Kelly Lunis watched the tournament with great attention; after all, her classmate was participating. Around her were the other children from the orphanage, all shouting anxiously for the final match that was about to begin. It was tradition for the director to take the orphans to see the tournament each time it was held.
The young girl with white hair and horns fixed her gaze on the two fighters entering the arena. On one side was Luke Astron, the young man who had spoken to her on her first day on that new school. On the other, a woman with brown hair, a fierce appearance, and a blood-chilling stare. Her name was Leona Viznar. Little was known about her, but from what she had shown in the tournament, she appeared to be a fearsome person, capable of doing anything to win.
The combat began as soon as they reached the middle of the arena. Both lunged at each other at superhuman speeds. Luke managed to dodge Leona's blow and counter it with a punch to her chin. The girl's body moved backward from the impact, but she didn't seem to feel any pain. Luke continued hitting her, but nothing he did seemed to hurt her. After that first hit, nothing he did could move her from where she stood.
Leona punched Luke in the stomach, sending him flying several meters, bouncing multiple times on the arena floor and staining his clothes and face with dirt.
Luke got up quickly; his legs trembled and he struggled to stay on his feet. Once stabilized, he lunged at Leona again, trying to hit her, but she dodged his blows with ease.
"You should give up, boy," Leona told him while avoiding his attacks. "You can't beat me. You've had everything since birth, a millionaire family, all your needs met. You don't know what it's like to fight for survival, to live on the streets, to have to rely on your own efforts to survive."
She hit Luke again, sending him flying several meters. This time he remained on the ground without moving.
Leona's words resonated with Kelly. She knew what it was like to feel alone and rejected by the world. As a baby, she was abandoned by her parents; as a child, both at school and at the orphanage, everyone made fun of her because of her horns. She remembered once having friends, but things didn't end well with them.
"She's a monster," said the girl she considered her best friend. She was talking with other friends after class, and Kelly only heard because she had returned to the classroom to retrieve something from her desk. "I'm only her friend because my mom tells me I have to get along with her or she'll hurt me," she continued. "Yeah, me too," replied another.
They all nodded at these words.
Pain and anger consumed her. She hit them all, causing them to be taken to the hospital. From that day on, no one wanted to approach her. She lived completely alone, and no one spoke to her again.
After a few days, people, instead of ignoring her, began to attack her. They believed she would go crazy and attack them all, just as she had done with her friends. In addition to the insults, some of her classmates attack her for fear that she would attack them first, and they continued to do so constantly, every day. That was why she had to change schools.
But she met Luke on her first day at her new school. It was the first time she had a normal conversation in months. He spoke to her without any trace of fear or pity. He didn't even judge her for her horns as everyone else had done before.
If I ever find out that Luke thinks of me as a monster, just like they did...
Her thoughts were interrupted by an impressive scene. Luke got up after the blow he received from Leona. He walked slowly toward her until receiving another blow from Leona. However, this time he didn't move from his spot. In his hands, he held Leona's fist, the same one that had sent him flying meters away just moments before.
"You have no idea what I've been through," Luke squeezed Leona's fist harder with one hand, while with the other one he formed a punch. "I also had to fight for myself to survive!"
Luke,while keeping her body in place with his hand, gave Leona a powerful blow to the face, making her head recoil. He gave her a couple more blows before finally releasing her, letting her fall.
She rose slowly, showing streaks of blood flowing from her mouth. She breathed heavy for a few seconds, then lunged at Luke again.
Both began a much more intense fight than before, their blows causing immense damage, provoking grimaces of strong pain in each other. Kelly realized that the way they fought was quite similar; it didn't seem like they were following any martial art, but rather using dirty hits and movements that favored effectiveness over aesthetic beauty.
Leona was very strong, Aaron already knew that after seeing her fight in previous matches, but he wasn't prepared for her to not even flinch at his blows. It was only through the emotion he felt when remembering his past that he could resist one of her blows and deliver some that caused her some damage. With this impulse, he could fight with her equally for a few minutes, but the more blows they exchanged, the more she began to gain the advantage.
Leona gave him a blow to the chin that forced him to collapse on the floor. He got up quickly, but Leona continued hitting him, giving him no time to recover. He no longer had the strength to respond to her blows, practically becoming a punching bag for his opponent to train her arms.
Aaron could do little but receive the punches at a constant rate, making it impossible for him to counterattack in any way.
Why is she so strong?
Nothing that was happening made sense. He remembered his time training in the Astron family martial arts, but no matter how much he tried to replicate what he learned from his training, he couldn't. All he could do was resort to his way of fighting before being reincarnated. He remembered being able to overcome the Training Center with ease, but after finding out he was reincarnated, he couldn't beat his time record. Something was wrong.
While Leona was hitting him, her face transformed into a macabre grimace, full of sadism. Those watching the combat from a distance would see a normal face in Leona, perhaps in the midst of an ecstasy caused by the emotion of the fight, but for Aaron, who had her so close, her face seemed to be extremely scary, as if she were not human.
It was only a matter of time before Aaron's body began to bleed in response to the beating he received. If he didn't do something soon, he would lose the match, so he used the last bit of strength he had left to sweep Leona's feet with his legs, making her fall on her back in front of him.
Aaron moved away from her to recover, while Leona got up from the floor.
"I'm surprised you can still stand," she said, also standing in the arena.
"Those blows alone won't be enough to defeat me," Aaron pretended with a voice full of confidence, despite being on the verge of fainting.
Aaron lunged at her and hit her in the upper part of the stomach. The blow barely seemed to affect her. Quickly, he jumped backward, moving a few meters away.
"Your blows don't hurt me," said Leona.
After the beating he received, he no longer had the strength to do noticeable damage with his punches. Nevertheless, that didn't stop him. He would approach, give her a blow, and immediately afterward move away, narrowly avoiding the hits she tried to deliver. He repeated this same action constantly.
He was recreating Bo's strategy in his match against him. He wanted to escape her blows until Leona got tired. During the previous exchange of blows, he realized that she was much slower than him, which allowed him to implement Bo's strategy without being as fast.
After several repetitions of this exchange, Leona began to notice something strange.
Aaron positioned himself in front of her, then prepared a great punch, very slowly, to truly damaged her this time. Leona couldn't even move while Aaron prepared his attack; all she did was grab her throat while desperately opening her mouth.
"What's happening, I can't..."
Aaron's plan copied Bo's, not only by taking advantage of speed to hit his opponent but by striking only at her lungs to suffocate his enemy, simulating the effect they caused when Bo prevented the air from reaching him.
Aaron hit Leona in the stomach this time, making her fall to her knees at his feet.
The damage to her lungs hurt her enough to prevent her from breathing for a few minutes, enough to fall unconscious. She desperately tried to breathe, but her attempts didn't work.
Aaron was already prepared to be declared the winner of the tournament, but surprisingly, Leona didn't fall unconscious despite not being able to breathe. She got up from the floor and looked at Aaron with immense hatred. She made the same sadistic face she had made before, the one that seemed inhuman, but this time it deformed even more.
What the hell...
Leona's body distorted. Her skin turned black, and her eyes glowed with a red light. Her body began to grow beyond its natural size, and her muscles grew much larger than they were, tearing several parts of her clothing as a result.
"This is the form that allowed me to survive," said Leona. "When I was a child, I was abandoned in a forest. With no other way to survive, I had to make a deal with monsters to gain power. With this power, I have robbed and killed. I caused a monster uprising in Astros, taking countless lives. All to take advantage of the chaos to steal money."
Immediately, Aaron understood what was happening. Leona was one of those people Algar had warned him about, those who had made a deal with monsters. He didn't have much knowledge about them in the video game. They were described as controlled humans and possessed much more strength than normal humans. Considering how strong Leona was, the power of the monsters would make her practically invincible.
It didn't take long to confirm her strength. Her arms lengthened into a disgusting black mass, crushing Aaron's body against the arena floor. Blood was expelled from his mouth, while intense pain spread throughout his body.
With his body on the floor, Leona hit and kicked him constantly, in a sort of repetition of what happened when the bullies were beating him that morning, before he recovered his memory. From the floor, Aaron cursed himself for his lack of strength. At the same time, a feeling surged from within his being: a feeling of fear. Considering how strong his enemy was, he was clear that he wasn't going to get out of there alive.
In what he thought were his last minutes, he couldn't help but think about his death in the other world. On that occasion, he felt the same fear as this time. That time he swore to himself that he would never suffer like that again, that if he was reborn, he would be the strongest in the world and would never suffer again.
But now he realized that he couldn't fulfill that wish.
In the midst of his thoughts, he heard a voice in his mind.
I think it's now my time to save you.
He had heard that same voice before. It was shortly after recovering his memories.
Aaron's body moved on its own. It threw Leona away, then lunged at her and hit her with a much more graceful style and movement than before. The way he hit her completely immobilized her, turning the situation around and dominating the combat almost immediately. It was the fighting style of the Astron family that he couldn't replicate before, now being performed automatically by his body.
"How...?" Leona couldn't believe what she was seeing. "How is it possible that you are so strong? Were you hiding your strength?"
Aaron understood what had happened. He thought he had recovered his memories and that he had always been Luke, just without the memories of his time on Earth. The reality was that Luke Astron was his own person. Aaron's memory and consciousness remained dormant within him until they awakened, then there was a kind of mixture between the two, but they maintained their individualities. That is, Luke and Aaron were two different people, not the same person.
Now Luke had taken control of the body.
The reason why Luke Astron was much stronger than him was easy to explain. Aaron had the memories of his time on Earth and retained several of his memories as Luke Astron. The problem was that having memories is not the same as knowing; that is, all those memories of training in the Astron way of fighting were not the same as the knowledge gained of those training sessions. That's why Aaron wasn't as strong as before and couldn't break his record at the Training Center.
That's right, I've been here the whole time. I didn't know whether to interrupt or not. I've been listening to what you were thinking, so I was a bit embarrassed to make my presence known. The more time passed, the more embarrassed I became saying something. I'm sorry!
He might be much stronger than him, but that submissive personality he had remained the same.
Luke delivered the final attack to Leona. A graceful and stylish blow to the face. The audience erupted, satisfied with the way the combat had developed. With Leona now unconscious, Luke was declared the winner of the tournament.
Doctors came running into the arena, taking Leona away on a stretcher. At the same time, several people hidden among the audience quietly withdrew.
With Luke's great power, I won't have any problems. If I use it, I'll be the strongest in this world!
While Aaron was absorbed in his thoughts, a figure jumped from the stands into the arena. It was the king of Couprisia, Amos Astron. He approached Luke and, with a movement so fast it could barely be seen, gave him a blow that knocked him unconscious.
Amos laughed out loud.
"I expected you to show a bit more strength, but you still need decades to reach my level!"
From the stands, Van and Terminus watched as the king left the tournament winner unconscious. It was a tradition at this point for Amos to attack the tournament winner, always winning with a single blow. Sometimes he didn't even need to attack; the opponent simply fell unconscious from his intimidating presence. When asked why he fought against them, he replied that he did it because whenever he saw people fighting, it made his blood boil, needing to hit someone to calm down.
"Why is Luke fighting?" a female voice asked Van. It was Tabea Astros, his wife.
Van briefly explained what had happened, mentioning how Luke had broken the ancestral rule by hitting some classmates who were bullying him. As soon as she heard it, Tabea frowned.
"Are you saying that our son was a victim of bullying, and instead of worrying about him, you scolded him and punished him? It doesn't surprise me that he acted so rebelliously and participated in the tournament; he has just lost all confidence in his parents and other figures of authority. We must fix this right now, or he will become a criminal."
A few hours later, Luke woke up in a hospital bed. His body was covered in bandages. In his mind, a familiar voice resonated.
It seems we share the same body.
The one speaking to him was Aaron.
I'm sorry! I'll try to disappear and not bother you.
You don't have to do that. Right now we're injured, you can keep control of this body until we recover. Then we'll see what to do.
Thank you so much.
Luke cried with gratitude for being allowed to use his own body, even if only for a short period of time.
You're truly pathetic...
The conversation between them was interrupted by a nurse, who entered the room quickly announcing that his father was on his way. Then she checked his bandages a bit and left the room, leaving him alone in bed.
I'm scared. What will father say? We broke the ancestral rule, escaped from home when we were punished, and participated in the tournament as an Astron.
Aaron didn't care much about what his father would think of his actions. He simply remained quiet while Luke was filled with nerves, shaking uncontrollably and on the verge of tears.
When his father arrived, he was accompanied by his mother. Van stood in front of the bed where he was lying. Then, to the surprise of both, he made a deep bow.
"Son, I'm sorry for what I said before. You're not punished, and I'll let it pass that you participated in the tournament. I hope this helps you regain your trust in us."
What is he talking about?
Luke asked Aaron.
I have no idea, but it seems everything turned out fine.
With the day ending, Aaron reflected on the events that had occurred, coming to a simple conclusion:
After being defeated by Amos with a single punch, I realize that I am not at all the strongest in this world. I will have to continue with my plan of acting carefully and not changing anything that happened in the video game.
Several weeks later...
In the Astron mansion, Terminus was heading to his daughter's room to inform her that she was engaged to her cousin Luke, as ordered by King Amos. He knocked on the door waiting for her permission to enter, but no matter how long he waited, he received no response.
He opened the door, worried. Inside, he found the worst he could imagine. The room was completely empty, with signs of struggle inside. A chill ran down his body, and he immediately went to inform his father of his daughter's disappearance.