"Why..." Her voice came out barely above a whisper. "Why are you protecting that thing...?"
The question hung in the air, suspended for just a breath between us.
But I knew there was no time to answer it. Instead, I used that split second of hesitation — that tiny window where her guard slipped — for exactly what I needed.
"GOB! RUN! DON'T STOP!" My voice tore out of my throat, hoarse and raw.
The moment the words left my mouth, I grabbed the hilt of the sword still buried in my shoulder. No hesitation.
I yanked the blade free in one brutal pull.
The pain detonated instantly, shooting through every nerve ending like flesh being torn from a living body. Visceral. Real. Especially when the warmth of blood began pouring freely.
---
I half-expected a wound that bad to drop me on the spot. Instead, the opposite happened.
The pain burned without mercy, like embers smoldering beneath the skin — but my body suddenly felt lighter. My heart slammed against my ribs in a wild rhythm. My vision sharpened. Everything around me seemed to stretch and slow.
Ah. So this is what it feels like. My new skill.
I didn't have the luxury of thinking about it. I tossed Aiz's sword aside — let it ring against the stone floor — and in the same breath, my legs were already moving before my mind caught up.
Bare-handed, I drove my elbow hard toward her wrist. Close range. Zero distance. Fast.
But Aiz only stepped back half a pace, and my elbow cut through empty air.
Of course it missed. That was never the point. All I needed was to keep the distance between us at zero — to lock her focus on every move I made, not on the sound of small footsteps fading down the hallway behind me.
Run, Gob. Keep running.
---
"You..." Aiz studied me with the expression of someone struggling to make sense of what she'd just seen. "You're seriously trying to fight me?"
I didn't take the bait. I charged again.
Right jab, low kick, elbow strike to the arm. Nothing landed. Every attack I threw was avoided with the absolute minimum effort — a foot shuffle, a slight shoulder rotation, the tiniest tilt of her head. That was all she needed to make everything I did pointless.
Like fighting the wind.
Worse, Aiz hadn't even dropped into a fighting stance. She simply stood there, reading me like she already knew what I was going to do before I'd decided it myself.
It was painful, truly, to feel the gap between us laid out this bare and absolute.
Still, I forced myself forward, grinding my teeth until I tasted blood.
---
And then, for the first time since the fight started, she hit back.
The back of her hand swung in one short, almost casual arc.
Crack.
It clearly wasn't a serious strike. But what looked like a light hit landed like solid wood. My head snapped sideways, my vision rattling hard.
My legs stumbled.
With what remained of my balance, I forced myself upright — my cheek and shoulder throbbing — and drove forward again.
Every move I made looked rough and sloppy compared to Aiz. I'd never trained in any martial art.
But ever since that fight with Gob, something had been quietly growing inside me — a raw instinct hammered into shape by injury and failure. I didn't know what to call it. I just knew how it worked: keep attacking, don't stop.
Punch, elbow, knee. I pressed in again and again.
But Aiz Wallenstein was still Aiz Wallenstein. Sheer determination was never going to win this.
---
About ten seconds in, she stopped retreating.
That one small change, and I immediately knew I'd made a mistake. She'd been giving me room on purpose — letting me swing away. Now she'd decided to stop playing nice.
The moment I stepped in for the next attack, Aiz planted her feet firmly and shifted her weight into a coiled fist, ready to release something catastrophic.
The air whispered as the punch drove straight forward. It almost seemed to move slowly — like she was letting me watch the end coming.
A second later, it hit me dead center in the chest.
My ribs groaned under the impact, every bit of air forced out of my lungs in a single brutal beat. My heart felt like it skipped entirely.
My body flew straight back, launched like a stone from a sling. Wind screamed past my ears. Then my back met the dungeon wall.
THUD.
A heavy echo rolled through the corridor. The damp, moss-covered stone was as hard as concrete — the shock jolted up my spine and seized my throat.
---
I slid down to the ground, catching myself on both knees. The world spun for a moment, my vision clouding with black spots.
But I pressed my hands against the floor and forced my legs to hold. I had to get up. Gob hadn't gotten far enough yet.
My right thigh was already stiff under the strain it carried. The tear in my shoulder kept bleeding, warm and steady. Every time my chest tried to expand, cracked ribs sent sharp pain stabbing into my skull like needles.
By any logic, with damage stacked this bad, my body should've already given out.
But that was exactly the strange part. The shock flipped direction. My body felt lighter, as though half the weight pressing down on me had been sliced clean away.
Battle High was running at full capacity now.
---
The pain didn't vanish — my nerves were still screaming every injury loud and clear — but my brain refused to process it as a command to stop. Adrenaline flooded my system in massive quantities, smothering the hurt and converting it into raw, burning drive.
Every bit of physical damage triggered a new surge of energy, like pouring fuel into a roaring furnace.
I didn't understand the natural law or the magic behind how something this broken even worked. I just had to be grateful for it.
---
"Why are you protecting that monster...?"
The question came again. Her voice was quiet, but this time it carried the weight of someone genuinely searching for an answer.
I tried to fill my empty lungs. Bad idea — my chest had barely expanded before the cracked ribs ground together, and the pain seized my breath halfway up my throat.
"I'll tell you," I said, forcing the stiff muscles of my face into something resembling a smile. "In your dreams."
Without waiting for a response, I ignored every distress signal my body was sending and slammed my feet into the dungeon floor.
My right elbow drove straight down, targeting her collarbone — sharp and heavy, nothing I'd ever read in a book, but my muscles seemed to know exactly how to swing it to do real damage.
---
Aiz didn't panic. She shifted her weight and angled her shoulder back. That microscopic adjustment was all she needed to send my elbow slicing through empty air.
Not done. I used my left foot as a pivot, snapping my right knee toward her stomach.
Before the knee could drop, my palm was already slashing for her jaw. When that missed too, I let the momentum carry me into a sideways spin and swept low at the back of her knee — that small hinge joint most adventurers always forget to guard.
Aiz stepped back. Just half a step. Her boot let out a quiet squeak against the stone.
And in that instant, something shifted in the air between us. The gap suddenly felt different. She had actually been pushed back.
Not because I'd grown stronger. She chose to step back.
And strangely, in that moment, something moved inside my chest too. My skill kept hammering my muscles past their natural limit. Every footfall felt lighter. My read on distance grew sharper. A thick wave of adrenaline smothered the sting from my blood-soaked shoulder.
Not time to fall yet.
---
"Your technique..." Aiz's voice came out low, nearly flat.
"Save it"
I didn't give her the chance to finish. My right shoulder jerked, launching an elbow toward her lower ribs.
This time, she didn't simply tilt away. Her forearm moved fast, blocking the strike head-on with solid force.
And the shockwave from the gap between us finally exploded. It felt like hitting cement. The impact rebounded up my arm, sending a deep, aching pain all the way to my wrist.
But my stupid grin stayed exactly where it was — deliberately messing with her focus.
---
Aiz returned fire without pause. The back of her hand connected with my cheekbone, harder than before. My head whipped to the side, the world tilting and blurring.
Before I could straighten, a sidekick cut horizontally across my waist.
The force hurled me into the dungeon wall.
CRACK.
And yet my body responded differently. Adrenaline detonated inside me like a dam giving way. The pain that had me gasping moments ago was shoved to the back of my mind, replaced by a searing heat spreading from my stomach all the way to my fingertips.
My muscles pulled taut. That burning energy tore through the weakness, and I was standing again far faster than I had any right to be.
---
Watching me recover without even flinching, Aiz narrowed her eyes.
Her patience was running out.
That was not good news. Until now she'd been treating me like a test subject — holding back, observing. Once that patience broke, she'd finish me in a single blink.
I knew that.
And I charged anyway.
A fast combo aimed at her throat and a sweep targeting her base leg — both brushed aside like I was nothing.
In return, one of Aiz's punches came straight and open, dead center at my chest. Nowhere to dodge.
THUD.
The force drove straight through me, hurling my body into the wall for the third time.
CRACK.
Fractures spread through the stone behind me — not from any strength I possessed, but from the sheer power behind her fist.
---
My energy was completely gone. I crumpled to the ground.
My vision was spiraling into dark. I pressed my palms against the floor and tried to rise, but every muscle had simply quit.
My right shoulder was numb and cold — nerves severed. Every breath I managed to drag in set my chest on fire, choking on blood. Breathing had become a gamble my heart might not survive.
From the edge of my blurring vision, Aiz's boot began moving toward me. Steady steps. No hurry. She already knew my body was nearly finished.
Damn it. Still not enough.
I couldn't hold her off any longer. Even with Battle High running full throttle, the distance between us was too wide to close on stubbornness alone.
But my body still had one option left.
---
That terrifying ability that had suddenly awakened when I was nearly dead fighting Zagan — something I had never once been able to control. Something that felt like it could tear me apart from the inside if I made even one wrong move.
I had no idea what that power actually was. But I knew one thing with certainty: it was the only thing that could save me now.
My trembling left hand began crawling across the stone floor. Cold fingertips found the hilt of Aiz's sword where it lay.
The metal was ice-cold — but in a state this close to dying, that didn't matter anymore.
---
Aiz's footsteps stopped directly in front of me. Close enough that her shadow fell over my whole body.
Her eyes dropped to my hand as I closed my fingers around the weapon.
"What are you doing?" Her voice was flat. Genuinely puzzled.
I didn't answer. My tongue was too stiff to move.
I forced what remained of my left arm's strength to tense. The sword lifted slowly, bridging the distance to my chest. The blade reversed direction.
And then, in one movement that felt strangely calm, I turned the edge inward and pressed it toward my own body.
---
The atmosphere shifted instantly. The corridor went dead silent, as though even the air had stopped breathing.
This was the most reckless gamble of my life. If I was wrong — if that mysterious ability refused to surface, or if it simply obliterated my heart from the inside — then turning this blade on myself was the last decision I would ever make.
I pushed what remained of my lungs and drew one final breath I could actually hold without coughing up blood.
Sorry, Gob. I hope this is enough.
And Goddess Hestia... if I die, please forgive me.