As the smoke cleared, Tiriandes slowly lowered his leg. Scalding heat streamed out through the gaps in the armor attached to his body, and the operating speed of the antimatter engine inside him was steadily increasing.
As the knight who had acted the most decisively among those who had come to Penacony, he was fully prepared to annihilate the blue-haired man in front of him.
Tiriandes's body transformed in an instant. As part of the armor on his body opened, a large number of nanomachines completed their assembly in an instant, directly turning him into a fortress of firepower.
Imaginary missiles, antimatter beam cannons, pulse submachine guns, and various other weapons locked onto Sampo's raised ass in an instant, as if they were about to blast him into pieces the next second.
"Wait, Tiriandes." Seeing the annihilation Tiriandes was about to carry out, Nero hurriedly called out.
He had no particular ill feelings toward Sampo, and this wild factory director still had to help him watch over the place. In Nero's eyes, Sampo had always been a "useful adult."
Besides, although the other party had shamelessly chosen to launch a sneak attack, those actions did not actually seem threatening to Nero. At least, that was the case for their group.
Considering the style of the Fool, this might just be a joke that looked very real. If Sampo ended up getting himself killed because of this, Nero figured that even if he was a Fool, he would regret it.
It was not impossible for a Fool to not care about dragging himself down with something just for the sake of having fun, but in Nero's eyes, Sampo was not that kind of person.
After all, back in Belobog, that guy had practically wanted to make sure he had nothing to do with himself at every step.
Hearing Nero's request, Tiriandes, standing where he was, let his eyes flash twice. Then, the engine roaring inside him gradually quieted down.
The large number of weapons that had "grown" around his body also gradually disintegrated during this process, being reabsorbed by Tiriandes or becoming part of the armor on his body.
"Ahaha... Little ancestor, didn't expect old Sampo to be here, did you?"
This Sampo was still lying on the ground in this position, squeezing out an awkward smile as he greeted Nero.
Looking at Sampo's ass and listening to what he said, Nero slowly narrowed his eyes. Then he slowly walked over, saying as he went, "Although Sparkle disguised herself once before, I didn't expect you to actually leave the factory behind and sneak off to have fun. What did you do about the factory? Did you find a suitable..."
Halfway through his sentence, Nero suddenly stopped. He blinked and looked at Sampo lying on the ground.
"This smell..."
Nero muttered. The next moment, he suddenly sped up and rushed toward Sampo on the ground.
At the same time, a shattered sword slashed toward Nero, but Nero happened to dodge it by speeding up.
A Blade whose body radiated a bewitching pink energy suddenly appeared, with no idea where it had rushed in from.
After missing with one slash, this Blade still wanted to continue the attack, but the next moment, a large silver hand grabbed him by the head and casually threw him away, sending him crashing into the wall in the distance.
The tall Tiriandes glanced at Blade, whom he had thrown away, then looked up. As a result, he saw the illusions of two other Stellaron Hunters, Silver Wolf and Kafka.
After a brief analysis, Tiriandes had already confirmed that all three of the Stellaron Hunters who had suddenly appeared were illusions.
Leaving the others aside, Silver Wolf had already appeared once before in the form of a projection. At that time, Tiriandes had already analyzed the technology behind the ether editing of this invisible emperor of Punklorde.
Although he could not replicate the technology in a short time, he had already backed up information such as her personal style and characteristics that could be used for identification.
Comparing these illusions with that information, the illusions that had appeared before him were far too different from the projection back then.
To put it more vividly, they were simply not part of the same system.
Looking at the other two illusions rushing toward Nero, as well as the illusion of Blade that had stood up again, Tiriandes raised his hand and made a motion as if brushing something to the side.
At the same time, some kind of invisible plane, whose form of existence was completely incomprehensible, swept to the side along with Tiriandes's movement.
It pushed the three illusions along and directly squeezed them against the wall, then flattened them into three-dimensional... no, two-dimensional figures.
As this scene unfolded, a fragment placed inside Tiriandes's chest also reflected a faint light.
Although Tiriandes had developed the technology to turn people into two-dimensional figures based on this fragment, in a battle, it was actually more convenient to directly use the authority contained within it.
This was a fragment belonging to the Beauty. Tiriandes had obtained it on the day he was born and became a knight. Before that, the fragment had belonged to Tiriandes's creator, a scholar who believed in the Beauty.
This had happened a long time ago. Tiriandes's information storage unit recorded that his creator had died at the hands of the Mirror Holder.
And just as Tiriandes used the authority within the fragment of the Beauty to slap the three illusions onto the wall and turn them into murals, Nero also rushed in front of Sampo. Then he suddenly turned around and kicked out, his little leather shoe kicking hard into the raised ass.
Almost instantly, Sampo flew away, letting out a cry of pain, "Ow!"
By the time Sampo landed on the ground again, he had already become another Fool.
Sparkle struggled to get up from the ground while rubbing her own ass with one hand. She had to admit, that kick had really hurt.
And... that guy Sampo's posture really did make people want to kick his ass, didn't it? Her little colleague had directly made the same choice as her.
Looking up at Nero, Sparkle sighed and said with some feeling, "Even though the smoke bombs and illusions had done their best to imitate Sampo's smell, I estimate that even Sampo himself would have a hard time telling them apart."
"I didn't expect you to still see through it. As expected of our tavern's precious darling~ You really can't be fooled by my disguise."
Nero narrowed his eyes as he looked at Sparkle rubbing her ass. "...Oh."
"Eh?" Stelle looked at Sampo, who had turned into Sparkle, then turned to glance at the wall beside them. The three illusions that had been flattened into murals had already disappeared. "Eh? Sparkle... why..."
"Why are there so many whys? Look at this place. What a great stage. Isn't it perfectly normal for a Fool to come here and have some fun?"
As she spoke, Sparkle walked forward and came to stand in front of Stelle, looking up at her with a grin.
"As for you, little gray hair. Are you ready? The dream is still very long~"
"What do you mean?" Stelle asked with a frown.
"It doesn't mean anything." Sparkle raised an eyebrow. "All right, remember this moment. Lady Sparkle has magnanimously given the champion's throne to you~"
After saying that, Sparkle left without looking back. Her behavior, along with those inexplicable words, made Stelle's brain race, eventually leading her to one conclusion: Fools really were hard to understand.
Compared to that, Stelle felt that if Sparkle did not rub her ass while leaving, she would look more at ease. With her doing this now, that line of hers sounded a little like she was just putting on a brave face.
Looks like Nero's kick really was quite strong.