The poor man was already on the verge of crying, and his facial expressions became very ugly the moment he saw Rio’s face.
Rio was now standing an arm’s length from him.
As a fellow S-ranker, he could notice the space elementals around Rio, and he could understand what Rio had just done.
From the perspective of an ordinary person, what Rio did might seem difficult to comprehend.
But someone like him, who has been in the S-rank for a while, can understand it deeply.
Rio forcefully bent the space-time fabric despite being just an early S-ranker, which was already a horrifying feat.
Only demi-gods are capable of messing with the space and time in such a reckless manner; S-rankers are still too weak to be doing something like that, as it’s very easy to suffer severe backlash.
S-rankers indeed have strong bodies, but they aren’t strong enough to resist the influence of the space-time fabric like that.
Rio not only bent the space-time fabric, but he also slid on that short time gap and reached near his opponent; he literally did a short-distance ’warp drive’ with his own power!!
Only powerful spaceships built with insane engineering skills and SS-rankers can do ’Warp-drive’!! But Rio did it!
Although he had to first amass a lot of miasma to use as a compressed energy source, it was still a remarkable feat that no S-ranker should be able to achieve.
"Don’t be so mean; I brought a gift for you!"
Rio smirked at the poor guy’s words and thrust his sword at an insanely fast speed.
[Sword Intent: Forced Overload!]
Rio pushed the sword into the man’s chest, and all the miasma swirling around his sword was forcefully pumped into the man’s entire body like a pressure jet pump pumping water into something.
Rio even forcefully pumped his sword intent into the man’s body, causing his entire body to bloat up like a balloon.
The sword intent that forcefully entered his body kept his body intact and didn’t let it burst apart, while the miasma that was forcefully pumped into him continuously tried to push out.
All of his organs were ruptured and corroded by miasma; his mind and sea of consciousness suffered waves of pain and horror over and over as his bloated body started to bounce around like a football.
Horror and fear appeared on the man’s face as he was turned into a meatball filled with miasma in a matter of seconds.
He couldn’t live or die and could only suffer horrible pain with every bounce.
It was so horrible to watch that even Rio felt a bit of pity for the guy.
’Er... did I go too far with this one... this doesn’t seem like a good thing to do to someone...’
’But this skill is indeed quite effective though... I can pump various types of elements into people’s body and make them incapable of fighting back...’
’In case I need to keep them alive and need immobilize them, I can use this skill and I can just heal them back if needed...’
The more Rio thought about this matter, the more he felt that it was a very effective skill, and he can indeed work on improving it further in the future.
’But this one can’t be used in front of Lia either... she might get disgusted by seeing such a scene... err.. I don’t want to make her worry about my mental health...’
Rio felt that if he used these weird skills in front of Lia, she might get worried about his mental health and might question why he was making up so many repulsive skills.
’By the way, should I practice my ’healing skills’ on this guy?’
Rio felt that it was quite a good opportunity to polish his healing skills.
[Sword Intent: Gentle Approach!]
[Elemental Sword Art: Healing Type: Pinpoint Heal!]
Rio poked the bloated blob of meat with his sword’s tip and inserted a gentle stream of healing elementals into the body.
’I need to be more precise and careful when trying to heal someone who’s being constantly corroded by miasma from inside out...’
Miasma corroded the man’s body and started making holes in the body and spilling out through those rotting holes.
Rio spread his healing magic to close those holes before they could get bigger.
’Hmm, it’s difficult... dealing with miasma with just healing magic alone is really inefficient... no wonder Riya felt so helpless back when she was trying to heal Zach who was affected by miasma...’
Riya only became capable of dealing with miasmic corruption when she learned the legendary skill ’The Heart of Eternal Nirvana’; before that, she couldn’t do anything about miasma.
’I see, if I didn’t have the ability to control miasma, I would have been very helpless against it too...’
What Rio failed to consider was that, normally, people are meant to be helpless against miasma and corruption.
Just like how this powerful S-ranker couldn’t even resist, even SS-rankers fear corruption and actively use their abilities to defend against it.
Rio is the only one who’s been smearing his entire body with miasma as if it were just ordinary warm water or something.
Miasma is very good at killing and rotting away things; Rio sometimes even uses it to bathe and dip his entire body in miasma to clean his body of all microorganisms and dirt.
’Miasma feels warm and comforting to me... I wonder what it feels like to others... Others seem to be screaming in pain and horror, so perhaps the sensation is similar to how your body feels when it is melted by acid or something.’
Rio has fought with his fair share of enemies and has already tested what being splashed with acid feels like.
Although his feelings are highly suppressed and he can’t tell accurately how it feels, it sure isn’t a pleasant feeling.
"OH! OH! OH!! HOO!! HE... LP... HE... LP...OH! OGGG!!!"
Just when Rio was about to lose himself in his world of thoughts, the distorted voice of the meatball resounded in his ears and brought him back to his senses.
"Oi! Don’t disturb me like that; I was busy thinking about something, you know!"
"We just started, you know! Can’t you be a little more patient? I just started practicing my skills..."
Hearing Rio’s words, the disfigured man started crying tears of blood and tried to beg for mercy, but Rio completely ignored that and kept polishing his healing skills.
Miasma kept rotting his body, and Rio kept healing him, preventing him from either dying or living; it was an endless series of experiments.
"You didn’t show mercy when your victims begged you, did you? You didn’t let innocent people live a peaceful life... and I kind of don’t like those who try to disturb someone’s peaceful life, so don’t complain..."
"I ain’t gonna go easy on ya..."
Rio shook his head and continued, causing the man to keep screaming.
Just when Rio was about to get irritated by those screams, the circular artifact on his chest glowed again.
[Code 11!! Alert! Alert! Emergency Recall!!]
A look of confusion appeared on Rio’s face as he finally stopped torturing the poor man.
’Code 11? Isn’t that only used when something important comes up? Is the headquarters of the association under attack or something?’
’Why are they sending an emergency recall order? Is the problem that serious that they need me to go over and help them?’
Rio scratched the back of his neck in confusion.
*BOOM!* *Splatter!*
As Rio had stopped healing him, the poor man finally couldn’t contain the miasma inside him, and his body burst apart like a balloon being popped.
Miasma spilled everywhere along with his innards.
’Thankfully, this is a barren area, far away from any town or city so there’s no need to worry about this area getting affected by miasma...’