Chương 59: Pamphlet Warrior

Every Gladiator was sent into the illusion with whatever they had on them. June could have picked armor, a sword, a bow, but no. June carried the Lengue Pamphlet into the battlefield. The Lengue colosseum was an illusory palace where fighters could fight and kill one another and still live another day.

'It's VR' June and the voice were silently seething. They sat on a rock, folding the pamphlet into an origami swan, which they planned to give to Lilia. The problem was that neither of them knew how to fold origami.

'I'm going to strangle that old man.' June tried to fight back, but Mortimer stood at nearly double his height.

'This is apparently my training.' June lay on his back; he didn't mind losing, he knew when Mortimer was lying.

'Old fart probably bet money.' In any other scenario, June would have been willing to comply, but today was his first day outside of the royal tumbler, no, his first day outside since living in the castle, and basically his first date with Lilia. June lay back, his arms under his head, and his legs kicked up. He was getting really comfortable for someone who could get maimed at any time, especially someone with their eyes closed.

'Oh, quit it, man, you know Flesh-Shaping isn't the prettiest way of fighting.'

'I don't look good while fighting, and this is a friendly competition, I can't go tearing spines out.' The nearby bushes rustled as an arrow flew towards June, and he briskly waved his pamphlet to deflect the oncoming arrow.

'Eh, maybe I could learn something or two from fighting someone without my abilities.' June deflected another arrow with the pamphlet.

"Are you going to try it again?" He sat up and stretched.

"Aim for the head, I got somewhere I would rather be." June stands up and started doing isometric stretches, he really couldn't care less. He put his forearms together and pointed them to the sky, and then leaned to the right and said without any enthusiasm.

"Super""…"

"No? No reaction? You don't get the reference?" June thrust his hand out and grabbed the air with a crunch.

"Why is everyone using invisibility spells these days?" He let go with a crackle as his fingers created an exit wound in the invisible archer's skull, as wisps of blue mist faded away from his enemy.

"Do you think Mortimer would share the profits if I win?" Reading on Amazon or a pirate site? This novel is from Royal Road. Support the author by reading it there.

"…"

"Thought so..."

June was a clumsy fighter; the only reason he was able to win against any threat so far was due to his superhuman strength and willingness to use underhanded strategies. After all, it was hundreds of times easier to kill an unaware enemy than to call it out into an exchange. June was a quick learner; his body enabled that by having enhanced senses, a single moment can be relived several times in a span of a second, so mimicry was not out of the question.

'Mimicry can only take me so far.' June hopped down the small rock and walked into the forest. His opponent's corpse had already dissipated into blue mist. This wasn't his first kill since coming to the colosseum, and it wouldn't be his last. Despite how easily he dispatched the past few enemies so far, he had no real reason to believe he would win. He had only encountered Aspirants and mundane gladiators after all.

In the end, he was just a brute compared to many of the other gladiators, and underhanded tricks, while fun, could only carry him so far. Even with his training against the twins, who were Aspirants, June commonly lost. His swordsmanship was direct and occasionally clumsy when fighting the more experienced twins, given his relative inexperience in combat. If June were to engage in a real fight against them, he would win because he was a Dreamer while they were still Aspirants.

Although it was impressive that they became Aspirants at such a young age, his physical strength alone compensated for his lack of swordsmanship. But if they stood at an equal level of strength to him, he would lose immediately.

'A cleaver would suit me better than a sword.' Bows, on the other hand, weren't as bad; they took muscle to draw and good perception to aim. June had both, but in the end, he lacked experience. Any proper archer with a little more practice or actual combat experience would outdo him. June did have one tenet that he was fairly confident in, and that was the potency of his will, not to mention its quality.

With it, he was able to make his pamphlet harder than steel, and if he wanted to, he could make it cut just as well as any good, sharp sword.

'Mimicry isn't too hard, but that's that, I don't have the knowledge to build on anything yet.' June, of course, had more than will; he was an exceptional flesh-shaper despite his reluctance to do anything flashy with it. He also had the strings within his body that he could use and the revenants that he always carried with him. June wasn't using his revenants at the moment, nor was he using their abilities of silence, body enhancement, or invisibility.

He was walking in the open for no other reason than to provoke a fight. Losing meant returning to Lilia, and winning meant looking cool to her.

'If she were watching, that is.' To the unsuspecting gladiator, he was a prime target; his eyes were always closed, and people so far had just assumed he was blind. He had no aura anymore after his explosive transformation, so to people who weren't particularly sensitive, they would just see him as a blind mundane, or a blind Aspirant at best.

'I just need to hope that no one considers the possibility of extended senses and I'll be righty-o.' Not long after starting his walk, he noticed a few new gazes observing him through the brush.

'A cohort? Or several independent gladiators?' June didn't need to ponder his question for long since the group watching him popped out of the brush.

"YOU, Blind one, prepare to meet your god." June stopped and turned around with a blank expression.

'Aspirants. Why did they give up the surprise attack?'

'Well, there goes my probable cause.' The cohort stepped closer. They seemed young, just around June's age, maybe a little older; unlike June, they wore some protection in the form of leather armor and a couple of weapon types.

'4 of them, shield, sword, bow, book?'

"Could you say that again? My hearing isn't so good these days." The cohort leader who called out to June stepped further with a lunging strike, narrowly missing June. June didn't move to dodge, but most fighters he came across so far try to anticipate movement, so it often throws them off their rhythm by subverting common rules of combat and purposefully acting in ways other fighters are taught to never do. He grabbed the young leader's arm and pulled him closer to his face.

"Say it again so I can hear it properly." June wasn't trying to be intimidating; he wasn't actually hard of hearing. Nor did he have a plan; he was just doing improv at this point.

"Say it again? Are you hard of hearing as well?" June slothfully lifted his free hand and put it next to the young aspirant's ear. 200 Decibels June snapped his fingers and simultaneously used the ability the voice taught him to make a noise so loud that it instantly killed the leader of the cohort and deafened everyone in the vicinity, including himself. June staggered from the blast and let out a defeated sigh.

He opened his eyes, with blood dripping out of his ears, and a blinding gold light violently shone from his eyes, which were so bright that they blinded the rest of the cohort. The reason why his aura went back to being nearly identical to a mundane or an Aspirants aura. Was because all of it was being stored within his eyes.

"Guess I'll indulge the old man a little."