章 185: Hajime vs Alex

The day of the arranged fight both Alex and Hajime faced each other in the same room they faced the hydra in, off to the side the girls were watching now the fight behind a few layers of barriers. Alex glanced over at them and saw Grayfia looking passive, most likely still thinking about what they discuss the night before after she found out about Gabriel. Though she didn't entirely agree, she also couldn't truly disagree with their actions as it was an eventuality anyways.

Alex pushed the thoughts from his head, and turned back towards his opponent, Hajime. He had already replaced his arm, and had an eyepatch over the eye he lost, as well as the storage ring on his finger full of his new toys. Alex smiled, and said,

"Are you ready?" Hajime nodded, then and didn't say anything bad he pulled out his first weapon and fired.

***

Hajime was bound and determined to win this fight, and spent the last week throwing together various weapons he had plans to make anyways. Though they weren't as good as he wanted, they should be enough for this fight. The first things he pulled out were his trusty partners, the first items he created after Alex left him, his custom made revolvers named Donner and Schlag. As red lightning covered the two weapons, several loud bangs resounded throughout the room as he aimed and fired directly at Alex.

BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG

Over and over again he fired at Alex. When Hajime saw Alex's reaction to this though, his only eye widened in surprise as Alex smoothly avoided all his shots. It wasn't as if he just barely avoided then either, Alex's smile never wavered as he used the smallest movements possible to dodge his attack. Hajime's brow twitched in annoyance at how casual Alex was acting, though he figured a small exchange like that wouldn't be enough for him to win. Using his agility, Hajime then started circling Alex and firing from all directions with the thought that he wouldn't be able to dodge that way. What happened though completely blew him away.

With the same casualness that he displayed before, Alex swiftly dodged all of Hajime's attacks without even seeing where they were coming from. This annoyed Hajime even more, as it completely felt as if he wasn't being taken seriously. He then put away Donner and Schlag, and pulled out one of his new toys. What appeared in his hands was a large prototype Gatling railgun he called Metsurai, capable of firing 12,000 rounds per minutes. What followed was complete and utter destruction, as the bullets Hajime fired annihilated whatever they hit. However even under the storm of bullets Alex was unharmed, instead he now seemed like a blur as he dodged every single bullet raining down on him as though it were nothing. Hajime was starting to wonder if he wasn't fighting some kind of illusion or something.

Realizing that Metsurai wasn't good enough, Hajime then pulled out his next weapon. He then aimed his next attack at Alex using a large rocket/grenade launcher named Orca, capable of firing several times in succession. Hajime then fired his incendiary grenades without restraint, turning the entire area around Alex, that was already mostly rubble anyways, into a raging inferno. As the substance he used for his incendiary attacks burned at 3,000 degrees Celsius, Hajime was confident he managed to do something at least to Alex by now. What he didn't know was that he did manage to do something to Alex, but it wasn't something he wanted as Alex's 'fire immunity' skill went up by one.

As the flames burned down, Hajime was incredulous to find Alex still standing there, acting as if everything he'd taken so far was no big deal. Hajime then surged forward, and delivered a kick to Alex's stomach. It wasn't a precise attack like what you'd see from a martial artist, but a kick designed to hurt that was typically used by thugs. He expected that Alex would move or that his kick would go right through him, what Hajime never expected was that even with all the stat boosts he'd gotten recently, his kick landed with a dull thud. With Alex looking like he wasn't even fazed by the fact that his foot landed on his gut, Hajime started throwing punches and kicks in rapid fire, while also throwing in some air blades with the ability he got from the claw bear. In return Alex would just go,

"Right punch."

"Left kick."

"Air blade."

"Head Butt."

Perfectly predicting every one of Hajime's planned attacks and either dodging or defending before they landed. Hajime was at his wits end, and was trying to figure out what to do when Alex said,

"Maybe it's time for me to go on the offensive." Startling Hajime, and making him take his distance once more. He then pulled out a large shield that looked like a coffin, and looked at the other side to see Alex preparing for the attack. He was annoyed to see that he simply seemed to be doing some warmups, before a large amount of energy stated radiating off of him. Hajime watched wide eyed as Alex became enveloped in a golden aura, while his hair started standing straight up. When he finished his transformation, there was only three words that could be heard in the room,

"I'm so fucked."

***

"You didn't have to go that far you know!" Anne said with half closed eyes as she looked at Alex. The person himself shrugged, and said,

"I was just being thorough, and besides his equipment is mostly made out of azantium, which known as the hardest metal in this world." Anne snorted at his words, and retorted,

"Yeah, but the damage that you did to the non-azantium parts of him, in other words the human part of him, had to be healed by me! And there was a lot of damage to heal!" Alex rolled his eyes, while the rest of the girls snickered in the background. It had been several hours after he ended the duel, and Hajime was still resting after being thoroughly thrashed by Alex. He then had to be healed by Anne, who wasn't happy Alex created that much work for her. He already thought of a way to cheer her up though, and said,

"How about I bring you with me to the town Brooke to make up for it?" At his words every girl became alert, and Anne asked,

"Wait we're moving on already?" Alex however shook his head, and explained,

"I don't know the exact location of the next labyrinth, so I plan to go to Brooke and do some work as an adventurer while searching for it. It'll still be a while before we challenge it though, but this will save all of us the need to search for it later." Rias looked excited to see some other places for a second, before Alex continued,

"I'll just be taking Anne and Kuroka with me this time, and Kuroka will just have one job before I send her back. As for the rest of you, I want each of you to focus on grinding your job levels for right now, since we won't necessarily always have a place with so many high level monsters conveniently provided for us. Don't worry, once we leave here we'll probably be traveling for quite a while, and I do plan to return via magic circle every night I can." Though the girls didn't like staying in the labyrinth for such a long time, they also knew that it would be best if they gained as many job levels as possible, plus it wasn't all bad since they could enter Asora anytime.

Anne on the other hand was ecstatic, she was looking forward to getting out and seeing more of Tortus, and most importantly getting some alone time with Alex. With this the fight with Hajime came to an end, and Alex started planning his next step.