The Villain Who Invests in a Witch to Survive Chapter 100 : Chapter 100

Chapter 100: Scrambling Away

Almost at the sa mont, another sensation of being watched ca from behind and to the side. It was more concealed, but it could not escape the heightened perception he had deliberately raised.

At his two o’clock direction, up in a lush water fir, sothing was quietly adjusting its position within the dense shadow of the canopy.

An ambush. And there were two of them—one behind a rock on the opposite bank, one in a tree on his side, forming a crossing field of vision and a potential pincer attack.

Ryan’s steps did not pause in the slightest, as though he had noticed nothing at all. He continued walking upstream along the creek, only shifting slightly toward the side where the trees grew thicker, as if rely trying to avoid the increasing number of rocks by the water.

His right hand hung naturally at his side, his fingers less than an inch from the Elental Foil Pack at his waist.

He could feel those two gazes stuck tightly to his back.

He walked another dozen steps or so and was nearly out of their best ambush range.

Then—

“Now!”

A deliberately lowered shout ca from behind the rock across the creek.

A figure sprang up from behind it, thrust both hands forward, and launched a fist-sized orange-red fireball. It howled through the air trailing fla, shooting straight toward Ryan’s back.

At the sa ti, the canopy overhead rustled loudly as another figure dove down from above, gripping a hardened wooden throwing spear whose sharpened tip faintly glowed with the green light of wood-aspect Mana. Using the force of the fall, the attacker drove it viciously toward the back of Ryan’s neck.

A textbook low-level coordination: ranged magic to distract and disrupt, followed by a lethal close-range physical strike.

The timing was not bad. Against an ordinary third-year student with little experience, it might very well have succeeded.

But the instant Ryan heard that shout, his body had already reacted.

He did not turn around, nor did he try to look at the incoming fireball. Instead, he drove his left foot hard forward and spun sharply to the right with the force of it.

The orange-red fireball grazed past the outside of his left shoulder. The scorching air lifted a few strands of his hair before the spell slamd into a tree trunk behind him and burst with a muffled pop, leaving behind a blackened mark.

And against the wooden spear stabbing down from above, Ryan’s left hand had already risen.

His fingers spread wide, aid directly at the attacker’s face, twisted slightly with strain as he descended.

“Flash Dust.”

As he spoke those words in a low voice, the small pinch of fine silver-white powder hidden between his fingers was triggered by a trace of Mana and suddenly burst into a sheet of silver brilliance several tis more blinding than the afternoon sun.

“Ahhh—my eyes!”

The diving attacker let out a scream. The originally precise strike deford instantly. Both hands flew instinctively to cover his eyes, and his body lost balance, pitching sideways past Ryan and crashing heavily onto the stony bank by the creek. The wooden spear flew from his grip as well.

Ryan’s sharp spin had just completed its half turn, leaving him facing the caster on the opposite bank.

That person clearly had not expected his companion’s surprise attack to fail in such a manner. He was frantically trying to gather a second fireball, and the shock had not yet faded from his face.

Ryan gave him no chance.

His right hand brushed across his waist, and a tal disc with a sharpened edge was already caught between his fingers. With a flick of his wrist, the disc flew out soundlessly, cutting precisely across the space before the other student’s raised hands, just before the casting gesture could be completed.

Sssht!

The Disruption Rune engraved along the edge of the disc activated, and a small field of chaotic, attribute-less Mana spread outward. The caster only felt the fire-aspect Mana gathering between his hands lose control and scatter in an instant. The heat of the backlash made him cry out and stagger backward. The second Fireball died before it could be born.

The fight had begun in less than three breaths, and it had all but ended just as quickly.

The attacker sprawled on the stony bank was still rolling and groaning with his hands over his eyes, while the caster across the creek clutched the hand that had been lightly burned by the magical backlash, staring uncertainly at the tall figure still standing straight on the opposite side. In the dusk, his face looked deathly pale.

Only then did they finally see their target’s face clearly.

“Ry-Ryan Velt?!”

The caster on the opposite bank cried out in shock, his voice filled with belated fear.

The attacker on the ground, still covering his eyes, also stopped rolling. His whole body went stiff.

Ryan Velt.

Among the third-year students—especially within certain petty cliques that loved to gang up on the weak and throw their weight around—that na carried a distinctly complicated aning.

He was gloomy, solitary, impossible to predict, and he even had the terrifying record of defeating the Sword Duke’s daughter. He was publicly acknowledged as the number one genius of the Lower Division.

To many people, he himself was like one of those unpredictable danger zones in the Whispering Forest. The best response was simply to stay far away.

These two ambushers had obviously heard of his notorious reputation, and they clearly believed every word of it. Greed had driven them to attack when they spotted a lone student, but now the target’s true identity had doused their courage like a basin of ice water.

Ryan said nothing. He rely stood there quietly, his gray-blue eyes calmly fixed across the darkening dusk and the murmuring creek on the panicked caster on the opposite bank. He did not even spare a glance for the temporarily blinded attacker on the ground.

That silence was more oppressive than any threat.

The caster’s throat bobbed violently, his expression contorting with struggle.

Run? Fight back? Beg for rcy?

All kinds of thoughts raced through his mind.

In the end, his fear of what “Ryan Velt” might do crushed everything else.

He spun around and bolted into the forest on the opposite bank without looking back even once. He did not so much as spare a thought for the companion still groaning by the creek. His panicked footsteps quickly faded into the distance.

The attacker on the ground seed to hear his companion fleeing, and panic seized him even harder. He struggled to get up, only to fall again because his sight had not yet recovered.

Ryan walked over to him, bent down, and picked up the hardened wooden throwing spear that had fallen nearby.

Its workmanship was crude, but the tip had been hardened by so thod, and it still carried faint traces of a natural-aspect enchantnt. Its penetrating power was not to be underestimated.

Sensing soone approach, the student on the ground began trembling even more violently.

Ryan weighed the spear once in his hand.

Then he drove it down with savage force.

Thunk.

The spear plunged deep into the mud right beside the attacker’s head, less than an inch from his ear.

The attacker jerked so violently that his whole body nearly bounced off the ground, and a short gasp burst from his throat.

“The runes.”

“In... in my coat... the inner pocket on the left...”

His voice shook as he frantically fumbled around and pulled out two runes—a pale blue one and an earth-yellow one—then held them up over his head with trembling hands.

Ryan took them and glanced at them once. Common attributes. Ordinary energy fluctuations.

He did not place them into his own insulated compartnt. Instead, he casually stuffed them into a sh pocket on the outside of his backpack. Those were redundant pieces, reserved for submission later or disposal.

“Scram.”

That was the second word he spoke.

The attacker looked as though he had just been pardoned. He no longer cared that his eyes were still blurred. Half stumbling, half crawling, he struggled to his feet and lurched off in the general direction his companion had fled, vanishing into the dusk-covered forest soon after.

Silence returned to the creek. Only the sound of running water remained, along with the faint distant cry of a night owl.

Ryan stood where he was, looked at the crude throwing spear in his hand, then glanced toward the direction where the two had disappeared. His face showed no expression as he casually tossed the spear into the flowing creek.

The wooden weapon spun several tis with the current, then slowly sank.

The night was deepening. He needed to find a place where he could safely light a campfire and survive the long night as quickly as possible.

As for those two, and whatever new rumor they might spread about how Ryan Velt had turned the tables on ambushers by the creek, he did not care.

Sotis a notorious reputation was also an efficient form of intimidation, especially in a forest where the rules explicitly allowed people to fight over what they found.