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“That’s all you got?”

Acting as if they found the whole thing trivial, Knuckle provoked the enemies further as the ‘elite of the elites’ that the Chaos guild sent out to defeat the three of them lay defeated on the ground.

“Whoa, amazing! But I guess that should be expected from the Church of the Lord?”
“What do you mean, lord? It’s Goddess now!”

The allies were excited as if there was a festival happening. They were so relaxed that they even started joking around with each other.

“What the- you really lost to those punks wearing nothing but underwear?”
“I knew that the Chaos guild’s fame had fallen rock bottom, but this is way too much.”
“I really wonder if we can even win this war.”

On the other hand, the enemies all sounded like they were at their own funerals. Seeing as how the top brass was keeping silent about this result, what else could be said about it?

They’ve done quite enough already. We simply needed to keep making fun of them and wait for the siege weapons to arrive.

“Hear me! Is it fine if I, Cloud, challenge you all?”

Before I could send a whisper message to Knuckle to retreat now, someone announced loudly towards them.

“Cloud?”

Hearing an unfamiliar name, I asked out loud who it was.

“It’s the Chaos guild’s vice-guild leader. A two-handed weapon user who’s ranked at 13th in the top rankings.”

Katalina explained who he was to me. But for some reason, I did feel like I had seen his name somewhere before. At 13th in rankings, he was practically one of the top-ranked users of the server. It was because there wasn’t much difference in levels between the top 10 ranked users and those below it, and in reality, there was only 2~3 levels difference between the 10th and 11th ranks.

“Then that means it will be quite dangerous for them…”

Even at a glance, you could see that if he were to go against the 3 men, they would likely be torn to shreds in a split second. The difference in their levels was way too high after all…

I sent a whisper to Knuckle without any hesitation.

They probably can say that without any fear since they haven’t actually gone against actual top-ranked users until now. For users that weren’t in a guild like them, there weren’t many chances for them to fight a much higher level user.

Even for me, in the whole 5 years I spent playing the game in the past, I could count the number of times I fought against a high level user with my fingers.

I didn’t say anything more after he gave his reply. Even if they were to lose there, it wouldn’t directly damage the morale of our side. We would only end up protecting the little amount of pride they have. And then by that time, the siege weapons would have arrived.

Of course, the best-case scenario would be for them to win against that Cloud user, but from my perspective, it didn’t seem like they would be able to. I would be amazed and thankful if they could even just buy some time by making it a draw.

“All right. We shall accept your challenge.”

Thinking that my silence meant that I was giving them permission, Knuckle accepted Cloud’s challenge.

“Heheh… thank you.”

He laughed out loud as if he couldn’t have imagined that the three men would actually accept his challenge, and then leaped high into the air after his reply.

Slam!

Because of the size of his body, a powerful crashing sound rang out as he landed and dust flew into the air. It was quite a bombastic way of entering battle.

Whoooaaa!!!

Perhaps because of his powerful-looking appearance, the morale of the Chaos guild rose up again as they cheered loudly. On the other hand, our allies all looked at Knuckle with half worry and half expectation.

“You can do it!”
“Use up all the energy you ever had, represent the Church of the Goddess!”

But nevertheless, they still received encouragement from the allies. They may have believed that they were brave to challenge this powerful foe without backing down. Since this fight definitely was too unfair to the point where it wouldn’t be much of an embarrassment to decline, the allies must have seen their actions as them trying their absolute best to protect my honor.

But since they were the ones that immediately said they would head into the frontlines the moment they received their gold, it was hard to say that they were people who knew well about honor. Is it perhaps so they can simply gain fame? But their outfits were way too suggestive to say that they were aiming for that. Or perhaps they were specifically aiming for that direction, maybe.

But even so, to stop while you are winning was a much better outcome for us. I didn’t need them to take the risk of fighting against Cloud as well.

“Hmm.”

And as I was wondering what to do, I witnessed a strange movement among the three men. The large-sized user with the ID ‘Hallelujah’ had changed his two-handed axe into something else.

The two-handed axe he was wielding until now looked to be plain in appearance and strictly used for its utility, but now he changed to a two-handed axe that had a powerful-looking dragon decoration, giving off a high-tier look.

Though appearances of weapons don’t always 100% change the outcome of battles, I could tell that those axes were what represented their confidence in this fight.

“I bet they got their confidence from pulling out at least an ancient tier weapon.”
“Huh? What do you mean?”

Katalina reacted to me mumbling to myself.

“Look closely at Hallelujah’s axe in his hand.”
“Let’s see.”

Casting ‘zoom’ magic towards the direction I was pointing at, Katalina soon let out a gasp of surprise.

“Hmm? If we’re lucky, we could be witnessing yet another legendary weapon that was shrouded in mystery.”

Even Katalina could instinctively tell that there was a high possibility that it could be a legendary tier weapon.

“Thinking about it, his ID ‘Hallelujah’ is actually familiar to me.”
“You’re saying you saw him in the past?”
“Yeah. In the past, the legendary item that appeared in the ‘Hidden Remains of Ancient Ruins’ was that axe. I’m not sure whether it’s because of his large body size, but I think I did see him as one of the surviving members that stuck to the end of the dungeon that I once explored before. I was also a member of that party that nearly got wiped… I had to give up and return to town because a monster with way too high magic resistance appearing, I really thought I was just seconds away from being massacred along with everyone else. I thought that everyone had died back then, but after some time passed, a legendary tier item appeared from within. I was so sad that I gave up on the chance to have it, even though that weapon isn’t related to my class at all. Ugh!”

It definitely feels like she’s hiding something in her story.

“So you’re saying that in the past, that user named Hallelujah was quite a high level?”

I was certain since he must have had the qualifications enough to stay alive together with her that far.

“That’s right. At that time he would have been 10th in the top ranked users. Though since that time all of the top ranked users excluding you drastically changed in placing on the ranks including myself, so I’m not sure about his exact placement in the ranks right now.”

Remembering what she could in the past, Katalina spoke while her expression looked as if she was annoyed at how dogged he was. Then again, I also knew that this Artoria character hadn’t had her number 1 spot in the top ranked users taken even once for the last five years, so I understood her reaction.

Whoa!

Yet another shout of surprise came from the allies.

I turned my head to see what it was about, and it was the three men all taking on Cloud at once. Thinking that Cloud may be going easy on them, I looked in detail at his face and seeing his extremely angry expression, it didn’t seem like he was going easy on them.

“That’s amazing.”
“They had a reason why they could be so confident about this.”

I was confident in my character control but those men were also showing skillful movements comparable with my level.

Seeing how the three of them attacked Cloud continuously with one skill after another in perfect synchronization showed they knew each of their exact roles. As Cloud only had average skill character control, it was only his difference in level numbers that was sustaining him in this battle.

As opposed to their weak appearance, they showed off powerful skills of at least S tier, causing Cloud to struggle in trying to fend them off. If that was me there, how would I fare? Of course, due to how much higher level and stats I had in comparison to them, it meant that if I were to get into a serious fight with them, I would have won the battle in an instant.

I wouldn’t even compare myself to Cloud over there who not only showed poor control skills but also inexperience in fighting against a team of users who worked together efficiently.

I came to the conclusion in my mind that if I was so curious, I could just ask them to have a duel with me later. There have been so many things to think about carefully these days that in order to stop myself from overloading with various thoughts, I needed the wisdom to simplify such thoughts that way.

“It seems like they’re going to win!”
“Yeah, it does!”

Cloud had already lost his initiative and was barely surviving the fight, he may find it unbelievable but he found himself in a situation of being absolutely wrecked by some no-name players.

And the situation was so bad that he couldn’t shake off his shock.

“Aaargh!”

In the end, he ended up not being able to dodge Hallelujah’s two-handed axe landing on his back, which led to a chain of attacks from others that continually landed on Cloud’s body, all landing critical hits.

“Goodbye.”

The final strike was delivered by Hallelujah’s two-handed axe. As he stood there, axe raised high in the air like an executioner, Cloud could only be on his knees and hands on the floor out of breath, as Hallelujah directly struck down his axe on Cloud’s neck.