Chapter 24 Inesperate Offer

Josiah felt some strange energy coming from the man in front of him. It wasn’t anything that could be felt physically, but the aura he passed was different from the other ones’. He started feeling insecure.

‘Better wait and see what this guy can do.’

Josiah was wielding his sword on both hands, carrying a very serious expression. Moving step by step closer to his enemy.

On the other hand, the man only had that pocket knife in his hand, and he wasn’t even carrying it properly. He looked bored, seeing Josiah act cautiously like that.

“Come on, boy. Either you give me the stuff or just charge in, already. I don’t have the whole day, you know…”

Setting reason aside, Josiah got baited and gave in to the advice.

Suppressing a useless “hah” he swung his blade at the standing man. When he was close enough, the bully moved the pocket knife to the side and his sword followed the movement, escaping Josiah’s hand and falling on the floor.

Josiah wanted to back off, but he was too close and his acceleration hadn’t stopped. The man delivered a punch, straight to Josiah’s face.

His body got dragged across the dirt.

“See? This is how street fighting should go. Nowadays everyone keeps bringing those damned weapons to the scene… Bring it on, boy. Let’s fight like in the old times.”

Josiah wiped the blood that ran out of his nose and leaned his hand on the floor to get up.

‘That was dumb of me, following his lead like that... But I needed to see what powers this guy had anyway… Now, his weapon… It draws bloodbound weapons to the direction he swings it? I guess the higher the level the more the weapons are drawn? That’s not good… Even if I try to swing my dagger at him, he’s going to just deflect it moving his knife to the side. In this case…’

Josiah walked slowly to the man in front of him. He was angered but acting cautiously.

The man put his knife arm down; it was on his bad hand. He carried it on the left while he punched with the right, which meant he really didn’t like fighting with weapons very much.

Josiah had trained some physical combat skills in the first years when Thomas would guide him daily, therefore he wasn’t exactly an amateur. He went to the man’s with a Zsangi form, a martial art form from a distant land, relying heavily on stamina. Josiah learned he should try to outfight larger opponents with that form since his physique was so small.

“Zsangi? No wonder Shiyo told me we would need the entire gang to get the coins from the boy.”

“Shiyo!? He’s the one who told them about the money? That bastard…”

Following his trained steps, Josiah managed to find the man’s bloodspot and struck right in, aiming for a kick on the joint of his legs, to destabilize him. But the man saw it coming and turned his body on a single, beautiful move and kicked him back on the crotch.

“Aahh!” Josiah abandoned the form to cover the pain with his hands.

“You’re good, but don’t go all thinking you’re the only one who’s ever trained.”

The man assumed a stance Josiah never saw before, with the pocket knife hand on the lower back and the right near the upper part of the chest.

Josiah distanced himself by jumping back unashamedly.

“…”

A vein popped on the man’s forehead as he felt slightly insulted.

‘I know hit and run isn’t elegant at all, but trying to outfight someone better than you recklessly won’t result in anything good. I need to find an opening. That’s how I beat my opponents and I’m going to stick to that. If it comes to the worse and I feel it’s impossible there’s no shame in running to the center of the city instead.’ Josiah thought.

He assumed his learned stance back, not because he wanted to fight but to put pressure on the man so that he could win a couple more seconds to think:

‘I can’t believe there’s nothing I can do here. The very brief show of skill states I should lose fighting on close range, but I can’t use my weapons either…’

The man advanced, this time trying to do more than a single hit. Josiah tried his best to defend himself from the kicks and punches with his little hands but he lacked both range and speed to do so. As a result, he blocked some but took the others.

‘That’s it. I should run for it. It’s not like they have stolen from me and I’m trying to take the money back, I still have the money with me. Wait… Unless I…’

Josiah had an idea.

When he found a short time where he could, he withstood a punch and grabbed the dagger from his back pocket, and swung back at the soon-to-be mustached man. It was a mighty, wide swing.

Josiah anticipated the man would react in time and use the pocket knife to deflect the dagger to the closest way out, in the case, direct the hit above his head.

But Josiah was counting on it.

The rapier he had could be used to accelerate his bloodstream. When he swung the dagger, he purposedly leaned his waist so that the rapier could make him a small cut, thus changing the rhythm of his bloodstream. This way the man calculated the dagger swing differently than the other time and defended it wrongly.

As a result, the attack came early and struck the head of the man.

“Aaaargh!” He shouted as he got thrown back, putting his hands on his face.

The dagger, of course, was thrown to the floor because of the power of the pocket knife combined with the wide swing. Now two of Josiah’s weapons were on the floor. That attack was really his last try.

But the man didn’t seem to have received much damage from it.

‘Did I hear metal clanging when the dagger hit?’ Josiah asked himself.

The man took the hands off his face. It seemed only a small cut had got in.

‘That tiara he’s wearing… Looks like one of those bracelets I’ve seen enemies blocking attacks with before…’

“You little bastard. I too have my little tricks. Now you’re gonna pay!”

The man was far more furious than before. This time he was the one who charged in.

‘Uh oh…’ Josiah thought.

The eight-year-old boy was hoping for an opening so that he could run away, but when the man approached fighting once again he noticed a decay on the quality.

‘Did the dagger effect kick in? I thought the tiara defended. Or maybe he forgot all about it…?’

The gang leader’s speed was inferior if compared to before, but he wasn’t so slow for Josiah to keep up. But he had another idea.

‘If he is under the effect of the dagger, and if I’m under the effect of the rapier, it means I can try one more thing…’

Josiah saw the chance and aimed straight for the hand where the pocket knife was, trying to immobilize the wrist and take the weapon off him. He used everything he had; ignoring the damage he would suffer on his lower body by concentrating only on that.

“What’re you doing?”

The man tried to move the hand away to turn that attempt vain, but Josiah’s blood was still under the effect of the rapier. His arm was guided to the pocket knife on its own.

‘It works!’

Josiah’s hand got cut badly by shocking to the dagger, but at least he took it out of the guy’s hand.

Seeing his weapon falling off, and the young boy in front of him trying to retrieve an ax from his back, the man finally backed off.

“You are crazy!”

Josiah’s hand was covered in blood from that last event.

“Yeah! That’s it! Get him, young boy!” It was an old male voice. Josiah turned to his left and a crowd of witnesses had gathered during the fight; they were all lined up, watching the fight since who-knows-when. One of them even got a bag of chips.

“I bet on him!”

The almost mustachioed leader exclaimed:

“Tch. I’m done. Keep your junk. Now there are too many people here.”

The duo agreed on ceasing the fight, each one grabbing the fallen weapons from the floor.

“Aww, c’mon. Let’s see who hins.”

“Are you kidding? The young boy won! The man was just using an excuse.”

People kept commenting on the fight as Josiah got his things back and prepared to move away. He left the spot without another word.

‘It sure got noisy there… This damn this Rimrid city…’

“Hey, wait!” A middle-aged slim man wearing fancy clothes ran to him before he reached the main street.

“?”

“You sure are strong, young boy. Not only that, but I liked your innate talent as well. The talent of a blood scholar.”

“Blood scholar?”

“Did you know his hemoccanads would react to the enhanced blood in advance? Or did you think of that during the fight”

“Hemocannads? Enhanced?”

“I also like the way you struck at his head with the b-level enhancement. Did you calculate it on your own?”

“…”

“Here.”

The man gave him a short card, almost the size of a thing called ‘business card’ from his own world. It contained the personal information of the guy and the place he worked in.

“I am a blood scholar at The Blood University of Rimrid. We are currently looking for potential juniors. I would appreciate if you could consider a spot. I can give you my recommendation and ensure you get in.”

Josiah got astonished.

‘A school of people who study the properties of the blood and bloodbound weapons? That’s exactly what I wanted…’