Today, I resolved myself to find Bea, and get her to start sparring me.

Considering that I hadn’t once seen her since the caravan had set out, you would think that I would have a difficult time trying to find her. You would also be wrong.

Someone had been staring at me rather intensely yesterday, and I had a very good idea of who it might be. I was slightly concerned with the fact that Bea was simply watching me—it made me feel like either something was happening, or going to happen to me.

So, by seeking her out in order to spar, I was gaining fighting experience, as well as forcing her hand. Besides, having someone stare at you so intensely was seriously weird. I want her to stop.

And what better way exists of doing that, then to fight her? I’ve long held the belief that fighting other people brings us together, since it can be a more honest method of communication then talking. I guess I’m just a muscle-head in that regard.

To start, I did the same thing as I had yesterday. I jumped out of the carriage with most people not noticing, and ran into the forest. Then, I ran parallel to the road from where the caravan had come from, going as fast as I can. All was exactly as had happened yesterday, including the fact that I could feel someone watching me. This was good, since it would allow me to trace the feeling back towards the one looking at me so intently.

After reaching a good distance away from the caravan, I started stretching, before moving onto sword exercises. I only kept half my attention on this, however. The rest was spent carefully observing that dim but persistent feeling of being watched that I experienced in the back of my head. By focusing on it, I could get a general idea of what direction that feeling was coming from. Then, I began narrowing down the possibilities based on the surrounding environment—things like the fact that she can’t be up in a tree who’s view is blocking me, or one whose foliage isn’t thick enough to hide her.

I narrowed it down even further through the use of my mana vision, which told me exactly where she was.

Yeah, yeah. I know I could have done that from the beginning, and easily known her precise location, but where’s the fun in that? It takes away any semblance of difficultly. Plus, it’s good to not rely on things too much—I feel much better knowing that I also found her location through the use of pure intellect and instincts.

So, what did I do with this bit of knowledge?

Why, but of course I threw my wakizashi at her.

I did it while transitioning smoothly from one blade form to another, which involved holding my nodachi in one hand. With the other hand free, I slipped the wakizashi out of its sheath, and lightly flicked it in Bea’s direction. I gave no prior notice that I was doing this, and didn’t even use any mana to accomplish it, relying completely on my physical strength. There were absolutely no warning signs for Bea, so when the wakizashi impacted the trunk of the tree just above her, she shrieked a little, and fell off her perch.

It would be an understatement to say that she wasn’t expecting it. Especially considering I was about two kilometers away from her at the moment.

It’s lucky my eyesight is so good, else I might have missed the tree-trunk, and actually ended up hitting Bea instead. And, since the wakizashi blew clean through that tree, and continued on it’s deadly path, Bea might also be lucky my aim is so good.

I smiled at her, through the intervening distance, and I knew she could see it, and recognize it for what it was. A predator’s smile.

She gawped at me as she stood up unsteadily. I had taken her completely by surprise, and she hadn’t had any time at all to do anything like prepare her defenses, or even register that I was attacking. The speed at which the wakizashi flew towards her didn’t allow for that.

I found the wakizashi in my mana sight, and extended a thin string of pure mana towards it from my mana pool. I retrieved it by retracting the string, leading to it flying back at me almost as fast as it had left my hand in the first place. I deftly grabbed it’s hilt right before it would slam into my body, and re-sheathed it at my waist.

By the time it had been returned, however, Bea stood in front of me, not even five meters away from me.

She had recovered from her fall, and used that same speed she had demonstrated in the flower garden to close the distance between us.

Bea looked straight at me, and I could see a faint bit of surprise buried in her expressions.

“How did you know I was there?”

“Oh please. I’ve known since before yesterday that you were watching me. I wasn’t planning on doing anything about it at first, but it began to really get annoying.”

Bea’s mouth fell open a little, and she seemed slightly stunned.

“For that long?...But, how?”

“That’s not really important. However, I really, really want you to stop watching me like a damn hawk. It’s weird, and it bothers me. Also, you said you would spar with me. Why not start now?”

She still looked stunned for some reason.

“But…You aren’t mad?”

I looked at Bea frankly.

“Mad? Why would I be? The only reason I would be mad, would be if you continue to watch me so creepily, even after I’ve told you to stop.”

“No, not about me watching you, but how we practically forced you to join this caravan. I thought you were mad at me and Joan….”

“Is that why you disappeared after the caravan set off? My gods, Bea. I’m not nearly so immature as to get mad at you guys for that. I needed a way to get to the Central Empires, and was provided with one. While the details are a little troublesome, this is nothing I can’t deal with.”

I gestured to her while pulling the nodachi off my back, sheath and all. I wrapped the strap around the hilt, or the tsuba, securing the sheath to the blade.

“I wasn’t kidding about that spar, you know. Better get ready.”

You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

Bea smiled for the first time today, pulling out some small daggers from gods-know-where, and sinking into a ready position.

“Sure sure. If you think you can handle it.”

I grinned ferally, and made the first move, not wanting to let Bea utilize that stupidly high speed she has.

My front foot cratered the ground as I rocketed in her direction, my nodachi held low in order to use a strong sweeping strike from below.

The wind whistled in my ears as I neared her, and my sword made a similar sound as it exploded into motion, slashing across Bea.

Aw fuck. That was one of those afterimage things, wasn’t it?

Her figure simply vanished from my sight, slowly fading after I hit it. I dropped low to the ground as something swept through the air above me, the air pressure in the wake of that strike popping my ears.

I braced myself, and trust the sheathed tip of the sword backwards without looking, and was rewarded with a sharp impact shaking my arms.

However, I quickly realized that something was wrong, and rolled forward before springing to my feet again and facing Bea, who had been behind me.

She stood still, a deadly looking black dagger held in front of her. Somehow, she had managed to block my backwards thrust with it.

She looked like she was expecting me to attack again.

I took her by surprise by simply dropping my ready stance, and sighing deeply.

“You know, this really doesn’t have much meaning if you are just going to go easy on me, Bea.”

“Oh? Are you saying that you want me to attack you seriously? You could die, you know.”

I grinned at Bea, a little bit of malicious intent leaking through.

“I doubt you could kill me. In fact, I would be more worried about you.” I said, which flipping a few mental switches that activated some certain skills. I want to force Bea to take me seriously.

Immediately, I felt shooting pains in my mana pool, and my body, as they grew more powerful. Much more powerful.

My level may stay the same, but that doesn’t matter when I go into my full Demon Lord form, while also activating the perfect counter to her speed—Storm’s Eye.

My base stats instantly skyrocket as release my natural state. Unfortunately, I can’t stay in this form all the time, since the intimidation effect it comes with would have all lower level life forms frothing at the mouth from a mere look.

My skin is also toughened by a pattern of tattoos that emerge, greatly resembling scales that appear on my arms, torso, and back. Notably, there were large holes in the pattern on my back, as if making room for something later. My two primary horns grow, and take on a blood-red luster, and a second pair of electric blue ones pop out of my hair-line, sweeping back.

I immediately feel many times stronger, and much more relaxed than I have in a while. I determined to release myself every now and then, in order to blow off accumulated steam.

As far as Storm’s Eye is concerned, I had a counter to Bea’s ridiculous speed. Due to my unfortunately high affinity to lightning, and storms, I could take advantage of the nature of electricity and boost my reaction time to several times better than normal. I got the idea from some of the thing’s I’d read on Earth, where supernatural powers were only found in fiction. It sort of worked by manually overclocking my brain, and having a razor-sharp amount of control. It was only due to the ease in which I could channel the storm that I didn’t accidently lobotomize myself.

As an added plus, the power of the storm raging through me kept Bea from directly touching me, since she would get zapped pretty badly.

After activating all these abilities, and drawing out my full power, I did two more things.

One: I brought out my wakizashi again, and bared it’s steel edge in my left hand.

And secondly, I got rid of the sheath over my nodachi.

A sharp and imposing feeling suffused the air around me after this. The fact that so many people could tell I had such good weapons, even after making sheaths to dampen their auras, was a testament to how strong my smithing skills really are.

With the black blade in my left hand, and the white one in my right, I felt like I could cut down the world if I had to.

There were no changes in Bea. She didn’t seem shocked, or surprised, or even fazed in the slightest. If I could say that there was a change, it would be the look in her eyes. She looked serious.

“Are you ready, then? I do hope you were right.” She said to me, while casually flipping her little dagger end over end in her hand with a dexterity that had me feeling a little wary, despite all I had unleashed.

Then, her figure flashed.

One second, she was there, the next a sonorous and regal implosion rocked the air, throwing up clouds of dust from the earth.

Holy crap, I think Bea’s breaking the sound barrier—on the fucking ground. With her running speed.

I was extremely lucky to have Storm’s Eye active, as well as my Mana vision. I could barely see a darting purple aura flashing about violently, taking a twisted path in order to open my defense up, and throw me off balance.

And, even though I was having such trouble keeping track of Bea, and was at such a disadvantage here, I found myself grinning.

Oh boy—I’ve really been cooped up too long.

In the end, rather then hold my position, and wait for Bea to attack my stationary self with impunity, I laughed, and flung myself on a collision course directly for the blur of purple aura.

I could see it pause for a split second through the dust clouds, taken aback for a split second. Meanwhile, I ran, each step gouging out huge chunks of Earth like a massive dragon rushing towards its prey, jaw open and waiting. My swords were held to the sides, ready to intercept Bea’s strikes, and my eyes were facing foreword, catching the vague and insanely fast movements of Bea.

All this takes a while to describe, but only half a dozen seconds had passed since Bea went super-sonic. Even less time passed before the first strike was released.

With a metallic tolling sound, I intercepted Bea’s first offensive action—a black blur moving at absurd speeds towards my left side.

I raised my wakizashi, and deflected the dagger so deftly thrown right at my ribs. It spun past me, and I barely twisted my body enough to avoid its counterpart coming from the front, where I couldn’t block so fast.

Fast, deadly, accurate, and misleading. That’s the feeling I was getting from Bea’s fighting style. She’s a gods-damned assassin, isn’t she?

I have some experience fighting assassins, though none of them could quite reach the absolutely stupendous speeds currently utilized by Bea at the moment. The best way to hard-counter an assassin, though, would be to be patient.

Just wait for them to screw up, then strike.

That wasn’t going to work here. If I let Bea continue, then I was going to lose sooner or later, given her speed, and accuracy. And, I couldn’t close the distance unless she got stuck in a corner or something, which I didn’t think would be very likely.

Or, I could manually lock her down.

Reaching my awareness into the earth, I grabbed hold of my mana pool, and began pouring it into the dirt around me, intending to take control of the very ground upon which Bea ran in order to literally trip her up.

I really must give credit to Bea here, since she did the very worst thing for me at that moment.

She came in close, while I was still attempting to manipulate the ground. I hurriedly cut the connection and tried to strike at her with the nodachi.

Bea snaked around the blade, tapping it with one of her daggers. The other dagger slammed into my chest rather lightly, all things considered, bypassing all my defenses.

In a normal fight, I would be dead. Completely, and without question.

This isn’t a normal fight.

For one, Bea lightened the strike, pulling it right as it was impacting. Judging from the panic in her face, she hadn’t meant to strike so viciously.

Second, she underestimated me.

My clothes have one hell of a defensive enchantment on them, after all. I would have hardly felt her dagger, even at full force. I also have an extremely sturdy physical build, so that even without the Sages clothing, I would have survived.

Next, my wakizashi was poking her rib-cage. What can I say? If you can’t beat them, then go for mutual destruction.

Lastly, the dagger she used to block my nodachi was shorn in two, due to my blade’s enchantments. She wouldn’t have been able to use it against me at all.

Bea looked down, and noticed my wakizashi. She looked back at my face, which had a gloating expression plastered across it. Stunned at my sturdiness, and my cunningness, she threw up her arms.

“Fine. You win, but only because I wasn’t expecting you to be wearing such strong armor.”

I chuckled.

“No, that was a tie. You still didn’t go all out, Bea.”

Her arms fell.

“What? You saw through that as well? My gods, Kai—just how much insight do you have?”

“Not enough,” I sighed “I guess I’ll just need to get stronger, in order to force your full hand then. We’ll spar again tomorrow—I need time to think.”

I reverted to my basic form, and started walking back to the caravan.

This time, Bea walked with me.