Ron decided not to put it off. Envy and jealousy tended to swell with time. In all his life, he had never seen anyone recognize his place and back down of his own accord.
‘This isn't something mercy will solve.’
Perhaps it was petty pride that did not know its place.
Bastards like these always caused trouble when left alone. Ron had encountered similar situations without fail in both of his previous lives. Based on that experience, he felt the need to break them of the habit from the outset.
If that still did not work—
Regrettably, he planned to erase them quietly.
Ron did not shy away from killing. Those who needed killing had to be killed. That made things easier.
It was a very simple principle.
“Come quietly unless you want to embarrass yourselves. I don't have time either.”
“……Don't regret this!”
At least they had some awareness.
Had they shouted that they refused to go, it would have become troublesome in all sorts of ways. Fortunately, these bastards cared about social appearances.
After quietly moving somewhere out of sight—
“All right, is this enough? Hurry up and come at us!”
They thought the fight would begin at once, but Ron stopped their hasty behavior.
“Wait.”
GRIND—!
He secured the space and deployed a Qimen Formation that blended with the surrounding terrain so no noise would carry outside.
The inversion of the Five Elements, the alignment of the Four Symbols—he named it the Taiji Void Formation. It was a kind of illusion art, though it was not nearly as impressive as its name. It was merely a temporary veil that separated the space and hid it from sight. Anyone who deliberately searched for it could still find it.
When Ron began doing something suspicious, Dane's group became intensely wary. Remembering how Ron had dealt with the assassins filled them with fear.
“…What exactly are you planning?”
“So you truly were conspiring with the assassins!”
“Do you honestly think this will let you defeat us?”
It was said that a frightened dog barked loudly.
Ron ignored them and finished installing the Qimen Formation. Now no one would come, nor would anyone be able to see them. This was not a world where the loudest voice won.
GRIN.
An isolated place where no one would come was exactly the sort of place Ron enjoyed. That was why he had moved out of the old man's house and built one of his own.
Time alone.
That solitude was a man's dream.
Who had said it?
Alone, one was lonely. With two, one suffered.
Wrong.
Alone was peaceful.
The more relationships a person had, the more responsibility he had to bear in life. Ron had even lived two previous lives in which he had been responsible for the entire world. Memories of being gaslit about everything, from beginning to end, with claims that no one but him could do it.
Even so, Ron did not consider himself a sucker.
His relationships had grown too deep for him to abandon the people involved. He could not say that he would have lived happily after casting them aside. Humans were not beasts. They could not simply discard their bonds.
Since he was incapable of betraying a debt of gratitude—
‘I should keep my relationships as limited as possible.’
Meeting many people would only repeat the same exhausting life. The narrower his circle of relationships, the less responsibility he would have to bear.
“From now on, I'll show you whether it was a trick. Come at me one at a time. Who's first?”
“……!”
Dane, Rotan, and Zenon hesitated without answering. Ron had threatened them into coming to an empty clearing, but they had not expected him to challenge them one-on-one. Judging by his arrogant attitude, they had assumed he would tell all three to attack at once.
“As knights of the great House Leonard, surely you aren't planning to gang up on me?”
Anger filled the faces of the three fools after he struck directly at their sore point.
They were not completely brainless.
“……We will not fall for your cunning attempt to divide us!”
“As expected, you're useless chaff who can't do anything alone.”
“This bastard! How long are we going to stand here listening to him? Let's take him together!”
Dane, Zenon, and Rotan drew their swords and charged at Ron. Though they were only probationary knights, they had learned the Triangle Formation, the orthodox basic joint-attack formation of the Dawn Knight Order.
Dane aimed for Ron's head, while Rotan and Zenon targeted his flanks from the left and right.
WHOOSH—!
Ron charged without backing down.
At the instant the distance between them vanished—
SWISH—!
Ron avoided Dane's thrust by a margin as thin as a sheet of paper, then struck him in the chin.
THUD—!
Dane's consciousness went dark as though he had been struck by lightning, and his body collapsed.
GRAB—!
Ron seized the falling Dane by the collar and threw him at Rotan, who was slashing toward him. Then he used his scabbard to smoothly deflect Zenon's sword as it came for his flank, breaking the man's balance.
The movements unfolded in the span of a single instant.
THUD—! THUD—!
Zenon's head snapped from side to side.
It was a left-right combination as fast as a flash of lightning and a spark from flint.
The first blow knocked him senseless, and the second brought him back to consciousness, but his battered body hung limp. As control of his flesh broke down, he tried to sink to the ground. While Zenon desperately clung to consciousness and attempted to control his body, pain surged through his abdomen.
THUD—!
Ron's right knee slammed into his stomach.
Zenon's waist folded like a shrimp, and he vomited up even what he had eaten the day before.
BLEAARGH—!
Leaving the collapsing Zenon behind, Ron targeted Rotan. Rotan had nearly killed Dane with his own sword, but he barely shook off his panic and swung his blade.
CRACK—!
Using footwork to slip to the side rather than retreating straight back, Ron delivered a calf kick to the inside of Rotan's lower leg. It looked almost casual, but anyone struck by it would immediately understand its power. If someone could still walk upright after taking that kick, Ron would suspect him of being an ogre incarnated as the embodiment of calves.
“AAGH!”
Rotan staggered, feeling as though his leg had been severed. As he began to fall, another kick swept upward, bending with the smooth flexibility of a whip. By the time the shadow of Ron's foot covered his eyes, it was already too late.
CRAAACK—!
The mid-level kick struck Rotan squarely in the neck.
His ankle met Rotan's neck with a tearing, rupturing sound. Rotan drove his head into the dirt as though trying to hammer it into the ground. The sight of his body rippling like a wave before collapsing was particularly impressive.
TREMBLE, TREMBLE—!
Dane, who had nearly had his throat cut by Rotan's sword, could not conceal his trembling. The panorama of his life that had flashed before his eyes refused to leave his mind.
“……Wait!”
Ron granted perfect rest to Dane, who was kneeling on the ground.
THUD—!
He was in the perfect position for a textbook mid-level kick. The dull impact shook the night.
Do not wonder whether his skull had shattered.
Ron was a master of controlling his strength.
SPLAT—!
The hard ground rebounded beneath him, and Dane bounced from left to right before collapsing facedown.
SHUDDER, SHUDDER—!
The dust-covered trio proved they were still alive through intermittent convulsions.
“How long are you planning to lie there?”
Ron stomped on them to wake them up.
THUD—! THUD—! THUD—! THUD—! THUD—!
Since sleeping on the ground could leave their mouths twisted, he stomped them from the opposite side as well to restore the balance.
“Guh!”
“GRAAAH!”
Once he balanced the left and right sides, their consciousness repeatedly returned and vanished, causing the pain to accumulate. It went beyond simple agony. Pain—or perhaps fear—was carved into their bones.
After stomping them as much as he pleased, Ron reestablished which of them was the superior party and which was the subordinate.
“Kneel and sit up. I'll count to three.”
“……Ughhh!”
“Three!”
He did not wait any longer and began stomping them indiscriminately. It was a merciless beating with no fixed rules, yet the placement and control of force were exquisite. He struck lethal acupoints that could cause instant death if hit incorrectly, alternating them with vital acupoints to amplify their vitality. Thus, even when they felt close to death, they revived and had no choice but to savor the pain of resurrection.
They could not even faint as they pleased. Just as they were about to lose consciousness, their minds snapped clear, and all the pain accumulated like mileage points returned to them at once.
The three fools were horrified by agony unlike anything they had experienced in their lives.
“GRAAAH!”
After beating them to his heart's content—
“Three.”
“……What?”
If they still had enough presence of mind to answer, they should have hurriedly dropped to their knees first.
“……Wait!”
The price of throwing away their chance belonged entirely to Dane, Zenon, and Rotan.
Without pausing for even a beat, Ron continued beating them while moving between vital and lethal acupoints.
“It's medicinal tonic. Take plenty.”
It looked crude from the outside, but it was little different from Pushing Through the Palace and Passing the Acupoints. Otherwise, even young knights who had trained in aura would have suffered chronic injuries and spent the rest of their lives sickly and weak.
However, they gained little from the process.
The energy amplified through their vital acupoints was concentrated into their lethal acupoints and completely dispersed. Thus, they received no benefit. Only the pain continued to intensify.
Infinite Beating Great Art.
It was a method Ron had developed in his previous life by combining Pushing Through the Palace and Passing the Acupoints with life-and-death torture.
There was no better method for torturing someone alive. Even after pushing a person to his absolute limit, he would never die, and the pain could be inflicted continuously.
The most astonishing aspect of the method was that its victim could never faint, nor would his mind break.
Because neither mind nor body collapsed, the pain could be delivered with clarity as vivid as 32K resolution.
That was why those who had suffered through it sometimes called the technique the Great Art of Yama's Hell.
‘It is on a completely different level from barbaric methods like Bone-Splitting and Tendon-Seizing.’
Ron stopped the beating and was about to count to three again.
SWISH—!
Where had they found such strength? Dane, Zenon, and Rotan sat upright on their knees with perfect politeness.
They fidgeted anxiously, afraid that he might stomp them again. Their bodies still screamed from the traces of pain that remained.
“Oh?”
Ron looked at them approvingly.
“What a shame.”
CHILL—! TREMBLE—!
As Ron smacked his lips with wicked disappointment, Dane, Rotan, and Zenon finally understood what they had touched.
It was Pandora's box, something that should never have been opened.
‘……I see!’
They realized something.
Ron had never distinguished himself until now. Even within the knight order, he had been like a ghost who might as well not have existed. That had never seemed strange before, but now that they thought about it, it was far too strange.
‘…It makes no sense!’
A knight order was essentially a community bound by a common fate. Its members ate, slept, and trained together in the same repetitive routine. They had spent years moving through the same spaces, yet no one had ever been conscious of Ron.
Could that possibly make sense?
Within the knight order, Ron always disappeared once training ended. He had no point of contact with anyone and associated with no one.
How had they only realized it now?
It made no sense, but what if the knight order had consciously excluded Ron?
Then it was not that he lacked presence.
He was someone who must not be touched.
And they had touched him without the slightest fear.
‘Damn it! If I'd known he was this kind of bastard, I never would've touched him!’
‘We should've just stayed still!’
‘Even so, he could've told us! Was there really any need to go this far?’
They remained bowed, unable even to raise their heads, but resentment still formed within them. Ron might have been much stronger than expected, but the fact that he was a commoner had not changed.
“You know what to do from now on, right?”
“…Of course. It won't happen again!”
“You're lying.”
“…No! I truly—Aagh!”
Ron could normally tell what someone was thinking with a single glance, but that discernment came from the accumulation of experience across his previous lives.
However, that was not how he had noticed this time.
-Progress: -78.99%
Astonishingly, the Status Window was seeing through these bastards' true thoughts. Strictly speaking, rather than reading their minds, the Progress changed whenever Ron improved circumstances that obstructed Raising the Count's House.
Even if the change was only 0.01%.
If they were worth so little even while the value remained negative, these bastards truly were specks of dust.
THUD—! THUD—! THUD—! THUD—!
After beating them repeatedly, he forced them to kneel again.
Being made to kneel might not seem like much, but it deeply wounded the victim's pride. The reason was that the person being forced down considered the other party insignificant. Pride was inherently relative. The range it permitted changed depending on the opponent.
“You understand?”
“I promise! We'll never come near you again!”
“You're lying.”
“No! Why won't you believe us?”
“We're in the same knight order. Saying you'll never come near me makes no sense.”
“……Oh. That's true…. Aagh!”
In the end, they personally learned that when the head was foolish, the body suffered.
THUD—! THUD—! THUD—! THUD—!
After being beaten for a long time, Dane, Zenon, and Rotan no longer dared to rebel.
They did not know how he was doing it, but Ron truly detected their innermost thoughts with uncanny precision. The more they learned about him, the more frightened they became. Had they known he was this sort of man, they would never have touched him.
-Progress: -78.97% …… -78.98%
The Progress of Raising the Count's House fluctuated back and forth.
“You still don't trust me.”
“…We do. It's true!”
“You're still uncertain.”
“……How did you know?”
It was beyond frightening. It was chilling.
Struck silent by the cold shiver running through them, Dane, Zenon, and Rotan continued to be beaten.
THUD—! THUD—! THUD—! THUD—! THUD—!
They were hit and hit again.
‘…Why won't I pass out?!’
At this point, it would not have been strange for them to lose consciousness.
Yet their minds remained as calm and clear as a still lake.
The solution was obvious.
To escape this pain, they had to forget their resentment toward Ron. No thought, no self—liberation from pain! Only then could they escape this infinite hell of beatings.
Not even the faintest suspicion or doubt was permitted.
They did not know how he did it, but Ron knew everything in their hearts. The more they accepted reality, the more awe Dane, Rotan, and Zenon felt toward him.
-Progress: -78.4%
When the Progress finally stopped moving, Ron suppressed a hollow laugh.
‘It actually worked.’
He had been prepared to use his last resort if this failed, but Raising the Count's House had vouched for them.
-Reward: 1 Coin
It even granted him a reward for his efforts.
Moreover, if these bastards betrayed him, all responsibility would lie with Raising the Count's House.
Most importantly—
‘It doesn't matter whether I change.’
The factors affecting the Progress were likely changes in other people—those connected to the count's house. There was still too little confirmed data, but he could verify it using test subjects from the count's house.