Chapter 133: Despair
Rohan crashed through the rotting remains of a market stall across the street, splintering ancient wood everywhere and kicking up a cloud of dust, then rolled twice across the cracked stone road before finally coming to a stop.
He didn’t even have the luxury of understanding what had happened in the instant it did. One moment the hoplite was standing a few steps away, calm and relaxed as if nothing in the world could bother it. The next, Rohan felt an impact across his chest so heavy that his molten-stone skin might as well not have existed for the brief second it took his body to leave the ground.
"Huk—!" More blood spilled from his lips.
His vision was shaking.
That hit hadn’t looked like much, just a causal backhand, but that strike had hit harder than almost anything he’d taken so far inside the Origin Realm.
’What the fuck...’
Rohan coughed violently, each spasm dragging another ribbon of blood up his throat. His chest felt like something enormous had caved it inward and then stopped just short of finishing the job. His skin burned with the active pressure of his molten-stone skin gene, and that was the only reason he didn’t immediately spiral into panic. If he felt this bad while protected by an E rank Elite gene, then he didn’t even want to imagine what that would have done to an ordinary F rank’s body.
Even with it, he felt like very organ in his body had just been thrown against his spine.
Rohan planted a palm on the broken floor and forced himself back to his feet, ignoring the sharp, ugly protests from his ribs and the wetness on his lips. He’d expected a hoplite to be dangerous, but there was a world of difference between dangerous in theory and dangerous in practice.
The Federation had drilled caution into people from childhood, wrapped in stories and news reports of border wars, gate conflicts, and failed expeditions. All of that had painted a picture in his head of an enemy race stronger than humanity.
A superior rival.
It had not prepared him for the crushing reality of one standing a few metres away and treating him like a toy.
"Run!" He yelled at Elane.
But she didn’t listen.
By the time he’d stumbled back out into the ruined street, Elane was already in motion. Her bow was in her hands, and the first arrow was already in the string. She didn’t hesitate.
"Rohan!" She yelled.
The hoplite barely even spared her a glance.
It lowered its bronze head slightly, looking at the blood dripping from Rohan’s mouth and what somehow felt like disappointment.
"Ah," it said. "So you humans are not entirely made of paper."
Rohan spat a mouthful of blood onto the ruined street and slowly straightened his back.
"Elane!... Goddammit, listen!" He rasped, summoning his spear.
The hoplite’s gaze remained detached. Like it had found a slightly more durable insect.
Rohan hated that. He really, really hated it.
Elane loosed her first arrow without waiting any longer.
The shot screamed through the air at an unnerving speed for an F rank to have produced toward the hoplite’s head, in a perfect line aimed right for the eye slit of its face plate.
The hoplite didn’t even react.
It let the arrow reach it, and Elane watched in dread as it bounced off.
The hoplite lifted one hand and plucked the deflected arrow out of the air between two bronze fingers, then turned it over once as if mildly curious about the craftsmanship, before crushing it into fragments.
’Right. This is the kind of opponent we are up against...’
Rohan’s stomach dropped in the next moment.
The hoplite had finally shifted its attention from him onto Elane.
She knocked another arrow and let it loose, but it was no different from before.
No matter how much strength she could muster, nothing she did could even damage this hoplite’s armour, let alone penetrate through.
Rohan felt a deep fear return to him, one that he hadn’t felt ever since what had happened with Liam inside the Spike Beast gate.
A fear for Elane’s life.
"Elane, move!"
She did. Her body blurred sideways with a speed and urgency that befit the situation. But the hoplite was done playing around. It stepped once, then again, and covered the distance between them in a blur that made Rohan’s stomach drop.
He threw himself after it, ignoring the screaming protest of his own battered body. He wasn’t fast enough. He knew it before he’d even crossed half of the street, but he ran anyway because there was nothing else he could do.
Elane fired one last arrow from near point blank range, and the hoplite batted it aside with his hand before driving it forward in that same motion.
Rohan heard the sound of it rather than saw it. The hoplite had its back turned to him.
A hard, ugly impact, followed by Elane’s body leaving the ground and crashing through the upper level of a ruined building.
Stone, dust and timber fell in after her.
There was no movement from her after that.
"Your friend is dead." The hoplite suddenly spoke.
"Now we won’t have any further disturbances."
Rohan stopped dead in the middle of the street.
Those words hit him harder than he expected.
Rohan’s fingers tightened around the shaft of his spear so tightly that his knuckles started to bleed through his skin.
Through gritted teeth, voice so strained that it barely sounded like him, he asked. "What do you want from me?"
The hoplite didn’t move.
Rohan took another shaky step forward.
His chest throbbed, his right shoulder felt half useless, and every breath came ragged. Yet he pushed through all of that for one simple reason.
"Why?" Rohan demanded. "Why leave me alive but kill her?"
The hoplite finally turned toward him.
"Because I feel a faint sense of danger from you."
That answer made Rohan’s brow knot in confusion and fury alike.
"What?"
At this moment, Rohan couldn’t see it, but deep inside he knew that the hoplite suddenly grew a despicable grin under that bronze armour.
"I hate it when weaklings butt in where they don’t belong. Now we can have a proper fight, unbothered by such a useless thing!"
