PATH OF THE STAR HUNTER

“Desmond, I don’t like this place.” A small voice full of complaint came from Kyuru′s reddish lips, she was holding a small fruit in her delicate hands and kept hidden inside Desmond’s clothes.

Looking at the crowd around him, a sour expression-filled Desmond’s face, who had to respond trying to calm the restless fairy: “Don’t worry, as soon as we get a more private place to spend time; you will be able to wander more calmly”

Unknown if his words had reassured the faerie or if she was too busy devouring the fruit in her hands, at least Desmond felt more comfortable now.

Advancing through the crowd, Desmond almost felt the urge to curse the church for organizing the event so early in the morning, it had been almost thirty days since he got his vacation and Desmond hadn’t rested a single day.

Trying to push aside his laziness at the same time as he pushed the crowd, Desmond finally made it to the front of the crowd, where he was able to more calmly watch the first battles of the event.

The disappointment Desmond felt couldn’t be clearer on his face, the level was too low, not only were the participants weak but they were also unskilled.

In the first place, Desmond had already noticed something about Serefía, something he hadn’t thought of the first time he was here, it was its level of development in terms of mana mastery.

During his first visit to Serefía, Desmond had witnessed an epically disastrous battle between a human army and the Stormbringer Skaylos. Back then, Desmond had thought that even though they were defeated, the humans of this world possessed inordinate power and in a way, he wasn’t wrong.

.....

In the said army there were many two-star class warriors, the problem was that these warriors were pathetically weak, at least compared to the Mei Fei Long who reached the two-star class.

Upon giving it a more detailed thought, Desmond realized why it was a matter of development in the martial sovereign world, people lived for the sole purpose of reaching the martial peak, their entire culture was strongly built on the idea of ??the strong devouring the weak, and there were organizations called sects whose only goal was to produce powerful people.

Due to all of the above, the techniques used in the Martial Sovereign World were extremely advanced and detailed, displaying a masterful domain of the aura and exploiting every ounce of potential in it.

In Serefia’s case, it was completely different, the people here didn’t seem to truly understand mana, or at least their techniques were far from that advanced, hence most of the two-star class warriors Desmond saw back then; won’t even use a single real ability and rely on pure elemental control.

And even then, they were a bit idiotic, the people of this world used mana as it was the aura and even fought like martial artists, it’s not like Desmond could judge that part since his fighting style was very similar; the problem was that Desmond had at least designed a fighting style around it and had real skills to back it up.

Hence Desmond found it quite ridiculous to see some of the fighters, who just coated their fists with some kind of mana before showing off their pathetic boxing skills.

Of course, Desmond wasn’t naive or arrogant enough to assume that everyone in this world would have that level of ability, that kind of complacent thinking is what gets people to their graves early.

Whatever the case, Desmond was quite disappointed to see the battles, although not all the participants were so bad, there was one guy who was clearly in a different league; but Desmond hardly saw it as a decent punching bag.

This wasn’t an exaggeration at all, Desmond was at the end of the day a hunter, not only was his talent monstrous, his fighting ability and lethality were in a completely different league than his peers; that was especially the case for Desmond whose fighting style relied on sheer explosive power.

At least, in Desmond’s opinion, if he used all his abilities and power, it wouldn’t take him more than fifteen seconds to completely slaughter all the competitors, although that was perhaps part of the problem; almost all of Desmond’s abilities had too high a lethality so they weren’t suitable for events like this.

Desmond’s only consolation was that he managed to see his target, the holy priestess Cecilia, even he had to admit that he wasn’t expecting the woman to be so beautiful, as he had thought that being a woman of the church, it was unlikely that she would even make an effort to display her beauty; little did he hope she didn’t need to make such an effort in the first place.

But there was a problem, this tournament was organized to select a guardian knight for her, this was the perfect opportunity to approach his target naturally, but Desmond had not signed up for the event; there was also that guy who would be the winner.

Only when Desmond found out about the true prize of this event, did he give a second thought to that guy among the participants, just as Desmond had thought before; that man was too strong compared to his competition.

Enough that it wasn’t even necessary for him to participate in an event like this. Desmond already found the whole situation a bit strange, to begin with, others wouldn’t have given it too much thought, but it just wasn’t normal for the church to look for knights among the common people when they had a whole damn order full of them; that was not to mention that this was the knight of the holy priestess.

So the only logical explanation is that this event was a farce, something staged to plant someone close to Cecilia, but there were two problems with it.

The first problem for Desmond was that he had no way of finding out who was behind this event and the second problem was that if he were to get involved, he would immediately attract the attention of Cecilia’s enemies; which would not be pleasant.

Sure, Desmond’s job was to protect the holy priestess, but that didn’t mean he wanted to run into people who were aiming at her head-on. Hence Desmond wasn’t sure how to react to the whole situation, on the one hand, she was the person he should protect but on the other hand, Desmond wasn’t sure how to protect her since he wasn’t good at that kind of thing.

However, he was too naive, some conflicts were bound to happen, they were a matter of disposition, and Desmond had to protect Cecilia, so he would inevitably clash with those who seek to offend her.

Perhaps, what Desmond did not expect was to have to collide so soon against Cecilia’s enemies, but when he saw how the champion approached the holy priestess speaking with arrogance and lust; Desmond knew that conflict was only natural.

And since the conflict was inevitable, then Desmond would no longer worry about offending these people since they were going to be enemies anyway; Desmond would crash into them head-on with all of his might.

That was the conclusion Desmond came to, since he was no good at protecting people, Desmond would keep Cecilia safe by brutally crushing anyone who dared to oppose her; At least for the next thirty days.

Once Desmond came to that conclusion, a rather playful smile spread across his face just before he used his to form an incredibly subtle wind tunnel around himself, which allowed him to increase his speed, while at the same time that it helped him to erase his presence to appear in a single sudden movement in front of the supposed champion.

Not having the disposition to even try to be subtle, Desmond slapped the man squarely, causing the sound of the blow to fill the entire arena. This was just before Desmond arrogantly declared his intentions and challenged the champion to a duel.

To Desmond’s surprise, Cecilia was the first person to second his unreasonable request for a duel, looking back at the eyes of the person he had just slapped, filled with fiery anger; Desmond did not doubt that this person would agree to the duel as well.

Just as Desmond had expected, the man whose name Desmond was too lazy to remember accepted the duel as his eyes pointed like daggers at Desmond.

Stretching his body at the same time that he cracked some of his joints, Desmond looked with little interest at his enemy, and instead, his mind was more focused on seeing the reactions of the people in the high-status box.

Witnessing the cynical indifference shown by his enemy, the former champion lashed out at Desmond, covering his right arm with a blade of light, that person displaying a skill superior to all the tournament participants.

The problem was that he was showing his incompetence in front of an expert, completely neglecting skill level to control mana, when it came to close combat; Desmond would never fall behind unless he faced monsters like Mei.

Rolling his eyes in exasperation, Desmond barely moved, it was just a subtle blow with the back of his right hand, but his opponent’s attack was completely deflected; then leaving the attacker with his guard wide open.

Desmond didn’t even find it funny, but since he had started all this, he would at least make sure to put on a good show, of course; the show wouldn’t be for the audience but for whoever it was backing his idiotic opponent.

Two jabs hit the man’s chest like meteorites, who felt his entire ribcage crack, his lungs barely managed to hold on to the air inside them, and when he believed that more blows would continue to rain down; Desmond stepped back.