Chương 35: Life or Death

Jonny had been in many fights, but he had only been unfortunate enough to fight someone with a weapon twice. Well, three times, if you counted the one where he died. In both of those first two fights, though, Jonny had a distinct size and skill advantage, and he was able to overpower his opponent without suffering anything more than superficial cuts. This time, he was outsized, and while he didn't doubt his skill, from the other man's demeanor and the way he held the knife, he knew what he was doing.

Jonny was both excited and apprehensive. Excited because he was finally getting a chance at a real fight again, and apprehensive because he knew this would be unlike anything he had done before. This was a life or death battle, and he was at a disadvantage, and unlike when he fought the primaboar, he had no clue how big that disadvantage was. I'm not in the octagon, he told himself. There are no rules. The man casually deflected another bolt of mana from Marianne, and stepped closer, holding his knife at the ready.

Marianne continued trying to shield Jonny, but Jonny took a silent step to the left behind her, giving him a clear path to the assassin. Whether the assassin saw him or not, Jonny didn't know. The mask completely covered his eyes. It didn't matter. Jonny didn't need to see his eyes to predict his movements. Marianne fired another futile spell, and this time, instead of deflecting, the assassin ducked underneath and darted forward with his blade drawn.

Marianne flinched and cringed backward, but the blade was not aimed at her. It was aimed at Jonny. Jonny was ready. The attack was fast, but he had been mentally preparing for it to be faster, and was able to leap to the side and out of the way of the strike. This caught the assassin completely off guard. He had clearly not been expecting Jonny to even know the strike was coming, and he didn't see Marianne as a threat, so he had gone all in on his attack, throwing himself off balance.

The assassin tried to pull back, and while he was fast, he was out of position. Before he could pull his lead leg away, Jonny stepped forward and delivered a powerful left-legged roundhouse kick to the man's calf. He went beyond the Igrette-approved mana allotment, up to about 25% of his capacity, and he could feel it straining his muscles, but it was still doable. His body could handle that much, at least for a little while.

The assassin hissed in pain, and swiped downward with his knife, but Jonny was already dancing backward, well outside the man's range. Marianne shouted something, but Jonny didn't hear what she said. He was completely in the zone. As a fighter on a big stage, he couldn't afford to be distracted by the audience, and had mastered the art of tuning out anything not directly related to his current fight. His vision was tunneled on his opponent, and the only other thing he was aware of was Marianne's position.

He doesn't actually want to hurt her, he realized. Jonny was the obvious target, but it looked like the man wasn't lying when he said that Marianne wasn't. And Sister Eliza was probably still alive, just like the man said. Jonny thought that seemed weird, since even if Marianne was weak, she was still a witness and an enemy. He filed that information away for later, though, as he didn't have time to think about the reasoning in the middle of a fight.

The assassin looked down at Jonny, and while his face was unreadable, his body language was clearly more cautious. He was smart enough not to show how much Jonny's kick had hurt him, but just from the way he was holding his weight, Jonny knew his leg couldn't be feeling good. Jonny's confidence was bolstered by the fact that he was able to hurt the other man, but he didn't let it get to his head. His opponent was still a trained assassin with a weapon, and Jonny was still in the body of a five year old.

He and the assassin regarded each other with caution for a second or two until Marianne tried to step between them.

"Stay back!" he snapped.

"You're in the way!" Marianne stopped moving, frozen in panic and confusion.

"Out of the way, girl," said the assassin.

"You're just going to get yourself hurt."

"I– I–""Support me from behind," said Jonny. Without giving her any time to process or respond, he ran past her, charging the knife-wielding man. He was ready for the charge, and thrust his blade forward, but Jonny dove to the side, rolling away and coming up on his feet. He raised his arms in a defensive stance, then felt a small trickle of warmth run down his cheek, followed by a drop of blood falling to the ground. What? But didn't I dodge–? The assassin thrust his knife forward again.

He was not close enough to Jonny for the knife to actually hit, but this time, Jonny was paying enough attention to sense the mana. His eyes widened, and he barely sidestepped in time for the blade of pure mana to slide right past his neck. Oh. Right. Magic. The man thrust his left hand forward, and a much wider wall of mana flew at Jonny. He braced himself, but was still thrown back, and the assassin followed up by dashing forward with the knife again.

Jonny ended up in pure escape mode, rolling backward, then diving to the side to avoid the assault. He got backed into the corner of the hallway, and got another cut on his shoulder as he rolled out of the way. The assassin attacked a half dozen more times, and all Jonny could do was keep running and rolling. He was barely dodging, and sometimes, he failed to dodge entirely, and would get a small cut, or get hit by a larger wall of mana.

He suspected that if he wasn't child-sized, he probably would have died already. The only thing saving him was that he was a small target. I can't keep doing this. His opponent had an extreme range advantage that Jonny couldn't hope to compete with. Even before the assassin started using spells, Jonny already knew he needed to get in close, but now that was even more important.

Just like when he fought Tommy, he needed to find a way to get his hands on the man, and unlike when he fought Tommy, waiting until he ran out of mana wasn't an option. These weren't light wind spells and snowballs. Every glancing blow made him bleed, and a single clean strike would mean death. The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.

Jonny rolled away from another mana blade, and this time, instead of coming up facing the assassin, he turned away and ran, pushing mana into his legs to launch himself down the hallway. He went right past a shocked Marianne, silently apologizing. He was intentionally using her as a shield, betting that the assassin would go around her. Even if he went through, it would buy him a bit of time, but he would rather that didn't happen.

Luckily, the assassin chose the former option, taking an extra step to go around her, and that extra step was all the time Jonny needed to reach his target. In this hallway below the attic, there were a few doors that mostly led to rooms where the nuns worked. Washing clothes, making and altering clothes, fixing toys, and other things like that happened on this floor. It was generally not a place where the children went, but Jonny had been here more than a few times to do chores, and knew where to go.

He reached the second door from the end of the hall, grabbed the handle, and ripped it downward. The brass handle came apart easily in his hands, and when the assassin appeared from around Marianne, Jonny turned and hurled the handle at him.

He had no delusions about the handle doing any serious damage, but he threw it with enough force that the assassin was forced to turn to the side and take the shot on his shoulder, which kept him from attacking, and gave Jonny enough time to push the door open behind him and get into the room. The room was not large, but that was exactly why Jonny wanted to be there. The hallway was too long. The assassin could attack from much further away than Jonny could, and there was no cover for him to work with.

This room, on the other hand, was not only small, but it was full of useful items. It was the room where the nuns made and altered clothes, so the walls were lined with tables and the tables were covered in needles and shears and spools of thread and rolls of fabric. Only the shears were directly useful as a weapon, but Jonny didn't need a weapon. He just needed to get in close. As soon as he was inside, he reached to the side, grabbed a table leg, and yanked it over so that it was in front of the open doorway.

He didn't stop, even as he heard the assassin crash into it and send it skidding across the floor, instead running further until he reached another table and grabbed a pair of shears. He turned just in time to see the assassin pushing the table aside, and he threw the shears as hard as he could, pushing the mana in his body to almost a third his capacity. His shoulder burned, but the shears flew through the air so quickly that the assassin had no choice but to take a step back.

The shears embedded themselves in the wooden wall behind him, quivering like a springy doorstop. The assassin started to move again, but Jonny was quicker. The second he had thrown the shears, he was already charging back, and using his small size, he dove under the table, grabbing the assassin's leg with both hands. He felt a powerful surge of mana above him, coming down straight at him through the table, but he was already out of the way.

The mana blade cut straight through the table and into the floor below, and missed Jonny completely, as he had already swing himself out of the way. Just like all those months ago when Igrette had decided to test his skill, he went for a leg lock. It didn't work against Igrette at the time, but this man was not Igrette, and Jonny was not the same as he was back then.

The man reinforced his leg well, doing his best to resist, but even with an advantage in strength, it didn't matter, because Jonny's technique was too good. He forced the other man to the ground, then grabbed his right foot and wrenched to the side. The other man tried to roll with it, but when he finished, he only came up in a worse position. Ordinarily in this position, Jonny would have gradually applied pressure to the ankle until his opponent tapped, and for a moment, he almost did exactly that out of habit.

Then, he sensed the man gathering mana around his knife for another thrust downward and realized his error. He surged his mana up to a third again, and jerked violently to the side.

"AUGH!" The other man screamed, and the mana in his blade dissipated as a loud crack echoed through the room and his ankle was broken. He gathered mana in his knife again, but Jonny had already let go. A leg lock was a good position to get a submission, or, as he had just done, to cripple an opponent, but he couldn't end a fight like that. Well, I could get some nice groin kicks from there… But Jonny was not yet so desperate that he would stoop that low. He had just turned the tables.

As long as the man was still able to move, the fight wouldn't be over, but with his mobility crippled, Jonny was suddenly no longer at as much of a disadvantage. The mana blade sailed past his head, and the assassin rolled backward, through the doorway and back into the room, coming up on one foot. His other foot dangled limply from the end of his leg, and he didn't bother putting any weight on it, but he was still holding his knife, and was clearly more than willing to continue the fight.

But now that he couldn't move easily, the fight was not in his favor. He tried another knife thrust, followed by a wind thrust from his free palm, but Jonny dodged both, and closed the distance, diving into the man's good knee and sending him right back to the ground. The assassin spun the blade on his finger, switching to a reverse grip, and stabbed downward at Jonny. Jonny managed to twist his body out of the way, and the blade instead stabbed deep into the wood right next to the assassin's leg. There it is!

Jonny wasted no time diving on the opportunity. The man pulled the knife out of the wood effortlessly, but the fact that it was in the wood in the first place gave Jonny a split second of much-needed time, and he was able to grab the man's wrist. A brief, chaotic scramble ensued as the man tried to get Jonny off, and Jonny held on tight with both hands, trying to get into a better position.

The man used a technique where he release mana from his body, trying to throw Jonny off, and it nearly worked, but at the last second, he managed to tighten his grip and hold on. He received a cut on his wrist during the struggle, but a moment later, he managed to get one hand around the man's thumb. No rules outside the octagon, he thought with a grin. He grabbed the thumb and pulled downward, and a moment later, there was another snap, and the knife clattered to the ground.

Jonny barely heard the assassin's scream, already pulling the arm up, and getting it between his legs and bending it backward over his body. There was another snap and the assassin's right arm was broken. Jonny let go again, and the assassin tried to get up, but without his knife, he no longer had a threat strong enough to stop Jonny from charging in. The assassin managed to sit up, only for Jonny to use the opportunity to circle around and take his back, wrapping one arm around the man's throat.

He got into an ordinary headlock position, pressing against the man's arteries with one arm, and the back of his head with the other. Just a few seconds, and the man would be unconscious, as long as the man didn't manage to pry Jonny's arms away. Jonny prepared for exactly that, reinforcing his body with mana as the assassin moved his remaining good arm, only for the assassin to reach downward instead. Jonny's eyes widened in horror as the assassin pulled another, almost identical blade from a sheathe on his hip.

Suddenly, Jonny's position was not good. One thrust backward, and his life was over. He would have to let go or be stabbed. Or… Before he had even fully processed his thought, he was already shifting his grip. He released his arm from the man's neck, but instead of fully letting go and backing away from the new blade, he just changed his grip. His right hand gripped the man's chin, and his left gripped the top of his head.

He exhaled, filling his body with mana, nearly to half capacity, then pulled both arms in opposite directions. The assassin's head turned, then his neck snapped, and the knife that was about to fly at Jonny's face clattered to the ground. The assassin's entire body went limp. For a second, Jonny stayed in that position, breathing heavily with the man's head in his arms. Then, he scrambled backward and got to his feet.

"Holy shit…" he muttered under his breath. I just killed someone.