Penny vs Iris and more

The battle between Bea and Yuu ended too fast. Apollo wasn't even able to finish eating his first stick of meat and it was already over.

Looking at the arrow piercing Bea's arm, Apollo started regretting his decision. The sight of the blood dripping from the wound made him lose all his appetite, so he put the meat stick aside and went to see how she was feeling.

(I should have used fake arrows instead! Why didn't I consider that this mock battle could be dangerous! I'm such a fool! What the hell am I doing!?)

By the time he took to walk around the field to where Bea was resting, the arrow had already been removed and they had already patched the wound. There was no medicine to apply to the wound, so they had only covered with strips of clothes to stop the bleeding like Apollo had done to Yuu a few days ago.

The girls learned fast, one single example was enough for them to figure how to do it themselves, but lack of professional made Apollo feel quite unsafe as he didn't know if what he was doing was right or wrong.

"Hey Bea, are you okay?"

"Master!? O-of course I'm okay! This is just a scratch! By tomorrow I will be as good as new!"

"Let me take a look...Ugh! So much blood! Is it hurting a lot?"

"It's fine! It's fine! Iris and Ivy's punches hurt way more than this!"

"Punch!?"

"O-oh! Please forget what I said!"

"Sigh... you really... All right, you are hurt so I won't scold you now..."

"Master! You are the best!"

"It's good that you are energetic, but make sure you rest and take care of yourself!"

"Yes!"

"I should prioritize building a medical center, but we don't have the materials to do so..."

The Medical Center SoW required a bunch of herbs to be constructed. Apollo wished to send the girls out to search for them but because he only knew their names and didn't know how they looked like, it was hard to do so.

One solution was to make the girls gather all kinds of plants they found in the forest. As long as they were stored in the base, their name would be listed in the inventory and they would know when they found the right one. The only problem with this is that it relied completely on luck and was highly inefficient.

(But it seems like this is the only way...)

As Apollo was thinking about this the second battle had started, this time it was Penny against Iris.

While Bea could be considered quite agile, Iris was surely one step above her, though it was difficult to notice due to how fast both of them were. People were only able to notice this now because the two of them faced the same arrows and while Bea could dodge by a small margin, Iris appeared to do so with relative ease.

Feeling pressured, Penny tried using the same trick Yuu had used, making arrows rain down from the sky, but on the moment she shot the arrow up, Iris changed direction, circling around Penny instead of heading straight to her.

This move completely neutralized Penny's attack, as the arrows couldn't change direction once they had been shot they were fated to miss once Iris changed her route, so Penny had to do so again but once another three arrows were shot up, Iris inverted her direction, making them miss again.

"Ah! Damn! Stop changing direction!!!"

Penny got angry and shouted at Iris who was snickering at Penny's attempts to hit her without any success.

"Hahahaha! Catch me if you can!"

"Stop laughing!"

Penny got another three arrows and instead of shooting to the sky, shoot them straight at Iris who was now less the 20 meters from her.

"It's my win!"

Iris declared as she jumped up, passing over the arrows, and diving straight at Penny who had yet to recover from making that shot. In a desperate attempt, Penny blocked with her bow, but it was far from enough to stop Iris monstrous strength.

Bang!

The large explosion that send dust everywhere woke up Apollo from his thoughts and as he looked to his side, he saw Penny laying on the ground, holding a broken bow while Iris celebrated jumping up and down and answering to the cheers of the girls around her.

Ding! Ding! Ding!

A metal bell echoed through the whole arena announcing the end of the battle.

"I announce the end of the second mock battle! The winner is Iris!!!"

"Iris!" "Iris!" "Iris!" "Iris!" "Iris!" "Iris!" "Iris!" "Iris!"

"This was another great fight that deserves one more round of applause!"

Clap! Clap! Clap! Clap! Clap! Clap! Clap! Clap!

"And let's not forget Penny who fought until the last second, unwilling to give up!"

Clap! Clap! Clap! Clap! Clap! Clap! Clap! Clap!

This battle was enough for Apollo to conclude the battle strength of the Ranger girls. While they were pretty good at archery, their melee skills were quite lacking when comparing with the soldier girls.

This kind of explained how his girls had made so much trouble without being subdued in the last battle despite being outnumbered by 2 to 1, and if they had not jumped at them, the result would have been quite different as the cat girls would be able to shoot freely without interruptions.

"Once again I recognize how lucky I was in that battle... I need to improve, if not for myself, for them..."

The last battle was announced after Penny was taken out of the arena. Nyau vs Ivy. Who would win? Who would lose? Apollo had lost interest in the match, but out of respect he decided to watch anyway.

"Battle....START!"

As Lumina gave the signal, Ivy started running toward Nyau, but what she didn't expect was that Nyau would do the same, running toward Ivy with the bow and arrows in hand.

"What the...."

Seeing Nyau running toward her with the bow and arrows ready to shot, Ivy turned around and started to run away instead!

"Hey! That's unfair! You can't play like that! It's unfair! Unfair I say!"

Despite Ivy's protests, Nyau continued to run after her, chasing her around the arena and shooting whenever she had the chance, but, to everybody's surprise, Ivy appeared to have eyes behind her back as every time the bow's cord sounded she was able to correctly predict and dodge the arrows by jumping to the sides.

"Puff...hahahahahaha!"

Seeing the cartoonish scene in front of him, Apollo couldn't help but laugh at the sight for a whole 3 minutes until the battle was deemed a draw.

And so the mock battles come to an end, but the event didn't end just yet. There was still a lot of meat that had been prepared and a lot of stomachs screaming for more, so the feast continued until night arrive.