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And just like that, the man closed his eyes again, back to ignoring him.

But Zier didn’t feel displeased with his actions. Instead, there were stars in his eyes!

‘Just how strong would he be to have such bearings?’ he questioned as he instinctively compared the indifferent man with his grandfather.

The two people earlier were stronger than anyone he had seen beside his grandfather, but they felt different from the man in front of him.

‘In just a single glance, I could tell those two were dangerous. But him... he feels so harmless. Yet, I feel as if I shouldn’t disturb him...’ Zier thoroughly scrutinized the man. Suddenly all the hair on his skin stood up in alarm as he came to the conclusion that this man was most likely more powerful than the earlier two people.

His mind flashbacked to the past when his grandfather had taken him to hunt some simple animals. He was only a kid, but he clearly remembered all the details from back then.

.....

“Adorable, isn’t she?” His grandfather had asked from behind him as he was staring at a leopard lazily sleeping atop a tree.

His past self had nodded his head without giving it much thought.

“Remember, little Zier. Don’t think low of a beast merely because it looks harmless while sleeping. That just goes on to show how confident it is in shredding to pieces any living being that dared to disturb its peace in the entire area.”

Back then, he hadn’t thought much of it before nodding his head again, pretending that he understood everything.

However, now that those words rang in his ears again, he couldn’t help but stare at the man again. His image blended in with the memory of the leopard sleeping on the tree.

A shiver ran up his spine before he stopped himself from dwelling on this for any longer.

Right now, his priority was survival! He should have run away before, now he couldn’t help but curse himself for succumbing to his curiosity.

Now that he couldn’t afford to waste any more time, Zier was about to turn around and run away.

But right on cue, the two people who had disappeared came back!

Zier felt his throat run dry as he noticed the big splashes of blood splattered all over the man’s body. The lady on the other hand was exactly as she was before.

Was the opponent too weak or were these people too strong? He couldn’t tell, but one thing was for sure; they were ruthless people who wouldn’t bat an eye while killing people!

‘...There goes my only chance of running away...’ he thought bitterly when he noticed the woman’s eyes landing on him immediately as she arrived.

***

As Raven and Blaze came back, they immediately noticed that the man they had left here hadn’t run away.

Raven traced her eyes from the man to Ozul and immediately noticed that he had changed his posture.

Hmm...

She didn’t know what to make out of the situation. Most likely scenario was that Ozul had allowed the man to be here, but she would have to ask him to confirm.

‘If he creates trouble later, it won’t be too late to kill him.’

She and Blaze could easily gauge his strength. To them, a Rank-5 Fighter who wasn’t even a Mage was nothing more than a nuisance who they could end anytime they wanted.

Blaze didn’t even care about the purple-haired man anymore and left it upto her to deal with him. In the end, she decided to ignore the man until Ozul had any instructions for them.

As she averted her eyes from the man, she could feel him visibly relaxing his posture.

And she was right on point. Since she didn’t decide to immediately kill Zier, he knew that his life wasn’t in immediate danger anymore.

A part of him even felt that his decision of staying here had benefited him. Zier wasn’t a strong person by any means, but in terms of intellectual prowess, he was far exceeding many.

From the moment he had first heard Ozul’s voice telling the two people that he was harmless, he noticed that they were very obedient to him. He also hadn’t missed when Raven had shifted her eyes from him towards Ozul as if contemplating something very deeply.

Putting the pieces together, he was overjoyed as he realized that as long as the man sleeping on the tree didn’t explicitly tell them to, they wouldn’t attack him!

And from his attitude earlier, it wasn’t hard to notice that the man was indifferent to his presence. That ultimately meant that as long as he didn’t mess anything up, he wouldn’t be killed today!

Just then, Zier’s heart skipped a beat when the same cold and lazy voice rang out again.

“They were only Rank-7. What took you so long?”

He again visibly sighed in relief as he realized that it was a question directed towards the two scary people; completely unrelated to him.

As the relief settled in, shock poured down his head as he realized the context of his words.

‘There was more than one Rank-7 Mages?! And what did he just say? Took too long?! That didn’t even take a couple of minutes!’

Zier shakingly looked between the three people; his initial image of them turned even scarier in his mind.

“They were not ordinary Rank-7 Mages. Both held a speciality of their own. I didn’t participate but for a second, even I was surprised when the person with Earth Element was able to sneak in sharp debris behind this idiot,” Raven calmly explained her view, receiving a growl from Blaze as she refused to use her spell to clean all the blood on him.

Her eyes clearly spoke, ‘You wanted to fight all by yourself, no? Deal with the mess yourself as well.’

“Those chosen by the old man clearly aren’t all simple then,” Ozul muttered as the duo nodded their heads.

Right after that, they collectively turned their faces towards the young man with purple hair.

Old Gu clearly only selected talented people. But in front of their eyes, there was a man who was not even a Mage. Even as a Fighter, he wasn’t looking particularly outstanding, as evident from his sickly appearance.

His talent clearly looked below average.

Could it be that this man had sneaked in the Neutral Lands somehow and wasn’t one of the participants? Or had he somehow hid in this area even before Old Gu erected that barrier?

“Obviously, he isn’t normal either...” Ozul lazily answered before they had even had the chance to ask anything. Then he turned his back to the three people and went back to sleep. As of now, he didn’t feel the need to actively participate in this death game of the old man.

His words caused Zier to instantly jerk back in fear.

*Thutd!*

He realized there was a tree behind him as his back hit the trunk. Feeling cornered all of a sudden, his hands stiffened again as a single thought ran in his mind, ‘Does he know?!’

His breath quickened to an abnormal rate as he looked all around him to look for a way out.

This panic stricken state did not last for long when Zier found himself being ignored again.

Since Ozul hadn’t said anything against him, it further solidified Raven and Blaze’s notion that it was Ozul who had allowed him to stay with them.

As Zier realized that these people didn’t care even after realizing that he could be a dangerous individual, he looked at them as if staring at some strange creatures.

‘Tch! To think I lost my cool so many times!’ he thought in his head, recalling how many times his grandfather had advised against the very mistake.

There was clearly something wrong with this group of individuals, thought Zier.

In his opinion, the best course of action would have been to kill him right away! Though he had never killed a human being, even he would have preferred to kill himself in their place!

He didn’t know if they were just that strong or merely overconfident. Based on the recent events, he was convinced that it was the former.

‘These are dangerous people...’ Zier repeated this to himself for the upteenth time.

After a few moments, he managed to completely calm his nerves.

His fists clenched in fierce determination. He had come to a reckless decision but it was his gut feeling that it might be his best option now.

‘At least my gut feeling has never been wrong... mostly...’

Zier smiled bitterly to himself but he was determined to not back away. He had decided to stay here with this eccentric group of people for as long as he didn’t find the need to run away.

Not only were these people extremely powerful, they were also not hostile to him.

Although he had lived his whole life on an island many times smaller than the Mainland, after Old Gu had invited him to the competition, his grandfather had shown him all around the continent.

He might have not seen everything, but he was at least somewhat familiar with the cruel nature of this world.

If he had met any other group instead of these people, he was sure that they wouldn’t have batted an eye before mercilessly slaughtering him.

‘Though their indifference is a little humiliating... I have to bear with it,’ Zier understood that survival was the most important right now. In the face of death, he didn’t think much about being shameful.