For an ordinary person, of course, it’d be impossibly hard.
But for a tennis player, this didn’t even count as basic training.
Just in the high school league, the daily training standard for those genius players was to handle ten tennis balls at the same time.
Which was far more troublesome than simply hitting back once.
If Echizen had been here, he probably would’ve thrown in a smug little line, just begging to get punched.
“Mada mada dane.”
You’ve still got a long way to go.
The five stones tore back along their original trajectories at blistering speed.
Thud thud thud thud.
Four muffled impacts, almost blurring into one.
The four goblin throwers in the distance were instantly punched clean through, their bodies bursting straight into black mist.
Because the stones were irregular in shape, the angles were a little off.
So in the end, one of them ended up slipping through the net.
That goblin watched its companions vanish one after another, the savage grin on its face turning to terror in a flash, and it spun around to run.
Pfft.
A throwing knife abruptly shot out from the darkness between the trees.
Its speed was so fast that all that was left was a streak of cold light.
That fleeing goblin didn’t even get the chance to let out a scream — its head was pierced straight through, and an instant later it exploded into black smoke.
Clap.
Clap.
Clap.
The sound of applause slowly drifted out from the darkness ahead.
Unhurried, unrushed, even carrying a hint of appreciation.
Natsuka, clutching his arm that was now bruised and numb, his entire body taut as a wire, kept his gaze locked dead on the direction the sound had come from.
The sweat on his forehead and the blood seeping out from his wound mingled together, sliding down his cheek.
He didn’t even dare to blink.
“In return, however, they’re a bit smarter than those newborns just hatched in the Dungeon.”
“That you could handle a double-digit number of enemies all on your own really does make me see you in a new light.”
Together with the voice, a figure walked slowly out of the darkness, clapping his hands.
The night receded from him like an ebbing tide.
It was a man.
On his head he wore a traveler’s hat with a feather tucked into it, his features so handsome they were rather eye-catching.
His short golden hair was tossed about carelessly, and the color of his eyes matched his hair — that same bright, vivid gold.
His frame wasn’t particularly muscular, and a faint, barely-there smile hung on his face, making him look almost lazy.
Yet the instant Natsuka got a clear look at him, his heart sank with a hard lurch.
Because this person looked far too ordinary on the surface.
Apart from being good-looking, you could hardly pick out anything special about him at all.
But the more so, the more it made one’s skin crawl.
An unprecedented sense of pressure was bearing down on Natsuka with crushing weight.
Completely unlike those “monsters” on the tennis court.
It wasn’t the kind of fear you felt toward a strong opponent.
It was more like facing something that wasn’t even on the same dimension as you to begin with.
A presence that loomed high above, as if naturally towering over the world itself.
Even the thought “the language here actually works,” which by rights should have been the first thing to occur to him, Natsuka had completely forgotten.
“What the hell are you!”
Natsuka’s pupils contracted slightly, his eyes flaring with red light.
Every muscle in his body was mobilized in an instant, and his body almost instinctively retreated three to five steps.
This was a state only an extremely small handful of top-tier athletes could ever step into.
[Zone].
Once entering this state, strength, speed, reaction, leap, field of vision, focus — all of them would be pushed close to one hundred percent.
But even so, Natsuka still felt that the man before him was unfathomable.
“Don’t be so tense.”
The other party raised a hand to press down the brim of his hat, his smile deepening a little. New chapters come out on g.com first.
“My name’s Hermes.”
“Just a fellow who likes to travel all over the place.”
“Mm…
exactly as you can feel right now.”
“I’m a god.”
“Pleased to meet you, child from another world.”
God.
That single word came crashing down, and the sheer information load straight up froze Natsuka’s brain in its tracks.
He really hadn’t expected that, on his very first day transmigrating to a new world, the first big shot he’d run into would actually be a god, of all things.
And what’s more, this self-introduction was enough for him to confirm in a single stroke just which world he’d dropped into.
Is It Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon?
Commonly known as DanMachi.
Some people also called it Familia Myth.
The entire story revolved around a giant hole known as the Dungeon.
The gods came down from the heavens, sealed away their own divine power, and carved [Falna] onto mortals.
Then, leading their own Familia, they pushed their way through the Dungeon.
Very orthodox, very RPG, and very classic.
In his past life — or rather, the life before that — the popularity of this work had always been pretty high.
Natsuka had been a longtime fan to begin with.
He especially loved the setting of this world — one that looked like a standard game-world cosmology, yet whose power system was, in actuality, remarkably internally consistent.
Of course.
There was also one more key point.
Lots of girls.
Very pretty.
And also good at throwing themselves at you for free.
This point likewise could not be overlooked.
Having grasped his current situation, Natsuka’s heart immediately came back to life.
When all was said and done, the gods of the DanMachi world were nowhere near the same danger tier as those existences like Haruhi Suzumiya or Evil God D — the sort you might land in trouble just by brushing against.