74 Chapter 74: The Spear Hero

"Oh?"

Suzuki Shirou raised an eyebrow when he heard my proclamation, his face curling into a derisive sneer.

"Interesting, very interesting…"

He towered over the broken wall of wood, gripping his spear tightly as he struggled to rein in his anger. Glaring at me, he maintained that twisted smile on his face. I could almost see golden light of fury shine in his eyes.

"But what do you mean the victor has already been decided?"

I shrugged. "Exactly what I meant. If Aoyama-kun said he got my message, then he must have done what I asked him under the cover of Ryuu's lightning rod spell."

"Indeed," Aoyama agreed with a nod. "You seem to be gesturing toward me that the lightning spears that Suzuki launched at us were his belongings, and that they made for easy targets when diverted toward the row of lightning rods in the ground."

"As expected of Tanaka, the person who defeated at least five other heroes." Sanada sounded impressed as he sent a glance in my direction. "Looks like victory is just moments away."

"During your barrage, I placed at least five lightning rods in front of Aoyama-kun," I explained. "In other words, his dual blades hit your lightning spears another ten times."

Aoyama smirked. "The number on your hand should have reached the limit to forcibly teleport you away from here."

Suzuki glanced at the digits on his hand, which true enough, had already risen to 33.

I took a deep breath, and the black mana around me disappeared. The zombie wyverns and the two dragons disappeared from view, allowing the sun to shine upon the valley once more. The ominous air that permeated the atmosphere vanished along with the flock of undead dragons.

"You dispelled your summoned undead?" Lilith asked. I nodded and rubbed my left shoulder, creaking my neck.

"Yeah…continuously maintaining the summons of such high-level and extremely powerful undead takes a lot of mana. He's already lost…no need to continue."

"Phew…so we managed to end this without killing anyone this time?" Hoshizaki sighed in relief, wiping the perspiration from her face.

"Ha ha ha ha!"

However, instead of reacting furiously, Suzuki burst into laughter, even as golden energy crackled around his body, preparing to warp him out of the valley. He seemed more amused at his imminent defeat than frustrated.

"I see…you really are strong!"

Cackling, Suzuki's mouth split into a wide grin as he exhorted me. What was this sudden change in attitude? Somehow he seemed really pleased at my move?

As Suzuki laughed, I noticed a bunch of lightning drake tokens crashing onto the ground, the golden sculptures frozen in a roaring demeanor at his feet.

"Too bad…but I had already taken precautions against Aoyama."

The guy clearly was a fan of Gundam.

"Once Thousand Divine Lightning Spears fires 1600 projectiles, the requirements for an ability will be completed."

We watched the lightning drakes, which were remnants that split off from the lightning spears from earlier and fell to the earth when Suzuki launched them. Makoto tensed when he watched the golden drakes flare brightly before emanating lightning that all coalesced into a gigantic electric flame that suffused Suzuki's form.

"Those drake sculptures are some kind of enhancement."

"This move is called Godly Physique," Suzuki declared as he allowed his body to be engulfed by the divine lightning that streamed out of his drakes. He glanced down on his hand, where the purple digits were disappearing, and smirked triumphantly. "Within 60 seconds, it frees me from all types of curses…"

My eyes widened as I watched the golden lightning wrap around his body and dispelled Aoyama's curse.

"I have a lot more techniques that you think…"

Cut to the panel where Sanada, Aoyama and I were still staring at Suzuki, completely dumbfounded. No, I swear, I'm not ripping off The Silver Gravekeeper. Okay, maybe a little. Ugh…fine, let's just call this a fanfiction then…

"I am the spear hero…and one of my special abilities, though not as powerful as Kobayashi's, allows me to have more than the 10 ability limit. It is obtained from killing over 1,000 demons who are at least level 100."

Huh? So there was a limit to the number of abilities I could possess, after all. Was that why I lost the Devour ability?

"You might have heard of it before…the legendary ability that allows me to use 1,000 types of abilities…"

Thousand Killer Asura.

"You're ripping even the name off the character from that Chinese webtoon?!" I shouted angrily. "Are you not concern over what happens if the copyright laws come knocking on our creator's door?!"

"If that happens, we can just claim fanfiction. It's not like you're making money off this work anyway, right?"

I rolled my eyes but maintained a close scrutiny of Suzuki and the visage of the golden mult-armed Asura who was seated cross-legged behind him in what was supposed to be a cool image. On top of a gigantic lotus flower too, I might add. Sighing, I decided to activate Absolute Appraisal again to make sure I knew what his abilities were.

Name: Suzuki Shirou

Species: Human

Job/Rank: Lightning Lancer/Hero

Special Abilities: Thousand Killer Asura (tap to see the list of 1,000 abilities)

Oh, so that was why I didn't bother to mention that I used Absolute Appraisal on Suzuki earlier – not only would it be a spoiler that would wreck this dramatic revelation of Suzuki's special ability, there was no way in hell that I would open a list of a thousand abilities and scroll through every one of them in the middle of a battle.

"Also…my Thousand Divine Lightning Spears is ready to fire for the third time."

I gulped when I saw that he was right. All the lightning in the air was accumulating around his real physical spear, coalescing into a terrifying orb that blazed as furiously as the sun itself. Suzuki was hefting his spear up and pointing it and the expanding orb of lightning at us, gloating. I could see the triumph written all over his face.

"It will be different from before…though it only has one shot..."

The ball of light stretched, turning into a single lance-shaped projectile.

"But its power is unstoppable!"

"Then I just have to stop you from firing it, don't I?"

I swung my staff at close range, forcing Suzuki to bring his spear up to parry my strike. He leered at me as I tried to change the trajectory of his spear, and then shook his head in amusement. A blast of lightning surged from his body and pierced me in several places.

"Look at you, Tanaka…trying so desperately. Are you trying to protect your friends? Really? Those guys just stood by and did nothing while you were being bullied by Kobayashi. None of them helped you when you were in trouble. Why are you trying to save them?"

Blood dribbled from my lips as I was held suspended by the lightning spears that had penetrated my Redwood jacket. The 15-layer defenses had helped me avoid a fatal blow and being turned into a human pincushion, but enough had gotten through to hurt like hell. Gritting my teeth, I tapped my staff against the electricity and unleashed a pointblank ranged Shadow Lunar Fang to destroy the web of lightning spears, and also to blast Suzuki away.

"Fuck!"

Coughing, Suzuki stumbled out of the smoke, but the lightning ball continued to charge and accumulate at the tip of his spear.

"You really are full of stupid tricks, aren't you? Tanaka! Hah! That's more like it. I remember how impressed I was when you always refused to give up and continue to fight against Kobayashi and his goons, despite all the odds!"

"It would be odd not to fight with those odds."

I was already charging at him, readying another blow. Suzuki was probably laughing at me for dismissing my undead dragons and wyverns too early before the battle was over. Normally, I would have agreed with him and raged at myself for doing such a stupid thing. I wasn't the type to underestimate my opponents, after all.

However, I had deliberately dismissed them, not because I actually believed that the battle was over or because they really required too much mana, but because I had just realized that there was some other technique that I wanted to try out.

Well, as a last resort, maybe I would rely on Ryuu and the others to work for me, but right now I had another plan in mind.

"Entertain me as much as possible, yo!"

Suzuki was guffawing as he clashed with me, but with his spear ready to fire off that orb of light, he suddenly decided not to parry my fourth strike and instead threw out his hand. I suddenly remembered that he had a thousand abilities and quickly backpedaled.

It was too late.

"Lightning Barrier."

A huge wall of golden electricity suddenly surged from the ground and electrocuted me. I fell to my knees, gritting my teeth as I relied on my Redwood jacket to deflect the worst of the blast. But there was too much electricity that it paralyzed me, stopping my movements and suspending me on the ground. I leaned on my staff, closing my eyes and enduring the electric blast.

"I don't understand…you seem like the type of character who relies on long-range magic and summoning. So why are you so insistent on engaging me in close combat? It would only be overly one-sided in my favor."

"That's quite the myth." I grinned, despite the amount of lethal currents flowing through me. "But I'm afraid it's not true. I might not be as skilled as you or Minamoto in close combat, but I'm not exactly a long-range fighter either. I only have one ranged spell…two at the most. Thanks to my undead abilities, I realized that I'm actually quite the tank."

"Yes, that Regeneration ability of yours is really troublesome." Suzuki stepped toward me as he noted that my wounds were healing on their own. The burns that I suffered from electrocution, the blackened and sizzling skin, were all vanishing of their own accord, as well as the regenerative barriers of my Redwood jacket. "It'll be tough to defeat you. But even your Regeneration ability wouldn't be able to save you from a direct hit from an attack of this magnitude, right?"

He slowly pointed his spear at me, and I swallowed as I saw the glowing orb of lightning right in front of my face. He was right. A hit from an attack of that much power would simply obliterate me and literally erase me from existence. I wouldn't be able to regenerate if there was nothing of me left to regenerate from.

"Checkmate."

Suzuki grinned. I grinned back.

"Indeed."

"?!"

Suzuki suddenly jumped back, his incredible battle sense warning him of danger, but it was too late. I had him dancing in my palm the entire time.

Blood spears blasted through the lightning barrier and pierced through Suzuki's body. Blood spurted all over the ground and across my face, even as the flexible, fluid blood weapons hoisted the spearman high into the air.

"Gaaaah! You…!"

"Oh, your blood is pretty tasty."

I smiled as I licked Suzuki's blood off my face. With a swipe from my blood appendages, I smashed the lightning to bits and dropped onto the ground, my wounds healing. I then closed my eyes and savored the taste of Suzuki's blood. Ever since I had become a vampire, this was the first time I had drank someone else's blood, with the exception being the battle against Asakura Akane, and it tasted so sweet.

"Bloody fucker!"

With a roar, Suzuki unleahed a gigantic field of lightning spears, forcing me to jump away and retreat. His Lightning Barrier obliterated and disintegrated my blood weapons, but they had already served their purpose.

"Bloody is right," I agreed as I wiped the blood off my face and then licked it off my fingers. "Thanks for your blood."

"Hmph."

Suzuki landed on his feet and pointed his spear at me. What the fuck, man? How long did he need to charge that damned third attack? It had been over a few minutes since he had started accumulating all that lightning, and he still hadn't fired it off yet? Granted, I had kept him pretty occupied the entire time and delayed him from firing his attack, but even then…could he possibly be intentionally holding his attack back and waiting for the right time to unleash it?

Wow…this guy was really dangerous. But I was tired of fighting him. After all, I already obtained what I wanted – Suzuki's blood. I could leave the rest to my "friends" who had been standing there and doing nothing all this while.

Speaking of which…

"Looks like Suzuki is going to release a massive attack."

I turned to glance at the rest of my former classmates, the ones who weren't brainwashed and indoctrinated into trying to kill me. Makoto, Sanada, Aoyama and Hoshizaki were all standing there and staring back at me silently. I pushed my glasses up as I issued my question to the four supposedly formidable heroes.

"Don't you guys think it's time for everyone here to get serious?"

Using Absolute Appraisal, I could tell that besides Aoyama, everyone's level here didn't exceed 100. Not that I was going to tell them that, of course. Normally, if we were to follow gaming rules, players who were below level 100 wouldn't have very strong special abilities, especially when compared to players with levels over 100.

But I could clearly see that this wasn't the case here. One reason was that the whole levels and numbers and stats and values were completely meaningless. I knew that from the start. This was reality. A person's ability couldn't be measured in terms of values, and even then it wasn't absolute. In games, a person with a higher level usually had an overwhelming advantage, but it ignored a lot of realistic factors such as strategy, luck, wits, intelligence and skill – skill, not as in the numerical value or type of ability but the skill to use one's strength or ability to its fullest potential.

"I don't know what all this nonsense about level 100 is about or whatever, but it's clear that you guys wouldn't lose to anybody of a supposedly higher level."

Makoto's wooden flute that could manipulate five elements, Sanada's incredible ice ability with huge offensive and defensive powers, and Hoshizaki's overwhelming stargazer ability that could obliterate even Suzuki's Lightning Dragon. Even Suzuki had trouble fighting against them, and they could easily defeat Ooyama Eiji, who was level 800.

"Our abilities are indeed special."

Makoto admitted as he took out five of his knives, a grudging smile on his face. Five different elements appeared and crackled around their blades, from the golden glow of metal, the red and orange blaze of fire, the green and brown dance of wood, the blue swirl of water and the muddy vigor of earth, each representing their elements.

"But we just wanted to see the strength of the gravekeeper, the guy who supposedly defeated five heroes by himself."

"It wasn't by myself," I muttered. "In some cases, I had help."

"It's too bad that you haven't been able to completely grasp your powers," Sanada Hiroyuki remarked as he brought out his ice bell, which glowed and froze his fingers while conjuring a bunch of crystalline snowflakes.

The ice rapidly spread all over his arm, and even expanded across his head and chest, forming some sort of intimidating frost armor. His hand melded and was sculpted into a gigantic frost blade, while his body was protected by icy chainmail.

"Although Suzuki is strong…as Makoto says…everyone at Iron Knights will not lose to any of the elite, chosen heroes in our class!"

"We wasted a lot of time earlier," Hoshizaki mumbled sheepishly. Conjuring a gigantic constellation, she released much more of her power, which emanated a much stronger force than when she was fighting Suzuki earlier.

Damn, she had been holding back just now?

"We'll all charge in together to finish him off," Aoyama said as he held his dual scythes, which were glowing with blue mana.

"Oh?"

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Suzuki looked down on the four Iron Knights who were charging at him – particularly, Sanada, Makoto and Aoyama, who formed the spearhead. With a smirk, Suzuki sneered at their advance.

"You're charging in to die?"

He snickered as he held his spear up and pointed it at them. His attack was finally ready, the orb having stopped growing a long time ago.

"Hehehe…die!"

The orb lengthened and turned into a single concentrated beam of lightning that lanced out of the tip of his spear and toward the approaching vanguard with a thunderous roar.

However, even as the golden beam blasted a devastating path through the valley, carving a colossal trail of destruction in the earth and boring a hole in the mountain ahead, the Iron Knights deftly evaded his massive attack. Chunks of earth and rock billowed into the air, lifted up by the sheer force of the strike.

Atop one particularly huge chunk of earth, Aoyama landed skillfully, using the flying piece of rock to gain a foothold. Some distance away, Makoto mirrored his movements, jumping on another huge rock that flew in the wake of the destruction.

"Didn't think it would be a laser type of attack!" Aoyama murmured. "Everyone, you know what to do!"

And they did. The three male Iron Knights sprang from rock to rock, bouncing about the place, dodging the lightning beam while closing in on Suzuki. They suddenly scattered and spread out, rapidly moving and changing directions. In an instant, they were behind Suzuki, ready to spring an attack on his unguarded back.

Suzuki glanced at them with a smirk.

They see that my attack is a beam, so they will probably appear behind me and split up to attack me from all sides.

"Kekeke! As if I'm going to let you have your way!"

The thousand divine lightning spears appeared right above him, all aimed at the dodging and evading Iron Knights. At the same time, Suzuki turned around to redirect the lightning beam at their approaching forms.

"This time, you guys won't be able to escape!"

A colossal beam from the front, and a thousand spears from above…no matter how skilled, fast or powerful those four were, there was no way they would emerge from this unscathed.

But right before the lightning beam and lightning spears could hit any of them, a familiar voice cut across the valley.

"Everyone, stop!"

Sanada, Aoyama, Makoto and Hoshizaki all froze when they heard the command, or perhaps they momentarily stopped when confronted with the countless lightning projectiles that were descending upon them.

It didn't matter.

A glowing yellow barrier appeared before them and deflected the beam, causing it to bounce off and fly back toward its bearer. At the same time, it protected them from the deadly hail of lightning spears from above.

The reflected beam blasted toward Suzuki, who dodged his own attack by moving his head ever so slightly. It nearly scorched his hair and shoulder, missing him by a hair's breadth, but otherwise he was completely unscathed.

Both Lilith and I watched, completely taken aback by the sudden turn of events, and at the person who was capable of blocking and reflecting Suzuki's super-powerful attack, which was supposed to be more powerful when fired for the third time. And so easily, at that.

High above us a cube divided into several more cubes, and they suddenly split up and flew in all directions. One cube hit Aoyama, and another hit Makoto who was nearby. A third struck Hoshizaki, who was perched atop one of those flying rocks, and a fourth collided with a surprised Sanada. A fifth smacked a panicked Nishida Kensuke in the face as he floundered about. The next thing I knew, all five of them were floating in midair, suspended inside huge yellow barrier-cubes, unable to escape from inside them.

"What the hell is this?!"

Nishida yelled as he pounded on the walls of the cube-barrier, to no avail.

The one who's observing from the tower is finally making her move…well, I know this person!

Inside a gigantic cuboid barrier of his own, Suzuki lowered his smoking spear and glanced at his huge prison, which had trapped not just him but also all of the thousand spears that he was launching from the heavens. That was one hell of a titanic barrier-cube when compared to all the others'. Raising a hand, Suzuki snarled.

"Who dares to get in my way!?"

"Stop!"

A voice issued an order as its owner slowly approached.

"You are strong…but you cannot win against all four of them together."

Nagano Nanaka hovered atop an arcane-looking yellow barrier-cube thing that resembled a floating stage. Levitating herself to address Suzuki, she continued calmly.

"And if you include me in the fight…"

Potent magic swirled around her as she glared at the defiant Suzuki with very stern eyes.

"You will lose very quickly!"