Esdeath had skin as white as fresh snow and striking ice-blue pupils.
Despite looking like a slender, fragile girl with absolutely no visible muscle mass, she hit like a runaway carriage.
Her fists were barely the size of steamed buns, yet every single punch she landed on her massive opponent echoed with a sickening crack, completely drowning out the man's muffled groans of pain.
Bang!
Because of the massive difference in height, it was hard for the girl to reach his head from a standing position.
Without hesitation, she launched herself into the air, nimbly evading the burly man's wild counterattack while smashing a crescent kick directly into his forehead.
The impact was so vicious it practically looked like smoke was coming off his skull.
Sitting in the VIP box above the arena, Noah found her fighting style hard to process.
She clearly only relies on raw speed and instinct...
There wasn't a single trace of formal martial arts foundation in her movements.
From the brutal way every one of her sharp strikes bypassed his guard and aimed straight for vital points, it was obvious her technique was honed entirely through pure, life-and-death combat.
Her eyes were incredible too.
She saw through all of her opponent's telegraphed movements before he even made them, and her reaction speed was astonishingly fast—more ferocious and unpredictable than a wild beast.
'The Partas Clan,' Noah recalled.
'A hunting clan from the northern frontier that specializes in killing Danger Beasts?'
On the surface, she looked no different from a normal human girl, but her explosive kinetic strength was clearly lightyears beyond what an ordinary person could achieve.
'Is it a racial trait? Or is that girl just a freak of nature?'
"She's absolutely amazing. They're actually fighting evenly matched..."
Even Laims's personal attendant, standing behind Noah's chair, was astonished by the fight.
"Who would have thought a twelve-year-old girl could hold her own like this?"
Hearing the attendant's exclamation, Noah secretly shook his head.
The man's eyesight was severely lacking!
To an amateur, it looked like Esdeath was the one being suppressed, because the burly martial artist kept using his massive body to press into the girl's space, forcing her to dodge repeatedly to avoid near-death blows.
But in reality, the man was only attacking so aggressively because he had already been driven to the edge.
If he didn't go all-in right now, he was going to collapse from accumulated damage.
So, before his stamina failed, he had to seize the chance to use his sheer size advantage to crush the girl in a grapple.
The faint cruel smile playing on Esdeath's lips showed that she clearly understood his desperate strategy well.
In fact, the times when she had "nearly" been caught were deliberate feints she had set up on purpose.
She was just entertaining herself.
She was toying with prey that could no longer escape.
Recently, since arriving in the Capital, this kind of cat-and-mouse game had become one of the only things she found genuinely fun.
"Hah!"
The martial artist suddenly let out a deafening roar.
His flesh literally writhed, and the muscle tissue across his chest and back visibly shifted, bunching together and sliding down his right arm.
In an instant, his forearm and fist swelled to twice their normal size.
The raw kinetic power and speed he unleashed with that mutated arm were more than double what they had been seconds ago.
If that terrifying, unnatural blow landed head-on, the little girl's chest cavity would probably be punched straight through to her spine.
The sudden, brutal turn of events made the spectators in the stands cry out in alarm.
But Esdeath herself showed not the slightest trace of panic.
She reacted instantly, splitting her legs and dropping into a perfect, full split, pressing her slender body completely flat against the dirt floor of the arena.
The gale-force wind from the missed punch blew her long, ice-blue hair wildly into the air.
Her massive opponent hadn't expected her to evade his ultimate move by instantly dropping so low, and his face twisted in disbelief and sudden panic.
Seizing the massive opening, Esdeath sprang upward from her split, wrapping her legs tightly around the man's thick neck in a brutal chokehold.
With a chilling smile, she whispered, "My body is very flexible."
The next moment, a vicious, predatory light flashed in her blue eyes.
She violently twisted her core, generating a massive amount of spiral torque.
Using the man's own forward momentum against him, she flung him violently over her shoulder, smashing his skull headfirst into the hard packed earth.
The man cried out in agony, his huge body stiffening for a fraction of a second.
Esdeath dropped gracefully from the air and drove a pinpoint punch directly into his crushed throat, heavily injuring him and knocking him unconscious on the spot.
From the exact moment the man suddenly unleashed his mutated killing move to the instant Esdeath reacted and shattered his throat, it had all happened in the blink of an eye.
Only after a long, stunned silence did the audience finally realize that the most anticipated match of the day had already been decided.
Sparse, hesitant applause began to sound here and there.
Once everyone finally processed the upset, wild cheers rose one after another, and thunderous applause swept through the massive arena.
Who could have possibly imagined it?
A renowned expert Martial Artist from the Koken Temple had actually lost in a deathmatch to a twelve-year-old little girl.
After knocking the big man down, Esdeath stood over his body wearing a bored, deeply disappointed expression, as though the fight had not satisfied her bloodlust in the slightest.
Suddenly, she froze.
She noticed a certain, heavy gaze resting on her.
Because she had lived on the frozen frontier her entire life, hunting Danger Beasts every single day just to survive, some survival traits had long since become pure instinct to her.
For example, being able to tell with a single bite whether raw meat was edible or poisoned, or being keenly sensitive to the smell of fresh blood from miles away.
And, more importantly, being able to instantly notice when a predator's gaze was locked onto her back.
Even though there were thousands of cheering eyes on her at that exact moment, her primal instincts could still perfectly distinguish which ones carried genuine danger and which ones were just harmless noise.
And the heavy suffocating gaze that just made a freezing chill run straight down her spine, sending survival warning signals screaming through her mind, was definitely not something simple.
She instantly snapped her head around, searching the VIP stands.
Her ice-blue hair flared out wildly with the sudden motion.
At the exact moment their eyes met across the vast arena, Noah was genuinely a little surprised that she had managed to pick his specific 'aura' out of a crowd of thousands under these chaotic circumstances.
He hadn't been projecting any killing intent.
His gaze had contained absolutely no emotion at all.
Standing in the dirt, Esdeath was equally surprised by what she saw.
'A kid?'
Looking at the finely dressed "young noble" sitting in the private box, who seemed to be exactly the same age as her, a deeply interested expression crossed her face.
Her lips curled into a sharp, dangerous smile.
Her blue eyes gleamed with raw excitement, looking exactly like a starved beast locking onto fresh, exotic prey.
'A battle maniac, huh.' Noah didn't even need to use Appraisal.
That psychotic expression alone was enough to make her entire character perfectly clear.
If they fought barehanded in the ring right now without him using any of his skills, he would probably lose to her raw physical power.
As for what the outcome would be if both sides used actual weapons, that was hard to say.
Weapons were strictly forbidden in this specific martial arts tournament, but judging from her fluid movements, she didn't seem like the type who relied heavily on weapons anyway.
Her body was the weapon.
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Some part is missing from chapter 222-224, it has been fixed!