A front kick, landed square.
However thick Hugo's hide and however far his durability had gone past the ordinary human level, it was a blow buried in the solar plexus.
And a counter, with the force of his own charge added to it.
He must have taken a considerable shock, and even in that instant Hugo did not stop; he leapt backward and opened the distance.
Floating up into the air, Hugo spun his body around and landed.
A considerably long time in the air.
Enough that you could fairly call it the movement of a beast.
Grrrr.
Hugo bared his back teeth and growled.
A baleful light swam in his eyes, and saliva dripped from a mouth reeking of a gamy stench.
The beast that carried the name Hugo was furious at the human in front of him.
He could not accept the fact that something he had taken for mere prey had wounded him.
Ethan looked at Hugo guarding with that savage face, and snorted a laugh.
"What? Going to bite? A son of a bitch shouldn't try to bite a person. Woof woof."
Hugo's ferocity leapt higher at the sneering, and before long he settled into a ready stance and charged.
Hugo was extremely nimble, as though he had taken no damage at all.
His body was closer to a beast's than a human's. Running on all fours, Hugo was faster than a wolf.
The distance between them was considerable, and the time it took him to reach Ethan was a bare instant.
Ethan's eyes tracked him.
Even through that instant of the charge his eyelids never blinked once as they chased Hugo.
He felt as though he could see each individual fiber of muscle.
Hugo was a beast right now.
A beast's movement is nimble and supple, but honest, and not cunning.
There is no trickery in it, no feint.
Unlike a human, it does not scheme.
So Hugo came in with his eyes fixed straight on what he was aiming for.
If the path of the attack is predictable, evading it does not require a large motion.
One step back and a lean of the upper body were enough.
WHOOM!
The sound of split air was murderous. The noise of the atmosphere tearing came to his ear.
The corner of Ethan's mouth crept up.
His heartbeat quickened and blood turned through his whole body.
A warmed body heating up meant the body's reaction speed rose.
It answered his intent and his will.
All he needed was intuition, and thought was already result.
'How much mana is left......'
Ethan felt the mana running inside him and took the measure of that power.
It was not easily measured.
Ethan, with a modern man's mind, found the act of handling mana unfamiliar.
Could he control it?
Power you cannot control is dangerous. Because there is no predicting where it will fly off to.
But in a situation like this, refusing to shoulder the risk was greed.
A process and a result he could not be certain of.
Thinking of that began to excite him, and his chest thudded.
The very act of handling an unfamiliar power gave him a flutter.
It felt like being a child playing with a new toy.
GRRRR!
With the attack come to nothing, Hugo growled low and turned.
Hugo's body was supple.
He managed motions a human would struggle with as though they were nothing.
That is the difference between a beast and a man.
But there are things a man can do precisely because he is a man.
Hugo leapt in again. There was no blank space between his attacks.
The linking of them was not smooth, but high physical ability filled the blanks in.
This time he came down with both arms, as if to allow no evasion.
An ordinary man's knees would have gone weak, but Ethan's smile did not disappear.
Watching it in silence, Pheon shouted in a hurried voice.
— You idiot of a fellow! What do you think you are doing!
Pheon could not understand Ethan.
With barely time to throw himself clear, he was taking it easy like that!
Had fear frozen his body, perhaps?
The reason did not matter. Pheon moved to exert his influence over Ethan's body then and there.
"Kindly stay out of it."
Ethan said it as though muttering, and moved one step forward.
Then he dipped slightly and straightened, and his body shot out like a released spring.
Flying through the air, Ethan struck Hugo's jaw with his elbow. The open mouth clapped shut and the head snapped back for an instant.
Ethan did not stop there.
He cupped a hand around the head as it went back and drove blue mana into his knee.
KRAK!
Something broke in Hugo's jaw with an audible sound, and the huge body crumpled backward.
But then......
GRRRNG!
The slack pupils drew tight and Hugo came back to himself.
Seeing it, the corner of Ethan's mouth slid up.
"You took that?"
Hugo turned in the air and opened the distance, and the jaw was so thoroughly shattered that he could not close his mouth.
Saliva ran from the useless jaw, making a grotesque picture.
"Well now. Impressive."
It was a blow no human could ever have withstood. Hugo had withstood it.
That would be the difference between a man and a beast.
Grrrrrr.
Hugo cried low, but he did not leap in carelessly as before.
The beast's instincts were warning him.
Throw himself in carelessly and he could not guarantee his life.
Ethan's expression, by contrast, was at ease.
'Though this is no situation to be taking it easy.'
The mana left was running to nothing. At a generous estimate, one more use. Two at most.
'And I can't let that show.'
A poker face was the most basic of basics. However poor the situation, you had to keep composure.
"If you're not coming, I will."
Ethan stepped forward. Hugo backed away, matching the stride.
The will to fight was draining out of the eyes above that drooling mouth.
"Sorry, but you're going to take a few until you come to your senses."
With that, Ethan charged.
And in the same instant Hugo's eyes changed; he dropped low to time the charge.
He meant to overwhelm Ethan in one go.
Hugo came shooting in, and the weight of pressure from before was no longer there.
The beast's spirit was already broken.
And a beast that has lost its feral nature is no longer anything to fear.
'Just an animal.'
Ethan caught the arm of the charging Hugo, and Hugo panicked and tried to swing it.
'He's strong, that's true.'
In that case, give him no opening to use the strength. Ethan burrowed into his chest and stamped down on his foot.
KRAK!
YELP!
A scream rang out of Hugo's mouth. But Ethan showed no sign of stopping.
The two of them faced each other.
Ethan's eyes glittered like a lion's; Hugo's held fear.
"This is the price of not coming to your senses."
Ethan's knee struck Hugo's solar plexus.
WHAP!
This time it did not end at one. The knee drummed into Hugo's belly and chest in sequence.
Each time, the body heaved hard. Blood ran from Hugo's mouth and the huge frame went slack.
"Sorry about this."
Ethan took hold of Hugo's waist and said it in a voice with laughter in it.
Pheon could roughly guess what Ethan was about to do.
— ......Cruel wretch.
Pheon turned his head away as though he could not bear to watch.
Hup.
Ethan drew breath in.
He held the pressure in his core and put force into his lower body.
To produce greater power he loaded magic power into his hips and his legs.
What magic power was left was not much. He drove all of it into the muscle.
'As if pulling him out of the ground!'
WHOOM!
Hugo's body floated into the air. And in the same motion, Ethan's back arched supplely.
BOOM—!
Hugo's body drove head-first into the ground, and the shock of the plunge sent dust billowing up around them.
Seeing Hugo's body twitch for a moment, Ethan's eyes narrowed.
"A beast is a beast."
He granted him the durability, at least.
Ethan stepped up on top of Hugo, and fear came into his eyes.
Ethan raised an arm.
A technique banned in competition, and here it did not matter at all.
Then the elbow came down, straight down.
KRAK—
One was not satisfying enough; the elbow fell several more times.
KRAK— KRAK—
As Ethan's elbow drove in, Hugo's body heaved a few times.
And then at last it went slack.
Having confirmed that he had completely lost consciousness, Ethan got up.
'He'll recover......'
According to the original's description, the minor wounds heal each time the form changes.
— ......
Pheon seemed to be left speechless; he looked at Ethan without a word.
"He was not an opponent to go easy on."
— ......That is true enough.
He was not wrong. Hugo in the feral shift was not an opponent on whom to spend mercy.
— That movement, though. That I have not seen before......
The movement Ethan had shown in the exchange was no ordinary thing. Every one of his attacks had been forceful, and systematic.
You could tell at a glance that they were extreme practical motions with all the flourish stripped out of them.
— ......Where on earth did you learn it?
Movement like that could not come out of a man who had not been systematically trained.
He knew it all the better for having turned his back on the sword and given his whole life to the fist.
Pheon tried to judge Ethan's age.
By the still-boyish face, he could not be a grown man.
— Is this what they call a genius......
Pheon had met a fair number of the breed called geniuses in his own time, and he had never met one like this.
At first, feeling not one grain of magic power in him, Pheon had privately looked down on him; Ethan's true worth did not lie in anything of the kind.
"Hey."
Ethan's eyes shifted.
They went to the place where Belmont the vampire lay.
Belmont's body seemed to flinch.
It was not Ethan's imagination.
"Not getting up?"
Ethan narrowed his eyes.
The look said he was watching to see how far the man would take it.
Belmont flinched under that cold gaze without meaning to.
Ethan crouched down in front of him.
"You were mouthing off well enough before, and now you're playing dead."
"......"
Belmont ignored him with everything he had. The exchange a moment ago had been genuinely horrific and brutal.
Recalling the scene again, every desire to be involved with the human in front of him was gone.
But Ethan took hold of the slack Belmont's collar.
"Hey."
At the low-pitched voice, Belmont cracked his eyes open without meaning to.
Meeting Ethan's eyes, he at once let the strength out of his body and shut them again.
"......Are you playing with me?"
Did the man think something like that would work?
It was so absurd that a hollow laugh came out of Ethan.
But Belmont was in earnest.
His knees had gone weak and he wanted to clutch at a straw, and this was a sensation he had never once felt since becoming a vampire.
"You can stay like that if you want."
Ethan smiled, showing white teeth. Belmont's use lay elsewhere in any case.
'The Dead Tree.'
He had never learned how to use it.
Naturally there was no instruction manual for a thing like that.
But he could feel it instinctively. The way a person feels instinctively how to walk.
It was about time to find out what the Dead Tree could do.