Reincarnated As The Heroine?! I refuse!

8: Encounter | 1 |

~A certain main road to Mingzhe Dei~

Raize had decided to continue onward, thinking Lea must have her ways to find him. He thought of her smart enough to think of the consequences before leaving himself alone.

After resting for several minutes, he had recovered some strength on his legs. He hated to waste essences on body fortification since he did not have much to spare.

Before he could go very far, however, he heard crunching sounds on both side of the wide road. Immediately, he changed his stance against ambush, remembering his time in Port Ruo's forest.

"Kekeke! Don't be so on guard, young 'un. A tasty prey is when they know nothing of cruelties in the world." Said wickedly by a dirty man who suddenly revealed himself out. Raize saw him in a corner of his eyes.

Raize observed the man only to find there were more of his men coming out from their hiding spots.

'Being ambushed seems to be my usual plot here... I'm seriously starting to fear for my safety.' He thought to himself. His thoughts started to panic, but his expression remained blank as usual.

"Oh ho~ You don't look scared at all! Let's change that shall we?" As the first man said so, he dashed with his sharp edged sword in a downward thrust at Raize.

In an attempt to avoid the sudden attack, Raize jumped backwards only to have a bit of his front hair cut. "Tsk!"

Another man went behind Raize, another on both sides and diagonal to him. 'Essences can manipulate certain things, but can it summon what doesn't usually exist....?'

He thought of countless failures of counter-plans, while not-so-agilely evading his pursuers. When he saw a chance to test out his theory, he jumped back 3 paces only to stumble on an unsuspecting rock by the road.

'MY LUCK! Where the f**k are you...?!' Cursing his own misfortune, Raize didn't care anymore and simply spared a few hundreds of essences into his imagination to produce a ring of fire around his ambushers.

Seemingly surprised at his success, he let out a triumphant smirk. He slowly stood up from his fall, looking more dignified since he came to Ingrid.

"Payback time!" He announced through gritted teeth, pulling up both his arm in the air.

[A/N: he didn't have to do that, but it makes his imagination more realistic; a chuunibyou in the making..? Raize, didn't expect that from you at all!]

He ran through his memories of the animes he had watched because of his younger siblings. Finally picking up one that may traumatize the people in front of him, he imagined dark gooey stuffs coming out of the ground.

As if these disgusting gooey stuffs were being possessed, terrible shrieks could be heard. They latched on every target, making them feel terrified.

"W-w-what is this?! Aaaaaah! I don't want to die!!" Screamed a youth in the group. He tried to slash the dark gooey, but his weapon simply slashed through thin air, leaving him even more frightened.

No longer able to attack, the ruffians tried to escape only to be stopped by another of Raize's imagination: inflicting each member's mind with mathematical theories, including calculus and other numerical figures.

This caused the rest to feel insane. "What are these jumbled symbols...? My head hurts... I can't... can't take this anymore... Aaaaaahhhh!!"

As if not finished with the business yet, Raize thought up of another hypothesis to test out. Using the bases of illusion, he summoned a huge, huge, spear on top of the area where the group was. It was a spear, but not a spear. An illusion that the others didn't need to know.