The man walked away from her then.

His words had felt like a punch to the gut.

She knew that she shouldn’t listen to the words of a curmudgeonly snobbish older climber, but she couldn’t help but internalize them. She knew already that’s what everyone said behind her back. Everyone was surprised she had made it this far.

The graduation had been one of the happiest days of her life and, in seconds, it had been ruined.

Who was she kidding? she thought. She was never going to make it as a climber. Graduating had just been some kind of weird lucky fluke.

She went home that night and cried.

But in the morning, all she felt was anger.

Anger at herself.

She’d graduated from the bloody climber academy! Less than 10% of the students at the start of the year passed and she was one of them.

How could she let the words of some jerk get the best of her?

She wouldn’t let that happen again.

Furthermore, she was determined to become stronger.

After a year and a half of harsh training, she hit D-rank.

People began to speak about her differently.

“A silver-ranked slicer, huh? Don’t see many of those.”

That was right, she thought. She was going to do better than anyone ever believed she could.

She was going to show the world that a climber with a common trait would be able to be just as powerful as any other climber!!

* * *

Sakura’s whole body trembled in pain.

She gritted her teeth and pushed herself up, wincing as she ignored the overwhelming pain as much as she could.

“Here’s the thing, Samuel,” said Sakura as she stood up. “You’ve always underestimated me and that’s been your biggest downfall.”

As a B-ranked climber, Sakura could use her slice trait twenty-five times consecutively at a total of seventy-five times a day. Take off three slices for attacks she’d already used and one more for safety, leaving her with seventy-one slices before she hit her daily capacity.

She was going to die in a few minutes anyway, she had nothing more to lose than go all out.

She clenched her fist and triggered her slice ability, again and again and again...

Until seventy-one massive golden blades of energy filled the entire arena and shot straight at Samuel Archer.

“Dodge this, asshole!”

103

The seventy-one slices shot forth into Samuel.

The man lifted up his shield slime-covered fists to dodge the blow.

“That won’t be enough to dodge all my attacks,” shouted Sakura as she commanded the blades of energy to blast into the A-rank climber.

This was her last attack she’d be able to do before she passed out and bled to death, so she had to make it count.

The slice attacks pounded into Samuel Archer.

He kept his fists raised, but it wasn’t enough.

“Arghhh!” he yelled in pain.