“Guh!?”
The blow hurled me across the ground.
I tumbled over the thin layer of snow and came to a stop coughing, blood spattering out of my mouth. It felt like someone had plunged a hand into my chest through ice water and was wringing my heart bare-handed.
Obsessed with the notion that I had to get back up, I bounced to my feet.
My vision wouldn’t stabilize.
Through the blur, I saw Joanne standing there with her arms folded.
“Hah… hah…”
I’d seen it.
Right before that whip-like kick connected, she’d slowed it down. How many layers of restraint had she wrapped around that one exchange? I hadn’t even managed to make her consider using her weapon.
A crushing sense of despair washed over me.
This world was full of nameless masters, meaning a freak like Whip could lurk anywhere. Those people would be far stronger than a Joanne who was holding back.
If I couldn’t even win against her in this state, what was I supposed to do?
Third bout.
I shifted to a thrust-focused offense… and paid for it instantly.
A sharp kick snapped up from below, smashing directly into my extended wrist. There was a dull crack, and the sword flew from my hand. The pain was so intense that my legs simply folded, dropping me to my knees. I stared at my useless right arm; my upper arm was bent at an angle no human joint should ever make.
Joanne’s voice was gentle when she asked, “Want to take a break?” The tone lent itself to a sort of taunt, and I forced myself to refuse.
“L-Like hell I’m yielding… to this level of pain…!”
“Pain eats away at the mind, bit by bit,” she replied calmly. “That’s why torture works. No matter how tough you act, your heart’s getting ground down.”
She wasn’t even trying to hide that her goal was to break me mentally.
Joanne raised her hand and cast healing magic on me. The fracture had been so clean that the bone knit together perfectly, without so much as a bruise left behind.
Fourth round.
I kicked up a spray of snow, going for a blinding move, but she slipped past it easily and met me with a spinning kick.
She had to be ramping up the power now, because when the blow landed, something exploded inside my gut.
Fire roared through my solar plexus. I tried to double over from the heat and shock, but the impact had shot straight through into my spine, forcing my body to lock ramrod straight instead.
“Ngh!”
This pain and impact were nothing like the agony of having my organs swapped or the sickening sensation of my flesh being replaced.
What tore at me wasn’t the physical damage. It was the fact that all the techniques I’d honed on my own weren’t landing at all. I felt my heart chiseled away by that single truth.
The helplessness of having all the effort I’d poured my life into trampled underfoot.
The visceral reminder of the gap in kind between us as living creatures sent a chill of defeat rippling through my whole body.
No matter what I tried, I could never match her speed, her reflexes, her output. Probably not her technique, either.
So, what exactly was I better at?
Nothing.
Goddamn it. But if I can’t at least go toe-to-toe with the Joanne that exists now, there’s no way I survive this butcher’s world…!
In reality, people didn’t just suddenly get stronger. Convenient awakenings didn’t exist in this world.
The only ones allowed to gather the soil of true strength and, under the right conditions, brush against godhood were fourteen chosen monsters. And one of them was the girl standing in front of me, Joanne Sagamix.
Once I accepted that pure technique wouldn’t work, I resorted to every cheap trick I could think of.
I used anything my eyes landed on. My own blood. Stones. Chunks of ice. Branches. Wind. Sand in the eyes, feints, underhanded traps—if I thought it might work, I tried it. Every last thing was crushed and tossed aside.
She punched me, kicked me, slipped around my swings like water. My jaw was rattled, my world flipped upside down, my groin punted skyward. A few times, my consciousness even winked out entirely.
Then she healed me, and we went again.
And again.
And again.
Human beings can shed skin—even twice, at times—when they go through something extreme.
And this was a once-in-a-lifetime chance: to fight, over and over, against one of the few true demons walking this world and live. Every bout seared an insane amount of experience into my body.
The dense, brutal hours kept piling experience onto me. The stabbing agony kept grinding my mind down.
And then, on the ninety-fourth bout, my clumsy, desperate swordplay finally forced Joanne to use her weapon.
“Oh?” she murmured.
Up until now, she’d only dodged, but this time, my downward slash, aimed dead center at her skull, was precise enough to make her bring her blade up and catch it on reflex.
If I’d let my exhaustion show for even a second, she would’ve pounced on it immediately. I wore a blank mask, lied with my face, and used every trick and scrap of technique I had to pry open her guard.
But that was as far as my offense went.
She sloughed off the blow, twisted my imbalance against me, and slammed me to the ground.
Her counterattack didn’t stop there.
The glaive’s edge came down on my face without an ounce of mercy. My upper and lower jaws were separated, blood erupting like a burst pipe. Cold air rushed through the underside of my tongue.
All sensation vanished from my lower face, replaced an instant later by a detonation of blistering heat. I couldn’t even tell how bad it was, only that it was fatal.
I could feel the presence of death, sudden and close, and with it, my fighting spirit shriveled.
“How long is that will to fight going to last?” she asked.
Pain was far too simple a word for it.
My ear had been smashed into the frozen ground. The torn half of my face screamed with pure, unfiltered pain at the maximum volume the nerves could carry.
Were my eardrums ruptured? I didn’t know.
It felt like my brain was about to melt and ooze out of my ear canal.
If she’d planned this level of injury as a way to break me, then this girl understood exactly how to snap a human heart in two.
Healing light flowed over me. My severed jaw stitched itself back on. The cut had been so clean that it reattached quickly.
The joint was fragile, though.
She’d deliberately left an edge of fear, healing me enough to keep going but not enough for me to feel safe.
This damn woman. Nothing ever goes the way I expect with her. She hints about wrecking the Northeastern Branch like it’s our shared secret plan, but her real objective is to shatter me. And yet, at this rate… I might actually be able to beat Joanne.
The moment that thought surfaced…
Ninety-fifth bout.
A lightning-fast thrust, nearly indistinguishable from the blowing snow, blew that sweet delusion away.
The point slid perfectly through the space between my lungs and heart, carefully avoiding my organs and major vessels, a pulled strike calibrated not to kill.
Bone cracked as the cold blade pushed deep into my torso, and my mind was shaved down another layer by the sensation alone. When the steel finally withdrew, slowly, almost leisurely, the pain and violation wrung a raw scream out of me.
“You want to beat an executive, don’t you?” Joanne said calmly. “You want to save the world, don’t you? Then get up.”
Her face was expressionless.
But she was absolutely serious about this, about holding back just enough, about breaking me without letting me die. And somehow, I found a kindness in that. Because the way she was now, Joanne looked like she was genuinely cheering on my stupid dream.
No matter what kind of hell stands in front of you, you’ll tear through it, covered in blood, with everything you’ve got. You’ll move the world in ways I can’t even imagine. Otherwise, you’re not worthy of being mine.
Her eyes looked like that.
So full of expectation, affection, and hostility all at once.
She was truly a hassle.
Troublesome, twisted, impossible to handle. And I couldn’t help thinking she was unbearably cute.
By the time we reached the hundred and fifty-seventh bout, Joanne still didn’t so much as flinch at my refusal to break. She’d experienced my stubbornness and tenacity firsthand once before.
She’d probably accounted for this from the beginning, factored in that it would take a long time to crush me.