Chapter 146: Use Their Strength Against Them
Her gaze returned to the arena.
The lynx Beastman launched another powerful attack. The fox slipped aside.
Again. Mirabelle pointed.
"Right there."
The General immediately followed her finger.
"The fox avoided him."
"Yes."
Mirabelle leaned forward.
"But imagine if, instead of simply avoiding him, he’d caught his arm, continued turning in the same direction the lynx was already moving, and pulled."
She swept both hands around.
"The lynx has already provided almost everything necessary to throw him."
A brief silence followed.
Mirabelle smiled faintly. She remembered learning that lesson long ago.
In her previous life, she’d practiced Judo throughout much of her teenage years.
Her parents had been firmly convinced that if their daughter was going to grow up in a large city, she should at least know how to defend herself.
At the time, Mirabelle hadn’t thought much of their reasoning. But years of training had taught her something far more valuable than simply how to fight.
She had learned that being physically weaker didn’t necessarily mean being helpless. Against someone larger, heavier, and stronger, trying to match strength with strength was usually pointless.
Instead, she’d learned to pay attention to balance, momentum and weight distribution.
The exact moment when an opponent committed to a movement and could no longer easily take it back.bSometimes, the greater their strength and momentum, the more they gave her to work with.
And apparently, those old lessons had remained buried somewhere in her memory even after she’d left that body — and that life — behind.
Her eyes flicked toward the General’s enormous arms.
"The basic idea is rather simple."
She held out one palm.
"Don’t meet force with force if you don’t have to."
Her other hand swept smoothly past it.
"Redirect it.bUse your opponent’s movement. Use their balance.bAnd whenever possible..."
Her smile widened slightly.
"...let them do most of the work for you."
The General slowly shook his head in disbelief.
"We’ve never thought about approaching a fight that way."
"Probably because you’re strong enough to meet force with force," Mirabelle pointed out.
Her attention returned to the two Beastmen still fighting in the arena below. For several seconds, she watched them thoughtfully.
"I’d almost be willing to bet that somewhere in Bergheim, weaker Beastmen have already developed some version of that fighting style."
She glanced sideways at the General again.
The enormous boar Beastman practically vibrated with energy.
Mirabelle could almost imagine him launching himself off the platform right then and there to test everything they’d just discussed.
His enthusiasm made her smile. And since he had accepted her first idea so eagerly...
Perhaps she could plant one more thought in his head.
"Theoretically..."bShe tilted her head. "...that should make it possible to defeat Beastmen of a significantly higher cultivation stage."
The General blinked.
Once.
Mirabelle could practically see the gears turning inside his head.
Then...
A very, very large grin spread across his face.
Behind her, Mirabelle heard the faint creak of chairs. Kaelith and Lucien had both begun shifting restlessly in their seats.
She didn’t even need to turn around. Through their mate bonds, she could feel the excitement building.
Interest.
Anticipation.
And that very particular kind of enthusiasm that told her both males desperately wanted to try this themselves.
Mirabelle shook her head with an amused smile and turned her attention back toward the arena.
All of that would have to wait.
There were still several exhibition fights left to watch.
The next pair consisted of a beaver Beastman and a woodpecker Beastman.
Mirabelle had absolutely no idea what to expect from that combination.
The beaver was broad and compact, with thick shoulders, powerful arms, and a heavy, muscular tail extending behind him. His entire build seemed designed around stability. Even his legs were unusually thick.
The woodpecker, on the other hand, was lean. Almost wiry.
He had dark hair interrupted by a striking streak of red, and although he possessed no wings in his human form, there was something distinctly birdlike about the way he moved. Quick and precise. Almost restless.
The beaver planted himself.
And the woodpecker attacked.
His strikes came in incredibly rapid bursts.
Not particularly powerful individually, but astonishingly fast. His fists snapped forward again and again, targeting the same places repeatedly.
He didn’t seem interested in overwhelming his opponent with a single attack. Instead, he hammered at weaknesses.
Again.
Again.
Again.
Like a woodpecker striking the same piece of bark until it finally broke.
The beaver fought in almost the exact opposite manner.
He absorbed.
His low center of gravity and powerful legs made him incredibly difficult to move. His broad tail remained close to the ground behind him, shifting whenever necessary to provide additional balance.
Most of the woodpecker’s attacks struck raised forearms or thick shoulders. And the beaver seemed perfectly willing to take them.
For several minutes, the entire match became a contest between relentless precision and stubborn durability.
The woodpecker accumulated small victories. The beaver waited for one large one.
Eventually, the woodpecker mistimed a combination. The beaver’s hand closed around his forearm. Simply catching him.
The difference was immediately obvious.
The woodpecker’s eyes widened.
The beaver grinned. Then he lifted the other Beastman completely off the ground.
Mirabelle winced.
The match ended shortly afterward.
The next fight drew considerably more noise from the grandstands.
A tiger Beastman stepped into the ring.
Opposite him stood a brown bear.
Mirabelle leaned forward.
Now this looked dangerous.
Both males were enormous.
The brown bear was heavier, his body carrying the dense, almost ridiculous amount of muscle Mirabelle had come to associate with bear Beastmen.
The tiger was slightly leaner.
But only slightly.
Dark stripes marked his skin along his shoulders, sides, and arms, following the movement of his muscles as he lowered himself into a fighting stance.
Unlike the fox from earlier, the tiger didn’t constantly move.
He prowled. That was the only word Mirabelle could think of.
Every step seemed deliberate.
His weight shifted almost silently across the sand while his long tail moved behind him, keeping his body perfectly balanced.
The bear simply waited.
Then the tiger attacked.
Mirabelle almost missed the first movement.
One moment he was several meters away.
The next: His claws were at the bear’s throat.
The bear knocked the strike aside with one enormous forearm. The impact cracked through the arena.
The tiger immediately followed with another.
Claw.
Elbow.
Knee.
His attacks came in violent combinations, each one powerful enough to matter on its own.
But the bear was terrifyingly difficult to hurt.
He blocked what he could. Endured what he couldn’t. And kept advancing.
The tiger’s advantage lay in explosive speed.
The bear’s lay in overwhelming strength and endurance.
Whenever the tiger attacked, the entire fight accelerated.
Whenever the bear managed to close the distance...
It became brutal.
At one point, the bear caught the tiger around the torso.
The soldiers erupted.
The tiger snarled, claws digging into the bear’s shoulders as the larger Beastman squeezed.
For one alarming second, Mirabelle wondered whether she was about to hear ribs break.
Then the tiger planted both feet against the bear’s thighs and shoved himself free through sheer strength.
He landed several feet away.
His tail lashed violently behind him.
The bear rolled his shoulders.
Both males grinned.
Mirabelle stared.
Beastmen had very strange definitions of fun.
The fight continued until both were bleeding from several shallow wounds and breathing heavily.
Neither gained a decisive advantage.
Eventually, the General called the match himself.
The final exhibition fight was perhaps the strangest.
An eagle Beastman entered the ring opposite a wild boar.
The boar immediately reminded Mirabelle of the General. Built like something that considered walls a personal insult.
His tusks were shorter than the General’s but still curved visibly beyond his lower lip.
The eagle Beastman was tall and broad-shouldered, though considerably lighter than his opponent.
Golden-brown feathers grew among his hair.
His eyes were what Mirabelle noticed most.
They barely seemed to blink.
Even before the fight began, his gaze constantly moved over the boar. Observing everything.
The General gave the signal.
The boar charged. There was absolutely no subtlety to it.
Mirabelle’s eyebrows shot upward.
The Beastman accelerated with terrifying speed for someone carrying that much mass.
His boots tore through the sand.
His head lowered. His shoulders came forward.
The eagle jumped aside.
The boar thundered past him.
He stopped, spun around, and charged again.
This time the eagle attacked as he passed.
Claws raked across the boar’s shoulder.
The boar barely reacted.
Again.
Charge.
Evade.
Strike.
Mirabelle gradually realized what made the eagle dangerous.
His eyesight.
He seemed capable of reading the smallest movements from an extraordinary distance.
A shift of weight.The tightening of a shoulder. The direction of his opponent’s eyes.
He reacted almost before an attack had properly begun.
And his strikes were frighteningly accurate.
He didn’t attack wherever he could reach.
He chose targets.
The side of the knee.
The inside of the elbow.
The eyes, although his claws deliberately stopped short during the exhibition.
Places where even a physically superior opponent was vulnerable.
But the boar possessed something equally valuable.
Commitment.
Once he chose to attack, he attacked with everything. There were no cautious half-measures.
His fighting style was brutally straightforward: close the distance, withstand whatever happened on the way, and hit hard enough that the opponent couldn’t continue.
Eventually, the eagle made one mistake.
He anticipated another charge.
The boar didn’t charge.
Instead, he waited until the eagle shifted sideways — then lunged.
His enormous hand closed around the eagle’s ankle. The bird Beastman’s expression changed instantly.
The boar yanked.
The eagle hit the sand.
Before he could recover, the boar was on him. One knee planted beside his torso.
A massive fist stopped barely a finger’s width from his face.
Silence.
Then the eagle slapped the sand.
The grandstands erupted.
Mirabelle sat back in her chair.
Three completely different fights.
Three completely different approaches.
None of them wrong.
And yet, now that she’d introduced the General to the idea of using an opponent’s own momentum against them, she couldn’t stop seeing opportunities everywhere.
Opportunities the soldiers themselves didn’t seem to recognize yet.
Beside her, the General apparently had exactly the same problem. He had stopped watching the fights like a spectator.