Chapter 7: First fight

"...Hmm. Then from today onwards, I will be Yue. Thank you." Yue replied with her eyes sparkling with happines.

"Glad you like it. Anyway..." With the matter of her name decied, Hajime took off his coat and offered it to her. "Here, wear this. Can't have you running around naked forever."

When she looked down at her body, she blushed as pressed the coat against her body to hide her stark naked body, then looking up at Hajime and saying,

"Hajime, you pervert."

As he remained silent to avoid worsening the problem, Yue happily put on the coat he gave her. Smiling as she struggled to fold the sleeves as the coat was too big for her 140 cm frame, he drank some Ambrosia to recover his strength while casually reaching out to her. As he was no longer as tired with its help, he could instantly sense the fake scorpion dropping on them. With his arm around her, he used Supersonic Step to get away as fast as possible.

Once again, he looked to the side, as her calm eyes only reflected him, leaving her fate into his hand. And once he saw those eyes again, his lips were curled up into his usual fearless grin, but with touch of gentleness. This person right here, held in his arm, was his Yue. Finally, looking at that calm eyes, it struck home. As if the gears that were out of place has been fixed, it finally became real to him that he went back in time, once again meeting her. And once again, she was putting her trust in him, someone she supposedly never met before. So as a man, he had to respond to her trust.

"Bring it, you bastard. Kill me if you think you can." He brought out another vial of Ambrosia, and brought it to her mouth. After it began to heal her emaciated body, he brought her to his back.

"Hang on tight, Yue!" While far from being perfect, she could still cling tightly to his back, as he drew Donner & Schlag.

As the scorpion scuttled to them, one of its tails shot a stream of purple acid. He evaded the liquid as he shot at full power. Two bullets traveling at 3 km per second slammed into the fake scorpion's skull. And upon this display of his weapon, Yue stiffened on his back due to surprise of weapon that didn't use magic and so fast. However, the thing that surprised her the most was that there was an electricity running down his arms, meaning that he had mana manipulation ability like her. He was same as her, and for unknown reason, he was also stuck in this depth of hell. This realization caused her to direct her attention to him compared to the scorpion in front of them.

Seeing that his bullets did almost no damage, except a dent this time, he clicked his tongue and put away his guns, and dodged the scorpion's acid using Aerodynamics to move through the air continuously.

Upon seeing Hajime taking care its acids with combination of Steel Legs and Gale Claw, scorpion readied it other tail. Noticing its action, Hajime quickly brought out his shield in his left hand, while holding grenade at his right. When it shot the stinger, Hajime quickly moved away from its trajectory while defending himself with the shield and throwing the grenade.

This time, even though the stinger burst in midair, his shield was able to defend them. Meanwhile, the grenade, the incendiary grenade he threw exploded, spraying tar and enveloping the scorpion in 3000-degrees flames. As it screeched, Hajime could see the damage the flame was doing to the scorpion, but he knew it was just minor wounds. In fact, after the flames went out, scorpion was coming at them with vengeance. Upon seeing this, Hajime was a little exasperated.

In actuality, he did not have much to be called trump card against this pseudo life-form. Yes, he was stronger, but he didn't have time nor materials nor magic power to make anything strong enough to kill this thing. If it was strength through numbers, he could easily level them. But the fake scorpion had cover made using Shtar ore, one of the strongest he's seen, and getting through it was tough task with what he had on him for now. Arachnes could help in distracting, but this was his first fight together with Yue. Personally, he wanted it to remain as moment between two of them.

However, as he was lost in thought on how to take care of this fake scorpion, he forgot that scorpion could use the ground to send attacks against him. He managed to defend against the spikes, but he lost his balance when he tried to twist his body around to protect Yue and was stopped from moving around. And to his chagrin, barrage of acid and spiked needles came hurtling toward him an instant later.

As ridiculous as it was, he found himself in same situation as before as he manged to evade the acid spray, but the needles somehow broke through the shield that was getting imperceptibly corroded by splashes of acid. He managed to reduce the damage to his head and vital organs with his Donner & Schlag that he summoned at the last minute, and avoid any deep wounds with his strengthened body with mana manipulation, but the wounds still felt like burning. The impact flung Hajime backward and threw Yue off his back. Quickly, he oriented himself and threw flash grenade that exploded in front of its eyes.

"Kshaaaaaaa!!!!" It screamed in pain and involuntarily stepped back as it lost the main method of tracking its prey momentarily. Hajime bit down on the vial of Ambrosia he kept in his molar and pulled all the needles as the scorpion was blinded, and turned to look for Yue. However, before him, Yue ran over to him with worried expression on her face, looking like she could burst into tears, unlike the expressionless mask she had before.

"Hajime!"

"Don't worry, I'm fine. More importantly, that thing is way too damn hard. I'm stumped. If I try to go for its eyes or mouth, those stupid scissor things would get in my way... Do I have no choice but try for a suiced rush and just accept that I'll take some damage?" He was thinking of way to defeat the scorpion, but even if he factored in arachnes, he couldn't think of a way to get get away without serious injury at this point. Honestly, he could have waited until he became stronger, but he did not want to let Yue stay in the dark room any second longer than she has to, leading him to his rash decision of coming here prematurely. But he was soon distracted by Yue's murmured words.

"...Why?"

"Huh?"

"Why don't you run?" This question that implied Hajime should have realized that he could leave her and escape by himself. At first, he was dumbfounded, then laughed as he said,

"Don't be ridiculous. I haven't fallen so low that I'd leave you behind to die just 'cause the enemy wee ran into's a little stronger than usual." (And even if they are almost unbeatable, if it means I will have you by my side, I'm still fighting.) That was his unspoken words as he thought about his encounter with Ehito, and his preparation to fight her to get Yue back. He would, and used, almost anything at his disposal for the sake of only surviving at the first time he met Yue, whether it was ambushes, tricks, traps, lies, bluffs, and all sorts of other cowardly tactics, and he was proud of it. Hell wasn't a place to survive on code of honor, and fighting head-on when he could win easier was just moronic. However, when he was about to sink lower and lower, that he would even be willing to abandon somebody, this girl in front of him stopped him. She was the who helped him regain his semblance of morality, and changed the home that he was returning to being only the 3-people family at Earth, but warm place where he could love and be loved by his beloveds. That's why, he didn't even consider abandoning her. When she gave him that look that left her life in his hand, when this moment that he came back to clicked with the moment he started his true journey before, she was no longer image of Yue that he loved, but the woman he loved.

Yue saw in his expression the words he didn't say and nodded in understanding before suddenly hugging him. At this, he could only smile bitterly.

'Here comes the start of her habit.'

"Hajime... trust in me." As she said that, Yue kissed, no, bit, the nape of his neck. And with tiny pinprick of pain, he felt as if the energy was being sucked out of his body. With a wry smile, Hajime wrapped his arms around Yue, and supported her tiny body as she drank his blood. She twitched in surprise, but after a moment, she hugged him even tighter and buried her face into his neck, as she seemed to be happy that he did that.

"Kshaaaaaaaaaaaa!" The scorpion's roar echoed through the chamber after flash grenade had lost its effectiveness. The ground shook once more and began to warp, as spiked cones started to form.

"Unfortunately for you, that's my specialty, too. He range was 6 meters compared to before, but the situation followed the same scenario. Hajime's manipulation was a little weaker due to difference in current magic power, but he was faster, transmuting walls to keep them at bay until Yue finished.

Finally, Yue removed her fangs from his neck. Her face was flushed as she licked the last few drops of blood off her lips. Like the ero-vampire she is, despite her young looks, her gestures and flushed face looked rather seductive. Her emaciated body had become healthy, and porcelain-white skin glowed with new vitality. Her once gaunt cheeks were now a rosy pink. A warm, gentle light dwelled within her crimson eyes, and she caressed Hajime's cheek with her slender hand.

"...Thanks for the meal." Suddenly, Yue got to her feet and brandished her hand at the fake scorpion. As she did so, a tremendous amount of golden mana poured out of her tiny body, chasing away the darkness.

Then, clad in a wondrous golden light, with her golden hair fluttering around her, she muttered a single phrase.

"Azure Blaze." Familiar massive blue-white fireball, at least six or seven meters in diameter, appeared directly above the scorpion's head. It backed away as it screeched in pain, but the vampire princess of abyss did not allow its escape. She struck her finger out, waiving around like a conductor's baton. The fireball then followed her finger faithfully, chasing after the fleeing scorpion... and slammed into it.

"Gagyaaaaaa!?" It screeched in pain, as the fireball smashed into its target and filling the room with blinding white light, temporarily robbing everyone of their sight.

Eventually, the magic wore off, and the pale blue fireball vanished, leaving behind scorpion writhing in pain. He then reached out to Yue as she was falling toward the ground after using up all her mana.

"Yue, you alright?"

"Mm... Just very... tired..."

"Haha. But man, you really did it. Thanks for the save. I'll handle rest, just rest."

"Mm, good luck..." Hajime laid her down on the ground to rest, waved at Yue, then used Supersonic Step to close the distance to it in one bound. The fake scorpion was still in surprisingly good shape, and even fired its needle buckshot when he was approaching it. He quickly threw the flash grenade and used Donner in his right hand to shoot the needle before it could separate and non-railgun shot at the grenade with Schlag on his left hand.

The scorpion wasn't fazed this time, having gotten used to it, but that was enough for Hajime to fall from sky and land on it back using Hide Presence and the flash to catch it unaware. The red hot scorpion's shell burned Hajime's skin, but he ignored the pain, placed Donner and Schlag directly above one of the damaged sections, and emptied the guns' entire chamber. The shells that became fragile from heat broke under the point-blank barrage of railgun shots. Then before scorpion could thrust at Hajime with both of its tails in desperation, he thrust another grande deep into the he had made. He ignored his burning flesh as he dug his "present" in as deep as he could. Then he fled to safety. As it also turned around to attack him with a projectile,

BOOM! A muffled explosion resounded throughout the room, ending the fight. The scorpion twitched, then they looked at each other in silence. Then finally, the scorpion crumpled to the ground with a resounding crash.