Reborn as an Extra

Chapter 582: Raika and The Lyre of Faith. Part-5.

Rio was not going to sacrifice his own ’Path,’ and he was not going to abandon Liam either, as he had promised to bring him back one way or another.

He chose the ’Path’ of being happy and peaceful in the future, but if Rio becomes a ’hero,’ his ’Path’ will divert to a completely new destination that he doesn’t want.

Rio still had no idea what Raika’s actual plan was or what he wanted from him or why he was pestering him over and over, but one thing was for sure: Rio was not going to compromise.

And when both parties refuse to compromise, refuse to bend their ’paths,’ and refuse to get out of each other’s way, their ’paths’ end up colliding and bring them face to face.

At that point, there was nothing else left to negotiate or talk about; it was now up to Rio himself to remove Raika from his ’path’ and clear this ’obstacle’ in his ’path’ forward.

[Sword Intent!]

[Elemental Sword Art: Fire Type: Illusion burning dawn!]

Fire-type skills are very good at destroying illusion-type abilities.

Most illusions are usually made from interfering with the light elements, water elements, or the wind itself in the surroundings.

Thus, fire elementals are one of the most common ways to deal with many kinds of illusions.

Up until now, Rio hasn’t figured out how Raika was able to appear and disappear out of nowhere without leaving any spatial fluctuation or mana fluctuations behind.

His mana sensing, miasma sensing, and sword intent detection—all three abilities have failed to figure out what’s going on with Raika and what he actually is.

Thus, Rio has no other choice but to start using all kinds of skills to carry out a process of elimination and figure out his secrets by subjecting him to various types of attacks and abilities.

The first one being the fire attack, Rio shot towards Raika, who took his stance midway and swung his sword upward in a vertical arc!

His sword was covered in fire elementals so condensed that the fire around his sword was deep blue, indicating that it was a very powerful flame.

"Hoh~ you don’t really think I would have come to confront you head-on without knowing how strong you are, Rio?"

"I came prepared!!"

A wide grin appeared on Raika’s face as he disappeared from his spot instantly and reappeared right behind Rio.

[Echo of Paradise: Heaven’s Symphony: The First Oracle!]

Raika gently stroked one of the strings of his lyre with a smile on his face, and in that moment, all of Rio’s senses started screaming at him about danger, but it was too late.

*BOOOOOM!!!!*

A powerful echo rang out in the area, and a shockwave attack that travelled right through the space-time fabric completely bypassed Rio’s sword intent and every other defense!

Rio flew away like a cannonball after being hit by that attack and smashed into hundreds of trees before hitting the ground!

*BOOOOM!*

The impact caused by Rio hitting the ground was so strong that most of the puppets and illusory trees inside this giant cage were shattered, and a crater hundreds of meters wide was created!

Debris flew in all directions, and even the flow of miasma and mana in the giant cage became disturbed.

*COUGH!* *COUGH!*

Rio threw a mouthful of blood as he hurriedly stood up from the ground with a look of shock on his face.

"This attack!?... This is Ashtel Rex’s signature move!!"

Ashtel Rex, the world’s strongest man’s world authority, is ’Shockwave’; it grants him the ability to create powerful shockwaves that can travel faster than the speed of light itself by using the space-time fabric as its medium.

Those shockwaves can bend the space-time fabric and can even shatter it if needed, and each and every attack they do is able to easily ignore every single defense a person might have.

The main reason why Ashtel Rex is feared by so many SS-rankers is because his attacks are nearly unblockable!

To stop his attacks, you will need to stabilize the entire space-time fabric itself to even have a chance of fighting him equally!

Even though Rio’s sword intent is very powerful, it is ultimately an offensive-type ability; it’s not meant for defense purposes.

And unless Rio reaches perfect sword intent mastery, he cannot block world authorities and attacks that can use the space-time fabric itself to harm him!

Rio had seen Ashtel use his skills and abilities many times before, and he had even seen Ashtel use his ’World Authority’ quite a few times, and thus, Rio was very familiar with that power.

And he immediately understood that what Raika had used was definitely a power that was very similar to what Ashtel Rex often used!

"Oho~ You figured that out quite fast. I thought you might take a few more hits to figure it out... but well, I guess that’s the reason why you are you, right?"

"You are Rio Flash after all, the person who’s the best at copying others’ skills and abilities... obviously you will know quite a bit about skills that you have seen..."

Just when Rio was using healing elementals to heal himself, Raika reappeared right beside Rio; he was sitting on a boulder, completely relaxed as if he wasn’t even trying at all.

"Come to think of it... now you know that my power source is actually miasma... you might be able to figure out things if I don’t finish the battle fast..."

Raika was using miasma as his energy source, which meant he was definitely not someone from the World Alliance or any other rogue awakener either.

The possibilities were now reduced to only a few scenarios; now, he was either a demon, a demonized human, some kind of evil spirit, or a transformed monster.

Before Rio could think too much in detail, Raika stroked his lyre once again, and Rio once again felt an immense amount of miasma radiating from his body, but before Raika could use his skill, Rio ignored his pain and reacted fast.

[Sword Intent: Maximum Range!]

[Elemental Sword Art: Miasma Type: Miasmic Flow Disruption!]

Rio immediately spread his sword intent everywhere as he pointed his sword towards the ground.

Using this, he messed up the entire flow of miasma in the area using his miasma control!

*BOOM!*

Raika’s miasma flow was disrupted due to the disturbances caused by Rio in the entire region, and his skill got interrupted midway, causing a miasma deviation!

"Hoh?... It seems that after staying in the spirit realm for so long, your miasma control really has reached quite an amazing level..."

"You even managed to mess up my control over miasma despite not being able to sense my presence with your sword intent..."

Ignoring Raika’s words, Rio raised his sword above his shoulders as he took his stance.

[Sword Intent: Maximum Output!]

[Elemental Sword Art: Space Type: Spatial Suture!]

Since fire elementals were useless, Rio switched to the next plan and decided to use space-type skills to deal with Raika.

Rio treated his sword like a needle and used the space-time fabric as a cloth and sword intent as the thread.

He rushed towards Raika’s side, manipulated the space-time fabric, and tried to suture the space-time fabric around Raika to confine him in one place.

"That won’t stop me either~"

Despite Rio trying to confine the space and trying to use the space-time fabric itself to stop him, Raika still managed to disappear!

’He’s not affected by space-type abilities either!?’

This time, Rio was really shocked; even SS-rankers could not easily ignore the changes in the space-time fabric around them.

Rio was able to use spatial suture inside the spirit realm because the space here was weaker compared to the outside world.

And his speed of sewing and confining was also very fast; unless Raika used some other space ability to stop Rio, it shouldn’t have been possible to easily break out of that confinement.

But to Rio’s surprise, Raika didn’t even need to use space-related or time-related abilities at all!

He simply disappeared from existence and then once again reappeared right behind Rio as if he were completely unaffected by any changes that happened in the world around him.

’What is this weird ability!? Is this a world authority!? But I can’t sense the unique spatial and mental fluctuations that all SS-rankers emit when using world authorities from him!’

Rio was very confused, and seeing that Raika had easily made it out, he hurriedly changed strategy as he swung his sword behind him, but Raika was one step ahead.

"You are really something Rio Flash; if not for the unique nature of my abilities... I doubt that I would have been able to deal with you without going all out myself..."

"Thankfully, you still haven’t mastered your sword intent to perfection, or this meeting between us would have been delayed for a much later time..."

"That would have been sad, right?"

[Echo of Paradise: Angel’s Symphony: Life force Re-alignment!]

Seeing that Raika was trying to use some kind of skill, Rio immediately tried to interrupt the flow of miasma once again, but that turned out to be a big mistake.

Because this time, Raika had used ’mana’ as the source of energy for his skill!

"What!? You can use mana too!?"

Rio was so taken aback that he couldn’t even dodge the attack and got hit by it instantly!

[Ding! True Immunity has been triggered!]

[Ding! You are now immune to life-force alteration-type attacks!]

Although Rio wasn’t able to react on time, thankfully, that weird and unusual attack that directly attacked his life force was completely blocked by ’True Immunity.’

"Hmm? What? I thought that one would hit? That’s odd... you still have abilities that I don’t know of?"

A look of astonishment appeared on Raika’s face after seeing that Rio was completely unaffected by the previous attack.

"Interesting... you are really interesting, Rio Flash~"