Hero or Villain, Both

It took a while, but Faust was able to finish searching the soul of the Iron Fist Gang's vice leader.

When he was done searching the soul, he reported everything to me.

"With this information, it should be easier to target the Iron Fist Gang. With the other powers restraining them, then it'll be easy for us to whittle away at their forces until they have no one left." I said after he finished telling me everything.

Though it seemed like a good plan, it didn't seem like Faust agreed with this.

Seeing the way that he looked at me, I simply asked, "If you don't think that it's a good plan, then why don't you tell me what you think is a good plan?"

"Why go through all those hoops just to reach them? Why not just take them out directly?" He said in a casual voice as if he didn't seem to think much of them.

I couldn't help knitting my brows when I heard this.

I had to look at Faust to see if he was being serious about this, but the look on his face showed that he was indeed serious when he said this.

Only I didn't think that this was something that we could do…

"Why do you think that we can't do this? Didn't you see how you easily defeated their vice leader?" Faust asked back without a single trace of hesitation.

I shook my head before saying, "He clearly wasn't that strong to begin with. Someone like him is normal for a large group like that, he just follows the leader and leeches off them. This doesn't mean that we're strong."

Faust shook his head before saying with a sigh, "It seems like I can't convince you without a demonstration."

Before I could react to what he said, he suddenly flicked his hand at me.

The moment that he flicked his hand like this, there were flames that gathered.

It took no time at all for this flame to form a large ball of flames, but that large ball of flames quickly condensed itself into a single arrow.

Then with another flick of his hand, that flame arrow was sent out at me.

I was surprised since I didn't expect to see this.

It was one thing if he gathered flames, but it was completely different if he formed them into a flame arrow like this.

That was because the flame arrow that he formed was a special flame arrow.

This flame arrow was a High Grade Spell that was known as Flame Lance.

At our current level, we shouldn't have been able to cast something like this.

After he formed this Flame Lance, I couldn't help feeling that there was something strange about the way that he just held it there in the air.

"Take it."

As I had expected, he actually waved his hand and threw the Flame Lance at me. With the heat that came from the Flame Lance, I could tell that he wasn't holding back at all with this.

"Are you crazy?" I couldn't help asking, but it was already too late for me to say anything about this.

The only thing that I could do now was…

"Ha!" With a roar, I punched my fist at the Flame Lance.

This was the culmination of all my power, using both the full force of my Iron Skin and the shockwave technique that I learned. I didn't hold anything back since I knew that Faust hadn't held anything back.

To my surprise…I found that the Flame Lance was actually shattered by this punch in the end.

Though it didn't mean that I was completely unscathed.

There was a layer of skin that was charred on my fist because I punched this Flame Lance, but it was better than having my entire arm burned away by the Flame Lance.

"Seriously, what is wrong with you?" I couldn't help asking Faust in the end.

I knew that he didn't betray the rest of us because we had the same mind, but I really couldn't tell what he was thinking when he did this.

"You blocked it, didn't you?" Faust said in a calm voice.

This really made me angry since it didn't seem like he was sorry at all about this.

Still, I waited to see what he had to say to explain this.

"You're much stronger than we thought, aren't you? If you weren't, would you have been able to block this Flame Lance?"

I slowly nodded in agreement, but there was something that I had to ask still, "How did you know this?"

"The Spirit Elixir, it had an extra effect that none of us noticed."

"Huh?" I couldn't help being caught off guard when I heard this.

I looked at our stats, but I found that there wasn't anything that was off about it. It seemed like the stat increase was the normal stat increase…or it would have been if I didn't look at the extra stats from the Shared Stats skill.

"Isn't this more than what it should be?"

"That's right. It's all because the Shared Stats skill leveled up."

"It can do that?" I asked in a shocked voice before looking at our status.

I found that it was indeed true.

The Shared Stats skill's description now had an extra line to it that said that it was now level 2. At the same time, I could see that the percentage of stats shared by this skill had increased.

"When did it happen?"

This time, Faust gave a shrug to show that he didn't know before saying, "It's the Spirit Elixir, but I don't know what the specifics of it is. All I know is that it changed after we took the Spirit Elixir."

I looked at him with a strange look, but I could tell that he really didn't know anything else.

"Then if we're stronger…"

"We can just take them head on. There's no need to hesitate." Faust finished my sentence for me.