「Kohaku, why are you able to use magic?」

「Nn? No, I can’t use magic, you know?」

To the question I had asked after finally making up my mind to do so, the answer I received in response was something I didn’t expect.

“Kijin is a race that specializes in physical skills,” I thought that I didn’t really have to say that again after going this far.

Strength, Toughness, Dexterity, and Agility. In regards to those four physical stats, it was not like kijin had the absolute highest values for each individual stat, but on average, the combined total of their physical stats was overwhelmingly the highest among all the races.

On the other hand, regarding magic, even if you put all your bonus points into the related stats, the highest level of ability you could reach would still be below average. This was what you could call a shackle on the kijin.

However, Kohaku, who should have been a kijin, the same as me, obviously used something like a strong magic spell.

She had used a technique called Fujutsu that had mowed down several monsters, each around level 20, and then she also had enough defense power to defend against it.

If I could use it then I’d like it to be one of the cards in my hand.

The question that I asked her, thinking of that, was lightly denied.

「If I have to say it, that was actually an item.」

「Item?」

Hearing Kohaku’s words, it reminded me of things like, when you swung it a flash surged out, or of something that healed your HP.

「That’s right. It’s a special paper talisman made only by a member of the youko race with the special job《Fujutsushi》. The price is a bit off, but for the one I used earlier, one costs 10k iris which is a intermediate-level fujutsu.」 (9: youko, is basically those you see in anime and manga or stuff, the fox people with a lot of tails that use illusions will o wisps and stuff, or kitsune stuff)

「10,000 iris…!?」

「We, the kijin race, can easily obtain and use a countermeasure against magic. If you think about it like that, it’s actually rather cheap.」

Certainly. Though the attacks had been mostly basic magics, the barrier was able to protect me from such high quantities easily, and it was even able to deflect the lightning strike. If that was the case, then I thought it was fine to pay 10,000 iris for it.

After all, there was no lag while using it. As an emergency defense, there were no other items as useful as that.

If it was just 10,000 iris then if you said it was expensive, yeah, it was expensive, but it was also worth it.

Though it hurt that it was disposable.

However, the youko race, was it? They appeared in the PV of the game, but they were a non-playable race that players couldn’t use.

A four-legged complete beast form and then a two-legged beastmen form, they had two forms. Also, they might be able to transform into a fully human form when they become adults. (9: I need a better name for beastmen, they are basically those furry or those with cat ears and stuff)

Since they were even introduced on the official site, their name was famous, but at least I still hadn’t seen one.

「I haven’t seen any youko.」

「That is natural. They have a really strong bond as a tribe, and most of them are in their hidden villages, after all. If I wasn’t a kijin then I wouldn’t be able to have interact with them, you know?」

「If you weren’t a kijin?」

「The kijin race and the youko race have a friendly relationship. Maybe because the Kishin-sama and Senko-sama have a close relationship, both races have had a strong connection since the ancient times.」(9: 仙狐 not sure if you read that as senko since it wasn’t in the dictionary so, i just took it from a certain manga or anime, and yeah it basically means hermit fox according to the dictionary)

I see, I see, so the kijin race and the youko race got along, it seemed.

Then someday, maybe I too can go buy some fujutsu?

But they seemed to be quite an unsociable race and I was just a player with a kijin race too….

「So Sukuna is the type that more or less shows what she’s thinking on her face.」

「Wut.」(9: yes its wut)

「Haha, well, if it’s you then they might like you. Since both the kijin and youko races like strong people.」

Once again, she looked towards my chest. Not in a perverted way, but in a respectful way that showed that the 《The Proof of the Named Solo Subjugator》 just had that much value.

In a mostly empty space, surrounded by tall trees, I could see a sunny spot.

「Now then, we are about to reach the place where the Master of the Forest is, but you don’t need any help, right?」

「Of course, since I’m already used to “this” after all.」

“This” meant not the hammer, but the gauntlets.

From the battle earlier, my level was raised and I had gained bonus points, so now I had enough strength to carry the Meteor Impact -Zero Type-.

Coming up to this point, I had piled up the battles and I had mostly grasped the method of using the Meteor Impact.

It was just that, even if I had reached the required strength, it didn’t mean I could wield it with ease. I only knew roughly how to use the Meteor Impact, not how to use it skillfully.

Seeing me like that, Kohaku was happily smiling.

「So, unarmed combat, is it? Now that I think about it, you also used that, didn’t you….regardless of whether you’re aware of it or not, fufu, it really suits you.」

Only saying those things, Kohaku softly pushed my back forward, encouraging me to enter the boss room.

「I’ll be going now.」

「Yeah, have fun (itterasshai).」

The sunlight was not being filtered through the trees and was instead blazing directly down onto a large clearing.

As if waiting for me to step in, the one that appeared was one huge snake with a purple body.

Even when it was coiled around, it was already ten meters. And its whole body was also bulky. Looked like it would be good to punch.

The name displayed was《Poison Naga Lv 27》. There was only one bar of HP.

The red ogre at the Caves of Trials was the same, but the boss names sure are rather simple.

「Now then, let’s do it.」

Before the poison naga that was making a slithery sound, I matched it by making a noise with my fist.

☆

In WLO, it was not rare for a monster to use poison.

And also, normally, it seemed that the lizards that I was supposed to fight at the wetlands used poison, and the 《Hide Snake》 at the Forest of the Edge also used poison.

And actually, the goblin archers had poison too, with their poison arrows……there was already such a large number of enemies that used poison that had appeared before this point.

And there was that, too. The Named that Rou defeated,《Huge Snake of Enticement -Valdia-》.

It seemed to appear around Fias, but since Rou acquired a poison-type rare skill, that type of monster probably also had poison.

Thinking about that, the poison naga right before me might be a degraded version of that Named, although, if you said it was a degraded version, it might actually be one.

Though, I had no plans to lower my guard, degraded or not.

This was the《Forest of Magic》. Meaning that in this place, all monsters used magic.

「In this game……is there some kind of rule that all huge monsters become some kind of immobile artillery?」

When the poison naga deployed a light purple magic circle around it, it shot liquid of the same color.

As the liquid was easy to evade, I could see that the ground it impacted on was melting.

「Well, of course it does.」

Looking at that melting condition, rather than venom it might be more close to a digestive liquid.

I didn’t really know if it was necessary to fire such magic, but it looked like it would hurt if it hit.

Swinging around its huge body, it looked like it would be hard to evade-…

「Its movement is really not that fast…..okay.」

After spending a little while trying to evade it, when I had judged that I could pull it off, I waved both my arms lightly and then I channeled all my strength into them.

While evading the incoming magic, I thrust both of my fists towards the bulky stomach of the huge snake.

Pashin….a rather frail sound echoed.

For having been a clean hit, it was a rather weak response, but that was fine.

At that moment, my fists lit up a bit.

This was the characteristic of the arts of the《Unarmed Combat》skill. Their true potential lay in combos.

It was only one line in the description of the skill, but saying it like that was probably the only way to explain it.

As your fists lit up, the more strikes you landed, the more your power would increase.

At the beginning, a strike would only echo with a frail, hesitant impact sound, but as you kept increasing the number of strikes, the echo of the sounds would get bigger and bigger.

The good part about these arts was the long span of time in which you were able to use them. Even if you combined them with evasions, the arts’ effects wouldn’t stop.

The first ten-hit combo, it started with a frail sound and then by the end it produced DDOON! a huge explosion sound.

Arts:《Ten-Point Cherry Blossoms (Toezakura)》

A ten-hit combo skill that was at its strongest when used against a huge and slow enemy.

With my high strength and the heavy metal weapon whose initial attack power was high, multiplying its firepower with Toezakura, the poison naga lost 30% percent of its HP in an instant.

The poison naga faltered from the last strike, but before my body had recovered from the stun time, the naga bent its body and commenced to blow me away.

「Guoo.」

Leaking a rather unladylike voice, receiving an attack on my abdomen, I was sent flying.

There wasn’t that much damage. I understood it from how easily I was able to land my attacks, most of its huge body was just for show.

「Fuhee, that stun time sure was long.」

I didn’t really expect that I was going to receive its attack that defenselessly.

While I was taking a breather for a moment, the poison naga once again repositioned itself.

The move Toezakura that I used earlier was powerful, and you could postpone it a bit, but in exchange, it had two flaws it seemed.

One was the stun time. The stun time after using it was kinda long. After you finished punching, it took five seconds of being stuck in the posture you ended with.

The other was that you must land all ten hits on the same monster. You couldn’t just use it to take out a bunch of small fries. Well, that was not that much of a flaw, though.

To be honest, there were other techniques that were easier to use with lower combo requirements and with fewer openings, but if you didn’t use them on a huge enemy then they still wouldn’t turn out how you wanted….to be frank, the reason they were used was more for the romance of using combos than the actual usefulness of doing so.

But thinking calmly, if I was hit by magic then I might have died.

Since I was satisfied that I was able to activate it once, from this point on let’s just do it more precisely.

Striking with both arms with all my strength, 《Twin Dragon (Soryuu)》. A three-hit combo that you needed to chain each blow together within 0.5 seconds,《Three Clouds (Mikumo)》. And furthermore, the left, right, roundhouse kick and reverse roundhouse kick combo,《Four leaves (Shiho)》.

Connecting the arts that increased in combo count was the skill’s advantage, and that was the reason why unarmed combat was known as containing「The True Meaning of Combos.」

And furthermore, the more you connected the techniques the more you added to the time of the stun time, if you got too smug and connected too many, you would probably end up with a big problem.

「Here we-….go!?」

After three seconds, recovering from the stun time, I backstepped to avoid the four incoming spells, but my legs got buried in the ground, and for an instant, my movement was stopped.

Forcefully pulling them out, I was able to avoid the spells, but looking at it properly, the acidic liquid that hit the ground earlier had melted the ground, causing it to become something like a quagmire.

Just taking a glance at it, it looked like it only melted the surface of the ground. Since there weren’t any holes, I hadn’t noticed it before, but it might be a magic that just melts things to become soft.

Since the ground that had been hit appeared as spots on the ground, I could know where they had landed, but….

Suddenly, a bad realization came into my mind. Stealing away my footholds, narrowing my escape route. And then after stealing away my mobility, just what did you think would come next?

「As I thought, it will come after all….」

Coming up to this point, no matter how powerful the magic was, at most all I had seen was intermediate-level magic.

It had happened when, with different timing than the rest of that swarm, a goblin mage chanted for about one minute and released a magic called 《Earth Javelin》. The Earth Javelin’s speed was incomparably faster to the ball-type magic.

I could evade it since it took time for the goblin to prepare and because I could roughly understand the angle of the shot during that time, but if it was shot suddenly, then I thought that magic would’ve been quite dangerous.

Now then, while using that as a reference.

From the hugeness of the magic circle that the poison naga deployed while opening its mouth, the spell should at least be larger than the earth javelin.

I didn’t know what was coming, but for me who would be on the verge of death after being hit by an ice ball, there was an eight- or nine- out-of-ten likelihood that I would die if hit.

But fortunately, it seemed like it would take more time to activate it. Looking at the brightness of the magic circle, it seemed like it would take around twenty seconds to charge up.

「If it takes that long, then!」

The naga’s HP was only around 60%. Compared to betting on being able to evade it or not, I wanted to try out something.

Seeing through to where the hard parts of the ground were and kicking it with all my might, as if charging through it, into the middle of the poison naga I drove in《Soryuu》. Two seconds.

There was a bit of recoil damage, but I didn’t care. 《Mikumo》, 《Shiho》, punching much more sharply than earlier. Four seconds.

A five-hit combo knife hand strike, 《Five Harmonies (Itsuwa)》. Six seconds.

A speed-dependent quick six-hit fist combo,《Six Realms（Rikudou)》 . Seven seconds.

「….Right here!」

Using the last hit from《Rikudou》as a starting point, I started up《Toezakura》.

《Toezakura》 ‘s power used the damage of that sixth strike as its starting damage, and with every strike it would multiply the power of that first blow. And the final damage would be equivalent to fifty-five times that of the first strike.

Since the initial damage was huge, the recoil was so strong that I couldn’t repress the recoil.

The third strike already had the same power as the first time I used Toezakura.

The fourth strike, I couldn’t handle it anymore, and it damaged my HP.

As I piled on the fifth and sixth strikes, my HP was being whittled down, but there was someone else that was suffering more.

「HAaa- AAAAH!」

The seventh strike. Doing it, it had enough power in it that I couldn’t even control it. My fist pierced through the bulky body of the poison naga.

The poison naga collapsed, and after convulsing for a while, it wasn’t able to move anymore, and as if dissolving it became polygons as it disappeared.

It took fifteen seconds to get to that point. Though my level was higher, in less than a minute I was able to deal damage over 50% of the naga’s HP.

Maybe, this skill…wasn’t this skill’s damage efficiency broken….?

「Fuuuuu….」

The eighth strike that had way too much power, to the point that I couldn’t control it at all, hit nothing but the air, and then my avatar was stunned.

I couldn’t move, but there were no longer any enemies. I slowly breathed out the air that I had held in while doing the combo, and then after ten seconds, I was able to move again and I fell down on my back.

It’s our secret that my bottom landed on the quagmire, okay?