"Look, asshole, I don’t give a shit who the fuck you are," said Mark with a cold voice that surprised even his own subordinates. "Consider yourself dead."

"Ooh, look at me shake," said the suited man in a mocking tone, lifting the greatsword and resting it on his shoulder. "For just a low-level necromancer, you’ve got more balls than I thought, Mister DarkLord69"

"...How the fuck did you just call me?"

Upon hearing those words, Mark’s brain froze, because in this world there was only one person who knew that name... and that person was himself.

DarkLord69 was his username in Eternal Conquest Online, the account he had created in his previous life and in which he had invested thousands of hours of his life.

Mark fixed his gaze on the subject in front of him and suddenly realized why that white suit with purple details seemed so familiar to him. 𝑓𝑟ℯ𝘦𝓌𝘦𝘣𝑛𝑜𝓋𝑒𝓁.𝑐ℴ𝓂

That outfit was one of the cosmetic armors from the Valentine’s Day event, White Days, limited edition, the same one sold in the premium store for thirty dollars during the event.

And he knew it perfectly because he had considered buying it for his main account, but in the end he discarded the idea since it didn’t match the necromancer aesthetic he had chosen.

But at that moment all of that was just unimportant details.

"How do you know my class and my username?" asked Mark, looking directly into his eyes.

"Does that matter?" responded the suited man with a carefree tone.

"I suppose that answer was to be expected..." said Mark, letting out a sigh and running a hand over the back of his neck. "Well, it doesn’t matter anyway. If you don’t want to answer nicely, that’s fine by me. I’ll just make sure to pull the information out of you after I kill you."

The man, upon hearing that, stared at Mark for a moment and then burst out laughing.

"Bro," he said when he finally stopped laughing, wiping his eyes with the back of his hand. "Your grasp on reality is seriously fucked up."

"Are you sure about that?"

"You should already know that there’s no way you can beat me in combat, since as a warrior, the class advantage is on my side," continued the man, spinning the greatsword over his shoulder in a casual motion.

"You might be right about that," conceded Mark in a calm tone. "But precisely for that reason, I won’t be the one facing you."

"Then who?" he said, looking at Mark with curiosity. "Your little girlfriends?"

Mark just looked at him with a half-smile on his face.

"Wait... you can’t be serious," he said, his expression shifting from mockery to disbelief. "Are you really going to hide behind a group of women? Are you fucking kidding me?"

"..."

The man stared at him for a couple of seconds and then let out a heavy sigh.

"Shit..." he said, shaking his head slowly. "You really are a worthless man."

"Are you sure you didn’t bite your own tongue with that last one?" said Mark, fixing his gaze on the corpse of the cat girl and the woman next to her who was crying inconsolably, holding a pair of severed wings.

"That’s that and this is this" continued the man in a tone that was no longer mocking but contemptuous. "No matter how weak you are, making such beautiful women fight for you is cowardly."

Mark just looked at him without changing his expression.

The man let out another sigh and then turned toward Mark’s subordinates.

"Ladies," he said, completely changing his tone to something that attempted to sound charming. "Don’t worry, I’m here to free you from this useless bastard."

After those words, the reactions were not long in coming.

Ely looked at him with such a disgusted face that it seemed like she had just smelled something rotten. Alice rolled her eyes with an expression of annoyance. Aria let out an audible "ugh." Rose looked him up and down with an expression of disgust. And Zilu, from behind Mark, simply pressed herself harder against his back, gripping his tunic with both hands.

"Free us?" repeated Ely in a tone that dripped with contempt. "I’d rather swallow broken glass."

"If you address us again, I’ll rip your tongue out," said Alice, barely containing her fury.

"Master, can we kill him already?" asked Aria, looking at Mark. "Just hearing his mountain of stupidity is giving me a headache."

"That would be doing him a favor, Aria," Rose intervened with a venomous tone. "This type of trash doesn’t deserve a quick death."

Seeing that the reactions were not what he expected, the man in the white suit immediately changed his expression, and the false gallantry disappeared in an instant, replaced by something much colder.

"Whatever... let’s just end this quickly," he said, gripping the greatsword with both hands by the hilt.

The man planted his feet firmly on the ground and the greatsword began to glow with a reddish color that caused the air to raise its temperature.

"Then I can have fun with you and with the rest of the women in the village," he added with a twisted smile.

And then his body shot forward with a speed considerably greater than what his size suggested. The ground cracked beneath his feet from the momentum and the greatsword cut through the air with a sharp whistle as he wielded it directly at Mark.

But Ely reacted first, placing herself between the greatsword and Mark.

She raised her sword with a single hand and stopped the blow effortlessly, causing the impact to produce a shockwave that lifted dust and leaves from the ground in all directions.

"what the f—?" the man started to say, his eyes wide with surprise.

But he didn’t have time to finish because Alice appeared on his left flank in a blink and threw a direct punch at his ribs.

He tried to shield himself with his left arm, but the blow was unavoidable, and the crunching of bone was so loud that Mark heard it from where he was standing.

"Aggghhhh—"

Upon receiving the blow, the man’s body shot off to the right, lifting off the ground and spinning uncontrollably in the air, until he crashed into one of the wooden houses in the village.

The wall shattered, and the roof collapsed on top of him as dust filled the air.

Silence stretched for a couple of seconds, until from the rubble a hand emerged, followed by an arm... and finally, the rest of the man’s body slowly pulled itself up from the remains of the house.

His left arm hung at an unnatural angle while the bone of his forearm pressed against his skin, pushing it outward without breaking it, and his hand hung limp like a dead weight.

"Fucking bitches..." said the man, his teeth clenched as he gripped his mangled arm.