Rio had already sneaked inside the base a while ago with the help of his new ’friend’ (forcefully made); he then made himself invisible using light elemental’s properties.
Once the S-rankers were off-guard, he went and disarmed the entire base. Not only did he break their communication methods with the outside world, but he even managed to set up space-jamming artifacts everywhere.
His sword intent and assassin skills are a perfect match, and he can even hide the spatial fluctuations of a space-jamming artifact for a while.
If it was someone like Alverto or Link, they could have easily noticed the spatial fluctuations, but it was not that simple for ordinary S-rankers.
Rio then killed the orc warriors who were in charge of communicating with the ’Orc King’ and ’erased’ their bodies from the face of the earth without leaving a single clue.
The current Rio not only has the assassination skills of the world’s greatest assassin, but he also has the capability to manipulate any element possible, and he can easily deal with evidence in thousands of ways.
Sword Intent can even influence the ’atoms’ a bit, making it even easier for him to assassinate without leaving any evidence behind.
After doing all this, he finally joined the poor victims who were being escorted right to the core of the area and blended among them to easily get extremely close to the strongest guy among everyone.
While wandering the entire base, Rio had already made a mental map of the entire base; he had figured out how many A-rankers and S-rankers were stationed here and who was stationed where.
With his extraordinary intuition, he even made an estimate of every S-ranker’s approximate strength; among them all, the guy Rio killed first was the strongest.
He was at medium S-rank and could have caused a slight delay in Rio’s actions, as he seemed much stronger than most of the S-rankers here.
Acknowledging this matter, Rio played a mind game.
He blended with the weak captives, made his way to the Orc, and used ’Maru’ as a sudden distraction.
His bet paid off; Maru became an awakener on the spot and caused the orc warrior to become angered and let his guard down for a millisecond.
And for a speedster like Rio, a single millisecond was enough to do a lot of things; he took advantage of that opportunity and penetrated the defenses of the orc with sword intent with close proximity.
He directly made it impossible for him to even control his mana for a single second with his sword intent raging in his body and then blew him apart on the spot.
Every movement and opportunity was calculated and done with extreme precision; even a single mistake and alteration would have caused Rio to enter a head-on combat mode.
Which would have made this stealth operation less effective.
’These assassination skills fit me so perfectly as if they were tailor-made for me... I kind of feel chills thinking about how creepy and horrific I might have become with these skills...’
With these skills alone, Kevin was once known as a legendary assassin; now Rio has gone one step further than even that.
Imagine an assassin who’s not only stronger than you but also uses tactics and deceitful strategies to weaken you to get even more advantages and then sneaks up to you at your weakest moments.
...
*BOOOM!*
The entire underground base was pulled out of the ground with sheer force; the space-jamming artifacts completely blocked any shockwaves and sounds produced.
They even made it difficult for the S-rankers to fly, as the space had solidified.
Rio and Raji, on the other hand, were not affected by the space-jamming artifacts, as Raji was strong and Rio had space elemental powers.
The S-rankers, on the other hand, were too shocked and confused to even understand what had happened.
They couldn’t contact anyone; they couldn’t even send a distress signal to their boss, and two big bad monsters were staring at them with murderous intent.
Everything happened so fast that the prisoners didn’t even realize that Rio had already sliced off everyone’s shackles and they were now free.
Only when those shackles fell on the floor and created noise did they snap out of their daze.
"We are saved! Yeah!!"
"That’s the ’Hero of Dawn’! He’s here to save us!!"
"Ah, I got to see my idol the cold princess Raji before G*A-6, I can now peacefully die..."
"Everyone step aside; my boyfriend, the ’hero,’ is here to save me!! Ahh~"
"Who’s your boyfriend b*tch! He’s obviously my hubby~"
Maru was dumbfounded after he woke up and found out that the person he had been talking to this whole time was actually the famous ’Dark Star’ Rio Flash himself.
"N-no wonder his words carry so much wisdom..."
Even the voice of Raji’s fans was suppressed by Rio’s excited fans; to avoid getting caught in between, he flew into the sky and stood beside Raji to confront the S-rankers.
"Good work; no wonder you could complete all of your missions so easily; you have become much stronger than I expected in the last few months..."
"Hmm, it won’t be wrong to say that you are already the strongest among all S-rankers..."
A rare smile hung over Raji’s face as if she was happy about something, as if something pleasant had happened, and even the stress from overworking was nowhere to be seen anymore.
Her spirit was refreshed, and she was in her peak condition now. She raised her finger toward the sky, and her eyes turned serious.
[Frost Type: Divine Grade Magic: Broken Throne of the Snow Queen!]
A magic circle so big that it covered the entire sky! It was so big that even Rio, with his enhanced physical capabilities, could not see the end of it.
In whichever direction the S-rankers looked, the magic circle had covered the sky till the horizon.
The mana in the entire region changed its flow, and a stir of mana so big that even the clouds in the sky were blown away was created.
The magic circle alone had so much mana concentrated in it that even all the S-rankers combined here might not have.
Even still, this was a weaker version, as Raji had made sure to hold back and had confined the area to not affect the planet too much.
If she manipulated too much mana, all the SS-rankers across the globe would notice that an SS-ranker was launching an attack, and they all might come over to see what’s happening.
SS-rankers are like tactical nukes; they aren’t supposed to be launched randomly like this, or the planet will suffer irreparable damage.
*Shmmmmmmmm!*
The sound of instant freezing rang in the space as the space-time fabric was forced to a halt; a gigantic throne made of ice elementals descended from the magic circle and floated in the sky.
The entire region froze instantly, and the S-rankers didn’t even have the time to react, as even the flow of mana in the air got forcefully halted due to the freezing magic’s ’Slow’ and ’Freeze’ effects.
The might of a ’Divine’ grade magic is enough to level down an entire continent even with a weaker version; thus, Raji confined it to one area, and all the S-rankers and the alive subordinates were frozen instantly.
It was as if a gigantic throne of ice had pressed down on them and had commanded them to ’stop’ and ’freeze’ at the orders of the throne.
Even Rio felt a chill run down his spine looking at that majestic throne of ice.