Chapter 42: A Loss

Chapter 42: A Loss

It appeared that with my fight against Louis, Stewart was rather wary of my attack that went for the neck. That wasn't wrong to be worried about, considering it was a way to temporarily disable some limbs if hit in the right spot.

However, that made him let his guard down for my punch. It appeared he didn't believe that was much of a threat, and that it was just any old one.

That led to him crumpling down onto the floor.

Like last time, I stepped on his sword and held down his head with my free hand.

"I guess you lost this time."

As for this Stewart guy, he let out a groan, but in between them, he was laughing. It was hard for him to speak in this position, but he still spoke up.

"Do you mind if I could have another try?"

...Huh? This guy wants to go again? I mulled over it for a little while, wondering if I should even agree. Though while I was pondering, that didn't mean I was silent.

"Didn't I tell you before that a true enemy wouldn't give you any mercy?'

Stewart's expression hardened somewhat. He was still out of breath and in pain from that punch but forced out the words.

"Nobody in my manor fights as you do. I wish to learn how to fight properly so that when I do face that true enemy, I can be the one beheading them instead of losing my own. To be frank, I doubt I will be able to experience a fight like this again in a while and wish to experience it once more."

I took a deep breath and promptly let out a long sigh. Honestly, I didn't want to continue this for longer than I should, but he said it in a way that made me respect him a little.

Just a little.

I backed off with a smirk.

"Then let's see if you can do better this time."

The Stewart guy backed up a bit as well with shaky steps. It seemed he was still feeling the effects of the punch. But there was a determined expression on his face.

I charged forth once more like I always did. He did the same and stopped once he was out of my range.

But I didn't.

Against his expectations, I lowered myself down and stuck out my arm so that he couldn't see the wooden sword underneath. Then, I pushed it out at full speed. He was still able to swing down with his spear in an attempt to get my sword out of the way, but I had actually aimed lower than he expected, slamming against his thigh.

The Stewart guy let out a groan of pain, but forced himself to continue standing. Though, I cheekily poked him in the side with a finger like what an annoying and mischievous little kid would do.

Except I did it with far more force, which made him fall to the ground once more.

He landed on his back, face up looking at the ceiling. I pointed my wooden sword at his neck. A bitter smile formed on Stewart's face, one that was mixed in with pain. He began sweating, but I was pretty sure that was because the pain was pretty bad for him.

He weakly raised a finger.

"I did not expect that. Do you mind fighting me once more?"

With a sigh, I pulled away the wooden sword.

"I won't do this with you forever, alright? You gotta learn some things on your own."

The Stewart guy nodded as he got back up once more. His eyelid was twitching somewhat, while his pupils seemed to be dilating in and out of focus. Still, there was a smile on his face. As a noble, he appeared to have quite the resilience.

After a second of thought, I pointed my wooden sword at him.

"Hey, what's your name?"

The guy seemed a bit surprised, but I surmised that was because he thought it was strange I didn't already know his name. Regardless, he said it.

"Liam. My name is Liam, Bryson."

I gave a nod.

"Alright then, I'm starting."

I suddenly lunged forth again, and he did the same. From there, I did the same thing as last time, hiding my wooden sword with my arm as it shot out.

In response, instead of trying to block it with his sword, Liam tried to retreat quickly, so that he could avoid it altogether. But as he lifted his foot off the floor, I abandoned my attack with the sword immediately and swept with my foot, slamming hard into the one leg holding him up.

He was directly knocked off his feet and slammed into the ground hard. Liam let out a violent cough as he landed. It appeared that the wind was knocked out of him, which is definitely not a pleasant feeling.

Eventually, he weakly held up a hand, about to speak, but-

"What is the point of continuing this fight? The Arden family is clearly superior here, I hereby declare that the Stewart family surrenders!"

Douglas spoke up first.

Liam had a somewhat distraught expression on his face, but he complied and clawed up before limping off the stage. I simply walked off. Douglas was being a little rude, but honestly, it was kind of helpful, since Liam was getting a little too bold and unreasonable with repeatedly asking for rematches.

From there, all of the other winners from the dukes' families fought against each other and the winners were slowly determined.

And soon enough, Douglas announced that it was my turn again.

"Next is the archduke Darcy family against the Arden family."

I got up on the platform like always, while Raisa got up as well, though there was an awkward expression on her face.

She waved sheepishly with one hand while the other had a long wooden halberd.

"Um, hi! C-Could you go a little easy on me? I'm not too confident in beating you."

I pressed my lips into a flat line.

"And what is the point of that?"

Raisa let out a gasp and stammered.

"W-Well, I'm just not that good at fighting."

I shrugged my shoulders.

"Then that just means I shouldn't hold back. It's better if I take advantage of any weakness you show, that way you will learn how to overcome those. As a friend, I shouldn't hold back.

And the same went for the people I didn't care about. Holding back was just going to be frustrating when I'd rather hurt them more.

Raisa blinked several times in surprise but slowly nodded.

"A-Alright then!"

The moment Douglas announced the start, I rushed in once more. Raisa didn't seem to know why I did that but did the same. I stopped before getting into her range, while she herself did the same. n(.OVeLBIn

She had her knees slightly bent and her wooden halberd raised. She was intently watching me, waiting for me to make a move.

Out of nowhere, I leaned my body forward, but my feet hadn't moved yet. Raisa visibly panicked, taking a step back and waving the halberd slightly, but proceeded to blush when she realized I hadn't done anything.

I took a step forward after she did, and continued to wait for a while.

From there, I suddenly lunged forth for real this time. Raisa attempted to ward me off with her halberd, but she wasn't committing to doing so. That made it easy to continue forth, but it also meant she could still use it to block or counterattack.

I went for her neck, but she raised the halberd to block while moving backward. Though I wanted to turn the attack into a feint before going for somewhere else, she was too far away.

I simply continued to move forth, taking the space.

From there, I lunged forth while keeping myself low. But instead of doing anything weird, I just swung, aiming for the knees. On the other hand, Raisa blocked with her halberd while moving back again, making it hard for me to transition my blocked attack into anything else.

Still, all things considered, I had a significant advantage here. People with long weapons usually wanted to abuse that, attacking their opponents while they couldn't. Then they should aggressively go closer to push them back, or force them to recklessly charge forth.

Should they eventually recklessly charge forth, you could abuse that to get a good hit in and back off, keeping the advantage.

Yet, Raisa wasn't even trying to do that.

This way would make it so I couldn't hit her easily, but that wouldn't change the fact she only had so much space. As I continued to go forth, she continued retreating. Eventually, she looked behind herself and frowned when she realized there wasn't much more space to retreat.

With this in mind, I stepped forth with a wide horizontal slash, knowing that the best way to guard against it was moving backward.

Raisa panicked somewhat, leaning back to dodge the sword, but she overdid it and ended up losing her balance and falling down. Her head hung over the platform, but she hadn't fallen out yet.

A small smile formed on her face.

"D-Do you mind giving me another try?"

She held out her hand, as though she wanted me to pull her up. I couldn't help but feel that this was just really dumb. Was everyone going to ask me for a second chance?

Still, since I considered her a friend, it would be a bit rude considering I still gave some random dude a chance.

With that in mind, I let out a sigh as I reached out.

"Fine, fine."

Upon grabbing onto her, I tried to pull up.

But Raisa abruptly pulled with all her might, putting me off balance. Then, while I was falling over, she pressed a hand against my chest, lifting me up and using the momentum to toss me over herself with her full strength.

As I flew in the air, seeing what was about to happen to me, a thought ran across my mind.

This crafty bitch.

Guess it's not too strange that she became the Daughter of Chaos.

I landed flat on my ass, still somewhat stunned. As for Raisa, she looked rather nervous.

"U-Um, sorry! Was that too far? You said that we shouldn't hold back anything, and this was the only way I could think of to win! S-So, this way you learn, right?"

A bitter smile formed on my face. I ended up laughing out loud, more at myself than anything else.

"Yeah, well played. I definitely learned from this experience."

Raisa awkwardly scratched the side of her head.

"Ah, phew! I really thought I may have gone too far!"

Quite a few people were stunned, especially so for Douglas. He looked rather displeased, but eventually announced the result.

I went back to my seat and continued to watch the rest of the spars.

The other people related to the archdukes came up to fight against the winning dukes. In the end, the other archdukes won rather easily. Part of it was definitely because the other party was tired, but the difference in skill and power was visible.

Even if the grounds were more even, the results wouldn't have changed anyway.

Then, the three winners each fought against each other once, so there were two battles each. In the end, Raisa lost both times, while Douglas's son won both times, giving him the overall win.

From there, everyone got up and headed home after Douglas gave another speech.

Though as he was saying it, I wondered if I was becoming soft.