31 Fighting the Skill Stealer

"You bastards, how dare you touch that orb! I'll kill you!" The voice screamed as they got closer. With anger overcoming the unknown person they immediately ran at Bell and attacked him. The person was worried about the orb as if their life depended on it.

Seeing the unknown figure letting his emotions take control over his actions the guild master sighed in relief and sat back.

"Bell, he's alone. You can fight him. We'll step in if it gets out of hand." The guild master said as he had Finn step back as well. Since the skill stealer had been here alone they were just gonna sit back and watch the show while giving Bell a chance at earning some experience fighting an actual person. The two of them had no idea that he had already fought and killed people before so they were thinking that this would be his first time.

With Bell and the skill stealer fighting the cave was too small of a space so they brought it outside. With both of them outside the cave, the skill stealer noticed something was wrong as he continued to try appraising Bell but no matter how many times he activated the skill it wouldn't work.

"You can't see my skills, right? If you can't see them that means that you can't steal my skills then, right?" Seeing that the skill stealer had become uneasy form being unable to use appraisal on his target Bell decided to try and goad him into attacking again.

"It won't matter if I can't steal your skills. I've stolen countless skills before you, and I will steal countless skills after you as well. Where did you put the Orb, I can't let anyone else touch that." While trying to not let the anxiousness get to him the skill stealer had decided to calm down, the orb was most likely in some kind of spacial bag or something. Even though he had been told to never let anyone else touch it he had been careless and thought that hiding it would be a better solution.

"I don't know? You'll have to beat me if you want it back." Bell had responded, in truth, he didn't know where the orb had gone. He had checked the system right after the orb got absorbing into his body but there was no indication that the system even recognized it. Even with the unexpected circumstance happening that didn't stop him from doing what he had come here to do. And that was to complete the quest that offered a Random Cheat Skill Ticket. The new addition to his cheat collection would help him in the future, just like his current cheats. Infinite mana was one hell of a cheat that let him cast magic and heal as much as he had wanted. Just thinking about the other cheats that he could get made him grin.

The two of them continued to trade blows as they fought with their weapons. The skill stealer would stack strength-related skills together to increase the strength in his blows while stacking speed-related skills to run around and dodge any incoming hits. Even though he had been faster than his opponent and even though he had been dodging any of the incoming his he still couldn't hit his opponent.

While Bell may not have been as fast as the skill stealer since he couldn't stack skills to increase his stats he could still use magic to reinforce his body and make it so that he could take minimal damage from the incoming hits. This kind of tactic only worked if your mana was stronger than the opponents but luckily the Skill Stealer had low mana and didn't use it to reinforce his body opting for using them towards skills instead.

After 10 minutes of fighting, neither of them had gotten an advantage and neither of them was running out of steam. Looking at the fight from the outside it seemed as if they could fight for eternity. The surroundings were completely quiet and the only thing you could hear throughout the entire area was the two of them clashing with each blow.

The only reason that Bell had towards not using his time stop cheat was that he wanted to be able to experience the feeling of being suppressed and being able to fight that kind of opponent with no worry for his life. The guild master Zach and Finn were both here and were ready to intervene if the fight started going in the wrong direction. With earning experience for the future Bell had also begun honing his sword mastery while aiming for a way to defend himself.

Throughout the fight, multiple system notifications had appeared in front of him but Bell had continued to keep his attention on the fight as he felt an unknown feeling rise up in him. The feeling kept rising until it felt like to was going to burst.

When he couldn't hold the feeling in anymore, Time had stopped. The surroundings were frozen as every person was frozen in place. The Guild Master Zach who was leaning back on the cave wall watching the fight with great interest, Finn who was looking at the guild master worried, and the skill stealer who was currently frozen in mid-air. While frozen in mid-air the skill stealer had an angry expression on his face as if he felt that the situation was hopeless, he couldn't protect what he needed to once again.

While frozen in time a voice had echoed throughout the surroundings.

"Ahhh, I've had my fill of fun. Time to end this." Upon Bell hearing this he couldn't help but feel like he had heard this voice before, it felt like it was so familiar but it also felt foreign at the same time.

As Bell swung his sword towards the skill stealer that was frozen mid-air he aimed at his throat. As the sword was about to connect he had a sudden thought of who's voice that was.

'It was my voice'

And with that thought time had resumed once more with the skill stealers' head flying off into the distance and a couple of system notifications occupying his vision.