Chapter 309 The Joker vs Survivors, hunters and Puppets

Just as the sword of the Angry Face and the spear of the Sad Face were about to reach Vlad, lightning bolts appeared around his body, crackling against the vines binding him.

The world seemed to slow to a crawl. Lorenzo’s victorious smile, the wisps of aura enveloping the incoming weapons, every fleeting second stretched into a minute.

Cracks spread across the vines binding Vlad. In the next moment, they shattered, flying in every direction, and Vlad vanished from his position.

"Take this," Vlad whispered, standing before Lorenzo as his terrifying punch surged upward from below.

Lorenzo didn’t see the fist. He saw his very life flashing before his eyes. The punch struck him squarely on the chin in a vicious uppercut. Lorenzo’s feet left the ground as his body was launched backward through the air.

After soaring nearly ten feet into the air, he crashed into the bushes with a heavy thud, his eyes rolled back and his jaw hanging open.

"Bwahahahaha!" Vlad burst into laughter, turning toward the stunned hunters with an ear-to-ear smile on his mask that made the hairs on their necks stand on end. He pointed his sword at them, still clad in nothing but Mana Blade, and declared, "Are you lot prepared for round two of the beating?"

"Don’t be so arrogant, Masked Maniac!" the Angry Face shouted, frustration evident in his voice. "We were all exhausted back then. Besides, we aren’t the only ones you’ll be facing!"

Vlad’s eyes narrowed behind his mask as he felt the ground beneath him vibrating. The bushes behind him began to shake, followed by the sound of cracking branches, as if something heavy were approaching.

Thud... thud... thud...

Vlad turned around, his eyes following the source of the heavy footsteps.

From the bushes, twelve towering humanoid figures emerged.

Their bodies were forged from crimson and black metal, plated like lacquered armor. Where their faces should have been, there was nothing but smooth steel, featureless save for two glowing eyes that burned unblinkingly.

At the center of each chest, a large sphere pulsed in a slow rhythm. They moved in perfect unison, accompanied by the sound of shifting gears and the faint hum of the spheres.

Walking behind them were two students whose silhouettes were barely visible, concealed by the towering bodies of the puppets.

Vlad’s lips curled into a faint smirk as he recognized them. Max and Lisa.

Max wore a worried smile, as though he had a bad feeling about what was about to happen. Lisa, standing beside him, wore the same flustered expression, her head lowered as she clearly wished to avoid becoming the center of attention.

"This bastard seems to be doing well," Vlad chuckled upon seeing the duo together.

The puppets surrounded him from one side, while the hunters and the remaining survivors approached from the opposite direction.

"Hand over all the tokens you stole, along with your own hunter token, as an apology," the Angry Face declared. "Ah, and take off your mask, too, unless you want to be beaten to a pulp."

Max’s twelve puppets were powerful enough to overwhelm a Two Star Knight. Combined with the twenty survivors and eight hunters, they formed a force formidable enough to make even an Early Stage Three Star Knight take them seriously.

No matter how strong this joker was, he surely couldn’t defeat all of them alone. After all, there wasn’t a single second-year student who had reached the level of a Three Star Knight. Not to mention, the joker must have been exhausted after fighting the eighty survivors he had just defeated.

"Aren’t you worried about him?" Aria asked, approaching Chloe, who was lazily sitting in the middle of the flower field and munching on chips from a packet she had pulled out of her storage ring. The packet was nearly as large as her torso.

Chloe’s pupilless eyes rose to meet the girl standing beside her. "Why? I don’t know him."

"You don’t need to lie," Aria retorted, lowering herself onto the ground beside her, as even standing was making her head spin. "The sword that joker is carrying has a crimson gem at the end of its hilt. Only Vlad has a sword that distinctive."

"Vlad lent it to the joker," Chloe lied with a straight face, popping another handful of chips into her mouth.

"..."

Aria let out a sigh. Watching Chloe devour those cheese-flavored chips made her a little hungry as well. She reached toward Chloe’s packet to try one, but Chloe immediately slapped her hand away and shifted the packet to her other hand.

"..."

Aria was left speechless. How could someone be so greedy? All she wanted was a single chip from the nearly five-kilogram bag resting in Chloe’s lap.

As she awkwardly withdrew her hand, Chloe declared with her cheeks puffed out, "You’re the one who needs to be worried. This much force isn’t enough to defeat him."

Her declaration elicited a mixed reaction from Aria. Was it overconfidence or absolute faith in Vlad? As she studied Chloe, she realized it was neither.

The complete absence of worry on Chloe’s face told her that this was simply a fact.

"Im-impossible..." Aria murmured, her eyes widening in disbelief. "Do you mean Vlad has already reached the level of a Three Star Knight?"

Chloe shook her head. "He’s only half a step away. And... the joker is not Vlad."

The joker’s limbs began to tremble at the Angry Face’s declaration. For a moment, everyone assumed he was so terrified that he had begun shaking. That was until the low snickers escaped him, gradually escalating into wild laughter.

A wave of confusion swept through everyone except Max, whose worries only deepened.

"Have you finally lost your marbles?" the Angry Face asked, looking bewildered.

Vlad shook his head, his laughter finally subsiding. "Do you know what’s the best thing about fighting puppets?" he asked, tilting his head ominously toward the Angry Face.

Vlad’s voice dropped, becoming deep and threatening. "I don’t need to worry about accidentally killing my opponent."

As the words left his mouth, the sword in his hand turned crimson, his Sword Aura bleeding into it like liquid.

"Bro..." Max whimpered, looking as though he were on the verge of tears. "It cost me my entire account to create those puppets. Please show them a little mercy."

The words had barely left his mouth when Vlad vanished from his position, appearing directly in front of a puppet.

Sensing the danger, the puppet hurled its massive fist at Vlad, displacing the air around it.

Instead of dodging, Vlad met the attack head-on, swinging his blade vertically. It struck the puppet’s knuckles, unleashing a burst of electrical sparks before slicing through its fist and continuing all the way to its shoulder. Vlad twisted his wrist, changing the direction of his sword mid-swing.

Slash!

The blade sliced through the puppet’s neck.

A second later, its head fell to the ground with a heavy thud. Sparks erupted from the severed cables in its torso before the rest of its body toppled backward, sending dust billowing outward.

"Now then..." Vlad said in an amused tone. "Let the circus begin!"