Ah, I knew it.
I boasted valiantly and challenged him, but the possibility of winning was zero.
“Ungh!”
A suspicious cracking sound echoed from my left arm.
I felt my left arm, which I had put in defense to avoid a direct hit to my torso, give out.
However, it’s only cracked. It hasn’t broken.
“Ahhhhhhhhhhh!!”
I masked my pain with a scream and swung my Ore Tree, but the attack missed and was narrowly dodged. An attack that crushed the air then mercilessly tore into my abdomen.
“Guh.”
I tensed my abdominal muscles, channeled magic power into defense, and strengthened my body to reduce damage. Despite that, I could barely contain the pain to a level where it felt like my internal organs were being crushed.
I couldn’t kill the momentum of the attack itself, and my body was blown away, crashing into the wall and embedding itself.
“D-damn it!!”
I cursed, but I couldn’t stay there.
I rolled out of the wall I was stuck in, throwing myself out as I escaped.
A “dagon” sound of an explosion echoed behind me.
It was the sound of Kizan’s follow-up attack piercing the wall.
There’s really no time to rest.
It’s been so long since I could attack that I can’t even muster a wry smile against an opponent who relentlessly attacks without a break. My body was blown away by the blast, and I somehow managed to get up while rolling on the ground.
“Shit.”
Even just that movement made my body scream.
But I don’t have time to worry about the creaking and pain of my body.
Even now, my body’s instincts are on total mobilization. I let myself be guided by the alarms that overflow from nowhere, moving my body before I can think.
My reflex was to defend my head with the Ore Tree, and an unimaginable shock vibrated through my body via the Ore Tree.
“…”
“…”
A momentary pause during the parry.
A brief exchange of gazes. My opponent is not attacking me as prey to be hunted, but as an enemy.
There isn’t a single opening.
This is equivalent to cutting off my chances of victory.
A slight stalemate, and then I am flung away by the subsequent impact.
“…It’s tough, to be so weak, really.”
“To think you can still speak.”
I don’t say it’s bad, but I can’t deny the feeling of being cornered.
My breath is short, and my stamina is being whittled away with each attack. It’s strange I didn’t fall to my knees from that last blow; my body is on the verge of collapse.
Kizan, who stands calmly with his fist raised, waiting for an attack opportunity, finds me too weary even to assume a fighting stance.
“…Let me ask you something. Why are you so fixated on this battle?”
It’s not as if he’s concerned about me, but the Oni before me desires dialogue.
Giving me a reprieve means allowing me to recover my stamina.
I thought he wouldn’t care about such a handicap, but I quickly reconsidered, realizing that he’s the type of person who wouldn’t allow even that kind of slip-up.
So, what is the point of this question?
“Is it status, honor, or money? What meaning is there for you to push your body to such limits and stake your life on a battle you cannot win?”
“You’ve become quite talkative compared to the beginning, haven’t you?”
But I don’t have time to care about the change in his mood.
If he’s given me an opportunity to gather strength, I’ll just take advantage of it.
“The purpose of fighting, huh? I can think of various reasons.”
As Kizan says, it’s natural to wonder if there’s any meaning in a losing battle.
I’m not expecting to win by some slim chance.
It’s useless to expect a slim chance against this type of opponent who relentlessly grinds down their opponent.
Thanks to the two breaths of reprieve, I gain the余裕 to raise my Ore Tree.
“If I had to give the main reason, it’s pride.”
“Pride?”
If I take another breath, my magic power circulation will slowly begin.
I’ll refine that magic power meticulously, without haste.
Perhaps dissatisfied with my answer, Kizan frowned, exuding a displeased atmosphere as if he couldn’t comprehend it.
“Yeah, pride. Just the petty pride of a human who hates to lose.”
“I don’t understand. What meaning is there in a battle you lose?”
“Isn’t that precisely why pride is worth upholding? Don’t you think so?”
“…”
The reason I fight is simple stubbornness.
Even if I lose, I’ll put up a fight.
If possible, I want to defy the expectations of those who believe I’ll lose.
That’s all.
Ah, it’s just a mouse trying to bite a cat.
This Oni couldn’t understand such a trivial pride, and even my question was met with silence.
“…!”
Those words and that silence led me to an answer.
A smile formed on my lips.
To the Oni who mistook my smile for suspicion, I deepened my smile and spoke.
“Ah, you know, this might not be the time to say it, but I think I understand why you haven’t become a General.”
“What?”
And then, with these words that slipped out naturally, I shook his emotions for the first time.
Anger mixed with his previously unpleasant demeanor.
Just with that alone, I am confident in my answer.
“You seem rather calm for an Oni, but when was the last time you enjoyed a fight?”
I felt during the battle that this Oni was suppressing his true Oni nature.
I’ve encountered many Oni since joining this company and learned that Oni are fundamentally beings who enjoy fighting, or rather, strife.
They engage in verbal spars, fight over trivial matters, and settle grudges on the spot.
After it’s over, they happily link arms and drink together.
They live transient lives.
I couldn’t feel that atmosphere from the Oni before me.
There might be peculiar Oni, but I don’t think this Oni is one of them.
“You are indeed strong. Strong to a degree I could never surpass, no matter how hard I tried. But you lack roughness. Compared to that other Oni, you are overwhelmingly lacking in your true Oni nature.”
After all, he’s suppressing his instincts.
And there’s only one being that can be compared to this Oni, the one that led me to this answer.
Instructor Kio, the Oni King, Raidou.
That Oni’s strength might be innate.
While he possesses technical prowess, like this Oni before me who trained and refined his martial arts, his true, fundamental strength is mental.
It’s not about having a strong or rigid will.
He possesses a psyche that can dedicate all his nerves to enjoying a fight, a mad spirit that doesn’t even value his own life for it.
Especially when fighting a powerful opponent, that spiritual nature is laid bare.
That’s why he’s scary.
You can’t predict what he’ll do. Isn’t his overwhelming strength precisely because he confronts you with the unknown?
The true nature of an Oni, is to embrace and act upon the unknown by instinct because they love to fight.
“That’s why I can stand. That’s why I get a chance.”
This Oni’s strength may be on a higher level, but it’s still understandable.
To put it harshly, this Oni is not yet unreasonable.
He operates with calculations, so he remains within a certain framework.
He is, in a way, the Oni furthest from the word “unconventional.”
“Against an instructor, I’d be crushed without question. I wouldn’t even be able to block one strike and would be shattered. But I was able to block your attack. Because I had a vague idea of where the attack was coming from and what kind of attack it would be.”
I probably have only one more chance to go all out in this battle.
That’s why I need to push my limits, exceed them, and overturn the opponent’s predictions.
I won’t leave any strength in reserve.
Although I’m babbling what I feel, my body is steadily preparing, not wasting the time I’ve earned.
I could do this only because I was able to reduce the damage to the absolute minimum.
I haven’t taken a single attack completely defenselessly, from the first blow to the subsequent ones.
No matter how battered my body became, the accumulated defense results have left me with enough stamina for this one attack.
“Is that all you have to say?”
The Oni, upon hearing these words, emitted clear homicidal intent.
The quiet mountain moved.
“No further questions. Let’s end this with the next strike.”
“Really, you’re finally acting like the Oni I know.”
My lighthearted remark struck a chord, or perhaps it was completely off the mark.
All I can say is that the next strike will be the Oni’s ultimate attack.
The magic power is more refined than ever before.
And the fluctuation of magic power, driven by his wild spirit, is exactly like the Oni I know.
I can feel it clearly on my skin.
I take a deep, slow breath.
I stand with my Ore Tree raised overhead, and the Oni, who could leap at me at any moment, has clearly refined his magic power.
And he’s waiting for my magic power to be refined.
He wants to crush me with my own ultimate strike.
Thinking, “Ah, he’s finally showing his true Oni nature,” the arena fell silent.
The tension that could signal the end of the battle enveloped the Coliseum.
In such an atmosphere, I patiently waited for my chance.
And then, the moment came.
The mountain became a volcano.
“!”
By the time I realized it, the Oni’s fist was already upon me, an overwhelming blow that would be too late to parry with a circular swing of my Ore Tree.
If the Oni’s fist hits my face, this battle will be over.
“Why?”
Yes, that’s if I, *as expected*, swing my Ore Tree.
“It’s my read. I won.”
But the result is different.
Toward the Oni’s face, eyes wide with astonishment, I smiled.
Although my ear was grazed, the Oni’s fist did not hit me. Instead, my fist felt the sensation of piercing flesh.
What I unleashed wasn’t the slash of the circling Ore Tree, but a decisive, full-powered right straight.
My fist stopped just before his heart.
And if I unleash the magic power I’ve imbued in this fist, I can end his life.
At that conclusion, the referee rushed over.
“Winner, Jiro Tanaka!!”
The match ended.
There was no cheering.
Instead, a murmur of bewilderment that seemed to envelop the venue arose.
However, that changed with a single clap.
“Well fought, Jiro!!”
A loud clap and praise from a large Oni, followed by the King of the Undead also clapping slowly but clearly. The Demon Lord, seeing them, also smiled and applauded.
As the top figures of the Demon Lord’s Army applauded one after another, their applause gradually spread throughout the entire venue, turning into a resounding ovation for everyone.
My aching body, unable to take another step, stood stiffly as I accepted the applause.
Honestly, it was a gamble.
A gamble where “slim chance” felt too generous; the odds of winning were nonexistent.
But nonexistent does not mean zero. There was a sliver of possibility left.
It was a battle I couldn’t win unless even one condition was met, but I seized victory by meeting those conditions.
“Why? Why could you see through my strike?”
Naturally, the Oni who lost this battle was the one most bewildered by it all.
“I didn’t see through it at all.”
As the referee, a Demon, treated my injuries, he faced me, who had dodged the final blow without falling to his knees, with a sharp gaze.
“I believed in it. In the Oni’s straightforward attack.”
“What?”
Come to think of it, it was a precarious strategy.
I simply returned the opponent’s first attack exactly as I received it.
There are several conditions for this victory, but the most important is that the opponent’s attack must be their ultimate strike.
In fact, if he had held back even slightly, I would have lost.
I possessed an attack that could pierce his body.
That was the attack I swung with all my might, linked with my Ore Tree.
However, it was a wide swing, with only a one-in-ten-thousand chance of hitting.
In that case, I would need a high-powered attack other than that, but I had no other method.
So, I should borrow power from someone else. That would be the opponent’s full-power attack.
If I could return the full force of his momentum, from his charge to his attack, theoretically, it would be a blow that could defeat him.
“I’m used to Oni attacks, so I can sort of guess where the attack is coming from by the atmosphere. After that, I gambled and waited.”
The many attacks I received from the instructor.
Predicting the attack position from those is also a condition.
Oni are often straightforward at heart.
Through interacting with various Oni, I learned that the majority enjoy brute force head-on confrontations.
That’s why I assumed this Oni was the same, believing he would swing without deception, and waited at the anticipated spot.
If that gamble had failed, the Oni’s fist would have pierced me before my fist could land.
“Well, thanks to that, my body is tattered.”
And finally, whether my body would hold out.
It’s cool to call it a counterattack, but essentially, I acted as a prop.
What I did was simply place a sharply pointed stick at an angle where it would stick into an object flying straightly at high speed.
When I intuitively sensed the Oni moving, I let go of my Ore Tree and, with my first step, swung my fist with all my might towards where the Oni’s heart would be.
In the end, that action succeeded, but of course, I had to pay the price.
The impact of the Oni’s full-power attack pierced through my body, from my right fist to my supporting left foot, inflicting enough damage to render me combat-incapacitative.
Frankly, even standing is a struggle.
“Your body is too tough. I intended to pierce your heart, you know.”
Every finger on my right hand is broken, the bones in my arm are cracked, and my joints are injured. As for my legs, moving from the waist down sends excruciating pain.
This is evidence of injuries to both muscles and bones.
If you took an X-ray, you’d see my entire body’s bones in a terrible state.
In hindsight, my victory was a narrow one, at best; a victory on thin ice.
If even one mistake had been made, I would undoubtedly have been the loser.
“Sheesh, you can’t even tell who won at this rate. My body is ruined, and you’re perfectly fine.”
“Even so, I lost.”
The Oni before me clenched his fist as if biting down on something. I still couldn’t believe I had won, but I had.
“Yeah, I won.”
As if to convince myself, I lashed out at my aching body and raised my fist.
Feeling the sense of accomplishment burning in my chest.
Word of the day:
Results can change depending on your actions. But I don’t want to do something this reckless again for a while.
Even if it’s out of pride.
That’s all for now.
If you found it interesting, please leave a review, rating, bookmark, etc.
*The first volume has been decided to be published by Hayakawa Bunko JA.*
*It was released on October 18, 2018.*
*An e-book version is scheduled for release on October 31 of the same year.*
*The content has been revised and expanded from the version posted on “Shosetsuka ni Naro,” with the addition of unpublished interlude chapters.*
*Please consider checking that out as well.*
