Torina won with ease.

Marian, smoking from all seven orifices in the literal sense, and Lilia, covered in bloody ice shards, clutched the huge lumps on their heads and wailed in pain.

The facts proved it. Torina’s PvP skills were still there. Even if she was rusty, she could still utterly crush two underclassmen who only knew how to cling to stronger people. After just a few exchanges, she had already won with ease.

“Told you so! Hahahaha!”

Ranifi burst out laughing.

“Mhm. Now that’s more like it.”

For some reason, Annawiel looked absurdly pleased with herself. For no clear reason at all.

The crowd watching nearby started whistling too. They were all enthusiastic spectators who loved a good spectacle and didn’t mind things getting bigger.

(I kept it to light injuries for now. It’ll just hurt a lot. That should be fine, right? Mm...)

Torina swept her gaze across the crowd. She noticed Mylora was watching too, one hand lightly covering her mouth. It was kind of cute.

(Right, this is the perfect chance to farm Mylora’s affection! Those two bastards bullied her for so long, and now they shamelessly came back for another beating. I’ll help her vent some of that anger properly!)

Thinking that, she gave a light cough, sheathed her sword, planted her hands on her hips, and looked down at the two defeated girls from above.

“Well? Do you submit now?”

“Guh...” “Damn it...”

“You’re upset, aren’t you? It stings, doesn’t it? Nyahahahahahaha~! This is karma!”

Her expression and tone matched the phrase evil deeds, evil face perfectly. She was basically a wicked stepmother straight out of a fairy tale. So punchable it was almost impressive.

“You two, you two! Filthy things worse than lice, and you dared show disrespect to a soul so pure and beautiful? Mere fireflies daring to challenge the bright moon in the sky?”

Of course, the “pure and beautiful soul” and the “bright moon in the sky” referred to Mylora. She was sucking up to Mylora. But to everyone else, it sounded like she was praising herself.

(What a villainess...) (Such a bad woman...) (She’s evil...) (And super narcissistic...) (I want to lick her shoes...)

The bystanders whispered among themselves, but Torina didn’t hear a thing. Trash-talking was fun. Trash-talking people from the moral high ground was even more fun.

“Trash fish~♡ Trash fish~♡ Dirty little trash fish~♡ Crawl back into your garbage bin~♡ Don’t let me see you again, and don’t let me hear you’re still out doing evil~♡ Garbage trash fish~♡”

Torina waved a hand casually. A freezing wind raised by ice runes blew them away like garbage, but then—

“Guh— you’ve gone too far!!!!”

“WOOOOOOOOOOOH!!!!”

At that moment, time seemed to freeze.

Marian and Lilia suddenly let out roars like shonen manga protagonists. An aura burst from them like they’d gone Super Saiyan. Their power and killing intent instantly surged, rose, exploded, skyrocketed, ramped up, up up up up up, kill kill kill kill kill!

“...Huh?” “What’s going on?” “Wasn’t it over?” “What are they doing...?”

The crowd was completely baffled.

Then Marian used her earth magic to rip stone from the ground. It wrapped around her body like armor, turning her into a vicious-looking rock golem over three meters tall. Beside her, Lilia raised her twin swords and chanted something. Extremely pure wind elements poured from her whole body, and the golem’s stone armor wrapped around her too. The two of them merged into one in a way straight out of a gag manga.

The crowd was stunned by the sight. It looked a little ridiculous, sure, but the overwhelming pressure coming from that golem was absolutely real.

Torina was dumbfounded too.

Then she reacted at once, and her heart screamed that this was bad.

(Hey, hey, hey, are you serious!?)

It had been mentioned before. To make the protagonist’s triumphant return and slaughter route more exciting, the original author had slapped a bunch of buff patches onto the former teammates. Marian and Lilia were no exception.

Their families had passed down some kind of special skill. When cornered in danger, it let them boost each other in a ridiculous left-foot-stepping-on-right-foot kind of way. In plain language, that meant—

Fusion!

Transformation!

Hen! Shin!

This was obviously a cheat skill they were only supposed to use in the middle of the original story when fighting the protagonist. And they were using it now!?

““Die, Torina Dewell!!!””

Even their voices had completely overlapped.

“Hey, hey, isn’t this broken cheat supposed to be for when the protagonist comes back and steamrolls you!? Why are you using it on me, the party leader!?”

““Fall before our friendship, effort, passion, and bonds!!””

“Do you think you’re in a shonen manga— gah!?”

The golem moved like lightning and grabbed Torina in one hand.

(So fast!!)

Its whole body was saturated with wind elements. Its speed didn’t match its clumsy appearance at all. The translucent white gauze on Torina’s body burst with dazzling lightning, but rock hard-countered the lightning element, so it did almost no damage.

““OOOOOOOOOOOH!!!””

The golem roared in their overlapping voices. Like a rugby player, it charged forward while clutching Torina, smashed straight through the inn, smashed through the apothecary next door, smashed through the flowerbed outside the shop, and then—

It spun a full three hundred and sixty degrees and hurled Torina like a baseball. She crashed with a thunderous boom into the outer wall of Garden Town!

“Gahhhhhh—”

Stars exploded in Torina’s vision.

Her ears rang with nothing but shrill noise.

The chain of massive impacts ravaged her bones and organs.

Her clothes had rune defenses, but even they couldn’t withstand that kind of damage.

And she wasn’t wearing any armor on her head. This was way beyond a concussion. She felt like her skull had shattered and her brains had splattered out.

It hadn’t even been ten days since she awakened the memories of her past life, and now she was about to reincarnate all over again—

“—Ah, I’m not dead?”

She suddenly snapped back to herself and crawled up from the pile of broken bricks and rubble. Agonizing pain raced through her whole body along her nerves, but unbelievably, she wasn’t injured at all. Why?

At that moment, in her class panel, the mosaic over the first skill under the “Office Drone” category disappeared. She finally saw the skill’s name.

(...“Office Drone Never Dies from Overtime”?)

What the hell?

““Yeeeeeeeeeart!!!””

The golem’s bizarre scream cut off her thoughts. She looked up—

The descending golem slammed a fist into her body. Hard enough to turn a person into meat paste.

It hurt like hell.

But she still didn’t die.

Her HP bar didn’t go down.

What went down was the thing called the Office Drone Gauge.

““Die die die die die die die!!””

The next punch launched her into the air, and then the golem unleashed a merciless air combo. Torina was tossed up and down like a willow catkin in the wind, but her HP still refused to drop. Only the Office Drone Gauge kept falling.

For some reason, while being beaten senseless and dizzy, Torina heard a mysterious BGM.

Standing here~

I realize~

You are just like me~

“Die, you piece of shit!!!!”

Boom!!!!!

A straight punch sent Torina flying backward. Her whole body embedded into the wall and turned into some kind of abstract art—

Crack!

But in that instant, the golem, having opened its centerline by taking that stance, realized—

Torina’s rapier had been stabbed into a gap between the stones on its surface.

““What the...?””

And Torina, embedded in the wall, raised a hand and lightly snapped her fingers.

“ᚦᚨᚺᚻᛜᛝ (Ice Lightning Spear)”

A flash of rune-light ran across the sword. Frozen lightning bloomed from inside the golem and pierced through it like branching vines.