Luke gave Artiuno the order to land and stop moving while Luke slowly approached the place the noises were coming from. Luke reached the next crossroads and then saw the moments where a rain of blood dyed the snow on that street and then the heads of several goblins fell and rolled on the snow. A man easily killed several of them with a single strike...

"Is he one of the survivors that talked with my Dad?" Luke wondered.

The person who defeated the ice goblins was a man in his twenties, he had black hair, and he wasn't short, nor tall. If one could select a feature to define him, it would be a glint in his eyes. It was as cold as they could be… He also had a dark blade and dark armor, they looked pretty cool, but Luke wouldn't use those since they screamed 'edgy' even from kilometers away. Before Luke could use Appraisal, that guy looked at him as if he had felt his presence, and without thinking twice, he attacked… with a devilish speed. Rina reacted on time to buff Luke's speed to the limit, and thanks to that, he blocked the sword strike with his own, but he was sent flying hundreds of meters away.

"... What?" Luke thought while he was spinning in the air. "This strength is…"

Luke never thought that he was the strongest human alive, but the level of the strength of that guy surpassed him by a lot… he also thought that such a difference was supposed to be impossible, considering that he didn't have partners like Rina and Shalia. Then again, it was hard to say if that was the case since Frank had a partner that no one could see.

Before Luke could land, he felt the approach to that guy again. Trying to argue with someone that attacked him wasn't his style. He wasn't that lenient… but killing a human that strong would be a waste for the human race. 

"Stop! I am not your enemy!" Luke said and then blocked a thrust that was aimed at his neck. "Ah, fuck it… you are going down."

After the second attack, Luke used Stinger to land faster than expected, and then he turned around to face that guy. Holding his sword with a single hand wasn't a good idea when the opponent was stronger than him, but it was necessary. Luke used Spark Ball in the last moment to hit him in the head, but he blocked the attack by changing the stance of his sword from a side attack to above the head one. Those were some crazy reflexes… Still, the enemy lost sight of Luke for a moment, and that was more than enough for the time being. Luke used Stinger level six, and then that guy was caught off guard by the sheer power of the attack, and it was sent flying to the distance. Before he could land or even fly for ten meters, Luke stopped him by using Water Tornado. It seemed that he had some Resistance to the cold, but that decreased after being wet that much. Still, that wasn't Luke's goal. He used Water Tornado to keep him in a single place, and then he used Lightning level two.

That guy was hit with the full power of the spell, but while he trembled all over due to it, it wasn't as much as Luke had expected. Some burn marks appeared here and there, but then that guy vanished into thin air.

"What the hell?" Luke frowned. "Teleportation?"

"No, it was another spell… one that let's him return to a determined place," Rina said. "It is called Checkpoint. I thought that one couldn't use it while in mid air, but…"

That was interesting, but it was troublesome since Luke had to use his best magic combo to get that asshole, and now the chances of the same trick working again were quite null.

"Did you guys pick anything weird with him?" Luke asked.

"Weird like us?" Rina asked.

"You know that I didn't mean that…" Luke said.

"Well, his armor and sword were quite high tier," Rina replied. "Those are supposed to cost 130 thousand gold coins and I would say that those are at least in the Rare rank. His strength and speed weren't something granted only by those, though. He was at level 140."

"As I had suspected… I didn't have time to use Appraisal, but I had that feeling," Luke said. 

"He seemed like a troublesome human in more ways than one… not even I am crazy enough to attack a random person like that," Shalia added.

Luke didn't want to defend someone who almost killed him because of that attitude, so he didn't say that out loud, but he assumed that he had reasons to attack anyone on sight. Maybe it was related to the castle above them… in any case, Luke got another thing to deal with in New York.

"My head hurts…" Luke said and then sighed.

Luke checked the goblins that the guy killed, but they didn't drop anything either… his luck was really shitty. In any case, even despite the frozen snow that made everything slippery, Luke found a lot of other goblins walking around the city while following that guy's footsteps. That made sense… he was definitely an enemy that would be troublesome to leave alone. Still, their master made some terrible calculations by thinking that only groups of five would be enough to deal with him… it wouldn't be enough even to tire him out.

"I wonder what people here eat… everything is frozen solid, so they certainly can't scavenge the town for food," Shalia said.

That certainly wasn't an image that Luke wanted in his head… but they were probably eating goblins… or they were still fishing beyond the ice in the ocean.. He also wondered if that would be a good idea… he was pretty sure the ocean in those parts was a bit polluted.