By the Grace of the Gods (LN) - Volume 15 - Chapter 5

Chapter 9, Episode 14: Rollercoaster

The hulking man who appeared out of the woods with his war hammer slung over his shoulder was—if I could trust the words of those I encountered at the last base—the S-rank adventurer Glen. With nothing but brute strength, the warrior had earned both the moniker of Raging Dragon and the pinnacle rank of adventurers that was reserved for those who made lifelong contributions to the world at large. All I knew about him came from what I’d been told in the City of Lost Souls...

“Some call me the strongest knight in history,” Sever had told me. “The strongest knight of our time, however, is Glen.” Sever had served as Glen’s opponent during the Raging Dragon’s S-rank trial, and lost. His defeat was one of the catalysts for him to seriously consider retirement, Sever had added.

Comparing the strengths of any two fighters—who wielded different weapons and strategies—was no easy equation, but it seemed like I could expect Glen to be as fierce a fighter as Sever, at least.

As I contemplated my next move in the S-rank adventurer’s presence, he asked, “Did you kill that snake?”

“Yes. It attacked me,” I answered. “Was it your game?”

“Nah. It doesn’t die easy, does it? I’ve killed a few myself. It’s such a chore every time. And by the time it’s dead, it’s nothing but mashed meat. Nothing left to sell. I’m impressed you killed it so cleanly,” he said, circling the dead snake and taking it in with genuine interest. Then, he suddenly turned to me. “Cool. Do you mind if I punch you?”

“Did you think I wouldn’t?” I blurted out, taken aback by his sudden leap in thought. Maybe something irritated him, and the emotion was amplified by the curse on me. I quickly explained all this to Glen, hoping he’d see reason.

“Whatever curse you’re talking about, it doesn’t matter. I got nothing against you. Actually, I kind of like you,” said the Raging Dragon.

“Really?”

“Yeah. That’s why I want to punch you.”

“You want to punch me because you like me?” I asked.

“It’s fun fighting against a good match.”

“And...?” While I struggled to comprehend him, Glen just beamed at me. True to his word, I didn’t sense a hint of animosity in his smile. He really wanted to fight me for no other reason. He’s a berserker, I realized. They really do exist... I’d come across all sorts of people in this world, but none had been like him. “Why’d I have to run into someone like this in the depths of the woods of all places?”

“You said that out loud,” Glen pointed out.

Sorry. “When we first met, you didn’t seem all that interested in me,” I said.

“Where’s the fun in fighting losers who won’t go past that place?” he countered, as if it were self-explanatory.

From his point of view, the people of that base weren’t worth his time, and he’d considered me on the same level as them...until he saw that I’d come this far and taken out an immortal snake all on my own. “Now you think I have a chance of being worth your time,” I said.

“Exactly. All right, let’s fight!”

“I never said I would.”

“Man, you’re cramping my style...” Glen grumbled. “Fine. One punch. You can’t say no to that.” Would he ever say anything not insane?

“I can hit you back, right?” While I wasn’t too keen on going along with the unreasonable challenge, it might be more work for me to talk sense into a guy like this. If a quick sparring session would satisfy and get him out of my hair, great. If he was going to attack me for real, I’d deal with him the same way I dealt with people and monsters who became a threat, S-rank or not. It still didn’t sit right with me, but I wanted to get this over with.

Apparently, my words were exactly what he was hoping to hear. “No duh. What’s the fun in you not fighting back?”

“That again...” I sighed, tossing my lance a good distance aside.

“You’re not going to use that thing?”

“It’s a fistfight, isn’t it?” I pointed out.

“It would have been A-OK with me. But this is more fun!” Glen chucked his war hammer with gleeful abandon, and began rolling his arms and shoulders. Then, he picked a small branch off of the ground. “We start when this thing hits the ground. Cool?”

“That’s fine.”

“Here we go!” Standing a few meters away from me, he made a slight motion, as if merely tossing the branch over his shoulder. However, the branch rocketed all the way to the top of the heatwood trees—which must have been no shorter than forty meters—before finally beginning its descent. The instant the branch hit the ground, a fist was in front of my face. All he’d done was come at me with a right punch, straight and simple. There were no tricks beyond bolstering himself with energy.

I moved on instinct, but his simple punch packed far too much force behind it. As soon as my right palm hit his forearm to deflect it, I knew I didn’t have enough strength to do so. Even though I’d managed to get my left hand as well, all I could manage was to twist away by making our point of contact a fulcrum. By a hair’s breadth, I’d dodged the punch. Feeling cold sweat on my cheek, I threw a full-force kick into his unguarded ribs. I had no time or intention to hold back at all, but the impact I felt on my foot told me I’d done no more damage than a light tap. Using the momentum of my foot being pushed back by his muscles, I managed to put some distance between us. After a successful dodge and counterattack, all I had to show for it was the slight tingling in my hands and foot. There was something else just as astonishing, though.

“He’s that fast with zero technique?” I couldn’t believe it. His punch had no subtlety or sign of any training. He seemed like he’d fought his fair share of fights, but almost as a street thug instead of any kind of martial artist.

A simple punch with no tricks beyond using physical energy nearly caved my face in. My shock began to ebb, rolling back into admiration for the unbelievable strength of an S-rank.

“Gah! Dammit! I screwed it up!” Glen shouted. I readied myself for a fight, but he only kept barking, “It would have been more fun if I’d given up a few more hits! But I was the one who said one punch... Oh, well. It’s over.”

Apparently, he wasn’t going to fight me further, and didn’t even seem that upset about this outcome. He was apparently the type to adhere to his own rules and promises, even if he didn’t really listen to others when they talked. As much of a pain as he was to deal with, he wasn’t a sinister slime bag like the guys at the base on the Edge.

Seeing how frustrated he was, I couldn’t help but ask, “You want to fight me that badly?”

“Huh? Of course I do. Most of the time, I don’t need more than one punch. They can’t dodge it. They just go flying. Once in a while, I find someone who can take a hit, but they can’t hit back. You know how rare it is to find someone like you? I’m missing out by not fighting you right now,” he grumbled, like he couldn’t stand to be bored anymore.

“Oh...” I figured him out, I thought. He’s too strong. He was so strong that even most people who fought for a living—let alone anyone who didn’t—never stood a chance against him. Because most of his fights ended in one hit, he asked to punch me—not to fight me. For him, it was much rarer to get into an actual fight.

“And then the eyes,” Glen added. “Even the ones who can take a punch lose their will to fight after I punch them. At that point, it’s no different from punching out someone in one hit. You know the type. Like the guys who were squawking when we first met.”

“Oh, at the base,” I confirmed.

“Ever since I beat the crap out of them, they won’t start anything. They’ll yap that rank doesn’t matter until they run for the hills when they get one whiff of a rematch with me,” he snarled.

Those guys at the base really did have weasel energy. They weren’t weak by any means, but stronger than most thugs or thieves I’d encountered outside of the forest. And yet, they’d turned into sniveling cowards in Glen’s presence. Glen’s point was that those guys would never try to punch up.

“But you were ready to fight me when I started shouting,” he said. “Unlike those chickens, you kept both feet on the ground, like you think you could kick my ass if I gave you a reason to. You have more cards up your sleeves, don’t you?”

That was a little surprising. He’d seemed carefree, like he paid the world around him no mind at all, but now...it seemed that there was more to this S-rank adventurer than met the eye.

Like he said, as absurdly powerful as Glen was, I had a few ideas on how to deal with him. I could retrieve the bloodsucker lance instantaneously with Space magic at any time, and I could also wield the mud around us through the mud slimes that still remained in the area. Even if I couldn’t defeat him, I was sure I could manufacture enough of an opening for me to flee with Space magic.

“Ha! I like you more and more,” said Glen. “You’re saying you’ll kick my ass if I give you the chance. Gah! I really should have made it last longer!” He bellowed to the sky, scratching his mud-speckled head. Then, like a shrimp snapping up, he turned his eyes to me. “What’s your name? I never asked.”

There was a light in his eyes that gave me a really bad feeling about answering him, but I did. “Ryoma Takebayashi.”

“All right, Ryoma! I’m going to tag along for a while!”

“Why?!” I’d missed my chance to run—not that I’d really had a chance—and my encounter with the S-rank Raging Dragon ended in a worse fashion than I could have imagined.