Focus finally returned to Gordo’s wavering eyes.
Gordo slowly raised his gauntleted fist.
The clang of iron plates rang out with an unsettling resonance.
“I am Gordo!”
His voice no longer trembled.
The thunderous cry filled the clearing.
“I fight for Heres’s vengeance and the honor of our sullied mercenary company!”
Sirin watched with her arms crossed and let out a derisive snort.
‘Honor, my ass.’
She said it simply.
“Sirin.”
“Is that all?”
Gordo’s eyebrow twitched, but Sirin only shrugged.
“That’s more than enough. A simple skull like yours couldn’t remember anything more even if you tried.”
“RAAAAH!”
Gordo charged straight at her.
A charge befitting his blunt, straightforward nature.
All that mattered was smashing the enemy in front of him.
Bjorn, watching the charge, felt a flicker of puzzlement cross his eyes.
Something was off.
The Gordo he knew was obsessed with gods and superstitions alike.
When the Goddess’s Scales had refused to judge that woman, Gordo could have abandoned the duel entirely.
But Gordo’s eyes were different now.
As if the goddess’s blessing meant nothing to him, only fury and fighting spirit blazed within them.
Had a few words from that beggar woman—no, that woman called Sirin—changed him like this?
‘…Is she truly a Witch?’
Bjorn had faced those called Witches a handful of times during his years serving in the imperial army.
Creatures that whispered curses to rot the mind, shattered battle lines with cunning illusions, or scattered plagues in the dead of night.
Sinister, wicked things.
But Sirin was different.
Instead of curses she spewed sophistry, and instead of illusions she used shameless provocation and bizarre antics to steal a person’s senses—and yet…
Sirin had reignited Gordo’s fighting spirit.
That was not something a Witch would do.
A Witch would have simply toyed with Gordo as he was.
‘Why?’
That woman was less a Witch and more something incomprehensible.
Unlike any Witch he had ever known—an unpredictable existence.
‘What is she thinking?
Does she have some ulterior motive?’
Contrary to Bjorn’s high estimation, Sirin had no particular scheme in mind.
Sirin’s only concern was figuring out how to get Gordo to give her a Body Enlightenment without it hurting too much.
Sirin sidestepped Gordo’s first charge with a sharp, keen eye and clicked her tongue.
‘That brainless idiot with nothing but raw strength.’
Sirin hated pain.
Just because she couldn’t die didn’t mean she couldn’t feel it.
The sensation of Heres’s blade piercing her had been absolutely wretched.
And worse than the pain itself was the way agony scrambled the connection between her brain and her tongue all over again.
But she couldn’t keep dodging forever, either.
To survive in this barbaric fantasy land, she needed martial arts—and above all, she needed Body Rebirth.
‘If I have to take a hit anyway, better to eat one big one and be done with it.’
Taking a bunch of middling hits was a waste of time and a waste of suffering.
Take one finishing blow fast, recover quickly, smash that dumb ox-brain, and wrap this up.
Sirin, true to her Korean sensibilities, preferred a fast build.
She supposed she should count herself lucky she’d landed in a fantasy world and not the martial arts world.
If she’d ended up in the murim, she would have one hundred percent taken a shortcut—dabbled in demonic arts—and gotten herself killed by Qi Deviation.
As it was, she was already being called a Witch, which meant her aptitude as a demon lord was more than sufficient; it was overflowing.
“Gordo! Stop holding back!”
Sirin shouted.
“Use the best thing you’ve got! I’m talking about a finishing move!”
Gordo answered her provocation not with words but with action.
“RAAAAAAAH!”
Gordo roared, kicked off the ground, and surged forward.
A faint blue aura seemed to swirl around the gauntleted fist.
Gordo knew nothing of divine blessings, knightly aura, military techniques, or the shamanic arts of savage tribes.
All he had was the superhuman strength he had been born with—strength that defied common sense.
If one had to classify it, it was the kind of power that could rightly be called a Mystery.
Not a technique honed through training, but something that simply manifested.
Gordo was a man born with that quality of Mystery.
Perhaps because he could never clearly understand the source of his own power, he had tried to lean on other invisible forces in the world—talismans, superstitions, and the like.
Of course, there was no one in this fantasy land capable of providing Gordo with psychological counseling, so his fixation on superstition was only going to grow stronger, not weaker.
Gordo’s fist went wide and came down on a boulder beside Sirin.
—BOOM!
With a dull, explosive crack, the boulder shattered into fragments that scattered in every direction.
Dust billowed up in a thick cloud.
“What the—”
Sirin was genuinely startled.
“What the hell, what the hell, what the HELL! A person just punched a boulder apart! You inhuman son of a bitch!”
“Stop dancing around, Witch!”
Gordo swung his fist again.
Sirin barely threw herself clear.
Sirin had acquired martial arts, but that didn’t mean she understood or could apply them.
The only reason she’d been able to dodge Gordo’s attacks so far was pure conditioned reflex—raw instinct.
What you might call stat-boosting.
Coward Mode’s 500% EXP increase was inflating Sirin’s stats at a staggering rate in real time.
But without knowing the techniques, Sirin had no way to deflect or redirect Gordo’s punches.
Dodge his fists, or just take one.
Those were the only two options.
—CRASH!
Having to eat that primal force head-on.
Standing up to that kind of power directly was no way for a civilized person to behave.
Sirin decided to try the civilized approach first: resolving things through dialogue.
Negotiation and compromise were the hallmarks of a higher intellect, weren’t they?
“Gordo, could you maybe hit me a little softer? Or how about we just call it a draw? Works out for both of us.”
“Witch, I won’t be played by that tongue of yours any longer!”
“No, I’m serious!”
Gordo answered by swinging his fist again instead.
—BANG!
Another boulder exploded apart with a tremendous noise, kicking up a cloud of dust.
Sirin had moved past shock and was now starting to feel genuine rage.
“Hey, Gordo!”
Sirin snapped.
“Which one of your parents was it?”
“What are you babbling about!”
“…”
Sirin’s anger doubled.
She was furious at Gordo for not even understanding the insult, and furious at whoever had brought such a blockhead into the world.
‘This thick-skulled moron who can’t take a hint.’
“I’m asking which one of your parents screwed a cow! Because how else does a human being punch a boulder apart?!”
Sirin was, in truth, a martial arts prodigy.
In her heart she was cursing Gordo, while with her mouth she was cursing Gordo’s parents—a spontaneous Dual-Core technique she deployed without a shred of conscious enlightenment.
Regrettably, Sirin’s Dual-Core lacked sufficient insight and shut down almost immediately.
“It makes no sense for a human body to smash a rock with bare fists! That’s something only a monster does! Did your mother roll around with a bull, or did your father mount a cow?! Because there’s no other way a person wearing a human face does something that monstrous!”
“Do not insult my parents!”
Gordo roared in fury, but Sirin only got angrier.
“Your very existence is an insult to your parents! It means one of them slept with a monster cow! You by-product of an affair with livestock!”
“RAAAAAAAH!”
Gordo could hold back no longer and charged at Sirin again.
Bjorn, watching, was dumbfounded.
Hadn’t that woman just said ‘your mother is my mother’ not moments ago?
And now, without batting an eye, she was calling Gordo’s parents cow-breeders and heaping insults on them.
But Sirin was fine with it.
Sirin had fallen into another world alone.
Sirin’s mother did not exist in this world.
Just as you don’t count dead friends, filial impiety is rendered null and void when directed at a mother who doesn’t exist.
Therefore, whether she called these savages’ mothers cows or said they’d slept with cows, it was no problem for Sirin whatsoever.
Of course, Bjorn had no way of knowing Sirin’s reasoning, and no mental bandwidth to guess at it.
Bjorn was too busy being appalled by something else entirely.
Under Sirin’s relentless barrage of insults, Gordo had been throwing every punch with his full strength each time.
But his breathing had grown ragged, and the motion of his swinging gauntlet was duller than before.
Gordo’s movements were visibly slowing.
‘The Witch… this is what she was aiming for!’
Bjorn furrowed his brow.
That woman wasn’t simply insane.
Her bizarre words were a scheme to make Gordo exhaust himself and collapse on his own.
Gordo himself, having thrown punch after punch into empty air, noticed his arms had grown heavy.
“Witch, stop prancing around and face me with honor!”
At Gordo’s cry, Sirin burst out laughing.
“Why do you keep bringing up honor? Where’s the honor in someone like you? Where’s the honor in someone trying to clean up after a man who died beating a woman? What—do you hit women too?”
Unable to endure Sirin’s agitation and fabrications any longer, Gordo bellowed.
“I have never struck a woman!”
Sirin nodded.
“You haven’t? Oh, right. Heres was your lover.”
Gordo’s face flushed crimson all over again.
—BANG!
Gordo’s fist sliced through the air and struck a boulder again.
The rock split, fracturing in a web of cracks.
Sirin, who had dodged by a hair’s breadth, looked at the boulder and snickered.
“Then don’t hit men either. Wait, actually—is it okay to hit men?”
‘No, that’s not right either.’
That was a sexist way of thinking.
Sirin had gender equality drilled into her by rote.
“Man, woman, child, or elder—don’t even strike with a flower, Gordo! Your lover died throwing punches!”
“Grrrrr…!”
“Violence… is wrong…!”
“AAAAAAAAAH!!!!!”
Gordo’s rage finally crossed the threshold and exploded.
He lost all reason and threw himself at Sirin.
—SMACK!
Sirin didn’t dodge.
With a dull, heavy impact, Sirin’s body was sent flying backward, light as a sheet of paper.
Her body spun several times through the air before crashing into the ground and disappearing into a rising cloud of dust.
“RAAAAH!”
Gordo let out a roar of triumph.
The Witch who had been toying with him until moments ago had finally gone down under his fist.
Gordo raised his gauntlet and turned toward his mercenary companions.
A cheer erupted from among them.
But before that cheer could finish, Sirin burst out of the thick dust cloud like a bolt of lightning.
“…!”
Gordo had no time to react.
—THUD!
Something heavy and blunt slammed into Gordo’s solar plexus.
Heres’s sword—the pommel end.
“Guh—!”
Gordo’s massive body couldn’t absorb the impact and toppled backward.
—THUMP.
With a dull crash, Gordo hit the ground.
He tried to breathe, but the searing agony of broken ribs kept the air from coming in.
Only a faint, wheezing rasp escaped him.
“……”
As the dust settled, Sirin could be seen slowly approaching Gordo.
There was no triumph on her face.
No relief.
Only fury.
“Stop! Stop this!”
Constable Captain Roderick cried out urgently and stepped forward.
“The outcome has already been decided! Show mercy…!”
Roderick tried desperately to intervene.
If that Witch, in her agitation, finished Gordo off entirely—
But Sirin paid Roderick’s words no more mind than she would a gust of wind.
Sirin raised her sword.
Was this the end?
Roderick squeezed his eyes shut.
—THWACK!
Instead of the sickening sound of flesh being cut, a dull thud rang out as something drove into the earth.
Roderick opened his eyes to a sight he couldn’t comprehend.
Sirin’s sword was buried deep in the ground—not in Gordo’s throat, but right beside his head.
The blade quivered, kicking up a small puff of dirt.
“…?!”
What on earth was that Witch doing…?
The question was answered immediately.
With the sword still planted in the ground, Sirin bent down and grabbed a rough fistful of Gordo’s shaggy hair.
“Ngh…!”
Gordo let out a pained groan, but Sirin paid it no mind.
She yanked his head up by the hair and screamed in a voice that made it clear she was about to blow a gasket.
“You useless piece of garbage! Did you think I was rolling around in the dirt with you just to learn some cheap technique beggars use?!”
Gordo, in his fading consciousness, could not understand the Witch’s distant fury.
Beggar technique?
What on earth did that mean?
Why wasn’t she killing him—why was she tearing out his hair and screaming at him…?
Of course Gordo couldn’t understand.
He couldn’t see Sirin’s system messages.
[ Through pain and damage, you comprehend the principles of martial arts with your body! ]
[ Through Body Enlightenment, you grasp the foundations of a new martial art! ]
[ Dragon-Subduing Eighteen Palms — Unyielding Force has been acquired! ]
[ A supreme martial art of the Beggars’ Sect. A fierce and unyielding palm technique capable of subduing even dragons. ]
Sirin stared at the system message and could not contain her rage.
She might not know much, but she remembered this one thing clearly.
In every martial arts novel she’d ever read, the Beggars’ Sect was a den of beggars.
‘I’ve been living like a beggar, so now they want me to learn beggar techniques?!’
She had endured Body Rebirth to escape this wretched body and this wretched lot in life—and the only thing she’d gotten for it was the martial art of beggars!
“AAAAARGH!”
Sirin roared and tore out a clump of Gordo’s hair.
—DING!
[ Your eccentric behavior — ‘Pulling out the hair of a defeated enemy’ triggers the effect of the title ‘Witch’! ]
[ Your incomprehensible actions are perceived as a sinister ritual, maximizing the target’s terror! ]
[ The Witch’s infamy grows ever greater! ]
“The Witch is cursing Gordo!”
“She’s draining his life force!”
The mercenary company idiots were shrieking and carrying on again.
But Sirin no longer had any attention to spare for the morons’ nonsense.
She focused on her own fury.
“Ngggh…!”
At last, a conspicuous circular bald patch was left plainly visible on top of Gordo’s head.
With the top of Gordo’s head looking remarkably similar to a Pantheon priest’s, Sirin found the sight satisfying.
“Urgh…”
Only after Gordo finally lost consciousness in the midst of his humiliating agony did Sirin release his hair and stand up.
She shook the loose strands off her hand without a second thought, then turned to face the terror-stricken mercenary company and shouted.
“Next!”