44. Touch Little Eli and You're Fucked
44. Touch Little Eli and You're Fucked
My hazy, blurred vision returned to normal, and I let out a breath.
The hell?
My consciousness had just been cleanly severed, like a snip.
I lost consciousness from that one hit? Me?
"What the, fuck—"
"You think you have time to be surprised?"
Leona giggled and threw another punch.
An honest, straight line. If I tried to block it like before, she'd obviously smash through my guard and cave my face in.
If the Tier gap were only one or two levels, I might've managed somehow, but Leona was on a whole different level. No matter how formidable I'd been in my Past Life, there was no overcoming an overwhelming Tier gap.
Assuming we fought purely in close combat.
...Of course, right now I'd get my ass shredded since I didn't have a weapon, but I wouldn't let my guard drop pathetically like before.
If I had a weapon, I could at least scrap somehow.
But she's even using Mana to beat me down.
I can't block, deflect, or redirect. And I'm bare-handed.
Which means, without a weapon, all I can do is dodge those fists.
Goddammit.
I twisted my hips and tilted my body.
Whoosh—! A dizzying wind grazed past my cheek.
But Leona's body didn't stop.
The shoulder of her extended arm twitched, and her lead leg dug in deeper, snapping her hips forward.
Her extended arm folded. She was aiming for my shoulder.
I can't dodge like this. I pulled my right foot back as my weight shifted, and stepped my left foot to the right.
Then I immediately dropped my upper body and twisted.
Right then, I felt an intense wind at the back of my head.
I quickly rolled my eyes. Leona's foot, creeping closer. Her waist, moving. Her abdomen, tightening. Her shoulder, rippling. If I watched any longer, I'd be too late. I moved my body at once.
I dropped my upper body, turned my head, crumpled my shoulder, folded my waist, and bent my legs.
I dodged the first punch, the second grazed my hair, the third touched my shoulder, the fourth skimmed my ribs.
And the fifth.
It wasn't a punch. It was a leg.
This beast had finally forgotten the difference between hands and feet.
I immediately raised my arms and set my guard.
I lifted my lead leg slightly and shifted my weight.
I relaxed the leg bracing behind me, preparing to retreat the moment I got hit.
Then—crunch!
A shin whipped like a lash and smashed into my forearm.
I retreated as planned and softened the impact, but the pain was fucking dizzying.
"You, bitch! Ugh..."
A curse slipped out on its own.
"You said... fists only!"
I clutched my left forearm, which felt cracked, and shrieked.
"Nyahaha! You dodged so well I got excited too. Sorry, sorry!"
Leona laughed sheepishly and approached, scratching her cheek. My body flinched for a second, but once I realized she was just walking over, I relaxed.
"Here, drink this."
"...Who brings a Potion and feeds it to someone on the first day?"
In Leona's hand was a violet Potion.
Since she was giving it to me, I accepted without refusing.
But this wasn't an ordinary Potion.
With this kind of viscosity.
"It's High-grade, isn't it?"
"It's the only kind I have!"
"You're not going to bill me for it, right?"
"Hey. You think I'd do that? Drink up, drink up!"
Pop! With a cheerful sound, the glass bottle opened, and the distinctive fragrance of a High-Grade Potion wafted out.
I downed it immediately.
Not a liquid, but a jelly-like solid wrapped around my tongue and slid down my throat. Then it mixed into my Mana and blood, spreading through my whole body as if taking root.
Along with a cool, tingling sensation, the throbbing pain in my arm completely vanished.
And the Potion remaining in my body.
"...Huh?"
My lower abdomen.
It gathered in my Lower Dantian.
"What the."
An Elixir?
It felt a bit too foreign to be an Elixir.
But saying it wasn't an Elixir—no, it was definitely an Elixir.
What is this?
I rubbed my lower abdomen, which felt warm, ticklish, and tingly, and stared at Leona.
"Is this... an Elixir?"
"Well, something like that! How is it? Feeling better?"
I raised my formerly stinging arm and showed her it was fine.
Leona smiled in satisfaction, then raised her fists again. Both hands this time.
"If you're all healed, get ready!"
"Wait, I need time to absorb this—"
She didn't give me any.
Boom! A fist shot out, bursting through the air, aimed at my face.
"You fucking—"
I instinctively raised my guard.
And then.
"Nyahaha! You really are an idiot!"
Crunch.
Stars burst before my eyes again.
This time, there were two of them.
*****
It was already past midnight.
In the middle of the training hall, where the sound of air bursting in a way that made it hard to believe someone was just swinging fists rang out continuously, Leona giggled.
That laughter had burst out naturally at the sight of Eliarnes's achievement.
Punches that extended without pause—punches that Eliarnes, at her Tier, could never block.
And Eliarnes was dodging them without rest.
At first, she had instinctively raised her guard and blocked, but from the tenth punch onward, she never once raised her guard.
From the twentieth, the punches couldn't even graze her body.
From the thirtieth, they couldn't touch her hair.
From the fortieth, her dodges flowed like water.
And now, she had reached the point of dodging the legs Leona occasionally swung as surprise attacks.
An indescribable genius. But an odd one.
Neither the fighting style of a genius, nor the movements of a genius.
Movements that looked as if someone ordinary had rolled and tumbled across battlefields to perfect them—a vicious fighting style.
A form that seemed to have erased habit, cut away excess, killed all flourish, and forcibly produced maximum efficiency.
A form that seemed to have dragged the realm submerged in human unconsciousness into the realm of consciousness by force and rebuilt it.
And at the same time, she was steadily accumulating the components of the Elixir Leona had fed her, knowingly or not.
Leona couldn't control the corners of her mouth.
She'd been laughing so ceaselessly that her cheekbones ached.
In her heart, she wanted to keep this momentum going, but Eliarnes's still-soft body clearly couldn't endure it.
Her eyes were still sharp, and thick curses kept spilling from her dainty lips, but she was at her limit now. If Leona pushed her further, her body would break.
Eliarnes herself seemed to think training while damaging her body was only natural, but Leona had no intention of letting that happen.
So, to break the flow, Leona circulated her Mana even more ferociously. Crunch—her fist clenched as if gripping and bending space itself.
Seeing that, Eliarnes's eyes flashed sharply. She wasn't afraid. She didn't even think of dodging.
She was thinking only of meeting Leona's fist head-on.
And the will to land at least one hit of her own hung on her tightly shut lips.
A brighter smile than before hung on Leona's lips.
This was a blow that would at least break bone.
She had prepared plenty of Potions for that.
Just how would she come at her?
With a heart full of anticipation, Leona's fist shot out.
That moment.
"...So that's what it was."
A scoff slipped from Eliarnes's lips.
At the same time, light Footwork followed, and her body spun in a wide rotation. Her slender body tilted to one side.
Her upper body dropped as if about to touch the ground. A posture that looked ready to topple over. But she didn't fall. The leg planted firmly on the ground held her center with stubborn steadiness.
Then cherry-blossom-colored Mana burst forth.
In its wake, her loosened pink hair scattered like cherry blossom petals. The leg planted on the ground moved. It soared upward.
Posture, distribution of power, Footwork, point of impact.
Witnessing that sequence, Leona's eyes flew wide open. The smile vanished from her lips, and her breath stopped for a moment.
The kick Leona's master had always used.
The spinning back kick Leona herself mainly used.
Roundhouse Kick (回蹴).
It was reproduced through Eliarnes's body.
Weak. Shoddy. Imperfect.
The balance was off. The power was weak.
Softer and more insignificant than her own or her master's.
But it was the same.
It was unmistakably a Roundhouse Kick.
At last, just as the pale white leg and the honestly extended fist were about to meet.
Leona pulled her fist back.
The dizzyingly swung leg stopped in midair.
Behind the hem of her skirt fluttering in the wind, pink underwear soaked with sweat and showing the color of skin was visible.
And then.
"Why'd you suddenly pull back and—ahem, why did you pull back?"
With a voice full of regret, irritation, anger, and competitive desire, Eliarnes spoke.
"I felt like if I could just clash with you once, I'd get the hang of it..."
She kept muttering something after that, but Leona didn't answer. She just quietly watched Eliarnes staggering in exhaustion.
"Um... I'm, sorry for the foul language. While fighting, it just, sort of, came out..."
Meanwhile, Eliarnes, thinking Leona was angry because of her cursing, bowed her head.
And clicked her tongue in regret.
The spinning back kick that had burst the Basilisk's head in the Entrance Exam.
And the one Arisa had always used—she had been one step away from grasping its secret.
Even after countless bouts of training, her body was still soft, squishy, and short, leaving her with little strength and a short reach.
The only thing that could serve as a somewhat strong weapon for someone like her was Kicking Art.
Once her Tier rose, she wouldn't have to rely on Kicking Art, but for at least a year, she'd have no choice.
But even that wasn't complete.
She had only copied Arisa's movements, so she couldn't know the secret contained within them.
Then, while dodging Leona's attacks and moving her legs this way and that, she had started to grasp something.
A feeling as if she'd found the method of distributing power.
Even that wasn't certain.
If she could have clashed with Leona's fist, she could have somehow refined it and changed it to her own taste, but Leona had pulled her fist back right before that.
Of course, if they had clashed, her leg would have been wrecked for sure, but that didn't matter to Eliarnes.
She could drink a Potion, or go to a priest stationed inside the academy and get healed, and she'd recover quickly without aftereffects.
She actually thought it would've been a bargain.
But Leona had pulled her fist back.
She hadn't grasped it.
"...Tch."
Setting aside that regret for a moment, just as she was reviewing the movement from earlier.
"Eliarnes."
In a somewhat subdued voice, Leona asked.
"That Roundhouse Kick just now. Who'd you learn it from?"
In that instant, Eliarnes's eyebrows trembled.
"What? Round, what? Roundhouse Kick...?"
She had known Leona's movements were similar to Arisa's.
She had even thought Leona might be Arisa's disciple, or something along those lines.
But what was this Roundhouse Kick?
She had just tried to imitate the kick Arisa often used as best she could.
Not something unique to her—an ordinary spinning back kick.
And she'd only copied the outward appearance. The process itself she'd improvised on the spot, moving by feel.
So she didn't know anything about a Roundhouse Kick or whatever.
It wasn't the kind of name that flower-brained Arisa would come up with, either.
If Arisa had named it, she would've called it something like Super Strong Spinning Back Kick.
Finishing her thoughts, Eliarnes shook her head.
"I don't know anything like that."
At that answer, Leona's narrowed eyes quietly stared at Eliarnes.
A gaze that seemed to be trying to read the true meaning of her words.
She stared silently for a long while, then seemed to reach some understanding on her own and laughed her usual "Nyahaha!"
"You're a Eustetia, so I guess that's possible."
And then.
"Still, you were a bit cheeky."
Wham!
She threw a punch and struck Eliarnes's chin.