"You.. you have a huge secret on you, don't you?"

Lagartha stood straight and looked at Eren with grim expressions as she asked. She refused to look at her party members' bodies after sending them nearby with her mana sense.

Eren chuckled when he heard Lagartha's question. He dropped his axes and clapped his hands to applaud Lagartha for her ability to think straight on the battlefield. He stared at her before commenting.

"The secret to success is not to let anyone else in on the secret."

Eren laughed as he looked at Lagertha amusingly. His smiling face looked haunting under the bright moonlight because of the blood and gore it was painted with.

Lagartha understood what Eren was trying to say right away. To avoid escalating the conflict, she wanted to ask him if he could let them go. She would offer him all the resources she has on her and other Spiders as compensation.

However, Eren's statement told her something. The guy was more interested in killing all of them for a while. There was no negotiating with this devil who appeared unflinching even when surrounded by three more rankers.

Eren wanted to cast Igni Lotus at this point and be done with all of his remaining enemies. But he knew that the rankers were more sensitive to the mana fluctuations than some half-brain-dead Slaad. He wouldn't be able to cast the spell peacefully if they were to guess that he was using Igni Lotus. Instead, it would invite retaliation while putting him in a vulnerable position.

'Hm. I don't need to mobilize a tank to beat someone with a knife.'

Eren said to himself as he casually stretched his legs and arms. The all-stats recovery potion that he had drunk before the three new opponents showed up kicked in and extinguished the stress on his muscles and mana circuits.

"Ready when you are."

Eren said as he stretched. The four rankers who were surrounding him with serious looks suddenly had their faces painted with aggravation. It seemed they were busy crafting a strategy to deal with him.

"Let's go."

As Lagartha said, she disappeared from her position. It looked like her legs had turned into green vines when she used her movement spell. Shifa and Vinah followed behind her.

Eren smiled when he felt three presences closing in on him from three different directions. He kicked the hilts of the axes he had dropped near him and made them fly. Igni Chains appeared to latch onto weapons' handles.

Clang! Clang! Clang!

Lagartha, Shifah, and Vinah moved in coordination as they attacked Eren together. His weapons were used against the weapons held by the three enemies.

Lagartha had a long spear in her hand. The spear had complicated runic inscriptions that made it look like a precious artifact in the Meta rank.

The trio exchanged dozens of moves with the devil in a short span of a minute. Still, no side had managed to land a lethal blow on the other.

historical

'Hm. I wonder how many Mana Quartz I'll get if I sell this spear to Malcolm.'

Eren thought to himself as he battled with three rankers at once. He was at ease fighting with three ladies. He would not admit it in front of capable female rankers, but dealing with most female rankers was an easy task in general.

Shifa and Vihah were holding daggers in both of their hands. All four daggers were identical and looked lethal. After adding Lagartha's weapon, Eren was fighting against five weapons simultaneously using his mana-based martial arts and Jeet Kune Do.

'Hm? Why aren't my attacks connecting?'

Eren felt puzzled by the way things were progressing. The three ladies easily deflected all of his attacks, as if they could predict them. That's because they were using a non-elemental spell named Sense Sharing, which allowed the ladies to enhance their senses.

'Faster and faster until the thrill of speed overcomes the speed of death.'

Eren chuckled as he had a random thought while playing the game of life and death with three ladies. He sent his mana circuits into hyperdrive once again without worrying about the repercussions.

"Aaaaah!"

Shifa was the first to get by Eren's ax he increased his weapon handling agility all of a sudden. She was hit by Eren's reverse swing that she couldn't guard against. As a result, the back of his ax hit under her chin, sending her flying with the sheer force it had generated.

Sense Sharing spell's effect was halved because Shifa was kicked out from battling Eren. The latter suddenly found it easier to strike his opponents. He wasn't the one who'd let a chance like this go to waste.

Igni Wave

Eren charged his two axes with fire-element mana before casting his flying slashes. Lagartha managed to parry the spell directed at her using her wood element mana's resistive properties against fire.

p She surrounded herself with green wines before the flying slash hit her. Despite being dragged away by the force of the slash, she was safe inside the layer of green vines.

Vinah had an earth-element defensive spell at her disposal. She could create a layer of earth-element mana skin all over her body that had exceptional defensive properties irrespective of how thin and insignificant it looked. It would look like the snake-type Wesen had shed a skin whenever she dispersed the defensive spell.

However, Eren's weapon handling was too fast for her to handle. The attack came at her before she could guard against it using her defensive spell. The next thing she knew, both her legs were cut off at the knees.

"Aaaaaaaah!"

Vihah had lost her legs as she flew away from a still-spinning Eren. Her frail and sharp screech conveys her current state the most effectively.

The two axes were still moving rapidly around Eren as he continued to work on them. It started looking like he was juggling his weapons for a circus show. The guy was still handling his weapons like he was getting into the groove of handling multiple enemies at once.

'The bastard's playing with us.'

Lagartha ignored Vihah's screech and Shifa's panicked voice and focused on Eren. She knew approaching the devil was dangerous. But she had to do it to cast her spell effectively.

"Green Prison!"

Eren was suddenly surrounded by green vines that sprouted from the ground and shot for the sky. They eventually interlocked in the air, creating a dome-shaped prison that trapped Eren inside it.

The thick, green vines served as prion bars that had radiant runic inscriptions on them. It was obvious that these weren't the vines one could just hope to cut with sharp weapons. Just like Eren's Igni Lotus, Green Prison was meant to keep the caster's enemies inside its domain.

Eren fired Igni Lotus at the vines. But as expected, they did a little damage to the vines which were recovered shortly after. Moreover, vines sprouted to fortify the area that was under attack from Eren's spells.

'Hm. Now, this is how I need to cast Igni Lotus. I need to learn how she did it.'

Lagartha had managed to cast her spell without letting Eren counter it by just moving away. This was something he wanted for his Igni Lotus. The battle would have been over by now if he could cast Igni Lotus this way.

'One can learn so much from their enemies.'

Eren wasn't worried even when he found himself getting trapped by Lagartha's spell. It was like he was in a world of his own. For some reason, he found the act of getting trapped intriguing. Because now he could celebrate his freedom when he gets out.

"Tohir, you are up!"

Lagartha said after landing safely a few meters away from Eren. She then immediately approached Vihah who was in critical condition because of her half-chopped legs. Her sister Shifa was already trying to stop the bleeding by coating her open wounds with her mana.

Tohir was kept in the background during the whole ordeal because he had been mentally broken by Eren in a previous fight. Plus, he wasn't a close-range fighter, to begin with. That's why the guy had always kept his distance from Eren when they were fighting four vs. one. And that's why he stayed alive.

Lagartha had decided to keep Tohir on the backfoot until her Green Prison was successfully cast. She deployed the team's ranger as soon as she made sure Eren was unable to break free from the cage she had put him in.

"Hahaha! You are done for, you crafty devil."

Tohir found newfound courage in him to face Eren when he saw him behind the green bars. The shakes he was feeling looking at Eren were gone. He didn't care that one of his party members had her legs chopped off and was currently struggling to stabilize her condition.

The ranger found too much joy in seeing a caged devil care about anything else.