[LSB] Chapter 150: Holding Back? What's That?

“You first.”

“Him first?!”

Everyone’s gasp escaped their throats all at the same time, but one candidate stepped forward, his voice cracking with desperation.

“I’m supposed to go first!” he argued, flicking a quick glance at Julian before glaring directly at Angelo. “If you let him go first, the rest of us are going to look bad! The guilds are watching!”

The man and the rest of the candidates all looked up. And even with the sky above slightly obscured by the two domes, they could still clearly see all the drones hovering outside.

“Wh—”

“Enough!”

Angelo stomped his foot on the floor, causing the man and the other candidates to flinch. He jabbed a finger toward the man, then swept it across the group.

“You’re all so easily rattled by a little display of strength. I’d fail every one of you right now if it were up to me,” he said, scoffing as he slowly approached the group.

“If you think that strength alone would be enough to survive as an Exterminator, that is where you’re wrong—it’s grit, combat prowess, experience. Everything you could learn. Come, Julian Winters.”

He stared at Julian, waving his hand and motioning for him to go to the center of the testing area. And then, the tone of his voice changed—from lecturing to an obvious mocking tone.

“Show them what I’m talking about… or are you just all talk?”

All talk? 

Julian was slightly confused at this statement—he barely even talked throughout the entire thing, so what exactly was this man trying to say?

[Master.] The Avatar of Searadyn’s voice coiled in his mind, low and brimming with quiet rage. [This mortal mocks you. Kill him.]

Julian, of course, ignored her. Instead, he gave a quiet hum and casually walked toward the testing zone, exactly as instructed.

“Tch,” Angelo clicked his tongue, not liking that Julian didn’t argue or resist at all. Still, he scoffed at the end as he joined the others, and said with a quiet voice,

“Don’t be discouraged, people. There are a lot of frauds out there. Julian might not even be able to defeat a critter.”

“But… we all saw what he did in Mars.”

“Were you there personally?” Angelo shot back with a scoff. “Don’t believe everything you see.”

No matter how quiet they wanted their voices to be, Julian could hear them. He initially thought that the proctor might have something to do with Vijya’s father, given how hostile he was to him. But maybe Angelo was just… mad at him for no reason at all?

There are a lot of people like that—people who resented others simply for existing beyond the small scope of their understanding.

“Okay!” Angelo shouted, “We’ll start with a critter!”

[Simulating daemon: Threat Level, 1.]

The AI’s voice echoed calmly as the hum of the projectors came to life.

Julian tilted his ear, listening as the tiny machines shaped the critter’s body—large hind legs like an extinct kangaroo, a long tail whipping behind it, its mass just slightly bigger than his own.

Still, Julian didn’t react.

He simply stretched his neck and shoulders, arms loose at his sides as the simulated daemon settled into its posture, ready to attack.

Angelo shook his head when he saw this, scoffing once more before raising his hand.

“We will begin in 3…” he called out, “2… 1!”

And with that, a loud screech screamed from the synthetic daemon. That was its only warning before it lunged toward Julian… but unlike with Angelo, the synthetic daemon didn’t just move in a straight line, no.

It hopped and weaved, moving toward his right side before rushing toward him, threatening to ram him with its large, grotesque head. Angelo’s eyes slowly turned wider along with his lips, his eyes reflecting the incoming onslaught he had been expecting right from the start.

Julian was not moving at all, maybe he couldn’t even react to it—he thought. Well, before long, he couldn’t think at all.

A deafening slam echoed through the testing dome. The floor beneath the other candidates vibrated beneath their feet. They instinctively looked around, unsure of what caused the tremor… even though the cause was already right in front of them.

The daemon’s head was gone. Splattered across the floor in a smear, with the projection cracking and slowly fading away. The rest of its holographic body flickered once, then shattered into a thousand fractured sparks.

Angelo’s mouth hung open.

He didn’t even see it happen.

One second, the daemon was inches away from crushing Julian—and the next, it was lying in ruin at his feet, its head obliterated, Julian’s hand still pressed down on the floor.

“Hmm.”

As for Julian, he only let out a cold hum before casually standing up straight and stepping away from the synthetic daemon. He rubbed his thumb together on his fingers and palm, tilting his head toward Angelo, and waited for him to say anything.

Angelo, however, didn’t say anything. He couldn’t. He was completely frozen in place, even more so than the other candidates, as they were already expecting this to happen.

He might have stayed that way if not for Hannah, who gently nudged his side.

“Angelo,” she whispered. “Time is ticking.”

“Huh?” He blinked at her, then turned back to Julian. He cleared his throat, trying to compose himself.

“V-very good. Of course… a critter wouldn’t be a match for someone with your strength,” he muttered. “Let’s continue, then. But just say if Level 2 is too much for you.”

“Okay.”

It wasn’t. 

The same exact thing happened, with Julian slamming down the quadrupedal daemon without it getting to react at all.

It wasn’t until Threat Level 3 that he finally changed his move—instead of his bare hand, he used his foot. He raised his leg and brought it down like a hammer. The strike cleaved the larger daemon in half—the impact loud enough to make the floor jump beneath the candidates’ boots.

Julian, well. Julian had no concept of holding back or trying to hide anything, for that matter. Of course, he was hiding his abilities as the Shadow Blacksmith because Silvie told him to—if she didn’t, he would probably use it too, as the entire world knew him as a ‘mutant’ anyway.

If he showed other abilities, they would just think it was part of his arsenal from the start.

And his goal here was to be seen, to be watched. To make the ones responsible for splitting him and Silvie nervous, to the point they wouldn’t even try to run…

…He wanted them to come to him.

He had told Silvie and Victoria that he also didn’t have any concept of vengeance—well, it turns out he was wrong.

Because right now, it was all he could think about—finding the people who separated him from her. What would he do when he met them? He hadn’t figured that out yet. He only knew he wanted it. Needed it.

He tilted his head, trying to hear the drones hovering above the Exterminator Association. It was extremely faint now, but he could still hear them better than before… because there were hundreds of them now.

They should be—

A sharp shriek cut through his thoughts.

A flying-type daemon lunged toward him, wings spread like razors through the air. He stepped to the side fluidly, letting it miss him by inches before grabbing it as it passed by.

And then, he climbed onto its back and tore it in half at the spine. The synthetic creature collapsed, its pieces vanishing before they hit the floor.

Threat Level 4 had finally made him move.

If he were to compare it to any daemon he’d fought before, its strength resembled the mantis from the Streamer Awards.

At Threat Level 5, he finally drew out his Flossblade.

A massive, synthetic giant-type daemon rose before him, its arms thick and veined like tree trunks—each the size of a small car. The room hushed as Julian leapt through the air, sprinting along its arm with impossible speed. He reached its shoulder in seconds, seized a tendril near its face, and slashed across its neck in a single arc.

Then came Threat Level 6.

Julian had never fought anything like this—not even in Artemia.

It was mollusk-like. Huge. With eight massive tentacles, each as thick as a pine tree, sweeping through the air. Tendrils clustered around its bulbous head, while a heavy shell protected its core.

It was… confusing.

But what threw him off, what really threw him off, was that its tentacles regenerated instantly.

“Kh!” Julian had just sliced one of its tentacles, only for the very same tentacle he should have sliced lash him from behind. If it wasn’t for him leaping in the same direction to soften the blow, he would have surely been thrown away.

Femty activated for the first time, spinning him in the air to regain balance. He landed on his feet, sliding a few more paces across the floor before stopping.

“Not yet,” he whispered, and his exosuit quickly deactivated. He then lunged forward, meeting the two tentacles slashing toward him. He jumped in the air to avoid both, slashing them at the same time before he elegantly landed and continued his way toward the synthetic daemon.

Of course, the daemon didn’t allow him to rest at all as another tentacle came crushing down on him. This time, however, Julian dodged just enough so that he could grab onto the tentacle, using its momentum as it retracted its limb to leap straight toward where its head was.

The synthetic daemon seemed to know what it was doing, however, as it quickly pulled its shell down like a shutter, trying to shield its face.

But the machine didn’t calculate one thing.

Julian threw the Flossblade.

It spun through the air—then sank straight into the narrow gap between plates, embedding deep in the synthetic daemon’s head.

“Kree!” the synthetic daemon shrieked, but Julian was already on its head.

He yanked the Flossblade free from its shell and drove it down again—this time flaying its face in a single, clean motion. A burst of static crackled in the air as the holographic daemon began to fall apart beneath him.

Julian leapt away before it collapsed, spinning lightly in the air and landing on one knee—arm extended to the side, his Flossblade humming in his hand. And the moment he rose to his feet, the giant mollusk crashed behind him, dissolving into motes of light.

He let out a deep breath, turning his ear toward Angelo and muttering,

“Next.”

Angelo didn’t reply—he couldn’t. He just quietly and subconsciously gave the command to the AI.

[Warning. Accessing Threat Level 7 and above requires elevated output. Simulated force thresholds may exceed standard parameters.]

The warning rang out, but no one paid it any mind. All eyes remained locked on the center of the dome.

Once again, the swarm of micro-machines began to gather and shape. But unlike the previous three levels, the daemon that formed in front of Julian was leaner, more compact, and only twice his size—it had four wide arms with a thick shell, perhaps three times as… dense compared to the usual exoskeleton, or at least that was what the tiny machines were trying to replicate based on what Julian was sensing.

Its body was long, perhaps to accommodate the two extra arms it had and its shorter lower limbs.

“Femty,” Julian whispered, and his exosuit activated instantly.

And just in time.

In a blink, the daemon was in front of him.

Julian sensed it—but it was faster than anything he’d faced. He barely managed to raise the Flossblade in time. The vibrating blade cut into the shell, but it wasn’t enough to absorb the force. The impact still sent him flying.

He was hurled backward like space junk, rolling violently across the arena before finally slamming into the far wall.

The sound of him hitting the wall was loud, and everyone held their breath as they watched him slumped against the wall and his legs sprawled on the floor. His designer clothes were completely tattered now, revealing the vanta-black exosuit beneath.

Blood, dripping from his nose.

“Wh—”

Julian started to move again before any of them could open their mouths. But now... something was different.

A smile crept across his face. Not the calm, detached composure they’d seen so far—but something feral. Focused.

They couldn’t quite process this sudden change, but the ones who had watched his Otherworld streams recognized it instantly.

The Sword Junkie.

He tightly gripped the Flossblade, and he took a step forward, tilting his head to the side—and—

Boom.

He launched himself from the floor like a bullet, aiming straight for the Level 7 daemon. His silhouette looked distorted in everyone’s eyes. 

His expression was wild now, eyes still closed, but with purpose carved into every movement.

But then—

“That’s enough now.”

The daemon suddenly dissolved.

It broke apart instantly, the micro-machines dispersing before Julian could strike. He sliced through thin air, momentum carrying him forward through the dispersing swarm.

He softly landed back on the floor, quickly turning his ear toward the woman who entered the simulation dome while sliding to a stop.

“We can’t afford the simulator breaking down on us now,” the old woman said, sighing while shaking her head as she made her way to Angelo and the others.

Angelo quickly stood up straight and lowered his head as soon as he saw who it was.

“P-president Aaliyah!”

Aaliyah Smith. President of the Exterminator Association.

***

[LAST CHAPTER] <-----> [NEXT CHAPTER]

Do holler if you notice any mistakes! We are now in Julian's aura farming era. Oh my god, when did I really start using "aura farm".