Chapter 40: Have You Been Struck by Light? (Patreon)

Truth be told, Rudy's knowledge of summoning magic remained rather shallow. But since he had personally developed most of the programmatic spells used to summon spirits, in a sense he was dealing directly with the underlying principles—reinforced further by everything he'd learned in his previous life.

Even though he had only been on the Demon Continent for five days, he had already picked up more than half of Armored Dragon King Perugius's summoning magic.

While he studied, Rudy was also refining his own spirit-summoning spells. The result was that the elemental spirits hovering above his head changed out one batch after another. He even discovered a way to establish a global remote summoning link, and thanks to this new method, the upper limit on how many spirits he could summon saw a real breakthrough.

By the end of those five days, he had deployed ten billion elemental spirits across the entire planet. He couldn't yet manage fully automatic detection, but he could at least handle active detection tasks.

As for his light-ray magic, it too had advanced further from where it had been before. Originally, Rudy had relied on a combination of water and wind elemental spirits. Now, though, he used water, wind, fire, light, and dark elemental spirits—five spirits woven into a far more complex combination—ensuring he could unleash his strongest attack at any hour of the day.

With his power boosted, Rudy naturally itched to test it out. And conveniently, right in front of him stood an Emperor Superd warrior.

While everyone rested from the day's travel, Rudy walked over to Ruijerd's side and asked with a smile, "Mr. Ruijerd, my magic has just made a bit of a breakthrough. Would you mind sparring with me?"

"Oh?" Hearing this, Ruijerd nodded, clearly interested.

"You attack first, or should I?"

"I'll go first—let Mr. Ruijerd get a feel for how I attack."

"Fine..."

As Rudy put some distance between himself and Ruijerd to prepare for the match, the others lay atop the hill, watching curiously in silence. Armored Dragon King Perugius especially—having failed to grasp Rudy's true strength back when he'd been captured—was eager for the chance to gather more information now.

On Rudy's side, he looked at Ruijerd ten meters away and asked with a smile, "Mr. Ruijerd, are you ready?"

Ruijerd nodded, grinning with anticipation. "Come on."

"All right."

The moment Rudy answered, a searing purple beam of light shot out at blinding speed and struck the ground right beside Ruijerd's foot. The scorching heat melted the earth into molten slag. As white smoke rose, Ruijerd had already leapt half a meter to the side.

Compared to the King swordsman Ghislaine, Ruijerd, an Emperor warrior, was indeed considerably stronger—even against light-speed attacks, he could react somewhat ahead of time.

Seeing this, Rudy nodded in satisfaction. That was how it should be. If his opponent had no way to fight back at all, this would be far too boring.

The corner of his mouth curled up. He made no visible move at all, yet three beams of light suddenly plummeted from the sky. This time they weren't aimed at Ruijerd's feet, but at his arms.

Whoosh, whoosh, whoosh! The three beams grazed past Ruijerd, landing just barely to the side.

Breathing hard, Ruijerd glanced down, drenched in sweat, at the dark red molten patch scorched into the ground before him. He raised his head and looked at Rudy, who stood exactly where he'd been, having made no move at all.

He had seen Rudy use this kind of attack before, but only after truly experiencing it firsthand did he realize just how terrifying its speed really was. If not for the magic eye on his forehead, he would already have been hit.

Rudy smiled and waved Ruijerd over. "Mr. Ruijerd, please attack me with everything you've got. Don't worry—I have my own way of protecting myself."

Having now truly witnessed Rudy's strength, Ruijerd nodded seriously at these words. He gripped the long spear in his hands and steadied his breathing. In the next instant, he planted his foot hard against the ground, and his whole body closed a five-meter distance in a single flash.

But at that very moment! Hundreds of beams of light struck without warning, catching Ruijerd completely off guard. The speed of light was simply too fast! Once targeted, unless one had the power of foresight, there was truly no way to dodge—even for an Emperor warrior with a magic eye that could see through weaknesses.

Ruijerd managed to dodge only a small fraction of the beams. The rest—the greater majority—he had no choice but to take with his own body. In an instant, hundreds of beams of light riddled his limbs like a sieve.

Thump! His weapon dropped. Ruijerd's whole body collapsed helplessly onto the ground, blood pooling beneath him.

But soon after, Rudy came over and cast a healing spell, restoring Ruijerd's body completely.

Once back on his feet, Ruijerd looked at Rudy with eyes that had completely changed. He asked tentatively, "Have you... already reached the threshold of God?"

Rudy shook his head and laughed. "I'm still far from God. Honestly, at best I'd say I'm at the very peak of Emperor. The reason you couldn't dodge just now is mainly because the speed of light itself is simply too fast. There are schools in this world that claim they can display light-speed, but that's nothing more than boasting. True light speed is an absolute velocity beyond anything they could ever imagine."

Hearing this, Ruijerd's thoughts drifted to certain schools of thought he'd heard of before, ones that claimed to rival the speed of light. But he'd never really had much of a concept of what that meant. Only now, after truly crossing blades with Rudy, did he finally grasp just how terrifying light speed really was.

It was a speed that left a person utterly despairing—once targeted, there was truly no escaping that absolute velocity.