Settling his gaze on the black-haired woman for several seconds longer, Rue closed his eyes and let out a sigh he hadn't known he was carrying.
The woman was a mere Fourth Destination practitioner; he determined after sensing the density of Will excluded around her body.
With some subtle movements, Rue shifted his body toward the woman leaning his upper body forward until his mouth was eye-to-eye with her ear.
With his mouth parallel to her ear, the disciple took in a deep breath through his nose—puffing out his chest—before…
"Yoo!" he exclaimed loudly.
The room metaphorically shook from the loud decibels.
Like a scene out of a cartoon, the woman immediately bolted upright—her back as straight as a ruler, her eyes now absent of any earlier grogginess, widened agape with her pupils dilated into pinpoints, and a thin string of saliva stretched from the end of her mouth to her chin.
"EEK! AIYA!" The woman shrilly squeaked.
Startled by the loud abrupt noise, the woman leaped from her stool several feet behind her.
Conducting a brief scan of the room, the woman—only after noticing nothing was out of place—lowered her head and began to calm her rapid, shallow breathing.
Fixing her breath, the woman's silhouette began to tremble uncontrollably.
Her hands, which rested by her sides, curled into fists involuntarily.
Pop!
Crack!
Her fingers began to pop from the excessive force she was applying, and her ears flushed red from embarrassment.
Snapping her head upward, the maid glared bullets at the originator of the noise.
IT WAS THAT BASTARD!
The same annoying gray-haired fiend she had been instructed to document over the course of the past couple of weeks.
If only this man wasn't her lady's disciple, she wouldn't even bat an eye at killing this bastard.
Damn it!
Of course he just had to wake up right when she began to settle into sleep.
She gritted her teeth. "If I may ask, sir… why had you deemed it logical to wake me in such an unorthodox manner? A simple shove would have sufficed, no?" she said in a tone as respectful as she could currently muster.
Rue scratched his chin and shrugged.
"I just felt like it, I guess," he answered.
Seeing the man's nonchalant body language and hearing his dismissive retort, the woman—a maid raised by her master with an expected testament of professionalism and pleasantry—now, for the first time, was given the dismay of experiencing such an unruly—THOUGHTLESS!—response.
After being around nobles for the better part of her life, she had learned her place.
She was a high-ranking servant of the Reigner house who swore her utmost loyalty toward Lady Livian.
She had earned the position she was in today through rigorous study and grueling work loads.
She was even granted the chance to practice martial arts due to her exceptional merit.
In short, Rue was her junior—
A junior who happened to get lucky.
The poor maid's heart was not tempered with enough real-world experience to handle this type of discourtesy.
Her head felt fuzzy—her pulse raced, her head heated as blood rushed into it.
The maid's ears reached an uncomfortable cherry red.
"Y-you son of a bitch…" she unconsciously murmured, her voice cold with disgust and detest.
"Hm?" Rue mused, hearing the sudden shift in tone.
"Did your bitch of a mother never teach you manners?! You'll learn your place today, you bastard!" she growled before springing forward at blinding speed.
The maid flew toward him like an arrow, her hands—now coated with an ethereal violet—curled into claws aimed for his head and vitals.
It was clear the woman preferred a short offensive battle rather than a war of attrition.
Now within her reach, the woman downwardly swiped her hand toward Rue's face.
She missed—by a hair's length—since her target had shifted his body just as the attack entered mid-movement.
"What?!" the maid's pupils shrank from surprise.
She was sure that was going to hit!
While the attack wasn't powerful—she hadn't intended to actually harm Rue—it was still fast and should have hit.
But she missed?
Pinning Rue's dodge to mere luck, she attempted a second attack.
The maid discreetly followed the first strike with her other claw-like hand.
Using the inertia of the initial attack, the woman increased her second strike's speed further as she aimed toward Rue's solar plexus.
Swooth!
Her attack met the air.
As with the first attack, she had again missed by a hair's length.
"Well, isn't this fun," Rue said, ecstatic as he scrutinized the bizarre martial arts the maid was employing.
Misunderstanding the intent behind his statement, the maid's eyes turned bloodshot.
"Stop… STOP MOCKING ME!" She yelled.
She no longer cared if she got in trouble for this—she just wanted to wipe that smug expression off that bastard's face.
"Oh, I'm sorry if what I said came off that way," Rue said modestly, attempting to diffuse the woman's rage.
And yet, not only did his 'attempt' fail, it actually increased the maid's already volatile anger since she took it as provocation.
Without hesitation, the maid no longer held herself back.
Even if she wanted to, she couldn't resist her cardinal urges anymore.
Her sense of logic had since been tossed out.
Reasoning with her was as effective as talking to a wall.
Weaving past another attack, Rue jumped off the bed, narrowly avoiding another swipe aimed at his face.
Seeing that another of her attacks had missed, the maid gritted her teeth, and without a second thought, she leapt from the velvet-clad four-poster bed, homing toward Rue.
The woman's claw-like hands fully took on the part of a beast-like armament, with both forming into a lethal pair of sharp nimble claws pigmented violet.
Raising one claw north and another south, the woman began to enact two simultaneous savage movements spirited with martial complexity.
Her footwork's speed resembled that of a cheetah's, her waist and upper body wavered as flexibly and segmented as a snake's, and the movements of her claws struck with the power and finesse like that of a tiger's.
As her claws neared the annoying gray-haired bastard, the total velocity carried behind them approached blinding speeds already surpassing the perception of a mortal.
SWIP!
Two claw-like gauntlets burst from the woman's hands.
BOOM!
The wall behind Rue exploded apart as the twin gauntlets connected with its surface after missing their target.
While not optimal, the maid had foreseen this outcome.
When Rue had dodged her first attack, she believed it to be a fluke.
When he dodged the second, she chalked it up to coincidence—maybe Lady Luck was smiling down on him today.
Who knew?
However, when her third, fourth, and fifth attacks missed, she came to the conclusion that she had been gravely mistaken.
Going against this man would be like a lightweight outboxer going against a monstrous heavyweight inboxer.
While the outboxer may be exceptional when fighting other lightweights, when push comes to shove and they are slapped with the newsflash of reality against a boxer of a higher weight class, with skills on par or greater than their own, they would find themselves helpless.
The maid knew this, her chances of winning were zero, but be it a sense of altruism or stubbornness, they wouldn't give in to such stereotypical roles so easily.
Dislocating her shoulder from its socket, the woman—in a movement similar to that of whip users—exploited her arm's newly floppy state to ride along the momentum of her past attack and snap toward Rue like a bullet.
To fight a Goliath you have to become unorthodox like David.
~~~
~~~
~~~
Clang!
Fwoom!
Sweep!
With a deft twist of his hand, Rue, with bored and practiced movement, parried the maid's arm aside.
Glancing over the woman's body instantaneously, the disciple decided there was no further need to draw this out.
He hooked her legs with a swift sweep of his foot, knocking her off balance, sending her tumbling toward the ground back-first.
However, just before she hit the ground, Rue caught her around the waist, steadying her in his arm.