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“Huh?!”

All the Chaos guild members turned to face me. As I was obviously in a position where I was trying to strike from behind, I flinched in surprise for a moment.

“It’s the enemy!!”
“What the hell!? Why is there an enemy here, what happened to the allies back at the federal room?!”

The Chaos guild members cautiously studied me, as commotion rose amongst the commanders. It didn’t matter what they were doing since instead of awkwardly standing there and smiling, I just charged into the enemies directly.

“You’re brazen to come and take us on alon… Huh? It’s Artoria!”
“It’s the lord of Camelot, Artoria?!”
“It’s true! It really is Artoria!”

The enemies one by one began to recognise me, as my ID became clearer the closer I got to them. As opposed to the composition of the Shining guild army, the Chaos guild had many long-ranged DPS. On top of that, most of them were mages as well. I activated my skill and chose the tactic of charging into them directly and causing chaos instead of giving them a chance to use their magic.

“S… Stop her!”

It was a late response. Their formation was set up with the tankers directly in front of Katalina, meaning that the healers and mages in the rear were defenseless against my charge attack. Without any tankers to defend them, the healers and mages didn’t have enough time to cast their spells.

“Sav…”

I saw fear in their eyes, but I simply swung my Excalibur at them right away.

Slash!

With a single slash and its cutting sensation flowing through my arms, two or three bodies fell over. Ah, if it wasn’t for Katalina I would have been able to cut down even more enemies before they noticed, so it was a bit of a shame.

But I wasn’t too late. Before they could change their formation again, I started cutting them down with the healers as top priority.

Numerous system messages indicating that I had resisted curses came up endlessly. Wine stood there glaring at me and trying to cast a curse, but Katalina was blocking her attempt.

As opposed to her quite wounded body, her eyes shone with life so it seemed like she still had quite a good amount of determination left in her.

Stab!

“Eeek!”

Feeling pain on my waist from getting stabbed, I couldn’t help but let out a scream.

Unbelievable, though I was swinging my sword around nonchalantly, someone managed to dodge all my attacks and landed an attack on my waist.

Feeling a direct damage being dealt to me for the first time among all the large-scale battles, I felt a little stunned by the situation.

It was certainly called ‘Real Mode’ for a reason.

Holding onto my sanity from the excruciating pain, I put strength into my legs which were shivering in shock.

As I surveyed my surroundings with more caution, I suddenly had a different sensation go through my mind. Was this because of the pain I was feeling? But in any case, this time I felt that the enemy was aiming for my neck.

The most terrifyingly fast and powerful attack I had ever experienced quickly raced towards me, aiming directly for my neck.

As it was definitely impossible for me to react to the attack with my two-handed sword, I tilted my neck backwards and twisted my body. Then I saw it. A figure that was holding a dagger that looked exactly like the one that stabbed my waist, wearing a completely black outfit, together with a mask which had a significant engraving of a silver tiara in the corner.

“Ah!”

An important bit of information suddenly raced through my mind as I remembered. Tiara of Secrecy. Even though he was 9th in the top-ranked players of the server, he wasn’t associated with any guilds and was someone that profited massively from mostly carrying out contractual assassinations of other users, which was what I had heard.

The dagger was another of legendary items in the England server, called ‘Nightmare’. Though he was ranked 9th in power amongst the players, it was fair to say that he would be easily the top in regards of player versus player battles.

As opposed to usual users who advanced their character through hunting monsters, he was someone that raised his character by killing mostly users and NPCs, so it was obvious that he would be regarded as one of the best in terms of his control during battles.

Only then did I realize the reason why Katalina was in this situation. She had probably declared a one-on-one battle against Wine, but had been ambushed by Tiara and was defeated.

‘Damn it. I was too overconfident.’

I was definitely in over my head due to how easily I was able to subjugate Lucas. It was completely my fault for looking down on the enemies so much. If I was just a little bit more cautious even, I would have been able to deduce their attack and dodge it.

Woosh, woosh!

As the attacks were too fast to recognise with my naked eye, I used the sensation I was feeling through my body as well as my armor to defend and dodge the attacks aimed at me.

Though it wouldn’t matter if it was only Tiara that was attacking me, there were numerous enemies also engaging me at the same time.

If it wasn’t for the huge amount of health points I had, it wouldn’t be weird to see me quickly fall to the attacks I was receiving. That was how much numerous minuscule damages I was receiving.

I predicted and waited for the daggers flying towards me directed at my waist. Even while I was receiving numerous different attacks, I started to recognise a pattern amidst all the dodging.

They would aim to attack my legs or arms where a relatively small amount of damage would be inflicted, then if I started to concentrate on blocking those locations they would aim at each part of my body which would be fatal to be hit on.

Considering that I was wearing full plate mail, the only places that they could attack properly with their dagger was my exposed neck and abdomen area, meaning that I was able to narrow down the areas they would attack next.

In any case, that was a big chance for me. To visually recognise all their attacks at 100% probability was impossible due to their higher dexterity, so the only way I could block their attack was to predict where they would aim for next.

‘It’s coming!’

Finally, I had the feeling that they were aiming for my abdomen with their dagger. It seemed like an accurate singular strike after numerous strikes against my legs or arms.

“Got y…!”

In my decision to sacrifice my health to attack them in return, I revealed my abdomen for them to attack while I lifted up my Excalibur and pointed towards Tiara’s neck, cutting a diagonal line of sword force.

Clang!

“Rgh!!”

With the sharp sound of metal clashing, two screams of pain rang out at the same time. I had predicted that I was going to experience quite a lot of pain so I had closed my eyes before opening them again, but an unexpected situation occurred instead.

The Nightmare dagger which should have stabbed deep into my waist had clashed against Excalibur, and feeling the attack that I had inflicted on them, Tiara stepped backwards with a trembling hand.

“Huh? Woman?”

I was absolutely surprised. Though I knew that their body shape was on the thinner side due to their form-fitting outfit which revealed their outline, I didn’t realize she would be a woman.

Most of the top 10 ranked users in Korea were male with only just one exception, and this was the same with many other countries so the fact that there were 4 women in the top 10 ranked users in this country was¹… Wait, this wasn’t the time for that.

I shook my head to stop thinking of such useless things. To give the enemy enough time to recover in this situation where I could still be in trouble even if I had completely cut down Tiara was something I shouldn’t do.

Though I was weak against beautiful women, I still knew the time and place for that.

“Are you surprised? Cough… I’m actually more surprised about you, Miss Artoria.”

Tiara who had been constantly attacking me with no rest in between seemed to have received quite a lot of damage from that one attack as she spat out a glob of blood before conversing with me.

“I heard that you were a neutral user, so why are you attacking us?”
“Fufu. I guess it’s because of the 1 billion gold contract that I received.”
“Contract, huh…”

She certainly was an assassin who worked on a contractual basis. She would receive any request as long as enough compensation was given after all.

“You were an unexpected obstacle, Miss Artoria… I would be losing too much from this to be a profit.”

It seemed like her plan had been ruined, as she shook her head and spoke with annoyance.

“Looks like the contract was for you to delete Merlin.”

She nodded her head lightly after hearing my words.

“That’s right. But considering you are here, Miss Artoria, you must have come here with others as well.”
“That’s right.”

And right on time, my allied commanders as well as their soldiers appeared.

The roar of the crowd rang out as they flooded in.

“We’re here to support you, my lord!”

Staring at the reinforcements flooding in with a troubled expression, Tiara seemed to have made a decision as she turned towards Wine and spoke.

“I don’t think this was in the contract.”
“Shut up! If you had just killed Merlin a little bit faster…”
“Goodness… The situation had turned out this way only because you said you’ll finish her off yourself, didn’t you? The whole story is important.”
“Ngh!”

They conversed with each other as if I didn’t exist at all.

“Looks like this would be a great time to retreat though?”
“Damn it! Everyone, retreat!”

The battle engagement which was getting busier was suddenly over in a flash.

The attacking side of a siege battle could always give up on their attacking attempt as opposed to the defending side, which leads to 50 million gold that is required for requesting a commencement of siege battles being naturally returned to the defending side.

“Then I’ll see you next time, Miss Artoria.”

Tiara disappeared like a hallucination right in front of my eyes but not before giving me a wink. Though her face from below her nose was covered in cloth, considering the outlines of her facial features it seemed that while she may not be the most beautiful, she still had the capability to be quite a beauty.

I guess the one thing that’s a shame would be that her eyes were a bit too much on the sharp aggressive side?

“Ellie!!!”

With a shout, someone dashed towards me directly. I was able to tell just from how they were calling my name, so I instinctively turned my head towards the voice. As Lina practically jumped into my arms, I received her in my arms without any problem.

If I was a man I would have been in a great looking position of holding her in a princess carry pose, but…

“Ah, Lina, are you okay?”

Though she definitely didn’t look to be okay in terms of health, the important thing was that she was alive so I asked the important question.

“Yeah! As you can see, you came in just in time. How were you able to come here though?”
“Well actually…”

It seemed like this conversation was going to go on for a while.

“Hm. Let’s get out of here first and organize ourselves a bit before I tell you everything.”
“Kay kay.”
“For now, you’re hea…²”

Katalina’s eyes sharpened mercilessly.

‘H… hey, I’m your life savior you know!’

1. Robinxen: Rule Brittania!
2. Robinxen: Oh how I wish I could know the full sentence here.