"How have you been?" Orion could see the indication from her eyes and understood she wanted him to leave, but he acted like he didn't see that at all.
The masked girl's face twitched with anger as she glared at Orion. "What are you doing here?" she demanded.
"Me? Haha," Orion laughed, feigning ignorance of her anger. "I'm here to see you. I thought I would never see you again after that day, but here you are."
The masked girl trembled at his words, feeling that Orion was intentionally making things difficult for her.
As Orion moved closer, he positioned himself so that his back was to Carl's group. He whispered, "Why are you approaching them with that expression on your face?"
A wave of understanding dawned on her, but it didn't diminish her anger.
"None of your business. Now, can you step away? I have business with them," she whispered, her voice tinged with irritation.
Orion frowned as he heard her and whispered angrily, "Are you out of your mind? Don't you know who they are? They'll kill you, and no one will be able to do anything about it."
Hearing Orion's words, it was as if a fuse had blown. The masked girl trembled, grabbed Orion's collar, and shouted, "Don't teach me who they are! I know them better than you ever will." She pushed him away and continued toward Carl's group.
Orion's frown deepened, not because she had pushed him or grabbed his collar, but because of the anger in her eyes. From that, he could tell she seemed to know them well, which explained her outburst.
Knowing their background and strength, and still heading towards them, could only mean one thing—she hated them.
Initially, when Orion saw her approaching them in anger, he thought Carl's group might have stumbled upon her in the dungeon and taken her treasures. But it seemed he was wrong all along.
The masked girl harbored a deep-seated hatred for them.
Carl's group had already noticed them when the masked girl first started making her way towards them. They also saw the scuffle between Orion and the masked girl that had just occurred.
So, when they saw the masked girl approaching again, they sneered.
"A cursed treasure?" Ethan nodded. "If it is indeed a cursed treasure then what happened just now could be explained." He also felt that was likely to be the case otherwise that level of strength at the iron rank couldn't be explained.
"How did she get her hands on something like that?" Damian asked curiously.
"The hell should I care," Carl snarled. "I am going to kill her for what she did just now."
He felt very shameful about what happened just now. Taking her as a low-level iron rank girl, he used the same amount of power needed to overthrow someone at that rank and hence the unforeseeable result.
He firmly believed that if he had used his normal strength then this wouldn't have happened and that was why he was very angry right now.
Losing his face in front of his friends, especially in front of Ethan, made him feel humiliated.
"I am going to enjoy my time killing you," Carl laughed loudly and at the same time, his body began to release black flames from all parts before they gathered around to form a core behind his back.
Also, the flames around his body didn't diminish as his core was formed; instead, it burned with even more ferocity.
And a moment later, his right hand holding the sword got engulfed in those black flames, completely changing his arm's entire structure. It became pitch black, its thickness almost doubled, and was radiating a deadly aura that made even Orion tremble who was watching all of this from the sides.
Meanwhile, the sword Carl was holding also became engulfed in flames. It became a little bigger and more unstable than his arm.
All this happened in a second, and because of that, the masked girl couldn't do anything to stop the transformation. She could only react to that when the transformation was fully completed, leaving her completely aghast.
However, the shock didn't come from just that she didn't react fast—no, it came from the fact that the transformation Carl used now belonged to her family.
"No, you—" as if she thought of something, her face became ferocious and her body began to release golden light in a berserk way but the strange thing was, the golden light soon changed color and became crimson as blood-red and formed a core behind her back.
But it was only a moment later that her body began to transform and became a little taller, with her hands, legs, and her body covered in what appeared to be blood-formed armors, and these blood armors were formed from the crimson core hovering behind her back.
When she was fully covered in her blood armor, the core behind her became a little small as if it had used all its energy on those armors around her body.
The four of Carl's group were shocked to witness that form, for it was none other than the 2nd form of the Three Divine Ways—Core Transformation.