Day 6. A green valley surrounded by a distant mountain range. Around 5 PM.
A small patch of land in this region had been destabilized by the rankers' fight. There were many residual mana signatures in the surroundings. The spread of new mana signatures just kept on going.
Meaning the fight between two groups of rankers was still ongoing.
"Aaaaargh!"
Veronica cried in pain when she sustained a fatal sword wound below her ribs. She looked more emotionally hurt than physically hurt. A tinge of sadness could be seen in her eyes.
Veronica was the same ranker who was with Ivor and Jason, forming a team with them. She had traveled from the city of Osan to the city of Lionhearts with the group. After Ivor was branded the Butcher of Osan Woods, she stuck with Jason and began attending Royal Ren from her second academic year on.
Veronica was devastated because the one who had attacked her was none other than Jason– the person whom she had come to trust the most in recent years.
"I am sorry, Veronica. I didn't have a choice."
Jason spoke solemnly as he slashed his sword to clear the blood from Veronica's body. He then looked at Bert who had been a pain in the ass to deal with up until this point.
Veronica and Bert both fell to their knees at the same time. It looked like Bert had also sustained similar injuries to his torso despite the golden armor he was wearing.
***
Jason had used a special Ability of his to hurt Bert even after he was seen wearing the Armor of Pride. With his Ability, he could link two of his opponents together so that they could share each other's injuries. Whatever damage he inflicted on one opponent, it would get mirrored onto the body of his second opponent.
This was Jason's Ability as a demonic ranker.
Arthur was always fond of lost paths that led further into the ranking journey. And he didn't shy away from using his capable son as a test subject for such paths. After all, the test subject needed to be capable and closely related to him to derive tangible and usable deductions from the experiments.
Arthur gave up on making himself or his son turn into a half-blood after the Osan Woods' Butcher fiasco. He started studying Demonmir's case in the kingdom's protected archives and found a way to perform a demon-summoning ritual for his son Jason.
Jason also willingly took part in the ritual. He considered it a necessity to survive against the threat of his step-siblings and their mother who was the Duke's official wife. He could see his father's selfishness just fine. Most of the time he chose to ignore it to rise above his circumstances.
Jason could always deal with Arthur if he becomes capable enough to exact his revenge on him in the future. This was why he was even more desperate for power than his father. He had suffered enough at the hands of his own close family. His real mother was no longer alive. So he took solace in the pursuit of power.
The demon-summoning ritual was successful. And Jason received a demon soul fragment from a very capable demon. As a result, he possessed such a demonic ability.
Jason knew that there would be negative repercussions if anyone found out that he was a demonic ranker. So he seldom used his Ability after receiving it.
However, things were a bit different at this point. And he was forced to use his Ability to take care of Bert.
Jason was on a hunt with his small group of the team when he fell into a booby trap set by Bert and Morty. It seemed like the two had spent a lot of Karma points to get a powerful Perk.
The booby trap worked well for Bert and Morty. They managed to severely injure Jason's team as a whole. Jason and Veronica somehow managed to escape. However, the rest of their teammates were killed by Ivor and Morty.
It was clear to Jason and Veronica both that Bert wanted to actually kill Jason without triggering Sansara World's defense mechanism. Rather than killing Veronica for good, Bert specifically targeted Jason.
Jason retaliated hard against Bert's team. Additionally, he attacked with the intention of killing. The battle mage would have killed Morty for good if Bert hadn't disturbed him. As a result of that interference, Morty was taken away by the world's defense mechanism. Meaning, Morty had to leave the battle zone, leaving Bert all alone with Jason and Veronica. But at least Morty prevented himself from getting killed.
After the cannon fodder was taken away, Bert, Veronica, and Jason were the only three rankers left in the surroundings. No matter how hard Jason tried, he just couldn't eliminate Bert after the latter donned his golden armor. He recognized it to be an otherworldly Ability. So he used his own Ability to counter Bert's unfair advantage and finally managed to hurt him by bypassing the armor protection altogether.
There was only one problem with Ivor's plan. Bert did not come with many rankers to attack him. And Morty had been basically kicked out of the event. Thus, Jason was not able to use his Ability on him.
Jason's life was in danger because of Bert's life-threatening attacks. And all of their attacks failed to injure Bert in any way. At this point, it could be assumed that Bert had taken all the preventive measures possible to make Jason fight with him and stay in the region.
Jason started getting desperate until he finally decided to link up Veronica with Bert using his Ability. His Ability had a demonic nature. After showing it, he had to kill Veronica anyway. So he bid his time and used her as much as he could before finally finding the right time to employ the girl as a way to hurt Bert.
Veronica looked at Jason with injustice written on her face. The latter sighed before commenting.
"Don't look at me like that, my dear. You know who we battled just now, right? That appearance isn't enough to fool me."
