“Looks like this is over,” I told him.
“Don’t screw with me!”
He brushed aside my knife and tried to raise his sword, and I backstepped around it. These bear shoes were just way too useful.
“Ms. Front Desk, I won the match just now, didn’t I?”
“You’ve got to be kidding me. The battle isn’t over yet.”
I looked at the receptionist, but she had no idea what to do. She seemed beside herself. I wanted her to make a decisive call, though.
“Okay, fine,” I said. “I won’t just end the match; I’ll end your life. Don’t think that I’ll let my knife stop this time.”
When I said that, the man’s face twitched. He probably knew the difference between our physical strengths. I had evaded his attacks and was also faster than him, and if I had used the knife instead of my bear punch earlier, I would have stabbed him in the hip. On top of that, he definitely couldn’t deny that I’d pressed the knife against his neck at the end. That basically meant I had already stabbed him twice.
“Are you really that scared of this little knife?”
I let him get a glimpse of it.
“Sorry. Using this against a person without no qualifications to be an adventurer was just so immature of me.”
I hurled the knife at Deboranay’s feet, embedding it in the ground.
“Not scary anymore, right?”
I made a little come and get it gesture with my gloves.
“Don’t take me for a fool.”
He charged hard, like an idiot. I sidestepped him, but his sword followed me. Of course he’d figure it out after I’d used the same method twice to evade him.
If one step didn’t work, then I just needed to take two steps, and if that didn’t work, I just had to leap three times. I evaded with three steps, got into his blind spot with the fourth, and in the fifth, I popped up right in his business. My bear punch collided with his face, and Deboranay’s giant body went down.
I hit his face with my right hand, then left, right, left, right, left. Bear punch, bear punch, bear punch, bear punch, bear punch, bear punch, bear punch. It looked like the black bear hand really was stronger—only his left cheek, which was turned towards me, was super swollen.
He didn’t move. Once I saw that, I disengaged. The whites of his eyes were showing; he was passed out.
“So, who’s next?” I asked my audience. None of them stepped up. “Looks like no one. In that case, Ms. Front Desk, could you remove all the adventurers here from the guild? It looks like they’re weaklings.”
I grinned.
“But…” one of them murmured.
“But all of you said it yourself,” I said, “didn’t you? Weaklings like me can’t become adventurers. Which means anyone weaker than me definitely can’t become an adventurer, right? Which includes this guy I’ve just beaten and people who won’t even try me in a fight.”
I looked around, still grinning. It looked like there weren’t any adventurers who felt like they could win after seeing that fight. Deboranay must have been the strongest of them all.
“I didn’t say that!” One of the adventurers broke the silence.
“I didn’t say that, either,” another continued.
“Deboranay was the one who said that, wasn’t he?”
“That’s right.”
It seemed they were going to sell out Deboranay to save their own butts.
“But I said that, didn’t I? If you guys won, then I’d give up on being an adventurer and leave. If you guys lost, you would give up being an adventurer and leave, and then, when that guy said, ‘If I lose against you, I’ll quit! Right, boys,’ you all said ‘Yeah.’ I got the lady from the front desk to confirm that, didn’t I?”
I looked at the receptionist.
“Yes…” she answered in a quiet voice.
The adventurers begin to stalk into the training area. They had nowhere to hide anymore, and nothing to lose.
“You better wait to say that until after you beat all of us,” said one.
“Or how about you face all of us together?” said another.
One, two, then three people arrayed themselves around me. Looked like I needed to beat all of them at once.
I guess if they’re only as strong as Deboranay, this won’t be so bad, I thought.
The battle ended too soon, if you ask me. I couldn’t be sure without checking my status, but I’d probably leveled up from beating Deboranay. My bear step was even faster, and my bear punch’s power was several levels higher. I beat the poor fools with a single blow.
“Hey, what do you think you guys are doing?!” A rugged, musclebound man came charging into the training area. “Hey, Helen, explain what happened!”
Helen, the receptionist, tried to explain as best she could. Once she was done, the musclebound man looked at me.
“You,” he said, “girl in that weird get-up!”
“What?”
“Were you the one who did this?”
“It wasn’t my fault. They threatened me with violence, so I was just defending myself. You’re not going to make me shoulder the blame, are you?”
“The guild is fundamentally neutral when it comes to fights between adventurers.”
“In that case, you’re on my side.”
“And what makes you think that?”
“I haven’t joined yet, so I’m not an adventurer. I’m just a regular person. Since I was attacked by adventurers as a normal citizen, aren’t they the responsibility of the guild that’s in charge of them? You’re not saying you’re siding with multiple adventurers who ganged up on one normal girl citizen, are you?”
“Well…”
“In that case, you’re on my side as an average citizen.”
Granted, I wasn’t a resident of this town, but he didn’t have to know that. The man scratched his head and hesitated. “So what do you want?”
“I guess just to register with the guild and for them to be deregistered.”
“I’ll approve your registration, but I can’t kick them out.”
“They’re bowing their heads and pleading for you to let them quit because they’re weak. And you won’t let them? Is the adventurers’ guild really that tyrannical?”
“What? You guys wanted to quit being adventurers?!” the swole dude asked the handful of still-conscious adventurers on the ground. The men assumed ambiguous expressions and declined to answer.
“That’s what they said. Someone as weak as me can’t become an adventurer, according to them. They said if they got beat by a weakling like me, they’d quit being adventurers.”
“Did you guys really say that?”
Several of them nodded.
“Well, I’ve learned that these guys are idiots,” he said, “that’s for sure.”
“Right. Good. In that case, can you do the needful?”
“I’m going to ask again: Do you guys really want to quit? If you’re not going to answer, then just leave your guild cards behind and get out of here.”
“SORRY!” the injured adventurers shouted, hanging their heads low.
“Could you forgive them?”
“On one condition.”
“Why not? Just tell me.”
“I want a guarantee that the guild won’t stay neutral if the other adventurers ever try anything with me again.”
“I got it. If they give you any trouble, the guild will take responsibility.”
“Well then, I have nothing more to say.”