Reborn as an Extra Chapter 558: The Unstoppable Bard. Part-3.

Even though the assault packed immense power and Rio stood smack in the middle of it, the impact hardly fazed him.

Sword intent cloaked his whole frame, bolstered by a protective miasmic barrier layered over it.

Without losing even a moment, after scattering much of the enemy forces and stirring up wild turmoil across the zone, Rio shot ahead like a rocket and whipped out his flute.

As he began to play the flute, Rio channeled the resulting sound waves into a sweeping area attack, infusing them with wild and perilous sword intent power.

Every lingering monster in his trajectory got their minds and souls obliterated instantly by the overwhelming force of Rio’s deadly melody!

A thunderous sonic blast ripped through the sky as Rio surged onward, traversing the ruined battlefield while claiming the lives of any monster foolish enough to obstruct his path.

To that vast horde of beasts, it could have been an epic clash of strength and supremacy, yet for Rio, it felt like just another ordinary day.

In mere seconds, Rio swept across the field, pulverizing hundreds of monsters into fragments and putting a huge gap between himself and the chaos by soaring at maximum velocity.

After hurtling through the air for roughly half a day without pausing once, Rio at last eased his pace and touched down on solid earth.

He drew in a long, steady breath while settling onto a massive rock.

"Phew~ that was quite a nice warmup..."

Though the fight came easy to Rio, it still let him pick up fresh insights and test out some ideas.

’I can actually create spatial cracks if I use the power of miasmic crystal explosions...’

It wasn’t feasible in the outer world just yet, but that earlier strike proved Rio could pull off something like it after hitting SS-rank.

’It’s odd though, why would an army be sent to deal with me?... did miasma not understand that I can easily deal with such weak foes on my own?’

The army couldn’t even graze Rio, much less halt his progress; so, dispatching them against him served no real purpose.

’What’s the purpose of this sudden interruption, I wonder...’

Rio’s gut feelings were dulled within the spirit realm, or else he might have pieced together hints by this point.

’Is this the work of that arrogant guy Raika?... but if he knows a lot about me, then why would he send such weak monsters to fight me?’

’That doesn’t make any sense...’

Mulling it over to that extent, Rio shook his head and quit dwelling on these stray notions.

He realized pinning down solid answers for such scenarios would be tough, so it made more sense to zero in on his main objectives instead of burning effort on unraveling these puzzles.

Rio eyed his flute, which remained pristine as always.

’I don’t even need to keep it in its sword form to do devastating damage anymore... wait, if I am not even using a sword, am I still a swordsman?’

Reflecting on it, Rio sensed that his self-description as a ’humble swordsman’ was growing a tad off the mark.

Rio let out a deep sigh while channeling miasma into his body to restore his drained mana reserves.

Regular folks can’t draw on any energy besides mana to recharge their mana pool or core source.

But Rio stands apart; immune to miasmic taint, he can harness miasma as fuel, much like demons manage it.

During the battlefield clashes, Rio burned through his own mana with various skills, emptying it out, and since mana is scarce in the spirit realm, pulling it from the environment proves almost impossible.

So, Rio had to resort to infusing his mana tank with miasma as a substitute.

"Hmmm??... what? Hmmm?..."

The instant Rio mixed miasma into his energy reserves alongside mana, a strange feeling washed over him.

It felt utterly ’unique,’ yet Rio couldn’t pin it down before it vanished.

"Hmmm? What was that?...."

Baffled by the abrupt shift, Rio grew uncertain and chose to run a quick test right there.

He perched on the boulder in lotus pose to meditate and zero in on that odd feeling with full concentration.

Rio let out more mana from his form to clear room for taking in extra miasma.

Right as he tried, that same ’unique’ feeling resurfaced.

Yet before Rio could press on, something halted him cold, slashing the miasma levels in his body by force!

All the miasma burst out of Rio’s system in a flash, yanking him from his trance immediately!

"Wha-what!?"

Rio’s shock hit so hard he couldn’t hold his blank expression, his mouth dropping wide in astonishment as if it might hit the dirt.

"What did I just do?... err... did I nearly kill myself just now?... no, it was some kind of ’Attempt’?..."

"Hmm... this is weird; I have never heard anything about this kind of situation..."

Rio marked the world’s first try at balancing mana and miasma stably inside himself, leaving no one to guide him through it.

The unexpected turn left him puzzled, struggling to make sense of the event.

’Does it mean that trying to keep mana and miasma in one’s body at the same time a very dangerous thing and can cause harm to me?’

Pondering that in his mind, Rio pulled a high-grade mana recovery potion from his space ring and gulped it down to rebuild his spent mana.

’But what will happen if I manage to make a proper stable cycle of both mana and miasma in my body?’

This fresh ’possibility’ sparked Rio’s interest, and he jotted it onto his mental roster of future tasks.

’Once I reach peak S-rank or even rank SS, I can retry this ’attempt’ once again...’

Since Rio can wield both mana and miasma, he clearly won’t stick to one alone; should the opportunity arise later, he’ll aim to integrate them both.

’Well, I might get in trouble if I keep miasma stored in my body though...’

Ashtel and the rest put up with Rio’s miasma use because none lingered in him, showing zero signs of corruption.

But storing it deliberately within could sour ties with them all.

’Err... I need to think things through before I do something like this again...’

Rio shook his head, rising from his spot as he reined in his drifting thoughts.

He lifted into the air and pressed on, still gathering miasma in hopes of forging an artificial miasmic crystal.

’Sigh... I wonder when I will reach that plateau... it’s so far away!’

His quest posed steep challenges, with monsters, armies, mighty entities, and more standing in his path, but as an unrelenting bard, Rio refused to yield.