The Knights' Spring (7)
The warrior's spear art shifted without end.
Sometimes, in a ripping rush of air, it snatched its prey in a single instant, like a raptor's talons. Sometimes it tore into a body the way a beast's fangs would, with a sickening crunch. And then, between one breath and the next, the spear whistled and became a whip, as sinuous as something reptilian. It bore the name of spear and nothing else, yet in his hands it did the work of sword, lash, shield, and blade alike.
The changes came so naturally that one had to wonder whether such a thing was even possible. In the art of the spear, it would not have been too much to call him peerless.
King of All Weapons.
Opinion still divided over whether sword or spear was the finest weapon of all, but if one looked only at the sight before them, the spear would have to wear the crown. Even that judgment, though, was possible only because that man was the one holding it. A knight with the potential of a Master of All Arms had never turned his eye toward any other weapon. He had melted the whole of his talent into the spear, and only that had made this possible.
His majesty was such that he might have introduced himself as the Divine Spear, and no one would have called it false.
A vicious crackle split the air. Yet the warrior's genius was not confined to spearwork.
Inborn killing intent, recast as destructive combat energy. An edge that tears skin at a mere touch. A force that can powder stone.
He was strong. Overwhelming. The mages of the Magic Tower who had met that power in the flesh no longer looked down on the green-haired warrior. They watched him as the greatest threat among them.
And then a man shoved that warrior aside and stepped forward. The knight who had reduced twelve Bronze Giants to scrap.
That knight...
"You're good in a fight, and yet you don't know the first thing about handling spell-slingers. You fight way too inefficiently."
Out of nowhere he started coaching, and a displeasure even the mages could read at a glance began to coil across the warrior's face.
"...Anyone can run their mouth."
"That's true."
"You admit it readily."
"Because it's right."
"......"
Running one's mouth was, in fact, something anyone could do. And the monstrously strong knight who granted the point at once went on.
"I don't hand my know-how out to just anyone. Special exception. I'll show you."
"What?"
"Stay back there for now. You won't find a better ace lecturer than me."
"...What?"
Rak de Duron understood what Lee Han had meant only after the man had been in the fight for less than three minutes, when he watched him take an archmage by the throat.
He proved in the flesh that he truly was an ace lecturer in the hunting of mages.
...The mages of the Magic Tower began to flee.
Proud as they were, and though their research still sat inside the Tower, that did not mean their lives came cheap. An ordinary foe they might have stood against. The intruders who had broken into the Magic Tower were nothing of the sort. Warriors so strong that one had to doubt they were human at all.
"Every Bronze Giant, smashed to pieces? That's no human. Absolutely not!"
"Let's just run. Now."
"But can we really flee like this? The Tower Lord will not forgive us..."
They flinched.
"Wh-what choice do we have? We have to live too."
The mages jerked as one, then shook their heads.
Mages, as a breed, were individualists down to the bone. They longed to become complete in solitude, and selfishness was simply how they had been born. The only reason creatures like that remained in the Magic Tower was that the facilities were excellent and research materials lay scattered everywhere. The funding was generous besides.
...But the moment their own lives hung in the balance, they were perfectly willing to abandon all of it. Banding together to drive an enemy out might have been the obvious course. It simply did not apply to them. What they wanted was personal glory, personal advancement, personal research: a clue that would carry them to a higher realm. They belonged to the Magic Tower for that, and not one of them had the slightest intention of laying down a life for the Tower itself.
"We should at least take this. An artifact like this ought to cover four years of research funds."
"Ho. Then I'll be taking this."
"Tch. Any decent staves left?"
Somewhere along the way the mages had evolved into petty thieves and were laying hands on the Tower's property: artifacts that would have commanded astronomical prices on the open market, and magical goods besides. To men who spent money like water and possessed no notion of economy, they would need at least this much if the life ahead was to be comfortable...
"Now that won't do."
A wet pop.
"Haah. Our own kind really can't be helped. Not a scrap of belonging in them."
He sighed as he came on at an unhurried walk. Yes. What was there to expect of one's own kind? Even he had known nothing of belonging when he was young. Still. That was that, and this was this.
"They should never have dared lay a hand on my property."
Yes. His own kind ought to have known better. Research notes or artifacts, it made no difference: one did not touch a mage's personal belongings. ...Well. If the other party were a genius poised to drag some new upheaval through the magical world, he might have been willing to invest. Short of that, one simply did not dare touch a mage's private property.
And so.
"Don't take it too hard. You're kin, so I sent you off without any pain. A special courtesy."
He smiled kindly down at the kin whose heads had burst like tomatoes. A merciful death, if ever there was one. They had tried to steal what was his, and he had granted them death on the spot. Smiling like that, he resumed his leisurely walk.
And then he saw.
"...Ho. I can see why the others are having such a hard time of it."
He watched the warrior fighting the old men with open interest. A thoroughly entertaining scene was unfolding. Perhaps that was why.
"Might as well watch a little longer."
With a playful grin, he dropped into a seat. He wanted to spectate their fight a while more.
If a course called How to Kill a Mage were ever opened among the academy's subjects, the expert who would unquestionably have to be invited on as professor was right there.
"You wretch! What are you, that you turn every spell aside!"
"Has he wrapped himself in some anti-spell!?"
"Stop talking and attack! That monster is coming!!"
"Clouds, gather! Harder! Fiercer—!!"
Five archmages—no, four now—reeled off their words in a panic. For an archmage, ordinary language was already no different from a spell. It was common sense that the moment they opened their mouths, a mundane soul fell under the spell's influence, dropped to their knees, or in a bad case simply died.
And yet that monster...!
"...The spells aren't taking. No—he's tearing them apart... Am I dreaming?"
CRACK!
"Horribly enough, this is no dream...."
Blood dripped. A fist's pressure, come from nowhere anyone had seen, grazed a nose, and an archmage bled from it. It was an ugly sight past all description, but he never even registered how wretched he looked. He only wore a face gone slack with revulsion.
Lee Han had switched places with the spearman. The man was displeased, and Lee Han was not the sort to shove into another man's fight for no reason. Today, he had no choice.
Sloppy against spell-slingers. A beginner. A beginner.
The lack of experience showed all over him. He fought filthy well, that was true, but Lee Han could not swallow the coaching. All the more because he himself had made a name as a mage hunter...!
And so.
"Why are you just eating the spells? You have to knock them aside properly..."
He decided to teach four of the hundred ways to fight a spell-slinger. The basic four.
A spell is a shaman's killing curse flung through the air. Throw a curse poorly, or fail it, and it returns upon the one who cast it. Feel the spell by instinct and knock it back, and the parry completes itself.
CRACK!
THWACK!
"Guaaaah!"
Yes. Just like that. The method needed a bit of knack, but that one had a special eye. Learning it should give him no trouble.
"You'd do well to pick up a simple hidden-weapon art, or some kind of ranged striking. When you throw, go for the head, then the mouth, then the heart. In that order. That's best."
Everything that entered his hand became a hidden weapon. A pebble, a shard of glass—it did not matter. Flick it with the right knack, the way one throws a dart.
THWACK!
If even that was unavailable, one needed something like the Hundred-Pace Divine Fist, or Strike the Mountain, Hit the Ox.
THWACK!
...A hit.
RRRUMBLE!
"Those types are a bit of a headache."
Now and then, among spell-slingers, you got the ones who used magic that grand. The ones who called down natural disasters, so to speak. Follow the teaching so far and most spell-slingers were easy hunting, but in a case like that, the methods already mentioned did not work. In a sense it was the advanced course, and when it came to that...
"You just have to keep cutting, stubborn as a mule. In a word, the process needs grunt work."
A flash. It was a process that demanded stamina and focus. You knocked aside the small spells of a strong spell-slinger, and if the scale was something you could not knock aside...
BOOOOM!
...You endure it.
You take it with your body and break through. Dodging was not allowed. Falling back was not allowed. Defense was the same. In a fight against a strong spell-slinger, retreat once, or do nothing but hold, and you were finished without exception. Even if skin tore and a few bones broke, pushing through and hunting one solid blow was the only road that opened a way out.
CRUNCH!
Bone ground. Flesh gave.
Give flesh. Give bone. Go forward, and land the blow.
SLASH!!
He struck the strong spell-slinger first.
"Ghk—!"
......If all he had managed was a cut across the chest, it was something of a loss.
"Tsk!"
Lee Han clicked his tongue. He had wanted to put on a reasonably fine demonstration, but the opponent was a nuisance. Old spell-slingers really were tenacious. Embarrassment written plain across his face, he scratched the back of his head and gave ground.
The moment a fight with a spell-slinger starts to turn against you, run. Do not think running is shameful. Slip free as much as you like, then wait for another opening. Measuring honor, or knighthood, against a spell-slinger is an overwhelming loss.
Having demonstrated even that last teaching in the flesh, Lee Han returned to the side of his temporary student, who had been watching the lecture in his own way. He wore an awkward look.
"Ahem. Embarrassing. I only managed to send the one of them to hell."
"......"
"Anyway, I compressed it for you. Use it well."
"...I haven't the faintest idea where I am supposed to use it."
"Where else are you going to find a lecture this fine? Nothing but complaints."
"...Ha!"
The man stared at him as if the whole thing were absurd, and impious besides.
...Rak de Duron's martial prowess was overwhelming even within Galahad. That his name was not widely known was surely because he had carried out his duties as a shadow and kept his skill hidden. He had stepped onto the official stage only because seventy-two ships of river pirates had struck the waterways under Galahad's rule, and because the feat that first carried the name Dire Wolf into the world was the solo destruction of fifty of those ships.
A man strongly favored to be the next captain of Galahad's pride, the Turquoise Unicorn Knight Order. His martial power was set beside Maximus of the North, and he was called both a demon of the spear and the Divine Spear. Even his given name and surname had been bestowed by Duke Blake himself. He had lost the name he was born with, but to him that was nothing but glory. He had not been particularly attached to it anyway.
In any case, the man called Rak de Duron made others admire him. He was not a man who was surprised. Even when his younger sister, who had only wanted an ordinary life, became a knight, he had answered coldly and without a ripple. "Foolish. She ought to marry off and be done with it. A knight, of all things..." (He was immediately subjected to more than three hours of blistering abuse.) When he first met Maximus, he had only weighed whether he could kill the man or not.
It would not have been too much to say that the things which surprised him were vanishingly rare. Nearly nonexistent. He did react where his lord Blake was concerned, but that seemed closer to excitement, or to passion, than to surprise.
And so Rak de Duron wanted to deny what he was feeling now. Of all people.
A scoundrel, of all men...
To feel admiration for a man like that. It was a moment of pure humiliation, and a twitch had started at the corner of Rak's eye. But however much he wanted to deny it...
SLASH!
The bastard really had fought well. So well that a thought this absurd rose on its own.
...Does he eat a meal and then spend the day killing nothing but mages?
And yet Rak was certain the teaching itself was a mess. It began with the impossible act of parrying a spell, ran on into a method that carried an unseen blow across a distance, and ended with pebbles and shards of glass pinched between the fingers and fired like a musket. Even the knights of Galahad would be unable to imitate such things. ...Rak himself, depending on the effort, might manage a pale copy of some of it.
But the last of it.
Not a man at all. A lizard.
As if he had never given bone or given flesh, the scoundrel's body was already showing signs of recovery. Nothing could have been more abnormal. Rak was certain. If this scoundrel became an enemy, he would have to be killed without fail. If he was not...
He would become the most dangerous enemy of all.
Rak de Duron judged that this single knight was more dangerous than the archmages still twisting the weather in the sky above.
Then.
"...You are really getting on my nerves."
"......Ahem."
Had he noticed the look? The moment had grown a little awkward. They were on the same side for now, and he had been about to treat the man as an enemy. That had been a mistake. Rarely for him, Rak tried to put on a sorry face—
"Hey. You over there. How long do you plan to keep watching?"
A rush of air. Rak's spear moved with keen speed and lunged, driving a heavy blow straight at the place Lee Han had indicated.
Unfortunately.
THUD!
...The blow he had thrown was stopped with ease. Rak's eyes flew wide, and as he looked at the one who had gently undone his strike, his pupils shook.
"Oh dear. Was I found out?"
He—the boy—showed himself, wearing a mischievous smile.
"......"
"More surprising than that, though. A blow of that level is penta-spell. No, hexa-spell. Tremendous combat energy. Haha."
"...A child?"
What Rak found hard to believe was not so much that his blow had been stopped so easily, as that the one who stopped it was a child who looked no older than fifteen. But harder still to believe were the words that followed.
"T-Tower Lord!"
"Why have you only come now!!"
"Late again, I see...."
...The name by which the archmages addressed the boy. Tower Lord. Which meant—
"People seeing me for the first time never believe it. Nice to meet you. I'm Tur, Lord of the Magic Tower."
Tur, Lord of the Magic Tower. ...He knew that name. Tur de Seigan. A name even a knight who knew nothing of mages could not help but know. And for good reason. That name appeared in the history books.
The man was...
"The archmage who has lived four hundred years..."
"Four hundred and fifty-three, to be exact. Lived a damn long time, haven't I? Haha!!"
"......"
Rak and Lee Han did not laugh. They only stood with stiff faces, cold sweat running. They were certain. The power of the one standing before them...
"Lesson five."
"......"
"Of the thirty-six stratagems, it's the one where you run. We're bolting. We can't beat that."
"...Have you no honor at all?"
"And what am I supposed to do with honor kept for a spell-slinger?"
"......"
"So. You not running?"
"...Hmph."
...Rak had no choice but to admit it. The bastard really was an ace lecturer. The teaching was nothing if not practical.