Until the Heart Beats (3)
"Tur, you monster in the shape of a man! Madman who knows nothing of the human heart and lives only by instinct, no better than a thoughtless child! I regret it!! That I ever took a creature like you for my disciple...!"
"......Why am I remembering this all of a sudden?"
Tur blinked.
He was terribly forgetful, and he preferred to magically delete useless memories as quickly as he could. He had decided the feelings those memories left behind were unnecessary. And yet a memory he was certain he had erased was rising now—the day he killed his master. The day, four hundred years ago, that he became Tower Lord.
And with it, the last words his master had left behind. Words no different from a curse.
"Hmm. That's strange...?"
Tur scratched his cheek. This sort of thing was a first.
Which meant—
"I'll have to research it!"
He was delighted to have found another subject. He would have to take up his research on the brain again.
He was nodding lightly to himself when—
Step. Step.
"Strategy meeting over, then?"
Two toys were coming toward him.
The memory that had surfaced was already shoved aside. Wholly absorbed in his toys, Tur smiled with a bright, innocent ease, eager to see in what new way they would amuse him this time.
"You're not going to hack away with swords and spears like dumb brutes again, are you? Sorry, but I'm sick of that. Try something else."
He would wait.
Tur spread both arms wide, as if to tell them they might try whatever they pleased. It went past ignoring them. He had made up his mind to look down on them, and he did not even see them as enemies. More precisely, he looked at them as endlessly feeble, shabby little rats.
There was not a knight alive who would not have found words like those insult enough to burn with rage. And yet—
"—Oh yeah? Then you'll swear to wait while we get ready?"
"...Huh?"
"What, getting soft this late?"
"Ah, n-no, it's not that..."
Even under an insult that could not have been more complete, they were perfectly unruffled. It was not what he had expected.
Tur was a little thrown. The confusion passed quickly, though, and he gave his permission without a shred of hesitation. Let insignificant vermin try what they liked; what could they possibly do? Arrogant, yes—but he had the strength to afford arrogance. So it was not arrogance at all. It was simply the way of things. Whatever method they chose, he knew they could not beat him. The outcome was already fixed, and so Tur urged them on instead, hoping with all his heart that they would entertain him.
"......"
"......"
The two knights showed no reaction at all to the way they were being treated. Only on the surface. In their eyes a heat like flame wavered—the scorching fever of a rage ready to catch at any moment.
Whoooosh!
Their blazing presence worked a wonder, melting the snowfield and turning even the blizzard into drops of rain. Body heat already climbing with their anger, they set about the work they had come to do.
"We start."
"Understood."
Thuk!
Crack!
...Huh?
Tur's face went rigid. He could not, for the life of him, understand what he was looking at.
"W-why are you fighting each other?"
Watching the two men suddenly strike one another, he was horrified. The blue-green-haired knight abruptly pulled the head from his own spear and drove it into the larger knight's shoulder blade, and the larger knight hammered a heavy blow into the center of the blue-green-haired knight's chest.
Infighting?
No. That couldn't be.
Even an Archmage who had lived more than four hundred years was struck dumb, dazed by a turn he had never foreseen, and for a moment he had no words.
Whoosh!
"—!"
Then he felt it again. Something unfamiliar. No—a sensation he had not known even once since becoming an Archmage.
A chill......
Thump. Thump-thump. Thump-thump-thump.
His heartbeat tolled in his ears like a great drum. A current both alien and violent blanketed his whole body, and the resonance within him came through with terrible clarity.
Lee Han clenched his teeth against the fierce energy driving in through his shoulder blade. Savage—no, wild past all measure. A power that seemed intent on ripping his insides to shreds.
This was fighting-energy!
Fwoosh!
And not ordinary fighting-energy. This belonged to a knight counted among the finest in the kingdom, a man even Lee Han himself could not be sure of defeating. There was that alien force called Red Tu-gi besides, and Lee Han's body shook as if it would go mad. He had to endure, somehow, a crazed power bent on destroying him from within!
Crrrack!!
Lark, for his part, was enduring a pain of his own. Lee Han's Gyeong, bearing the whole of his strength, was forcibly tearing Lark's body apart and assembling it again—a horrific sensation!
It must have equaled the agony of Tendon-Splitting Bone-Dislocation, yet Lark bore it on will alone.
The time the two knights spent in pain did not exceed three minutes, but those three minutes delivered an agony so vast it felt like three hours. Each of them was enduring the other's compressed power raw, second by second, with the patience of a man having every living tooth torn out.
A time of endurance. To skip a process that ought to have been learned carefully—half a year at the longest, three months at the shortest—they had staked their lives, knowing that even if they survived, their spans would be shortened. That was how completely they had wagered everything.
And the two knights who had wagered all of it—
"...I'd really rather never do anything this insane again."
"...Agreed."
—came back from the road out of death, their faces drained a bloodless white.
Had either of them slipped by even a little, had their skill been even slightly less, they would have died. They lived only because they were superb knights. One had driven his body to the point of madness until he held a body like steel. The other was a knight whose talent no one alive could hope to match. That was why the gamble had been possible, and they had succeeded.
"How long's this last?"
"About fifteen minutes."
"...Short."
"How long do I get."
"Twenty?"
"......"
"Well, it's your first time. I can pull it off 'cause I've done it on my kids."
"...Suddenly I pity the disciples studying under a bastard like you."
Both of them knew their lifespans had been cut, and neither cared in the slightest. They looked only at the immediate present. Only at now.
And to men like that—
"......You've gone mad, haven't you?"
—a madman said they were mad.
Tur stared at them in open shock. Astonishment. For the first time, the lunatic who had done nothing but grin schooled his face and turned a serious gaze upon them.
"At first I couldn't tell why you were acting so strangely... but I think I get it now! You shared each other's power. You shared time!"
Tur understood. Being a mage made it all the easier.
One reason a master's existence mattered so much to a mage was precisely this: when the master died, the disciple could take everything. Not merely property or the fruits of research. A master's mana was the greatest legacy a mage could inherit. To receive that mana was not simply to fatten one's own reserves. It was to imprint upon the body, indirectly, the flow of mana a master had accumulated across a lifetime—experience itself. A sharing of years, and a foothold toward a higher realm.
Well. There was the minor drawback that the one who passed his mana on then died.
And so, among most mages, the bequeathing of mana had long since fallen out of practice. If you wanted to inherit it—
...you had to kill them. With your own hand.
That was also why Tur had killed his master. How dare the man refuse to hand over his mana when Tur wanted it? Then he had to die.
But to think that such a thing—
"Knights could do it too...!"
Tur's eyes glittered as if at some marvel, but the two knights despised him.
"You think we're crazy bastards like you spell-slingers?"
"Spare me the raving."
"...That's harsh, you two."
Tur pulled a wounded face, protesting that they were treating him too cruelly, but the knights only snorted. As if he were nothing but revolting.
And more than that—
"What we did is not that disgusting rite you people practice, you rotten monster."
There is a method called Transmission of Power Across Bodies.
In principle it is a master passing on his internal power, by which a disciple may advance to a higher realm. It resembles the inheritance of mana Tur spoke of, but what they had done was merely an act that took its hint from that transmission.
And that something—
"That!?"
"If you're curious, feel it with your own body."
"Aw, that's mean."
"......"
"...Hehe. Kidding. Try whatever you like."
Tur spread his arms once more, as if nothing they did could matter, and Lee Han and Lark—
"Let's see how long you keep smiling."
—were glad to show him.
And so.
WHAM!
"...Huh?"
In the next instant, Tur felt pain.
"Finally landed a real one..."
The feel of the blow in his hand filled Lee Han with a deep satisfaction. Striking not merely a spell-slinger, but the rottenest spell-slinger of them all, was more than enough to blow his stress clean away.
And he—
Whoosh!
"Let's land a thousand more, you crazy monster."
—had not the slightest mind to be satisfied with one.
...His barrier and Memorize had not responded?
Why?
Tur could not understand why his barrier and his defensive magic had failed to unfold. It was the first time since he had become an Archmage. No—the first time in more than four centuries.
Given even a little time, ten minutes, he felt he could find the cause and put it right. But...
BOOOOM!
...the knights showed no intention whatsoever of waiting.
WHAAAM!
Lee Han had always been a swift, nimble knight despite the mass of his frame. The speed of his charge now, though, was beyond any comparison with the day before. Was this what it meant to move like the wind? It was nothing short of an explosive rush, and against a power even he could not control, Lee Han had to wrench his eyes wide and hold his mind in place.
This is Fighting Art? This is insane!
Fighting Art. A method of detonating fighting-energy inside the body and taking that blast as one's strength. Only now did Lee Han understand in his own flesh why it was a technique knights were required to learn, and why it was still treated as the highest of them.
Because the explosive force is this great! Of course it's strong!
Tens of times over at the least. Hundreds at the most. Depending on how he used this blast, his body's ability could be amplified to that degree. Without control, though, it would have been no surprise if the explosion collapsed him. It was a tightrope if ever there was one, and Lee Han ran Fighting Art at full power regardless of whether he fell from the rope.
Not just anyone's Fighting Art. He was driving the Fighting Art of Galahad's greatest knight, and the power of the Heaven-Slaying Star along with it. By any normal measure such a thing could not be handled, but Lee Han's abnormally hardened body made it possible to endure that force.
Power of another dimension poured down like rain.
KRA-KO-KO-KOOM—!
Because the force would not be governed, the reach of Strike the Mountain, Hit the Ox spread and spread until it lashed the whole of the Magic Tower.
The mages who had been watching the battle from afar were simply—
"Gyaaaah!"
"S-save me...!"
Splat!
—pulped where they stood.
And Tur, taking it head-on—
WHAM!
"Again...?"
—was reeling, soul-struck, at being hit once more clean through his barrier.
Drip....
However transcendent his mana, it was no light blow for a mage of frail flesh to receive. Any ordinary mage would have died the instant it landed. He was unhurt only because body modification had given his flesh a durability to rival iron. Keep taking blows like this, and not even Tur would stay safe.
Have to block it...
For the first time in a long while he tried to speak an incantation and cast a defensive spell with his own mouth. Unfortunately—
"—You wretch. So you'd learned something this fine."
Grind.
The hunter aiming for him was not alone.
Lark set his stance with a short club gripped in each hand. He had simply split what remained once the spearheads were gone—shafts, and nothing more—and then he—
Whoooosh!
—swung the clubs in both hands at a maddening speed and beat Tur down. An indiscriminate battering that called Kali Arnis to mind. And it was not merely fast.
Crack! Crackle! Crrrack...!
The barrier dented. Every defensive spell Memorize brought forth was destroyed and ground apart the moment it appeared, and the Red Tu-gi on Lark's clubs grew vaster and deeper in color with every swing until, at a certain instant, it began to pour heat as though it burned.
Fwoooosh!
Born bearing that abnormal energy, the Heaven-Slaying Star, the knight had never once loosed his power upon the world at full strength. The force was a double-edged sword. It harmed others, and it harmed its host.
But now was different.
Diamond Body. The very fruit Lee Han had reached through untold effort was melted into Lark's flesh as it stood. Lee Han's fierce Gyeong was protecting and reinforcing him from within, and for this moment alone the killing intent of the Heaven-Slaying Star was no longer a power that threatened and destroyed him. It was no different from a beast in a collar, obedient to his command.
Boom!
BOOM!
BOOOOM—!
Use too much of that energy, though, and there was a side effect. The killing intent would invade his brain and turn him into a fiend of slaughter....
That is a matter for later!
Lark knew that to kill this monster, he himself had to become one. It was a power he had hated all his life. Right now, he needed this hateful thing.
Fwoosh!!
Lark's Red Tu-gi became flame at last.
Fed on the Heaven-Slaying Star as its kindling, the fire gradually swallowed his whole body, and Lark was dyed red. These were the clubs of a man becoming not merely crimson—no, a man of Red Blaze—and his strength, his speed, and that Red Blaze at last—
KRRRACK!
—melted the barrier and shattered it outright.
"......Ha. This is fun."
Even as he watched the Red Blaze crashing over him, Tur laughed in delight. That an Archmage should feel, only today after more than four centuries, the first true danger to his life—nothing had ever exhilarated him more.
I see. So this is...!
So this was a fight to the death.