The Switch: Second Match
The second match of the Switch began after a relatively short rest period. It seemed the organizers had taken the audience's comfort into consideration. Since the next bout was a bare-handed martial arts match, I shed my fluttering robe and stepped into the arena wearing only a shirt and long pants. In the old days I would have fought in little more than my underwear, but doing that in front of a crowd felt a bit embarrassing.
The announcer pressed his mouth to the sound-amplifying stone that functioned like a microphone and bellowed, "The first match, the swordsmanship bout, was an overwhelming victory for Lord Werner! But how will the second match turn out?!!! A bare-handed martial arts bout!!! It begins now!!!"
Hoon glared at me while breathing heavily, his hands wrapped in cloth. He must have seen it somewhere and decided to tape up. What an idiot.
"I'll show you the secret martial arts of the Akahara family!"
"Yeah, yeah. Just get on with it already."
Killing him would be troublesome, so breaking one arm or leg should be enough. After all, it was a best-of-three, so winning here meant I wouldn't even need to go to the magic match... Though, as a mage, I feel like I'm not using magic nearly enough. Maybe I should just change jobs to magic fighter or something.
Ding! The match bell rang, and Hoon began circling me warily, keeping his distance. The trauma from getting beaten senseless after recklessly closing the gap in the first match must have stuck with him. Pathetic. Did he really think that would change anything? He clearly didn't understand that keeping distance against the Ninth Fang of the Metzudo, Werner Alton, was completely meaningless.
"Kuh... What are you doing? Come at me already!"
"Kukuku. I just can't stop laughing."
"What's so funny? Are you trying to insult me?"
"A brat who doesn't know the ways of the world dared to meddle in the relationship between my fiancée and me with such bravado, and now he's backing off like a little girl. How could that not be hilarious?"
I deliberately scratched at his pride to provoke him. Trash talk was a tactic that worked across all eras and cultures. Judging by the veins popping on Hoon's face, it was working quite well.
"I believe there's no such thing as trash martial arts... but the one who inherited it is like this, so even the martial art you learned must be crying. To think such trash is its successor..."
"Don't insult the Akahara style!"
"I don't recall insulting your martial art. I was only insulting you."
Unable to contain his rage, Hoon charged at me. The sight of him rushing in like a boar in heat just because I'd poked at him was so ridiculous that tears came to my eyes.
"How dare you look down on the Akahara style!"
I easily dodged his sluggish jab. With punches like that, he couldn't even catch a rat. Karate, aikido, judo—Japanese martial arts were strong in their own right, so why was this guy's family style so pathetic? Martial arts existed to protect the weak, not to turn them into idiots.
"I already told you—I was insulting you, not your style... Yet you interpret an insult toward yourself as an insult toward your entire organization. You must have a strong sense of belonging."
"Shut up!"
"But you know what? The more desperately someone clings to a group, the more it means they have nowhere else to lean on, so they're staking their life on that organization."
Hadn't the young Werner been the same? He took excessive pride in belonging to Zeek's party and became obsessed with it. Because he had no psychological support, he hid in the shadow called "the group" and identified his own shadow with the group itself. I'd seen plenty of people like that.
"What the hell are you trying to say?!"
"Ah, so to summarize what I want to say... Hmm..."
I needed to condense what I wanted to say as clearly and concisely as possible.
"You had no friends, right? That sudden temper of yours, and that ridiculously strong sense of belonging... No matter how I look at it, you're not the type to have friends. Maybe during your training you had none, and after coming here you felt like you were finally somebody, got drunk on that feeling, and picked a fight with me—the one who belonged to the 'upper class' you were jealous of back in your hometown?"
"You son of a bitch!!!!"
Hoon had completely lost his mind and started swinging wild punches. It didn't look like there was any Akahara-style martial art at all. No martial art in the world would teach you to throw punches like that. What a pathetic fool.
I grabbed him as he was and slammed him into the ground with a suplex. The sound of bone and flesh striking stone rang out. He didn't even know how to break his fall properly and took the full impact.
"Instead of wasting time on half-baked knowledge and whatever skills you got from some goddess, why don't you try making friends first? Or maybe you gave yourself the character of a lonely genius and think hanging out with friends is for idiots? And yet you still have sexual desires, so you pant after women like a monkey in heat, and while you're at it, you wanted to play at being some half-assed hero for my fiancée?"
"Sh...ut..."
"How pitiful. That's the classic trait of losers. People whose insides are worthless but brainwash themselves into thinking they're special. I bet that story about inheriting some family swordsmanship or martial art was a lie too. You brainwash yourself into believing you're special that way, don't you? When you can't even love yourself as you truly are, who would ever truly love you?"
"Shut up! Shut up! Shut up! I finally got reincarnated into another world! You extras are supposed to hand over the heroines and disappear! You, and all the guys at the academy, just keep looking down on people!!!"
"Haa... You're so vulgar I don't even have anything to say. It's not that they're idiots—they just have a bit of pride. There simply wasn't anyone with a stomach strong enough to get close to trash like you. Please stop living in your delusions and try living honestly while knowing your place. Then maybe someone will approach you. Though that's a very big 'maybe.'"
I turned my back on him and started walking out of the arena. Someone like that idiot wouldn't even be able to stand up after this. Yet after only a few steps, something unexpected happened. Hoon began choking me from behind. And... did this guy not even know how to properly apply a choke? He really seemed like a complete amateur when it came to martial arts.
"You provoked me like a coward! You suplexed me like a coward! You bastard!!!! Stop treating people like idiots!!!"
If suplexes were cowardly, then every judo athlete would be a coward, you moron.
"Ah... Did you just say 'treating me like an idiot'? Calling me an idiot... You seem to have overestimated yourself quite a bit?"
Hoon let out a scream and poured all his strength into the hold. But no matter how hard he squeezed, his posture was so terrible that it didn't even reach the level of a massage. I decided to just suplex him one more time and end it. I didn't even feel like breaking his arms or legs anymore. It was just too pathetic and disgusting.
"Haa... Time to wrap this up..."
"The trash who taught you those cowardly techniques! You too! Everyone here too! You're all just stepping stones for my isekai reincarnation!!!!"
"...Hey. What did you just say?"
The thread of my sanity snapped.
"What, you didn't hear me?! You're all just stepping stones for my isekai life...!"
In an instant, I broke free of his sloppy choke and drove both my thumbs into the joints of his jaw. His jaw dislocated on the spot. He grabbed his jaw and started stomping his feet.
"Aaiiieee!!! Aaiiieee!!! Ang ahhyeee!!! Eeyaa!!!!"
"You definitely said that surrendering before being killed would count as a win, right? Now try surrendering, you moron."
With his jaw like that, he couldn't speak properly, but I couldn't ignore the strong will to survive. I took off the shirt I was wearing.
"I'm the type who follows the rules. So there shouldn't be any unfortunate incident where you surrender."
"Ahaoi ah! Ahaoi ah!"
I stuffed the shirt straight into his mouth. Now he wouldn't even be able to speak. There was no need to listen to a pig squealing while I butchered it.
"Stepping stones... you said?"
I knocked him down, then stomped on his mouth with my foot. Again and again. The white shirt stuffed in his mouth began to turn red.
"Does it hurt? If it hurts, try shouting that you're surrendering... Then I'll stop..."
I grabbed his hair and slammed my fist into his cheekbone. Then I stomped on his ribs with my foot, broke his legs, gouged out his eyes, crushed his fingers... The blood splattering, the screams of the crowd, and the gurgling sounds of the bastard in front of me were enough to make me lose consciousness.
When I came to my senses, there was only a lump of meat that could no longer be called a person. The only thing that could identify him was the shirt in his mouth, now completely devoid of white and dyed red. Blood was splattered across the stone floor, with the tattered lump of meat at its center.
"Since I killed him before he could surrender, this counts as my win, right?"