LXXXVI

The next monster that the man returns with is a chicken. Literally, it looks like a chicken, I cannot spot a single difference between it and a common animal. Once our fight starts, I bombard it with lightning magic, aiming to make some lightning fried chicken. However, the animal demonstrates unimaginable speeds, leaping into the air where it uses its wings to hold itself with ease.

[A flying chicken? Wait, can normal chickens fly? Surely not, otherwise they'd escape their farms, right? Well, I best be wary of this beast, who knows what methods it may have other than flight, I have already seen its immense speed.]

After only a moment of thought, I decide to use wind elemental magic against this chicken. I form a large tornado around the monster, in the hope that it will be able to tear the chicken from the sky.

To my dismay, the tornado has minimal effect on the chicken, which demonstrates its immense flight ability as it somehow maintains its elevation with only a slight visible schedule.

After my primary method of attack fails, I begin to bombard the creature with blasts of many different elements, creating a web so dense as to appear as a wall. Yet, the chicken flies nimbly and with agility as it finds tiny openings between attacks without fail, squeezing through each barrage of attacks, ever closer to me.

Where once the chicken had appeared pathetic, even deserving of mockery, it now seems to me an imposing force as it closes the distance between us with terrifying ability.

[My, how big a beak you have… how sharp your claws… how keen your eyes, magnificent chicken. You are the opposite of the lion, I see; where he proudly displayed his form to cover for his meager ability, you do the exact opposite, hiding immense power in your commonplace form. How intelligent a method, as it is said, appear weak when your are strong, as opposed to that lion, who appear strong when he was only of middling power. And besides, appearing strong when you are weak is only good advice in a world where fighting strong enemies is disadvantageous, in this world of levels and skills, one is rewarded when challenging and defeating the strong; how fortunate then, to see that the strong you were willing to fight is actually weak? It would seem that the teachings of Sun Tzu are only necessarily valid on Earth, for here they have already been so clearly disproven.]

The chicken approaches quickly, prompting me to ready my blade for our conflict and cut off my elemental attacks. WIthout missing a beat, the chicken flies in, flashing over my head, turning like a boomerang, and returning to slash the back of my neck with its fangs. Fortunately, the age-old method of blasting myself with air in the desired direction comes in handy here, my body ignoring the ruthless forces acting upon it as it rapidly accelerates away from the chicken. Employing the very same skills with which I had practiced extensively when learning to fly, I turn myself around midair only to see the chicken rapidly gaining on me.

All too aware of the wall I am rapidly approaching, I continue towards it until the last second, before blasting my body with wind at a ninety degree angle, canceling out my momentum and propelling myself in a new direction.

Unfortunately, my methods are not sufficient to escape from the chicken, which turns just as sharply as I and continues its pursuit of me. Deciding to switch up tactics, I propel myself forward towards the approaching chicken sword held out in front of me.

Even with its immense speed and impeccable agility, it can do nothing but die when cut through by my sword, bisected into two parts, its legs and talons not even long enough to get in a counterattack.

[While humans may lose to other creatures in a great variety of physical parameters, one must never underestimate our intelligence. While this bird may have been better suited to fast paced conflict than I, all I had to do was take advantage of its instinct to chase, wait until it was too close to turn away, and charge it down. Had I doen that from the beginning, it would have avoided me; thus, I had to bait into chasing me instead, to implant the assumption into its animalistic brain that I was the prey and it the predator, that it had to chase me, not the other way around; and once it did, my victory was a foretold conclusion.]

"My apologies, it seems that your pet was not able to withstand even a single one of my attacks," I say, turning to the beast tamer. "Considering that you did not remove the beast from the battle prior to this, as you said that you would if I displayed adequate ability to defeat it, I think that it would be unfair to charge me with a fee, eh?"

"Don't think that a silver tongue will get you out of the fee, it is not my fault that you appeared to be losing until the killing blow, if you wish for your opponent to be removed, be more straightforward in your display of strength. Though, you do not need to worry much; the costs of replacing this monsters are not high, the fee is only a single gold coin."

"Only?! That's a significant sum!"

"Oh, come on. There is no way that you could have afforded that fancy sword of yours if you didn't have at least a little spare cash lying around, there is no way that such an expense would be significant to you."

"Hmph. You're incorrect, but I don't desire to continue this, we have already had an unpleasant enough first few interactions, let's just move on. What's next for me, what still remains before I can be considered a B-grade adventurer?"

"Fine, then. You have two more creatures to defeat if your aim is to be a B-class adventurer, I'll go get the first of them now, wait here."