Chapter 34

In the training ring below, Kyra sprinted at Hawk full tilt, knives glinting in the morning light. Hawk grinned, ready and waiting, obviously expecting to be the bear tanking bee stings.

A few steps before Kyra reached her though, she disappeared.

The look on Hawk’s face was comical for a moment, eyes wide, jaw dropped, before it grimaced, letting out a growl of pain. Blood sprayed from the back of her calf as Kyra appeared behind her, tsking in frustration.

Damn, Hawk is lucky as hell, or has the battle instincts of a god, that was definitely supposed to get her Achilles, Cora thought. She wanted to rush down, get a better view of the action, but by the time she made it, this would probably already be over.

She noticed Hawk wasn’t using her greatshield and maul from yesterday, instead opting for a big hunk of metal roughly the same size and shape as Bertha. Made sense, considering her {Improvised Weapons Mastery} skill.

{Improvised Weapons Mastery}: if it’s big, heavy, and has a place to hold it with both hands, it's a melee weapon. Others might dispute this, but you’ll hit them with the disputed object until they agree. When using something that isn’t a melee weapon as a melee weapon, receive an effective +10 to [Str] and [Dex]

Cora wondered how many non-standard things Hawk had been required to hit people with to end up with that as an ‘innate skill’ when the System had integrated her.

To be clear, it suited her. She swung that hunk of metal around with such speed and finesse it might as well have been a masterwork greatsword that Kyra just barely ducked under.

But duck under she did, and for all Hawk’s strength and speed, Kyra was still faster. She recovered from the dodge so quickly it nearly left an afterimage, tensing her powerful legs to blast forward, diving between Hawk’s own to deliver slashes on either inner thigh.

Hawk roared, but not with rage. Her laughter was raucous enough that Cora heard Tania groan in annoyance from behind her. Hawk’s legs looked like she was currently in the middle of a particularly nasty moontide, but apparently it hurt just exactly enough to get her excited.

She didn’t bother swinging her weapon around, instead using it to counterbalance a back kick that caught Kyra off guard, slamming into her shoulder after a rushed dodge.

The force was titanic, sending Kyra into a spinning tumble that Hawk was going to capitalize on. She twisted, bringing her hunk of metal around to meet Kyra’s trajectory with a home run swing.

For a moment, Cora worried she was going to lose a friend she hadn’t even made yet, but she’d underestimated Kyra’s skill just as much as Hawk had.

The girl’s tumble shifted instantly into a perfectly controlled handspring, sending Kyra sailing just over Hawk’s swing. Mid-fucking-air, Kyra still managed to swipe her karambit across the inside of Hawk’s wrist, forcing her hand to fall limp as its tendons severed.

That sent a shiver down Cora’s spine. Not a fan of tendon trouble, no fuckin’ thank you.

Still, Hawk laughed, though it sounded just a little more forced. For her part, Kyra looked cold as she came to a rest in a three-point crouch, the arm Hawk had kicked hanging limp at her side.

With one fuckin’ arm!? Cora thought, unable to stop a little ‘squee!’ from escaping her lips. This was better than the best UFC fight by a mile. It looked better than most of the fights from her movies, and those were half CGI!

Wait, shouldn’t Hawk be way weakened by =Disciplinarian=? Is this her at half strength!?

NO NO

YOUR BOY IAIN WAS THINKING AHEAD

TOOK {Trainer I} WITH HIS INITIAL LEVEL UP. HELPS EQUALIZE COMBATANTS BUFFS IN TRAINING MATCHES HE OVERSEES.

Cora looked to the edge of the ring, where the aging soldier shouted either encouragement or instruction till he was red in the face, Cora wasn’t sure which.

Thank god for Iain, she thought, and not for the first time. Luck, or maybe [Big Sys], had granted her an excellent pair of Isekai doulas in him and Mike.

YOU’RE WELCOME! [Big Sys] said, apparently just to the thank god part, since Cora hadn’t consciously thought the second part of that.

After a beat to recover, Kyra burst forward again, this time preceding her charge with a flick of the wrist, sending a knife streaking towards Hawk’s face. Quick as a whip, Hawk raised her useless hand, letting the knife bury itself in her palm.

It was a pure intimidation tactic, she easily could have blocked that with a forearm plate, but that really only made it more effective. She didn’t even flinch as the knife sank into her flesh, bringing her other arm around and up into an uppercut that looked like it would catch Kyra square on the chin.

Once more, the smaller woman avoided it, but not without cost. She tucked into a roll, Hawk’s fist scraping over her [Voidblack Bodysuit] as she did. It was less controlled than her usual fare though, and that meant she slammed into one of Hawk’s tree-trunk legs with a massive ‘crack!’ that Cora felt more than heard.

The impact winded Kyra, and she lay motionless for a crucial moment, while Hawk just grinned and raised one massive boot. Even as it fell, Kyra regained herself. Cora saw her snarl, get her legs beneath her, and twist. She’d reached out, braced the falling boot against her side, and spun on the ground like a turtle, twisting Hawk’s ankle with an absolutely sickening snap, robbing some of its downward momentum to convert into angular.

Hawk fell onto her other knee, and Kyra was on her in a flash, climbing her one handed, using her karambit like an ice pick, until the knife was at Hawk’s throat.

Cora could see the cold sweat of pain on the giantess’ skin, but still, Hawk grinned wide, laughing, and patting Kyra on the back. Notably with the hand that had Kyra’s knife stuck in it, so it also stabbed her, just a little.

Damn, honestly, I expected that to be more one-sided, in Kyra's favor. That girl is like a ninja, but Hawk is…. something else.

Show over, Cora headed downstairs, hoping to god that her two strongest fighters hadn’t just taken each other out of commission for a few weeks.

She passed through the dining area on the way out, grabbing what appeared to be a soft-skinned mango kind of thing and a fresh croissant as she passed. Cora had to figure out who they had cooking, and move them up in the [System Integration] priority. What if there was a Cook class?

When she entered the courtyard, she saw Jocasta hobbling into the ring, although with noticeably more alacrity than she’d been displaying before. Cora would bet anything the woman had been hiding the energy her high [Vit] gave her on purpose. She shuffled up to Hawk, who still had on a brave face, but her foot was literally facing backwards, and that was something the body reacted to, no matter how tough you were.

“My word, you two went at it like cats and dogs!” Jocasta cackled as she crouched, and put her hands on Hawk’s ankle. The big girl finally let the pain show on her face. “Right, dearie, I won’t lie, this is going to hurt like an absolute son of a bitch. Here, bite down.”

Jocasta produced a piece of some kind of soft wood, and stuffed it into Hawk’s mouth. She waited for no kind of confirmation to place her hands back on Hawk’s ankle, and they glowed.

It was the same verdant, pulsing green that had filled the Grove last night, flowing from Jocasta’s gnarled fingers into Hawk’s wrecked ankle. After a moment, with crackles and pops Cora could hear from across the courtyard, the ankle began to twist itself back into place.

Judging by Hawk’s face, this hurt considerably worse than it getting wrecked in the first place. She screamed through the wood, eyes almost completely white as they rolled back in her head. Then, with a little ‘pop!’ that felt kind of anti-climactic, her foot was where it was supposed to be, and her other wounds had healed as well. Hawk let herself slump onto her back, too drained by pain to even spit out the piece of wood.

Jocasta stood, wiping sweat off of her wrinkled brow and shuffling over to stand above Hawk’s head.

“Right, well, I said it would hurt,” she said, with the air of an apology. She rummaged in her dress, coming out with a few berries. Jocasta plucked the wood out of Hawk’s mouth, and replaced it with the berries. “Chew those dearie, be good as new in no time.”

She gave Hawk a cheerful pat on the cheek, and went to tend to Kyra.

“Hey,” Cora said, walking up and crouching next to Hawk, who was still breathing hard, but was regaining a little color. She laid a hand on her chest. “You good, big girl?”

Hawk weakly patted Cora’s hand, and fuck hers was big.

“Oh peachy, Miss Mistress, don’t you go worryin’ about ol’ Hawk,” she said. Her voice had begun weak, but by the time she was finished speaking, it’d regained its confident timbre, and she’d risen up on her elbows. “Whew! Fuck me, I didn’t even get my ass kicked that hard when the Chains moved in!”

“Yeah?” Cora asked, “I mean, Kyra won, but not by a lot. How the hell did they stop you then?”

Cora flipped her hand over, taking Hawk’s and helping her to her feet. She found she actually was able to help now, under the effect of all her stat boosts. She could probably out-lift her personal trainer back home now.

“Riot foam, fuckin’ cowards,” Hawk hissed as she dusted herself off. “Filled up the whole room I was holed up in. Still ripped one’s tasty little throat out when they chipped through to me, though.”

She grinned, and now Cora was sure, those teeth were sharper than they should be. She was also, to her great shame, now sure that she found that pretty fuckin’ hot.

Kyra had been silent behind them, but one single, solitary, piercing shriek of pain cut the morning calm, in conjunction with a ‘snap!’ that had almost certainly come from the girl’s shoulder. Still, she recovered fast, and an instant later, she was filling Cora’s peripheral.

“Holy shit Hawk,” she said, not in complaint, but in awe, “you kicked me hard enough to turn my shoulder to powder, and you barely hit me!”

“Yeah, well, that’s what happens when you fight Monsters,” Hawk said, giving Kyra a wink, but her smile faltered just a bit.

Encouraging. Don’t want her being entirely proud of that.

“I fucking guess so!” Kyra said, giving Hawk a light punch in the side. “Now I see why you charged a Shimmer Addict like a maniac though, those arms are stronger than they look, and they look…”

Kyra’s eyes scanned over Hawk’s bulging muscles, and she blushed, then coughed.

“... uh, pretty strong.”

There was a part of Cora that wanted to hiss at Kyra like a possessive cat, and she ignored the little voice in her head that roared ‘hands off, bitch!’. She couldn’t stop it, but she didn’t have to acknowledge it.