Why!?

She lunged her beastly claws at him, bleeding from head to toe, her body tattered in injuries, lots of her bones broken, her aura completely exhausted, yet even so.

With every bit of strength left in her, she moved.

All to kill the cause of her sufferings.

All to kill him.

Everything had gone wrong since he came into their life. Everyone she had once held dear was now dead.

People she loved, people she had spent an incredible amount of time with.

All dead.

Unable to bury the rage in her heart anymore, she lunged toward a 16-year-old boy.

Right now, she couldn't give a damn if he is just a child.

All she wanted was to kill him. To kill the person who has imparted all this suffering to them. Prepared to give her everything just to kill him.

And so was the boy who was prepared to kill the person in front of him albeit he didn't seem to have any emotion or desire in him. He was simply killing her because ...just because she had provided him exp and some answers.

That was all. He didn't hold any grudge against her, he didn't hold any particular reason to kill her either, honestly, he could kill someone else entirely and he would still get the results he wanted.

And so, both veterans of many life and death struggles, faced off each other.

"I will kill you!!" she rushed at him with a scream resembling a wild animal's roar. Her approach was jagged and her hair spread out behind her as she swung her arms and swayed like a dancer, weaving to and fro as she attacked.

"Crazy bitch" Saying so, he too moved on the defensive.

Noah could easily, pretty easily take people out who are skilled, after all, they have a pattern in their movements and Noah was good at discerning those patterns as fast as possible.

Even if Noah were to fight a completely new person with skills he has never seen before, it would take him barely 5 minutes to completely and utterly discern their movements from that point on.

But a person moving with no rhythm? No pattern? A person just trying to kill? There was no pattern, all Noah could do was take advantage of the openings and their crude style but he was against the SS ranker even if she was on death's door, she proved to be a force to be reckoned with.

Thus, despite seeing the openings in her attacks, Noah found himself unable to take advantage of them.

In Noah's words, 'It's not professionals that you need to worry about, it's those damned amateurs'

Whish!

She swung her right arm with all her strength, targeting the back of Noah's neck. Noah in response ducked, narrowly avoiding having his head flying.

Their paths crossed, and Elisa, carried by her momentum, sailed past him, stumbling.

Noah took the chance to create distance between himself and her, shooting out a fireball, Elisa, narrowly avoided, however her skin felt the heat of those blue flames that went past her, and with loud bang sound resounded throughout the area, setting the trees behind her on fire.

"...That was an intermediate spell"

"Wait, what? I thought you lost your thinking capacity with how you were attacking, gotta be on guard."

Noah's reply which appeared nonchalant and mocking did a great job at pissing her off, but he was actually being sincere.

Preparing herself to attack Noah once again, she skidded her left leg a little.

Noah simply waited, he had decided it was better to let her steam run off, and so Noah prepared himself to dodge her attacks just like how he dodged his responsibilities.

In normal circumstances, the more time given to a person, the more aura they would regain with time, so stretching out a fight wasn't an optimal answer.

But Elisa had exhausted her reserves dry to the point that she was going to be backlashed. She would need at least a month to recover herself from all the havoc that her aura is currently causing inside of her ...if she gets out of the situation alive.

"Why?" her voice resembled a low growl.

"Why... indeed why?" Noah having no idea of what she wanted to ask or what she was even getting at, played along with his own dialogue.

Context be damned, she is going to die soon anyway, so who actually cares about her question, gotta focus on making talk look cool!

What about the fight? Do you think it's cool to have a fight to death? What the actual fuck is wrong with you?

Is what Noah thought as he continued evading her relentless onslaught.

And then he began speaking.

"Oh wait, I get it. But still, are you really asking me 'why' I provided Elina with blueprints? I mean, I should be praised for providing such valuable information. Why are you angry?"

"That damn wench! I will kill her too!" She roared, slicing through the air her left arm. Her whole body spinning, she lashed out one limb after another.

"You! You ruined everything! You killed Ella and Oliver!"

"Just of the info, Orson and Edison are also dead."

She clenched her fists tight enough for the blood to seep through them, but she didn't stop.

"Okay, girl, let's be honest. Did you really expect to get away without facing any consequences for what you all did? Don't make me the bad guy when you are clearly the one."

Finding himself in a position to not be able to dodge another one of her attacks, Noah blocked Elisa's left leg with his right arm, and his bones creaked.

'...She is... on death's door.. right? Oh lord, screw fantasy settings, I still can't determine the danger level. ' Noah thought to himself.

"We were prepared! We were ready to accept the punishment! What we did was a necessary evil!"

"For the love of god, you think you get to decide the consequences you have to face for your sins? You can't. It's something brought down by others and that was what happened. Also, necessary evil is an excellent justification but there's no 'excuse' for what you did. If you prepared yourself to commit necessary evil you also need to be prepared to face everyone's hostility towards you even if your actions have those people. You chose that path, that's al-grr!"

Elisa's right foot hit Noah's stomach with enough force that he was thrown off his feet, and he tumbled across the ground. Closing the distance without giving him any chance to recover, she stomped her feet on the right side of his chest as he gasped for air-pressing down his lungs.

Elisa looked down at him, her face contorted with blood lust and agony "...And you should be prepared to face the consequences of your actions, too, no?"

"Haa.. You are right. You have the right to ask for retribution, for revenge... but so do I have the right to refuse, even if god were to pass a judgment on me, a judgment that I don't agree with, I will just kill him in turn, if things can end ...peacefully, that's great too" Noah replied, struggling to speak with the leg pressing down on him.

Elisa felt creeped out. The reason for that was simple, Noah's black eyes, with an empty look, and his words that were spoken so casually just shook her.

'Something's wrong with him..'

Normally, what he said could be passed off as him being arrogant but.. the way Noah had said just stuck to her.

It was a certain sense of uncertainty that his way of speaking caused as if he was actually capable of killing a god.

To begin with, he had killed SS rankers.

What if ...he could?

'Absurd!' Shaking herself of such thoughts she prepared herself to stomp on his chest one more time, and this time she will crush his chest.

She was barely keeping herself conscious or maybe her strong desire to kill Noah was keeping her conscious to begin with.

Regardless, she was at the end of her rope.

And so, just when she prepared to stomp her feet on his chest, the blazing blue flames emerged from Noah's chest, prepared to swallow Elisa in whole. She jumped back to save herself from those flames. In normal circumstances, Elisa would have been able to dance in those flames without being harmed by them but this wasn't a normal circumstance.

"I really don't like it" Noah muttered as he stood back up, his own body covered with several 3rd degree burns.

Noah's psychic causes destruction to not only its target but the very user itself. The heat that Noah used to drive away Elisa had harmed him, unlike Elisa he couldn't jump back from the flames, they surrounded him to protect him, why would he jump back from it?

Regardless of which, Elisa couldn't help but be confused, after all getting harmed by one's own spell wasn't something heard of.

But that didn't matter, Elisa now could see Noah being severely injured, she could kill him!

That thought of her's shattered in an instant.

She saw Noah's mouth moving a bit and then his body ...was back to its original state, the scorched skin back to the pale white skin, the burns were all gone, and the injuries she had inflicted on him vanished.

She stood as if spellbound, unable to comprehend what she just witnessed. If it wasn't enough that Noah could use intermediate spell levels, despite being a weakling just months ago, then this had to be a wake-up call for her to realize Noah was way stronger than he was and far more dangerous.

"For the love of god, can't you die already?"

With her ragged breathing and wobbly legs, she greeted her teeth, looking at Noah with an intense murderous gaze.

"Sheesh."

In response, a growl was heard.

And so, both of them engaged in another battle.

Elisa managed to gravely injure Noah once again but in the end with his healing potion Noah was back to no injuries while Elisa inched closer to her death.

Once

Twice

Thrice

.

.

.

.

And finally...

Elisa's desire to kill Noah wasn't enough to help her move.

So she fell, and Noah with his dagger, inched closer. Until the end, she looked at him with eyes full of hatred.

And Noah stared back into her eyes and slid the dagger down her throat.

And just like that, Noah had killed an SS ranker with his own hands.

"System-san, I can level up, right? Do it."