Ascension: Online

(Furuwa's Perspective)

The moment the battle began, I activated all the stat—boosting skills I had.

'STR: Boost.'

'AGI: Boost.'

'INT: Boost.'

'DEX: Boost.'

There was no LUC stat boost, unfortunately, but I wasn't planning on relying on luck to get through this anyway. And finally—

'Acceleration.'

As I began running, I sped up my speed using this skill, then sprinted all-out towards Koroth. This was my first plan — draw out his attack, then narrowly dodge it and finish him in one blow while his fist was still outreached. Such a strategy would be better for Assassins, but Knights could play whichever role is necessary — exactly what I liked about this class. Very versatile and adaptable.

As expected, Koroth was ready to meet my attack with his fist, but right before he hit me, I jumped upwards, soaring through the air as I landed behind him.

Not wasting any time, I brought up my sword and prepared to cut downwards, but Koroth was faster than I expected. He managed to avoid my attack just in time, stumbling forward with a very stiff and clumsy front roll.

The audience gasped in shock.

"That's the first time Koroth moved from his spot!"

"Will the Unshakable Mountain be shook after all?!"

I gritted my teeth. "Tch… that didn't work. Plan B it is."

As Koroth spun around and moved in towards me slowly to unleash another punch, I nimbly dodged out of the way, once again somersaulting over him.

However, this time, he wasn't about to let me just fly by that easily.

He reached up with his other arm and jumped, grabbing me by the hell and slamming me down onto the stage.

"Wha- ngh!"

I cried out in pain from the force of the impact. My head was shaking and the world was spinning, my vision getting hazy.

"Ooh…" the audience collectively winced in empathy.

Given these symptoms, it seemed I had a concussion… however!

'Status Ailment: Cure.'

Immediately, the dizziness and haziness went away, though the pain on my head and body still remained. I opened my eyes wide to see Koroth preparing to pummel me straight into the ground. However… he was hesitating — waiting.

Not bothering to figure out why, I immediately grabbed my sword laying beside me, and cut towards his arm pinning me down.

Koroth let go of me, jumping back a short distance as I rolled on the ground and got to my feet in an instant.

"You… why did you hesitate there?" I asked, narrowing my eyes. "You could've punched me straight through the floor there… why stop?"

"…" Koroth didn't respond, and instead got into a fighting stance once more. He had never done this to his other opponents, since he finished them all in one hit.

"Well, whatever… if you're going to hesitate, that's your loss…!"

I charged towards him once more, using Accelerate to boost my speed again. He prepared to receive my blow with his own punch, but obviously, I wasn't stupid enough to take it head-on.

'Intrinsic Focus!'

At the last moment, I used this skill to suddenly sharpen my senses by about 50 times, allowing me to perceive his punch at reduced flow of time. This made it possible for me to dodge his devastating blow, tilting slightly to the right as I prepared to drive the sword into Koroth's body without any hesitation.

However, to my surprise, my sword… did not pierce through. Hell, it didn't even draw blood.

I noticed Koroth's skin color change from the dark tan to silver, almost like steel. The audience cheered in anticipation.

Sensing danger, I immediately backed off.

"Well, that's not good…" I muttered.

Koroth's skin was now made of pure metal — his shirt ripped, unable to withstand the expansion of his body's mass. His breathing turned ragged and heavy as he closed in on me, one step at a time.

Yeah… there's no way I'm fighting back against him when he's like this.

With any luck, this 'metal' form of his had a time limit, and would run out soon. If not… if not, well, that would be a problem.

As he smashed down on the ground in front of me, sending a shockwave powerful enough to shake the entire city, I jumped upwards lightly, taking advantage of the fact that both his hands were currently on the ground.

Fortunately, Koroth was already slow normally, but in this form, he was even slower. This made getting away from him quite easy — I just had to make sure I didn't blunder again like last time and end up getting caught.

And so, the ferocious duel soon turned into a game of tag.

Several minutes later, I noticed Koroth slowing down even further. He deteriorated to a walking pace, panting heavily. It seemed he would be running out of energy soon. I could only hope this metal form of his would go away along with it. After all, I was running out of stamina as well, jumping around all the time.

Eventually, Koroth just stopped and fell backward, crashing onto the stage in exhaustion. Slowly, his silver skin returned to normal, signaling that his metal transformation was over.

Hesitantly, I walked over, and pointed my sword at him.

Koroth raised his two hands up in surrender, holding them in the air for a brief two seconds before letting them slump back down again. It seemed he was truly completely out of energy.

"The winner of this fight is… Chiaki Furuwa!" Zhen Yuhan declared as the drums began being struck once more.

I took a deep breath and opened up my System, putting my sword away. Then, sparing one final skeptical glance back at Koroth's panting body, I walked off the stage.

*****

(Kaze's Perspective)

"Welcome back," I said once Furuwa returned to Hina-nee and I. "Well done."

"That fight… it felt weird," she narrowed her eyes at me.

"How so?" I asked in confusion.

"… You did something, didn't you?"

"Do what?"

"… Talk to Koroth. I don't know when or how, but you spoke to him before he fought me, right? One way or another, you convinced him to let me win."

"And what leads you to that conclusion?" I taunted, continuing to feign ignorance.

"He hesitated before punching me. Back there, when he had me pinned to the ground, if he had just threw his fist, I would've been respawning by now," Furuwa analyzed. "And yet, he didn't, for some mysterious reason. Tell me — if there wasn't someone giving him a reason to do this, why would he do it?"

"Hm, the analysis is pretty logical, but how can you be so sure it was me? What makes you think I have the means to manipulate a character such as Koroth?"

"Who else would bother doing this, all to make sure I won?"

I shrugged. "Beats me. Secret lover or something?"

"Haha, you're real funny," Furuwa said with a completely neutral and unamused face.

"Look… I'm just a normal high school student who got bullied in the past — the type of guy you can find just about anywhere," I said, sighing exasperatedly. "I don't know even know how to make friends, much less manipulate someone to do my bidding. Sorry, but you're overestimating me."

"Oh, really…" she muttered, before turning away, not wanting to talk anymore. However, I knew full well this conversation wasn't over. Without a doubt, Furuwa would bring it up again later, when there were less people around.

Put simply… this was bad. Furuwa seemed to be dead certain on the fact that I had manipulated Koroth into letting her win.

I'll give her credit — it was true, I made a move behind the scenes. Right before the fight began, I snuck onto the stage using Vanishing Steps's invisibility, and whispered into Koroth's ear. He knew who I was from the voice, but no one else could hear because of the loud drums going on at the time.

I had told him that I would get him the three herbs he needed — Firesaffron, Bloodmint, and Hailflower. All he needed to do was let Furuwa win this fight.

Of course, he had no reason to accept my baseless proposal with nothing to back it up whatsoever… that is, if I didn't have some handy information on the guy.

Sometimes, the threat of doing something is more dangerous than the 'something' itself. That was the theory I was using here. I had threatened to leak his demon identity to everyone here, thus disqualifying him from the tournament and probably even executed right then and there.

Sure, it was pretty evil to blackmail someone like this, but I needed Furuwa to win, and I was ready to use any pawns I had at my disposal. She would become a useful chess piece for me later on — one far more useful than Koroth was. Reason being, she was a player — she had endless potential to continue growing and getting stronger.

Koroth was a demon, and may be stronger than her right now, but I'm thinking in the long term here. Eventually, Furuwa will definitely surpass Koroth — and that's when this decision I made today would turn out to be the right one.

Besides, it's not like I'm completely scamming the poor guy. I was actually planning on using the wish I was granted to get the three herbs he needs, if I get first place — which I was confident I could take.

However… something told me I wouldn't even need to. This was the Blessing Nature Sect, after all. Herbs and whatnot was their specialty.

I purposely had Koroth not just outright forfeit the match, so that he could demonstrate his skills a little bit. The mayor had stated that even if you don't get into the top four, there was still a chance to make it into the sect as long as the elders present determined you worthy. That was my end goal — to have Koroth enter the sect as well.

That said, this wasn't 100% necessary. However, Furuwa getting into the sect to stay by my side was. It would be difficult to control a pawn too far away from me.

Therefore, I made the decisions I made today. Now, I just had to pray the elders didn't detect my invisibility earlier — they probably didn't, considering they didn't say anything — and come up with a lie good enough to satisfy the powerful yet cunning chess piece known as Chiaki Furuwa.

This girl was a two-headed snake. Depending on how I used her, she could bite both the enemy… and myself.