chapter3 · 038-ep38

Episode 38: An Enchanter Moving to the Front

"Okaaay, show me this painful lesson, then."

I exhaled as I said it, steeling myself to test right here how far this fighting style of an Enchanter moving to the front would work.

"Nice."

The man laughed.

"You've got spirit, at least."

Before he had finished speaking, his foot kicked off the floor, and the meeting-room floor gave a low boom.

By the time I thought he was fast, his fist was already right in front of me.

No, it wasn't just fast.

From his step to the path of his fist, there was the weight of someone who genuinely intended to kill me.

Before I could even think of dodging, my body made the call that it was impossible on its own.

I couldn't avoid it completely.

【Ability Grant: Endurance】

The instant I applied the enchant to myself, my core grew heavy, and it felt like something had been laid over my skin.

At that moment, the man's fist touched my arm.

Enemy Observation caught the fist's path, and before I could think, only the places it couldn't hit, the direction that would drain the force, and the angle I needed to shift my body surfaced in my mind.

Don't take it head-on.

Deflect it a little.

If you stop it head-on, you're done.

I angled my arm in, and the moment his fist struck, Contact Perception picked up its weight, speed, and flow of force all at once.

"Ghk!"

It was a blow unlike anything I'd ever taken.

Different from Rio's attacks, from the strikes I'd taken in training.

Different from a Wood Wolf's charge.

It was a human fist, yet it shook me to my insides, like my organs would be carried away before my bones and muscles.

Taking that normally would kill me.

Following the flow of force I'd picked up with Contact Perception, I slid my arm, not trying to stop it head-on but shedding the impact outward even a little.

Still, I couldn't redirect all of it.

The remaining shock went into my body, lifting my feet and sending me several steps back. Then Posture Control+ forcibly returned my almost-collapsing body to a single line.

My arm hurt like hell.

But it wasn't broken, and I hadn't been blown away.

My knees weren't on the floor either.

Rather than stopped it, it felt closer to somehow having managed to stop.

"...Huh?"

The man widened his eyes and froze with his thrown fist stopped in place.

"Hey, hey. You stopped that?"

Holding back the breath that threatened to become ragged, I checked my aching arm.

It normally hurt, and I wasn't uninjured, but it still moved.

Then I could still go.

"There ain't many guys in our group who could take my fist without a scratch."

For the record, I wasn't without a scratch.

It normally hurt. It hurt like hell. And I didn't have enough room to put on a show and correct him.

But apparently, just my arm not being broken and my knees not being on the floor was weird enough from the man's point of view.

The man stared at me.

Not the casual look from before. He was clearly much more wary now.

"You're an Awakener?"

"Well, technically."

"And you've unlocked your Job, right?"

"...Well, technically."

If a regular person stopped that, they were no longer a regular person, so naturally he came to that conclusion.

The man drew his brows together a little.

"A Guardian? No, a Barrier Knight?"

Guardian.

Barrier Knight.

I had never heard of either Job, but I got what he meant.

Defense-type, or guard-type.

Apparently that was what I looked like to him.

"Enchanter."

The instant I answered, Mibu's voice came from behind me.

"...Himura-kun."

Her voice was a little lower than usual.

"What?"

"Was it really okay to say that so easily?"

"Ah."

Crap.

She was right.

Why did I just answer normally?

Don't answer honestly just because someone asked you.

This wasn't a get-to-know-you party.

Maybe I was a pretty big idiot too.

"...Enchanter?"

After blanking for a moment, the man let out a short breath.

"What, a support Job?"

Some of the tension left his shoulders.

His wariness hadn't vanished, but it had clearly dropped a level.

"I get it. You put Endurance on yourself and somehow managed to defend, huh?"

"Yeah, something like that."

About half of that was right.

It was true I had applied Endurance, but that wasn't all.

Enemy Observation.

Contact Perception.

Posture Control+.

All of them meshed together, and I had only barely stopped it.

The man didn't know that much.

"If that's all you've got, you're not scary."

The man grinned again.

"If all you can do is endure, I just have to keep hitting you until you break."

Saying that, he lightly cracked his fists.

The next one was coming.

And it wouldn't end with one punch this time.

Because I'd stopped the last blow, the man now completely saw me as an Awakener.

Then he would stop holding back from here on.

Endurance alone wouldn't cut it now.

If I only took hits, I'd eventually get overwhelmed.

【Ability Grant: Agility】

Something switched deep inside me. The weight that had settled into my core lightened a little, and my footing grew lighter instead.

My field of vision widened slightly, making it easier to see the sway of the man's shoulders and the pressure under his soles before he stepped in.

I moved sideways, slipping between tables and chairs and out of his front.

The meeting room was narrow, completely unsuited to moving around in.

Even so, it was far better than standing in front of him and getting punched.

"Oh? Agility next?"

The man smiled happily.

"You better put Endurance back on, or you're gonna die."

The man threw a fist.

Lighter than before.

No, not lighter.

He was changing how he put out force to make it a chain of attacks.

I fled sideways while avoiding a table corner. Before his fist landed, I searched for my next footing.

With Agility applied, my body moved better than before, and the range in which I could react after seeing something had increased.

But I couldn't dodge everything.

Of course not.

He was a Fighter and more used to fighting than I was.

And perhaps because he read presences, the instant I tried to move, he placed a fist ahead of me, and a kick flew where I fled.

"Tch!"

A fist grazed my shoulder.

Not a direct hit.

Enemy Observation had caught the dangerous line, and the instant it touched me, Contact Perception told me the direction of the force.

So I twisted my body and redirected it.

Even then, I couldn't completely redirect it. The shock ran from my shoulder through my back, and my footing wavered.

Then Posture Control+ activated, forcing my broken posture back to a position where I could fight.

The instant I steadied myself, another blow came.

An elbow this time.

Then a kick.

His fighting style was incredibly rough.

I took a step back, but at that moment my lower back hit the corner of a long table.

"Ow...!"

The worst.

Just backing up made me run into obstacles.

It would be bad in a different way if rental meeting rooms were suited for fighting, but just now I wanted them to let me do this somewhere wider.

The man didn't miss the opening.

I took his fist on my arm.

It hurt, but it was somehow within acceptable limits.

Even though my Ability Grant had switched to Agility, Endurance still remained inside me.

This was Enchant Echo.

The exclusive passive I'd gained from clearing a Job-Exclusive Achievement.

Even after switching the enchant I had maintained right before, this Skill kept roughly seventy percent of it for me.

The enchant before that stayed at around fifty percent, and even the one before that stayed around thirty.

In other words, it made stacking possible, but of course it couldn't last forever.

Only while I had MP left.

And the more I stacked, the worse the consumption efficiency became. Processing multiple sensations at once was hard on both my mind and body too.

With my current MP and Job proficiency, I could probably only use three types stacked together for around one minute at most.

So I wanted to settle this fast.

"You threw Endurance back on in the nick of time."

"..."

"For a support Job, you're pretty nimble."

Apparently that was what it looked like to the man.

From his perspective, I probably seemed to be switching between Endurance and Agility as I fought.

But that wasn't it.

I hadn't switched.

It remained.

Endurance and Agility.

Then the next one was decided.

I watched the man's movements.

His habit when stepping in.

The shoulder movement before he threw a fist.

His feet moving a little before his gaze.

The dangerous lines Enemy Observation caught and the impact flows Contact Perception remembered overlapped in my head.

The echoes of Endurance and Agility.

And one more on top.

【Ability Grant: Strength】

Something shifted inside me again.

Before Agility's lightness entirely disappeared, while Endurance's heaviness still remained firmly, I layered Strength over them.

My body grew heavy with a thump, and my MP started dropping another level faster.

"Oh?"

The man raised his brows for a moment.

Maybe he sensed that my presence had changed.

Maybe it was because he was a Fighter, but he was absurdly sharp about things like that.

"Hah. You planning to come at me head-on?"

The man laughed, then pushed off the floor to close the distance.

A kick.

Sharp as a stab.

Enemy Observation sensed the dangerous movement, and knowing I was done if it hit, I shifted my body out of that line.

Then a fist.

It grazed my cheek, leaving heat behind.

Maybe my skin was cut.

Didn't matter.

I clenched my left hand.

My off hand.

The one normally less reliable.

But the blow that had saved me many times before.

I gathered force into my left hand, strengthened by a Strength enchant.

But would this alone reach him?

My opponent was a Fighter-type Awakener, not just a human.

His Endurance and Strength were surely built far more for fighting than mine.

Even if this blow landed, it meant nothing if it didn't reach twenty percent of his maximum HP.

Then I'd add one more.

【Ability Grant: Strength】

I stacked another Strength enchant on top of the Strength enchant.

I didn't know if that was the right way to use it, and the efficiency was probably the worst.

My core grew heavy all at once, and the feeling of my MP being shaved away was clearly stronger than before.

I concentrated on my left arm.

Shoulder. Elbow. Wrist. Fist.

When I forcibly loaded strength into it, the inside of my arm hurt as though it was creaking.

I couldn't maintain it long.

Probably not even for several seconds.

But that was fine.

I only needed one instant.

Just the instant this fist reached him.

And then.

【Off-Hand Strike】

Before the man's fist could finish its swing, I stepped in only half a pace.

Only to land one blow.

"—!"

Thud—

A dull sound.

My fist sank into the man's torso.