Ch.20Entry – 3

“Hey, hey… what the hell is that guy doing?”

“I-I don’t know, shit. Wasn’t he the one who couldn’t even swing a knife properly?”

“Y-yeah, right?”

The remaining three were so flustered they were stumbling over their words. The smiles had completely vanished from their faces. The tips of their swords were now pointed directly at me.

Earlier they weren’t even holding their weapons properly, but now that the first guy who stepped up was lying dead, they seemed to be coming to their senses.

I walked forward, stepping into the pool of blood that had seeped from the corpse onto the floor. The splashing sound made their bodies flinch as blood spattered.

I took another step forward. Bloody footprints remained where my shoes had passed.

“Hey.”

At the sound of my voice, all three reflexively raised their blades. Their panic was evident. When they’re this disoriented, when instinct overrides reason, that’s when you need to establish dominance.

If these guys kept coming at me, that would be one thing, but if they decided to enhance their bodies with mana and run away, I’d be the one in trouble. I had no way to catch them.

I needed to either quickly take out two of the three and interrogate the remaining one, or get information first and then kill whoever attacked me.

But realistically, the latter was almost impossible. So there was only one option left.

“Let’s make a deal. I’ll spare whoever tells me first why this place ended up like this. How about it?”

They looked at me like I was spouting nonsense. Not working, huh? Maybe I should have killed the first one more brutally instead of piercing his throat in one go?

I glanced at the corpse still creating a pool of blood on the floor. Perhaps if I’d sliced open his belly and spilled his guts, their reaction would have been different.

For a moment, I regretted killing him too quickly. Judging by their reactions, they still seemed uncertain about my abilities.

To them, what I’d done probably looked like a lucky strike.

The first guy had approached me carelessly, underestimating me, and got stabbed once and died. They probably thought my blade had luckily pierced a vital spot in his neck.

In reality, though they were shocked, they weren’t taking any particular action.

They seemed to be weighing whether to fight or flee.

My skills might have been far better than expected, putting a hole in the first guy’s neck, but their thin pride was probably keeping them from running away.

These were guys who hung around with that Scarface. He was someone who prioritized self-preservation above all else.

If they truly believed I had been hiding my skills all this time and had just revealed them, they wouldn’t be standing there hesitating—they’d either be on their knees begging for their lives or running away without looking back.

It seemed like I needed to take down one more before they’d talk.

“You there.”

I pointed my blade at the guy on the far left. Suddenly singled out, his face filled with bewilderment.

“What are you waiting for? Come at me.”

The other two looked at the unlucky guy I’d picked.

As three pairs of eyes—including mine—focused on him, the bewilderment on his face deepened. His expression seemed to say, “Why me of all people?”

There was no particular reason. I just pointed my blade in a random direction, and it happened to be the leftmost one.

The three exchanged glances intensely. They seemed to be urging the chosen one to step forward and do something. Typical of their kind.

They needed to confirm my skills, but they were too afraid to step up themselves, so they were eagerly pushing the guy I’d singled out. Pathetic to the smallest detail.

“Ah, fuck it! I don’t know anything!”

Unable to withstand the pressure, the guy strode forward. The other two watched me with faces half relieved, half amused.

The relief came from the thought that they weren’t the sacrificial lambs, and the amusement from the belief that this nameless, lowest-rank adventurer was now finished.

As he approached, he surrounded his body with blue mana. This time, he seemed ready to attack properly. His hand gripping the sword was tense, and his gaze was filled with killing intent.

Since the first attacker had become a corpse with a hole in his neck due to carelessness, he didn’t want to follow the same path.

But having killing intent and having skill were two different things.

Although my standards might be high from having seen Serena, even objectively speaking, his mana quantity was ridiculously low.

I wondered how he had reached the intermediate adventurer rank with such skills.

He seemed far inferior even compared to the low-rank adventurers in this city. Could the other two be at a similar level?

Thinking about it, things started to make sense.

Probably the guy who stepped up first and died was the strongest of the four, and the rest were all mediocre, so they didn’t know what to do and pushed the guy I singled out as a sacrifice.

If things went badly, Scarface would have stepped in to resolve the situation himself, so these opportunists who just followed him and ate his leftovers didn’t need to be strong.

They just needed to flatter him well and look good beside him, and other people would cower before them because of Scarface.

Of course, even that pitiful amount of mana was far better than having none like me.

If I were to clash blades directly, my blade would either break or my teeth would all fall out within 10 exchanges at most.

Unlike others’ weapons, which could be used semi-permanently with proper mana reinforcement, weapons for me were merely consumables that needed to be replaced constantly, so they weren’t of particularly good quality.

Holding my blade with both hands, I checked the positions of the other two behind him. Both were slightly shifted to the right.

I moved a few steps to the left. In response, the guy walking toward me slightly adjusted his stance. It was an angle that maximized his coverage of me.

“Die!”

He raised his blade and charged. It was amazing how even his battle cry sounded pathetic. His stance was terribly sloppy. Every movement dripped with awkwardness.

I stood still until we were close enough for our blades to touch, then as I saw his downward strike, I twisted my body and simultaneously tripped him.

“Whoa?!”

With a loud thud, his body rolled heavily across the floor. He was truly pathetic. It seemed he hadn’t even considered that I might dodge.

From behind me came the sound of laughter—”Kahahat!”—from guys who still hadn’t grasped the situation. They’d be next, so I don’t know what they found so amusing.

The guy who had rolled away got up abruptly. His face was flushed with anger.

The fact that he hadn’t even directly clashed blades with me but had been dodged and tripped seemed to have wounded his pride severely. Panting, he took his stance again.

Honestly, I was a bit surprised too. Since they hung around with Scarface, I had planned assuming they were at least intermediate adventurers, but their skills were far worse than expected.

I doubted if these guys would have any useful information. They seemed like they were just taking advantage of the strange situation to do whatever they wanted.

Now that I’d assessed their skills, it was time to change the plan. I glanced behind me. About twenty paces or so. The distance had narrowed considerably.

They were so thoughtless that they believed they were safe until the one I had singled out was dead. Their intelligence was remarkably low.

“You bastard! You dare look away?”

Seeing that, he swung his blade with a curse. I checked the direction and stepped back twice. The tip of his blade cut through empty air.

“If I looked away, you should have killed me. That’s not something to be angry about, but rather something to be grateful for, isn’t it?”

When an opponent does something useless, you should say thank you and use that opening to kill or subdue them. And this guy failed at that.

The reason was simple. Despite having mana reinforcement, he had nothing better than me except for strength.

From the moment I could see his attack with my eyes and dodge it, he was already doomed without body enhancement.

There were occasionally people like this. Those who could mindlessly surround their bodies with mana but couldn’t achieve physical enhancement through it.

If the former was closer to the realm of instinct, the latter was closer to the realm of education. And this was the end for those who refused to even step into that realm of education.

As heat seemed to spread to his head, making normal thinking impossible, his attacks became increasingly erratic.

Until now, he had at least been thinking somewhat when swinging his blade, but now it felt like he was just swinging it however his hand moved.

After dodging a couple more attacks, I looked back again. The distance that had been about twenty paces had now narrowed to less than ten.

This was enough. I slightly twisted both wrists holding the sword hilt diagonally. Praying that my teeth wouldn’t break or crack on the first attack, I blocked his downward strike.

Clang! Not just my palms but my entire arms vibrated. I barely prevented my knees from buckling under the pressure. The area around my eyes trembled.

For such a sloppy attack, it was disgustingly heavy. Indeed, even a pitiful amount of mana was always better than none. This damn body of mine.

I glanced at the sword in my hand. There was a slight nick where the blades directly met, but overall it was intact without any cracks.

Given the difference in stance and strength, if I continued this power struggle, I would be at a disadvantage.

I slightly twisted my wrist to make his blade slide down my sword. As the blade hit the crossguard, it made a cracking sound.

Fortunately, the crossguard held up once. If it hadn’t, my arm might have been completely severed.

As he momentarily lost balance when the sword slid down, I drove my fist hard into his face.

There was a bone-breaking sound where my fist collided with his eye socket. Of course, it was my fingers that broke. I had deliberately aimed for a softer spot, but it didn’t help much.

Ignoring the pain in my hand, I continued to swing my fist.

By the time the thudding sound was heard for the third time and my completely shattered fingers were returning to normal, he was screaming, clutching the area around his left eye. He was annoyingly tough.

“Aaagh! My eye!”

I raised my right foot and kicked him in the stomach. Using the recoil to push back, I spun halfway around. The remaining two still had dazed expressions. I transferred the sword to my fully recovered right hand and kicked off the ground.

First, the one closest. I pulled my right hand to my chest with the sword tip pointing down and left, then swung upward toward the upper right.

The blade grazed his body, leaving a long laceration on his chest. Blood sprayed from the wound.

“Hieek!”

He let out a high-pitched scream. Judging by the fact that he still had the presence of mind to be afraid, the cut wasn’t too deep.

I glanced to the side. The other one had just finished assessing the situation and was surrounding himself with mana. I needed to finish him off before both attacked together.

There was no time to adjust my stance. Without dodging the sword thrusting forward in panic, I pushed straight ahead.

Perhaps he didn’t expect me to take the hit instead of dodging, as a dumbfounded “Huh?” came back.

The sword pierced my left shoulder, but I didn’t stop moving. The blade went through my shoulder and out the back. The distance was sufficiently closed.

I grabbed him by the collar and pulled, bringing his terrified face closer. My hand was faster than the urgent footsteps approaching from the side.

I stabbed the sword diagonally into his cheek. The tip pierced through the skull, stirred the brain, and emerged again at the side of the crown.

The tip was covered in blood. I rotated the handle half a turn and pulled it out. Judging by his eyes rolling back showing the whites, it was instant death.

I carelessly threw the blood-soaked sword to the floor and regenerated my left shoulder. The sword was pushed outward by the blood droplets and flesh returning to their place.

I grabbed that handle. Since my original sword had lost some teeth and the crossguard was shattered, it was better to use this one rather than risk it breaking.

I turned my body around. Now to deal with the other guy who was charging at me—

‘He’s gone?’

The guy who had been charging at me just moments ago was nowhere to be seen. For a moment, my thoughts froze. Did I turn in the wrong direction? That couldn’t be it.

A shadow was cast from behind me. For a moment, I wondered if I had misjudged my opponent. Could the remaining guy move this fast?

With a swooshing sound, a piece of metal swung through the air. I couldn’t dodge this.

Crack! I felt my side being shattered. My spine must have been broken by the attack, as I had no sensation in my lower body.

My waist was bent at an angle it shouldn’t be. My legs dangled like laundry on a clothesline. My body floated in the air for a while.

An intense pain shot through my back. With the sound of something breaking, my body pierced through a wooden wall and plunged into a house.

With a crash, my body rolled across the floor, breaking various parts of the house. My arms and legs broke randomly, unable to withstand the rolling force.

I hit the back of my head against something hard. My skull must have cracked, as warm liquid flowed down my neck.

There was a foreign object stuck in my left eye, but when I tried to remove it, my limbs wouldn’t move at all. It seemed my entire body was shattered.

As the movement stopped, I could finally check my body’s condition. The first thing I noticed was my back.

My neck had turned 180 degrees, making it seem like the positions of my back and stomach had switched. It was bent 90 degrees to the right, resembling a table corner, adding to the grotesqueness.

The back of my left knee was touching my back, and my right arm looked like it had seven joints instead of the usual.

I could feel my left arm attached, but I couldn’t see it, probably because it was trapped under my body. Footsteps were heard from the wall I had crashed through.

It seemed better to regenerate first.

My neck, which had turned completely backward, found its proper angle again, and the back of my knee that had touched my back returned to its original position.

I wondered where my left arm had gone, only to find it trapped under my body with the shoulder joint rotated about three times.

During the recovery process, my left shoulder rotated counterclockwise about three times. My right arm also regained its original shape.

Whatever was stuck in my left eye fell to the floor. It was a wooden fragment. It must have gotten stuck while I was rolling on the floor. I slowly got up. Someone pushed their body through the hole in the wall.

A rugged face. A scar that ran from the upper left to the right cheek, crossing half of it.

Thighs as thick as a decent-sized adult woman’s waist, and equally thick forearms with bulging muscles.

A massive frame that nearly touched the ceiling and broad shoulders. A hammer of monstrous size in one hand.

“Well, well, who do we have here? Isn’t it the bastard whose name is ‘Nameless’?”

It was Scarface.