I Became the Simp Character I Roasted Online-Chapter 51: Setting the Tempo

Revan closed the distance.

He hurled himself forward at an angle, deliberately cutting across the creature’s orbit. The trajectory was intentional, aimed at a point along its circling path that would force it to make a choice: hold its loop and let Revan intercept, or break away and move.

It broke.

The displacement veered right, accelerating to widen the gap.

Revan veered with it.

The creature adjusted. Changed direction. Tried to swing around behind him.

Revan followed the rain.

The moment the creature moved, its synchronization with the rainfall stuttered. A fraction of a second where the pattern of drops hitting mud was disrupted by something large passing through them at speed.

Three meters to his right. A patch where the downpour thinned for a heartbeat.

He swung.

The blade cut air. The creature had already shifted.

But that was the point. The swing was never meant to connect. It was meant to force the creature to dodge, and dodging at speed meant breaking its rhythm with the rain.

Revan was herding it the same way it had been herding him five minutes ago.

More disruption. Two meters behind him.

Revan spun and slashed low.

CLANG.

A glancing blow that numbed his wrist but confirmed position.

’Found you, you slippery bastard.’

The creature snarled and pulled back.

Revan stepped forward into the snarl, thrusting his blade. The creature sidestepped, but the thrust pushed it left, and left was where Revan’s next step was already going.

He planted his foot and drove his shoulder straight into the space the creature had retreated to.

His shoulder slammed into something warm.

His broken ribs screamed. White flashed through his vision. But for one instant he was TOUCHING it, pressed against invisible flesh, and his sword arm was already moving.

A tight, elbow-range stab. Six inches of black steel into whatever was directly in front of his chest.

The creature screamed. Point-blank. So close that Revan’s left eardrum popped with a wet crunch that turned the world lopsided.

’How’s THAT for a greeting, you piece of shit?’

Something caught his right hip and threw him sideways. He hit the mud rolling, came up with the sword, ears ringing.

He expected the creature to flee.

As he had thought earlier, the scenario in his head didn’t always match reality.

The displacement surged back at him. Fast. Furious. A straight-line charge directly into his guard.

Revan clenched his jaw.

"—!"

CLANG!

The impact drove Revan back three steps. His boots carved trenches in the slurry. Before he could reset, a second blow hammered his blade from the left, spinning him ninety degrees. A third caught the flat of his sword from above and nearly drove him to his knees.

"Shit, couldn’t you just run away?!" Revan shouted in frustration. "Shouldn’t you have figured out that if I keep chasing you, my stamina will just burn out anyway?!"

Of course, any creature that agreed with what Revan said would have a minus brain, with an estimated IQ of only twenty.

Revan had just demonstrated that slow, synchronized movement could be tracked through the rain. The creature understood immediately. If stealth no longer worked, the answer was speed and violence.

CLANG. CLANG. CLANG.

Three strikes in under two seconds. He parried the first, redirected the second using viscous Aura through his torso, and ducked the third.

’You figured it out that fast? I spent ten minutes bleeding to learn your pattern, and you rewrote yours in ten SECONDS?’

The creature pressed harder. A low sweep aimed at his ankles. Revan jumped. Something clipped his right shoulder midair, sending him tumbling sideways.

He rolled through the mud and came up swinging. The blade met resistance. The creature snarled and pulled back, but only for a heartbeat before launching another barrage.

From angles Revan couldn’t predict because there WAS no pattern anymore. Each strike arriving from wherever felt right in the moment.

’Clever girl. You stopped using a pattern because you know I read patterns. So you went random.’

Block. Spin. Redirect.

’But here’s the thing about random.’

A strike from behind. Revan sidestepped, let it pass, and drove an elbow backward into the space the attack had come from.

Thud. Something solid. The creature grunted.

’Random means you can’t plan either.’

Another from the left. Revan caught it on his blade, let the viscous Aura channel the force through his hips, and whipped a counter-slash into the creature’s flank.

The blade kissed flesh. Shallow. The creature yelped.

What Revan was doing underneath the chaos was something far simpler than reading a pattern.

He was setting a tempo.

Every parry at the same speed. Every redirect at the same timing. Every counter-slash at the same interval after the block. He was feeding the creature a rhythm. His OWN rhythm.

The creature didn’t notice. It was too focused on overwhelming Revan’s guard through unpredictable violence to realize that while its attacks were random, Revan’s responses were mechanical. Identical. Repeating.

Block. Redirect. Counter.

Block. Redirect. Counter.

Forty seconds. Forty seconds of brutal, close-range exchanges in the mud and the rain.

And then the creature’s attacks started to sync.

The way a person walking beside someone else will gradually match their stride without meaning to. The creature’s random strikes began to arrive at intervals that matched Revan’s response timing. Pulled into his tempo.

’Got you.’

The next attack came from the right. On beat. Exactly where Revan expected it, exactly when he expected it, because he had spent forty seconds teaching the creature when to swing.

He didn’t block.

He stepped forward and drove the sword straight into the gap the attack had opened.

SHUNK.

The blade sank four inches into something dense that gave way under the pressure.

The creature convulsed. The scream was singular, raw, enormous.

And then it ripped itself free and came back swinging.

’ARE YOU SERIOUS RIGHT NOW?!’

Something hit Revan across the chest. He flew backward, hit the mud, slid. Scrambled up. The creature was already on him.

CLANG. CLANG.

Revan parried both, but his arms nearly gave out.

A strike caught his dead left arm. The impact spun him sideways. One knee hit the slurry.

From the ground, he swung upward. A wild, scything blow.

CRACK.

The blade connected with something structural. Something load-bearing broken under the edge.

The creature staggered. Its displacement lurched sideways, listing hard.

It struck again. Weaker. The displacement wobbling on the follow-through.

’YES. That’s a joint. Or whatever the fuck you use for joints. How’s that feel, huh? Not so fun when YOUR leg doesn’t work, is it?’

Revan rose to his feet. Aura channels flickering. Left arm dead. Left ear ringing.

But the creature was limping.

And Revan was still standing.

’Your move, ugly.’

The creature didn’t flee.

The displacement lurched away, circled, came back around. Tried to flank. On one working leg.

’Oh, you stubborn son of a bitch. I can respect that. I HATE it. But I can respect it.’

Revan tracked the uneven gait through the rain. Every heavy step on the damaged limb produced a distinctive disruption.

The creature tried to compensate. Shifted weight to the uninjured side. For a few seconds the displacement became harder to read again.

’Smart. Redistributing weight to mask the limp.’

But slower. And slower meant Revan could close the gap.

He sprinted.

The creature abandoned its compensated gait and ran. Revan was already inside two meters.

He dropped into a slide. Swept low.

The sword caught something at the same height as the previous hit. The creature screamed and its displacement collapsed. For one second, stationary. Mass pressed into the mud.