Fury and reluctance

[Skill Creation Ticket: A ticket that allows you to create a skill under the following restrictions.

The skill shouldn't belong to existing fiction, or the ones recorded in the host's mind.

The skill should be within Host's capabilities, i.e., Host should have experience doing the exact same thing as the skill does.

The skill should be compatible with Host for about 90%]

That was the ticket he had gotten after completing the mission—the third objective which was to make sure Riko doesn't die as she did in the original.

Initially, he had thought that the ticket would allow him to create any skill which made him quite excited to get it.

He could become overpowered right away — that was his thought process.

After all, he had thought of creating a skill that would allow him to create other skills—Skill Creation.

He could only gleefully imagine the number of skills he would be able to create with it, from utterly overpowered skills to completely normal everyday skills.

All of his imagination was mercilessly stomped on when he read the description, making him almost pull his hair out due to the sheer frustration and disappointment he felt reading it.

Of course, why would he receive something so overpowered over such a small mission — he internally thought — maybe if the mission was to kill Madara Uchiha, there might be a chance to get something overpowered.

The Quest Board was still confusing to him.

Since he still didn't have a clear idea of how it worked.

That's why the disappointment lasted but only for a brief time before he put his mind into thinking about which skill to make.

Though he didn't have to think for long since he knew what skill to make the moment he read the description and the restrictions—the technique he used during his fight with Toji.

He was able to pull it off at the last second, but there was still a doubt in his mind if he would be able to achieve it again or not.

If he is able to make a skill out of it, Noah thought that it would be great.

Since skills worked the moment he activated them, not requiring any calculation or starting process.

Just think of the skill you want to use and it will activate.

It was like playing a video game where you just need to click either a button or the skill for it to work.

Void Step, yes, a very generic name, but it did what was required of it.

At least, he didn't name it "confusing step" or "one step to reach heaven" — the initial names that came to his mind.

What it did was quite simple — whenever the skill is activated, it would allow him to create a fake intent into anything he desires and remove any and all intent from him, allowing him to become invisible theoretically.

For example, during his fight with Toji, when he stabbed him in the end, he felt the sword connecting with Noah and piercing him, but, when in reality, it was just a body made of intent.

Nothing but pure intent that took the shape of Noah's existence—the intent existed to describe Noah's existence while his real body was in absence of any intent, just a pure white paper or a pebble lying around the street with no purpose whatsoever.

Which made it impossible for Toji to find out that the Noah in front of him was not the real Noah but just an image made up of intent, while the real Noah stood behind him.

The only downfall of this technique was that Noah needed a medium to place his intent on—which was a sword during his fight with Toji—and the fact that if the person fighting him understood the technique, they can easily find his real position by focusing all around them, not fighting based on their instinct but on their senses.

Though with the addition of <<Camouflage>>, <<Odorless>>, <<Silence>>, he could by-pass most sense—unless, of course, the person didn't possess any sixth sense.

In the simplest sense, it was an illusion technique that allowed him to create a fake of everything and to make others focus on that instead of him.

Naoya stared at the smiling Noah, his rage increasing with each second.

Projection Sorcery — this was the cursed technique he had inherited from his father.

The technique itself was simple yet confusing, allowing Naoya to divide one second into twenty-four frames.

In each frame, he will have to predict his moment while also having the ability to skip into any frame.

For example, he wants to reach Noah — he will have to lay out his moments beforehand and divide them into 24 frames.

If in frame one he is bending to start his run and in the last frame he reaches Noah, Naoya's ability allows him to skip to the last frame making it look like he teleported.

And if he touched Noah, then he would also have to abide by the rules of twenty-four frames per second, which means Noah would have to pre-lay his moment in those twenty-four frames, and if he did not, he would be stuck into a frame for one second, vulnerable to any form of attack.

Of course, there were some limitations like he can't create moments outside of his field of vision or his moments cannot defy the laws of physics.

Yet this technique was quite potent once he touched his opponent and the opponent is not able to determine his moment one second ahead, after all, you are to become vulnerable to any form of attack for one second.

'The only problem is, they never use weapons to attack their opponent, don't they? What a waste of such beautiful technique.'

One second is enough for someone to kill someone, yet Naoya and his father never were able to do it.

The answer was simple, they never attacked their opponent with weapons but always used their fists to attack.

'What do they think they are? Saitama or something? Punching people thinking they would lose… idiots.'

"Say… I've been waiting for a while now but are you done with your power-up or not?" With a slight tilt of his head, Noah stared at Naoya with a bored gaze. "I got stuff to do. Can't you hurry up a little?"

A smirk formed on Naoya's face.

It was the smirk of someone who was going to kill the person in front of him to salivate the ever-increasing anger.

But despite the anger almost boiling his head, Naoya had not lost any reasoning.

He could tell… No… He could feel it, his instinct, the same feeling he felt when he first met Toji—strong… overwhelmingly strong for him.

His mind, his soul, his body, all of it told him, he would die if he fought the person before him.

With the overwhelming pressure that was being released from the person before him as he looked at him with the gaze of pure boredom, Naoya felt suffocated.

Though he would never know that most of these feelings were due to a spell, the feeling of death was real.

After all, after his fight, Noah indeed took another step closer to the next realm.

Even if he wasn't able to enter it, he could be said to have entered it halfway through.

The aura of his before and now couldn't be matched, it was in a completely different league.

"Yooo… Come on… Come already…"

Naoya could feel how Noah didn't put him in his eyes—Noah's gaze, his tone, and his gesture told all that he didn't care in the least what Naoya was up to.

His whole being screamed that "no matter what you do, you will lose".

Finally, not being able to take the taunt in Noah's voice, Naoya launched his attack.

Using the Projection Sorcerer, he "skipped" behind Noah and touched him.

He was in doubt for a second, thinking if he really touched Noah or not, but then a smirk formed on his face—he touched him.

As has been said before, if you are touched by the user of Projection Sorcerer, you will have to abide by the rule of twenty-four frames per second or you will end up stuck in a frame for a second.

Naoya thought it was enough time for him to eliminate Noah.

Yet… His eyes widened to the extreme as he felt a piercing burning sensation down in his guts, prompting him to look down, seeing a sword piercing his guts and leaving from behind.

"Your fast man… Sadly…" Noah turned around with a smirk on his lips. "Surprise attack doesn't work on me."

He pulled the sword out, creating a streak of blood on the ground.

'It seems that as long as I hold the Inverted Spear of Heaven on me, direct cursed techniques will become ineffective.'

The most promoting question in Naoya's mind currently was how his cursed technique didn't work on Noah, which should have been since he was able to touch him.

If only he knew that Noah had a Cursed Tool that nullified all forms of curses.

The moment Naoya's hand touched Noah, his technique activated on Noah.

But since he had the Inverted Spear of Heaven on him, and since the technique turned everything of the person into a frame under one second, as it touched the spear, it became invalid.

Naoya Zenin was to lose from the start.

"What are you doing?"

Due to the commotion caused by Noah and Naoya, it would be a surprise if no one noticed it.

The first person to notice was of course the one closest to the place—Naobito Zenin.

He stared at his son with an apathetic gaze before his eyes turned to Noah, his body tensing as he felt the dread that he only felt from a single person in the past—Toji Zenin… or Fushiguro after his marriage.

"I'd thought Toji was special, but it seems that more and more monkeys like him are popping out these days."

"Hm? Then how does it feel to be the father of a person who is defeated by a monkey? Though I wouldn't expect much, since blood runs thicker than the water—the son is such a waste, the father can't be much different, don't you think too, Naobito-san?"

Without showing any discomfort in the presence of the Clan Head of Zenin, Noah still held the same carefree smirk over his face.

"Want to give it a try? Though I highly doubt you can do much either."

A silence fell into the now destroyed hallway with Naobito staring at Noah, calculating his odds within his mind while the twins had kept on creating distance between them before they hit a person, making the turnaround and finding a white-haired man with the same smirk as Noah, waving at them as if none of this had anything to do with him.

As Noah and Naobito stood at a standstill—one smiling as if they were sightseeing while the other stared at Noah with a dead serious gaze—the hall soon was filled with the most elite force of the Zenin Clan—The Hei.

At the forefront of the squad of these elite sorcerers stood two people clearly distinguished from the rest—Jinichi Zenin, a member of the Hei, and Ogi Zenin, the father of Maki and Mai.

"Clan Head… Is there a problem?" Ogi inquired, his old gaze staring at the smiling Noah, his hand reaching for his Katana.

'What a monster.'

That was the first thought that came into his mind, and not only him, it was the same with Jinichi.

After all, they have seen Toji before, and they could tell, the person in front of them was even worse than Toji—the aura his body was releasing told them that the person in front of them can kill them in a blink.

Naobito remained silent, his gaze still not leaving the face of Noah before he said.

"Nothing… Just a little game." Finally, he looked towards the twins and the person standing behind them, staring and waving at him with the same annoying smirk that Noah had, before looking back to his son, saying.

"Take Naoya and treat his wounds."

Ogi and Jinichi remained silent for a while before nodding, ordering the members of the Hei to comply with the order of the Clan Head.

"Why is everyone so stiff? I clearly mean no harm. I'm just here to take the twins, why are you guys staring at me as if I've cucked everyone in this place?"

It might take some time for them to leave the Zenin Clan it seems.