My blade blocks the incoming attack as I retreat for the umpteenth time. His long sword is working to his advantage by keeping me far while striking from afar. This is totally unfair, it’s like fighting a character from a fighting game that can hit you from the other side of the screen with a neutral slash attack. Speaking of, this is comparable to playing footsies; he’s engaging me while keeping to a distance and not letting me get too far while I don’t go too far nor too close. If only I could use a projectile like gunflame. Gah, enough of that, I need to get out of this situation, and quickly, but how?

“Going in for an attack is a no-go,” I whisper to myself.

“You should just surrender, it’s pointless to keep fighting me.”

“Oh, shut it!”

Think, there has to be a way to catch him off guard. What if I go into the forest? No, he might have thought of me doing that already. Besides, he might not follow. Damn, the only thing I could do is knock his weapon out of his hand, but that might be a challenge.

“I grow tired of waiting for you!”

He comes towards me. I back away from him only to have a tree block me off. He goes for a horizontal slash. I drop to the ground to avoid it. The sword strikes the tree, but it doesn’t cut through it. However, it makes a good dent in it.

“Hm, seems you dodged.”

I barely did. He would’ve hit me if it weren’t for this tree…

“Hm?”

Taking a good look at this tree, he made a good dent in it. Damn, that’s a good swing, It takes all I got just to put a dent like that into the training dummy... Hang on, if he were to hit the other side, then he’d probably make a good dent there as well. It’ll be enough to tip it downward… On my opponent!

“That’s it!”

I roll away from my opponent, jumping up to my feet.

“Oh my, you seem quite jumpy for someone in an unfavorable situation.”

“Bzzzt, wrong! I got this in the bag.”

“Is that so?” He straightens himself, putting his sword forward. “...Then meet me in battle!”

“Actually… Why don’t you come to me?”

With my plan in mind, I’m going to make my move.

“Pardon?”

“Deft? I said you can bring your ass over to me.”

He isn’t responding to my invitation. He stands there with a dumbstruck face. I need to reel him in further. I take a seat on the ground.

“What are you doing?” he demands an answer, growing slightly angry.

“What else, taking a quick sit down. Such a good day, nice sky, good breeze. Why not take a seat as well?”

His face contorts into an annoyed expression. Good, now I know I can annoy him. That’s gonna be my key weapon. If your opponent lets words bother them, then you have the best weapon, no matter who you fight; when someone’s angry, they’re bound to make mistakes, and it just so happens, I’m good at pissing people off.

“We are in the middle of a battle! How can you just sit on the floor!?”

“Like I said, it’s a good day today. Besides, I’m getting bored.”

“Is this a game to you?”

A mind game, yes. Looks like it’s working so far. I just need to push him past the boiling point.

“Come on, you take fighting way too seriously. For me, it’s just a pastime. Honestly, it’s laughable how people take it so seriously, you know what I mean?”

His hand is quivering with rage. Great, looks like I got him right where I want him.

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“You dare insult this fight, how disrespectful. I shall feel no remorse for slaying you now!”

I get up from the ground. I’m ready to move on a moment’s notice.

“You gotta chill out. It ain’t that bad of a thing.”

He comes running at me with his sword at his side. Okay, let’s get this started. His sword comes at me from the side. I dodge by going in the opposite direction. Seeing my chance, I move away from the swordsman. He chases me to the tree that I want to cut down. I stop a few steps short of the tree, this should be good enough for him to hit it!

“Come on, fight me before I just go back and take a seat.”

“You will not even have time to sit down! I shall use my secret arts to cut you down!”

He puts his sword to his side again, there’s a dangerous feeling coming from him now. He said secret art, so he’s gonna bust out a killer move. If that’s the case, then I need to pay attention! As the seconds' pass, my body freezes more and more into place. The anticipation is killing me. With little motion, he swings his sword at me. Despite the length of the sword, he swings it faster than a normal person can see. My instincts, realizing this fact, kick in. He swings it to my neck. I duck my head as fast as humanly possible. He then goes for my legs. I jump to dodge it, but now his sword is going for my chest while I’m still off the ground. I quickly grab a tree branch above me and pull myself even higher.

“How did you… You dodged all my attacks!?”

Crazy, but my instincts told me what you were going to do, even when I couldn’t see it clearly, and my body knew exactly how to evade them. It still amazes me I can do that, but it’s pretty damn useful. Speaking of his attacks, they took a good chunk out of the tree, enough to push it down. His sword is lodged in it. This is perfect, now’s the time! I move behind. I jump against a tree perpendicular to it and I use all of my body to knock down the tree. I can hear it coming down as it separates from its base.

“What the!?”

He’s crushed by the tree’s mass before he even had the time to dodge. Damn, that went off well. Even I’m impressed. I approach him, he seems to be alright. The tree has him trapped. His sword is poking through the tree where his chest is.

“Don’t worry, I’ll help you out of there after I dispose of this cannon. Now, how will I?” The barrel looks big enough to fit a tree. Maybe I can put one in there? Hm, I'm gonna need something to cut it with. My eyes roll over to the enemy’s sword. Oh yeah, I can make this work.

…

With a final push, I place the tree log inside of the barrel. I had cut the bottom and the top of it to make it easier to drag it and put it inside of the barrel.

“Let’s do this, but maybe I should get this thing pointing elsewhere, just in case.”

There is a wheel next to a lever on the side of the cannon. Maybe I should turn the wheel rather than the lever first.

“Hopefully, this isn’t the firing mechanism.”

I twist the wheel on the barrel. It moves upward. Okay, so this is to turn it up or down. Now, let’s see if we can turn this thing sideways. Bingo, there’s another wheel that’s facing upward instead of being on the barrel. I turn it; it pivots to the right. Good, now I can blow this thing up. Hopefully, this doesn’t kill me. I pull the lever, the cannon fires. My ears ring from the cannon firing. My ears suffer from the blast. I can’t hear anything except a ringing sound in my ear.

“OKAY, THIS HURT!”

As I pop my eardrums to reduce the effect of the ringing, though, I can’t say it’s the best method. My head is killing me while this is all happening. Shit, I hope I’m not deft…

“HA!” I yell, to test my hearing. I can hear my loud yelling. “Good, my hearing is coming back, that’s a sign of relief.” If I had gone deft, I’m not sure how I would take it. The cannon is totaled. Nobody is going to be using that thing any time soon. Now that’s settled, time for me to hit the road, but before I do. I put the swordsman's sword under my shoe. I raise my foot as high as I can. I take a deep breath, calming my mind and preparing my body for what I’m about to do. Okay, let’s do this. “Here goes!”

My foot goes down towards the side of the sword. My foot breaks the sword in half. The blade clatters to the ground as the grass wraps it in its embrace. Good, now he won’t have a weapon to come at us with. It’s time for me to regroup with Richard and Nunnalé. Oh right, I almost forgot to get him out of there. I poke him to wake him up...

“You…” The swordsman is awake. His voice is much more subdued than it was before.

“Listen, I’m gonna lift this thing, so move out when you can."

I lift the tree by the head. He moves out by crawling. I let go of the tree; it hits the ground, causing a little quake in the ground.

“...How could…I lose...to you?” he begs the question.

“Easy, I saw a way to win, and I took it.”

“You...disrespected...our...fight!”

“Listen, I just wanted to taunt you. Anything I said wasn’t serious.”

“So...I feel for...a trap?”

“Sorry, but yeah.”

“I see…” He lets out a dry chuckle. “...I am glad.”

“Why?”

“Because you...took our battle...seriously.”

“Yeah, I’ve been getting into the habit of that lately. Don’t worry, I took it seriously. By the way, your fighting style was cool.” I walk over to my bike, jumping on it from behind. “If we ever meet, let’s fight again. Though, I can’t say that you’ll win, but who knows, maybe you could.”

“Heh, I’ll take you up on such a thing. But next time, you shall be the one on the ground.”

“Oh yeah? Well, we’ll have to wait and see.” I turn on the engine to my bike. “Take care.”

I drive into the forest. I’ll have to climb down through it to get back to the others. I want to go to the battlefield right away, but I need to make sure the others are okay first.