"D-Do you think you’ll survive after killing me? Huh? You might be stronger than me, you might be stronger than the rest of us, but when we don’t return to the island, the true monsters will come looking for us. And when they don’t find me or find the rest of us dead... kikiki," Zar laughed hysterically.

"Are you done?" Arc asked rather impatiently.

After realizing he’d been regressed, Arc didn’t dwell on it for too long and sent Liz on her way before speeding toward the island and arriving just in time to meet the Avariel group.

Arc was one person who knew too well what messing with time could do and tried to follow the script as closely as possible to avoid a time variant. He killed the first two Avariels from the group the exact same way and waited until Zar stepped forward and attacked first before subduing him and dragging him to the island’s edge, dangling him over the expanse of blue below.

"W-What?" The Avariel was stunned by Arc’s nonchalant demeanor.

"Now listen carefully. I know there are four of you left on the island. There’s a powerful Archer with a special class. A Rogue who can control metal. A formidable Swordsman. Then there’s your leader, a Healer... who’s also an Authority Devil." He listed them for the Avariel, whose eyes kept widening in disbelief, and by the time Arc mentioned the Authority Devil, the Avariel was too dumbstruck to formulate a sentence.

"H-How...?"

"Let’s say... I have an ability that tells me everything I want to know. But you see, abilities have cooldowns, and I need you to tell me everything you know about Rhea, and... I’ll give you a head start. If you can outpace me, you get to live," Arc stated brazenly, while snickering on the inside.

The Avariel was even more shocked when he mentioned their leader’s name, but Arc wasn’t done.

"But if you refuse to talk, remember how I said abilities have cooldowns? Well, mine isn’t that long, and I can decide to drop you right now and simply wait until it’s over to find out more. The choice is all yours," Arc said coolly.

The Avariel gritted his teeth, weighing the odds that favored the enemy either way. But one option gave him a guaranteed chance of escape with his impeccable speed.

"Alright..."

Zar went ahead to explain to Arc that their leader had a unique Talent for making thin wire traps and was active on the battlefield even as a healer, using poison-laced needles due to a unique class she obtained in a dungeon.

Outside her core teammates, the rest of them were mostly from other islands which she’d conquered and spared in return for pledging their loyalty to her.

After they managed to kill an Authority Devil, losing a lot of members in the process, an Authority Card was dropped, and she went ahead to absorb it and learned the ability to manipulate blood, hence the red threads that had trapped Arc.

His initial assessment was wrong. The red threads were blood, and blood was liquid. But for some reason, she had a way to solidify and use it while it was still liquid, which explained why his daggers had phased through them.

The only spirit attack was from her needle. And she didn’t just have one, but a whole stack of them. They were all spirit weapons obtained from a dungeon.

There were three types of attack: Physical Attack, Spirit Attack, and Soul Attack, the latter being the most dangerous and difficult to guard against, followed closely by Spirit Attack.

But unlike Soul Attack, Arc knew that Spirit Attacks had no effect on undead-type mobs and items that had immunity to such attacks, and were naturally the go-to items to counter a spirit-focused mob boss.

"Is that all?" Arc asked the Avariel after absorbing all the information.

Rhea didn’t feel so out of reach now with the new information Arc had gotten, and if only he’d asked the more important questions and hadn’t been so impatient, he wouldn’t have died so pathetically to her the first time.

"Well..." Zar hesitated for a moment. "She can be really crazy sometimes and is always searching for powerful enemies who can match her level of skill."

Are we still talking about a healer?

"Alright. A deal is a deal... here’s your head start," Arc said as his grip around Zar’s neck loosened, and he watched the Avariel’s eyes widen in surprise as he realized too late the kind of head start Arc had been talking about.

When Zar’s hand suddenly shot out and firmly grabbed Arc’s ankle, which was dangerously close to the cliff.

"If I’m going to die, then you’re going down with me," he said with a maniacal grin and dropped his weight onto Arc’s ankle, pulling him down with a victorious expression.

But nothing happened.

Arc’s leg was like an immovable mountain, and he calmly gazed below as the smile faded from the Avariel’s face.

His expression turned cold. "Should I crush your hand beneath my heel first, or are you going to let go?"

Looking up at Arc’s looming figure now, Zar didn’t feel like he was interacting with a human, but an absolute monster. At that moment, he wasn’t certain if he still had hope in his leader crushing this player, as the easy island they had targeted from afar had given birth to an equal monster.

Either way, it was going to be a formidable battle of monsters.

That was his lingering thought as he loosened his grip around the ankle and dropped down into oblivion.

Arc walked over to the border of the islands and paused. He could clearly remember creating his very own movement skill at the end of the battle between the trio and was so focused that he totally missed the system notification.

He’d been regressed now, and naturally, the skill had been wiped from the system database... but not from his mind. 𝒻𝘳ℯℯ𝑤ℯ𝒷𝘯ℴ𝓋ℯ𝘭.𝑐ℴ𝑚

Arc crouched low as he positioned himself and placed his mind in that familiar serenity. He inhaled a cold breath and let it sit in his lungs before slowly exhaling the warm breath. And before his surroundings could realize what was happening, Arc was long gone.

This time... it’ll be different.

[You have created a Mythic-tier skill (incomplete) ’Formless Heaven-Defying Path’]

[GLOBAL ANNOUNCEMENT]:

[A Player has created a Mythic-tier skill: ’Formless Heaven-Defying Path’]