Episode 29 — King Kong and the Hybrid Clash (8)
He had known. The power of a Lv. 8 Hero was nothing short of transcendent.
And yet.
Knowing it and actually seeing it are two different things.
The floor began to break apart with a splintering crack, and a boom rolled through the stone as the ceiling threatened to come down after it. No—more than nine-tenths of it had already fallen. It would not have been strange if the rest blew apart at any moment. What made his head swim was that all of this had come from nothing more than two people colliding. Was this truly a force a human being could put out?
"Hmm. I really do have an eye for people. Strong, just as I thought. Still, to think you'd actually stop Lightning Drop."
"The hell kind of childish name is that?"
"I-isn't it a perfectly good name?"
"Not really...?"
"Hmm..."
Even so, the two knights paid scarcely any mind to the natural disaster they had manufactured between them. They were still leveling their blades at one another, and for a simple reason: there was no trust between them.
"Let's not keep this up. Our goals look similar enough."
"Similar, I'll give you. That doesn't mean I've got any reason to think well of the bastard who swung first."
"...Mm. Nothing I can say to that."
Lee Han was right. Whatever the cause, Maximus was the one who had bared his hostility first. Lee Han had only settled into a fighting stance and answered with everything he had. Had he not, he would have been hurting plenty.
"Still, I've an excuse. Rahan—the presence pouring off you was so savage that, honestly, I took you for a monster. So how about a little understanding, and we leave it here?"
"Something pissed me off, so yeah, I got savage. That's fair. ...More to the point, that isn't my name."
"Right. Rihan."
"...I'm going to lose my mind."
Harder to deal with than a man you could not talk to was a person with no malice. In that sense, he truly felt none from this one. All that stood out, quiet and clear, was a fighting spirit as pure and white as snow.
But a sharp pain lanced through him. Hurts like hell. Not only the arm that had met the clash, but the shoulder too, ached so keenly that Lee Han's brow tightened. A human gorilla. No—a damn King Kong...! His face twisted, sick of the sight.
Maximus. The first time Lee Han had seen him was while the Academy's midterm evaluations were in full swing, and all they had done was stand face to face in the company of the Grand Duke of Lionel. Even then he had felt it, if only in passing. The knight called Maximus was threatening beyond all reason.
How does a bastard like this even exist?
Perhaps because Lee Han himself had been through no small share of growing pains since, he could now glimpse a strength in the man that he had not caught before.
What a body.
A massive frame you could read from the outline alone, built to proportions so perfect that you could believe a sculptor worthy of the name master had carved them. He knew. He was a body-first knight himself, after a fashion. To make a physique like that, effort was effort, but what you were born with had to be of a different order entirely.
Hell. A walking lesson in how unfair life is.
To a man who had started with a pauper's body, he could not help but be an object of envy. That did not mean the sight turned his stomach, or that inferiority came crawling up. If anything, admiration rose where admiration would, and with it something like the urge to try building a body like that for himself.
But he was not the sort Lee Han wanted to get close to. He had thought so before, and he thought it still. This was a man he genuinely wanted to keep far away. Just look at him now.
"I'd like you to understand. I'd been dealing with nothing but weaklings, and then a splendidly strong enemy turns up—you can't imagine how welcome that was. So I charged in on impulse. Won't make that mistake again. Haha!"
A way of speaking where you could not tell an apology from a provocation. If that man had a crowd of enemies, every last one of them was probably his own doing. He was that easy to resent.
Lee Han exhaled.
"...Hah."
A quarrel like this was pointless. Keep talking and he would only make himself sick.
"Let's stop."
"Hm?"
"I'm in a damn hurry as it is. What do I get out of fighting you? Better we each go our own way."
"Hmm. Cold of you."
Lee Han lowered his axe, and the regret written across the other man's face was so plain that he must truly have been starving for a fight. Like some demonic cultist... It drove the lesson home again. This was not a man to stand close to.
Then Maximus spoke.
"Hm. Even so, I ought to apologize properly. I'm a knight of the North. How could I let it pass with words alone? Hmm... Ah. Yes!"
A heavy boom shook the ground beneath them.
"—I'll take those ones."
No sooner had he finished than shadows surged up all around them. Air rushed in. The black-clads, baring a fearsome killing intent, hurled their blades the instant they spotted Lee Han. So many hidden knives that he could not begin to guess where they had been concealed swam through the air, every one of them aimed at him—and then those knives burst apart in a flash of force.
"Since when do assassin rabble take aim at an honorable knight!"
A violent gale exploded from the sword Maximus swung without a moment's hesitation, and every throwing knife lost its strength and dropped to the floor. He had used no technique. He had simply swung hard enough to bat them all aside. A monstrous strength.
Maximus stamped a footprint into the stone and shot forward, and in the next instant his figure was gone. A clean, shearing cut.
"One."
"—?!"
When he reappeared, the black-clads had no choice but to be horrified. One of their own had been parted at the waist, torso and legs come apart. It had happened in a flash—a swing and a movement almost too much for the eye to follow. What came after was more astonishing still.
"As expected, a sword is awkward to use."
With a dull clatter, the blade he had presumably picked up in the Tunnels reached the end of its endurance and stood on the verge of snapping. It simply could not bear his outrageous strength.
"Hm. Fighting barehanded will be more comfortable."
"...Don't get cocky!"
He threw the sword away without a second thought. The black-clads took it as contempt and burned with rage, but the rage did not last.
"Cocky? Me—?"
His two hands came together on a black-clad's skull as if he were clapping, and the head crumpled like clay. The man died on the spot. Did a human skull fold that easily?
"...Gulp."
They swallowed dry and faltered back. The ferocity, the decisiveness, and the strength of the giant who had appeared out of nowhere were genuinely terrifying, and stepping backward was the same as the instinct to live. Maximus's eyes, though, were bright—bright as if he did not mean to let a single one of them go.
"The cocky ones would be you lot. Charging in without even recognizing your opponent's skill. How unsightly."
He set his lead foot forward again, and his body vanished. For all that he had a giant's bulk, the speed with which he moved—instant, flowing like water—was like watching a cheetah, or a snake. A cheetah's burst of acceleration, and an elasticity that worked every muscle in his body as freely as a serpent's. It was movement that made you doubt a human body could do it at all, motion that had stepped clean outside the laws of physics.
In the next moment his fist detonated. Another black-clad's head burst, and someone else's body was torn apart. At the hands of a single man, the black-clads were being walked through a massacre of terror.
An experience for which there would be no second time.
"Is that thing even human?"
Lee Han was struck dumb. Honestly, teach martial arts and technique to an actual gorilla and wouldn't you get exactly this?
That burst acceleration is past a hundred, easy.
It was the level of unfolding Divine Bow, Elastic Shadow in real time. Except Lee Han had to deploy the thing as a technique. That bastard seemed to have it hanging off him as a passive.
"What kind of unreasonable monster is that? How's an ordinary talent like me supposed to live...?"
"......"
"...Why are you looking at me like that?"
"Ah, n-no. It's just..."
Which was only to be expected, because every impression coming out of the man's mouth—
I rather think that may be exactly what other people feel about you, Instructor...
Derek could not make himself say it. He had no wish to be torn in half like those black-clads.
Bodies dropped.
"Hm. Unsatisfying."
The time it took Maximus to part heads from necks was ten minutes at the outside, and more than thirty of them lay dead. Someone might suppose he had won so easily only because they were weak. A certain skill-bearing System Window, however, rendered its own assessment.
Target:Black-clads
Level:Lv. 5 — uniform
Rank:Elite Knight
He had annihilated men of that caliber in an instant. The only verdict left was that Maximus's martial power was overwhelming. And yet, even after facing enemies that threatening, no great feeling showed on his face. Only regret remained. The match had been that empty.
"A duel, by rights, ought to send blood and chunks of flesh flying..."
An exceedingly psychotic thing to say, but this was precisely the mind of the North. Battle had to be violent, and to die in battle was, if anything, honorable. Living by cowardly means, or fearing a duel—that was the deeper humiliation for a northerner.
Hm. For once a strong man who could satisfy me is standing right in front of me. But to press it even in a situation like this wouldn't be proper.
Maximus stole a glance at the young knight of Pendragon. Even at their first meeting the man had been giving off an aura that was anything but ordinary, and now that aura had swelled another size larger. Growth beyond any comparison with the day before.
I see. He has overcome the Trial of Struggle.
The warriors of the North revered struggle because they believed that fighting an enemy stronger than themselves, and winning, was how a man grew. They called that struggle a trial, and the one who overcame the trial grew stronger. Through victory, one stacked karma. But stacking such karma was exceedingly difficult. No matter how brave the warrior, surviving a duel in which life and death could not be promised was a hard thing.
And so—
A remarkable man.
A Champion who had seized victory in the end. To Maximus, he could not help but be an attractive opponent.
I want to fight him. Truly...!
Back then, the man had only been enough to stir his fighting spirit. Now it was different. Defeat him, and Maximus could climb to a still higher realm. An endless hunger to rise. Not talent alone—was this bottomless appetite not one of the reasons he had come to be called the strongest warrior of the North?
Just as that craving for struggle surged up, an interloper cut in.
The Mother Worm. A gigantic sandworm, a hundred and twenty meters of it, was charging with a roar thick with fury.
"...For a worm, the bulk is respectable."
Even watching that charge, Maximus only thought, well, of course. Things that huge were scattered all over the North. What caught the eye more was something else.
"That one over there is giving you quite the passionate look. Do you know each other, by any chance?"
"Mm. Former coworker, I suppose."
"Hoh."
A certain black-clad was racing along the Mother Worm's head. Looking at Number Four, Maximus's eyes lit. He could tell at a glance. This one stood higher than the black-clads from a moment ago. In that case—
"This former coworker of yours. Mind if I take him?"
The words sounded like a request for permission. They were not.
"And if I say no?"
"Heh heh...!"
"......"
It was no different from a notice delivered without words. A laugh, and no answer in it—yet as if he had already heard the reply, he let out a low chuckle. Lee Han snorted and shook his head.
And so they moved. Neither could have said who was first. They simply threw their fists at one another, and the impact detonated between them. From the moment they could no longer trust the other with their backs, they had already been enemies.
And the Mother Worm, and Number Four—what about fighting them, you ask?
If you were wise enough to calculate something like that, you were never going to make a living as a knight in the first place.