What Justification Does a Knight Have to Fight? (4)
…Krk.
At some point Orthrus's mind snapped clear, and one head turned toward the humans with a sneer curling its muzzle. How foolish. How absurd. They had not even cut its throat, and still they were fighting among themselves…!
Of course. Flesh hissed as it knit. For Orthrus, it was nothing short of luck.
Shaaaa!
It was showing the fierce recovery of a high-grade monster, and already, while they fought, that recovery was coming on fast. Even the head whose neck had been broken was fusing vertebrae and regenerating, spared because the other head remained intact. Orthrus would not die so long as even one of its two heads or its serpent tail survived. A monster with three lives. That was what it was.
Recovery, however, demanded nutrients to match, and unfortunately Orthrus had eaten nothing today. It would have to heighten its regenerative power by sacrificing its own flesh and blood, like an offering. Its bulk would shrink enormously, and reclaiming its strength would likely take a great deal of time—but wasn't survival what mattered? Strength, more than anything, could always be grown again. Escape this place, feed, and rebuild the body from the start. That was all.
Krrrk.
A soft slither. While those idiotic humans fought among themselves, Orthrus triggered its transparency once more, meaning to flee. It had hidden even its presence and its form. There was no way those humans would ever find it. Never….
A rush of wind.
…?
Orthrus saw it. Out of nowhere, a human of enormous bulk came flying straight at it. In the next instant bone and flesh that had not yet set tore and snapped all at once, and Orthrus blacked out again before it could so much as resist, swallowed by a colossal agony.
"Hm? What is this soft thing?"
Unlike Orthrus, which had coughed blood and fainted under that horrific pain, the man who had expected to roll hard across the ground only blinked, and then simply accepted it.
"Right. This must be luck too!"
Felix took his narrow escape from an undignified tumble as proof that the Light still wished to watch his struggle.
"Yes! I mustn't fall so meaninglessly yet!"
He sprang up like a coil.
"Come, then!"
He burned with fighting spirit, as if loosing a thunderous shout at his opponent.
…However.
"No—not come. You're already injured, you know."
From where Lee Han stood, facing him, it only earned a shrug. And no wonder.
This just looks like I'm bullying him.
Felix was a mass of blood-bruises from head to toe; Lee Han was perfectly unscathed. Set the two of them side by side, and the scene looked uncomfortably like a beating.
Felix's condition was wretched beyond words. His frame was so massive the damage might not have shown, but right now his body had swollen to about half again its size—arms and legs, and his face as well. There was so much of it that his face had gone red as if he were dead drunk, and a visible tremor ran through him. Not fear. More like the fine shaking that comes of injury.
Arms and legs cracked? The facial bones are intact, but the damage has stacked up nicely. Mm. Ribs look gone too.
He was no physician, but reading an opponent was not difficult. Perhaps because he had ruined so many people's bones and muscles. In this particular field, one would be hard-pressed to find a finer doctor than Lee Han. And so he said:
"How about we call it enough? Keep going and you'll die."
"A knight dies only when his heart dies! Fleeing a duel like a coward is no act for a knight!"
"Since when was this a duel."
"Words are useless!"
"…My head."
Watching the man charge in again on nothing but brute force, Lee Han felt his skull ache. Ache or not—
A rush of air.
"?!"
"Don't blame me."
He was not arrogant enough to ignore an opponent coming at him in earnest. Against someone charging with everything they had, courtesy meant meeting them the same way. If he closed in, he closed in for real. For the first time, Lee Han used a technique.
A heavy impact.
"Ghk!"
"Just a simple throw."
It took the judgment to calculate an opponent's timing exactly, but Lee Han handled that calculation by instinct, used the charging man's own force with precision, and flung him with ease. The rush of that massive frame had shown a breakthrough every bit as frightening as a battering ram, but sadly it was not enough to cow a knight like Lee Han, and that was why tossing him came so easily.
"This is going to hurt."
With that kind warning, Lee Han seized one of the fallen Felix's arms as if pinning him and, together with the neck, clamped arm and throat in a single grab. A creak of locking joints.
"Went in clean."
"?!"
A guillotine, the arm hooked in with it. It might have been nothing more than a simple joint lock, but a choke, once it took, was not easy to escape. And with one arm pinned along with the neck, well…
"Grrrrgh!"
There was no way out. Ordinarily a gap in size this large made the hold difficult to land, but Lee Han's weight class could not be measured by looks alone, and Felix was suffering as if he were prey being choked by an anaconda—the agony of suffocation itself. Lee Han's choke was that perfect. At this point most people would give up and cry surrender, or black out for lack of air.
"Mmmrgh!"
With a creaking swell Felix's muscles ballooned, and he slowly began to rise. Common sense said that once the joints were locked like this, you could not move. Felix ignored that common sense. The explosive rebound pouring from his muscles finally produced something that should not have been possible.
A boom.
"…?"
Lee Han, still not releasing the choke, had no choice but to be startled. He and Felix had suddenly shot into the air.
Did this man just launch his whole body off the ground with his lower body? While he was pinned?
"Out of his mind."
Lee Han nodded as if even stupidity, at this level, deserved real admiration—and then, without a second thought, he let the arm go.
"!!"
A crashing tumble slammed the ground with exaggerated force. Felix flipped over in a truly pathetic sprawl. Lee Han, by contrast, turned a fluid, admirable somersault and landed.
"Aaaah!"
But his opponent, perhaps thinking Lee Han had let his guard down, sprang and charged again. He came the same way as before, this time mixing in a feint as if wary of the throw, showing a hook—
"Too obvious."
A light tap. Felix's hook was stopped in Lee Han's hand before it could even extend. No excuses: his timing had been stolen completely, and Felix looked startled.
"Don't be surprised. You should have at least done it like this."
Lee Han's head slammed into Felix's brow. It felt less like a headbutt than being struck with a lump of iron. Felix's vision flipped, and in an instant Lee Han's hands and legs divided the work—hooking a leg, seizing the waist, and hurling him with everything he had. An inside trip even a child could manage. But even an ordinary technique, when timing, strength, and skill all came into harmony, could be ordinary and still unleash fearsome power.
Like this. An ominous boom, and Felix's body drove into the ground. He trembled all over, and then—
A thud. Knockout.
This time Felix was truly out cold, and Lee Han shook his head.
"I'll grant you the strength. It's probably greater than mine, or that giant's. But to be cold about it, that's all you've got. You need to fight more intelligently. Or at least raise the quality of your technique. You haven't, so it's a bit of a problem."
The man was, quite literally, a perfect lesser copy of the giant of the North. His strength and bulk might surpass that giant's, but he had neither the giant's reflexes, nor his judgment, nor his wild instinct, nor his tactical sense. Maximus looked and sounded like a brute, yet in truth he seemed more a fox in a lion's body. That was the man called Maximus.
Or he ought to lean into his own style the way the spearman does. He doesn't even do that.
The spearman had honestly been lacking in muscle and durability, but he had drilled speed and technical precision to the extreme and established a style that was his alone. A specialist in a single field. Even the same thrust, from the spearman, showed hundreds and thousands of new variations. This man, by contrast, had simply trained brute strength and nothing else. He had established no style worthy of that strength.
The strength is definitely the sort that makes you say it's beyond standard. But that's all.
Using the pull that strength generated to freeze an opponent in place was already something others could not imitate. And yet that was it. Once you grew used to it, answering it was not difficult, and it was not without weaknesses. Had he used that power strategically, even Lee Han would have had a much harder time. But this man had settled on no such style at all. To put it kindly, he was upright. To put it unkindly…
"Mm. So what you're saying is that I'm a hack."
"…I didn't go that far."
Since when had he come to? Or had only his eyes rolled back, while his mind stayed? Felix accepted Lee Han's muttered coaching as if it were only natural and, still spread-eagled, sent him a silent look.
"Strength won't go into my body."
"Which is why you should have charged in moderation."
"I apologize. Partway through I realized you were human, but I could not suppress the will to win."
Receiving that sincere apology, Lee Han accepted it more easily than he had expected. Not because he was kind, but because he knew the knight called Felix was, from start to finish, an upright man who threw himself in with sincerity, and so he forgave him. Even at a disadvantage he had never drawn a weapon, and he had put no killing intent into his fists. That alone proved he was sincere.
…To a foolish degree.
"That's enough. If you heard me, then answer. Why do you fight that extremely?"
"Hmm… So I hear again the advice Sir Vale once gave me."
"Tristan's?"
"Oh, you know him! Well, a warrior as tremendous as you would have reason to cross paths!"
"…Lower your voice. Keep shouting and you'll turn your guts inside out."
"I am not so weak as that! …Kuheeerk!"
"See?"
"Khrm!"
At the awkward cough, Lee Han clicked his tongue and tossed him a potion.
"Drink it yourself."
"…My thanks for the kindness. In that spirit, to answer your question!"
"No, you can drink first and then talk…."
Lee Han told him he could answer after quietly drinking the potion, but the man was as stubborn as he looked—as if, having received a kindness, he would repay the debt even if it killed him. And sure enough, the answer he spat out was this.
—The privilege, the privilege…!
"……?"
Hearing that spectacular answer ring out like an echo, Lee Han failed, for a moment, to understand. Not that he failed to understand the words. A faint dizziness came over him at the thought that the man might actually be in his right mind while saying them. And so—
"Is this man serious? This?"
"…Regrettably, he is."
"…Has he never thought of fixing it?"
"Haa…."
"Ah. You don't need to answer."
He had thrown the question at a man who had been hiding for some time, and the sigh that came back was answer enough. Lee Han was fully convinced.
So this is genuine madness….
He was freshly reminded that a man pretending to be crazy and a man who truly was lived on entirely different levels.