The basic premise seemed simple enough: kill your opponent before they killed you, yet the truth was that actually fulfilling the idea was far from simple.

“Princess, throw me one of your swords! Hurry!” Darius bellowed as he readied himself. Lara heard the boy as she had put down her hands, exposing her ears once again. The worm had stopped squirming and now prepared to retreat underground once more.

Lara questioned Darius’s motives, but a glare from the later completely subdued the former. Any doubts she had about his actions disappeared as she looked into his bloodshot eyes. His Indomitable skill was in full swing, visible from the bloodlust he oozed, yet the young man seemed eerily calm. He seemed extremely relaxed as if he were in his own backyard. Were it not for his feral grin or red eyes, she would have thought him to be in a normal state of mind.

The stark contrast between his general appearance and countenance overwhelmed Lara. Before she knew it, she had already thrown her sword to the young man.

She was shocked by her own actions. After all, two swords were always better than one. By giving him one of her swords, she weakened her own battle strength, not to mention that the worm could attack her at any moment. After all, there was no guarantee that it would continue its sole pursuit of Darius. Despite her logical reservations, the young woman had unconsciously thrown Darius her sword without hesitation.

As the sword was in mid-flight, Darius ran toward it. His keen intuition and senses were keeping track of the worm’s whereabouts underground. It was a simple-minded creature, thus its attack patterns were rather easy to read. Darius snorted as he ran to the sword. Just as he was about to reach it, the worm burst up from the ground!

Darius was expecting this, so he nimbly circled the creature, arriving quickly by its side.

Boom!

With a swing of his hammer, he smashed whatever portion that had come up straight into the ground. Except he didn’t retrieve his hammer. The worm’s top half remained embedded in the ground with the hammer above it.

Thanks to the hammer’s special enchantment, only special means could be used to lift this. Darius knew this from experience, and the elder had given him even more information regarding this. The elder had said that this fact had applications for battle, and Darius was using one of them.

Since he had the worm pinned, Darius quickly turned and lept into the sky. By the time he had landed, he had Lara’s sword in hand.

He slowly made his way to the worm’s head. It wriggled and tried and much as it could to get out of its predicament but it was all in vain. Lara was not sure how he had done it, but he had somehow managed to incapacitate the worm.

“His strength is indeed nothing to scoff at.” Thought Lara as she walked toward Darius. She marveled at the sheer force of the blow, in which he had blasted the worm into the ground. Plenty of earth had scattered while the worm’s upper body was entrenched into the ground. Lara could not help but wonder where all that strength came from.

Granted, Indomitable boosted one’s physical abilities, but it could only bring out what was already there.

The human brain limited the amount of strength one could use from their own body. Overdraw removed those limiters while drawing on the body’s vitality, converting it into raw power.

“Just what kind of foundation does this boy have? How much training did he have to go through to achieve such monstrous strength?”

In this day and age, there were plenty of people born with unique talents. One of them being inborn strength. Those with inborn strength would have the strength of a tiger at the tender age of ten. By the time they reached adulthood, they could even match the strength of an elephant! Without any training!

Their bodies would naturally be incredibly large and muscular as a result. Yet Darius was nothing like that. His build and size seemed normal. He was quite fit, but it was hard for her to see how muscular he was as she had only seen him fully clothed.

While these thoughts were swirling in Lara’s mind, Darius had already reached the head of the worm. He used the sword to tap the creatures hard carapace as if to test something. It only left a small dent, but it was enough to confirm what he was thinking. By this point, Lara was nearby. She saw his actions and saw the dent. The tap was slow and casual, but the dent caused was similar to one of her full strength blows, as the dent it caused was only slightly smaller than the ones she had caused on the creature. While Lara was marveling at the young man’s strength, the worm decided to shriek once more.

The noise was quite deafening, causing Lara to once more cover her ears and back away. Darius seemed unaffected as he simply took a few simple steps. Once he had chosen his spot, he relaxed his shoulders and gripped the sword with both hands.

He closed his eyes and calmed down for a moment, in an attempt to ready himself. When Lara finally reached a comfortable distance, she removed her hands from her ears and focused Darius. The screech from the worm was still uncomfortable, even from almost 100 meters away, but Lara bore with it. She put all her attention on Darius, as his recent actions caught her attention.

“Don’t tell me he wants to cut it?”

Lara found the notion absurd. As far as she was concerned, he was strong but not that strong. However, Darius couldn’t care less about her thoughts. He opened his eyes and raised the sword above his head.

He stepped forward and struck down.

Swoosh!

Lara rubbed her eyes in confusion because she could have sworn that the sword and Darius’s arms had disappeared for a moment before they had appeared once more thrust into the ground, but that was not what shocked her; the shrieking had stopped. Since she was standing at the side, she could not see clearly, but the sword seemed to be submerged in the worm. This and the silence could only mean one thing. The worm was dead!