"W-Wait! Do I seriously have to fight that monster?" I was seriously scared for my life.

"Hey, he's just an old buff man, don't call him that. He still has some emotions." the girl patted the man's arm to comfort him.

I looked at the man's face and he had a blank expression.

"To me, it looks like a robot now."

"Well, you are not wrong. He is just a puppet, so he is not as strong as the original was." she tried to reassure me but it didn't work because I started seeing something surrounding his body, it was a blue flame that was creating great pressure and I could feel it very well. My body wanted to tremble but I tried to keep it still.

"You can see his aura now, right? It's not that scary." she said with a smile.

"Not that scary? How am I supposed to beat him with this wooden katana??" I replied louder while shaking up and down the katana. It was light and it didn't give me a good feeling.

She rolled her eyes "Relax. I don't expect you to beat him today. 1 week here is equal to 2 days in the human realm, so you have a lot of time to try."

"Can you give me a hint on how to beat it, at least?" I asked desperately

She shook her head and pointed at me "Be ready! We’ll start right away!"

I tried to reassure myself by thinking

'Shit. Ok, maybe that man is all strength and zero speed-'

In the blink of an eye, the man was already in front of me.

"Uh? I couldn't even-"

The man joined his hands together and smashed them against my head; against all that strength my body was sent down to the ground floor of the ten floors palace I was on.

Thanks to some kind of miracle, I was still alive with just a few broken ribs.

'Not as strong as the original?! Don't make me laugh!' while getting up using the wooden sword as support I noticed that the broken ribs were coming together and the pain was also going away.

'Regenerations? This will surely come in handy.' I was trying to think positively by suddenly Nysilia spoke in my mind

‘Don’t be too sure of yourself. Regeneration is something everyone who got some decent training has’

‘Thanks for the encouragement…’

I held on tight to the wooden katana and looked up. The old man was still on the roof, looking at me through the holes my body made.

'That punch would have crushed me if I was a normal human. If only I had some more time to analyse the power I have."

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I continued thinking while keeping an eye on the old man, still on the roof and realised something.

'Wait, I forgot that I have his powers. That means, I have super strength, speed and, since I was able to survive this fall, probably, high physical endurance too."

Suddenly, the man catapulted himself down trying to crush me again and I quickly moved away but when his feet touched the ground, a huge shockwave was generated, throwing me outside the building but this time managing to fall on my feet.

"Phew, I'm making some progress."

Suddenly, a small stone fell on top of my head. I looked up and the palace was falling apart because of the man’s shockwave.

"OH, SHIT-"

I couldn't run away in time and the collapsing building buried me alive.

———

After a minute or so, I managed to dig my way through the debris and I was fine, still holding that crappy katana. The first thing I saw was the old man slowly walking towards me, with a broken column in his left hand and surrounded by his aura.

'is he planning to hit me with that? Even if it hits me, it won't be enough and it will break apart.'

I stayed alert, ready to defend myself to minimise the potential damage and the regeneration wouldn't have taken too long, meanwhile, we were walking around in a circle waiting for the other person to make his move, but since it didn’t seem he was going to fight I tried to provoke him

"COME AT ME YOU FUCKING GORILLA!" maybe the hits I took so far damaged my brain because this was a dumb move.

The old man did not think twice to charge at me; in a second he was in front of me and swang the column against my poor body causing me to fly away like a baseball ball. I crashed through some buildings and when I started losing altitude, a big tree in the middle of the city stopped me with its branches and then I fell to the ground, near its base.

Every bone in my body was broken and I could feel them slowly coming together, meanwhile, the big man reached me with the column in his left hand and my wooden katana in his right hand, both still intact without a single scuff.

"So, that's what your other power is."

Once the fractured bones healed I slowly stood up.

"You can fortify the objects you surround with your aura right?" I asked but the old man was just a puppet, so he didn't reply and suddenly threw at me the katana, which I caught on the fly.

'Obviously, I didn't expect an answer from him'

I looked behind me, there was a bench near the tree where the girl was sitting and looking at me with a little smile on her face.

'No answers from you either huh? I'll take this silence as a yes then.'

I closed my eyes and concentrated. I visualised my aura slowly surrounding the katana

'and by applying a similar logic, maybe I can…' After thinking, I concentrated part of my aura around my legs and the rest on my arms.

When I finished the preparations, I opened my eyes, pressed my feet against the ground with enough strength to make some cracks and then charged at the man at lightning speed.

In a second, I was standing behind him and it didn't seem I did some damage at first but suddenly the old man's head fell on the ground, followed by his body.

I was exhausted and breathing heavily while looking at the body surprised by myself and looked towards the girl, who looked surprised too.

"Well, that was unexpected. I'm truly impressed." she said.

Her expression slowly became serious

“But this isn’t enough.”

The old man's body slowly turned back into a puddle of blood and from that 3 copies of him were slowly coming to life.

"What…?" I looked at the god, who while smiling said

"As I said, 1 week here is 2 days in the human realm. It would be useless to waste all this time…" She stopped for a moment while looking at my preoccupied face and then continued "Time to start with round 2-"

“W-Wait!” I interrupted her speech “At least tell me one thing! Was I right about his powers?”

“1 out of 4” she promptly said.

“Huh?”

“Of the four powers you said, just one is correct but I’ll tell you more later, we can’t waste this precious time. Let’s start again.”