Not Residual Muscle
The Quest Office was thick with muttering and undisguised disgust.
Every one of those stares was aimed, unmistakably, at Rin.
I didn't have to think about it for long.
I walked straight over to the group that had been pointing at her. Five of them, a mixed bag — a lizardman, an orc, and a few humans besides.
"Got a problem with my teammate?"
Their eyes snapped to me. One of the humans sitting up front let out a disbelieving little snort.
"Teammate? With that witch?"
"Heh heh heh. There's a real freak for every occasion, huh?"
"You trying to make us laugh? Because it worked!"
I scowled, and Rin drifted up behind me, her voice light.
"Oppa! What are you doing? We've got a mission to get to! Come on, let's go~"
"Stay the fuck away, you bitch!!"
The big human with something like a horn jutting from his skull hurled the cup in his hand straight at Rin.
"Ah!"
Her reflexes were good enough to dodge the cup itself. The liquid inside was another matter.
A thick, black sludge splattered across her pink hair, her face, her clothes. A smell hit me at once — sickly-sweet and nauseating all at once.
"R-Rin! Are you all right?!"
Aria rushed to her in a panic and started brushing the stuff off.
"The hell do you think you're doing?"
I glared. The horned bastard who'd thrown the cup just snickered.
"Hey, you're a newbie, right? That witch is your teammate?"
"One look and you can tell she's wrong. Got yourself bewitched and turned into a complete idiot. Heh heh heh."
They kept staring at Rin like she was something that had crawled out from under a rock, pouring out one filthy remark after another.
"Ah! I didn't quite dodge all of it!"
Even like this, Rin was beaming. And for some reason, that smile of hers only made me angrier.
"You motherfuckers..."
"Oppa~! Let's just go back! I need to wash this off! And don't you dare start having dirty thoughts just because I'm wet right now!"
The bastards showed no sign of letting up.
"Huh? Wait a second. That guy — isn't that the Primordial Power one from before?"
"That's him! His skill's Primordial Power and he still walked up to us? Wow, you have to admire the balls."
"What, is the witch your girlfriend or something? Bwahahahaha!"
They looked me up and down and laughed in my face.
I was just about done holding it in.
Even at a glance, these guys had a lot more experience than we did. If I picked a fight with them, could I actually win? The horned one looked like an axe fighter.
Then again — since when have I ever picked my fights by calculating that kind of thing?
I started to take another step forward.
"Oppa, don't. I feel seriously gross right now. I just want to go wash this off, okay? Please? Let's go~!"
"M-Min-woo, I think we should just leave it for now..."
Hah... fuck.
The one who'd actually been hit was asking me this hard to drop it. Letting it go was probably the right call. That sticky mess had to be miserable for Rin, and as for the Primordial Power cracks — I'd heard them enough times that they barely even registered anymore.
I swallowed the anger and started to turn away.
"Puhahahaha! Look at the coward run!"
"That's right. Better to face reality than puff yourself up. Good boy."
"What's a short, scrawny bastard with some leftover muscle doing acting tough?"
What?
Scrawny?
Leftover muscle?
Had I heard that right?
Leftover muscle?
My body looked scrawny to them?
Were these fuckers' eyes broken, or was I actually just a dried-up little anchovy with some definition?
Crack. Crack!!
I turned back and walked toward them, nice and slow.
"What, you wanna go? Shall we take this to the Hub Dueling Arena?"
Ah. So that place existed.
Perfect.
The one who'd hit me with the leftover-muscle line was the same horned bastard who'd thrown the cup at Rin. I pointed at him and crooked a finger.
"You. Get over here, you son of a bitch."
"The hell...?"
He let out a hollow little laugh, like he couldn't believe it. His buddies immediately piled on, cackling as they needled him.
"Kwahahaha! Hey, Karante! Guess you looked like the softest target in the group!"
"A guy who gets challenged to a duel by Primordial Power. You'll be the first, Karante. Bwahahahaha!!"
The horned bastard they'd called Karante twisted his face like it was about to split open. At the same time, the horn on his head began to flush a burning crimson. That, I had to admit, was kind of interesting.
"You little shit... Fine. You're dead today. Follow me!!"
Karante surged to his feet and snatched up his two-handed greataxe.
"Oppa. Just don't. I— I'm really fine!"
"This isn't about you. I'm doing this because I feel like it."
"......"
"If it bothers you that much, go wash up first."
"Min-woo, will you be all right?"
"No idea. I'll find out."
"Kerrk..."
Weighing whether I could win. Calculating whether it would even be worth it. That kind of thinking had never suited me.
I just really, really wanted to beat the hell out of that guy.
And yes, fine — the leftover-muscle comment was absolutely what had done it.
Either way, I finished talking and followed Karante out.
The Hub Dueling Arena, underground beneath the Quest Office.
Word that a fight was on had already spread, and people from the Gathering Hall came drifting in by twos and threes, appointing themselves an audience.
Karante took his place at the center of the arena and drew his two-handed greataxe. I'd picked up a sword off the floor on the way in — just some discarded blade lying around — and walked in with that. No supply weapon had materialized for me on the trip down.
"Hey, newbie! How do you want to do the rules? Want me to go easy and just knock you out?"
There were rules?
So you probably weren't supposed to kill people, or something like that. I didn't know a damn thing about any of it, so I figured I'd just leave it to him.
"Do whatever the fuck you want, you moron."
"Hah. Has this bastard actually lost his mind? Fine. You want to die that badly? We're going deathmatch. No complaints, I assume?"
"I've got a complaint about how weird that horn on your head looks."
"You son of a bitch!! You're dying today no matter what!!"
"Ah, my bad. I should've said do it however your horn wants, not however the fuck you want. I figured that thing on your head was a horn, but looking at it now, it's shaped way too much like a dick."
"You motherfucker!!! Hey!! What are you waiting for!! Start it already!!!"
The Gathering Hall staffer acting as referee nodded and raised a hand.
"By mutual agreement, this will be a deathmatch. It ends when one side surrenders or dies. Begin!"
A sharp burst of motion.
I'll finish this in one go!
The instant it started, Karante kicked off the ground and charged. Explosive leg strength, the kind unique to Dragonkin — the distance vanished in a blink. A human body that couldn't even coat itself in mana was paper in front of Karante's Axe Technique skill. And that human's skill was Primordial Power. The moment the axe came around, one of the bastard's limbs was as good as gone.
A newbie who doesn't know his place, running his mouth. Time to teach him a proper lesson.
The greataxe howled through the air. Karante drove Min-woo back with heavy, brutal axe work — blows that looked like they would burst a body apart if they landed.
And yet.
What— what the hell?
In the instant Karante was sure he'd connected, Min-woo slipped the attack by the width of a sheet of paper. And whenever sword and axe did clash, a jolt ran up Karante's hands sharp enough to make his fingers go numb.
He's different, I'll give him that.
Min-woo, for his part, was in no position to feel comfortable. Karante's assault was on another level entirely from the likes of Bren. In truth, Min-woo was so busy weathering that overwhelming offense that he couldn't even find an opening to counter.
But he had been through worse. Isra's bombardments, her greatsword, her whip — he had already felt that kind of overwhelming speed and mass. That was the only reason he could keep slipping and turning Karante's blows aside. One slip in concentration, though, and something was getting cut off. That much was certain.
Let's try approaching this a little more technically.
Crack. Crack!
Min-woo drew up his Primordial Power and started feeding Karante's attacks through the defensive forms he'd drilled so hard, letting each blow slide off.
This bastard's stronger than I thought!
Karante watched Min-woo move and felt a jolt of genuine alarm. A sense of distance that looked close enough to touch and somehow never was. This was not the helpless nobody a Primordial Power skill was supposed to produce. Trading blows at half-measure was not going to be enough to win.
He'd taken the human for nothing but a loud mouth. The man had clearly had something to back it up.
So Karante put everything he had into the next swing.
Sword and axe met.
A hard, ugly crack — and Min-woo's blade snapped clean in two.
Karante's greataxe was a decent-grade weapon bound to him. Min-woo's sword had been nothing but a supply blade he'd picked up off the floor.
That's it! I won!
He could land it now. The human was just standing there, dazed, like the broken sword had shorted out his brain.
Look at that vacant face. What an idiot!
Karante put his weight behind the greataxe and brought it down at Min-woo's shoulder. He'd called it a deathmatch, but he hadn't actually intended to kill a newbie.
And then.
A dull, solid thunk.
"Huh...?"
A low hum. A translucent yellow film caught Karante's axe and stopped it dead.
A— a barrier?
How? His skill was supposed to be Primordial Power. Then why was the barrier yellow...?
In that instant, the look in Min-woo's eyes changed. Both hands shot out with the speed of a lightning strike and clamped down on either side of Karante's axe blade.
A hard, final grip.
"......?!"
Karante's eyes nearly started from his head.
Is he insane? Grabbing a blade with his bare hands?
Not bare, exactly. The man was wearing a pair of gray gloves. But they weren't plate, weren't anything — they looked like nothing more than slightly thick scraps of cloth. Karante was certain those fingers were about to come off.
He hadn't reached the level where he could pour mana into a weapon yet. But the greataxe was one he'd bought at the blacksmith, and that heavy edge was vicious enough to split rock.
And yet.
"Wh-what the hell is this...?!"
Min-woo's hands were perfectly fine. The axe sat in his grip and did not move — as if it had been wedged into a crack in a boulder.
Panicking, Karante twisted the haft back and forth and yanked, sawing at the gloves. He fully expected the cloth to tear, the flesh to open, and a scream to follow.
A nauseating scrape of metal on something that would not give. Not a single drop of blood appeared on Min-woo's hands.
How?!
Karante had no way of knowing. The gray gloves on Min-woo's hands were cut-resistant gloves he'd ordered off PangPang.
And then.
Crack!! Crack!!!
Yellow lightning erupted from Min-woo's hands in a violent flood.
What is that...? Lightning magic?
An overwhelming grip strength came surging up the axe haft, and Karante's skin crawled.
Then — a bright, almost cheerful burst.
Both blades of Karante's greataxe shattered like cookie crumbs. All he could do was stare, blank, at the scraps of metal tumbling away through the air.