The Villainous Noble Who Kept Rewinding After Death: The Story Somehow Changed When I Committed Suicide

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The Villainous Noble Who Kept Rewinding After Death: The Story Somehow Changed When I Committed Suicide

Episode 41: Each Battle

Lewis first observes the Forest King, Build, and the surrounding terrain.

(Build has no weapon in hand. So he’s a martial artist like Fiera. That shell covering his body seems quite tough. The area is somewhat open, but there are many rocks and trees. I can just about use a sword here, but a spear would be impossible. Plus, since it’s a forest, using large-scale magic looks difficult.)

“Confirmation. Done.”

As Lewis completes his assessment of the information he can gather at this stage, Build calls out as if waiting for the moment.

“Were you waiting for me? How punctual.”

“When it comes to battle, information is crucial.”

(He’s quite the smart one. This is troublesome.)

After adjusting his evaluation of Build’s intelligence, Lewis draws the sword he has at his waist from its sheath.

“When I’m ready, come at me.”

Leaping down from the rock, Build lands quietly on the ground, crossing his arms and standing firmly.

It seems he’s willing to let Lewis take the first move, showing quite a bit of confidence in his defensive abilities.

(Then, I won’t hold back.)

Lewis slowly raises his sword into an upper stance, the fighting spirit swirling around him as he exhales.

With his focus sharpened, Lewis eliminates unnecessary information, concentrating solely on Build.

“Ha!”

After enhancing his body, Lewis kicks the ground hard, instantly appearing in front of Build and bringing his sword down.

In that moment, a sound akin to metal clashing echoed, and the shockwave kicked up sand, creating a cloud of dust.

After a bit, as the dust settled, Lewis stood still with his sword raised and Build, who bore no injury despite the strike, was revealed.

Lewis lightly kicked off the ground to create distance and made sure of the sword in his grip.

(The blade has chipped a little. If it hadn’t been enveloped in fighting spirit, it would have easily broken.)

“You’re too tough.”

“Your attacks are considerable. But they cannot match our hardness.”

Judging the chipped sword as now useless, Lewis tossed it to the ground and assumed a martial arts stance with his fists.

“As you said, I can’t seem to land a hit with a sword, so I’ll switch to this.”

Saying that, Lewis layered fighting spirit and body enhancement onto his fists.

While he could only apply fighting spirit to his sword, he could combine fighting spirit with body enhancement on his physical body.

This technique was something he had practiced after seeing Fiera use beastification and body enhancement simultaneously before.

“Hm. Come at me.”

Seeing Lewis take his stance, Build relaxed his crossed arms but did not assume a fighting stance.

However, his posture left no openings, and his natural stance exuded an aura that suggested he could respond to any attack.

(That’s impressive.)

Lewis thought he had acquired various martial arts knowledge and was now capable of optimal movements, but watching Build showed him he still had a long way to go.

“Ha.”

With a short exhale, Lewis anticipated that winning this fight would lead to significant growth and confronted Build.

Meanwhile, Fiera, who had moved to a distance from Lewis and Build, was quietly observing the bee-type monster, just like Lewis.

(The appearance is bee-like. So it must be fast? Its attack power doesn’t seem high, but if it uses poison from the stinger on its hands, that’ll be troublesome. It’s probably as strong as that dragon at Floor 40 of Icy Fake.)

Fiera estimated that the strength of the monster before her matched that of the dragon she encountered earlier.

“…Can you talk?”

“Somewhat.”

“Do you have a name?”

“Mine is Maito. I received it from the King…”

“Okay. I’m Fiera.”

Once Fiera and Maito roughly grasped each other’s fighting styles and characteristics, they slowly assumed battle readiness.

Fiera enveloped her fists in fighting spirit and enhanced her body.

Maito floated into the air using its wings, continuing to stare at Fiera.

“Shh!”

The first to move was Fiera, who instantly closed the distance, utilizing her speed, winding up her fist to strike Maito.

However, Fiera wasn’t the only one confident in speed; Maito was also quite confident in its speed as a bee.

Thus, Maito effortlessly dodged Fiera’s strike and aimed to stab her with the stinger on its hand.

Fiera deflected the attack with a roundhouse kick and placed a hand on the ground to maneuver some distance away.

Next, Maito attacked, leaning forward in mid-air and seemingly vanishing as it circled behind Fiera, attempting to stab her with both stingers in a deadly embrace.

Fiera bent down to evade and used the momentum to rotate and punch at Maito’s torso, but Maito easily dodged.

Fiera and Maito continued to exchange attacks and defenses, both unable to land a single hit on each other.

(This is tough. Our fighting styles are too similar to each other.)

Fiera was skilled in close combat and relied on speed for her attacks, feeling the frustrating challenge of fighting Maito.

“…Gather. My children, rise.”

Just as Fiera contemplated how to attack, Maito suddenly spread its arms.

Then, using its species-specific magic, “Queen Bee,” it summoned a multitude of bee-type monsters from behind, who began to swarm around her.

“Go.”

With a wave of her arm, Maito signaled the bees to charge toward Fiera.

“Partial Beastification!”

As Fiera murmured that, only her arms transformed into beast-like features. Since starting her journey with Lewis, she had practiced the usage of fighting spirit and instant beastification.

While Lewis could also use fighting spirit, which allowed him to teach her, he couldn’t teach her beastification as it was a unique ability of beastmen.

Thus, through meditation and physical training on her own, Fiera managed to partially achieve instant beastification.

“Shh!”

With her hands turned into sharp claws through beastification, Fiera began slicing the approaching bees one after another.

However, no matter how many she killed, the bees kept coming, and with her limited number of strikes, Fiera gradually found herself cornered.

“Ugh!”

In the endless swarm of bees, Fiera let her guard down for a moment and was stung on the arm.

She felt the sensation at the sting gradually fading, prompting her to hurriedly leave that spot to detoxify the poison.

“This is paralysis poison…”

She had detoxified quickly, so the poison hadn’t spread much, yet a slight numbness lingered in her arm.

(This is bad. It seems better to take down Maito rather than try to defeat the other bees.)

Initially, Fiera intended to take out all the bee-type monsters first, but realizing there was poison involved, she decided she couldn’t afford to be stung any further and opted to take down Maito first.

“Children, rise.”

Noticing that Fiera was targeting him, Maito began gathering the bees around him to trap her.

“Get out of the way!”

Fiera draped her fists with the frost ability from the Ice Snake Gauntlet, which created a chilling effect around her hands.

The bees nearby that were struck by her fists, slowed down by the frost, began falling to the ground one by one.

And just as she was about to land a hit on Maito, a sharp pain shot through her leg.

“Ugh!!”

Fiera looked down in confusion to see several bees clinging to her leg, injecting their stingers.

Immediately, she killed those bees and retreated, but the pain at the injection site refused to fade, prompting her to pour the potion Lewis had given her onto the wound.

(What the heck? I thought I saw all the bees coming.)

Fiera was supposed to be wary of the approaching bees to avoid getting caught off guard, yet she was bewildered to be suddenly stung on the leg.

Upon observing the flying bees again, she realized there were no bees that had just attacked her.

“Could it be… below…?”

“Soil Bee. They live in the ground.”

The Soil Bee was a type of bee that made its nest in the soil and primarily resided underground unless gathering food like nectar.

And this specific bee was uniquely bred by Maito; being stung by it resulted in excruciating pain.

If she approached, the bees flying near Maito would hinder her, while underground, Soil Bees would attack from blind spots.

Fiera remained calm and began to contemplate how she could defeat Maito in this predicament.