Before the priest’s punishment was carried out, the matter of Val being poisoned was indeed brought up, but it wasn’t explicitly stated that the poison used was the Whitemore Bloodline Suppressing poison.
This meant that most still saw Val as a defect, a normie.
The fact that Val was a Bloodline User was privileged information known to only a select few, and Elias was not amongst them!
His understanding of Val was still stuck in the past. Ignorant of the fact that Val was a level 2 Bloodline User, an entire level above him, he still perceived Val as a mere normie.
That’s precisely why he, a mere level 1 Bloodline Warrior, had the audacity to target him, a Level 2 Bloodline User!
“Well, well,” Elias’ voice rang out in a condescending drawl, his eyes glinting with cruelty and overflowing with jealousy as he caught sight of Val. “Isn’t this a sight? Our dear Val, attempting provocative yoga moves beneath the setting sun. It’s quite the performance.” He paused dramatically, a malicious smile playing on his lips. “Tell me, Val, have you decided on a new career path now that you’re destined to be nothing more than a normie? Is your new profession the world’s oldest? Should we henceforth refer to you as ‘Val the Harlot’?”
Without skipping a beat, Elias continued his verbal onslaught, “I’m curious, Val, do you cater to men? There’s quite a sizeable crowd at the IronSpire stronghold who’d generously pay to see the once-glorious star of IronSpire stronghold bend over and present himself. The spectacle of IronSpire’s golden boy reduced to such a level… wouldn’t that be a sight for sore eyes?”
Elias’s words were intentionally designed to provoke, to belittle Val’s status as a so-called ‘normie’, a term used to mock those who didn’t possess the extraordinary abilities that set apart the elites of their society.
The insinuations were crude, intended to hit Val where it would hurt the most – his pride and dignity.
“This is hilarious,” a few onlookers chuckled, finding amusement in the spectacle.
Rudely interrupted from his training, Val turned to look at Elias with an incomprehensible gaze and said calmly, “You shouldn’t have said that, Elias. I will make you regret every word you just uttered.”
Elias closed the gap, stopping just in front of Val. “Really? And how exactly do you plan on doing that? How can a puny normie like you pose any threat to a Bloodline warrior like me?”
Pa!
In response, Val’s hand cut through the air, delivering a resounding slap across Elias’s cheek. The sound echoed across the training ground, capturing the attention of everyone present.
Immediately after, the onlookers directed whispers of mockery at Elias.
“Haha, did you just see that? Elias got slapped!”
“He’s a bloodline user and still couldn’t dodge a slap from Val? What a disgrace to our ranks!”
“Who knew that a mighty Bloodline Warrior could be humiliated by a normie? This day will go down in history!”
Because of one move from Val, Elias became the butt of everyone’s ridicule.
Val’s single slap had managed to puncture his inflated ego in front of the entire crowd.
“You dare?!” Elias bellowed, his face reddening with anger.
Val didn’t answer with words. Instead, his hand flashed out, landing two more sharp slaps on Elias’s cheek. The force behind his blow was so heavy that Elias stumbled and nearly fell.
“Since you dared to disrespect me, naturally, I dared to slap you.” Val retorted after slapping him not once but twice.
Driven by humiliation and fury, Elias screamed, “Argh! I am going to kill you!”
Immediately after, he launched himself at Val, fist clenched and ready to strike.
His fist shot out like a hurricane. However, Val merely tilted his head to the right, and Elias’s fist missed him entirely.
Then, in a blink of an eye, Val’s hand moved with the swiftness of a striking viper, delivering ten rapid slaps, each one landing with more force than the last.
Elias did try to fight back, but every time he attempted to retaliate, Val’s slaps threw him off balance, leaving him disoriented and reeling.
The first few hits knocked Elias’s teeth loose, sending them flying. The following ones distorted his features until his face resembled a baboon’s red butt.
Under Val’s relentless onslaught, Elias’s face ballooned out, taking on an almost comedic appearance.
Everyone in the training ground watched as his tenth slap sent Elias crashing to the ground like a puppet with its strings cut off!
Seeing him lying motionless on the ground, Val surmised that he had slapped Elias into oblivion. Well, who told him to mess with him in the first place? He had no one but himself to blame for this.
The echo of that final slap was followed by a pin-drop silence that swept across the training ground.
The spectators, all of whom had been spectating their fights with a mixture of disbelief and amusement, suddenly found themselves grappling with a shocking reality.
A burly man stood with his jaw dropped so low it looked like it might detach from his face. A nearby woman’s eyes bulged in disbelief, looking as though they might burst from their sockets at any moment. A teenager who had been in the middle of a jest froze, his mouth forming a perfect ‘O’ of shock, while a veteran bloodline warrior stared at the scene with wide, unblinking eyes, as if he had seen a ghost.
They were so shocked because it was believed to be impossible for a normie to cause harm to a bloodline user, let alone defeat one.
What they had just witnessed though had completely shattered their preconceived notions. 𝑶𝐯𝑙xt.𝗇𝓔t
Val had accomplished the impossible or so it seemed!
Anyway, someone who was considered to be a normie has beaten a level 1 Bloodline Warrior. If this isn’t madness, then what is?
As a result, Val received a notification from his system:
[Mad Points increased by 25 due to shocking the crowd by overwhelming Elias!]
The sight of Elias lying on the ground and the expressions of the dumbstruck crowd had clearly made quite an impact.
[Mad Points increased by 30 due to surprising the crowd by defeating Elias!]
Val smiled. The reaction was even better than he had expected.
[Mad Points increased by 20 due to the disbelief of the crowd at seeing you accomplish the impossible]
With each shocked gasp, each widened eye, each drop of the jaw, his Mad Points shot up.
By the time the crowd’s initial shock had subsided, he had accumulated dozens of Mad Points!