps of shadows shattered and scattered on impact.

Grey couldn’t help but sigh on the inside. Why did pretty women like pissing him off so much? First Sabrina, then Mauve, now Amunet. They were making it too easy for the Producers to paint him out to be some woman-hating psychopath.

Amunet’s consciousness was wiped out clean. This time, she didn’t even last a single strike before she collapsed to the ground, the world around her nothing but a sea of black.

Grey walked over to her as the other shadows froze in place. Then he took a seat on her chest, tapping at her face until she showed signs of waking up.

"Ah, ah, ah," Grey’s foot pressed her wrist into the ground when she tried to raise her rapier again. "You’ve gotten weaker, Amunet."

Amunet’s pupils constricted into pinholes. She had never expected that the gap between herself and Grey would have grown to this extent.

Of course, she didn’t know that he had now been through a few more loops. But she didn’t need to know that, not when she hadn’t really stood a chance against him during the first loop either.

"Now, be nice and hand over your inventory. Or I can just take it after I kill you. Which will it be?" Grey asked.

Amunet’s lip trembled. She realized then that Grey wasn’t actually trying to kill her teammates, he was just trying to lure her out.

The moment she felt that, the guilt she had been suppressing came spilling back out.

"For fuck’s sake, keep the puppy dog eyes to yourself or I’ll gouge them out myself."

More than just a few hints of anger flickered in Grey’s tone. It was really starting to piss him off.

Well, it already had before. But he much preferred people who were assholes just continued to be assholes. He didn’t want this seesawing, back and forth bullshit, especially since he was pretty sure that if Amunet was forced to make the same choice again, she probably would.

Amunet froze when she heard this.

After a small while, she gritted her teeth and exhaled. Finally, her expression went deadpan.

"I don’t know how to do what you’ve asked."

"Figure it out, or the more convenient way will be for me to just kill you. Maybe that would be easier on my conscience too."

Amunet didn’t react to these words. Instead, she reached toward her inventory, forming a connection with it. She had never tried to do what Grey was talking about, but since he said it, it was probably possible.

Of course, Grey had no idea about any of that. He just assumed that if he could steal someone’s inventory after they died, there was some mechanism for transfer as well.

If he had an ally with an inventory, that would probably make it more convenient to pass items between themselves without alerting those around them.

Too bad he didn’t have allies.

The moment Grey sensed the shift, he immediately moved his own inventory, taking a bite out of a specific part of Amunet’s own.

The world shook as though rippling waves of water were moving, and when he looked in his inventory now, he found a very beautiful bike with his name on it.

Not literally, but he was really thinking about it now.

"Maybe that would be too lame." Grey mumbled to himself as he stood up.

Amunet was still on the ground in more than a little bit of a daze. Grey hadn’t taken her inventory, but he had definitely taken one of her most powerful items. It was like he had known it was there the entire time and had been gunning for it from the very start.

BOOM.

The skies shook and Grey looked up with a grin on his face.

The fabric of the tent began to burn away in a fiery inferno, falling in wisping lines of ash that were carried away by the churning currents.

Dark gold butterfly wings in the form of pulsing magnetic lines appeared at Grey’s back as he began to stretch, bending his knees, stretching out his groin, and then his arms.

In the distance, an alien creature appeared hovering in the skies.

Grey swiped a palm at the air and a spear appeared within it. Its white gold and his own blazing dark gold layered atop one another, forming a contrast of radiating light.

He pointed the spear at the air. Despite the distance that separated them, the words the alien was about to speak fell dead on its lips, its gaze shifting to look at Grey as though he was the only person present worth the slightest bit of attention.

"Listen here, you ugly alien fuck. I’m gonna tell you how this is going to go."

Grey’s Dark Solveign Frame raged, the butterfly wings behind him growing larger and larger until they practically dwarfed him.

The sun’s rays scattered through the Fog of Chaos, but he caught every hint of it. But not just it either.

A stronger and stronger suction force came from the depths of Grey at his core, his mind reflecting an image that had left an impossibly deep imprint on him...

The black hole that formed the center of the universe, its every shell layer forming one after another on his body as his power surged and his Frame broke through the ceiling of the Proving Class into the Established Class.

In that single instant, his Frame went from six Abilities to twelve.

Chi.

The Fog of Chaos dispersed around Grey, a beaming ray of sun descending from on high as though to grant him a halo.

"After I’m done with you, even your ugly mother won’t recognize you."