The Knights' Spring (4)
Have you ever watched baseball?
Lee Han had once known nothing of the game. In his soldiering days, though, a senior NCO he had grown passably close to left him no choice but to watch. The man was a fan, and humoring the hobbies of a higher-ranking senior was simply the natural order of that ecosystem called the army.
"What the hell is any of that supposed to mean..."
At first, all of it was difficult. He could not quite grasp the rules, or the way a score was made. Batting average, on-base percentage—there was nothing he could make sense of. Little by little, however, his eye for the game was trained by force, and at some point he found himself with a team to root for. When that team happened to win, his mood lifted for the day. When it lost, he sank into a gloom. He repeated the cycle, and by the time he had somehow started watching autumn postseason baseball—
"Baseball is complete shit!"
He hurled the highest compliment in his possession at the opposing team, and every time the side he rooted for lost, a bottled rage took hold of him. So this, he learned, was what it felt like to watch your blood pressure climb in real time.
Then, from a certain day onward, when physical training came around he no longer played foot-volleyball with the others. Alone, he took up a baseball, practiced throwing, and practiced hitting with a bat. If he was going to curse the players, he meant to put his own body through whatever sport they played, and curse them only after that.
...And then.
"God. This is maddeningly hard."
He felt it in his bones: this was no trifling sport. Throwing a ball was genuinely difficult. Hitting one was every bit as finicky. What startled him most, once he actually held a baseball, was how hard and heavy it was—harder and heavier than he had imagined—and how, every time he threw it with all his strength, it felt as though his elbow and shoulder were being ground away.
Then came the breaking balls. He tried those from videos as well, and they felt several times harder still. He was already being ground down; now it seemed his wrist was being ground down on top of that. He understood, at last, why pitchers went under the knife so often, and why people spoke of them swapping out their elbows.
After that he stopped cursing pitchers, and he stopped watching baseball. He would not curse them. He simply had no wish to nurse a sickness of rage. In place of watching, he took up catch as a hobby, and now and then he still practiced a breaking ball. It was the first hobby to bloom in the pitch-black stretch of his life as a soldier, and he thought he might as well train hard enough that, once he was discharged, he could join an amateur club.
And yet. Of all things.
This is how it ends up getting used?
Whatever you bothered to learn in life found a use eventually. Nodding at the thought, Lee Han set about loosening his body in earnest.
"So if I go the way you're pointing and just scrape it, that'll do? Should I throw a cutter, or a slider..."
"...What are a cutter and a slider?"
"Figure it out."
"Fine. Do as you like."
"...Why are you suddenly being so agreeable?"
"Because I'm not the one who has to do it."
"Hey..."
Had he ever seen a man this irresponsible?
And he's the one who told me to...
Even so.
"If you're scared, you can quit right now. That'll be the end of it."
"...Thanks for the taunt."
It was a magnificent provocation, the kind that made it impossible to admit you were afraid even when you truly were, and Lee Han let out a short laugh.
In any case...
"Even if you hadn't been here, I meant to punch through no matter what."
Right. He had not the slightest intention of leaving those spell-slinging bastards in peace.
And so—
Crack!
"Point me true."
"I won't be wrong."
"...Smug bastard."
Lee Han began to spin his body.
The other had said it plainly. To intercept that colossal castle, he would need power, accuracy, and speed. At first he had thought of the Piercing-One Spear, but...
That won't quite be enough.
The Piercing-One Spear was powerful, yet it was not easy to control.
So.
Crack!
Then I'll just do it myself!
Air Walk
Lee Han invoked Air Walk. The flow, however, was nothing like an ordinary step across empty air. His body's direction kept changing, as if he were drifting lightly upward.
Wooooong!
Force gathered, slowly. Power strong enough to set the air trembling concentrated upon him, and at a certain moment Lee Han became a small typhoon.
Yes. This was the art—born of Daoist legend, derived from the martial arts of Kunlun, homeland of the immortals, and reshaped by Lee Han's own interpretation. Completed by a hair's breadth in his clash with Tristan, it spun his body into a small typhoon and turned him into a shell that pierced whatever stood before him.
Nothing beneath the sky can stop a dragon sporting through the clouds.
Boom!
Lee Han's body flew. Aimed true upon the enemy, his speed matched that of a capsule fired from its launcher.
And at once—
Fwat!
A single spear shot ahead even faster than Lee Han, already flying like a shell. As if to show him the way.
"—."
Without a shred of hesitation, Lee Han turned toward the path the spear was taking. The spear's direction was, in other words—
The gap. That's what it is.
Lee Han curled his body into a ball. What he needed was velocity, stuff, and a fearless break—enough to scrape, without mercy, this colossal castle. Or rather, for this one moment, nothing more than a colossal bat!
Krrrrk!!
Lee Han's body, the very image of a small typhoon, became a single ball and, spinning without restraint, raked the barrier wrapped about the Magic Tower. Relentless as a razor. No—as a saw blade.
Rumble!
...The Magic Tower shook.
"I... am I dreaming...?"
Patrick's mouth fell open. He could not believe the sight before his eyes. A man flying through the air was already something, but the man had become a small typhoon, flown in, and was scraping the Magic Tower without a shred of mercy. If he told anyone a story like this, they would tear into him and ask whether he was on drugs. But Patrick was only saying what he saw, and all he could do was stand there with his soul half out of his body.
And yet—
"—As expected. Still a little short."
"Sir Knight?"
"Stand back."
"!!"
A chill.
At the murderous presence pouring from the cold-faced knight, the strength left Patrick's legs. He felt he might piss himself where he stood. The energy the man gave off was that far beyond the ordinary, that savage.
Hoooooo!
A heat haze tinged red began to wrap the knight's body.
Crack...!
It was the terrifying killing intent one man had been born with, given form in the world, and that killing intent alone held force enough to split the ground and spiderweb the buildings around him. Born beneath a baleful star, the man poured his killing intent into the spear.
Thud!
It was nothing more than a spear he had roughly obtained in the empire, but once the killing intent filled it, the weapon began to hold the strength to pierce anything at all. His master, Duke Blake, had given that power a name, and the knight's own strength gathered steadily into the spear.
Inborn killing intent, given form as destructive combat energy, concentrates within the spear.
And the spear—
Fwaaaaah!
It was loosed, drawing a red trajectory. Not at the speed of any javelin a human could throw. Fired like a harpoon cannon, the spear struck the Magic Tower as it swayed, unstable.
Booooom!
"Done."
He had not simply thrown it. The only man who could see the Magic Tower's gap had thrown to finish a Mana Barrier that was already coming apart.
"...They said it had held for a thousand years. Laughable."
Once a thousand years have passed, even a wall built to last must be repaired. After that much time, the castle's blueprints would have been picked clean and then some. And yet these vermin, on what nerve—
"I suppose they were kind enough to stand there and make a target of themselves."
Foolish beyond words. They were not even straining to be hit, and looking like that, they would fall to two old spears bought from some random forge and—
"One scoundrel."
The knight wore a cold sneer as he ran. If he dragged his feet even a little—
—the beast cub would eat every tasty part.
The knight ran.
"...In the South, knights like that are average?"
The boy, sunk to the ground, could only stare, dumbfounded. What kind of monsters were these? A small misunderstanding of the South began to sprout in him.
Crack-crack-crack!
The Magic Tower's Mana Barrier shattered. A barrier that had endured a full thousand years broke in a single stroke. But the shattering of a Mana Barrier did not simply mean the Magic Tower's shield had been pierced.
"Ghk—aaagh!"
"Huuuurgh!"
"S-save... me...!"
What maintained the Mana Barrier was the mana of the mages who belonged to the Magic Tower. For that mana to break, a heavy blow had to fall on them as well.
Give and take.
Everything carried its risk, and because a Mana Barrier they had believed could never break was breaking, the mages had no choice but to feel enormous pain. The horrific sensation of the mana throughout their bodies tangling together! That alone was an internal injury that would demand half a month of convalescence.
But this was no time to mind their wounds.
Whoooosh!
The Magic Tower was falling. The mages' sanctuary, revered as the Castle in the Sky... As the Mana Barrier came undone, the power that held the castle aloft vanished with it.
And that meant—
"N-now! Cast your spells!"
"The Magic Tower is going to hit the ground!!"
"N-no!!"
Inside the Magic Tower lay all of the mages' research, the fruits of their experiments, their artifacts. To the mages those achievements were as dear as life itself, and for the Magic Tower to collapse...
Kraaaash!!!
...meant that all of it would be destroyed.
Before the mages could lift a hand, the Magic Tower collided with the ground and shook the earth. Fortunately it had crashed into an empty snowfield, so the common people would take no harm.
Crash!
Rumble...!
But the great quake born of castle meeting earth shook the ground as if there were no helping it.
Shaaaa!
The shock sent every drift across the snowfield heaving. The nearby Colony was surely gasping at the sudden earthquake, and travelers were likely freezing mid-step in fright. In truth, a shock of this scale ought to have left even the sturdiest castle anything but intact. It had plunged from the sky as if thrown headlong. How was a building supposed to endure that? By common sense, collapse was the natural outcome. And yet.
"Th-the Magic Tower!"
"My research notes...!!"
"...Th-thank the gods. It didn't collapse."
...The Castle in the Sky had suffered only a few cracks, and remained more or less whole.
Yes—how could it fall to something of this degree? According to the records, every brick used in raising the Magic Tower had received a special mana coating, and each material was said to be extraordinary. It had tumbled from the sky, yet it possessed the durability to endure, to a point. A miracle, if ever there was—
"—Let's see if it holds against this, too."
Fwoosh!
But as if to mock the mages' relief, he rose into the air and lifted a boulder.
Where had it come from?
He had simply dug up what already lay in the ground, and as he sent that boulder aloft, Lee Han set his stance the way he would to throw a pitch.
Right. Even when he played baseball...
A fastball that drilled straight in felt the best!
Fwoosh!
A pitcher who threw beyond a hundred miles an hour was called a fireballer.
But then.
Whooosh!
What did you call a pitcher who threw a boulder the size of a bull at nearly two hundred miles an hour?
...A meteor-baller?
Whatever the name, of course.
Crack-crack-crack!
From the Magic Tower's point of view, none of it changed the fact that this was a disaster.
Long ago, the mages had worked slaves to the bone to raise an ivory tower that belonged to them alone. A cursed tower that had wrought cruel atrocities upon those who were not mages, steeped in countless blood and tears, was now—
"R... run!"
—falling upon the mages, about to be soaked in their blood and their tears.