Chapter 12: Spar

Chapter 12: Spar

I stared down at Nathan, while he looked back at me. The two of us didn't move for quite a while. This was how it usually was when we fought. I held onto an ordinary wooden sword while he held onto a wooden spear.

The sounds of wooden weapons clashing with each other slowly picked up in volume, until they became quite loud. The sounds gradually melded into each other until they appeared to have their own rhythm.

I slowly bent my knee, while Nathan raised his spear ever so slightly.

In the end, I lost the battle of patience. Unable to hold myself back, I lunged forth, closing the distance as fast as I could. On the other hand, Nathan took a step forward, thrusting his spear forth.

He did it rather clumsily, and while I wasn't the best at dodging, I still was able to do it. With a grunt, I swung my sword horizontally, toward his shoulder. Nathan took a step back and leaned away, avoiding it.

While he was somewhat unstable, I attempted to press my advantage by taking another step forward and giving an overhead swing. However, he was able to easily bring up his spear with both hands, letting the sword slam against the handle.

Both of our attacks definitely weren't the best, but neither of us really cared. I felt taken back to the time when we still hated one another.

Without waiting, I attempted to attack again, but he recovered faster than I did, thrusting the spear forwards while tilting his body back. I immediately recognized what he was doing.

Nathan often liked to do this sort of move. Whenever I did an attack that would be relatively slow, he liked to do a swift attack of his own and use the recoil from it to dodge mine.

Knowing this, I gave up on my attack and retreated, avoiding the crudely thrusted spear.

Now it was Nathan's turn to press the advantage. He took a step forward while pulling back the spear before thrusting it toward me once more. I leaned to the side and slammed my wooden sword against the side of the spear before pushing it away.

Nathan was dumbstruck for half a second before lifting the spear up to get it out of the way. With that time, I tried to go for something cheeky. n/.Ovelb1n

One of my hands let go of the handle, while the sword itself shot forwards like a rapier, towards Nathan's fingers. Unfortunately, it looked like he saw that coming. He shifted the grip on his spear greatly to avoid mine.

Honestly, I kinda expected this because he knew I liked to go for the hands in a fight. My mentality is that if I disable their offensive power, then they can't do anything. Unfortunately, that's easier said than done.

Regardless, my situation was still good because I would have time for another attack before he could lower his spear. Most people in Nathan's position would back off, meaning I should take a step forward.

But I knew the kind of person he was.

I bent my knees, stabilizing my center of gravity. Nathan took a long step forth, his leg sweeping towards my ankle. At the same time, I swung my sword toward his waist.

Two dull thumps resounded at once.

I felt the kick hit my leg, which made it burn up in pain, while Nathan cringed after the wooden sword hit his waist. Despite being in pain, he retreated at the same time, while I stood my ground.

The kick had almost pushed me off balance, and I spent the time recovering from that.

Overall, I took the upper hand in this engagement. The hit to his waist should be more damaging than the one to my leg. Though, I knew he wasn't demoralized at all, nor did he feel he was at a disadvantage.

He simply valued wounds to the leg more.

It was at this point we both began to dumb down our thoughts. In the end, we both knew each other's habits, thus to become more unpredictable both of our solutions were just to become empty-headed.

Of course, actually thinking was probably a better solution, but frankly, neither of us had a brain able to process things fast enough for that.

I pulled back my sword, ready for a swing, while he pulled back the spear. Both of us rushed forth to attack. I saw the point of his spear coming for me and sidestepped, while he folded himself like a piece of paper to dodge my horizontal slash.

While close like this, one of my hands let go of my sword to grasp the spear. As for Nathan, he pulled back his foot for a full-power kick. I decided to take this engagement head-on, swinging my sword down with full power toward his head.

Two loud thumps rang out one after another.

I felt a strong force slam against my knee. As for my sword, Nathan had tilted his head to the side, letting it slam into his shoulder.

Due to the kick to my knee, I could feel it buckle, but I hurriedly let go of the spear and backed off before he could capitalize on it and make me fall to my knees. It had happened once before, and I paid dearly for it.

I didn't realize it at the time, but my eyes gradually began to widen, while my breathing became heavier. Apparently, the same thing happened to Nathan as well. The both of us considerably sped up our pace. Adrenaline fueled our actions, and let us ignore our pain.

His spear shot towards me again and again, making me feel like I was actually in a bullet hell. In order to dodge his attacks, I had to keep going from the left and right, making me feel like I was doing some sort of dance. Occasionally, he would attack with his legs too whenever he saw a good opportunity. I was only able to avoid some of them.

As for me, I attacked a bit slower, but made up for it by putting my full power behind each strike. Though I hit him less, each hit definitely hurt him by quite a bit. Since he was quite short and I was tall, it was hard for me to reach his legs, so I just focused on hitting his upper body whenever I could.

Though my legs hurt from him generally attacking those more, it was still manageable. On the other hand, several parts of his arm and body were getting bruised. Ordinarily, it would interfere with his attacks with the spear, but he had too much adrenaline in his system to notice.

I'm not really sure when, but at some point, I began hearing intense gales of wind from each of our strikes. Our thoughts gradually lessened, until the only thing in our minds was to either strike, dodge, defend, or reposition.

As for our bodies, they began moving on instinct.

My body was definitely overheating, as it felt like the worst part of summer right now. There was so much sweat covering our bodies, that when we moved droplets of it would get flung off.

Gradually, the sounds of wind coming from our attacks became sharper. They started to sound like whistles and were rather harsh on the ears.

My eyes were open to their limits and were tearing up because of the winds. Naturally, Nathan was the same.

I landed a strong hit on his upper arm. At the same time, he got hit on my leg.

The tip of his spear slammed into my stomach. My abs instinctively tensed up to lessen the damage. At the same time, I slammed the tip of my sword onto his hand, causing his fingers to spasm.

I got lost in the fight, though I couldn't help but notice that Nathan had some purple spots. They were bruises. In fact, even though I wasn't particularly looking at myself, I also saw quite a few bruises as well.

We continued trading blows. Our attacks slowly become more devious and underhanded.

He would directly go for my balls, while I went for his eyes.

So far, neither of us had been hit there, but I wasn't sure for how long that would last.

I noticed the muscles in my body were gradually locking up. My limbs felt like giant metal bars that I had to lift, but I did so nonetheless. Thankfully, it seemed like it was the same for Nathan, as he began to match my sluggish pace.

The blows that we took increased greatly because dodging had become far more difficult. Honestly, the battle had dragged on for quite a long amount of time.

It wasn't as though we weren't trying to abuse the rules, as we were also trying to shove each other off the stage, but the places where we fought were quite claustrophobic. As such, we were very familiar with taking space. After all, failing to do so would basically lead to getting pinned on the wall and getting beat up.

Fragments of old memories began surfacing one after another.

"Shut the fuck up!"

I remember saying those words a lot.

"You're a piece of shit!"

And that was what he said to me a lot.

The sounds of our wooden weapons clacking against each other began melding together and started to sound like how our fists would sound as we hit one another.

"You're the fucking lucky one here!"

"You think I wanted this life? If I could kill myself to give it to you I would!"

We never held back when we fought. If it wasn't for someone stopping us each time because we were yelling at the top of our lungs...

There was a real chance both of us could've become either crippled or straight-up dead. Though there were no debilitating injuries from our fights, we both suffered permanent scars, a reminder of our past relationship.

I had a small scar across my stomach, while he had a small scar next to his right eye.

Obviously, now that we transmigrated we didn't take those scars with us. But those very same injuries appeared on both of us during the fight. While going for his eye, he tilted his head to the side, while my wooden sword scraped his face, leaving a faint red mark.

As for him, he caught me off guard by sweeping with his spear. I felt a dull pain.

Both of us immediately readied for another attack with full power. We both realized the other's intention, but there was no time to defend ourselves unless we retracted our attack.

And at this point, we had no plans of stopping.

My wooden sword drew an arc toward his neck, while his spear shot toward my ribcage. Even in my adrenaline-filled state, I knew it was going to hurt, and thus braced myself, getting ready for the pain.

"Stop!"

But before either of our attacks connected, our wooden weapons froze in the air. The teacher, Rae, had grabbed onto both of them tightly.

Both Nathan and I broke out of our stupor, but we felt a little displeased. I frowned slightly.

"But we were almost done anyway."

Nathan nodded in agreement.

"Yeah, after just a little more the fight would've been over."

Rae put on a strict expression and shook her head.

"No. I judge both of you are unable to fight right now, so it's a tie on both ends. Besides, the gym period is already over!"

It was at this point Nathan and I looked around us. All the others in the class were watching. In fact, there were some people that had their weapons raised but were frozen in place, with their eyes on us.

Well, this is a little awkward.