These Few Are Not Easy to Deal With

Among experts of the same level, when there was no obvious gap in strength, defense, or endurance, what could determine victory or defeat?

Most people would say, of course, it was their trump card.

When one possessed a killing move, it was naturally the best means of deciding the outcome.

To that answer, Eight-Eyed Spider could tell you—

Wrong!

Just because you had a trump card, did that mean your opponent did not?

More often than not, that approach would lead to mutual destruction. Either both died, or one died while the other was grievously wounded.

And clearly, for an expert— a true expert, not one piled up through resources, nor one who had merely muddled through a World Fragment before coming out, but someone who had truly endured savage fights, stood on the brink of life and death, and broken through step by step—such a situation was the height of stupidity.

Experts were, in truth, like beasts in the wild—predatory beasts.

Under normal circumstances, even upon encountering prey, if a beast realized that pouncing on and killing it would leave itself injured, it would not charge in. It would only choose to retreat. Even if it was so hungry its eyes had turned green, if it could not be sure of killing the prey before it in a single blow, it would still lie in wait, unmoving, until the right moment came.

Because beasts understood that once they were injured, it meant they might be eliminated. They might die.

Experts were no different!

Once they realized that the creature before them was a predator of the same kind, capable of inflicting fatal injuries upon them, they would not make a move before gathering the intelligence they needed and finding the best opportunity.

Thus, to Eight-Eyed Spider, essential intelligence and