Chapter 39: The Duel

“Sir, can’t I, uh, fight the cat girl…?”

“What? No,” the knight denied his combatant. “Here, if you need to even things up…” He gestured to a second soldier, waving him forward. “Two versus one ought to work.”

“Oh, come on!” Bandit complained, finally losing patience.

“Okay.” In contrast, Lupy accepted the conditions.

“You don’t have to—“

“This is good,” said Lupy, not elaborating further. Bandit suspected she was just eager to face the challenge.

The two soldiers looked at each other, holding a conversation with just their eyes. One’s focus seemed to be on self-preservation, while the other didn’t want anything too bad to happen to the young girl they were about to fight either.

Lupy wielded an ax in her right hand and the sword she recently commandeered in her left. She took up a stance as the two soldiers fanned out to approach her from differing directions. They each drew swords with their right hands and then positioned shields in front of their body with their left forearms.

Lupy looked back and forth between the two approaching soldiers, sizing them up. Suddenly, she swapped weapons, exchanging the ax to her left hand and sword to her right.

The two approaching soldiers paused, likely wondering how she had determined which weapon to use against each of them. They resumed their approach, creeping toward Lupy as she waited for them. With their longer reach, she entered their range before she could do anything. The soldier to her left pulled back his shield for a bash, whereas the other retracted his sword, getting ready to stab. Before his sword came forward, Lupy sprung to action.

The shield struck air as Lupy lunged toward the soldier to her right. Normally, approaching an enemy just as they were thrusting their sword was a mistake, but Lupy fluidly deflected the sword with the one in her own right hand, avoiding the sharp tip entirely. Without pausing, she brought the ax around from her left side, assaulting the soldier whose sword strike was thwarted.

In the nick of time, the soldier managed to twist his body, bringing his shield up to meet Lupy’s ax, but awkwardly bringing his sword arm behind him as a result. His inability to counter from this position created an opportunity for Lupy.

Lupy once again rushed the more aggressive but now backpedaling soldier, avoiding a horizontal slash from the soldier behind her by a hair’s breadth. She wound up both of her arms, preparing to unleash strikes from both sides.

The soldier turtled up, withstanding her attacks with his sword and shield. His sword arm buckled, nearly allowing Lupy’s ax through. As he hopped back farther, trying to create as much distance as possible, Lupy smoothly transitioned into a spin, slashing with both weapons from one side at the opponent approaching her from behind.

The ax and sword bore down on him from the side opposite his shield arm. Unsure if he could weather the attack, he also hopped back, creating a pause in the action.

“You two are spectacularly bad at this,” the knight complained. “Attack in unison.”

To Bandit’s eyes, the soldiers weren’t performing particularly poorly. It’s true their coordination wasn’t rock-solid, but their difficulties were mostly from how Lupy was moving around, attacking one while moving out of the attack range of the other.

“Yes, Sir…” the knights acquiesced. They prepared for a second assault.

Lupy suddenly reversed the grip on her ax—something Bandit had not seen her do before. She assumed a new pose with outstretched arms, ax held behind her and sword pointed forward.

The two soldiers charged her from either side. This time, both attempted sword strikes simultaneously. One went for a straight-on stab whereas the other unleashed a diagonal descending slash.

With a flourish of both weapons, Lupy deflected each attack. The sounds of weapons clashing overlapped—to Bandit it just sounded like one loud noise. As Lupy continued swinging her weapons in a fluid motion, winding up for follow-up swings, her opponents regained their balance and adjusted their stances to tighten their defenses.

As focused as Bandit was on watching the battle, she still noticed motion in the corner of her eye. Before she could process what she was seeing, the knight had rushed over to Lupy, approaching her from behind. Lupy was too busy executing attacks against her two opponents to react, whether she noticed his approach or not.

The knight drew his sword in a practiced motion, lowered it, and swung with a rising slash. His speed stats were likely the highest of anyone here; nobody could react in time. His sword approached Lupy’s arm unhindered, cutting through and lopping it off from above the elbow.

Lupy screamed, dropping her ax and falling to her knees as she cradled the stump of her right arm with her left hand.

“No!” the young man who had been watching from the back came back to his senses and shouted in grief at the sight of his injured comrade.

While everyone else gaped at the spectacle, the fastest person to act was actually the soldier who had been advising the knight on talents. The man, likely the most experienced among the soldiers, stomped over to the knight.

“Marcus! What the hell did you—“ The unarmed man was interrupted as his head went flying.

“Don’t call me Marcus.” The knight began cleaning the blood from his blade.

By then Bandit and Kat had reached Lupy as the girl’s opponents had backed off in panic. While Kat positioned her staff to begin casting healing magic, Bandit reached into Kat’s robe and pulled out a spare healing potion, force-feeding it to Lupy. Kat succeeded in stabilizing Lupy so she wouldn’t bleed to death. Bandit turned to the knight who was making a show of acting casual.

“You two looked like you were having a bit of trouble there, so I moved things along—“

“You bastard!” Bandit shouted at the knight Marcus while her hands creeped into her armor, grasping for hidden weapons. Before she grabbed anything, a hoarse voice drew her attention.

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“If you… wanted to fight… you should have just said so.” Lupy stood slowly, opting to reach across and unholster her second ax with her left hand rather than reach down for the one she’d dropped on the ground. “I’ll take you on.”

The knight stared for a few moments, then laughed hysterically. “You’ll take me on? Good! I was growing tired of watching those fools flail around! Come!” He took up a similar stance to his soldiers, shield pressed forward with his left arm. He turned his blade sideways and rested it atop his shield, pointing it at Lupy. “Actually, since you’ve only got one arm, I’ll cast my shield away and fight just with my sword. It’s the least I could do.”

Kat backed away, and Bandit reluctantly followed her.

The knight smirked and continued his diatribe. “Is that what you expected me to say? Well, sorry to disappoint but I’ll be fighting with my full strength… as a swordsman.”

Lupy kept quiet and began her slow steps toward Marcus, the new opponent. As she drew closer, he crouched lower and began muttering into the back of his shield, mouth obscured.

Most likely, Lupy was too out of it to detect what the man was muttering, but Bandit strained her hearing until she could pick out a few words. Her eyes went wide and she turned to Lupy, who was nearing the knight. “He’s casting—“

“Hahaha! Fireball!”

Lupy reacted to the red ball forming on the tip of Marcus’s sword, hopping sideways to dodge.

Marcus had anticipated her effort to dodge and delayed launching the spell ever-so-slightly. He turned, shield and sword aiming to point at Lupy’s new location. When he then released the spell, she was in no position to dodge.

The fireball flew and struck Lupy center-of-mass, blowing her onto her back.

“I knew it!” Marcus bragged. “You may have a talent with melee weapons, but that doesn’t give you any special abilities when it comes to dodging magic! Gyahahaha I bet you didn’t see that one coming!”

Bandit signaled with her arm for Kat to keep back. If she moved forward to help Lupy again, who knew what this awful knight would do. That was the limit of Bandit’s lucidity, though. The rest of her focus was on how she was going to kill this man. Bandit started walking toward Marcus using the same unlabored footsteps as Lupy showed several times already.

“Hm? You wanna go, bitch?”

Bandit didn’t have a plan, but she knew she wouldn’t hold back. No method was too underhanded for taking care of this human filth. She slipped her hands back into her armor, preparing to remove concealed weapons. Before she could, she felt a tug.

Somehow, Lupy had climbed back to her feet and grabbed Bandit’s collar with her only remaining hand. “He’s mine.”

Bandit returned to her senses and turned her head to object. “But he—“ When she made eye contact with Lupy, the words caught in her mouth. She wasn’t face-to-face with a comrade; she was staring down a predator. For the first time, Lupy radiated a desire to hunt rather than to fight.

“Stand back, Nina.” Lupy momentarily pressed her hand to Bandit’s shoulder, then stumbled down to her knee to pick up the ax she’d dropped. She walked around Bandit to approach the knight again.

The scariest part was that Lupy had used Bandit’s alias correctly without any prompting from the other girls. It was like she was in serious mode for the first time. Bandit decided to abide by Lupy’s wishes and stay out of the way.

“You’re a tenacious one,” said Marcus. “I can’t deny your skill, but you can’t win. Even without that wound, your stats can’t compare to mine. If I was unskilled, you’d still have a chance, but sorry, I’m a properly trained knight. You should have cut your losses.” He followed up his wordplay with another hearty laugh. “Let’s settle this! Then that raccoon bitch is next…” Marcus assumed his stance again.

Lupy seemed to be swaying. Bandit figured the accumulated damage was having an effect on Lupy’s balance. If so, there was no way Lupy could win. Bandit started planning for how she would jump in and ambush the monster of a knight until she noticed that Lupy’s swaying was surprisingly rhythmic. At closer inspection, the swaying was likely intentional. Lupy was using the swaying to maintain some type of rhythm, although most everyone else watching probably thought she was simply struggling to remain vertical.

“Come! You face a knight!”

Lupy’s response was too quiet for anyone but Bandit and maybe Marcus to hear. “Vulp’s already twice the knight you’ll ever be…”

Whether Marcus heard the utterance or not, he quietly drew back his sword, preparing to assault Lupy.

She swayed one more time as she entered his range.

Marcus thrust his sword forward at neck-height for Lupy, piercing only air.

Lupy’s swaying had aided her in sidestepping yet another attack. She fluidly transitioned into a spin, although her opponent wouldn’t just let her be.

Marcus redirected his sword sideways, converting his failed stab into a horizontal slash. His blade approached Lupy’s neck. Although the slash wasn’t strong, it would still do considerable damage if it struck such an unprotected part of Lupy’s body.

Lupy brought her ax up as part of her spin, deflecting the approaching sword away with her ax, all while moving closer to Marcus. Her body continued to spin and she wound up for a second attack.

Marcus didn’t have time to bring his sword back down at her before the girl’s attack could strike him. He turned his shield to face her, planning to deflect one blow before reciprocating.

With an outstretch arm, Lupy managed to reach around the shield. The shaft caught on the shield’s edge. Had the ax head come loose, it could have flown into Marcus’s face, but the ax did not fall apart.

Momentarily surprised, Marcus grunted and prepared to release a powerful slash at Lupy’s undefended flank. Before he could, he felt a pull on his left arm.

The bottom of the ax head, the beard, was caught on the rim of his shield. Lupy had pulled with unexpected strength, yanking the shield out of position. Such an act was not possible with a sword. Bandit suspected Marcus did not have much experience fighting opponents with axes, which explained his sudden surprise.

Marcus wasn’t completely off-balance, but the sudden yank on the left side of his body had delayed his next action. He must have decided to abandon using his shield entirely on focus on his sword since he released the tension in his left arm and let the shield drop.

Lupy’s ax would need to get pulled back before she could bring it forward again for another chop. Well before then, Marcus would unleash his strike on her, having the flexibility to aim pretty much anywhere he wanted. To prevent that, Lupy used one of her signature techniques. She pushed the ax forward, abandoning using the cutting surface of the bit, instead plunging the flat eye on top of the metal head into Marcus’s face.

Marcus was clearly not expecting to take an attack so soon. He twisted his face away from the incoming mass instinctively, but was not able to avoid taking a heavy concussive blow to his cheekbone. His stance was momentarily ruined, preventing him from following up immediately with a diagonal sword slash.

Lupy could have brought the ax back and attempted to follow up with a second attack, but Bandit wasn’t sure if she would be able to accomplish that before Marcus regained his stance and unleashed a quick slash. He was also bringing his shield back up. Soon he’d leverage his advantage of having a shield and a sword compared to Lupy fighting with a single arm.

Lupy wasn’t retracting her ax. She just kept it pressed up against Marcus’s face. Marcus looked just as surprised by this as Bandit felt. Lupy’s next spoken words clarified her intentions.

“Fireball.”

“What!?” Marcus couldn’t seem to follow what was happening. Fireball needed a moment to form before being launched from the tip of a mage’s staff. With the ax pressed up against his head, where was the fireball even forming? While he pondered this, the spell completed, releasing a T2 fireball directly into his face.

The fireball was more powerful than the one he had struck Lupy with a few moments earlier. Its damage didn’t get reduced by armor or striking a non-critical area either. Marcus was knocked back, landing spread-eagled on the ground. He was dazed but still conscious. Looking up, he saw Lupy peering down at him. Instinctively, he raised his sword, blocking the descending ax that he hadn’t even been able to see. The bit stopped mere centimeters from his face.

“You—“ He abandoned his sentence when he heard Lupy’s next words, spoken again with an emotionless voice.

“Lightning bolt.”

Marcus could see the bright white light forming on the edge of Lupy’s ax. A moment later, it bridged the gap to his nose, exploring the interior of his skull before retreating the ground. Marcus went limp, unconscious.

“Just in case.” Lupy raised the ax and brought it down.