He was probably trying to get out of my sight at this moment.
I could only see the trees, standing unnaturally still all throughout the arena. It was a dead silence, as his ability probably also masked the sound. Taking a few steps backwards, I put my back against the wall.
His own trees were his biggest mistake.
Normally, distorting my vision would be useful, especially with his [Scanner] ability. However, in this specific scenario, the distortion of my vision reduced the total amount of space I needed to ‘see’. By doing so, it made it much harder for him to meet the activation condition of his own winning ability.
“You’re running out of time, Kai.”
The seconds kept ticking, but I continued to stand—unharmed.
Eventually, his figure appeared a few metres in front of me.
Looking up with an undisturbed expression, he sighed.
“I’ll give it to you, Akira. Whether that was just pure luck or unimaginable deductive ability, I wouldn’t know. But you’ve got me.”
I took a few steps forward.
“So, are you going to forfeit?”
As I approached him, he began to step backwards.
“Fight ‘till the end, isn’t that the saying?”
This was getting pointless.
I lunged forward and grabbed his arm.
“—ah!”
He pulled the other way, but he lacked the strength. His shoes slid on the marble floor before I ripped his entire body in my direction. He fell toward the ground, catching his fall with his hands. A dense thump echoed throughout the arena.
Suddenly, he grabbed my ankle.
“I’m not as weak as you think, Akira~”
Digging his feet against the ground, he leveraged his body weight to twist my ankle toward the ground.
Ah, that really was a decent amount of force.
Still, it wasn’t enough to make me lose my balance.
“What the hell…? What are you?”
Raising up my leg, his body slowly lifted from the ground. As he let go of me, I tried to kick his face. However, he did manage to react and block it with him arms. His body rolled across the ground a little before gasping for air.
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Struggling, he managed to pull himself back up and get to his feet.
I made my way toward him again.
All of a sudden, he dispelled his forest ability. In an instant, every single tree in the arena vanished.
“What’s the point of that.”
Suddenly, he went invisible again.
That was sooner than I expected. He must have had a passive ability which boosted it. Guessing from the ones that Sumire’s looked at, it could’ve been [Cooldown Reducer], but even that wouldn’t have recharged it so fast.
It was something that I wasn’t aware of.
Oh well.
I’d memorised all his movements anyway.
The instant he left my sight, I moved forward and guessed his position. Everyone has a pattern in the way they move. Everyone has a pattern in the way they make decisions. Everyone has a pattern to everything.
With enough information, I could deduce it all—that was my only skill if I could even call it that.
I felt an impact against my foot as I kicked the open space. There was no sound nor change in the environment.
I took a few steps back.
I simply leaned back against the wall like before.
Thirty seconds passed.
I saw him once again, holding his side in pain. His blonde, jock-like hair was beginning to frizz. He stepped back with a limp.
“You’re stronger than Kamura, but you’re just as easy to read as he is.”
He seemed shocked.
“Kamura…? Like Kamura Tsukamichi…” he laughed a little, “so you were the one who started his downfall. Isn’t this a small world?”
“It really is.”
I began to make my way toward him.
Despite showing clear signs of distress, he forced a smile on his face.
He swiftly lunged forward and tried to make a fist.
Flicking my wrist a little, I blocked his hand.
In return, I punched in him the face. I could feel the sensation of the bones in his cheek smashing against my fist. His entire body crashed into the ground, causing a little bit of a dent to form.
The arena was almost silent.
I could hear his strained breathing.
He clutched his face as he lay on the ground.
“Are you finally going to give up?”
“…you drive a hard bargain, Akira…”
“This never needed to happen.”
“…but it did. I’m just someone’s puppet, after all…”
「The duel has concluded by forfeit. Please leave the arena. Further combat will be punishable.」
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I made my way back toward my room. For the first time in a while, I didn’t feel the gazes of people through the hallways.
I didn’t even have to use [Mind Breaker], granted, I didn’t really need it against Kamura either. One use was enough to give me a good enough understanding of my ability; at this point, it’s better to limit the number of people who know about it.
I looked down at my phone.
POINTS
Your current points: 5,394,411
Current Rank: #1,004
That significantly increased my ranking.
With that in mind, I guess I can take it easy, at least for a little while.
Is that so?
Turning the corner to the hallway where my room was, I saw a girl walking toward me—well, she wasn’t walking toward me per se, but simply walking in the opposite direction.
As I made my way past, her soft voice brushed against my ears.
“Isn’t it such a waste?”
We both walked a little more before stopping.
“You were almost perfect. So what’s… this?”
As I turned around, I saw that she had vanished.
Sigh.
It wasn’t the first time someone’s said that to me. The day I left the facility, the director’s words echoed through my mind.
You were supposed to be the perfect human…
but you were born in the wrong place, isn’t that right, Akira?
***
[Book 1 END]