Inferior

Mia stared down the honey badger for a moment, who in turn snarled at her rather aggressively. She was a bit nervous but wasn't too scared of it overall. After taking a deep breath, she took a few steps forward before slashing down at it.

The honey badger did little to try and dodge, instead pouncing towards her.

In the end, her blade had hit hard against the honey badger's back, however, to her surprise it was deflected off. Its open jaws came dangerously close to Mia, though she was just barely able to dodge.

The honey badger was faster than her. In reality, the only way she was able to dodge in the first place was because the attack was fairly clearly telegraphed. While most people wouldn't have been able to do the same thing, if the badger was just a bit more sly, with a feint or delay, the damage would've been bad.

Mia quickly took a few steps back to get some distance and gather herself. In response, the honey badger growled rather aggressively, opting to threaten rather than close the gap immediately.

With that brief respite, Mia reevaluated many things in her head. Clearly, this wasn't going to be the super easy fight that she expected. This fact confused her quite a bit. After all, she didn't have that much trouble with something harder, even if it did affect her emotionally quite a bit.

It was in this short moment her mind came to a rather simple, but meaningful conclusion. That while the number of the card did indeed indicate the difficulty, the suit also seemed to relate to the type of difficulty. While this was a rather simple conclusion to come to, it was meaningful.

Mia wasn't too sure what the fox meshed with a coyote was, though she did notice the aspect of creation, where it summoned a forest, was similar to the other diamonds animals doing similar things.

As for clubs, her only reference was the T-Rex, which seemed to have relentlessly strong regeneration. While she wasn't sure, it probably also had incredibly strong power through simple muscle, though Emma didn't allow it to show said power. It appeared to be a sort of brute force type.

For hearts, Mia was quite familiar with it as she fought one directly. It cast illusions and seemed to use indirect ways to win the battle. Conquering through the mind rather than force.

Then came spades. The monkey that Jessica fought didn't appear oppressively big like some of the clubs fights, or unreasonably relentless with attacks for the diamonds fights. However, it seemed to make up for that lack of strength with superior skill.

While it would be a bit too much to call a rabid honey badger skilled, Mia had the feeling that it was at least aware of its strengths. It wasn't afraid of an attack on its back, opting to ignore it entirely.

With this in mind, she figured the tough back was a strength it had, or at the very least not a weakness. She narrowed her eyes slightly as she decided it was best to figure out more.

The sensation of hitting the back of the honey badger was still fresh in Mia's mind. It was strangely tough, yet still incredibly flexible. It almost didn't make sense. She knew that she wasn't particularly strong and couldn't just brute force through it.

Perhaps there was a chance if the honey badger just remained still and let her hit it over and over again, but that obviously wasn't going to happen. She needed to find its weakness. That was the only way that she could end up winning against this thing.

With caution, Mia approached the honey badger, wanting to bait out an attack from the honey badger. In response, its growling had grown much louder, especially with each step she took.

When she was only a few steps away, the honey badger lunged once more.

This time, Mia lowered herself and tilted out of the way. At the same time, she swung her katana towards the underbelly. While there wasn't any real technique and the slash itself was weak, she was doing it for the sake of information in the first place, so she didn't mind such a thing.

The hit itself was clean, however, Mia found that a very similar thing happened. The honey badger's hide was thick, such that the katana couldn't really penetrate through it.

This time, the honey badger didn't seem to be content with a stare off anymore and immediately turned around and lunged toward Mia. While she would've preferred some time to think, she was still not caught off guard by it.

After ruling out the back and underbelly, that only really left its head a neck, including the facial features.

Mia wasn't going to give herself more credit than she was due. If the weakness was specifically the eye or the nose, she knew that she would only hit it by luck. She had considered going straight for the jaws, but it wouldn't be too pretty if its bite was stronger than she thought and her sword was lost to the badger.

That left only the head and the neck.

All of those thoughts went through her head in that split moment before she arbitrarily decided to go for the neck. Mia sidestepped like she always did, though the badger tilted its head in an attempt to bite her anyway while flailing with its claws.

She was not expecting that, but resolutely gave up on attacking right at that moment, shying away. Unfortunately, she still got scratched by one of the claws. Lines of blood quickly formed on her arm and bubbled up, but it was nothing serious.

Right as the badger landed on the ground, Mia let out a cry and slammed down her katana, slashing into the badger's neck while it was trying to turn around once more.

A clear popping sound rang out along with a whimper.

The blade pierced through the neck, despite being repelled so many times before. However, it only dug through the skin a few centimeters. While it was probably a wound that would lead to it bleeding out to death eventually, Mia wasn't confident in surviving that whole time with a rabid animal hunting her down.

With that in mind, she didn't consider the dangers of pushing her opportunity further than she should and placed her hand on the back of the katana to force it deeper.

The honey badger let out a wail before trying to twist its head around to bite her. A few of its teeth got quite close, but Mia moved her fingers away, so there was no chance for it.

The honey badger aggressively tried to claw at Mia. However, she had already accounted for that, and its attempts were rather fruitless. Seemingly realizing this, it began clawing into the dirt, bringing itself closer to Mia, struggling intensely despite the terrifying wound in the back of its neck.

It let out a gurgling growl and was getting dangerously close despite Mia taking steps backward. After a few seconds, she decided to commit wasn't worth it and pulled out her katana while running away.

The badger immediately gave chase, yet at the same time blood sprayed out from its wound like a fountain. Its eyes quickly became bloodshot as it frantically rushed forth, catching up rather quickly.

Yet, right when it had reached Mia, it suddenly slowed down to a crawl. Then a second later, it stopped moving entirely.

After it all ended, she realized she was panting quite hard.

"You've won this one. We will now move on to the next."

The man in a suit confirmed it, and Mia felt the muscles she didn't know were tensed up, relaxed. She took a look at the wound on the side of her arm, with a small frown. It stung pretty badly despite being a shallow one, but she was afraid of it being infected.

Though that was her thought, she was still fixated on how much more difficult it was for her to deal with the honey badger despite supposedly being easier. Between her and Jessica, Mia was the one who was confident. Yet at the same time, Mia couldn't help but see herself as weaker than Jessica.

After all, she struggled with something at the level of 3, while Jessica was able to do a 5. Not to mention, her strange state that allowed her to defeat a 7. And those thoughts also brought up bad thoughts from Jessica's freakish state, prompting her to quell her thoughts altogether.

She took a deep breath and left it at that.

Jessica had arrived not too long after the battle had concluded. Seeing that Mia was standing and her foe was no longer moving, she smiled slightly and clapped a few times.

"Ah, you're already done. That was so fast!"

Mia looked away from her, trying to pretend she never heard anything.