A fist covered in dense Reiatsu slammed into Olivas's face, completely caving in his cruel face.
Then.. he unleashed a Hakuda technique!
"Ikkotsu!"
Boom!
A massive pillar of white spiritual energy sent Olivas flying backward through the air.
He tumbled harshly across the dirt ground for several rotations before finally coming to a dead stop.
Rayleigh lowered his fighting stance. "I take back my earlier underestimation. You're much tougher than I thought."
He splayed his five fingers, flexing the joints one by one to shake off the physical impact.
Lying broken on the ground, Olivas seemed to have lost consciousness.
His bruised body twitched involuntarily in the dirt. Half of his face was completely mangled. His cheekbone had shattered into dozens of sharp fragments, violently piercing through the flesh and skin of his own face.
The raw muscles around his eye socket were directly exposed to the air.
On the side that took the brunt of the hit, his eyeball had burst entirely.
Rayleigh's words truly came from the heart.
His original intention had been to blow the man's head clean off his shoulders with that single punch.
A normal Level 3 Adventurer shouldn't have been able to withstand it.
But the Fanatic actually survived.
He had proven just how tenacious the pure life force of a Level 3 could be.
Shunpo and Hakuda.
These two combat abilities alone had been more than enough to render the infamous Fanatic completely helpless.
"Thank you for your hard work as my test subject. I'll put you out of your misery now."
Looking down at the unconscious Olivas, Rayleigh had absolutely no intention of stopping his assault.
He approached his target with steady steps, beginning a low, rhythmic chant.
"Ye lord! Mask of flesh and blood, all creation, flutter of wings, ye who bears the name of Man! The scattered bones of the beast... Spire, crimson crystal, steel wheels. The wind if it moves, the sky if it stops, the tone of lances clashing fills the empty castle."
"Hadō Sixty-Three: Raikōhō."
CRACK-BOOM!
Golden lightning descended in a brilliant, straight line!
The blinding thunder looked just like a golden spear falling directly from the heavens. Its raw momentum was immense.
Terrifying power erupted outward, and a massive golden thunder cannon gathered tightly in Rayleigh's open hands.
The bright lightning formed a dense plasma sphere entirely under his control.
"Disperse with the roar of thunder you scum!" he commanded.
BOOM!
The golden thunder cannon erupted from between his hands. Its terrifying destructive power caused the surrounding atmosphere to vibrate and hum with static.
The dazzling blast descended on the broken man.
A massive golden mushroom cloud rose high into the sky from the sheer force of the explosion, taking on the eerie shape of a glowing skull.
Crackle— Thick, dark smoke billowed across the ruined street.
Arcs of residual electricity lingered in the air, clearly visible to the naked eye.
The exact spot where Olivas had been lying was now a massive, irregularly shaped fissure in the earth.
The crater was likely six or seven meters deep.
A fully chanted Hadō Number Sixty-Three was easily powerful enough to blow an entire city block sky-high.
In the depths of the smoking pit, not even a single scrap of Olivas's corpse could be found.
Compared to Kidō numbered sixty and below, the intensity and density of the spirit particles in a spell like Raikōhō were on a completely different level.
Both the quality and quantity of the energy were unmatched.
The raw power and grand scale of such high-numbered Kidō effectively rose to a strategic, tactical level.
If used down in the Dungeon, it was powerful enough to serve as a trump card, capable of killing a strong monster in a single devastating blow.
In a fight against ordinary people, it could easily decide the outcome of a small-scale war.
Rayleigh felt very satisfied with the destructive power of his Kidō.
Although using it on a weakling like the Fanatic was a bit of overkill, the man had perfectly fulfilled his final duty as a test subject.
After all, he had been turned completely to ash!
"Clap, clap, clap."
The distinct sound of applause rang out over the crackling flames.
The clapping was slow and highly rhythmic as Rayleigh turned his head and saw a face he had only seen a few times before, yet he was very familiar with it.
'Erebus.'
He recited the God's name in his own mind.
Alise, Ryuu, and the other girls tensed their bodies, preparing themselves as if facing a great and terrible enemy.
They warned him right away.
"Rayleigh! He's the evil God of Evilus, Erebus! He's an extremely dangerous being!"
Rayleigh nodded at them to show he understood the threat, then turned his calm gaze back to Erebus.
In truth, he had already used his spiritual sight to perceive the hidden spirit ribbons flowing through the area.
This God was certainly no fool.
In terms of raw strategy and wisdom, he undoubtedly surpassed Finn, even successfully leading the Pallum hero by the nose for a time.
Because of that sharp intellect, he wouldn't expose himself to physical danger so easily.
Just as Rayleigh expected, he spotted Alfia's distinct spirit ribbon.
She was watching the entire exchange closely from a nearby building.
Her specific job right now was probably to act as a bodyguard and protect Erebus.
"It seems i arrived a little too late," Erebus said.
Looking at the battlefield that had already been swept completely clean, the deity's expression showed a tiny hint of miscalculation, but the shift was extremely subtle.
He asked, fully feigning ignorance, "Where is Olivas?"
His tone was incredibly casual, making it near impossible to gauge his true feelings on the matter.
Besides, he wasn't the Fanatic's actual patron God.
At his direct question, Alise, Ryuu, and the others subconsciously glanced over at the deep, smoking pit to the side.
Seeing their eyes shift, Erebus let out a heavy sigh. "I see. It seems you've already kill him."
"Kill... him?" Ryuu asked, shifting uncomfortably on her feet.
"Have you not?" Erebus pressed.
Kaguya spoke up, her voice sharp and cold. "Of course not. All we did was rid the world of a terrible menace."
A cruel man like the Fanatic dying a thousand times over would still be getting off far too easy.
Worried that the straightforward Elf would be clumsy with her defensive words, Kaguya had taken the strict initiative to speak on their behalf.
Erebus's expression changed, and his gaze turned frigid.
"A menace?" he repeated. "And who exactly decides that?"
"What did you just say?" Ryuu snapped back. "With all the horrible things he's done, what is there left to decide!"
"Is there no need for a decision?" Erebus retorted smoothly. "Olivas harmed other people, so you used your own arbitrary judgment to condemn him and kill him. Tell me, what's the actual difference between you and him?"
"We are justice..." Ryuu argued.
"Hiding behind the convenient shield of justice again?" Erebus mocked. "Your sense of justice is truly a useful tool. Is this the hypocritical rhetoric your Goddess Astraea taught you? As the supposed Goddess of Justice, as long as you pay pretty lip service to the concept of justice, you can commit violence as you please and be met with the tearful gratitude of the weak. I see, so that's how it really works."
Erebus spouted a long string of philosophical fallacies in a single breath.
Listening to him speak reminded Rayleigh of an anime character back in his previous world.
The famous philosopher of the Soul Society, Sōsuke Aizen, also enjoyed talking in circles about similar twisted concepts.
For overly hot-blooded protagonists, having too much empathy and proper education wasn't necessarily a good thing in a fight.
It made a person incredibly easy to be morally blackmailed.
If you couldn't win a philosophical argument with clever words, then you could only pray that your fists were much bigger than theirs.
That way, you could just act like a certain orange-haired king of hacks.
You could shout, "What the hell are you talking about?" and then simply cleave the villain in two with a powerful Getsuga Tenshō!
Unfortunately, the girls of the Astraea Familia belonged to the former category of heroes.
At this moment, they were completely rendered speechless by the evil God's twisted logic.
Although they knew deep down that he was spouting total fallacies, they didn't quite know how to properly refute him.
Erebus's roguish arguments, or rather, his high-level trash talk, was simply a bit too advanced for the honest girls to handle.
"You! Shut up! Don't you dare insult Lady Astraea!" Ryuu yelled, her expression turning truly terrifying in her anger.
Seeing how easily the Elf was provoked by the taunts, Rayleigh decided not to be a quiet bystander any longer.
Ultimately, he was the one who had actually killed the man.
Erebus had picked the wrong target to provoke today.
"You've got one major thing wrong, Erebus," Rayleigh interrupted.
The evil God paused his lecture and glanced over to the side.
"I'm the one who killed the Fanatic," Rayleigh clarified with a blank expression.
Moral blackmail was indeed a terrifying weapon in a debate.
The core premise, however, relied entirely on the fact that the person being blackmailed actually possessed such a limiting thing as morality in the first place.