After that, whenever Rare found a yer, she would sic the Kenzaki brothers on them.


    —<i>Actually, at this rate, Yoroizaka’s [Sword] skills will bepletely neglected!</i>


    She decided that the next yer she found would die directly by her hand.


    However, that was only if time permitted, since she was having a bit of trouble locating her next victim. The other yers were probably fighting each other and their numbers were rapidly dropping. But so far, every yer she beat took only a single blow to send them to their graves; none of them felt like they were still alive because they had emerged victorious after defeating another yer.


    In which case, there should still be a strong yer here. With those thoughts, Rare began to stay on guard while moving around. Since she was decked out in full armor, there was no way for her to achieve perfect stealth, so she had no choice but to leverage [Enhanced Hearing] to pick up the noises they made first. If her opponent also had some kind of strengthened hearing, then she’d lose this advantage, but there was nothing she could do about that at this point in time.


    She quietly advanced through the forest while concentrating solely on her ears. At longst, she caught the faint sound of shing. There was the unnatural ring of metal, and the sound of footsteps mixed in. It was probably someone inbat. Rare focused primarily on those noises, still staying aware of her surroundings, and carefully closed in on them.


    The sounds led her to the sight of two yers locking swords. From the sword skills that they used, they must have invested quite a lot of XP. In addition, it was clear that they were both naturally skilled at the de. In other words, this was the perfect time to test Yoroizaka’s skills.


    Rare purposely made a lot of noise as she stepped out before the two.


    “Huh?! It’s another yer!” “Don’t be in such a rush. I’ll take you on after taking care of this guy, so don’t get in the way!”


    The two of them noticed her, but neither seemed interested in stopping their match. Rare casually walked up to them and swung her sword.


    “What the—?!”


    “You bastard! All right then! You’re first now…”


    —<i>Wonderful, they’re strong enough to chat while fighting.</i>


    Using Yoroizaka’s [sh] skill resulted in sweeping sideways with a Kenzaki. [sh] was, as advertised, a skill that generated a shing attack with a sword, but the orientation of the sword when the skill was activated changed whether it was a vertical or horizontal sh. Rather than deliberately aiming at a specific yer, since the sword was in her right hand, it shed to the right, at the chatterbox guy. He unconsciously reacted to block with his sword, but his sword was poor quality. Without any meaningful resistance, sh went right through the raised sword. Yoroizaka and the Kenzakis made a formidable team.


    “No way!!!”


    The shed yer died instantly, so the one who shouted was the other yer. Nowpletely on guard against Rare, he jumped back to put some distance between them and readied his sword. However, against Yoroizaka and the Kenzakis, such little distance was akin to nothing. The [sh Step] skill was found far down in the [Nimble] tree; using it instantly closed the distance between them, and a vertical [sh] cut the second yer in half.


    —<i>I thought they would be pretty strong, at least based on the mood…</i>


    Rare felt a bit disappointed. She had no idea how many yers were left, but it would be pretty difficult to devote the rest of the time limit to hunting them down. If there were any yers who were also hiding, it would be hard to find them. If there was one thing she could take back from this experience, it was that she could use some sort of searching or detection skill to help her out a bit.


    —<i>Wait, hold up a sec.</i>


    She suddenly looked over at the Kenzaki brothers. They were able to fly on their own.


    —<i>Jirou, Saburou, Shirou, and Gorou, fly up above the forest and look for yers. If you find any, report in… Ah, no, just cut them down on the spot.</i>


    She didn’t need to continue testing out Yoroizaka’s capabilities. What she’d seen so far was more than satisfactory. After watching the four swords fly off, Rare resumed her own search for more yers. However, after that, Rare didn’t encounter anyone else, and eventually the notice came that her block’s preliminaries were over.


    A minuteter, Rare received another notification about being automatically transported to the spectator seats; she quickly canceled the possession, crawled out of the tree hollow, then summoned Yoroizaka to her. She had Yoroizaka help reequip all the armor and put on her cloak before a glow appeared at her feet and she was transported. Made it by a hair’s breadth. The ursed sunlight apparently didn’t have anysting effects if she only spent a short time exposed in the shade under trees, and she didn’t feel like she had taken any damage either. Knowing this, perhaps she could be a little more cavalier in the future.


    The spectator seats were packed with yers, and the standing gallery on the outer perimeter where Rare materialized paid her no mind. She had her cloak on, which helped temper Yoroizaka’s impressively intimidating appearance. Looking into the arena, numerous monitors were floating in the air, which allowed any person from any seat to see the action in any block. However, there was no way to watch just any battle taking ce; she wasn’t sure where they were, but the monitors only showed the fights that the camera focused on. In addition, as far as she could see, they only filmed actual battles; there was a good chance that the ce Rare had been hiding and the ce where the archers hadid in ambush, background scenes, were not shown on any monitors.


    The yers around her were all abuzz about the one monitor that went ck, which was probably the one showing Rare’s block. ording to what she overheard from the yers chatting about it, thest thing it had disyed was the battle between those two yers and Yoroizaka, after which her four swords flew away in all directions while Yoroizaka stalked off. They didn’t see the final scene of Rare quickly getting into the armor.


    “I wonder who that was, the ck armored knight?”


    “They were way too overpowered. Do you think it could be some kind of special event boss the admins added?”


    “That might be a bit of a stretch. If that were the case, wouldn’t the yers in block sixteenin?”


    “With so many yers excited about participating in the event, it’d be shitty for there to be an unbeatable boss. There’s no way.”


    “So you think that was a yer…? What the hell did they do in two weeks to afford aplete suit of armor?”


    “They probably robbed a merchant, yeah? They easily cut a yer in half, so it’s gotta be someone pretty stone-cold.”


    “Right, that part’s weird, isn’t it? How much STR would you need to cut clean through that guy’s sword?”


    As she expected, she definitely stood out. Based on the amount of XP she had earned, Rare didn’t doubt that her power was at the top, but she thought there should at least be some decent yers who could put up a proper fight against Yoroizaka. If there were actually someone at that level, then after defeating Yoroizaka, then she thought she could y at “unleashing the final boss’s second form,” but she didn’t think that was likely to happen anymore.


    The monitors captured the myriad battles unfolding in various ces. Many of them included tricking opponents into falling for traps, so they served as great study material for Rare. With them as reference, she could try applying that knowledge in the great forest.