"Get off me, you fool..." the Whitelocke heir hissed, shoving the slumped noble off him with visible disgust.

He dusted his hands slowly and deliberately as though the noble had contaminated his bloodline just by landing on him. "We already gave you a chance to surrender, but you refuse to heed our words."

The other nobles stepped closer, grouping behind him in a loose semicircle like they were posing for a poster titled... "We Swear We’re Not Going to Jump You." 𝚏𝕣𝕖𝚎𝚠𝚎𝚋𝚗𝐨𝐯𝕖𝕝.𝕔𝐨𝕞

They were absolutely going to jump him.

Ren looked at all of them, counted them and looked back at the Whitelocke heir then he laughed.

’They look straight out of some cheap shounen manga,’ he thought. ’All that’s missing is a speech about friendship and the unbreakable power of unity right before they get flattened.’

Reina shifted into position behind him without being asked, dropping into a clean fighting stance with her legs planted wide and her palms already glowing faint blue with gathered ice.

She hadn’t said anything and she had just moved, Ren was glad that she was smart enough to read a situation without needing it explained to her.

It was going to be an all-out war.

The Whitelocke heir’s eyes blazed. Literal flames curled up his hair, along his forearms, licking across his boots. He took one step... and burst into a sprint.

"CHARGE!!!"

Everything exploded into chaos and the clearing became a battleground in an instant.

The Evermere heir had already transformed into a massive rolling ball... a perfect spherical nightmare.

His body was spinning so fast he blurred, his skin stretched unnaturally with expansion magic until he looked like a living wrecking ball made of rage and cholesterol.

He barreled straight at Ren.

Meanwhile the Whitelocke heir hurled himself at Reina, fire blasting from every limb like he was trying to cook her alive.

Ren dodged left, letting the Evermere ball shoot past him so fast the displaced air nearly shaved his eyebrows clean off his face.

’How do I stop a charging ball of madness?’ Ren wondered, watching it skid across the clearing and slow down as it struggled to change direction.

The physics of spinning that fast worked against the heir since all that momentum had nowhere to go quickly, he needed time to redirect.

He prepared to take advantage of the opening... only to feel something coil tight around his leg from below.

He looked down slowly. "...Vines. Seriously?"

His gaze snapped upward to the Thorn clan heir... with green hair, shirt half-open like he had spent the morning practicing that exact pose in a mirror, looking smug as hell with a dozen thick spiky vines writhing around both his hands like living whips.

"Immobilized." the Thorn heir announced proudly.

"Damned fucker," Ren muttered flatly. He grabbed the vines around his leg and ripped them apart with raw strength alone, the fibers snapping like thread then he hurled his wooden stick at the Thorn heir’s head with enough force behind it to shatter a bear’s spine clean in two.

It whistled through the air on a perfect arc...

Only for a ripple of compressed sound to pass through it mid-flight and disintegrate the entire thing into a fine cloud of splinters and dust.

Ren’s eyebrow climbed slowly. ’Oh. That guy.’

Neon Aldercrest stepped forward from the tree line with both hands raised at shoulder height, expression calm and practiced.

The future best friend of the Protagonist... The one destined by plot armor to survive literally everything the story threw at him and one of Jordan’s least favorite characters across the entire original novel, for reasons he was currently being reminded of in real time.

’I should absolutely cripple him first.’ Ren thought with genuine warmth toward the idea but Neon was faster than he looked.

He blasted a wave of compressed sound straight at Ren.

Ren dodged... barely. The soundwave clipped him anyway and the vibrational shock crawling through his bones. It was not painful, but deeply irritating.

And then...

BOOOOM!!

The Evermere cannonball slammed into Ren at full rotational speed.

Ren launched backward like he had been fired out of a cannon.

The impact wasn’t painful exactly since Ren’s endurance stat was doing serious work but the force was enough to lift him completely off the ground and send him sailing across the clearing.

While airborne, he calmly reached into his pouch and tucked the box and necklace securely inside then, because he was who he was, he twisted mid-flight with control, spotted a tree trunk rushing toward him, planted both feet against the bark, and stopped dead.

His boots dug in and held. Mana Wall-Suction keeping him pinned vertically against the tree like the world’s most overdressed insect.

He took one breath and assessed.

"I’m weaponless and getting jumped..." Ren muttered to himself. "What do I do now?"

His eyes cut across to Reina. She was managing... weaving around the Whitelocke heir’s fire slashes with efficient footwork and returning ice bursts whenever a clean opening appeared.

Her element was at a disadvantage against fire and she knew it, so she wasn’t trying to overpower him. She was just surviving smartly and waiting for a mistake.

’Again, she’s very competent.’ Ren thought.

Meanwhile he was... not very competent without a weapon.

BOOOOM!

Just as Ren leapt off the tree, it exploded behind him as it was blasted apart by a sphere of condensed shadow.

Standing where the tree had been was the Ravenire heir with pale skin, black hair and black eyes with genuinely nice drip too.

"Shadow blast." the heir said coolly even though he had already attacked.

"At least be fair," Ren muttered but the Evermere heir was already rotating again, building speed for a second pass.

And right then... the Briarhallow heir, the one Ren had previously launched into the water came sprinting out of the bushes with his face twisted in pure rage.

"FUCK YOUUUU!!"

He hurled a sword at Ren with everything he had and Ren blinked.

Neon Aldercrest blinked too with horror instead.

"NOOOOO!" Neon shouted, blasting sound at the sword to stop it but all the soundwave did was accelerate it.

Ren reached out... and caught the sword mid-flight.

The blade was instantly enveloped in blue light with Blade Resonance activating on instinct in his hands.

The Evermere cannonball was already bearing down on him.

"Perfect." Ren whispered and then he slashed forward.

SHRRRRK!!!

The sword tore through the spinning ball, carving a clean diagonal line across Evermere’s torso.

Blood sprayed as the heir unraveled mid-roll and collapsed in a heap, clutching his chest and shrinking back to his original size instantly.

’There are healing mages in this world,’ Ren thought. ’He’ll be fine... probably.’

The clearing went silent for half a second then...

"QUICK! BLAST HIM DOWN!" Neon screamed.

Everything happened at once.

The Thorn heir stomped, sending razor-sharp vines shooting from the ground toward Ren while the Ravenire heir launched a sphere of condensed shadow at his head and Neon fired compressed sound again, even the Briarhallow heir ripped a chunk of earth from the ground and hurled it like a boulder.

Four attacks converged on Ren from every direction at the same moment with vines coming from below, shadow from the right, compressed sound from directly ahead, and a chunk of earth the size of a small cart from behind.

Ren stood in the middle of all of it and did not move.

He inhaled once... tightened his grip on the sword until his knuckles went white and poured mana into the blade until the steel screamed with it and the blue aura coating it turned almost white at the edges then he slashed diagonally in one clean motion.

KRRRRRRRRRRRSH!!

Every single incoming attack was torn open at once.

The vines shredded... The shadow sphere split apart and dissolved... The compressed sound unraveled into scattered pressure... the boulder cracked cleanly down the middle and both halves went wide.

Energy scattered across the clearing in every direction, blowing a wave of dead leaves outward from where Ren stood like a ring expanding from a dropped stone.

The sound of it rolled through the forest and faded.

Ren stood in the middle of the crater his own mana discharge had carved into the ground with his chest rising and falling once while the sword was still extended from the swing then he grinned.

’Hahahahahaa!!!! I genuinely feel like an overpowered protagonist right now!’

Across the clearing, Reina had gone completely still mid-fight. She was staring at him with the Whitelocke heir momentarily forgotten beside her.

"W...what the hell...?" she whispered, barely audible.

The nobles stared like they had just watched someone punch the fundamental laws of physics directly in the face and win.

Neon’s eye twitched then twitched again and then a third time with increasing violence, like it was trying to leave his head entirely in protest.

"This is really bad!" Neon shouted, his voice cracking slightly on the very last word. "Everyone just... run!"