The Scumbag's Guide To Heroism novel Chapter 337

Chapter 337: 337 | How Not to Die [PS BONUS]

Because every time I hurt him, he adjusted. Every time I found an opening, he closed it. Every combination I threw got read faster the second time I tried it, and by the third attempt he was already moving before I’d finished deciding what to do.

He tagged me with a hook that made my vision blur. Got his hip under mine and threw me three feet sideways before I managed to break his grip. Caught my incoming jab on his forearm and converted it into an armbar attempt that I barely escaped by wrenching my shoulder in a direction shoulders weren’t designed to go.

We separated again. Both breathing hard now. Both starting to accumulate the small damages that added up over time.

"You’re not bad," Hiro said.

"High praise from the guy whose entire personality is backhanded compliments."

"I mean it." He wiped sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand. His hair had lost its perfect styling, falling across his face in damp strands that he didn’t bother to fix. "Your speed is genuine. Your instincts aren’t terrible. But you fight like someone who learned by not dying instead of learning to win."

For a beat, my own hands felt heavier.

"And you fight like someone who’s never lost anything that mattered," I shot back. "Perfect technique, perfect form, perfect everything. No improvisation. No creativity. Just the same combinations your coaches drilled into you repeated at different angles."

Hiro’s jaw tightened. Good. I’d found something that bothered him.

"Improvisation gets people killed."

"Predictability gets people killed faster. The first opponent who doesn’t play by your rules is going to take you apart because you’ve never had to adapt to something your training didn’t prepare you for."

We came together again. No circling this time, no feeling out. Just collision.

His jab met my cross in a simultaneous exchange that left both of us staggered. I recovered first, pushed forward, threw a knee at his solar plexus that he blocked with both forearms. He shoved me back and launched a spinning elbow that I ducked under his spinning elbow. There was no thought behind the motion. My body simply moved, a hair’s breadth from disaster.

I came up inside his guard and got both hands on his collar. Tried to pull him down into a clinch where my longer reach might give me an advantage. He posted on my hip, broke my grip with a technique so clean it felt effortless, and converted my momentum into a throw that sent me rolling across the grass.

I was up before I finished moving. The Demigod trait refused to let me stay down, refused to accept that the impact had hurt, refused to acknowledge that a prettier version of myself had just thrown me like a training dummy.

Hiro hadn’t pursued. He stood where I’d left him, weight balanced, hands loose at his sides.

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