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“My name is Koise.”

‘Okay… I didn’t ask…’

I really didn’t care about whatever he said his name was. All I cared for was finding my friends again and getting away from him alive.

“…”

There was an awkward silence as if he was waiting for me to say something else.

I took the time to think of ways that I could escape or defeat him. From the massive bow he held, he looked to be an archer class of some sort. My best bet was to close the distance, especially as such a massive bow would probably be next to impossible to fire at point-blank range.

He wasn’t standing too far from me either, close enough that he had been able to toss the health potion to me with a simple, underhanded toss.

Not only that, but he had to have known that I specialized in close range by then as well, so he had some hidden trump card that gave him confidence.

[[New Quest!

Defeat the enemy before you or escape!]]

{{New Quest!

Peacefully resolve the misunderstanding!}}

Two quest windows appeared in my vision briefly before I willed them away. It was clear that the man didn’t want to talk, but it wouldn’t hurt to at least try. Whatever skill he had used, it would take the rest of the Lions some time to scale the cliff face.

“They attacked me first, you know…”

The man summoned an arrow from thin air, easily as long as my extended arm.

“I hired them to help me Awaken, they tried to steal from me and leave me for dead, and things just got out of hand…”

It was pointless. The man simply placed the arrow on the bowstring and began drawing back on it, slowly, as if telling me to get ready.

The chilly wind blew intermittently, sending little drifts of snow between us. His ponytail flapped in the wind and the cold bit at the exposed flesh where the jutting rocks had pierced me.

There wasn’t anywhere to run in the wide, snowy field. Though there were ridges and hills, his bow likely had a frightening range, and I wouldn’t be able to run anywhere. He could just pin me until the rest of his guild arrived and flushed me out.

I only had 50 mana remaining, though I still had a few skillpoints from leveling up that I quickly used.

[[STR: 18+4

END: 18

AGI: 12+4

PER: 10

MAG: 10

MANA: 10]]

I had one free skill point that I put into AGI again. I was pretty sure by then that the other three were going to be my dump stats because I couldn’t afford to lose out on speed, strength, or endurance as a close-range fighter.

[[AGI: 13+4]]

I wasn’t quite sure where that put me stat-wise, but it should have been at around level 6 or 7. Unfortunately, I didn’t have the extra skills that a higher level would have.

My stamina was already low from having run so far and using the base form of Eruption twice while scaling the cliff.

I used «Second Wind» for the first time.

The skill surged through my body like a refreshing wind, instantly making me feel like I had experienced a full night’s rest. Unfortunately, it was a skill that could only be used once per day, but it was extremely powerful when considering the fact that stamina was a resource in using my Second System abilities.

I lunged forward, trying to close the distance between us as fast as possible.

Thwack.

His arrow left the string, flashing towards me in a blur.

[[«Walk it Off».]]

I reinforced my earthen gauntlet as much as I could as I raised it between the projectiles and myself as a shield, not taking any chances after I had previously seen just how destructive his arrows could be.

[[Mana: 25/100]]

That left me with a single skill use remaining.

“Ugh…”

The arrow struck the gauntlet, shattering it and knocking me off balance. It sent me tripping into the snow as I fell to the ground with one hand extended out to catch myself briefly on the snowy rocks before continuing my run. I judged that he wouldn’t be able to get a second arrow out in time and summoned the earth again, drawing slightly on my stamina.

I noticed as I approached that the man didn’t seem surprised.

He remained in place with a cool, expressionless look on his face.

It was probably a trap of some sort, and I still hadn’t ascertained why he seemed so confident while being so close to me, but I had no choice but to find out.

Woosh.

My gauntleted hand swung through the air at him, moving as fast as my «Strike» had back when I had first unlocked it due to the increase in my attributes. With my bonuses to Strength, it probably would have been enough to crack a boulder, let alone a man.

Thunk.

The man intercepted my fist with the string of his bow with awe-inspiring precision, slowing my punch and allowing him to easily slide my fist to his side.

I caught a glint of steel from the corner of my eye as the man smoothly pivoted around me and stabbed something towards my side.

Shift.

Earth slid down from my hand, leaving the skin bare as it reformed into a protective barrier at my side, sending me sliding through the snow with the impact—the man had to have had massive amounts of Strength to send me sliding like that.

My eyes drifted towards Koise’s other hand, which held another long arrow in it that he had used as a sort of dagger to stab at my side.

Unfortunately, the «Walk it Off» skill only restored my stamina, not my mana.

With a single skill usage worth of mana left, I wasn’t sure of how it could be used to get me out of the situation I found myself in.

It was apparent from our first exchange that the man, despite being an archer, had a higher Strength and Agility stat than I did. I was unsure as to the rest of his stats, but they were probably similarly high from either a class boost or item effects, probably both.

While I did have the Second System skills to help me, they still required me to actually hit my target.

My eyes took the moment to drift over the wide and uneven snowfield again, searching for something that I might have missed the first time, anything.

It wasn’t actually my eyes that caught something, but my new sense for heat.

Standing there, I felt an unusual warmth that I wouldn’t have otherwise noticed with my enhanced sense wafting from one of the crevices in the snow that I then noticed was unusually absent of ice and snow.

Some of the rock itself was revealed around the crevice opening, which was only about as long as my forearm and as wide as a finger—certainly not big enough for me to run away into.

It did give me an idea, though.

The idea I had in mind did leave a bit up to chance and luck, but wasn’t that life? I had gotten lucky with the Second System, I had gotten lucky with the anti-sleep effects it gave me, I had gotten lucky with how «Walk it Off» worked with it…

My luck had held out so far, what was one more push?

Fwoo…

I exhaled a deep breath as I surged the energy through my body again, slowly sliding my feet along towards the crevice, walking in an orbit around Koise while he placed the arrow into his bowstring and waited—as if hoping I would make another move.

He frowned.

“Is that it?”

He sounded almost disappointed that I wasn’t going to attack him again. The guy had some sort of lust for battle, the crazy sort that would either die when he bit off more than he could chew or who would shake the foundations of the world.

The former was far more common than the latter.

My plan formed in my mind, I stopped next to the crevice and waited.

‘How disappointing.’

Koise held the arrow for a moment and willed the adventurer to make another move towards him.

Not only had the man not returned the exchange of names that was customary in honorable duels, but he had also given up after the first exchange.

While Koise had been surprised by the man’s reaction speed and resilience in blocking his arrow, the attack itself had been nothing special. The man simply had some sort of rare fighter-type elemental class that had enabled him to surprise others with new skills, nothing that Koise hadn’t adapted to before.

‘May you have better luck in the afterlife…’

With a twinge of regret that the fight couldn’t have lasted longer, Koise fully drew the arrow back.

[[«Draw».]]

The man simply stood and watched him through the lazily drifting flecks of snow.

Wearing the outfit of a Lion scout, the man’s coat was torn and already soaked through with snow after having landed on the bank of it.

A fleck of snow landed on the arrow’s tip, melting as it landed and becoming an almost infinitesimal droplet of water.

[[«Draw».]]

He activated the skill again, the arrow pulled back even farther and audibly creaking as the bow lost a few points of durability.

He at least planned to do the man the honor of a quick death.

[[«Release».]]