CLANG—!
The only reason he managed to hurriedly raise his sword and deflect the rapier was thanks to his Trait, “Touch of Darkness.”
“Ugh!”
The blade of the deflected rapier swept past his neck.
A cool pain. Drops of blood scattered through the air.
As if it regretted narrowly missing his carotid artery, the blade vibrated with a wiiing.
In Brillante’s eyes, sunk cold as ice, there was unmistakable killing intent.
‘This woman tried to end me in one strike…….’
Every fine hair on Min-jun’s skin stood on end. There was not the slightest hesitation or estimation in her hand.
‘If I’d been even a little late, she would’ve hit my vital point.’
Brillante slipped past his side and widened the distance, then stretched one arm straight out.
The hilt in her hand aimed toward the center of Min-jun’s brow.
“You have fast reactions. I did not expect you to block that.”
One arm was behind her back, and only the hand holding the sword extended straight forward.
There was not a single wasted motion in that disciplined stance. Her claim that she had fenced clearly had not been empty talk.
“……Looks like we understand each other. I didn’t expect you to come at me this fiercely either.”
“I wanted to end it without pain. I had no other intention.”
End it without pain, huh…….
It was an expression that seemed to say she had not even considered the possibility of losing this fight.
‘She’s fully resolved.’
While Min-jun caught his breath and looked at her,
“Do you find the changed match to your liking?”
At the top of the arena, for some reason, General Doturan stood beside the emperor.
“I referred to the valiant episode in Your Majesty’s biography, where Your Majesty defeated the traitor of the war, Margrave Ronald, in a one-on-one duel while escaping from the enemy prisoner camp. Your Majesty.”
“Hmph. Your tongue is smooth. To change the rules right before the match without any report, are you disregarding the tradition of the Victory Festival that the empire has upheld for ten years, Doturan?”
“Now, now. How dare you accuse me of disregarding tradition!”
As the eunuch screeched beside him, General Doturan’s expression rotted for an instant.
“Leave it. This seems as though it will be entertaining to watch too.”
The emperor looked at the arena with rather interested eyes.
Because he thought the structure of the two people’s fight was quite interesting.
“I remember that female gladiator. Is she the swordswoman who defeated a Lizardman in one exchange with mysterious magic?”
“Yes, Your Majesty. And the one in front of her is the one who rose after defeating the heavily armored Lizardman, Your Majesty.”
“I know. I thought both would pass the third stage, but I did not expect you to place them together like this. Doturan has come up with an amusing trick.”
“I am honored by your words, Your Majesty!”
The two gladiators settled in the emperor’s retinas.
The two circled clockwise with their swords aimed at each other.
Min-jun and Brillante were even holding their breath to search for each other’s openings.
A tension unlike anything before hung over the arena, and the one who moved first was Brillante.
Tap—!
All Min-jun saw was the sand wind rising as she kicked off the ground.
Only after that did he see Brillante thrusting in with her waist lowered.
‘This……!’
Min-jun flinched and stepped backward.
Brillante’s leg kicked off the ground once more. She clung to him persistently.
‘Fast!’
Tap!
A step that closed several meters at once like she was sliding. The sharp sword tip aimed for his head.
“Hup!”
Brillante exhaled briefly and extended her folded body.
It was a motion where she stretched her arms and legs to their limit and thrust the sword straight out.
An acrobatic movement almost like lying her body forward.
Its attack range was so wide it even created the illusion that the rapier’s blade had doubled in length.
“This……!”
The sword he had thought was not within reach slashed across his abdomen in an instant.
If he had not twisted desperately at the final moment, his solar plexus would have been pierced straight through.
‘I have to counterattack!’
Min-jun charged toward her movement path with his shield. Just as he was about to strike down at her shoulder with all his strength.
CLAAAANG—!
A tremendous repulsive force burst from the blade. The shock traveled up his arm and shoulder.
‘This is insane!’
It was hard to believe this was the result of her blocking by swinging a mere thin rapier.
Where the arm gripping his sword bounced away, his defenseless body was exposed. Brillante was not someone who would miss that.
“Hah!”
The sword flew toward his solar plexus again.
When he hurriedly covered the spot with his shield.
“……Hup!”
The rapier bent sharply upward as if alive and shot up. Its target was Min-jun’s jaw.
Min-jun’s body was wrapped in a tingling sense of danger.
‘No!’
He saw a future 0.1 seconds later where he would be mercilessly pierced from his jaw to the crown of his head. He had to dodge.
“Urrrrgh!”
When he sharply bent his upper body to the side, the rapier brushed past.
The thin, slender blade had pierced up through the place where his head had been only 0.1 seconds earlier.
“Remarkable reflexes, Liz.”
Brillante’s face, as she quickly fell back, had stiffened slightly.
“Honestly, I thought you would never be able to dodge that one. It seems taking 1st place in the last game truly was not luck.”
“Well, who knows.”
As he wiped away the blood flowing from his neck, Min-jun examined her complexion.
“If not meeting someone as frightening as you early counts as luck…… then I suppose I did have quite a bit of luck.”
“You flatter me.”
Amid the audience’s ecstatic cheers, she alone was completely calm.
That was exactly why Min-jun felt even more that she was not an easy opponent.
“I will end this request.”
The rapier that had been held toward the sky once again pointed at Min-jun.
“So, Liz. Even if you are eliminated here, please do not despair. No matter what it takes, I will protect the lives of all 100 participants with my own hands.”
“Ah, that’s what I was planning to say if I won…… Ugh!”
He could not continue speaking.
The rapier flew in, leaving a long streak of light.
If he blocked once, it came again from the side, then from the opposite direction.
“Urgh!”
It felt as if enemies positioned all around him were freely aiming at Min-jun from all 360 degrees.
The cause of all of this lay in her footwork.
Tap—!
Every time she kicked off the ground, she moved from front to back, back to side, as if she were skating.
It was a wondrously fluid flow of attacks.
‘Does this make sense?’
Even for Min-jun, who pushed his reflexes to the limit with “Touch of Darkness,” covering every direction was not easy.
It was only natural that wounds began appearing all over his body.
‘I can’t let this keep going.’
Brillante was using a clever strategy.
Between Min-jun and her, before technique, there was a decisive difference in weapon length.
When he tried to approach, he could not stop the tip of the rapier from entering toward his neck.
Having the advantage in length, she was using that benefit to steadily accumulate damage on Min-jun.
The proof was that she actively aimed for the parts his armor did not protect, creating wounds that made him bleed.
She was probably aiming to take his head in one strike the moment his balance broke from the accumulated damage.
‘I can’t get caught in her pace like this. I have to show her a blow from my side too.’
Min-jun waited for the right timing and swallowed his breath. The moment the rapier came in toward his shoulder.
“Hooook!”
He exhaled hard and swung his shield as if striking it away. He had also expected her to bend the sword downward to avoid it.
THUD—!
The moment the rapier caught on the edge of the shield, Min-jun twisted his body and swung his sword. His only thought was to land a hit no matter what.
Even if the movement was recklessly unrefined, this was the only way he could deal damage to Brillante.
‘Got her!’
The moment the sword aimed at her, Brillante’s form slid away and vanished from before his eyes, as if collapsing.
‘What?’
Min-jun had definitely swung his sword at her waist.
Until the blade reached within a hair’s breadth, he had been certain this attack would land.
But the only sensation his hand caught was heated air. Brillante’s body scattered into the air like a mirage.
Min-jun lost his balance for an instant because of the motion where his strength had been pushed to the limit.
Tingle—!
A terrifying sense of danger rang an alarm inside his head.
‘Behind……!’
Brillante was behind him.
It felt as if death had chased all the way up to his chin and was licking the nape of his neck. Chills ran down his spine.
By the time he came to his senses, he was already rolling across the ground with all his strength. It was not an action he had thought through. It was a pure instinct for survival.
‘Urgh!’
A sharp force flew from behind him with a hiss and instantly split the ground.
What remained in the spot where sand had risen in a hollow burst was a sword mark roughly three meters long.
That thin rapier blade had torn through even the stone floor beneath the sand.
If he had been even slightly late, Min-jun had no doubt that what would have been there was his corpse split in half.
‘Th-That…… I really almost died.’
Min-jun was certain. That goblin-like movement she had just shown was Brillante’s ability, her “avatar Trait.”
If not for Touch of Darkness, his head would have flown off several times already. But there had never been a moment where it had helped as much as now.
Unless someone could catch the sensation flying in from behind and dodge, nine times out of ten they would have had to give up their life.
“How…….”
Brillante also could not hide her shock.
Even after revealing her trump card, she had been astonished by Min-jun’s movement as he evaded it with beastlike senses.
There were not many people who could dodge a sword sent from behind. Especially not when they had been caught in a reverse motion like just now.
‘I thought he was not an ordinary man. But to this degree…….’
Brillante threw away even the last handful of leisure in her heart and raised her tension.
“I acknowledge it, Liz. It seems I was still underestimating you until now. You are far more skilled than I thought.”
Those words chilled Min-jun. It would have been better if she had kept underestimating him, but Brillante was not someone who overestimated or underestimated an opponent.
A gambler who calmly found a strategy based on objective combat strength. That was Brillante.
‘Damn it, even in games, there’s no type scarier than people like that…….’
No provocation.
No openings.
She was the kind of opponent Min-jun found most troublesome.
“Hah!”
Brillante charged in again. Unlike before, her body changed.
It seemed to sway left and right, then split into two forms in an instant.
It felt like watching a cloning technique from a comic.
‘That trait is ridiculously broken!’
Min-jun waited until her sword came all the way to the edge of his jaw.
Just before the two swords rushing in from left and right pierced his neck, Min-jun’s senses pointed to one side.
‘Right!’
Min-jun completely abandoned the thought of dodging.
‘I have to take the bone, even if I give up flesh!’
Instead, he pushed his body forward.
So that the sword aiming for his neck would pierce his shoulder instead.
Squelch—!
Brillante was shaken belatedly, but it was already too late.
Min-jun charged in while clenching his teeth against the pain of his shoulder being torn apart.
“Urrrrrrgh!”
Min-jun’s eyes rolled wildly as he roared like a beast.
Before Brillante could withdraw her body, he seized her arm.
“Ah!”
Brillante was startled, and Min-jun thrust his sword with all his strength toward her heart.
It was the moment victory came within reach.
Squelch—!
The sound of a blade cutting through bone and flesh and burying itself. Flesh split like a lump of meat and allowed steel to invade.
‘……Damn.’
Min-jun, who had been wearing a triumphant smile, looked down at his abdomen.
He saw a long rapier sliding out slowly after having entered him.
‘……That’s a damn cheat.’
The last scene he saw was Brillante’s body suddenly growing distant.
He thought he had been gripping her arm firmly, yet how that was possible was a mystery.
Brillante had simply retreated without any resistance, then thrust her sword in with an unbelievably fast motion.
“Blink. That is the name of my Trait.”
Brillante opened her mouth while scattering the blood on her sword onto the ground.
This time, she was certain the match had been decided.
“A set number of times per day, I can move a short distance without any restrictions. It is easiest to think of it as teleportation.”
That was right.
Her body splitting into two in the air was nothing more than the gap between motions as she moved back and forth between two directions.
It was only an illusion created during the process of moving from left to right. The essence of her ability was not cloning, but teleportation.
“Do not despair, Liz. I will end this request. No matter what happens…….”
Brillante walked steadily toward him to finish it.
Because the strike had missed his vital point, one more blow was still needed.
Min-jun merely stood there blankly, quietly looking down at the bloodstain spreading from his stomach.
Thump.
His heart beat violently.
The nature of the blood flowing inside his body changed in an instant.
An alien sensation surged all the way up to the depths of his head.
-The effect of Berserker Zeroph manifests.
Min-jun’s two eyes burned red.