A Knight Chews on Defeat (3)
A thunderous rumble rolled in from behind as the castle wall came down, but Lee Han did not spare it so much as a thought.
Wall or mountain, it could collapse all it liked. What mattered now was meeting the superhuman before his eyes with everything he had. There was no room to look anywhere else. Lee Han loosened up, bouncing lightly on his feet as if working through footwork—tok, tuduk—and not a single injury showed on him.
He had been driven into that wall with such force, and yet… If anything on him hurt at all—
"Damn, that stings."
—it was only the spot where he had taken a flick to the forehead. How did a forehead flick hurt worse than being smashed into a wall?
"You monster."
"That is hardly yours to say. And I am no monster. I am a superhuman."
"…Right. A superhuman, which is worse than a monster."
"Enough grumbling. Do you mean to do nothing but whine?"
"As if."
Tok. Finishing the last of his loosening steps, Lee Han fixed his eyes on Baltar. Would a beast watching its prey look any different? But no matter how he watched—
Not a single opening. Figures.
The man did not have so much as a crack. If one existed, it would only be a trap laid on purpose. So—
I'm going.
He threw out the pathetic notion of waiting for a gap. What he had to do was crash in, and force an opening on that monster whether the monster liked it or not.
Paang! Lee Han's legs swelled in an instant and hurled him forward on monstrous power. Acceleration to rival a cheetah's sprint married the breakthrough force of a tank; the charge was a missile in all but name. Merely coming down would have scoured the ground around him in a heartbeat—a technique that, by any sane measure, should never have been used on a human.
Tak.
"Your strength has certainly grown. Heh heh."
"…!"
"Put more into it. A young man ought not be this frail."
His opponent was not a person.
Lee Han's charge came apart into nothing. The shockwave it left behind swept the yard and sent knights tumbling across the dirt, and that was all. Baltar, who had caught the body blow in one hand as if it weighed nothing, let out a thin laugh.
"I remember when you said, of all things, that you were going off to work as an instructor. Even then you were body-slamming people with that technique—Divine Bow, Elastic Shadow, was it? Looking back, those are fond memories…."
"Grrrk—!"
Kwajik! Lee Han strained with everything he had to tear free of Baltar's grip. The harder he pushed, the heavier his body grew, as if he were caught in a web he could not slip, and he was simply pressed down.
"Let us recreate that day."
Thud. Baltar's other hand settled on Lee Han's shoulder. And then—
"You called this the Weighted Strike Method, if I recall?"
"!!?"
"It will hurt a little more than last time."
A single palm became a missile. The pressure did not stop at the body—it struck the earth, and the ground collapsed.
The words had barely left him before Lee Han was driven straight into the ground. Not merely driven.
Kwajijijik!
"Guhk—!"
The pressure pouring off Baltar's Weighted Strike Method hammered Lee Han and the earth alike, and the ground gave way beneath him.
How is this "a little"!?
If Lee Han's charge had been a missile, Baltar had made one out of a single palm. The shock that began at his shoulder turned his insides over, and for a moment he nearly blacked out.
"Khuk—!"
"Is this all?"
Huuuk!
"How disappointing."
Thud. Baltar set a foot on the fallen man's back. It was no more than a light placement, a mere tap—but the instant that foot came down—
One ton settled all at once. The body beneath the foot was crushed flat, as if something meant to flatten it outright.
—Kung! A mass on the order of a ton came down on him, and he was crushed as if something meant to flatten him outright.
"Two years ago you spoke of some technique. A Thousand-Catty Drop, was it? I interpreted it in my own way. Matching six hundred kilograms proved difficult, so I simply set it at an even thousand. Well? Suitably heavy, is it not?"
"……."
"Heh heh. Have you passed out?"
"Y-you sick bastard—why—why are you stealing my ideas and running wild with them…!"
"Mm. As I thought, you are perfectly fine."
"!!?"
Rage surged up in him. Fine, his ass! If he had not poured everything into Diamond Body, his back would have ruptured long before now. The force was that fierce.
If I hadn't gone through Bone Reforging, I'd be dead. Damn it!
Kwajik! He felt an overwhelming gratitude toward the fairy, but giving thanks could wait until later, with a bowl of clean water set out. Right now—
"Hooh!"
—getting out of this old man's grip came first.
Pabababat! Lee Han dug into the earth like a mole and went straight under. Even the great Baltar had not expected an escape of that kind. Surprise crossed his face, and Lee Han vanished into the soil in a blink.
"I knew you had abandoned the path of a human some time ago. Was becoming a mole the goal?"
The voice came down as if to mock him, or to provoke him. Lee Han answered it from below.
"Don't look down on moles, old man."
Puk! Peobeok! Peoeok! He decided to teach him exactly what there was to fear in a mole. Holes began to open one after another across the ground, a crop of pits fit to set trypophobia crawling. In the instant suspicion rose as to what this trick was meant to be—
Peoeoong!!
"…Huh?"
Fist-force erupted from a hole and grazed Baltar's shoulder. But a reincarnator knew that once you committed, you did not hold back. Lee Han—
"Let's see if you block this, too."
Strike the Mountain, Hit the Ox. The holes became gun muzzles, and fist-force poured out in bursts like a machine gun.
Peoeoeong! He used the holes as muzzles and spat fist-force through them. Blasts carrying the principles of the Hundred-Pace Divine Fist and Strike the Mountain, Hit the Ox hammered toward Baltar in a continuous stream.
Peoong! Peoeoong!!
"Heh heh! I have lived to see a true madman!"
Baltar laughed that he had never in his life seen tactics like these. He was a knight who had lived past seventy, with a history of facing every kind of mystery, sword art, and magic, and even he was seeing this method for the first time. To burrow underground and then detonate one's force so indiscriminately—!
And he is not throwing that force carelessly, either.
Peoeok! When he met a blast with his own hand to feel the power lodged inside it, his palm went numb. The method itself might look ridiculous, but anyone forced to face it directly would find their guts turning to ice, and would have to worry whether their head was about to come off.
"What a clever brat. To put on a little trick like this for a bored old man."
For other people, it was a matter of guarding one's head. That did not mean the same rule applied to Baltar. To him, the amusing trick was merely endearing—something like the feeling of watching a grandson who had just found his tongue come crawling over with a clumsy, "G-Grandpa!" And so, for the sake of the one who had moved him—
"Then I shall be a little serious as well."
Cheolkeok. Baltar took up an iron sword. It was a shabby thing, plain enough to pass for decoration, so neglected it stood one step short of rust. And yet, the moment it rested in his hand, that rusted blade—
"Mm. I suppose I shall simply cut it all."
A single horizontal cut. Basic. Perfect. If an ideal stroke existed that no one had ever achieved, it would look like this.
Seogeok! It swung with a cutting power one would not hesitate to call that of a famed blade. A horizontal cut: the most basic motion, one any student of the sword would have swung thousands of times, tens of thousands. But if swordsmen saw the cut Baltar swung now, every one of them would doubt his own eyes.
Perfect. If an ideal cutting motion existed that no one had ever achieved, it would look like this—a motion so beautiful that even blinking felt like a waste. And that was the tragedy. The knights had all fled the sparring ground, surrendering the fortune of watching Baltar's sword, and so no one saw the motion of that swing.
In another sense, it was a mercy that no one remained. For if they had—
Ssakduk!
—they would have been sliced away very prettily indeed.
In an instant, the fist-force lingering in the air stopped all at once. More than that, the flow of the air itself seemed to hitch, as if the wind had forgotten how to move. And then—
"I have more or less cut it all."
Sseunggeong! Hundreds of fist-strikes burst together like balloons. The volley that had been firing on Baltar in unison was nullified. It was a sight wondrous enough on its own, and yet—
Thud.
"Now. How long do you mean to keep playing mole?"
The moment he stamped lightly, cracks raced through the ground, and then—puhwaaaaak!—the entire floor, save the spot beneath Baltar's foot, turned itself inside out.
"……."
"Ah. So that is where you were."
Only after the earth had been overturned did Lee Han finally show himself. He shot high into the air, took a falling mass of soil, sand, and stone full in the face, and let his mouth hang open. Sand and gravel getting into his mouth, he could let pass. He was simply dumbfounded.
"…The ground isn't a carrot or a radish, and he's out here dicing it……."
In that moment a stretch of earth about the size of a drill field was diced and flipped entirely over, and a hollow laugh escaped him on its own. This was the passage that explained why, in the Martial God's era, they had called Baltar the Sword God.
Puhwaaaaaak! Soil poured down, and the castle walls, already split by shockwaves, cracked further in succession and came apart. Not even five minutes had passed since the fight began, and the Royal Castle was on the verge of collapse.
That alone was a disaster of no small scale, but the two men were content to let such trifles fall however they might. If punishment came, they would take it. That was the mindset. Lee Han and Baltar were men of that sort.
And now—
"Well? Will you concede?"
Baltar asked it with his sword still drawn. Baltar without a sword and Baltar with a sword might as well have been different people. For Lee Han, already being taken apart, a far greater crisis had clearly arrived, and admitting defeat was, in truth, the natural course.
"You gone senile?"
"…Insolent brat."
Of course Lee Han was never going to declare a clean loss.
Cheolkeok. He drew his sword as if in answer. He, who hardly ever used a blade, drew one now for the first time. An edge could kill an opponent all too easily; it was the sort of weapon with which controlling one's strength was nearly impossible. But—
"You're not the kind of man who dies just because I drew a sword. Today, I'll draw it."
"Of course. A sword like yours is a toy beside mine."
"…You're not wrong, and that pisses me off. For real."
His opponent was Baltar. Someone there was absolutely no chance of killing.
"The truth has a way of stinging."
"……Damn it!"
The fact rankled, and still Lee Han could steel himself to pour out everything he had.
"Huuuu…!"
He drove his focus and his senses to their limit. Certain that this was the only means he had of landing a real blow, he began to hone the edge. Ung. Uuung. Sword Resonance rang—the sword-cry—and Lee Han's energy flooded into the iron sword. The instant he added the arts he had stolen from the hulking man of the North and the dark-skinned swordsman—
Hwaaaak!
"…You have made something amusing."
"The power won't be amusing."
Like a beautiful night sky holding its stars—and beneath that beauty, a destructive sword-force that should never be turned on a person, compressed until even its wielder stood in danger.
Sword Star. It looked as if it held the stars of a beautiful night sky, yet what poured from it without cease was a destructive sword-force that was anything but beautiful. Uuuung! Catastrophic power that should never be used on a person, compressed and held—a method dangerous even to its user. Lee Han leveled it at Baltar.
"Even you ought to find this a little dizzying, old man."
He aimed the Sword Star as if to provoke him. No matter who you were, you could not take even this lightly. But—
"Hm. Is that the end of it?"
"…?"
"Heh heh. Dear me. It seems you have forgotten who I am."
"???"
"Very well. If you have forgotten, I shall have to teach you."
Uuuuung—! In an instant the same energy rose from Baltar's iron sword—no, an energy fiercer still—forming a vortex as it gathered. And that—
Hwaaak!
"!"
—became a Sword Star in a heartbeat. A Sword Star that looked fiercer than Lee Han's own.
"……."
To Lee Han, staring blankly, Baltar offered the kindly smile of a gentle teacher.
"Other knights barely manage Sword Resonance or Sword Qi, but for us, such things are easier than breathing. As they should be. For we are—"
Pajijijik!
"Aura Users, you see."
The words had barely ended before Baltar's Sword Star changed, as if to kindly demonstrate that a Sword Star was only the foundation, and that a next stage existed. Ulleong! An ominous heaving rose within it, a heaving like waves, and when the shards of light that heaving made gradually formed a sphere as beautiful as a glass bead—
"…Star Orbs."
Lee Han felt as if his will to fight might simply leave him. Sword-Star Compression Orbs. Otherwise known as Sword Orbs. Watching spheres of destruction, fit to break everything, being drawn forth without end, he could only—
"…Ha."
—let out a hollow laugh, too dumbfounded for anything else.