System vs Rebirth

"What are we going to do now? That guy must be running away, leaving us here to fend for ourselves." Lezlev gritted his teeth, looking at Alfred. Even though he could cooperate with Noel and trust him a bit, this was already beyond his ability.

"Nothing we can do." Alfred shook his head. "Even if we run, this demon will hunt us down. We need to find an opportunity if we want to run…"

"An opportunity?"

"Yeah. If there's another battle around us, we can drag this demon there to get some help from others. But… let's wait for five to ten minutes first. If he doesn't come back, we'll do it." Alfred nodded in agreement. He also wanted to escape right now, but the situation didn't allow him to.

Seeing there was still a trace of trust in Alfred's eyes, Lezlev could only grit his teeth and endure this battle for another few minutes.

The battle continued as the demon continued to overwhelm them. Alfred had exhausted most of his stamina while Lezlev was covered with bruises. The hope became dim as these few minutes felt like a few hours.

The one they expected to come back never appeared.

But when the situation couldn't get any worse, they heard a shout from the side.

"Lezlev, Alfred! Run toward me!"

"!!!" Lezlev and Alfred turned their heads, finding Noel on the side with his shirt completely soaked with sweat.

It seemed Noel had been working hard on his own.

After exchanging a nod, Lezlev and Alfred hurriedly ran to Noel.

As Alfred said earlier, the demon chased them. Its speed was quicker than them, so the demon caught up to them soon.

forward and grabbed Lezlev and

to the ground, making the demon miss them and falling to the bushes behind

ground was painful, Noel still stood back up and thrust his

he was stuck in that position. And Noel thrust his sword to the area

*Huft!*

*Huft!*

few times as he dropped to the ground, smiling.

his eyes. There was a shock and

opened the bushes and found a few sharp spikes planted on the ground. Two of them impaled the demon's face,

from woods… No, they're roots." Alfred

sides, so I thought about using a surprise attack to impale

"The demon tree?"

we didn't have enough time to carve a spike made of its trunk. Hence, I chose the roots that had pointed tips. They were perfect to pierce our body, so I thought it was at least better

took you so long…" Lezlev looked

came back here before planting

think about using

smiled and recalled the lesson from Shale. "Let's admit that we're weaker than the demon. Even if we combine our strength, we can only take down a demon tree earlier… The time limit and the difficulty don't match up. So, I thought this is a test to apply all the lessons we've learned so far.

want us to bring the crystal back. They want us to use their parts to kill them. Just like

of metal. And one of them is a weapon created by a demon body."

The time limit is too long. So, I figure out they're the time it takes us to create traps and strategy to kill the demon. And the other reason is…" Noel looked

is that?"

groups. Although we need to kill two or three times the number, it's going to be far easier to kill the demon with that number." Noel looked at Alfred. "It's just I don't think you're

group would allow them to kill the enemies easier. However, he didn't like the fact that

a difference between your words and Lezlev's previous plan. It's