Chapter 4: Lessons in Defeat

Chapter 4: Lessons in Defeat

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Standing alone in a dark forest was not Ace's ideal landing spot just after transmigrating. Scanning his surroundings, all he could see were tall, haunting trees covered in snow. A shiver ran down his spine from the cold, and the unsettling dark vibe of the forest didn't offer much comfort.

"Couldn't you have dropped me in a city or a town?" Ace complained.

Examining himself, Ace found he was dressed in normal attire—a white t-shirt, a black jacket, and cream-coloured pants. However, something felt different.

After a little close inspection he found that his physique had changed from what he could last remembered. It was more defined, more streamlined, and essentially felt more perfect.

"Hmm, my body has changed from my old one. I'm pretty sure I look different too. Well, it doesn't matter much as long as I'm not too ugly," Ace thought, not overly concerned about the body change.

Suddenly glancing sideways by chance, Ace's eyes caught something shiny. He approached it to find a glaive lodged into a tree. He quickly pulled the glaive outside of the tree.

The glaive looked majestic and divine, to say the least. It had a shiny silvery blade attached to a long golden shaft. At the end of the shaft was a small, sharp point for piercing. On each side of the blade, intricate diagrams of the sun and moon were engraved.

Holding the glaive in his hand, Ace began walking through the forest. The darkness made it challenging to see, and the dense vegetation made the journey tough. He had to be careful about any poisonous insects or snakes lurking in the shadows.

"Should I camp here until morning? It's too hard walking without any light," Ace pondered.

Suddenly, to his shock, the glaive's blade lit up in a golden hue, illuminating his surroundings.

"Can you understand me?" Ace wondered but quickly dismissed that idea, thinking, 'How could it possibly respond to that, it doesn't have a mouth?' So, he tried a different approach.

"Adjust your glow, if you can understand me," Ace asked. To his dismay, the brightness of its glow remained steady and unchanged, leaving him to ponder how it works.

"Hmm... maybe it works on a command-based function rather than having a more independent thought process or having its own consciousness," Ace thought.

"Lights off," Ace commanded. The blade's light suddenly turned off, returning to its normal state.

"It seems my guess was correct. It works on command-based functions," Ace said and turned on the glaive light again to continue his journey.

With some light to guide him, he started moving toward the east, killing any small insects that tried to bite him on his way.

'Don't know when some wild animal might show up and make a meal out of me. I have zero fighting or hunting experience, especially with a glaive. Or worse, a demon could be lurking,' Ace thought, somewhat nervous.

With a typical teenager's untrained body, surviving this forest would be quite a challenge, and it would be downright embarrassing to die without even making it out of the forest on his first adventure.

After hours of walking, the sun was almost beginning to rise, and he heard the sound of rustling leaves and approaching footsteps. He quickly switched off his glowing glaive. Tension gripped him as he feared the worst-case scenario.

He quickly hid behind a tree, waiting for whoever was coming. 'If it's come to this, I'd better be ready to fight instead of running. Running would leave my back exposed and demons smell a human quite easily.' He waited until the footsteps were right in front of him.

To his immense relief, he found a woman there, not a demon. Up close, he saw she was quite beautiful with pale skin, warm amber eyes, and jet-black hair. She wore a working-class kimono with flower patterns and carried a large pot on her hip.

Ace, still cautious, decided to approach her. "Hello"

Startled by his voice, she turned to look at him and quickly stopped her walk, surprised at finding someone at this hour.

'Who is he?' she thought warily in her mind.

Seeing her stopping and looking at him warily, Ace just put his hands in the air as the universal 'I am Harmless' gesture to her, showing that she didn't have to be wary.

"I am just a lost person in the forest! I don't mean any harm!" Ace said in perfect Japanese, thanks to the library.

But it seems she was still wary and she started ignoring him and continued on her way.

'Japanese sure don't trust strangers that easily, especially with me not looking like a local,' Ace wondered, observing her behaviour.

"Can you help me in finding my way out of the forest? I seem to be lost," Ace shouted from behind. He decided it was better to be straightforward rather than appear as though he was stalking her and scare her away.

She stopped in her tracks and stood there without turning. Ace walked up to her and asked for help, but she denied his plea without a second thought and said, "I can't help you, so please don't follow me; I need to bring water to my home."

'It seems she is quite wary of me' Ace thought.

"It's okay! I'm not going to follow you. By the way, I'm Ace, Ace Walker," he quickly introduced himself, hoping it would demonstrate respect and possibly gain her trust.

She looked at him for a moment and then said somewhat hesitatingly, "I am Yuki Tanaka."

'Woman, I am not going to eat you, so why act so scared,' Ace thought but kept a harmless smile on his face.

Yuki looked at his smiling face, her cheeks rosy up a little, but she quickly turned her face away, afraid of him seeing her. It was the first time she had seen someone so handsome in her life.

But, of course, would our protagonist not notice a beautiful girl blushing?

'Hmm, why is she blushing? Am I that handsome now?' Ace wondered. While he was good-looking in his previous life, he wouldn't turn heads every time he smiled.

Maybe because of his smile, this time she started the conversation.

"Are you from a foreign land?" Yuki asked.

"Hmm, no?" Ace replied, lying to her, as being a local would benefit him more than being a foreigner.

"Well, you look quite different from... us," she somewhat hesitatingly said.

"Well, my parents were from a foreign land, but I was born here," Ace said. It was a good thing that the translation function was provided by the Library; otherwise, he would not know what he would do.

"Hmm," Yuki nodded.

"So, will you help me get out of the forest now?" Ace asked nervously.

"You know it, right, that you can just follow me back; you don't need my permission," Yuki said.

Ace looked at her with a dumbstruck expression while also being speechless at his own dumb behaviour. It seems hours of walking in a dark forest had some effect on his mind.

Seeing his expression, Yuki tried to stifle her laugh, but it was proving to be quite a difficult task.

"Okay, I will let you carry the pots as your thank-you gift," Yuki eventually said after successfully suppressing her laughs.

"Hmm," Ace nodded, trying to appear stoic so as not to embarrass himself anymore.

While walking toward the river, Ace suddenly perceived some dark purple type of aura rushing toward them at very high speed.

"Hmm?"

Since his ability [Ethereal Eyes] perceives supernatural aspects of reality, this was very likely to be a demon.

Seeing this, Ace quickly took hold of Yuki's hand and started running in the opposite direction.

Yuki tried to stop him and struggle her hand out of his grip, but seeing the grave expression on his face, she stopped struggling.

"What happened?" Yuki asked nervously.

"A demon is coming; we need to run fast," Ace replied.

Before she even had time to process this, Ace's combat intuition kicked in, causing his hair to stand on end, his heart to race, and time to slow down. His life was in danger.

Summoning all his strength, Ace grabbed Yuki and leaped to the right just in time to dodge a strike that obliterated several nearby trees.

"Holy...!" Ace exclaimed. 'Almost dying before even leaving the forest. Seems like I used up all my luck on that gift pack.'

The creepy demon hissed, "You managed to dodge that! Keke, this will be fun."

Ace quickly looked around to find Yuki, only to see her collapse near him.

Ace could only say, "RUN," as he had to focus on the demon from now on.

The demon, which looked twisted and deformed, with leathery, discoloured skin that appeared to be rotting. Sharp, jagged fangs jutted out from its misshapen mouth, and its eyes were sinister, with a pungent hue. The demon's limbs were elongated and twisted, with bony protrusions, and its nails were like wicked claws, seeming to take his time hunting his prey.

"Seriously, why do you look like a demon from 40k? Because I'm sure demons here didn't look this ugly," Ace quipped, cursing under his breath.

Summoning his glaive, he was ready for the battle, but the demon didn't even give him time to think. Rushing toward him with a speed that left him no time to evade, the claw of the demon reached him in a split second; he could only block it with his blade and try to endure it.

Due to the speed and power of the claw, he was launched like a cannonball toward the trees, only stopping by stabbing his glaive into the ground.

Ace didn't even have time to breathe as a second claw was already on him.

Ace barely got the time to raise his glaive in time to meet the incoming claw, with the demon raising his eyebrows at his reaction time.

Unfortunately for him, the difference in strength was too great, making his hand's bones crinkle under pressure, and the situation got even worse since he couldn't use his glaive with broken hands.

"Pathetic, to not even last this much time you sure are quite weak," the demon said mockingly.

Approaching the boy, the demon lifted Ace by clutching his hair and was about to deal the final blow to this pathetic creature.

Suddenly, a stone hurled at his face and struck him right in the left eye, making him go blind for a moment before his regeneration kicked in.

'Thanks, Yuki,' Ace thought.

Using this life-saving opportunity, Ace used all of his strength and stabbed the demon in the neck with the glaive, but maybe it was because of his broken hands or his luck, he missed slightly from the mark and stabbed the demon just below the neck.

"Arrggghhhh."

The Demon screamed in agony from the cut and started thrashing on the ground.

"What have you done? Why isn't it healing?"

"It burns, it burns, someone stops it!" The demon screeched madly.

In his rage, he unleashed a brutal punch on Ace and then delivered a forceful kick that sent him crashing into a nearby tree.

"Argh."

'Ugh, it hurts like hell, and what the hell is this bad luck? Dying so early even in a low-tier world. Maybe I should choose a slice of life world next time,' Ace mused, enduring the horrifying pain coursing through his body, cursing his luck.

"I will kill you, I will kill you, for doing this to me!"

As Ace lay there in silence, awaiting his inevitable demise, the demon drew closer to him, with its grotesque form.

"Dieeeeee hum–"

But before the demon could finish its utterance, its body was brutally lacerated in multiple places, and then it was sent reeling with a swift kick to the face.

Ace gazed up in disbelief to find a petite woman with pale skin, large insect-like eyes, and hair that shifted from black to a dark shade of purple. Her hair was elegantly pulled back in a bun adorned with a butterfly ornament. Despite her slight build, she possessed phenomenal beauty.

Ace recognized her immediately as Shinobu Kocho, the Butterfly Hashira, with a wave of relief washing over him. This fight had laid bare his inexperience, and he wasn't able to even utilise Ethereal Insight during close combat.

With the absence of the demon's tormenting screams and the belief that the battle had concluded, Ace saw Shinobu crouching before him, came down to his eye level, and casually remarked, "You have a nice glaive."

Ace found himself at a loss for words, unsure of how to respond.

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