Chapter 74
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Translator: MadScientist
Chapter: 74
Chapter Title: Love Quarrel(?)
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Under the scorching sunlight that might turn into a murderous beam at any moment.
A brown-skinned beauty with striking leg lines lunged sharply at my side.
-Swish!
Not even a trace of internal energy in it, yet the air screamed in surprise at the elegant curve of her flying kick.
A small gust of wind followed its trajectory, pressing down on me.
"Hup!"
-Boom!
I countered with a reverse axe kick straight on, and before our legs even clashed, the rushing air collided with a small explosion.
"Whoa... At this level, even Theseus might give you a run for your money in a one-on-one."
"Hng...!"
It had been nearly a week since I'd properly attended combat and martial arts class.
The lesson, originally set for Ares's Colosseum, had been moved to Athena's tactical training grounds thanks to my exploits with Heracles.
Aside from the basic framework, the heroes taking the class each had their family martial arts or skills they'd learned so far, so rather than rigid military drills, they paired off freely for spars and discussions.
The moment I showed up at class after a week—martial arts class, no less—Heracles and Theseus came charging like they'd been waiting.
But Atalanta beat them to it, rushing at me like a gust of wind, leaving them to duke it out off to the side.
They must have figured that trying to stop her from dragging me off by the wrist would end badly for them, given her ferocious momentum.
'Honestly, my bad.'
I'd spent the past week holed up in Hestusias's workshop with the koto, ignoring everything else.
I'd been so fixated on that one thing I hadn't even properly talked to Atalanta or Neris.
To be frank, the moment class started and I saw Atalanta charging with fire in her eyes, I debated whether to just take the headbutt or grovel in apology first.
As expected, Atalanta was pulling the Demonic Combat Art from my mindscape and slowly making it her own.
The high roundhouse kick she'd thrown at me earlier, or the fists and palms targeting the dantian and meridian circuits—things hard to develop naturally in this land without internal energy.
The frame was still Greek pankration, but the outlines of the Demonic Combat Art were emerging.
I found myself matching her with the same Demonic Combat Art, subtly refining her Greek version bit by bit.
"Kyap!"
After her attacks got blocked several times, Atalanta dropped her stance in an instant and targeted my lower body.
A pankration grappling stance reminiscent of a hunting leopard.
Ancient Greece's pankration showed flexibility and practicality beyond modern MMA, and it looked plenty powerful to me.
Especially since the one executing it was Atalanta—her momentum wrapping around my waist in a flash sent chills down my spine.
"Tch."
For a moment, I flinched at her arms locking around my waist and the soft curves of her body pressing through the thin fabric.
"Hng...!"
Like a leopard snatching its prey's throat, Atalanta smirked in satisfaction, leaving me frozen with a stiff smile, unable to do a thing.
That smile was one of a pleased predator.
But her eyes blazed like an angry goddess's.
Atalanta knew it too.
If I really wanted, I could slip out of a simple wrestling grapple like this with ease.
But if I did, her ruby eyes said, her pankration joint locks and takedowns would look like mere lover's playthings.
'...My karma.'
Having never had a proper relationship myself, I could instinctively tell that dodging this would bite me hard later.
Atalanta had probably come at me wordlessly with martial arts because I hadn't shown my face properly in a week and had buried myself in that workshop.
Like lovers in a morning drama bickering to vent their frustrations, she wanted to clash with me directly to clear the lump in her chest.
But this martial artist's disease kicked in at the familiar techniques clumsily flowing from her, so I'd countered with the same moves.
From her perspective, it must look like I'd ignored her for a week and was now teasing her gently.
"Hraaaah!!"
So.
This time, figuring I'd just take her attack to let her vent until she felt better, I stayed put...
"Huh...?"
A soft female form wrapped around me with a whoosh, and as my vision flipped instantly, I realized something was wrong.
Dangerous.
This was really dangerous.
In the martial world, I'd always told junior disciples to beware of the elderly, women, and children.
A woman at that— one far surpassing any late-stage disciple, who'd stolen not just the surface but the essence of the Demonic Combat Art.
And I was letting her attacks land.
Her healthy brown skin tangled my vision and body chaotically.
Her beautiful arms and legs gripped my neck and limbs like nooses, and my instincts blared emergency alarms, screaming for me to headbutt and beg.
"Uh, hey, Atalanta. Sorry about this past week..."
"Hmph!"
In my ominous premonition, I finally offered the apology I should have given ages ago, but this lovely little heroine snorted cutely.
Then she started twisting my neck and shoulder joints.
"Gaaah!!"
What had I called this brown-skinned huntress with her healthy glow?
Leopard?
Ha, ridiculous. Way off base.
She was a snake.
Not some petty viper spitting weak venom, but a massive hydra that could snap an elephant's neck into meat mush in one go and swallow a person whole to digest.
"Now you, apologize?"
"W-Wait, Atalanta, uwaaaah!!"
I'd figured taking hits until she felt better would cool her off and make her listen to my excuses later.
But this... it hurt. More than expected. Way more.
"Tap tap! Tap!!"
"What nonsense!!"
This was seriously dangerous. Not the level to take lightly...
-Crack!
"Guhhh!"
Crack? Not even crunch—this sound from my neck?
Could a human body even make this noise?
In unbearable agony, I thrashed, forgetting forgiveness or anything—just survive. I strained to shake Atalanta off.
But each time, she slithered over my body like a tree-climbing serpent, snapping every joint her hands and legs could reach.
"Do you, have any idea, how worried I was!"
"My bad... I'm really sorry!!"
Twisted here, snapped there—so intense the pain felt like it was wrenching my brain, tears welled up.
'Am... Am I really this fragile...?'
No, I'd been through countless battlefields, nearly died who-knows-how-many times.
And now tears from this beauty's wrestling?
Was Atalanta's martial talent that exceptional?
Or...
"A... Aaaah!"
"Grab you to talk and you say you're busy and bolt.
Skip classes, go to the dorms and get teased to death by that centaur gatekeeper! Do you even know?!"
Oh, right.
Come to think of it, since taking this body, I'd never properly taken a direct hit.
Whether with Artemis or Heracles, fights were always at equal footing, trading blows.
Direct impacts? Barely countable, mostly deflections, dodges, counters.
'Ah... I see.'
No matter how profound the enlightenment or how exalted the achievements etched into the flesh, they didn't toughen the body itself.
No matter how harrowing the soul's memories of hardship and pain.
This body was fresh(?), never scarred by blade or broken bone.
"Gaaah!!"
'First, escape. Think later.'
Toughness aside, priority was breaking free from this nightmarish twist hell.
Couldn't do anything like this, so I tried channeling internal energy—not full Demon God Ki, but enough to unravel her cobra twist.
"Huh? This..."
Atalanta, constricting my whole body, tilted her head like something was off, sending an inexplicable chill through me.
"A-Atalanta?"
She'd been choking my neck and head with her arms, my arms and torso with her legs—then she shifted fluidly.
Now legs on my neck and chest, arms pinning mine: full ambar lock.
"Like this?"
Her toned legs coiled snake-like around my chest, compressing and twisting the meridian path to my mid-dantian entirely.
"!?!?!"
Damn it all.
It was clear.
When I'd started learning qi arts and divine skills from Parwigokma and Surama-jon, gaining confidence in handling internal energy, that Infinite Demonic Combat master had ambushed me because he didn't like my face.
Hellish joint lock. Internal Energy Slaughter, no doubt.
True to its blunt, simple name, this devastatingly effective technique simply grasped the opponent's meridians on contact and wrenched them.
It read the flow of qi in real-time thought flow and twisted it at the root—a mad concept.
Theoretically near-invincible, but required insane qi sensitivity and god-like reflexes to even mimic.
Even I had only mastered it after hundreds of near-death trials.
Fail, and die.
Yet Atalanta had somehow stolen enough from my mindscape to demonstrate this insanity on me—the joint lock that had shocked the martial world and terrified peak masters.
'Asura, Hera, Hermes—damn it, anyone!!'
Why was this Infinite Demonic Combat lunatic, dead for centuries, still tormenting me?
What grudge did my mental world, my mindscape, my damn enlightenment hold against its rightful owner, passing such vicious techniques to a mythical legendary heroine...
"Huh? Mind wandering?"
"Gaaaaah!!"
Muscles screaming, bones wailing, qi passages fainting—the terrifying trio yanked me back to reality.
...All my karma.
At some point.
Atalanta found herself deploying bizarre techniques she'd never learned, popping up unbidden.
Not pankration or boxing, but a strange martial art using all four limbs.
Unlike her instinctive crude motions, these were undeniably martial, practical, and shockingly powerful.
It had shone in the 1v5 brawl with Aphresia's squad, and even more in the past week's endless clashes with the vice-captain and his cronies.
Unknown origin, but devastatingly effective—she poured everything into honing it.
But she hadn't expected it to work on Dianes.
Even Heracles had never landed a clean hit with martial arts alone.
So when he finally showed after a week, without a word of explanation, holing up in that workshop.
She'd requested a spar to vent her anger, inwardly fuming that she couldn't land even one on that infuriatingly lovable face.
And as expected, none of the arts she'd polished through brutal fights and training that week worked on him.
Worse, he countered flawlessly with similar—no, far more refined—motions.
She nearly swooned... no, rage boiled again.
She wanted to vent the anger and hurt in her chest, yelling like any lovestruck couple, through this clash.
That was how heroes talked, after all.
But he was too far beyond such dialogue.
'Ha...'
In love or not, princess or prodigy warrior.
No matter how she clung, he was across an uncrossable chasm.
Feeling that afresh, seething with indescribable grievance and fury, she charged at Dianes with a "whatever" mindset.
And as if reading her heart, he yielded his embrace too easily.
'Eeeek!!'
Like placating a child, holding back— it only fueled her rage more.
She'd never use it normally, and it wouldn't faze Dianes anyway: pankration joint locks.
Asclepius warned against them in spars unless killing, as they snapped necks and limbs instantly.
But in desperation, figuring he'd block it, she went for it...
But wow.
It landed better than imagined. Way better.
"Uwaaah! Tap tap! Tap!"
Dianes pinned beneath her, screaming for mercy.
Her lover, seeming across that uncrossable gap, begging under her hands...
'Oh...?'
The impassable wall, the distant lover.
Object of her love, hero's goal and envy—the black hero.
That strong, beautiful, mighty Dianes writhing, begging mercy in her grasp.
Night-sky tresses shaking in her arms, obsidian eyes tearful, pleading.
A strange thrill crawled up her spine, heart pounding.
Sadistic pleasure surging at her supposedly insurmountable lover's vulnerability.
Addictive, that feeling—Atalanta tightened her hold.
But as Dianes caught his breath, signs of slipping free emerged.
'No...!'
Just a bit more.
Just a little longer savoring this.
Was this how Bellerophon felt reining wild Pegasus?
Desperate to hold her elusive black steed even a moment longer, Atalanta poured her all in.
Suddenly, a weird sensation hit her hands and legs on his neck and chest.
Faster than her confusion, her body shifted—legs now coiled around the flow's core: Dianes's chest.
She compressed and twisted that tingling spot with full force...
"!??!?!?!"
Success.
Dianes, on the verge of escape, sank back into her embrace.
'...Heehee.'
This moment.
This unfathomable lover was wholly hers.