As soon as Tancelot gave the signal, Tan-Claude and I lunged at each other.
My mind was almost totally blank. I aimed my fist square at his face. I figured that if I took any time at all to size up the situation, Tan-Claude would get the jump on me and I’d lose. But sure enough, Tan-Claude had the same thought as me and was lunging right for my face in turn. I used my southpaw stance to throw out my right fist—and Tan-Claude threw his right from the orthodox stance.
But in the end, I was the one with just a little bit more of an advantage. My body was smaller, so I would always have a shorter reach than Tan-Claude. But by combining the four moves of jumping forward, rotating my hips, extending my arms, and opening up my chest, I could push my attack a fair bit farther than usual.
In contrast, Tan-Claude was using an ordinary attack, so despite his undeniable strength, I was able to sneak my punch in under his without immediately tipping him off to what I was doing.
“Nice move, Shooter! Get him!”
“Brother?”
Somewhere in the back of my mind, I heard voices calling out from the spectators.
My hit was about to catch Tan-Claude in the face. In the middle of throwing his punch, Tan-Claude spotted my attack and dodged, throwing himself slightly off-balance. Now he couldn’t get his hips behind his swing anymore.
My hit missed his chin. Still managed to smack him right in the neck. Not that one hit could win the fight. Tan-Claude Van Damme was supposed to be the strongest bullfighter around, after all.
Unfortunately, extending my body so far to throw the punch had been too desperate; my pivot foot skidded out of position. Tan-Claude saw the opportunity and took it, leaning back and catching me with a high-kick. The strike launched out in a perfect arc, like something out of an action movie. To make a kick like that while off-balance showed an incredible level of combat instinct.
I raised my arms and managed to block his leg, but it landed with a heavy thud and I felt my arm muscles fall limp at the blow. The bull-kin chieftain had known that even with my guard up, his kick would be overwhelming. If I kept using my arms to block his attacks, his hits would eventually wear me out and erode my guard.
I decided to switch to close-quarters fighting—I closed the distance between us as fast as I could. If I let Tan-Claude get away from me again, he could just unleash more of his devastating high-kicks.
I briefly considered one tactic, where you slowly sap your opponent’s mobility with low-kicks, but instead I got into a position where either of our kicks would miss.
I closed in and dealt a series of backhand strikes to his face. If I targeted his face over and over again, the bull-kin chieftain would have to focus on those blows. I had to pick the terms of the fight, had to control it.
But then Tan-Claude swung a hook at me. I had to get out of the way of that vicious strike. I folded up to try to evade, but he cracked me right in the knee. This was going downhill fast. That bastard.
His moves weren’t so primitive after all; they seemed positively modern, all stuff from the martial arts revolution of the mid-twentieth century and beyond. These were recent techniques.
How had he learned these maneuvers in a world like something out of an old Monsters and Mazes manual?
The big innovation Tan-Claude brought to bear was his skill at moving sideways—that is, circling around someone in response to a strike—which is embedded in every style and category of modern martial arts. The older forms of karate specialize in a forward-pushing, driving kind of fighting style, so roundhouse kicks and sidestepping are an incredibly recent development.
The bull-kin chieftain matched my move to circle around him, stepping to the side to avoid exposing vulnerabilities. I was gonna have to go for that low roundhouse kick after all.
As soon as I launched into it to stop Tan-Claude from moving, he—are you kidding me?!—lifted his leg into a guard and shut me down. Then to top it off, Tan-Claude came at me with a low-kick. I quickly raised my leg to block him, but it didn’t matter. A hammer-like blow slammed into my knee. It felt like he had shattered my whole leg.
At that point, I spotted a difference between our low roundhouses. The two techniques aimed to break different things. In my world, we struck a little above the joint, targeting the muscle along with it, but Tan-Claude’s strike had zeroed in on the connection point between bones, right where my pitiful human body was at its most vulnerable.
“YeooOOOOOOOOooooowch!” I don’t think I’ve got enough vowels here to convey just how much that hurt. It was like he’d trained his low-kick through years of Shaolin kung fu, toughening up by kicking an old wooden telephone pole for hours on end.
I had only been hit with a kick like this once, by a middle-aged person who practiced Shaolin kung fu. It had stung all the way to my marrow, and I’d toppled to the ground right then and there.
But if I moaned and cried about my pain now, Alexandricia would definitely classify that as a humiliating loss and boom, I’d be introducing myself as Mr. Minotaur Slave Shooter.
“Hrmph. What’s the matter? Don’t you want to attack me?”
“You’re not…going to bait me that easily!” I lashed out with a middle-kick as I spoke.
Back on Earth, I was a pretty good size, so I always thought I had some decent power behind my kicks. But in this world and against a minotaur, the difference in height and build meant I was delivering nothing more than a distraction.