Restarting My Life After Failing to Protect Girls in My Class – The Day I Was Called the "Demon God of Dragon Slaying" - Episode 7

“Ugh—”

An unbelievable impact hit me from above after I guarded against a middle-level roundhouse kick. The shock ran deep into my core, violently stirring my insides. I thought I might have broken my spine.

It felt like I had been hit by a car.

I couldn’t stay on my feet; my knees buckled, and I collapsed to the ground, still in the position of guarding against the kick. “Ugh—” I froze in place, overwhelmed by intense pain, nausea, and discomfort.

Taiichi Homura looked down at me with his hands hanging limply at his sides.

“I’ll give you credit for moving your arm. But come on, just using your arm as a shield doesn’t change the fact that my strike is going to hit.”

This was my eighth round of free sparring today.

And my eighth defeat from being unable to move.

Patapata—Whether it was the hot sweat pouring out from my desperate movements or cold sweat from the pain, a large amount of sweat dripped from my face onto the wooden floor, forming another puddle.

Two hours had passed since practice began, and my uncle’s wooden floor was covered in puddles from my sweat.

It was hot. Just unbearably humid. My uncle had stripped down to just a short-sleeved undershirt.

Still, there was no heating in the room, and my body temperature and breath after two hours of intense movement had raised the temperature to this level for mid-February.

—Exhausted—

—Injured all over—

Those words flickered in my mind dozens of times, trying to stop my body, but I stood up again, shaking.

“Haha. You’re doing well.”

I glanced at my uncle, who was watching me drag my feet, and made my way to the wall—there, hanging from the ceiling by a string and a clothespin at face height, was an A4 sheet of paper—I straightened my posture in front of it.

I lowered my hands… and positioned my feet slightly narrower than shoulder-width apart in a natural stance.

———

I unleashed a quick upper-level straight punch that I had honed over nearly six years of practice.

Bang!

With a satisfying sound, my tightly clenched fist broke through the pure white A4 paper.

I pulled back my wrist and fist, then silently swapped the punched paper with one from the stack of A4 sheets I had placed on the floor against the wall.

Training to deliver the best strike, no matter how injured I was.

My fist, which could barely pierce even a suspended newspaper at first, had progressed from newspaper to flyer, and then from flyer to A3 paper—before I knew it, I could even break through A4 paper.

To pierce the suspended paper, you need both the sharpness to strike the paper’s fibers hard and a speed that far exceeds the movement of the paper trying to recoil from the impact.

Softer, larger paper is easier to penetrate, while harder, smaller paper is more challenging.

“Uncle, one more—”

I let out an adorable voice that hadn’t yet changed, and it almost made me want to vomit. I quickly covered my mouth, and my uncle laughed at me.

“If you’re coming at me with the intent to kill, I’ll just counter you as I please.”

So—at 170 centimeters tall as a sixth grader, I slipped into my uncle’s space before he could finish his sentence.

I closed the five-meter distance in just a little over 0.6 seconds.

Without pushing off the floor, without changing the height of my head, and without shifting my body’s axis, I initiated my movement by bending my knees. Once I started, I sent out my next foot, and then the one after that.

“—”

As I got within striking distance, just like before with the “A4 paper punch,” I let my right hand fly.

An upper-level straight punch aimed at the face.

My right arm shot up like a whip cracking.

My fist grip was still loose, and until the moment of impact, when I tightened my back and engaged my shoulders, my grip remained weak—wait, what?

I felt a jolt.

My right fist, which I intended to launch with maximum acceleration, didn’t move beyond my shoulder.

“What do you think you’re doing, moving within my awareness?”

Looking closely, my uncle—Taiichi Homura—had somehow placed his thick left hand on my right shoulder.

Then, with just a light push from his fingertips, my stance crumbled effortlessly.

Even though I should have gained weight compared to before, I stumbled back like a toddler just learning to stand.

—This is bad—

There wasn’t even time to feel a chill.

———

Before I knew it, Taiichi Homura’s bare-fisted punch was right in front of my face, stopping just short of touching my nose.

Right after that, without even being touched, my hair was blown by the pressure of his fist, and the massive killing intent packed into that punch surged into my eyes, attacking my brain and spine.

I seriously thought I was going to be killed.

I was so scared that it made me feel nauseous from the bottom of my heart.

“Ugh—!?”

The deep punch to my abdomen that followed was a million times better.

Pain doesn’t scare me.

Having endured the excruciating pain and discomfort of terminal cancer for days, weeks, until the moment of my death, pain has become like a partner to me. I think to myself that any pain is just like this.

But the fear of death is different. I’ve only experienced death once.

I was truly terrified of dying meaninglessly without achieving my goals in this second life that I had just obtained.

So—

That’s precisely why—Taiichi Homura’s punch that stopped just short of my face, filled with killing intent, was incredibly effective in etching the nuances of real combat into my body.

Every defeat, a true defeat that seeped into my bones, has undeniably made me stronger.

“What’s wrong? Your hands and feet have stopped moving, Togo.”

“Ugh—!!”

I couldn’t do anything against Taiichi Homura, but I still had to do something.

None of the dozens of hand techniques, the dozen foot techniques, or any of the throws or joint locks worked, but I had to do something. I unleashed the techniques I had learned.

I threw a punch only to have it deflected down with a knife hand—honestly, I thought my forearm was going to be severed.

I executed a front kick, only to have my leg beautifully swept away—spinning in the air and landing flat on my back.

When I finally managed to grab my uncle’s wrist and tried to apply a wrist lock—he didn’t budge an inch.

Nothing worked.

Nothing worked, but—I desperately thought, moved with all my might, and did something again.

“Oh. That entry was quite… but your follow-up was slow.”

I was taken down by a fierce low roundhouse kick that swept both my legs, sending me crashing down again.

As soon as I rolled to absorb the fall, I jumped back up and moved.

Breathing heavily, sweating, and suffering from bruises all over my body, I thought—I’m lucky—like that.

—I’m really lucky—

—I’m probably the only person in the world who can keep losing to the sorcerer of the underground fighting world, Taiichi Homura, and still be alive—

—I’m the only one who can enjoy Homura Taiichi’s karate for an extended period—

——————————————————————

“Well. This is about it, I guess.”

“B-but…!!”

“What’s a kid lying on his back and unable to move talking about?”

“I’ll get up…!! I’ll stand up right away…!!”

“Hah. I’ll give you credit for that spirit and tenacity. …Well, you should cool your head for a night and really think about everything that happened today. That’s important too.”

“…Are you saying that just being reckless won’t make me like Taiichi Homura?”

Looking down at me, sprawled out on the floor and breathing heavily, my uncle didn’t answer, just chuckled lightly in silence.

Eventually, he murmured, “Togo is already in middle school, huh…” as if reminiscing.

I still couldn’t even sit up.

“It seems like your bones and joints have gotten pretty solid, so it’s about time you start training specific areas.”

But right after my uncle said that—I jumped up, forgetting the fatigue and pain.

“Are you going to let me start!?”

“You must be tired of just faking it with push-ups and finger push-ups, right? You’ll be hitting and kicking various things… Well, by the time you graduate middle school, you should have ‘appropriate limbs.’”

I couldn’t stop smiling and had to cover my mouth.

After all, I was finally allowed to train specific areas that had been forbidden because they would have too much of a negative impact on my soft elementary school body.

I could finally ‘weaponize’ my hands, feet, elbows, shins, and my whole body.

“…Hehe… I have to create fists that can crush my opponent’s fists…”

I couldn’t stop laughing.

In a few years, I would show ‘strong me’ to Noma-san and Aoki-san.

If my fists were soft then, and I was wearing open-finger gloves, it wouldn’t look cool at all.

“Togo. I hate to burst your bubble, but it’s probably going to hurt like hell, okay?”

“Just pain?”

“Just pain, all the time.”

“ Then it’s fine. I’m pretty—no, I’m stronger than strong when it comes to pain.”