Chapter 128: A heavy fist

Seeing Gary charge in, Austin stretched his arms out wide, and held them by his side, waiting for Gary’s next move, which turned out to be a thigh kick he had practised with Innu countless times. Alas, once again, at the perfect time, Austin whacked the green haired teenager’s foot away, almost parrying it, and stepped forward, quickly throwing a fist of his own aimed at Gary’s stomach.

[-4 HP]

Gary hurled forward from the heavy blow, not moving away from Gary this time, Austin grabbed the back of his opponent’s head, holding onto his hair and pulled him up. The loner held the other’s head in place and then swung his fist hitting Gary’s face, and sending him down.

[-6 HP]

“Hey, isn’t that a bit much grabbing his hair?” Marie worriedly asked.

“Does that matter in a street fight?” Innu questioned back.

The girl had nothing to say to that. She was very well aware that out there people would use weapons and all sorts of dirty methods to win, not caring in the slightest whether something was ‘fair’ or not.

Landing on the floor, Garry felt something go through his hand. Lifting it up he could see it was one of the glass shards. It pierced right through his hand, but it was shoved in quite deep, adn blood was already flowing.

[-1 HP]

[You are suffering from minor blood loss]

[Foreign object detected in body]

[Unable to perform emergency healing.]

The high schooler quickly stood up. Gritting his teeth, he didn't hesitate to pull the glass shard out and threw it across the floor. Marie flinched a little bit seeing this, imagining how much pain she would be in if it had been her, but Gary didn’t even flinch, instead he clenched his fist as if there was no pain at all.

[Emergency healing now in progress]

“I’ve been through a lot worse!” Gary shouted, remembering the two times he had been stabbed by a knife, a glass shard through his hand simply couldn’t compare to that. As for the pain, compared to the emotional pain his family had gone through and the stress he had been through these past few days, this wasn’t even worth mentioning!

The fight so far had been pretty one sided, Gary hadn’t managed to land a single hit, while he himself had suffered hits several times. It was beginning to look like a repeat of the earlier fight against the Vicious Twins. Only this time, Gary had gone all out using Charging Heart from the beginning meaning he had nothing else to use to gain an advantage over his opponent.

“This is what I was worried about.” Innu sighed. “For someone like Gary this matchup is the worst. Our leader is someone who seems to be blessed with natural speed, strength and endurance that allows him to take quite a beating.

"He also knows a few basic skills, so he can take down the average thug. Even if they are trained, his endurance and strength can make up for that.

“But with Austin…he’s a natural street fighter. You can tell he doesn't have any training at all. There's no pattern that one can follow, and he just does whatever his instincts tell him would be the optimal move.

"Gary hasn’t fought enough to deal with this type of unorthodox fighter.”

Kai was of the same opinion. It would have been far more favourable if they had sent out someone trained like Innu who could use his skills to support his fighting style to deal with Austin. The thought of watching a fight between these two interested him as well.

That or it would take someone who would have been a lot faster or a lot stronger than Austin. Unfortunately, Gary was neither of those things.

‘Come on, Gary! I know you have it in you. For the first time, you agreed to a fight yourself. I can feel it, you are also starting to see the goal, aren’t you?

'In the grand scheme of things, Austin is just a small pebble on our long and thorny road. If you want us to reach the top, you need to take him out!’ Kai thought. Even for him, fighting the loner wouldn’t have been easy and wasn’t a hundred percent sure that he would be able to win.

Gary’s kicks and punches were unable to reach his opponent. Austin’s style wasn’t like the twins who had been dodging narrowly, yet it was as, if not more, effective. The green haired teenager still had one unallocated stat point over, yet he wasn’t sure that a stat boost alone would help him win, no matter which stat he would choose.

‘He’s not countering me because I’m too slow, but because he has keen eyes. Dexterity won’t help me change that and what's the point of putting it in Strength if I can’t hit him? My Endurance is already stupidly high yet his punches hurt.

‘Come on, Gary, use your brain, there’s gotta be something you can do to beat him!!!’

Charging forward again Gary let his body do what it had trained to do many times before, Austin had been expecting a lot of desperate measures Gary might resort to at this point, but the other trying to tackle him as they were playing a rugby game wasn't on that list. Once reaching him, the green haired teenager held onto the loner’s waist, and tightly gripped around it.

“You got me, but what are you going to do now?!” Austin shouted, as he grabbed both of his hands together, and slammed them down on Gary's back like a hammer.

[-4 HP]

Gary held on though, not letting go of Austin's waist. He gripped tightly, and started to squeeze tightly.

‘I don’t even know what I'm doing, but what else can I do?!’ Gary wondered, hoping he could make use of his doubled Strength.

Meanwhile, Austin continued to slam both hands down the other's back.

[-4 HP]

[77/100 HP]

“Did you guys hear his back click?” Innu looked around to the other two, whose faces showed that they were mentall sharing Gary’s pain.

‘What do I do, I can’t just keep holding. Should I use Drain Claw? No, I can't. Not with the other three watching...’