Chapter 33: One-Sided Fight

Chieftain Keith’s primal instincts screamed in alarm before his eyes could even register the movement.

The teenage assassin didn’t just move fast—he dissolved.

The air where Sato had been standing bent like heat over a summer road, leaving behind a faint wisp of purple mana.

SWOOSH!

Keith swung his colossal black-iron cleaver in a wide, sweeping arc behind him on pure reflex, aiming to cleave through the empty air where a normal flanker would strike. The heavy blade whistled violently, kicking up a spray of dirt and scorched embers.

It hit nothing.

"Whoa, slow down there,," a mocking, nasal voice chuckled from right above him.

Keith’s amber eyes snapped upward. Sato was crouching casually atop the thick back ridge of Keith’s oversized cleaver, balancing on the flat of the heavy metal like an acrobat on a balance beam. His hands were shoved loosely into the pockets of his dark leather tunic, his obsidian dagger spinning effortlessly around his index finger.

"Nice swing, though. Real scary," Sato jeered, leaning forward with an obnoxious smirk. "Too bad your attack speed is absolute trash. What is that, barely sixty points in agility? Man, you local mobs really are built like training dummies."

"Get off my blade, human rat!" Keith roared in fury.

Keith twisted his wrists with explosive strength, violently ripping the cleaver upward to fling the boy into the air while bringing his left claw forward in a lethal, bone-crushing swipe. His razor-sharp claws were coated in a dense, shimmering layer of grey beast-aura, capable of shredding iron plate like wet paper.

Sato didn’t even bother to block.

With a lazy sneer, he tapped into his summoned cheat skill.

[Shadow Step: Phase Shift]

Keith’s claws tore straight through Sato’s chest—only for the youth’s body to disperse into a cloud of swirling black smoke.

The real Sato reappeared instantly on Keith’s blind side, his boots touching down silently on the blood-soaked sand.

"Looking for me, doggie?"

Before Keith could turn his massive shoulders, Sato drove a mana-coated, steel-toed kick directly into the back of Keith’s left knee.

CRACK!

The sheer force behind the kick wasn’t normal human strength. It was pure, system-boosted stat superiority backed by an Otherworlder’s broken Class-B cheat modifiers. Keith’s heavy leg buckled beneath him with a sickening crunch of cartilage, forcing the towering seven-foot chieftain down onto one knee with a heavy thud.

"Gah...!" Keith grunted through clenched teeth, his snout pulling back in a snarl of agony as he braced the cleaver against the earth to keep from falling flat.

"Oops! Did that hurt?" Sato mocked, circling around the kneeling chieftain with slow, deliberate steps like a delinquent circling an easy target in an alleyway. "Aw, don’t look at me like that with those big, dumb eyes. Back in Tokyo, guys like you were the loudmouth seniors who thought they owned the block just because they had big shoulders. But guess what? In this world, the Goddess gave me the cheat codes."

SHING!

Sato flicked his wrist. The obsidian dagger flashed in a blur of purple light.

SPLAT!

A clean, three-inch-deep slash opened across Keith’s broad back, instantly splitting his tough grey hide and spraying crimson across the dirt. Keith didn’t scream, but his breath caught in his throat as the burning sensation of enchanted shadow-venom began eating away at his open flesh.

"Look at this! Even with your fancy beast skin, you cut just like butter," Sato laughed, wiping a speck of blood off his cheek with the back of his hand. "Come on, Chieftain! Show me that boss energy! Or are you all bark and no bite?"

"Die, fiend!"

Keith pushed through the excruciating pain in his shattered knee, pivoting on his good leg and thrusting his elbow backward in a devastating short-range counterattack. The blow packed enough kinetic force to shatter a boulder.

Sato easily caught Keith’s massive, furred elbow with the palm of a single hand, stopping the chieftain’s full-force blow dead in its tracks. The ground beneath Sato’s boots didn’t even crack.

Keith’s amber eyes widened in sheer, disbelieving horror.

He was the strongest warrior of the Ironclaw tribe, a veteran of a hundred clan wars whose raw physical might had crushed mountain bears. Yet this scrawny, arrogant human boy stopped his desperate strike with a lazy, one-handed grip.

"Is that it?" Sato yawned right in Keith’s face, his breath reeking of cheap wine and arrogance. "Man, what a letdown. You’re barely worth the EXP."

Sato’s narrow eyes flashed with cruel delight. He twisted Keith’s arm backward with brutal leverage, forcing a sharp pop from the wolf warrior’s shoulder joint.

Before Keith could recover his center of balance, Sato unleashed a blinding flurry of rapid-fire dagger strikes.

SLASH! SLASH! SLASH! SLASH!

The obsidian blade moved like a swarm of angry hornets. Sato deliberately avoided vital organs, choosing instead to systematically carve deep, agonizing lacerations across Keith’s chest, arms, shoulders, and thighs. He treated the proud tribal lord like a piece of meat on a chopping board, cackling loudly as dark blood drenched Keith’s battle-worn fur.

"Dance for me, mutt! Roll over! Beg!" Sato taunted, punctuating each slash with a vicious kick or a taunting slap across Keith’s snout with the flat of his bloody dagger. "Where’s all that big talk about mounting heads on gates now, huh?! Say please! Say ’Lord Sato, please spare my worthless dog life!’ and maybe I won’t skin you alive!"

Around the burning square, the surviving beastkin defenders watched in horror. Several young wolf warriors tried to break through the imperial lines to save their leader, but the Solarian spearmen easily held them back, laughing mockingly at their futile struggle.

Grand Inquisitor Valerius stood by his command line, nodding in deep satisfaction as he watched the otherworlder completely dismantle the barbarian lord without taking a single scratch.

Keith dropped his heavy war cleaver. The weapon clattered uselessly onto the blood-slicked stones.

He was on both knees now, his body trembling violently from severe blood loss, shattered joints, and the burning poison spreading through his veins. He looked up at Sato through a haze of crimson, his breathing shallow, ragged, and wet.

Yet, despite the humiliating torment, Keith refused to bow his head. His bloody fangs remained bared, his amber eyes burning with unyielding, ancestral defiance.

"You... may have the power of a demon..." Keith coughed out, spitting a mouthful of blood straight onto the toe of Sato’s leather boot. "...but you have... the soul of a coward. You will never... break... the Ironclaw..."

Sato’s arrogant smile instantly vanished, replaced by an ugly, twitching grimace of petty rage.

He looked down at the dark red stain on his boot, his face contorting with disgust.

"You dirty piece of trash," Sato hissed, his voice dropping into a venomous, petty snarl. "You spit on my gear? A worthless sub-human dog like you dared to spit on me?!"

Sato grabbed Keith by his pointed wolf ears, yanking his head violently backward to expose his thick, scarred throat. He raised the obsidian dagger high into the air, dark purple shadow-mana swirling violently around the sharp tip.

"I was gonna let you bleed out slow, but now you’re done," Sato spat, glaring into Keith’s unblinking eyes. "Die like the animal you are!"

Sato drove the dagger downward with all his might, aiming straight for Keith’s jugular.