My secret technique: Bear Punch.
Huh? It didn’t end him. All it did was make him scowl. Maybe it’s because of the difference between our levels?
“Why, you…”
Deboranay, who had taken the bear punch without flinching, readied his sword. Excuse me, I thought, what’s this amateur doing using his sword when we’re close enough for hand-to-hand combat?
WFO had hand-to-hand battle events. They were open to all, without level, weapon, magic, or gear restrictions, and occasionally featured battles where the admins would change the settings to make the fighters have fixed defensive and offensive abilities.
In a fight where levels, weapons, and equipment didn’t matter, the match would be decided based on skill. From my time in those circuits, I knew that enemies who would rely on raw power to attack were no match. I bear punched Deboranay’s exposed wrist, and because he had was leaning into a sword thrust, he lost his balance. The next moment, Deboranay had a knife thrust to his neck.
“Looks like this is over,” I told him.
“Don’t screw with me!”
He brushed aside my knife and tried to raise his sword, and I backstepped around it. These bear shoes were just way too useful.
“Ms. Front Desk, I won the match just now, didn’t I?”
“You’ve got to be kidding me. The battle isn’t over yet.”
I looked at the receptionist, but she had no idea what to do. She seemed beside herself. I wanted her to make a decisive call, though.
“Okay, fine,” I said. “I won’t just end the match; I’ll end your life. Don’t think that I’ll let my knife stop this time.”
When I said that, the man’s face twitched. He probably knew the difference between our physical strengths. I had evaded his attacks and was also faster than him, and if I had used the knife instead of my bear punch earlier, I would have stabbed him in the hip. On top of that, he definitely couldn’t deny that I’d pressed the knife against his neck at the end. That basically meant I had already stabbed him twice.
“Are you really that scared of this little knife?”
I let him get a glimpse of it.
“Sorry. Using this against a person without no qualifications to be an adventurer was just so immature of me.”
I hurled the knife at Deboranay’s feet, embedding it in the ground.
“Not scary anymore, right?”
I made a little come and get it gesture with my gloves.
“Don’t take me for a fool.”
He charged hard, like an idiot. I sidestepped him, but his sword followed me. Of course he’d figure it out after I’d used the same method twice to evade him.
If one step didn’t work, then I just needed to take two steps, and if that didn’t work, I just had to leap three times. I evaded with three steps, got into his blind spot with the fourth, and in the fifth, I popped up right in his business. My bear punch collided with his face, and Deboranay’s giant body went down.
I hit his face with my right hand, then left, right, left, right, left. Bear punch, bear punch, bear punch, bear punch, bear punch, bear punch, bear punch. It looked like the black bear hand really was stronger—only his left cheek, which was turned towards me, was super swollen.
He didn’t move. Once I saw that, I disengaged. The whites of his eyes were showing; he was passed out.
“So, who’s next?” I asked my audience. None of them stepped up. “Looks like no one. In that case, Ms. Front Desk, could you remove all the adventurers here from the guild? It looks like they’re weaklings.”
I grinned.
“But…” one of them murmured.
“But all of you said it yourself,” I said, “didn’t you? Weaklings like me can’t become adventurers. Which means anyone weaker than me definitely can’t become an adventurer, right? Which includes this guy I’ve just beaten and people who won’t even try me in a fight.”
I looked around, still grinning. It looked like there weren’t any adventurers who felt like they could win after seeing that fight. Deboranay must have been the strongest of them all.
“I didn’t say that!” One of the adventurers broke the silence.
“I didn’t say that, either,” another continued.
“Deboranay was the one who said that, wasn’t he?”
“That’s right.”
It seemed they were going to sell out Deboranay to save their own butts.
“But I said that, didn’t I? If you guys won, then I’d give up on being an adventurer and leave. If you guys lost, you would give up being an adventurer and leave, and then, when that guy said, ‘If I lose against you, I’ll quit! Right, boys,’ you all said ‘Yeah.’ I got the lady from the front desk to confirm that, didn’t I?”
I looked at the receptionist.
“Yes…” she answered in a quiet voice.
The adventurers begin to stalk into the training area. They had nowhere to hide anymore, and nothing to lose.
“You better wait to say that until after you beat all of us,” said one.
“Or how about you face all of us together?” said another.
One, two, then three people arrayed themselves around me. Looked like I needed to beat all of them at once.
I guess if they’re only as strong as Deboranay, this won’t be so bad, I thought.
The battle ended too soon, if you ask me. I couldn’t be sure without checking my status, but I’d probably leveled up from beating Deboranay. My bear step was even faster, and my bear punch’s power was several levels higher. I beat the poor fools with a single blow.
“Hey, what do you think you guys are doing?!” A rugged, musclebound man came charging into the training area. “Hey, Helen, explain what happened!”
Helen, the receptionist, tried to explain as best she could. Once she was done, the musclebound man looked at me.
“You,” he said, “girl in that weird get-up!”
“What?”
“Were you the one who did this?”
“It wasn’t my fault. They threatened me with violence, so I was just defending myself. You’re not going to
