Chapter 777: Diplomacy

Ryan glared at Gravis with nervousness, rage, and fear.

"You ask why?" he asked through gritted teeth. "Because I will make you live a life worse than death if you don't release my daughter!"

Gravis remained calm as he kept Samantha hanging with his spear. "Didn't the rules say that both combatants had to agree to drop the fight before the fight would end?"

Ryan tried to stay calm, but it was incredibly difficult to stay calm in this situation. He might lose his daughter!

"Yes," Ryan said, "her life and your life are in your hands. Don't make a foolish choice because of your pride and indignation. Be rational right now and realize that killing my daughter will also result in your death."

"This Formation Array is under my control," Ryan said. "The other Sect Masters can't enter if I don't allow them to. If you kill my daughter, you won't be able to escape."

Gravis looked at the Formation Array, which was still being attacked on occasion by some Sect Masters that wanted to put on a show of wanting to help Gravis.

"You know," Gravis said calmly. "I'm a stickler for fairness and justice. As you have seen, I'm a lightning Cultivator, and that's how lightning generally acts."

"My lightning wouldn't be happy if I just let such an opponent live," Gravis said.

Ryan gritted his teeth. "Can't you look at yourself!?" he shouted. "You are currently holding a helpless girl with your spear and are threatening her father with her life. Only a black-hearted devil would do something this evil!"

"Helpless girl!?" Gravis shouted in shock as he broke out into laughter. "You mean the woman that looked down upon me from the very beginning. The woman that didn't even deign to look at me or talk to me? The woman that used the Major Law of Cold and Law of Rage to attack me?"

"And even more importantly, the woman that accepted our challenge without hesitation, knowing that she could very well die?" Gravis asked.

Ryan remained silent as his mind went wild. "That might be," he conceded after some seconds, "but you have already won. The resource point is already yours, and you have demonstrated your superiority. Killing her now has no meaning. You won't get anything else, and you won't even get tempering out of this."

"Killing her now would only be a black-hearted act of cruelty," Ryan said.

Gravis sneered. "What, so normal tempering is now an act of cruelty? Do you even believe your own shit?"

Ryan clenched his fists in absolute fury. "I don't expect someone like you to understand my sentiments," he said through gritted teeth. "Your actions have already shown your personality. So, this once, let me give you some valuable advice from your elders. Don't step onto this path of slaughter. Learn to forgive. Your life will be much brighter as a result."

"Uh-huh," Gravis uttered, not being impressed in the slightest.

"Also," Ryan said slowly, "you might be rewarded if you are a kind person."

"And there we go," Gravis commented. "There's the bribe. You know, all these flowery and holy-sounding words would have had more impact if you didn't put a bribe right after them."

Ryan nearly exploded. Why was this person so difficult!? Couldn't he just accept the bribe and leave!?

"Anyway," Gravis said. "The main reason why I talked to you was to see how you would attempt to rationalize your blatant breaking of the rules."

"You know, honestly," Gravis said, "If you just said that you wanted to save your daughter because you loved her and that you didn't give a shit about any rules, I would actually have admired you a little bit. Throwing away the respect others have for you to save a loved one is something admirable."

"But you didn't even manage to do that," Gravis said. "I have the life of your daughter in my grasp, and instead of pleading, begging, or directly threatening me, you only gave me soft-spoken threats, a bribe, and some sermon about being a nice person."

"Right now, I even doubt if you even care about your daughter. Any good father would try everything to save his child, even if the chances were minuscule," Gravis said evenly.

Ryan became even angrier, if that was even possible, while the onlookers from outside became annoyed by Gravis. How shameless was Gravis? He was already threatening the father with his daughter's life, but instead of simply accepting the reality, he seemed to enjoy seeing the father squirm.

In reality, Gravis wasn't really that annoyed or disgusted by Ryan. Gravis was also a father, and he could sympathize with Ryan's situation. However, Gravis became more and more annoyed with all this hypocrisy of the humans he had met.

All present humans except for Gravis and Samantha had the ability to break the Formation Array and involve themselves. Ryan had blatantly broken the rules of the Sect Alliance, but everyone else was only looking on while preaching to everyone that the rules were absolute.

Gravis saw this as a betrayal.

The Sect Alliance said that no one was allowed to interfere, and Gravis had believed them to some extent. Yet, when an actually powerful person broke the rules, everyone was only silently whispering a "no, don't do that", which they obviously didn't even mean.

"What do you want?" Ryan asked angrily. "You obviously won't throw your life away, so what do you want?"

If this barbarian wasn't able to act and talk properly, Ryan had to talk to him in a way that this barbarian understood. This barbarian was not showing any sophistication or diplomacy. Ryan felt like he was talking to some unreasonable beast.

"You're asking me what I want?" Gravis asked.

Ryan nodded with narrowed eyes.

"I want to kill my opponent," Gravis said.

BANG!

And Samantha's head exploded.

Let Samantha go? What, so that she could seek out to rectify her humiliation and kill Gravis in the future?

Additionally, Gravis wasn't so stupid to believe that Ryan would be all buddy-buddy as soon as Gravis released Samantha. Ryan was the arrogant, unreasonable kind. Gravis would probably get some assassination squads sent after him.

So, in short: Fuck both of them. They were both his enemies, and there was no reason to keep up a superficial show of peace.

Ryan wanted to kill him?

Sure, let's go right now!