I Reincarnated into a Single-celled Organism! - Chapter 260

After I spoke, a thick and heavy silence fell over the crowd. Even Elara had stopped crying as she stared over at me in disbelief. Everyone in the crowd was now staring back at me, and the Bengal men, in particular, looked less angered by my words and more confused. The leader tilted his head.

“What did you just say?”

His words weren’t filled with threat, but genuine confusion. It was like my words were so unexpected, he had convinced himself he must have misheard me. I took another step forward and met his gaze unflinchingly.

“Are you Bengal men also known for being deaf? I said you were cowards who pick on mortals because the world of paragons is too scary. You’re pathetic.” I didn’t bother to hide the disdain in my voice whatsoever.

Elias had been following behind me, trying to get my attention this entire time, and it wasn’t until I stopped for a moment that he managed to get my sleeve and pull.

“Sir, you don’t know who you’re dealing with! These men come from a major paragon clan! They cannot be trifled with.”

At the same time, the village elder who had been on the ground, bowing in reverence, previously noticed this exchange and quickly spoke up. “I am sorry, my lord. This man is a stranger to us. Elias fished him out of the endless sea a few nights ago. He has no affiliation with our village, and he does not represent any of our-“

“Shut it!” The Bengal leader roared, causing him to cower back to the ground.

While he had been pointing his finger at Elias and me and throwing away any sense of pride, the Bengal leader finally had time to process what I had said, and his expression had grown increasingly darker. After barking at the elder to be quiet, he looked me up and down. He seemed to have quickly put a handle on his fury and was now looking at me with a cruel smirk.

“You got some nerve,” he finally spoke. “You must not come from these parts, or perhaps your time in the endless sea has sullied your brain, but we are from the Bengal family. We’re the family in charge around here, and if you wish to insult part of our family, you insult all of us!”

“So, I’ve heard,” I responded, ignoring Elias’s pleading look as I looked at each of the men expressionlessly. “However, I must question the intelligence of a family that had put an idiot like you in charge. It seems like they are the ones with sullied brains.”

The men behind the leader all reached for their weapons, but he lifted a hand, stopping them, his smile turning more vicious. “I’m feeling extremely generous today, so I will give you a chance to take back what you said. Fall to your knees and beg for my forgiveness. As long as you’re convincing, I’ll allow you a swift death!”

“You? Allow?” I threw back my head and laughed.

“You find death amusing?” his face finally contorted with rage.

“I find you amusing,” I replied. “My question is… what if I don’t apologize?”

“I’ll make you!”

“Okay,” I grinned. “Show me how you’re going to make me.”

He blinked, once again taken aback at my provocation. However, his shock only lasted a moment. Then, he let out a roar and drew his sword. Anyone who was standing between him and me had already moved away. Even Elias had taken several steps back, watching with only one eye open as if he was about to see a slaughter he didn’t want to see but couldn’t look away from.

The leader lunged forward, and perhaps to the villages, this seemed like an unstoppable attack. Maybe he moved with a quickness that their eyes couldn’t even catch, giving him the illusion of teleportation. However, to my senses, he approached like a man treading through a viscous medium. In science, viscosity is a measure of a fluid’s thickness. Although people typically thought of liquids when they considered this, gases were considered a fluid as well. The more viscous a fluid or gas, the harder it is to move through. Although in this case, there was nothing actually slowing the leader down, he still appeared like that to me.

This also wasn’t to say that my perception of time was off. Oftentimes, when people conceive of speedster heroes in stories, they often have to speed up their minds, because if your mind can’t think faster than your movements, you’d end up just stumbling over yourself. In some stories, this is because the person traveling at incredible speeds perceives reality as exceptionally slow. This wasn’t the way it worked for me.

I could naturally speed up my thoughts or slow down time in my mind’s eye, but this was a temporary state I initiated. It was like how when someone is watching the clock and waiting for something, time can seem to drag on forever, and yet when they are doing something they might call fun, it is over all too fast. It was similar to this. I could focus on something, buying myself more time to deal with it, or I could ignore things, allowing time to pass quickly. Since I didn’t need to sleep, this ability to let time pass quickly was instrumental in avoiding boredom.

Either way, by the time his strike arrived, I had more than enough time to plot how I was going to deal with it, and a body with the physical prowess to keep up with any movements I wanted. With a simple, almost casual motion, I reached out and caught his wrist. My hand closed around his arm like a vise. He grunted in surprise, his eyes widening in disbelief as his forward momentum was brought to an abrupt halt. He struggled, his muscles straining, but he couldn’t break my grip. I could feel the bones in his wrist grinding together under the pressure.

“Let go of me!” he roared.

“As you wish.” I then pulled and swung, guiding him in a circle around me and then sending him stumbling back toward his men.

He fell forward, landing in the dirt. While this is what happened between the pair of us, to the mortal observers, everything was far too fast. It looked almost like the leader ran a circle around me and then tripped and fell in the dirt. If he was angry before, he was furious now. He leaped back to his feet, snatching his sword from the ground and ignoring the dirt all over his pants.

“Kill him together!” he ordered, no longer caring about appearances.

I closed the distance between us in a single step. My fist shot out, a simple, direct punch aimed at his chest. It was a blow that was devoid of any fancy technique or wasted motion. It was just pure, unadulterated power. There was a wet crunch as my fist connected with his sternum. His eyes widened in shock, and then the light went out of them. He collapsed in a heap at my feet, his body limp and lifeless.

The other four men froze in place, having only made it a few steps before they watched the leader fall to the ground. Their faces became pale with shock and confusion. When such an unbelievable sight appeared, one could either trust one’s senses or presume there was some kind of trick involved. To these four men, it seemed to be the latter.

“He’s only a tier six evolved, how did he defeat a tier nine?” one of them asked.

“He must have used some kind of trump card; he shouldn’t have another!” another added.

“Do you want to try me?” I asked, tilting my head.

All four of them flinched. The leader was the highest level among them. If he could be defeated in a single hit, then any of them could be defeated just as easily. None of the remaining four had the guts to try it out. This was because at the end of the day, I had been correct. They were cowards. They went on this duty because it was the safest, and it allowed them to act smug and superior, but that only made the sudden danger they experienced all the more terrifying.

“You have no clue what you just did,” Elias spoke in a weak tone from behind. “These may just be weak paragons to you, but the clan is much stronger than that. For you to kill one of their members, they won’t let it go.”

As if to confirm his assessment, one of the men mustered the courage to step forward. He was likely the second in command based on his tier seven evolution.

“You will pay for this!” he stammered. “You won’t get away with killing one of ours!”

“Is that so?” I asked, taking a single heavy step forward.

The four men flinched all at once before turning and immediately running away. I watched as they just ran, their cowardice on full display for the entire village to see. As for the repercussions of this event, I wasn’t worried about it. Rather, I had been aiming for it!