Chapter 23: Kuro vs Misen(2)

Alright, stay calm, don't get too ahead of yourself. He was stronger than me. He was faster than me. So I'll let him make the first strike.

I need to watch, read and react as efficiently as possible to his moves.

He shot towards me with his spear aiming for my chest. Watch his feet, stay alert for any feints, stay prepared to counter. As the spear neared me, I deflected it with my sword, glided forward across the blade, and drove my dagger at his neck.

He evaded it.

Not a problem. I shifted my grip so that one finger was off of the daggers' handle and fired a streak of lightning at his eye from the fingertip. He began to evade, getting struck across the side of his head. As I watched his movements carefully, I noticed his start to shift his weight. He was trying to jump back and gain some distance.

He was faster than me. But if I could read his moves beforehand...then that speed was useless. I swiftly moved my foot behind his heel, causing his to trip and fall backwards. His back hit the ground with a thud, as I stabbed down towards his chest with my sword, before he blocked it with the handle of his spear.

I then thrust my dagger towards his throat, as he let one hand off of his spear and put it in the way of my blade, as I stabbed through his left wrist. The very next instant, as his face twisted with pain, he released lightning bolts from his mouth and both hands, as I sprang back to avoid them, pulling out the dagger from his wrist.

"You...you were reading my moves weren't you? Heh, now that...I do not like. Fuck, my wrist hurts like a bitch. Screw it, I'm done playing around with this fight. Time for me to go all out. Congratulations on forcing me to use this, I was saving this for the final, but I can see now that going easy on you was a big mistake. I honestly never imagined you'd be able to read my moves even with my triple boost in speed," He remarked, as the electric glow around him intensified, "See, I led you all to believe that the highest I could control my Lightning Boost is a x3 boost. But that was only true months and months ago. My current maximum is...a x3.5 boost!"

The slight tinge of red in his right pupil began glowing brighter at the center, as sparks crackled around him.

Not good.

I streamed as much lightning into my eyes as I could, enhancing my perception as much as possible and braced myself. He shot forward at me, thrusting his spear straight towards my abdomen.

My eyes were just about able to follow him, but...my body wasn't going to able to keep up.

I just about barely deflected his strike with my sword, the momentum of his attack making me stumble a bit, as he shot past me. Before I could recover, he had already turned around and was charging at me again. I was straining my muscles to move my body into position as fast as I could, but I felt like I was moving at a snail's pace in comparison to him.

I managed to half deflect his next strike, as his spear slashed across my side. I electrocuted the wound shut and stopped the bleeding, watching him as closely as possible. He shot across me again, thrusting his spear at my head, I bent my neck to move out of the way, as the blade slashed my ear in half.

Right at that moment, I had gotten a close look at his expression.

He looked like he was straining his eyes.

That's it...he may be able to control a x3.5 boost, but his eyes couldn't fully keep up with his speed.

I was able to practice streaming lightning through my eyes as much as possible because of my Healing Factor, but for everyone else, excessively practicing that particular extension of the Lightning Boost technique was way too risky, just one mistake could lead to permanent blindness.

He was moving a lot faster now...but his moves had been more complex and less predictable when he'd been using just the x3 boost.

And if that was the case...I can still read his moves. No, I need to predict his moves as early as I possibly could.

So far, he had only used straight charging strikes. Still, predicting and reading them was one thing, reacting to them in time was a whole other problem. He was moving so fast that I could just about barely evade or deflect, let alone counter.

He struck past me again, knocking me slightly off balance, before turning back and charging again, driving his spear at my chest. I sidestepped but not enough, as his spear slashed off my right arm.

Not again.

For the second time today, I had lost my right arm.

And I had miscalculated...his movements were getting sharper and more accurate with every strike, as he seemed to get more and more in-sync with his current speed boost the longer he used it.

I needed to throw off his rhythm, time to go unorthodox...

I increased my Lightning Boost to x2.5, ignoring a sharp pain in my knee, and dashed straight for my severed arm, putting away my dagger and secretly began charging up a lightning blast in my left hand.

I can charge a lightning blast outside my hand, but by pooling the Mana inside my palm instead of forming it outside, I could charge it without being noticed and then fire it as a surprise attack.

As I reached my right arm, the sword still grasped in the hand, Misen shot towards me with a triumphant look on his face, thinking that I'd left myself open.

Now.

I bit into my right bicep and picked up my severed arm with my mouth, swinging my head across with the bloody end of the arm pointed towards him, spraying blood towards his eyes.

As he began to slow down to avoid the splatter, I shot forward and swung my head the other way, so that the end gripping the sword swiped across him. He jumped back as I left a straight horizontal slash across his chest, upsetting his balance. I then fired the hidden, compressed lightning blast that I'd been charging up in my left hand straight at his heart, as he shifted to the right, getting struck square on the left shoulder.

I quickly pressed my right arm onto the leftover stump and re-attached it, and shot towards him as it healed. His shoulder had been fried black, the armor covering it had been scorched off and the skin underneath looked burnt and was giving off wisps of smoke.

As I began to slash at him, he met my gaze, his eyes were bloodshot, filled with pain and rage, the red glow from his right eye growing brighter. He met my slash with a swing of his spear, the impact forcing me off balance.

He then unleashed a barrage of lightning enhanced rapid thrusts at my body, I deflected and parried his strikes with my blades to the best of my abilities, but more than half of them slashed across or stabbed into me.

I managed to deflect his spear into the ground and jumped back, quickly biting and snapping a string in my arm guard, which released and fired all the poison needles and throwing knives towards him in it in one go.

In response, he shifted his grip on his spear to the middle of the handle and spun it in front of him, deflecting all my projectiles. Before I could break away, he jumped towards me and swung the spear down at me as I blocked with both blades.

My legs almost collapsed from the impact as the ground beneath me started breaking apart, my arms straining to push back.

"Just lose already! I can't believe you not only made me use my x3.5 boost, but you've also forced me to boost my eyes as much as I can. See the red glow in my right eye? That was the result of me pouring too much lightning into it when I was still trying to get the hang of it, and now whenever I go beyond a x3 boost, my eye starts glowing red, and the brighter it glows, the more it hurts. I hate boosting my eyes to this extent...you'll regret forcing me to go this far!"

Was he seriously complaining about me putting up a fight? He was the one who asked for this in the first place!

"Quit bitching...you brought this on yourself!"

I shifted my Lightning Boost from running through my whole body to just my arms and shoulders, and then pushed back as hard as I could, knocking back the spear.

I then drove both my blades towards him, grazing his neck and shoulder as he evaded and shot away rapidly, stopping by the end of the arena and charging power into the tip of his spear. I quickly re-streamed the internal lightning evenly throughout my body.

His movements had become much, much more efficient, now that his eyes were able to keep up with his speed, despite the obvious pain in his expression. Damn it, I was running out of ideas, and my arms and shoulders had gotten damaged from that last move. I could still kinda move them, but not very well.

Since I couldn't keep up with him in a chase, my only option was to let him strike and then try to take him out with a counterattack, but every time I managed to get an opening, his speed let him avoid any fatal strikes that would teleport him out.

As I quickly began healing my arms, his spear began glowing brighter than ever, with streaks of lightning flowing along it and crackling, before he shot forward. He ran the end of the spear along the ground as he charged towards me, before reaching me in a flash and swinging it up at me.

I began to take a step back and raised my arms to block, but before I could get them into position, both my hands had been severed at the wrists by his spear and went flying off.

Before I could move, he slipped behind me and slashed my heels, forcing me to fall onto my knees. He then moved in front of me again, swinging his spear and slamming it into my torso, as I was sent crashing onto the barrier wall, my abdomen once again cut open.

My hands were scattered well away from me, and I couldn't stand. My heels had been slashed pretty deep, I didn't have the time to fully heal them, as Misen began walking over to me.

"Well, that's that then. I'll admit, there were a couple of moments where you had me a bit worried, but it's over now," He declared, his spear growing brighter as he approached me.

No.

I wasn't going to just sit here and let him beat me without a fight. I had...one more trick up my sleeve. I slowly moved my arms towards each other and brought my two stumps together, and began gathering and charging lightning inside them, so that it wouldn't be visible outside.

It was the same idea behind charging it up inside my palm, except this was a lot deeper.

I could feel the flesh, muscles and nerves beneath the stumps getting fried, but that didn't matter...

"I noticed that you take extra care to avoid injuries near your heart and neck. I'll assume that aiming for one of those spots should teleport you out."

That's right....

Write me off, drop your guard, and get closer.

"Heh, what's the matter, nothing left to say?"

Wait till he's close....so close that he wouldn't be able to dodge.

"Well, then. I suppose I ought to thank you for a fun fight. But it's over!" He declared, stopping in front of me and raising his spear to bring it down.

Now. I raised my arms and pointed my stumps at him, an sharp electric glow emanating from beneath them.

Alright, asshole...taste my Lightning Incineration Canon.

"Die."

The ends of my stumps disintegrated away as I compressed and fired out the charged up lightning inside them at his head, a look of alarm spread across his face, as he hurriedly reactivated his Lightning Boost and began to pivot on his left foot to try and avoid my blast while thrusting his raised spear down at my heart...!

And suddenly, everything in my line of sight vanished.

I blinked a couple of times and looked around, before realizing that I'd been teleported out.

So...I lost, huh?

My last attack must have missed. Damn it, that asshole probably had a smug look on his face now.

Hmm, why was it taking so long to announce the victor?

And why was the crowd so quiet?

I turned around to look at the arena, and saw why. Misen was standing in the same spot he'd been in before I'd gotten teleported, with a stunned and pained expression.

The top of his right shoulder was missing a couple of centimeters of skin and flesh. The right side of his neck and jawline was scorched. His right earlobe was gone.

He had evaded my last attack.

But not completely, the blast had gone in the arc between the right side of his neck and right shoulder, and it had just about brushed against him.

As I followed the path that the blast would have taken after it shot past his head, I saw what had everyone so quiet. There was a hole in the barrier...as well as a part of the roof above the audience, it had drilled through it so cleanly that there was no falling debris or even a dust cloud.

If I'd angled that a bit lower, I probably would have taken out a few of the spectators.

"Th-the winner is...third year student, Misen Ragiu!"

Hold on, how the hell was that blast so powerful? It should have been a lot, lot weaker than what I used in the Goblin maze. That was easily the most powerful lightning blast I'd ever fired by far.

Did it have something to do with me firing without any hands? Maybe firing from my wrists instead of my hands is like...uh...oh, I know, like pouring ketchup after removing the narrow spout on the bottle, a lot more pours out.

Oh, right...my hands.

I sighed and stood up, walking over to my severed hands, as I began to heal some of the wounds that I'd zapped shut instead of healing during the fight. I picked up my right hand with my teeth and pressed it to my stump, reattaching it.

I did the same with my left, and then sighed again as I sheathed the dagger and sword.

I lost.

I know that I only even got close because he kept holding back and underestimating me, and if he'd gone all out from the start I wouldn't have stood a chance, but I still couldn't help feeling frustrated.

Well...my run in this tournament was over, moping about it won't change that. I should head to the infirmary. As I walked past Misen, I threw a glance at his direction. He still had that shocked expression, guess my last blast had felt like a near death experience to him.

I suppose...that isn't the worst consolation prize.

I may have lost, but I'd wiped that smirk off of his face just like I said I would. I also told him that I'd teach him what true fear felt like at the start of this match. I think it's safe to say I accomplished that too.

I hadn't been able to win, but...I guess it could have gone worse.

I made my way to the infirmary and headed inside.

"Ah, it's you again, first year student. Back so soon?" Greeted Instructor Tear Tones, adjusting her glasses and looking up as I walked in.

"Mhm. I just need the regular Healing Spell Scroll," I requested.

Unlike the other two scrolls that had side effects, the normal one just tires you out a bit, not unlike my Healing Factor. As I began to use it, the door opened and Misen walked in.

I should have figured he'd come here, after all, I'd given him a bunch of cuts, slashes, zaps, that stab through his wrist, and of course, his scorched right shoulder, neck and ear. I sat down on one of the beds and activated the scroll, as he requested the same type of scroll too.

A few seconds later, another instructor opened the door and informed Instructor Tones that Instructor Tabbs was looking for her. She nodded in reply and got up, exiting the room and leaving me alone with Misen.

Well this was unpleasant. And awkward.

It was also a bit weird that he wasn't acting all smug over winning.

"You're awfully quiet considering that you beat me, especially since you wouldn't shut up before the fight," I remarked, breaking the silence.

"Yes, well...I don't feel like much of a winner. I might have bitten off a bit more than I could chew with you. As a result, I'm literally scarred from your last attack."

"Let me guess....you expected me to be someone who would briefly give you a challenging fight, but not to the extent that you'd be in danger of losing and actually have to go all out against? Heh, well that explains why you went from cocky to frustrated the longer our fight dragged on."

"I underestimated you, but I can hardly be blamed for that, it shouldn't be possible for someone to improve that much in just a couple of months. I was quite surprised by your progress during our run-in two weeks ago, and you've further improved drastically since then too."

"That's on you. That annoying run-in gave me an extra motivational boost during the last two weeks."

"Heh, I'd heard that the current batch of first years have greater potential than we've possibly ever had in this country, so I thought it would be fun to provoke one of these talented yet inexperienced student to come after me with everything they've got, an underdog with the potential to be a future rival, or something like that. Of course, I would crush them in the end, brushing off their best efforts like it was barely a warm up. That's how it was supposed to go, anyway. When I heard about your group's encounter with my brother, it seemed like the ideal opportunity, and your showing in that first year mock tournament was the last push I needed. I suppose in the end, all that backfired."

Yeah well, that's because he got one thing wrong...I wasn't nearly as inexperienced as he assumed I was.

"You weren't looking for a rival or opponent, you just wanted to get your kicks by screwing with someone. And you panicked when you realized that screwing with me was a dangerous game, that's when your smirk vanished and you lost your cool during the fight. Well, whatever your miscalculations were, it doesn't change the fact that I lost. Next time, I'll-."

"Oh, no, there won't be a next time anytime soon. Don't get me wrong, I'm not afraid of strong opponents, in fact I enjoy a good fight, I'm quite looking forward to fighting Ekai in the final. But fighting you was just so stressful. I mean, when I cut off your arm, not only did you not show pain, but you even used it as a weapon. You are undeniably weaker than I am in terms of raw speed and power, but it's your instinctive yet efficient fighting style, animalistic tenacity and rapid adaptability that are just a pain to go up against. Fighting you just isn't satisfying or fun...you don't cry out in pain or beg for mercy or anything. Well then, my injuries are healed and I can think of no reason to stay here any longer, so I'm off. See you around, first year."

I'd rather not see you around.

With that, he left. What the heck had that all been about, I couldn't tell if he'd been complimenting or insulting me. Either way, it wasn't what I was expecting from him after he won.

Whatever, hopefully I won't be seeing too much of him after this. So, what to do now? I didn't really feel any particular interest in the rest of the tournament now that I was no longer a contender.

Guess I'll just rest up a bit- my train of thought was interrupted by the door opening, as Persia walked in, followed by Rai, Key and Azyl.

"Oh, it's you guys. What's up?" I greeted.

"That was some display, dude! A lot of people in the audience are talking about you, you've definitely made an impression!" Exclaimed Rai, as they walked over to me.

"Indeed. Initially it was mainly about your healing ability, but after that last fight, it was apparent that your skills had impressed as well," Agreed Key.

"You're pretty strong," Added Azyl sleepily.

"That's all well and good, but I still lost. So-."

"So, what? Saying 'you did your best' would be an understatement, you had the second ranked fighter at the Academy on the ropes, and you made it to the semi-final round, something that's never been done before by a first year student. Y-you were amazing," Interrupted Persia, with her usual slight awkwardness.

"O-oh, uh, th-thanks. I suppose I did give it everything I've got, though I still feel like I could have won. I was especially motivated after you gave me these," I replied, holding up the fully black sword and dagger.

"Holy crap, that really is Black Steel! I thought so when I saw them from the audience. Aren't those only sold at the really high-end weapon stor- ow!" Said Rai enthusiastically, before letting out a yelp.

I didn't see exactly what happened, but Persia's hand was near his tail.

"I-I just happened to come across them at a random small store, guess I was just lucky or something!" She defended, quite unconvincingly.

"That seems far too convenient," Countered Key suspiciously.

"D-does it really matter!? B-besides, it was a birthday gift, so you guys really shouldn't be asking about stuff like where I got it from or how much it was!" She protested nervously.

"Uh, hey...Persia, I'd kinda feel bad if you spent a large sum on these-," I began, before trailing off as she glared at me with a pout.

"Hold on, you said birthday gift. So is today...?" Inquired Rai.

"Well, I don't actually know when exactly my birthday is, so I decided to set it to tomorrow," I replied.

I saw Persia let out a quiet sigh of relief as the subject changed. I'll bring it up sometime when the others aren't around. While I was definitely over the moon when she'd got them for me, I'd feel a bit undeserving if they turned out to be super expensive.

"Hmm, tomorrow is...the 20th of April...heh, nice," Quipped Rai, as he made the connection.

"What do you mean, 'nice'?" Inquired Key curiously.

"Huh, oh n-nothing! Just a, uh...inside joke!"

"Oh? You two have inside jokes with each other? You're closer than I thought," Remarked Persia, raising an eyebrow at us.

She was making sure that the subject was staying well and truly changed.

I saw her mouth slightly twitch. Was she trying to keep a straight face? She was making fun of me, wasn't she.

"No way! I have no idea what he's talking about!" I protested, a bit too quickly.

Yeah, that wasn't convincing at all.

"Anyway, the Brawl of Glory isn't over yet, let's go find some seats in the audience to watch the rest of the tournament!" Declared Rai.

The others agreed, before turning to look at me. I sighed, and shrugged.

"Eh, why not?"

As we all left the infirmary and headed for the audience, Persia sidled up next to me.

"So, um...I guess this brings an end to us training together, huh?" She asked, looking at me expectantly.

She looked like...she wanted me to refute that.

"Well...I think I'll still continue to sneak out and train, at least two or three times a week, or something like that. I now have a better idea of where I stand with my current abilities, and I have a lot of room for improvement. I want to get stronger. I-if you ever feel like tagging along, feel f-free to do so. I don't particularly mind having you around or whatever," I replied, my words coming out a bit awkwardly towards the end.

She smiled cheerfully and nodded in reply, he face slightly flushed red, as we all walked into the audience section and began looking for unoccupied seats.

I had been in this world for a little under five months now, and it hadn't quite met my expectations at first. But little by little, things got better. I'd never gotten close to a single person in my old life, but I actually had friends here. Man, that still felt weird to say.

Then there was the magic of this world, a definite improvement over my old world. And with my old life, the majority of my jobs as an assassin were boring, and gave me no enjoyment besides the brief instant that I take out my target. But this tournament...I had immensely enjoyed it. Same with the mock tournament a couple of months ago.

All in all, my life after reincarnating into a fantasy world...was pretty good.

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