Gradba looked at Rio with a sharp gaze, but Raji got in the way and blocked his sight as if to show that she was protecting him and he won’t get to Rio and the others before dealing with her.
"I am surprised that you actually dared to even come here! I praise your courage, woman! But today, you have gone too far!"
Gradba’s words made the ordinary folks shiver in fear, and they looked at Rio and Raji with a look of worry.
Raji waved her arm and spread out the ice shards floating around in the air to better protect the people behind her.
"Heh, I haven’t had a genuine fight with a fellow SS-ranker, but I don’t mind doing it either; in fact I was looking for a chance too..."
Her voice turned domineering as she continued.
"Last warning, you are inside the borders of the human empire! Leave this place immediately and go back to your nation; what you are doing is illegal trespassing between nations!"
As Raji spoke those words, she unleashed her aura to the fullest and pressured the Orc king Gradba without backing off for even a single second.
Gradba shook his head after seeing Raji’s stubborn determination.
"Having the courage to face a strong enemy head-on is indeed praiseworthy, but! Don’t think that I will go easy on you just because of that alone!"
"You have killed dozens of important subordinates and pillars of the orc empire; I will not let this matter rest!"
"To avenge them all, I will kill that kid and capture you too! I will make you the hostage and then use you to extort important things from your empire!"
Raji smirked at those words and replied in a mocking tone,
"If even the king of a nation is so blatantly talking about extortion and kidnapping, It’s not difficult to understand why the nation is still left behind others..."
"The mentality of yours and your people is still stuck in a long-gone age of violence and war... in this era of peaceful coexistence and cooperation, your ideology is too outdated..."
The war between nations and races was a major trouble before the age of King Allen Von Reinhart, but after he created the world alliance to solve the problems of all races, things progressed into a new age.
An age of coexistence and cooperation was created.
By working together and speaking the same language, the entire world came together and became so strong that they even drove the entire demon race close to extinction from the entire solar system.
Negotiations and talks during world alliance meetings can resolve most matters, deescalating war-like situations and promoting peace among nations.
Orcs, on the other hand, don’t follow these policies too faithfully; they are inherently violent by nature and even consider humans as a high-quality food.
Moreover, their nation is located right beside the human empire, and they hate that humans are making so much progress in all fields.
That’s where the hatred and geopolitical tensions come from; it even caused a war that went on and on for decades, causing the deaths of millions of people.
"HOW DARE YOU INSULT THE GREAT ORC EMPIRE!!"
"I WILL SHOW YOU TODAY THAT THERE ARE HIERARCHIES EVEN AMONG SS-RANKERS!"
With that said, Gradba brought out an artifact from his space ring and channeled mana into it.
Before Rio could understand what was going on, two powerful auras appeared in the sky near Gradba, and the pressure on him and everyone behind him increased tremendously.
’Two more SS-rankers!? They were ready to kill Raji here today!!’
Originally, Rio was confused why the Orc King decided to lay out such an easy-to-notice plan and why he didn’t use any other methods to lure out Rio and Raji over to the border area.
Only now does Rio understand why he did this.
Gradba himself was a powerful veteran SS-ranker who already had enough combat capabilities to defeat Raji in a head-on clash.
But such a clash will alert the entire world; the world alliance will get involved, and all the SS-rankers of the world will flood over here after sensing that Gradba was fighting with Raji.
No matter how much Gradba tried to hide it, once he got involved in a drawn-out battle, he would not be able to keep it secret from others that there were SS-rankers fighting on the planet, which is strictly banned.
If SS-rankers fight on the planet, they can easily shatter the planet, and it can cause damage to everyone. That’s why they are all banned from fighting on the planet and always do it in the empty space.
Rio was confused about how Gradba would hide this matter and how he will settle the fight with Raji fast enough to not get noticed by the world.
But it turns out, his solution was very simple: he had already made preparations; he had already convinced two other SS-rankers who were on friendly terms with him to attack Raji together.
With three SS-rankers, one can fully focus on suppressing the entire region’s mana and spatial fluctuations to prevent those outside from noticing anything and can even prevent excessive damage to the planet.
The other one will suppress Raji’s magic and will stop her from escaping by continuously interrupting her mana and putting debuffs on her.
Then Gradba, on the other hand, will do explosive one-shot combo attacks and severely injure or kill Raji in a single explosive attack in her weakened state.
This way, the situation won’t escalate, and the goal will be achieved in complete silence without letting the rest of the world notice.
If Rio hadn’t messed up the timing of their plan, these three SS-rankers would have reached here before the S-rankers were slaughtered, and then the innocent humans in the base would have worked as perfect hostages to make Raji hesitate.
And hesitating in front of a warrior as experienced and powerful as Gradba would have been a fatal mistake; even a single millisecond delay would have been enough for him to close the gap and do fatal damage.
’This plan is really good actually; that situation could really have put me and Principal Raji in a lot of trouble...’
Although Raji hasn’t fallen for this trap and all the people have been rescued, the three SS-rankers are still a problem; Rio didn’t expect this kind of situation.
"PFFFTTT!!!HAHAAHAHAHAHAHAH!!!"
Although it was a dire situation, it was not a time to laugh, Raji; the woman known for being a cold beauty was laughing while clenching her stomach.
This was the first time Rio had seen her laughing so loudly like that; she was laughing so much that tears appeared in her eyes because of laughing too much.
"Y-you just said you will show me the difference between SS-rankers and then summoned your boyfriends to help you out! PFFFFTTT HAHAHAHAHAH!!!!"
"Is that the difference!? Pffftttt!!! N-no seriously... pffff!!! Ah, I can’t stop laughing, ahaha..."
The entire area went silent, and only that melodious laughter rang out in that awkward, silence-filled environment; the faces of the three SS-rankers twitched in anger.
But no one cared about that.
Raji, who’s usually always cold like an iceberg, looked stunning and charming while laughing so happily.
Even the ordinary folks who were being suppressed by the powerful auras forgot about their worries and went into a daze looking at her beautiful face.
’She is indeed related to Riya no doubt... if she was always smiling like this, it would have been easy to mistake her as a grown-up version of Riya except her hair are bluish...’