Rals’ eyes went wide.
He hadn’t seen it wrong.
That guy’s beat-up, worn-out blade had blocked his well-forged steel axe.
What the hell?!
He had definitely felt it.
That violent shockwave that spreads when raw power collides head-on.
In that case, the weaker side should have shattered.
But the man held his slanted sword steady—without so much as a flinch.
It’s just a fluke!
In a fierce exchange like this, deep thinking was a luxury.
If the Seventeen-Strike Combo could be stopped just once and that was it, it wouldn’t be called a finisher.
“Uraaah!”
Rals poured his strength and weight into a diagonal slash that hamred toward the man’s body.
“Four!”
Clang!
A blue spark flew.
It had been deflected again.
What an idiot!
Sure, maybe he blocked it once by luck.
But how long could his luck hold?
The difference in strength was undeniable.
The quality of their weapons wasn’t even comparable.
Which ant only one outco remained:
That rusted sword would soon be crushed entirely.
“Five!”
Clanggak!
A clear ring sounded again as sparks exploded.
The crowd’s cheers grew louder.
A direct clash between weapons—this was one of the monts they longed for the most.
And what they desired next, of course, was one side’s defeat—and death.
“Raaaah!”
“Six!”
Clang!
Rals swung the axe with each shout, his giant muscles bulging.
Sweat, mixed with sand, sprayed out forcefully.
Whoooosh!
The whooshing sound of the swings was downright murderous.
It felt like the very air in front of him was being shredded by his pressure.
“Seven!”
Clang!
The man blocked it.
Rals swore this would be the final blow, again and again—but nothing changed.
“Eight!”
“Uwoooaah!”
Fwhoooooosh!
The eighth strike.
A powerful spinning slash—one of the most damaging in Rals’ arsenal.
Even that—
Clang!
Was blocked.
With an expression that didn’t change.
Only then did Rals realize sothing was wrong.
What the fuck... What the actual fuck!
By now, that guy should’ve been a pile of at.
But the man was perfectly fine.
Compared to Rals, who was drenched in sweat, he looked almost serene.
“You son of a bitch!”
Was this a joke!?
Rals’ face flushed red with rage.
So it wasn’t luck, huh?!
The guy was using a special technique.
Rals had faced opponents like that a few tis before.
He’s using deflection!
A technique where, in the mont weapons clash, one slides their blade diagonally to disperse the impact.
It took imnse training and natural instinct to pull off.
Even if the guy was worn-out, he was a high-rank gladiator.
He must’ve had so secret technique.
“But that won’t matter!”
“Nine!”
BOOM!
Rals brought the axe down with all his might.
The force was now so intense it no longer made a clear ringing sound.
Now, it sounded like sothing was breaking.
“Tricks won’t work in the face of raw power!”
“Ten!”
BOOM!
He struck again.
“Die!”
“Eleven!”
BOOM!
Again.
“Hahahahaha!”
“Twelve!”
BOOM!
Rals’ signature technique as a high-rank gladiator—the Seventeen-Strike Combo—grew stronger with each hit.
By the tenth blow, the combo devolved into pure downward strikes.
But each one carried the weight of a mountain behind it.
“You’re holding out pretty well!”
“Hahaha! Chop him up! Kill him!”
“Rals! We believe in you!”
The audience erupted.
The thrilling clash between the man's overwhelming slashes and the sword-wielding opponent was more than worth the fortune they had paid to enjoy.
But in their minds, the outco was already decided.
Before long, that axe would split the guy’s skull open.
BOOM!
“Thirteen!”
“You’re at your limit now, aren’t you?!”
Drenched in sweat, Rals taunted.
Even if it was deflection, it wasn’t invincible.
If you kept applying greater shock, it would break down eventually.
“Fourteen!”
“You can’t even talk anymore, can you!”
BOOM!
His muscles scread.
His body was begging him to stop as pain surged through his nervous system.
But he didn’t stop.
“URRAAAAAHH!”
“FIFTEEEEEEEN!”
This was it.
The final strike.
It was called Seventeen-Strike Combo, but it never went that far.
No one had ever made it to the fifteenth hit.
So dodged, so tried to run, but in the end, they were caught—and their heads split open within fifteen blows.
BOOOM!
The axe exploded downward.
Sand, sweat, and blood flew in every direction.
And in that mont, Rals felt it.
The man’s corpse—split in two.
“Huff... huff... You held out well, I’ll give you that. But still... huh?”
Rals rubbed his eyes.
It wasn’t a hallucination.
The man who should’ve died was still standing.
“There’s two more left, aren’t there?”
The man spoke in a low voice.
“I’ll take them.”
Rals’ jaw dropped.
His brain started to misfire, unable to process the impossible reality before him.
Am I seeing things?
No.
The brute shook his head.
The guy was absolutely standing there.
Still bleeding from head to toe.
“H-how...?”
As Rals caught his breath, things he’d ignored in the heat of battle started to surface.
Why is his weapon still intact?
Maybe once, sure.
Twice—maybe luck.
But luck doesn’t repeat itself.
Not this many tis.
Deflection! That’s it—he used deflection...!
But was it really?
His cooling mind shoved reality in front of him.
Deflection was a technique that involved sliding the blade at the point of contact.
But that guy had done no such thing.
Instead, he’d thrust his blade forward and collided head-on with the axe.
That’s not deflection.
Even the sound was different.
If it were deflection, it wouldn’t make that sound.
Then what was it?
How did he absorb the shock held in the axe blade?
Did he just take it straight on?
Impossible.
If so, both he and his weapon should’ve been destroyed.
......
It made no sense.
It defied reason.
Even if he didn’t know the formal laws of motion and reaction, Rals had instinctively learned the principles of force through years of training.
The transmission of force and its counteraction.
When weapons clash, there is always a consequence.
So where had all the force Rals poured into those blows gone?
Rals looked down at the man’s feet.
“...No fucking way.”
The sand beneath the man’s feet had not shifted in the slightest.
Since the flurry of downward strikes had begun, the man hadn’t moved from his spot.
The laws of force had been broken.
It wasn’t deflection.
What the man used was likely sothing far beyond what a technique like deflection could even touch.
The man had taken Rals’ combo head-on, yet sohow nullified the shock that should’ve ripped through his body.
And without snapping that chipped iron sword.
How... did he do it?
Rals didn’t know.
Was it a technique?
A bodily ability?
Or maybe—so kind of magic?
The only thing certain—
Was that the outco had been decided long ago.
The mont he realized that, Rals’ face turned pale.
“What are you doing, you bastard! He’s on the verge of ◆ Nоvеl??g??t ◆ (Only on Nоvеl??g??t) death!”
“Kill him! Just kill him already!”
The spectators scread in rage.
To anyone watching, the match was clearly Rals’ overwhelming victory.
He, aside from the sweat, was completely unhard. His opponent was drenched in blood.
To anyone watching, the winner had been determined.
“Y-you... insolent...”
But Rals knew.
He knew how aningless those injuries were, despite how dire they looked.
Among all the scratches covering the man’s body, not a single one was fatal.
Blood flowed.
But that was it.
No tendons were severed. No bones were broken.
Among all the cuts, not a single artery had been struck.
Only veins were bleeding—minor wounds that could be healed with a little treatnt and rest.
That unnaturalness ant only one thing.
Rals had done the sa before.
When your opponent was too weak, ending the fight too quickly bored the crowd.
That’s why he’d deliberately taken injuries before, to stage a more dramatic match.
But being able to pull off such a calculated performance...
That ant the gap in skill was enormous.
Like an adult toying with a child.
“Ghhk!”
Rals stumbled.
So I... was just a plaything to him?
“You bastard... you piece of shit...!”
Rals glared at the man.
But in that man’s eyes—there was no emotion at all.
“Kill him! Just finish it already!”
“Are you insane?!”
“End it!!”
The spectators shouted and cursed.
But Rals ignored them completely.
This was probably the last mont of the life he’d lived.
Whatever those damn pigs were shouting—it didn’t matter.
“...I see.”
Thud.
Rals dropped his axe.
His fighting spirit had long since vanished.
Now that everything had beco clear, he almost felt relief.
“If you’ve worked that hard... and ended up stronger than ... then there’s nothing I can do.”
Rals let out a bitter smile.
“Before I go, just tell
one thing.”
“What is it.”
“That technique. What’s it called?”
Soday, he’d die to soone stronger.
That was the fate of all gladiators.
Rals had always been prepared for it.
It had simply arrived sooner than expected.
“It was a magnificent move. How long did you train for that? How many nights did you vomit blood in practice? That’s incredible.”
Rals smiled faintly.
They were in the sa arena.
He had a rough idea of the life that man had lived.
Sold into the arena as a slave in childhood. Forced to do nial tasks while training, then eventually pushed into the arena as a fighter.
A life that wasn’t uncommon.
Rals was no different.
They’d barely spoken, but the two of them had grown up in much the sa way.
“Heh. Were you secretly training at night? Part of your strategy too, I bet.”
He felt a sudden surge of respect.
He’d thought that man never trained at all.
And yet he’d been hiding such skill all along.
He got .
All those close victories must’ve been staged.
It was intentional, no doubt.
You probably didn’t even sleep.
Staring at the stars ‘til dawn. Training in secret where no one would see.
Hands bloody, calluses never even getting a chance to dry.
That’s what effort looked like.
And effort never betrayed you.
That was Rals’ life creed.
If he died in battle, it would be to soone who had trained harder.
There’d be no regrets.
It would simply an his effort wasn’t enough.
Deflection isn’t an easy technique.
Rals knew that well.
Gladiators who weren’t born with raw power honed their techniques to the extre.
They were called technical-types.
Even among them, those who could freely use deflection were exceedingly rare.
But to wield sothing far superior to deflection like that?
He couldn’t even imagine the blood-soaked training behind it.
“...Technique?”
The man muttered.
“That wasn’t a technique.”
“...What?”
“A technique is sothing you learn, right?”
“Wh-what are you talking about?! That move was... incredible! You can’t just do that! It’s sothing you work for, for years—!”
“I didn’t train for it.”
The man replied calmly.
“It was my first ti trying it. Seed to go alright. You said it was called deflection? Well, let
correct you on one thing. That wasn’t a technique. I didn’t learn it. I didn’t train for it.”
“......”
“I just did it. Because I could.”
Rals stood there, frozen.
The man’s words echoed in his skull like a low hum.
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