74. The Queen’s Battle
The skinhead man wound up his right fist and swung it straight at Miarant.
To someone watching from ringside, the punch looked obvious and impossible to miss. But the moment he lowered his arm, he crouched and delivered a low kick aimed at her feet.
Given that he appeared to be a power-type fighter, I hadn’t been able to follow the feint at all.
Miarant, however, barely jumped aside at the last moment to dodge the kick.
But the men’s attacks weren’t over yet.
Next, the rhino demi-human launched a tackle from behind.
If she didn’t dodge, it would be disastrous. Miarant was still in the air.
Her landing and the rhino’s collision were almost perfectly timed.
Realizing she couldn’t avoid the tackle, Miarant spun mid-air and kicked the oncoming rhino.
The spin was slow enough that her beautiful long golden hair and skirt only fluttered lightly. Yet the rhino was sent flying all the way to the ropes surrounding the ring, hitting them at full speed.
The thought of sending a man nearly twice his size flying with just one kick sent a chill through me. But the men on the ring felt nothing like fear.
“Oraa!”
Right after the rhino was kicked away, a few seconds later, the eyepatch-wearing beastman — Lurbu — attacked Miarant.
By then Miarant had already stepped onto the ring, but because she had been kicking the rhino, she was now exposed with her left side open.
Miarant managed to dodge, but before she could move, Lurbu’s sharp claws slashed across her skirt.
“Ohhh! Lurbu’s attack hits! Miarant’s skirt has been cut!”
The overhead monitor showed the torn edge of Miarant’s skirt in gory detail. It was only a small tear, nothing life-threatening.
Yet the entire arena erupted as if the challengers had already won.
“Why are you making that face like you don’t know why everyone’s cheering?”
“Huh? W-well…”
“Only a small cut on the edge of the skirt. For you, that might not seem like much. But from the perspective of everyone who’s watched those women fight before, that alone is worthy of applause.”
Miarant’s expression had been relaxed earlier, but now it was completely different.
She was no longer smiling. She was calmly analyzing every move.
“Earlier, when I said that woman lost twice, the first time she lost because she was a newcomer and didn’t know the rules and was holding back. The second time, she lost to an unknown power. So in terms of pure combat, Miarant is still undefeated. In fact, I only know of a handful of people who’ve managed to injure her. Attacks from ordinary humans almost never land. Even if they do, they’re powerless against her magic. That’s why some people even claim it would be an honor to hurt her.”
On the ring, Miarant had taken a step back, and the men quickly adjusted their positions again.
Unlike pro-wrestling, this match felt more like chess or go — a board game played with bodies.
“But I won’t be happy with just this level. What I’m after is the moment she’s violated…”
The skinhead man’s attack had been the first, but now the rhino demi-human launched another charge straight at her.
If they kept this up, it would just be the same old dance again. The rhino had no hesitation.
The moment his eyes followed the rhino’s charge, the skinhead man closed in from the opposite side.
The rhino could be kicked again, but that would leave a gap in the next response. So Miarant chose to dodge instead.
By deliberately stepping to the right to avoid the rhino’s charge, she used him as a shield and successfully blocked the skinhead’s pursuit.
The rhino who had charged in had no intention of attacking her again, and his left side was even more exposed than before.
Miarant didn’t miss that opening. She immediately countered.
But at that exact moment, Lurbu’s attack cut in.
This time it wasn’t a single scratch — it was a rapid flurry of claw strikes.
One after another, Lurbu’s sharp claws rained down on Miarant.
The speed was far beyond anything I could react to. Attacks that should have been impossible for anyone to dodge. Yet Miarant avoided every single one.
Still, the relentless barrage forced her to take a small step back.
Before she knew it, she had been driven into the corner.
Even then, Miarant continued to evade.
Fortunately for her, Lurbu’s attacks were more like stabbing than slashing. That meant she had to choose between left and right to dodge.
Even with the corner behind her, she could still move sideways.
If Lurbu had stepped forward and slashed from above, Miarant would have had nowhere to run.
But Miarant was a fighter who always counterattacked the moment she saw an opening.
The current formation continued for a while, but Lurbu’s rotation speed never slowed. If anything, it felt like it was increasing.
Miarant had no room for error. She was completely focused.
If this kept up, I thought Lurbu would win. But the next instant, that thought was instantly shattered.
“Guhhh!!”
With a loud “dun!” sound, Lurbu suddenly retreated to the center of the ring, clutching his knee and groaning in pain.
I had no idea what had happened, but the overhead monitor calmly explained it in slow motion.
Miarant had dodged Lurbu’s claw attack at the last moment and immediately tackled him.
At that distance, Lurbu had no chance of avoiding the tackle.
If you can’t go backward, you go forward. That was a queen’s move.
Miarant’s face as she landed the tackle was calm and confident.
—-
“A tackle of that power from such a slender body! Miarant’s knee is on the mat, but can Lurbu stand back up?!”
A normal woman’s tackle would be nothing. Even I could take something like that without breaking a sweat.
But this opponent was different.
I thought Miarant’s tackle was about as strong as Rabi’s kick. Yet unlike the men in Rabi’s match, Lurbu wasn’t sent flying out of the ring.
It was because he himself was strong and because he had fought her with genuine seriousness.
The thought of clapping for a single warrior like Lurbu who fearlessly attacked without hesitation made me want to cheer.
“Now that your skirt is gone… I’m sorry.”
While clutching his abdomen, Lurbu grimaced in pain from the tackle, but he still smiled and spoke those words.
At that moment, a black piece of fabric fluttered down from inside Miarant’s skirt.
“N-no way…!!?”
“Uooooooooo!!!”
The black cloth that fell from Miarant’s skirt was actually the spats she had been wearing.
If the spats had fallen, then what was inside that skirt…?
“Hey, Miarant. Do you have panties on…?”
Lurbu’s line sent the arena’s voltage soaring to a new peak.
Since I wasn’t very familiar with women’s fashion or athletes’ fashion, I didn’t know whether people normally wore underwear under spats.
In my mind, two clear facts existed right now.
One: inside Miarant’s skirt on the ring, she was wearing panties.
Two: she wasn’t wearing panties, and her most private parts were exposed.
It was like the famous phenomenon people sometimes talked about in experiments, happening right in front of me.
The audience around us was basically seated at the same height as the ring. Even if they tried hard, there was no way they could see over the “wall” of the skirt unless the wind blew it.
But I was sitting ringside, so I was lower than the ring. If Miarant came toward me, I would see it. I would see that other world.
“Kukuku… You’re surprisingly entertaining. Good, good…”
The man next to me was also delighted by this unexpected turn of events.
The maid sitting beside him maintained her usual silence and blank expression, but I couldn’t stay calm either.
Because no matter how this played out, it was the best possible outcome for me.
“Cut that skirt again!”
“All of you, go at it together!!”
Miarant handed the torn spats to the staff member waiting on the ring and took up her fighting stance once more.
Lurbu somehow stood up and returned to his combat position as well. The other two men also positioned themselves behind him to watch Miarant.
“You said you’re wearing panties, didn’t you?”
Suddenly, Miarant spoke directly to Lurbu and the others.
Her voice was exactly as it looked — beautiful, clear, and easy to hear. It made me feel weak in the knees.
“What? You’re going to tell me?”
“Yes, but… not from my mouth…”
The next instant, Miarant’s figure vanished from where she had been standing in the corner.
“Confirm it with your own eyes.”
Miarant suddenly appeared right in front of Lurbu and immediately launched a kick at him.
Her speed and the power of the kick were terrifying.
The thing that surprised me most was that she lifted her own leg high and delivered an overhead kick aimed straight at Lurbu’s face.
For just an instant, most people in the arena couldn’t react.
Even I only noticed the overhead kick hit Lurbu’s face.
The others had somehow read Miarant’s movements earlier, but the two in the back had no time to react. Lurbu, who hadn’t expected this kind of angle, was too slow to defend and took the clean hit.
Miarant performed a perfect overhead kick on Lurbu, spun once, and landed near the center of the ring.
At that moment, her skirt fluttered slightly, but there was no way to see what was underneath it.
Of course, no one had been able to see inside her skirt from that previous kick either. It had been far too fast and sharp.
Lurbu, who had fallen on the ring, showed no signs of standing back up after the tackle. He lay flat on his back.
“Now then, let’s both enjoy this.”
The smile Miarant gave at that moment — the first smile since the match had started — looked like a demon’s smile.
