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I intentionally entered the back street to avoid the human eyes. The other party seems to have realized that too and showed themselves before me. Quite a sportsmanlike attitude I would say.

The one before me appeared to be a young girl. I say ‘appeared to be’ because she was hiding her face and I couldn’t distinguish her features.

Her completely black attire was practically screaming that she was into some shady business.

“Heh, it seems you do know when to give up.”
“…”

The girl—let’s just call her that for convenience’s sake—didn’t respond to my words and drew short swords from her back. She faced me with clear killing intent.

“Oh, you wanna go?”
“………………Of course. And who are you supposed to be?”
“Who? I’m a beautiful little girl as you can see, you know?”

The voice that came after a little pause sounded quite young. I cracked a joke, making it sound a little provocative too, and waited to see how she’d react. I didn’t know who she was, but she’d been following me ever since I left the academy, and yet she hasn’t shown any signs of harming me until now.

But now that she did, there must have been a reason that caused it.

“I thought you were a girl with influential parents being her only grace, but you discovered me and even had the nerve to tempt me. And you don’t even budge after receiving my killing intent…”
“Oh, that? I’m just used to it.”

I was constantly in a kill or be killed situation in my previous life. As if some little girl’s killing intent would affect me now. No well, I was a little girl myself now, but still.

“You… Could it be that you replaced her while she was away from her parents…”
“No no, this is how I’ve always been, y’know?”
“There’s no way a mere girl could shrug off my killing intent!”
“What are you asking me to do then!”

She brandished her swords at my words. Full of killing intent. And hostility. However, there was no malice. I didn’t know why, but I just couldn’t hate this strange enemy.

“I don’t know, you don’t really look like a scoundrel…”
“Shut up! You took Lady Nicole’s form and approached King Elliot. How outrageous! I shall reveal your true colors!”
“Oh, so you’re Elliot’s subordinate?”
“…Y-You did not hear that.”

So she’s a clumsy girl, huh? If she was Elliot’s subordinate, then she must be a guard employed to guard him for sure. She was probably a secret agent that guarded him without him even knowing about it. Though, I felt like she was a little too young for that.

“Here I go!”

Warning me about her attack already disqualified her as a secret agent. If it were me, I would’ve silently laid my traps and sealed the enemy’s movements by now.

Either way, I felt like it wouldn’t be too bad to ‘play’ with this girl, so I decided to keep her some company. I grabbed my threads on the left hand and sent them to strengthen my underfoot and right arm.

Rushing straight at me like that was a dead giveaway of her character. I dodged her slash by kicking the alley wall and jumping over her. Right as I landed behind her, I instantly moved to sweep her legs. Since she was with Elliot, I couldn’t just injure her, after all.

However, she decided to stop my leg sweep by bracing herself on the ground. She probably judged that she would be able to stop it based on how light I was. Observing my appearance and making the judgment to block rather than evade my attack showed that she was surprisingly level-headed.

I returned my leg after it was warded off and took some distance with one rotation. The next moment, her fist landed where I previously stood. By bracing herself on the ground, it also lowered her center of gravity. She used it to her advantage and attacked with a punch, so her decisions were quite good.

“Ah, this turned out quite fun.”
“Stop messing around!”

She was still far too inexperienced from my eyes. But I could clearly feel her great potential. People always treated me like a kid ever since I reincarnated, so seeing her putting up such a desperate struggle put a smile on my face.

“Grrr, take this seriously!”
“I mean… I feel like that would be a waste.”

Lately, I’ve been one-sidedly tormented by Maxwell and even lost to a monster out of carelessness, so I had quite a bit of stress piled up.

In the first place, I specialized in personal combat, so the monsters were out of my expertise. Even so, I grouped up with the heroes and fought the Evil Dragon… that was as far from my field as you could possibly take.

After I reincarnated, they kept teaching us about the monsters in the magic academy. The previous battle with the Poison Monster was the prime example of what would happen with insufficient knowledge.

I drew the katana from my back and met her swords. She was using short swords, so the katana was more than enough to block them.

We stopped and exchanged a few blows like that. She clearly specialized in fast battles. Mixing a short sword and hand to hand combat was quite hard to do for people other than me.

I blocked her left sword with the katana, dodged her right sword, and responded with kicks and punches. She cleverly reacted to them and dodged.

“Oh boy, this feels like the training with Cloud!”
“Damn you, are you making a fool out of me!?”

Her face was flushed from anger—I mean, I couldn’t see it, but probably—but I had to return already or Finia would worry. I felt a bit sorry, but I had to end the battle and have some talk with her.

Fortunately, she hasn’t said anything that was linked to my identity, so it should be easy to convince her that I’m the real deal.

She rushed at me with a slash. I responded to her slash with my own that had my weight put into it, and flicked it off. However, doing that also broke my posture so I couldn’t attack.

We were both in each other’s range, both with broken postures. The first to have recovered from the recoil was me, who was strengthened by threads. No, perhaps the threads had no relation to this.

I let go of my katana and closed the distance empty-handed. The range was too short for the sword use. She made a big blunder and hurriedly tried to retract her sword.

Because she couldn’t think of letting go of her weapon during the battle. She didn’t yet have enough courage to do it while at a disadvantage. I grabbed her elbow and dragged her down into a pinning technique.

“Wha-!? Oww-owowowowow!”

I stretched her joint and put her in a reverse armlock. Then I pushed down on her shoulder with my body weight.

“Ready to give up?”
“I will not give in to evil!”
“Hng!”
“Pigyaaaaa!?”

And thus, the pitiful girl had surrendered. I did not expect her to hold out that long.