Ren’s blade caught the elbow joint of the A-ranked dummy, but the metal hinge tanked the blow with little trouble. The dummy countered with its own swipe, but Ren ducked under it, dodging concussion but just a hair, and responded by ramming the hilt of his blade into the mannequin's torso.
The dummy took a step back as the force traveled through it, and Ren capitalized on the extra space with the ferocity of a starving panther finding a doe. His arms were a blur as he launched strike after strike, each with an expertise and finesse that betrayed the years of practice he’d invested in his craft. The A-ranked dummy was pushed on the back foot immediately, even though the fight had just begun. Having learned how difficult an A-ranked dummy was to fight from my experience, Ren held nothing back right from the beginning, keeping up a ferocious barrage of attacks as he quickly claimed and defended the upper hand. Five minutes later, it almost started to look like he would actually defeat the cornered dummy and put a definitive end to my claims of being stronger.
Or so I thought, but as the fight continued, Ren’s momentum began to slow as the dummy started to react faster and faster to Ren’s unusual attacks, almost as if it was learning how to deal with his swift style.
While Ren’s blade wielded no trivial amount of power, his style largely depended on his exceptional speed. A speed so great even the A-ranked dummy seemed to be having trouble handling it, even though it dealt with the force behind each strike quite easily. The power that had swiftly brought the B-ranked dummy to its knees seemed to have no real effect on the A-ranked one.
And as the time passed, it started to look like even Ren’s incredible speed wouldn’t be enough to preserve the upper hand in their fight. The dummy got quicker and quicker with every block, until it finally bought itself enough time to sneak in a palm to Ren’s gut.
The blow sent the boy flying back, but the dummy didn’t even give him time to land. With impossibly powerful strides, it ran after Ren’s flying form, catching up just before he could crash onto the ground. Its fingers curled around his ankle and pulled, letting the momentum of the original attack pull his body in two different directions in a way that made both the lady and I wince in sympathy.
But pain was a part of the package that came with challenging a rank above your own, and Ren had known that when he’d accepted. Not to mention, he was no stranger to pain, so the frighteningly painful combo the dummy hit him with barely fazed the boy.
Before he could even hit the ground, Ren curled his body in and brought the tip of his blade crashing against the dummy’s forehead. The immense force drove the tip of the blade a full inch into the wood – wood that had been artificially hardened to be even stronger than steel.
The dummy let go of Ren’s ankle as it backed up a few steps, its head snapping back for a moment. Ren didn’t let the moment go unused, immediately jumping back up after he hit the ground. There was a look on his face as he turned to the dummy that sparked a smile on mine, one of pride and anticipation. I could tell in that fraction of a second that he had entered his flow for a moment, and I knew what I was about to witness would be a masterclass in close combat.
Ren’s hand shot out then and grabbed the handle of his blade, yanking it back to him just before the dummy stepped out of range. The blade was dug in deep, and didn’t come out with Ren’s tug. Instead, the dummy was pulled forward with it, like a doll on a string. Ren pulled the handle down just as he brought up a purple haze covered leg, knee bent to greet the featureless face of the dummy.
There was a clap that echoed as Ren’s knee crashed into the wood of its face. The force threw the dummy’s head back, its body stepping back as it did.
But Ren wasn’t done yet. Just as it moved far enough, Ren’s bent leg stretched out and caught the dummy’s head again, this time from the side. The blow sent the dummy reeling again, stumbling to the side this time, but Ren still wasn’t done.
He brought his outstretched leg back to the ground and immediately used it to launch himself after the dummy, shooting out like a bullet the moment his foot touched the ground in a display of physics-defying strength. His second knee found the face of the dummy immediately, undoubtedly hitting it with enough force to crush a human’s skull.
Before the force could send the dummy out of his reach, Ren grabbed the handle of his sword midair and pulled again. One leg went down to catch his landing, while the other went out to the side to catch the neck of the dummy. The combined effect of the tug and kick finally freed Ren’s blade from the clutches of the dummy’s forehead, simultaneously sending the dummy stumbling back, effectively resetting the fight, only with the dummy having taken an intense beating.
The lady watching had dropped her jaw in the face of Ren’s amazing display of speed and talent, and I felt a strange sense of pride and validation flow through me as I saw her reaction.
Unfortunately for Ren, though, the dummy was still an A ranked one. And as intense of a beating as the dummy’s head had taken, it hadn't yet splintered apart, and that meant that it still retained every bit of strength as it had at the start of the fight. And while Ren had put up an amazing show so far, it wasn’t something he could keep up for very long.
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Exhaustion began to weigh on Ren’s moves as the time passed, forcing him to slow down more and more, allowing the dummy to continually push him harder and harder. And while Ren would have ended the fight a million times already if his opponent had been human, unfortunately for him, the mannequin’s metal neck didn’t sever quite as easily as a flesh and tendon.
About an hour later, Ren flopped down to the ground as the lady disabled the dummy, saving Ren from a kick that would definitely have required a Revive to heal. Though, of course, that wasn’t to say Ren wasn’t already bruised all over, and would need some proper healing to recover anyway.
The woman, with a few muttered words of sympathy, handed his limp form a Flux potion that she fished out from the bag she carried on her side. As he drank from it, she announced her final decision.
“Well, I’ll be honest, you fought beautifully. The both of you are probably the most talented adventurer’s I’ve ever had the pleasure of testing, and I’m sure you’ll both go very far in your field. Unfortunately,” she gave Ren a great big look of sympathy then, “you just barely missed the mark for top tier B rank. You dominate the upper B rank, of course, but you miss that special something that you need to push yourself to the top tier. For example, if you’d showcased any of the Artes you’ve learned – which, I’m not quite sure why you didn’t – you would have done much better. Even if it wasn’t cultivated quite to the level that your friend here has gotten her's to, just a mid to high level Arte would have been enough to push up to the next tier. Unfortunately, since you didn't, I don’t have justification to mark you down as top tier, even if I personally believe that you should be.”
Ren smiled in the face of her kind words. “I understand,” he said simply. “I don’t mind.”
"Aw, don't be so sad, Ren," I said with a smug smile, knowing that he truly wasn't bothered in the least but still wanting the satisfaction of imagining he was. "I'm sure you'll catch up to me one day."
Ren smiled at my words. "I'm sure I will, Red," he said with a smile that told me he used the nickname just to bother me. "I'm sure I will."
—
About half an hour later, having gone through about a dozen more forms, Ren and I finally walked out of the Guild Branch, proudly displaying our freshly minted adventurer badges. They were gold – painted steel, not the actual metal, I learned – shield-shaped badges with two crossed swords in the center. Not exactly the most creative design I’d ever come across, of course, but I quickly learnt why.
“Now, when you join a private guild,” the lady, whose name I learned was Loretta, had explained as she’d taken us to get our badges, “you’ll get a new badge with the design of whatever guild you’ve joined. Of course, you can stay an ‘independent’ adventurer if you don’t wanna share your loot, and think you don’t need the support of a guild, but then you’ll be stuck with the generic Adventurer Guild badge – at least, until you hit the upper ranks, of course.”
I asked about making my own guild, but the woman had waved me off. “Guilds can only be made by graduates of some kind of adventurer academy. That’s not something the two of you need to worry about until much later.” Loretta paused then, giving me a sneaky smile. “Well, officially, anyway. But, there’s nothing really stopping the two of you from using the name of the guild you want to make. A little notoriety will go a long way once you actually start recruiting. And once the news of your ranks gets around, fame will be a crown hard to duck.”
“On that note,” Ren added then, “we’d appreciate it if you could keep the news of our results under wraps for a while. If they are as exceptional as you make them seem, I think it’s in our best interest for us to keep the information hidden for as long as we can. Preferably till we get into Karmore.
Loretta seemed surprised at the request, before she considered it and nodded her head. “If that’s what the two of you want, then sure, yeah. I’ll have to report it to my manager, of course, but I’ll make sure your records don’t show up anywhere else until you guys want it too.”
I’d asked if her manager would have any problems with our request, but she assured me that he wouldn’t. The manager would be more than happy to accommodate for us, she said. “After all, it never hurts to get on the good side of people with incredible potential,” she’d added with a smile.
The statement rang true for us too, I realized not long after Ren and I stepped out of the building. We’d just stepped off the last of the stairs when a man wearing scarlet armor approached us. He was powerful, that much I could at a glance, but he carried himself with a surprising amount of servitude – at least, as he approached us.
“Miss Ruby and Mister Ren, I presume?” the man began, bending into a slight bow as he spoke. “I am Sir Damon,” he continued when the two of us answered with bewildered nods. “I was instructed by the young lord to escort the two of you to your new residence.”
There was a beat of silence that followed his words, before they finally clicked in my head. “Huh?” I responded dumbly at that. “New residence?”
The knight nodded. “The young lord wanted to extend a gift to his new friends, and since he knew that the two of you were new to town, he graciously bought you two a house in the city. It’s a humble thing, since he knows that this city is only a temporary stop for you two, but it’s leagues better than any of the inns you could find around here.”
“Huh,” I said, “that’s awfully nice of him.”
“Indeed. So the two of you accept his gift?” the man asked.
Ren and I shared a glance, and Ren’s wordless response was, unsurprisingly, that he didn’t care either way. With a shrug, I turned back to the man and replied, “Yeah, sure. No point refusing it if he’s already bought it, I suppose.”
The man nodded at my response, as if it was as he’d expected. “Good. Now, if you’d please follow me,” he said, motioning for us to follow as he turned around, starting to lead us to our new home.