36 Penne Ryder's Wrath

The villagers all panicked. They had noticed the two guards who were devoured by the huge slime. They were ignorant, but not stupid.

"I'll... I'll come to your side, so just don't kill me, okay?!"

"Me too! Me too! I'd rather be executed than eaten up by a slime!"

Soon, every villager was standing behind Alaric. They numbered just under 50, so it seemed as if Alaric gathered an army of bumpkins.

'Well, I'm a bumpkin myself.'

Currently, Gunnar was stretching himself in arcs, moving quickly through the village. The specifics of Alaric's command were conveyed through Alaric's ability, and Gunnar naturally understood that he had to kill the men in armor.

'Kra!'

Gunnar was currently engaging the 12 guards alone, 2 just so happened to be rank-1 awakeners. They would give Gunnar trouble, but not much.

One of the rank-1 awakeners seemed to have a wind-based talent and used an exhale to blow one of the guards out of harm's way. The other had a red aura around his body, and it seemed as if his talent was some sort of physical buff.

They were both rather useless against Gunnar, of course.

After making sure Gunnar was sure to win, Alaric ordered Clarus to remain at the gate with the villagers. Now, he would handle the Ryder family.

...

At the back of the village, in the Ryder estate, Penne Ryder was in his luxurious bedroom drinking a cup of wine. When he heard that megaphone announcement, he was a bit embarrassed that his guards allowed such a thing to happen. Especially so with his mistress in his bed, just beside him.

"Those damn guards need to learn to act first and ask questions later! Now, all of the peasants below will think me to be a weakling!"

The woman beside him, although not his wife, seemed rather confident in offering her opinion to the angry tyrant, "My love, why not just execute the guards? Then the dirty riffraff below will feel as if it was their fault, right?"

Penne Ryder shook, and his wavy blond hair with it.

"Margaret, you're a genius! I will execute them at once!"

The tyrant directly crushed the wine glass in his hand, and thrust the sharp glass into the neck of the woman called "Margaret."

Penne Ryder looked down at her dully, ignoring the blood that had splashed onto his black robe, and said, "But to offer me a suggestion that I'd already thought of, isn't that rebelling against the government?"

She simply looked up at him in shock, her eyes losing the light they once had.

...

Alaric had arrived in front of the Ryder estate, the cries of the 12 village guards sounding far behind him.

"Penne Ryder, come and receive your punishment!"

Suddenly, the two doors in front of Alaric caught fire, and the golden handles connected to them began to melt.

"Dirty clod... why did my esteemed hunters and guardsmen allow you to come this far? It seems I need to reform!"

Alaric looked at the man in front of him, his silhouette revealing itself as the doors burnt down.

'Round figure, wavy blond hair, and red eyes. All that, plus the burning doors, this is Penne Ryder.'

"I am of similar status to you, Penne. I hail from Ooze Village, and I am its village chief. In order to protect the people of Ryder Village, I have decided that you are to be executed!"

As if in response to Alaric's words, the two doors suddenly froze solid, and Penne Ryder kicked at them, flinging the two doors in Alaric's direction.

Of course, Alaric simply ducked to the side, evading any possible damage, and the frozen doors shattered under the weight of their crash.

"I see, you, a mere peak rank-1 wielder wants to challenge me?! You dare?!"

Penne Ryder's red eyes widened, and his pupils shrunk. When he sensed the mana of the young man in front of him, he became jealous of his ability to become a peak rank-1 existence at such a tender age. This, of course, only served to make him even angrier, even more embarrassed.

Alaric simply stared at him, knowing that the angrier this man was, the higher chance he had of victory.

Of course, Alaric could simply call Sonic to finish things right away, but he wouldn't lose the opportunity to fight someone stronger than him, he needed such an experience.

Penne Ryder roared, and a visible heatwave exploded out from his body. It was as if a of pure heat surrounded him, distorting the space around the Ryder tyrant.

"Today, I kill!" Penne Ryder shouted, and Alaric began to sweat despite not being within the sphere surrounding Penne Ryder.

Alaric looked to the rug beneath Penne Ryder, noticing that a circle 5 meters in diameter had been burned into it, and thought, 'He has raised the temperature 2 meters adjacent to him to an extreme, and I can even feel the heat affecting me from here!'

Suddenly, Penne Ryder used his rank-2 wielder's strength and burst toward Alaric. His speed, although not comparable to Sonic, was especially impressive.

'If that thing touches me, I'm screwed!'

Alaric jumped back, gaining distance quite easily as he had been standing atop the estate's front stairway beforehand. With gravity aiding him, he was able to barely escape Penne Ryder's "Tempature Control" talent.

With his mouth curled upwards, Alaric taunted, "A rank-2 wielder failing to capture a rank-1 instantly... aren't you too fat?"

The temperature surrounding Penne Ryder quickly rose another few degrees, and Alaric quickly shouted, "Bind!"

The ring upon his hand, also known as Pamela, stretched forward! She quickly transformed into a rope and entered Penne Ryder's heat zone. A slime was completely immune to extreme temperature environments, and even the heat surrounding Penne Ryder, which even melted the ground beneath him, was nothing.

Pamela quickly wrapped her now rope-like body around Penne Ryder and forced his hands to his side. He could no longer use his upper body for anything.

Alaric then jumped further back, shouting, "Eat!"

Soon, a sizzling sound came from the slime rope surrounding Penne Ryder, and his face contorted with pain.

"What is this spell, you dirty clod?! What are you doing?!" Penne Ryder shouted.

Then, Penne Ryder's red eyes began to glow, and he changed the temperature surrounding him to that of a freezing state. Noticing that it didn't affect the strange rope keeping his arms tightly bound, he tried brute force. His arms, bound by Pamela, began to move, forcing Pamela to struggle to keep him in place.

Alaric had already landed on a villager's house, looking down on the tyrant.

"I call this spell 'retribution!' The real question is, are you seriously losing a fight with a rank-1 wielder?"