Infinite Realm

"Sato, we're done here. The BOSS is dead."

Fudo's voice sounded from the other side.

The original plan was for Sato to keep the opponents at bay while the others defeated the Kobold King. According to the original plan, Fudo and the rest were supposed to take only a minute but they had encountered some problems in their battle with the Kobold King. Since it was facing death, the monster had gone all out and began spamming space-type spells despite its current condition, just to take them down. As a result, the team had to be extra cautious as they battled it and this made the battle drag out longer than they had thought. 

Luckily, Sato was able to hold off the two guilds, albeit barely, and so, the team on the other side didn't experience any interruptions. While it was true that Yukino had moved with Black Tempest and a few other players, a minute wasn't enough for them to catch up so Fudo and the others didn't experience any problems.

"Copy." Sato replied.

'Seems like I'll have to change my plans.'

Before the message, Sato was already prepared to take the battle with Han seriously, but as it turns out that there was no reason for him to remain here, he decided to alter his original intentions.

"[Sprint]"

Sato abruptly turned tail and ran away.

"Eh, he's escaping?" Chesces widened his eyes in surprise. 

He was expecting to see an interesting fight with Sato taking the match seriously. While it was true that Sato did have the option of escaping, it never crossed Chesces' mind that he would do so. 

'Did I misread his personality?' Chesces wondered.

"Stop him!" 

On the other hand, while Chesces was stunned, Silver Wolf had managed to react quick enough and ordered the rest of his teammates to prevent Sato from escaping. With all the preparations they have made being wrecked thanks to him, Silver Wolf felt that he wouldn't have a good night's sleep without seeing Sato turn to glitter.

"What are you standing there for?! Order your men to follow suit and stop him. Or are you not aware of the consequences of this?!" Silver Wolf barked at Azure Dragon.

The master of the super guild's branch division frowned at the ex-militant's words but he still gave out a similar order to his men. It would be a stain to the names of the two guilds if the news were to spread that a solo player had not only stolen their target but had also killed a bunch of their men before escaping without a single scratch, despite them doing their best to kill him.

Just like that, the remnant forces from the two guilds began pursuing Sato.

"You have disappointed me." Han suddenly said.

"I was expecting to have an 'okay' match with you and at least stretch my muscles but you took the cowardly path. Even though it's the safest option for you, I don't like it." 

Sato ignored him and kept running towards the boundary of the pressure barrier. 

It should be known that the pressure barrier occupied a wide enough region to contain the forces of the two guilds. Apart from the ever-present pressure that weighed down on Sato, there was still the bluish hemispherical walls that after as prison. Since the mana used to maintain it was supplied by the mages, the barrier possessed a self-healing feature. For Sato to break past it, he had to deal enough damage that would either drain all the mages' mana at once or unleash an attack that would destroy the barrier faster than it could repair itself.

"He's going for the barrier. Keep your focus high." The mage leading the others in maintaining the barrier yelled.

"Don't fail me, buddy." Sato whispered to his sword.

"[Chain Hit]."

Wielding [Drakken] with one hand, Sato slashed at the barrier, making a clear mark on it.

With the concentration of the mages at their peak, the barrier's repairing speed was faster than usual so one attack, even at full power from Sato, wouldn't be enough to take it down.

*Bang*

The second slash connected but this time, a tear appeared in the barrier.

"Ho-" 

Before the mage could even finish his words, Sato's third and final slash connected, tearing a hole through their barrier following which Sato hurriedly jumped through it. In front of him though, was an [Elementalist], who was charged with handling that area of the barrier.

There were at least 6 mages maintaining the barrier and due to its size, the barrier was divided into 3 major areas with each side handled by at least 2 mages. Even at that, the size was still incredible so there were certainly weak points in the barrier. 

Using a reverse-psychology tactic, the mages focused on the areas beyond their positions, leaving their side to be the weak points. The reason behind this was quite simple; most gamers would target the spot far from the mages, believing that that was the weak point since usually, the farther a point was from the mage, the less mana would reach that location leading to it becoming vulnerable to attacks. The mages of Emperor's Might, however, did the opposite and made their locations the weak spots. This would result in a situation where the target would end up targeting the barriers strong points why they themselves remain unharmed.

Sadly for them, this backfired since Sato wasn't really bothered to figure out which was the weak or strong point; he was already strong enough not to bother about such. Sato just faced a direction and ran towards it, and it turned out that his chosen path collided with the location of an [Elementalist]. This could only be termed as bad luck, for the [Elementalist] of course.

"!!!"

With eyes widened in both shock and fear, the [Elementalist] was greeted by a black sword that pierced through his chest. The cloth armour he had on did nothing to stop it, simply because it was too weak in both quality and level to do such.

-475 (???/??? ???)

Due to the fact that most of the force in the sword was used to break through the barrier, the damage wasn't much but the pain was still there.

"Puack!" 

The [Elementalist] puked out blood as he grabbed onto the sword with both hands. The staff that was previously in his hand had already fallen to the ground at an unknown period.

The [Elementalist] looked at Sato with a face laced with shock, anger, and despondency.

"Demon." The [Elementalist] spoke.

"You will, regre-"

*Splash*

Sato was disinclined to listen to his woes of hatred and anger as he made a horizontal slash with [Drakken], forcing the black sword that was stuck deep within the opponent's chest to move to the side and exit from the left lungs. Such an attack was both bloody and deadly, and this was proven by the system notifications on his interface.

[Critical]

-1024 (???/??? ???)

"Save your words for yourself." Sato said to the disappearing body before he took to his heels once more.

"After him." Silver Wolf kept barking as the men from both guilds chased after Sato as if he had cuckolded them.

Han and Chesces however, didn't bother. They both knew that Sato was well ahead of them in terms of level and as a [Swordsman], part of his attributes would have surely gone to [Agility]. Therefore, it was safe to say that even when considering the [Assassins] present, Sato was still the fastest. Adding in the fact that he had used [Sprint] and had taken off before anyone could react, there was no point in giving chase. Sato was destined to escape no matter how hard they pursued.

"For him to escape now, does that mean that the Kobold King is dead?" Chesces suddenly thought of something.

The [Ranger] from before had said that the reason Sato remained behind was to hold them back while his teammates finished off the Kobold King. Therefore, unless the Kobold King was dead, there should be no reason for Sato to escape all of a sudden.

'If that's the case, then his teammates are definitely not ordinary players. There might even be the chance that there's someone close to him in terms of strength and maybe even level.' Chesces thought.

If Chesces could reach that conclusion, then the man who was said to be on par with him in terms of intelligence as well as the guild leader of the branch guild, would also make the same deduction.

'The battle for Black Rock province would definitely not be easy.' Azure Dragon thought with a dark expression.

He didn't call his men back but left them to chase after Sato. It wasn't that Azure Dragon didn't figure out that they wouldn't be able to catch Sato but he wanted his men to realise that themselves. They would then use this failure to improve on their skills and become better. At the same time, Azure Dragon could say to the higher-ups that he had tried his best, but the level difference was insurmountable. 

Also, if the news were to spread, it would sound better if it was explained that they had tried to catch Sato rather than they had given up from the start. It would still let them maintain a certain level of dignity at the very least.

Sometimes, it was better to fail than to give up from the start.