That blow contained the girl's disgust for his twisted logic, her anger over what had happened to herself and her friends, and her confusion over his code of conduct. Yet even all of that combined had failed to knock him down.
"Mana—what are you going to do to Mana?!"
Ignoring the voice of the girl's fairy partner, Sharuru, Ash crouched down while licking the slightly loosened fang at the back of his mouth. He turned the girl over so that she faced upward. Even unconscious, her face still wore an unwilling expression.
"Do you dislike fighting me that much?"
Thinking back, it had been the same when he fought other heroes. Though they did not fear battle, most of them were unwilling to fight.
They felt anger and confusion too. He could not understand it. He could not understand why they would fight him when Ash had no hostility toward them. To them, it was an entirely pointless and unreasonable act.
But a battle that made no sense to others was something else entirely to Ash.
As mentioned before, Ash obtained something called "Dark Echo" from fighting both heroes and villains. That was exactly what his system needed. Fighting members of dark organizations gave him a large amount of Dark Echo, but its quality was poor. Fighting heroes gave him less Dark Echo, yet its quality was astonishingly high.
But that was not the only reason. The truth was that he liked the different kind of satisfaction his opponents gave him in battle even more.
During battle, the "bridge" formed through exchanged fists and kicks conveyed not only strength, but usually the other party's emotions as well. He enjoyed sensing the turbulent feelings in their hearts, as though doing so could make his heart, numbed by endless deaths, beat again.