I Possessed the Heroine’s Teacher

The second match took place after a relatively short break. It seemed like they had considered the audience’s circumstances.

Since the next match was a hand-to-hand combat match, I threw off my flowing robe and entered the match wearing only a shirt and long pants. If this had been in the past, I probably would have fought in almost just my underwear, but it was a bit embarrassing to do that in front of people.

The announcer shouted into a sound amplifier, which worked like a microphone.

“The first match, the sword fight, was an overwhelming victory for Werner! But how about the second match?!!! The hand-to-hand combat match!!! Let’s begin!!!”

Hoon was glaring at me, his hands wrapped in cloth. It looked like he had even taped up his hands. He must have seen it somewhere. What an idiot.

“I will show you the Akahara family’s vision of martial arts!”

“Yeah, yeah, just start already.”

I figured I wouldn’t kill him, so I’d only need to break one of his arms or legs. After all, this was a best-of-three match, and if I win now, I won’t even need to go to the magic match… But wait, I’m a magician. I haven’t been using much magic. Maybe I should change my class to a magic martial artist…

Ding!

The bell rang to start the match, and Hoon began to keep his distance, eyeing me warily. It seemed that his trauma from getting too close and being destroyed in the first match hadn’t left him. What an idiot, though, what difference would it make?

It seems he doesn’t know that maintaining distance against me, Werner Alton, the nine-time fang of Metsudo fang(KENGAN ASHURA), is meaningless.

“Tch… What are you doing? Hurry up and come at me!”

“Heh, I’m just laughing at how pathetic you are.”

“What’s so funny? Are you trying to insult me?”

“You, who don’t even understand the world, dared to meddle so confidently in the relationship between my fiancée and me, and now, like a little girl, you’re backing away. Isn’t that funny?”

I was deliberately trying to provoke Hoon by getting under his skin. Trash talk is a tactic that works well across cultures and times. Judging by the vein popping out of his forehead, it seemed to have worked pretty well.

“There’s no such thing as trash martial arts… I believe that, but if the heir is like this, your martial arts ancestors will cry. A piece of trash like you is the heir… That’s what your martial arts ancestors will say.”

“Don’t insult the Akahara style!”

“I didn’t insult your martial arts, though. I only insulted you.”

Unable to hold back his anger, Hoon lunged at me. It was like watching a horny pig charging at me just because I scratched his ego… It was so ridiculous, I almost cried from laughter.

“This bastard dares to disrespect the Akahara style!”

Hoon’s slow jab was easy to avoid. With punches like that, he couldn’t even catch a rat. Karate, akido, and judo are all strong martial arts from Japan, but why was the style passed down in his family so weak? Martial arts are meant to protect the weak, not turn them into idiots.

“I told you, I didn’t insult you. But you seem to have taken my insult as an insult to your organization… You seem to have a strong sense of belonging.”

“Shut up!”

“But do you know? The more someone has a strong sense of belonging to a certain group, the more they end up depending on that group, putting their life on the line for it, because they have nothing else to rely on.”

Wasn’t that what Werner did when he was younger? He felt proud of being part of Zig’s party and clung to it excessively. He had nothing else to lean on psychologically, so he hid in the shadow of the group, and he ended up identifying himself with the organization. I had seen so many people like that.

“What are you trying to say?”

“Well, to summarize what I want to say… Hmm…”

I had to summarize what I wanted to say as simply and clearly as possible.

“You didn’t have any friends, did you? With your sudden temper and your extreme sense of belonging… From what I see, there’s no way you had friends. Could it be that you didn’t have any friends during your hardships, so now that you’ve come here, you feel like you’re something special, drunk on that sense of superiority? Did you come after me, someone from the ‘higher class’ you were jealous of back in your hometown, to fight me because of that?”

“You bastard!!!”

Now, Hoon had completely lost his composure and began throwing wild punches. Looking at him, it seemed like there was no such thing as the Akahara style martial arts. No martial art would teach punches like that.

What a pitiful fool.

I simply scooped him up and slammed him down onto the ground. The sound of his bones and flesh hitting the stone floor echoed.

He couldn’t even perform a proper breakfall and absorbed the shock directly.

“With that pathetic knowledge and whatever skill you got from that goddess or whatever… maybe you should focus on making friends instead of trying to impress women? Or are you one of those types who thinks you’re a lonely genius, thinking it’s foolish to hang out with friends? And yet, you’re horny enough to act like a sex-crazed monkey around women. Seems like you wanted to play hero with my fiancée while you were at it, huh?”

“Shut… up…”

“How pathetic. You’re the typical loser. People like you, who have nothing of substance, convince themselves that they are special. I bet even the claim about your family’s inherited swordsmanship or martial arts is a lie. Are you brainwashing yourself into thinking you’re special? You can’t even love yourself as you truly are—so who will ever truly love you?”

“Shut up! Shut up! Shut up! I was reincarnated in this other world! How dare you, an extra who should disappear and offer me heroines, treat me like this! You and everyone at the school think you can look down on me!!!”

“Sigh… there’s nothing more to say to you. It’s not that those people were fools, they were probably just trying to keep things clean. No one with any sense of decency would want to be close to the likes of you. Maybe instead of living in your delusions, you should know your place and live honestly. Who knows, maybe there will be people who’ll approach you. Well, that’s a long shot, though.”

I turned my back on him and started to leave the arena. A fool like him probably wouldn’t be able to stand up with the amount of damage he had taken. But as I walked a few steps, an unexpected event occurred.

Hoon began choking me from behind. But… does he not even know how to apply a proper choke? He seemed completely clueless about martial arts.

“You cowardly piece of shit! Provoking people from behind! Using cheap tricks to throw me! Don’t treat me like a fool!!!”

If throwing someone over your shoulder is cowardly, then I guess all judo practitioners are cowards, what an idiot.

“Ah… did you just call me a fool? Calling me a fool… looks like you’ve overestimated yourself.”

At that, Hoon screamed and put as much strength as he could into the choke.

But no matter how hard he tried, his form was so poor that it didn’t even reach the level of a proper massage.

I decided I would just slam him down once more. I didn’t even feel like breaking his arms or legs. It was just so pathetic, and it disgusted me.

“Sigh… let’s finish this soon…”

“The trash who taught you that cowardly technique! You! Everyone here! You’re all just stepping stones for my otherworldly reincarnation!!!”

“…What did you just say?”

The thread of reason snapped completely.

.

.

.

“What, didn’t you hear me?! You’re all stepping stones for my otherworldly life…!”

In an instant, I broke free from his sloppy choke and jabbed both of my thumbs into his jaw joints. His jaw dislocated immediately. As he groaned in pain, I started to stomp on his jaw.

“Ah, hey!!! Ah, hey!!! Ugh! Ugh!!!”

“Didn’t I tell you that killing after someone surrenders isn’t the way to win? Now surrender, you idiot.”

With his jaw in that state, he couldn’t even pronounce a word, but I couldn’t ignore his strong will to survive. I took off my shirt.

“I’m someone who follows the rules. So there shouldn’t be any unfortunate events where you don’t surrender.”

“Ahaoi ah! Ahaoi ah!”

I shoved my shirt into his mouth. It must have been hard to speak now. I didn’t need to hear a pig’s squeal while I was slaughtering him.

“You said… stepping stone…?”

I knocked him down and stomped on his mouth again, over and over. His white shirt, shoved into his mouth, began to turn red.

“Does it hurt? If it does, shout surrender… then I’ll stop…”

I grabbed his hair and punched his cheekbone hard. Then I stomped on his ribs, followed by his legs, breaking them, then gouged his eyes out, and next, I stomped on his fingers and crushed them… The sound of blood splattering, people screaming, and the gurgling noise from the bastard in front of me was enough to make me lose my sanity.

When I came to, there was nothing left that could be called a person, only a chunk of meat in front of me. The only trace that identified him was the blood-stained shirt, now completely devoid of white.

The stone floor was soaked in blood, with the mangled chunk of meat at its center.

“I killed him before he could surrender, so that makes my victory, right?”