Chapter 91 :

Episode 91 — Substitute 

The temple bastards knew how to entertain themselves better than I expected.

“Jinger from Group 21! Lia from Group 34! Step forward!”

Judging by the way they had made such a crappy bracket.

“This damn…”

Jing, who was just as flustered as Lia, who had to go out for her match as soon as she appeared, unconsciously muttered a curse.

I looked at the temple priests sitting pompously in the high seats of the audience.

They probably had not been conscious of Lia.

Rather, it must have been an order made with Jing, a strong candidate for the championship, in mind.

If the match was decided too quickly, the villagers’ excitement would cool down.

They probably also wanted to check the skills of the other members besides Jing.

“I-I’ll be back.”

Lia, bound by a tension that had barely loosened, clattered up onto the arena like a toy doll.

Worried and mocking gazes followed behind her.

“Well, well. Look who it is. I guess you still had enough shame left to enter the tournament.”

Lia bit her lip as she confirmed the face full of ridicule.

It was Jinger, the eldest son of the leather shop owner.

He was a man who would occasionally come to the shop to ask Edan to enter the tournament with him, but each time, he would grind his teeth and leave after Edan’s firm refusal.

“How about forfeiting even now? Don’t get caught late after using dirty tricks.”

She wanted to close her eyes and lower her head at the unbearable insult, but she could not do that this time.

It was not because she had gained any special courage.

—Do not take your eyes off your opponent! Fix your stance!

Because, due to the side effects of the training she had endured for the past two days, if she closed her eyes now, it felt as if Jing’s fiery scolding would come down on her at any moment.

Along with his nagging, the difficult training came back to her mind.

Feeling strength naturally enter her body, Lia corrected her stance.

She fixed her legs in place and raised her clenched fists above her temples.

As soon as she adjusted her posture, the referee’s whistle sounded as if he had been waiting.

Her opponent, who had participated in the Lucha tournament several times, charged at Lia without hesitation.

Desperately ignoring her pounding heart, Lia repeated Jing’s advice inwardly.

‘Just like training, just like training, just like training.’

But his advice was not very helpful.

To be precise, there was no need to recall the advice.

Lia realized that as she easily dodged Jinger’s fist.

‘….Why is he so slow?’

With that doubt, Lia dodged Jinger’s next attack.

However, Jinger was still an experienced fighter, and Lia was only a beginner.

A beginner who was swinging her fists for the first time in three years at that.

Thwack!

The tip of Jinger’s foot struck Lia’s shin dead-on.

“Ugh!”

When Lia’s stance broke because she could not endure the pain, a fist immediately flew toward her face.

Lia quickly twisted her body, but she could not avoid it completely.

Feeling the fist graze the tip of her nose, Lia quickly retreated.

As the match lasted longer than expected, boos erupted from the audience.

Everyone was expecting Lia’s defeat.

Fortunately, their jeers did not really reach Lia’s ears.

Because her breath had risen to her chin, and the leg that had been hit felt like it was screaming.

“You rat-like little thing! Are you just going to keep dodging?”

Jinger, furious because he had failed to land a decisive blow, shouted.

Lia clenched her fists tightly.

It was strange.

She was being pushed onto the defensive, her beaten leg and nose were stinging, and she was out of breath, but she was not impatient at all.

Compared to Jing, all of Jinger’s attacks were too slow and too light.

Since when had Jinger become this weak?

While she was blankly thinking that, Jinger aimed a kick at Lia’s knee.

Jinger’s attack struck Lia’s calf instead of her knee.

It was a half-failed attack, but since the hit finally connected anyway, the excited Jinger unleashed indiscriminate punches at Lia, whose stance had broken.

Even amid the pain that snapped her mind awake, Lia did not take her eyes off Jinger, who was visible beyond her guard.

It felt as though Jing’s voice was ringing in her ears.

—Good, Miss Lia. There are two things you must remember. First, do not get hit. Second, even if you get hit, get back up immediately.

—Uh, is there nothing like hitting well?

Jing had definitely laughed at Lia’s question.

—There is no need to worry about that. An opportunity will definitely come. When that time comes, all you need to do is strike well.

—All I need to do is strike well?

—It is fine. One blow will be enough.

With a face more confident than Lia herself, he had raised his fist and said that.

—A single blow will be enough.

One blow.

Lia now felt like she vaguely understood what Jing had meant by that one blow.

Just as he had said, there were plenty of opportunities.

Because her opponent was slower than she had expected and sloppier than she had expected.

The moment Jinger pulled his arm back to swing his fist, Lia took one step forward for the first time since the match began.

Without taking her eyes off the striking point.

Her target was Jinger’s philtrum.

Crack!!!

The brutal sound of Jinger’s front teeth colliding with the bones of her knuckles rang out almost at the same time as Jinger, knocked unconscious, collapsed to the floor.

The boos that had filled the arena also turned into silence.

“W-Winner, Lia!”

The referee’s trembling judgment rang out as he looked back and forth between the fallen Jinger and Lia.

But no one cheered or clapped.

Amid the cold gazes, Lia awkwardly bowed once, then ran toward the waiting room as if fleeing.

The audience’s gazes followed behind her.

Among them, there was one person looking down at Lia coldly.

Edan glared at his younger sister, who was dyed with thrill and excitement, then soon turned away.

The sunken gaze that had been watching Edan also quietly followed behind him.

* * *

The second round of Lucha, which had opened early in the morning, ended earlier than last year, before evening arrived.

Jing and Lia, who had contributed greatly to that, fled to the bookstore to avoid the cheers and attention of the people.

A few tactless people tried to follow us inside, but they were chased away after being baptized by the bookstore owner’s furious feather duster.

“Miss Lia, you did very well today.”

Jing said, finally taking a breath in the peace that had arrived.

“I really defeated Jinger, right?”

Even though a good three hours had passed since the match ended, Lia still could not feel any sense of reality and muttered.

Three of his front teeth were gone, and he had even fainted. If that did not count as defeating him, then that would be an excessively harsh standard in its own way.

“How horribly do you have to finish someone off before you will acknowledge that you defeated them?”

Ratel, apparently thinking something similar to me, scolded Lia.

“No, it’s just that I won much more easily than I expected, so it doesn’t feel real.”

The flustered Lia said, as if making an excuse.

“Compared to Jing, he was too slow….and his fists did not seem very threatening either.”

Jing smiled brightly at Lia, who added an evaluation that killed Jinger twice over.

“Thank you for the compliment. You were also a good disciple.”

“That’s good. Please take good care of the remaining third round, fourth round, and the finals too.”

When I indirectly said that I would only forfeit like today, Ratel’s sharp gaze immediately pierced me.

“You don’t seem very surprised.”

At his nitpicking, I shrugged my shoulders.

“Why would I be?”

“You look like someone who knew from the start that this would happen.”

Of course I knew.

Halfway, at least.

Although I had arrived half a year early, there was no way Lia’s talent would run off somewhere.

Even in the original work, she was the strongest fighter in the village without any professional training.

But right now, there was a word that was bothering me more strongly than that.

“You…” 

Huh.

This bastard had been naturally speaking informally to me since last time.

No matter how much I was currently inside the body of a kid who was not even twenty, I was nearly thirty.

But if I said that, I would have to bring up the story about the world inside the book.

I glared at him, filling my gaze with dissatisfaction that could not become words.

“How would I know what will happen ahead of time? If I had known in advance, I wouldn’t have received Jing’s training so diligently.”

At my answer, a sneer appeared on Ratel’s face.

“For someone saying that, you were pretty negligent with training.”

“Did you see me training?”

“….”

The guy shut his mouth, as if he had nothing to say.

Why did he get strangely stubborn every once in a while?

Sometimes, he was not that different from Celos.

No, still, the protagonist bastard had at least a slightly cuter side than that guy.

When I looked at Ratel with a slightly more generous heart, the guy returned an answer to my goodwill.

“Why are you looking at me in such an unpleasant way?”

Right. What was the point in saying one was better or worse than the other?

Both of them still had crappy personalities.

Lia, who had been watching me and Ratel, opened her mouth with a smile.

“The third round is in three days. The rules are the same as the second round.”

That meant that, if things went like today, we could seize the championship without any major upset.

It was good that things were moving forward without much difficulty, but there was one thing that bothered me.

It was the gap created because the timeline had been moved ahead of the original work.

Before leaving Lucha Village, I had to decide whether to fill that empty space, dig deeper into it, or just ignore it and leave.

“I hope luck will follow us that day too…but…”

Lia’s voice gradually grew quieter, and her smiling face stiffened.

I confirmed the face of the man standing at the entrance of the bookstore, where her gaze had landed and did not know how to leave.

“So you were all here.”

At the calm voice that spoke first, Lia came back to her senses and awkwardly approached Edan.

“Did you come to the arena today?”

Edan looked down for a moment at Lia’s face, which held a little expectation, then silently passed by Lia and stood in front of Jing and Ratel.

It seemed his purpose was not Lia, but the others.

Before Lia, who had suddenly been ignored, could even become flustered, he opened his mouth.

“I came to make a proposal.”

“I refuse.”

When Edan, hit by Ratel’s way of conversing that left people speechless, stiffened his expression, this time someone capable of having a conversation stepped forward.

“What could you possibly have to propose to us?”

“I am promising you a more certain victory.”

“Edan, what do you mean by that?”

Lia, flustered by an opening that could be called rather arrogant, asked, but this time too, Edan continued speaking without even glancing at Lia.

“I will enter the match with you in Lia’s place.”

* * *

In Lucha Village, which was unaffected by Manis, whose influence had been disrupted because of me, there were two people different from the original work.

The first was, of course, Lia.

The Lia in the original work was more proactive than now, more confident than now, and also more desperate than now.

In order to meet Edan, who had won Lucha and left the village.

It was difficult to imagine the current Lia from the Lia in the original work, who had been looking for outsiders to enter the tournament with her.

That must have been how precious her one and only older brother was to the Lia in the original work.

The problem was that human being called her older brother.

The second person, Edan, who did not even appear in the original work.

The insurmountable wall Lia had never once defeated.