Chapter 1735 - 240 - The Battle at the Black Pole (10)

I took a step back and forced myself to calm down, giving myself a moment to properly compose myself before looking at her again. My breathing was still a little heavier than usual, so I took another slow breath and tried to settle my thoughts before we continued the fight.

"You really are exactly what I've heard you are," she said while looking at me with an expression that seemed to mix surprise and excitement. "I honestly didn't think anyone could block that attack, but you actually did it. You blocked it with such seamless precision that I almost couldn't believe what I was seeing. Someone doesn't just do something like that casually, and even the Pirate King himself couldn't pull it off."

Well, if someone had been subjected to that kind of power, I honestly didn't think they would have had many options available to them.

Her attack had enough force behind it to drive straight through anything that got in its way, and the sheer impact had been powerful enough to generate an actual shockwave.

I could still feel some of that force lingering around me.

"Now then, shall we go at it again?" she asked, sounding almost annoyingly cheerful about the whole situation.

Apparently, getting knocked around was her idea of having a good time.

I rushed toward her without wasting any more time, and she immediately charged toward me from the opposite direction.

The first thing she did was swing her sword toward me with a powerful sideways slash, forcing me to raise Ayuru and block the attack before the blade could reach me.

The impact traveled through my arm, but I managed to hold my ground.

While I was keeping her sword blocked, she suddenly raised her pistol with her other hand and fired directly at me.

She had intentionally combined both of her weapons instead of treating them as separate tools.

That was something I hadn't expected from her at first, but after seeing it happen, I realized just how naturally she seemed to handle the combination.

She wasn't simply swinging her sword around by moving her arm, either.

Her entire body was involved in every movement she made.

Her shoulders moved with her swings, her waist twisted along with each strike, and even her legs contributed to the force behind her attacks. Her feet constantly adjusted their positions as she moved, allowing her to maintain her balance while simultaneously preparing for the next attack.

It was clear that she had spent a ridiculous amount of time practicing.

Her footwork was especially impressive.

I could immediately tell that she had a lot of experience fighting people who were stronger than her, faster than her, or simply difficult to deal with.

She didn't waste much movement.

Even when her attacks looked strange, there was always some kind of purpose behind them.

"You really are something!" she shouted while grinning from ear to ear. "This is incredible! I'm actually having so much fun with this!"

She wasn't pretending to enjoy the fight.

That much was obvious from her expression.

Her mouth had split into an incredibly nasty smile, the kind that made it look like she was enjoying herself far more than anyone reasonably should during a fight.

Honestly, she looked like someone who had finally found a game worth playing after being bored for years.

The way she handled her sword was already troublesome enough, but adding the pistol into the mix made things considerably harder for me.

I was having trouble blocking her attacks altogether.

She was fast, and her movements weren't always straightforward either.

Sometimes, she would suddenly shift her body in a completely unexpected direction, changing her momentum halfway through an attack and forcing me to adjust my defense almost immediately.

Other times, she moved in ways that looked almost bizarre.

She would suddenly lower her body, twist around, and attack from an angle that didn't seem particularly natural. Then, before I could properly understand what she was doing, she would already be moving somewhere else.

She even went as far as jumping over me in one particularly strange movement, twisting her body in midair just so she could land in a position that gave her a better angle for her next attack.

It looked ridiculous for about half a second.

Then I realized that she had done it intentionally.

That was what made fighting her so troublesome.

Her movements were difficult to read precisely because they didn't always follow the patterns I expected from someone using a sword.

She could suddenly speed up, change direction, lower her stance, or throw herself into an awkward-looking movement without giving me much time to react.

Even her strange movements had some kind of purpose behind them.

It was like fighting someone who had decided that conventional swordsmanship was merely a suggestion.

I kept blocking her attacks while trying to understand her rhythm, but her rhythm was practically nonexistent.

Just when I thought I had figured out what she was going to do, she would suddenly change her approach and force me to rethink everything.

Then, all of a sudden, she stopped moving.

She stood there for several seconds without attacking me, her sword still held in her hand while she stared directly at me.

Then she looked down at her sword.

After that, she slowly looked back at me.

"You..." she said while narrowing her eyes. "You're not taking me seriously, are you?"

Her expression changed almost immediately.

The excitement disappeared from her face and was replaced by something much more irritated.

She looked genuinely angry now, to the point where I could almost feel the heat coming from her glare.

"If you don't take me seriously, you're going to get yourself killed, you know?" she said while gripping her sword more tightly. "I really get pissed off when people don't take me seriously."

Her voice had become considerably more serious.

"That's exactly what happened with the previous Pirate King," she continued. "I killed him because he didn't take me seriously when we first fought."

She paused briefly, almost as though she were remembering the incident.

"Although, admittedly, he was caught off guard by my power and started taking me seriously immediately afterward. Even so, he had already pissed me off by that point, so I killed him."

Her expression became slightly more twisted as she continued talking.

"I tore his innards right out on his own deck, and I did it directly in front of the thousands of men he had with him."

She said it so casually that I almost wondered whether she realized how disturbing that story actually sounded.

I really didn't want to hear the graphic details about how she had killed the previous Pirate King, especially since I had absolutely no reason to imagine any of it in the first place.

Still, I suppose I understood something about her from that little story.

She had a serious problem with being looked down upon.

Considering how irritated she became simply because I wasn't fighting her seriously enough, I probably should have figured that out sooner.

"But even if you're not taking me seriously, you can still fight me this easily," she continued while staring directly at me. "And honestly, that pisses me off even more."

Her grip tightened around the sword.

"Because it makes me think that I could lose to you even if you don't put any real effort into fighting me."

Her eyes remained fixed on mine as she spoke.

There wasn't much joking in her expression anymore.

She genuinely wanted an answer from me, although judging by her smile, I had a pretty good idea what kind of answer she was hoping to receive.

"So..." she said while slowly raising her sword toward me.

A grin spread across her face again, but this time it wasn't playful.

It was the grin of someone who had finally gotten exactly what she wanted.

"Defeat me with your full power."

She pointed the sword directly at me.

"If you defeat me after giving everything you've got, then I won't even be disappointed about losing to you!"

I stared at her for a moment.

Well, that certainly explained everything.

She didn't necessarily care about winning.

She cared about being taken seriously.

If I defeated her while holding back, she would probably be more offended than if I simply beat her at full strength.

It was honestly a strange way of looking at things, but considering the person standing in front of me, I probably shouldn't have been surprised.

Still, if this was what she wanted, then I had no reason to keep pretending otherwise.

"Then I won't hold back," I said.