Overpowered Character

People forget. No matter how deeply you carve feelings into your heart, no matter how painful the memories are that make you want to die just by recalling them, even your love for someone dear will slowly fade.

That is why you carve it in again. Over and over, again and again. To live, to survive, and to become happy. You carve those repeatedly sworn feelings back into your soul.

I returned from the sea of thoughts and looked up at the sun. It felt like I had been lost in that sea for quite a while. In reality, not much time had passed.

Presence Detection was still unresponsive. Every now and then a monster’s presence would barely be caught at the edge of my detection range before it disappeared.

If only I had my smartphone, then I could kill as much time as I wanted. Thinking stupid things like that, I was getting sick of simply staring at a clay dome.

I should use this time more effectively and think about something that will actually benefit me.

In this savage world, combat ability is everything. In a world where the strength of an individual can overpower a group, danger to your life is always close at hand.

If an overwhelmingly powerful person truly sets their mind to it, no one can stop them. The best form of self-defense is to become that overwhelmingly strong person yourself.

I had broken through the level wall and obtained a black-steel weapon. If I want to reach greater heights, it is about time I reconsider my fighting style.

I did consider learning the sword and acquiring a swordsmanship skill. But my real strength is my ability to fight barehanded. They are techniques nobody else knows, cannot predict, and cannot respond to.

That advantage is enormous.

If I were to acquire a sword skill now, I would only drop down to the level of an ordinary adventurer who is a bit sharp eyed.

However, I also cannot rely on fighting barehanded forever. Monsters have tough bodies, and in fights against humans, a weapon that can take a life by simply grazing a vital spot is effective.

My weapon is a knife. The blade is about twenty-five centimeters long and fairly thick. The reach is short, but the sharpness and durability are guaranteed.

Even if it is only twenty five centimeters, the change in reach is significant. Until I get used to it, my sense of range feels off. That is when it hit me.

I could hold the knife in a reverse grip. In military combat styles they sometimes use a reverse grip, but usually with much smaller knives.

I’ve got total edgy-teen vibes going on here, holding a big knife in a reverse grip. If I started dual-wielding on top of that, people would probably ask which anime character I’m cosplaying.

But this actually works.

The range is now close to bare-handed range. I can fight using the same distances I am used to. I hold the knife in reverse grip in my right hand, drive in a punch, and as the opponent recoils, I run the blade along their neck.

From there, I slip past their side and get behind them, extending my folded arm and driving the knife into the back of their head.

It wastes the extra reach the knife gives, but that is fine. I can fight with my usual sense of distance. I can still use kicks.

Using a knife does not mean I must rely on it.

The knife is just one option. Against a person, a punch or a kick can destroy the body too, though it does require significantly more force than using a blade.

I could take a southpaw stance and hold the knife in reverse grip in my right hand. Then I combine attacks from my head, shoulders, elbows, fists, knees, legs, and the knife.

The more the opponent focuses on the knife, the easier it becomes to land attacks with the other parts of my body. I exploit those openings by those hits to slide the knife into a vital spot.

Their fear of the knife makes my bare-handed attacks land more often. And because those land, the opponent loses their balance and the knife hits even more easily.

I could move in a way that lets both elements complement each other.

Before I realized it, I was completely absorbed in shadow boxing. I could see a new path opening up in combat. All that was left was to refine the technique.

I had never been used to handling weapons, and it always bothered me that I did not know how to make the most of them. Even when I was in a party with Gonz and the others, weapons never felt right in my hands.

I thought I needed to learn an entirely new style centered around weapons. That was wrong. All I needed to do was incorporate the knife into the techniques I had already mastered.

The knife is only another option. The fighting distance remains the same. A punch, a kick, even a tackle is fine.

There was never any need to place the weapon at the core of my technique. Something inside me finally clicked into place.

There was no need for flashy, complex techniques using a knife, or for devising an unavoidable finishing move.

Deflect attacks. Cut veins, nerves, and tendons. Stab vital points. Simply that.

I could finally see my own style of fighting with a weapon. It was fun. No, this was dangerous. It was getting really fun. I wanted to practice right away. I wanted to test it in real combat.

But if I started practicing here, I would get too absorbed in it. If a hole opened in the clay dome, I might not even notice. I had to endure it for now.

Funny how I could not think of this no matter how much I agonized over it, yet it came to me when I was spacing out. Maybe that is just how things are.

Integrating knife-handling into martial arts and hand-to-hand combat. The base remains unarmed techniques. Behold, the birth of Wildling-Style Short-Blade Combat Arts.

Then embarrassment hit me all at once. What the hell is “Wildling-Style Short-Blade Combat Arts”? That is so lame. Calm down. Breathe.

Thinking it would be better to use my dominant hand, I gripped the knife with my right hand. That made my stance southpaw, but that also feels very good.

Now that I think about it, I have never seen a southpaw in this world. Either there are no left handed people, or skills activate in an orthodox stance.

In Japanese swordsmanship, for example, the stance is the same regardless of your dominant hand. Perhaps two handed sword techniques do not consider handedness either.

In this world, due to cost and portability, many adventurers use broadswords with blade lengths of sixty centimeters or more.

They are technically one-handed swords, but the hilts are long enough for two-handed use.

Normally they are used one-handed, but when more power is needed, they are used with both hands. Longswords used with both hands have blade lengths of ninety centimeters or more, so they cost more due to the extra iron required. Those stuck at level fifteen cannot afford them. Even those who break the level wall prefer weapons they are used to.

Since people often fight in narrow places like dungeons and forests, many adventurers use broadswords. Of all the human opponents I have faced in this world, broadswords might be the most common.

I feel like left handed people could just use a broadsword with their left hand, but since I have never seen it, either they do not exist or they are extremely rare.

Not knowing something means you do not know how to deal with it.

Thinking back, that genius hobgoblin I fought in the goblin settlement also seemed thrown off when I switched to a southpaw stance.

Even on Earth, where the concept of southpaw is widely recognized, the advantages of left-handed fighters in pro sports and martial arts are well known.

The proportion of left handed people is said to be around eleven percent of the total population. Among top athletes who perform professionally, the proportion of southpaws clearly exceeds that number.

This is especially evident when looking at recent Japanese boxing world champions.

Shinsuke Yamanaka, known as “God’s Left,” defended the WBC bantamweight title twelve times. Hozumi Hasegawa, known as “Speed Star,” defended the WBC bantamweight title ten times and later achieved titles in three weight classes.

And Toshiaki Nishioka, known as “Monster Left,” defended the WBC super bantamweight title seven times and became the only Japanese fighter to headline in Las Vegas against the lightweight superstar Nonito Donaire.

Among recent Japanese world champions, many of the ones with especially outstanding records are southpaws.

Of course their own talent and effort matter a great deal, but there is no denying that being a southpaw itself is an advantage.

So what exactly is that southpaw advantage? It varies depending on the sport, but to put it bluntly, it mostly comes down to a difference in experience.

If you loosely apply the statistics, an orthodox fighter will have fought ten matches and only one of those will have been against a southpaw.

Meanwhile, a southpaw fighter will have fought nine out of ten matches against orthodox fighters. The gap in experience is enormous.

So it is actually very common for southpaws to be bad at fighting other southpaws.

You might think, “Wait, that is it? Just being used to it? Just a difference in experience?”

But in boxing, being off by only a few centimeters, even a few millimeters, means a punch might miss completely or glance off the vital spot.

When an orthodox fighter and a southpaw face each other, their lead hands and feet get in each other’s way, and the sense of distance becomes totally different.

Whether you are used to that distance or not makes a massive difference.

And in this world, people are also unfamiliar with the distance used in bare-handed fighting. If I can just get close, add being a southpaw on top of that, and the advantage swings overwhelmingly in my favor.

Most likely, it is a strength that only I possess. But that advantage is a double-edged sword. Closing the distance gives me the upper hand, yet getting into that range is incredibly difficult.

They say that if karate fights kendo, kendo wins. If kendo fights naginata, the naginata wins. That is how decisive reach really is.

Even in boxing, if two fighters have similar skill and physical ability but one has a reach that is 20 centimeters longer, the shorter one cannot do anything. Their opponent’s blows reach, while theirs fall short.

You just keep getting hit from a safe distance where your strikes cannot reach.

Until now, I managed by making my opponent miss and using that opening to close in, or by suddenly accelerating from a standstill to catch them off guard.

But there is no guarantee that will always work. I need to learn a new way to defend, not just dodge sword attacks.

If I can block my opponent’s strike, I will be able to counter from a much closer position.

But a knife cannot stop a sword. I will have to use the knife in my lead hand to deflect the opponent’s attacks and control the direction of their force.

Ideally, I want to make them lose their balance. But I cannot practice that kind of thing alone.

The world is not very kind to loners, huh.

Up to now, I figured the reason I was so good at slipping into my opponent’s space was because I was catching them off guard. But I do not think that is the whole story.

After I went into the mountains, I had more free time, which meant more time to think. That is when I realized it. I had never noticed before because I was always next to Gonz, the physical monster.

My physical ability is clearly higher than other people around level 15.

Even if everyone is being enhanced and made more efficient by their skills, breaking someone’s sternum through leather armor with a single straight punch and destroying their heart is not normal.

I never noticed because Gonz could just snap necks bare-handed like it was nothing, but it is obviously strange. My speed in closing distance is probably also fast for someone in the level-15 range.

That is why I was able to crush the gap so easily.

I started to think my base stats might simply be high. I am not saying I am gifted, but what you use to determine those base stats changes everything.

Were they based on the talent I was born with? Or on the body I had when I was reincarnated here? That would make a huge difference.

I have no idea what the average physical ability of people in this world is.

A body raised in Japan with good nutrition from childhood and trained using proper equipment. A body in this world that just looks big and sturdy. Which one actually has more strength?

If we assume there is no level correction and my base stats were taken from the body I had when I was reincarnated, then it is very possible that my base stats are far above the average adventurer.

At first, I thought that explained everything.

But there is still something that does not fit. I learn skills quickly. Skills like Presence Detection level up incredibly fast, at least from how it feels.

I have often been forced into situations where, unless I learned something, I would die. Al told me that in situations like that, skill levels rise more easily.

Even so, this is still too fast.

Just yesterday I even learned a new skill, Enhanced Senses. And I feel like my level is rising faster than what Al told me to expect.

All this time, I thought I had been thrown naked into this insane nightmare-difficulty world without any decent cheat abilities at all.

Given a language cheat and dumped into a forest full of nothing but goblins.

Even with a language cheat, I could not actually talk to anyone. When I finally spoke to a village girl and realized I could, I thought: so the language cheat does work after all.

Here, you can have a language cheat. But everyone around you is a goblin who does not speak that language. I honestly believed that nasty-tempered god was mocking me like that for fun.

Appraisal. Item Box. Language cheat.

Out of the three sacred cheat abilities, I only got the language cheat, and was then dropped into a goblin-infested forest where that cheat was practically useless. I really thought I had been treated that cruelly.

So I forgot.

About the fourth cheat ability that stands alongside those three. The kind of cheat beloved by every edgelord1 out there.

Yeah. A growth cheat.

I probably have one. Looks like the god actually did give me a cheat. Wait. Then why is my life still like this?

Why am I a wanted man, sitting in the mountains, covered in mud and naked, and watching over a dirt dome?

Is this really what people with cheats are supposed to look like?

Still feeling strangely unconvinced, I stared at the earthen dome.