What Cause Does a Knight Have to Fight? (2)
KRA-KOOM!
The sound was so vast it seemed, for a moment, that the sky itself must be tearing. It did more than fill the space. It struck the whole of it, the way a fist strikes.
The lesser monsters burst their eardrums and dropped where they stood, eyes rolled white. Those with the size or the toughness to keep from fainting did not fall, but terror seized them in the same instant, and they shook like aspens.
Spirit and fighting will, packed into sound. Not a sermon. A blow.
The old Buddhist teaching said that a lion's cry bends every beast, and that the Buddha's dharma bends demons in the same way. Lee Han's roar was nothing of the sort. He did not press evil down with lofty power or enlightenment. He loaded spirit and fighting will into the sound and used it to beat whatever stood before him to pieces—a road of submission by force.
The name might have been borrowed, but the roar itself was a proud declaration that he was walking a road of his own. And so long as Lee Han did not stop growing, his Lion's Roar would not stop growing either. The proof was plain enough. A year ago the same roar had only been enough to pin a handful of students. Now—
A prickling shock ripped through the air.
"Grrk!?"
"Keheek!"
"Ssshhh..."
Even a high-grade monster was driven back.
Orthrus shuddered, as if it had never been sure of itself at all. Blood ran from its eyes and ears. Cuts opened across its body, fine as knife-work, and the great snake that served as its tail writhed in agony and coughed blood. Under the name of Lion's Roar, a brutal wave of sound had hammered Orthrus and Orthrus alone. The sight was proof that Lee Han had not simply bellowed like some mindless beast.
"You lot can't do this, can you?"
He did not scatter the force of sound through the space. He gathered it onto his opponent alone, to strike like a hammer or to flay like a razor. That was the domain of technique, and one of the shapes he meant his Lion's Roar to take.
Using it the way the sound arts work in those murim novels is still too much. This much, though—if you've got the knack, it's easy.
Put it to proper use, practice, and seize the trick of it, and before long he might even manage secret voice transmission, pitching his words straight into a man's ear. Practice, of course, could wait.
"Kaaak!"
The impact landed like a cannon shot.
"Lives up to the name of high-grade monster."
For the moment, it seemed he was going to have to beat the thing into the dirt.
"Kahaaak!!"
Orthrus recovered with insulting speed, as if the fear and the wounds had never happened, and kicked off with its hind legs. The rush of air was a whip-crack. Bigger than five bulls lashed together, and absurdly quick for all that bulk—cheetah-quick. Another knight might have frozen at the speed and lost his throat between those jaws.
"That the best you've got?"
"!!"
An explosive step. He overtakes the charge and sets a single punch.
He answered with the art as lightly as a shrug, and with that uncanny trick of outrunning Orthrus itself he took one more step and set his body to throw the blow.
"Saaaaah!"
Orthrus knew the dodge had come too late. It showed a keen judgment all the same, whipping the snake-tail up to shield its heads. That, too, was a mistake. Or more precisely, the mistake was still treating that human as the equal of any other knight.
Crack. Something wet gave. One head's eye burst outright.
"!?"
It had blocked the strike. It was certain it had! Orthrus was known to possess an intelligence beyond a human's, and so bewilderment ruled its mind more than the pain of the moment. Disbelief sat naked on its face.
"A dog can make a face like that?"
"Grrrr...!"
"You're a dog getting your ass kicked. What are you mad about?"
Thud.
"?!!"
Again. The head whipped aside again. It had dodged—it was sure it had! This time a molar snapped clean off, and the jawbone had certainly cracked. Even Orthrus's extraordinary mind could not make sense of an attack so alien, and its wariness of Lee Han had to climb.
And then—
"......"
"Not moving now?"
"......"
"Clever bastard. First time Strike the Mountain, Hit the Ox lands, even knights lose their heads. I'll be damned. You're better than most knights. Still just a monster brat."
Orthrus did not rise to the taunt. It held to a coldness that only grew colder. That was the terror of a monster seated near the top even among the high-grade: a creature that could make strategy, and whose gift for learning reached even human technique. Cleverness. Because it had that, Orthrus needed only to survive an enemy's hand. Then it would take the human's strategy and skill for its own and come back stronger the next time.
And so it moved.
"...Huh?"
Orthrus flung itself into a sprint and fled. The opponent threw attacks it could not understand. Fighting would only cost it, so pride and everything else were thrown away, and it chose to run. For a monster whose hatred of humans was branded into its brain—whose instinct was to charge a human whether it lived or died—the choice was one no one could have imagined. The foolish sound that escaped the man's mouth was only natural.
And then, for good measure—
"Saaaah!"
Orthrus called up the ability meant to make him look a greater fool still. Little by little its fleeing body turned transparent, and even the sound of its feet began to fade.
"!?"
"Kaa!"
It seemed to feel the man's bewilderment whole and untouched at its back, and a sneer touched it. This was the power with which it had toyed, these past five years, with everyone who came to kill it. However much stronger he might be, once shape and presence were both gone, how was he supposed to catch it?
"Grrrng..."
"Kaaah!"
One head was of the opinion that it would very much like to kill the human while still unseen. The other head shouted the notion down at once. The invisibility would not last long, and a needless attack would give them away. Take a blow for that, and they alone would pay. Orthrus had not the slightest intention of dying for empty bravado—
"—There you are."
Crunch.
"!!?"
"!!"
"??"
Both heads and the snake-tail failed to hide their shock. Bad enough that a worthless human had stopped them with his bare body. Worse, he had found them exactly while they were still invisible. His grip crushed in.
"Curious how I found you?"
He put his strength into the hold, and Orthrus's enormous body rose, slowly, into the air. Monstrous power. No one could have called it human.
"You hid the presence well. Hid the shape, too. Couldn't hide the rest."
A light flick.
"Should've hidden the smell."
"...?"
Before the question of what nonsense that was could even finish forming, Orthrus's body turned over, and in that same inverted state—
"—It's called a tombstone piledriver."
Inverted, and driven into the earth with everything he had.
KRAAANG!
Planted in the ground, Orthrus convulsed. Its eyes rolled, and its awareness went out. One head's neck had snapped fully backward—dead on the spot. The other head did not yet seem dead. The snake that formed the tail still clung to a scrap of consciousness.
"S-saaah..."
Terror had it completely. Tears stood in its eyes, as if it were begging to be spared. It stirred nothing in him. If anything, he looked disappointed that the technique he had used was of such miserable quality.
"Hah. A piledriver isn't supposed to come out like that. Body's just too big, isn't it?"
Too much bulk, and two heads besides, so in every respect it had felt like some other move. He clicked his tongue and briefly considered trying again, since one head was still left. Only briefly.
"Idle thoughts..."
As if nothing were more foolish than wasting time on them, Lee Han drew his sword for the first time. Steel cleared the sheath with a clean rasp. It had been dunked in water once already, and still the edge was keen. The blade poured out a baleful pressure, as if it might pierce the monster's heart or take its neck at any moment. He did not kill every opponent who bared hostility at him. Monsters and spell-mongers were another matter. For those, he found no worth in mercy.
"!!?"
The snake-tail screamed in a panic to be spared. Lee Han's eyes, and his sword, were pitiless.
"Next life, don't come back a monster. Get born as some rich house's dog. Or a cat."
The pitiless sword came down with all his strength, meant to cleave Orthrus in two.
Clang!
"...?"
"Hm! A splendid sword-stroke, for a monster!"
"...The hell is this?"
The sword failed its purpose. It was stopped. No—the other man had knocked it aside.
"You..."
Lee Han blinked at the one who had turned his blade away with such ease. He had swung with real force, and the man had stopped it cleanly. That was decent. Arrogance had nothing to do with the thought. Lee Han simply took the White Cats, and the knights of ordinary domains, as his measure of average, so a knight who could meet his blow felt like something new.
He was not the only one surprised.
"Astonishing! To think that among monsters in human form there could be one with sword technique this strong!!"
The other man was just as impressed with him.
Except—
"...What kind of bullshit is that?"
A monster in human form. What nonsense was that? Lee Han's brow creased on its own, and the moment his face soured—
"Hah! A presence this mighty could never be taken for a human's! From the look of you I doubted whether you might be a man after all...!! But you are a monster! Show your true form, wretch!!"
"...I'm human."
"Ridiculous! How could a human lift Orthrus with his bare body! How could smell alone pierce Orthrus's invisibility! No human could do such a thing!!"
"No, that's..."
"Furthermore, no human could drop every monster with a roar alone!!"
"......"
"......"
Why?
He could have denied every last one of those claims, if denial was what he wanted. So why did it feel like this?
Can't refute a damn one of them, can I?
The knight had a voice like a man who had boiled and swallowed a locomotive's boiler. At his words, Lee Han took—only a little—a wound to the heart.