A Knight's Valor Knows No Recklessness (8)
……Thank God.
KWA-GWAGWAGWANG!!!
Thank God the Hidden Grotto was truly solid, and cut off from the outside. Had it not been, the ground would have given way long ago. The place had stayed intact through thousands of monster raids; surely two little shocks were nothing.
KUGUGUGUNG—!
……Or were they?
The Hidden Grotto heaved. Sealed away from the world or not, a mass of staggering weight had driven itself straight into the ceiling and seemed to throw the balance of the space into chaos, and somewhere it even looked as though cracks were beginning to run. Perhaps it was the Heavenly Bull's mystery of pulverization at work. Whichever it was—
"Wh-what did I just see?"
"…After that knight, I don't think any natural disaster could surprise me."
"Naturally. That knight already is a natural disaster."
"I-is that a person…?"
"????"
It was power that had gone past overwhelming and into the superhuman, and the soldiers of Mordred who witnessed it were dazed, certainly—but more than their bewilderment, their morale surged.
At their first meeting he had become a letter-carrier and moved them. Then, of all things, he had shown one impossible ability after another in the fighting until they felt they could rely on him, and now, at last, a majesty like this!
They were warriors of Mordred who had never met an Aura User, a true Superhuman. To them, as they stood now, Lee Han was an Aura User. Nothing less than a Superhuman, or something beyond even that.
"From the moment I heard he'd beaten Sir Felix outright, I thought he was no ordinary man…."
"To think he can transform from that handsome face into a freak like that…! He might not be human at all. He might be some other race."
"Are there even other races that can transform?"
"Wouldn't that make him a new species? There are plenty of mystery-races that haven't been identified yet."
"Does that… even make sense?"
There had never been such a fuss, and the soldiers were properly worked up, but not one commander rebuked them. On the contrary—
Kkeuk!
They were clenching their fists, struggling to settle the excitement pounding in their chests.
Every warrior of Mordred looked at him with a heart too full for words. At that peerlessly imposing back!
"????"
…Only, unlike the others who found him imposing, the very man who had just displayed that superhuman majesty wore a foolish look and was tilting his head.
Afraid the bull's strength might spill outward and hurt the kid waiting outside, he had dragged up even the strength he'd had at his mother's breast….
Was I always this strong?
Confirming a monstrous power even he hadn't known he possessed, Lee Han could only stare, slack-jawed. He had thought that merely toppling the thing would count as a success, and here he was flinging a mass bigger than a respectable building all the way to the ceiling.
Seriously, how did I do that…?
Wuuuung!
"…Ha."
And did he know what was even more absurd?
I think I could still do this a few more times.
He had shown off power like this and, far from being spent, still had strength to spare.
…Absurdly so.
Thinking back on it—
It's been a long time since I used my strength properly.
After he reached the realm of Intent, the Diamond Indestructible Body, Lee Han had rarely had a proper fight. Aside from trading blows with a few small fry while dealing with a vampire, he had never truly taken the measure of how much the sum of his strength had grown.
The spar with the Sword Duke had, in truth, been a one-sided thrashing before he even had room to bring his strength to bear, so he hadn't so much as realized that he himself had improved. More than that, until recently—no, until ten minutes ago—he had spent dozens of days in the Santa Rihan form, holding down the backlash of his body, and so he had been forced to meter his strength at every moment.
In that sense, today was the first time he had used his power properly, and because of it he had come to understand a great deal.
If he had to name two things in particular….
The duration of his Intent had lengthened, and the flow of Gyeong felt as natural as breathing.
"A cow steps back and catches a rat. That's what this is…."
It seemed that while he had been playing the joke of a man called Santa, the fundamentals of his Intent and Gyeong had climbed to a ridiculous degree without his ever meaning them to.
It was not a phenomenon he couldn't understand. Living for dozens of days with a bomb cradled in his arms, one that might go off at any moment, was much the same: whether he wished it or not, he had been forced to keep using the flow of Gyeong and his Intent, and his base abilities had swelled because of it.
His fundamentals had already been on the high side. If what he had possessed before was a wine only just aged a year, hadn't it matured to a ten-year vintage all at once?
Someone might well object that the aging was far too steep….
Thud. Thud!
But it was a flow of power that could not be explained by anything less.
I've changed. No. More precisely, the way I use it has grown refined.
Lee Han was no longer merely throwing the strength of his flesh around. Drawing on the terrain and the things around him to wield Gyeong had become far easier as well. Whether it was thanks to learning Intent, or because his mastery of Gyeong had climbed past all reason, he couldn't say. Whichever it was—
Clamp.
"Feels good."
It was a moment of confirming that he was growing, steadily. And more than that….
While he was fighting a stray ghost like that, it was a result that could not have been more refreshing.
Lee Han looked at the great evil spirit with a keen eye and deliberately put on a sneer, as if the face staring in blank horror at the skeletal mass jammed into the ceiling were well worth seeing.
Had it caught the provocation?
The great evil spirit….
……began to weep, bitterly.
"??"
He had expected a meltdown, or a fit of irritation. Instead the great evil spirit went a step further and suddenly started crying, and watching it, Lee Han frowned as if baffled.
It was not that his heart had gone soft because a great evil spirit in a woman's shape was weeping.
Huuuuung!
…His face had hardened because he felt a current that was anything but ordinary.
Lee Han snatched his fist shut and set his stance in a hurry. A proper fist posture. The posture for launching the Hundred-Pace Divine Fist. Just so, he drove out a single blow—
KWAAAAANG!!
……And this time, the opposite of a moment ago, it was Lee Han who was driven into the ceiling.
As if he were being paid back, in full, for the humiliation the great evil spirit had suffered….
"From what Mordred has uncovered, the great evil spirit was a being that once reigned as the god of a certain ancient kingdom in the West."
The margrave who had acknowledged Lee Han held nothing back of what Mordred had learned of the great evil spirit across the past three hundred years.
Lee Han hardly needed to know. Even so, the margrave spoke as though knowing would help more than not knowing, and Lee Han, aware that knowledge might serve him better than ignorance, chose to listen closely to what the man had to say.
"The great evil spirit Inanna. That vermin, an incarnate god who reigned over an ancient kingdom, was, from what I hear, a being that governed abundance and war."
"…Abundance, and war?"
"A god of the harvest, and a god of war. That is the meaning."
"Hm. Hearing it like that, it sounds like a god who would have been fairly popular."
"It was. Only, not long after it bestowed abundance, the fertility of the soil was entirely consumed, so for several hundred years the whole of that region turned into a land of death. And in exchange for granting victory in war, it demanded that hundreds of living young men and women be offered up as sacrifices every year. That is the only problem."
"……."
"Well, it is not such a strange culture. Look only at the myths of ancient states, and human sacrifice is a fairly common custom."
"…Sounds like it was just insane."
"From the viewpoint of the present, yes."
It was more than enough to explain why the thing had been driven from a god's seat.
It had claimed to give abundance, and in truth left its believers' descendants centuries of famine. It had claimed to bestow victory in war, yet demanded hundreds of young people as offerings every year—enough that one would rather have cried surrender….
Was it not, quite literally, no different from a calamity god?
"Yes. A calamity god. In truth, the human heart wants to cast a god like that aside as soon as it can, and yet they say it reigned as the god of an ancient state for a full thousand years."
"…Insane."
"Yes. An insane thing. But I suspect even the people of antiquity had no choice. That vermin was a terrifying existence."
"Terrifying?"
"More precisely, they say the beings that followed in that vermin's wake were the terrifying ones."
"?"
"The great evil spirit Inanna. It is said to possess two mysteries."
One, they said, was a mystery gained by murdering the husband of a sibling-god who may once have been its own brother or sister.
"The Heavenly Bull. By another name, the mystery called Gugalanna. According to the records, a mystery possessed of the mighty power to raise famine and erase every living thing upon the earth."
"…And the other?"
"The other, they say, is the soul of a certain warrior who followed that vermin with fervor in life."
"A warrior?"
"The strongest warrior of the ancient state, and the soul of the warrior called the most beautiful. That was the record we uncovered. According to it, that warrior was undefeated, and the foremost hand in having the vermin called a god of war."
"Then in truth, it isn't that vermin who's the god of war. It's the warrior's soul, isn't it?"
At those words the margrave nodded, as if in agreement.
"You say the same thing as my father."
"I do?"
"Yes. My father said so as well. No—he fought the vermin himself, and faced the warrior's soul besides, so his words carry even more weight."
"Hm."
"My father said this. If ever you must fight that thing—the warrior's soul—you are to flee, without fail."
"Why?"
"Because it is strong."
"……."
"So strong that you cannot possibly win. So strong it cannot be borne, he said."
"……."
…A reason so simple it was blunt, and at the time Lee Han could only blink.
The old knight he had met, the one named Ganok, was a strong knight. And yet, to be told that fleeing was all such a man could manage, his head tilted of its own accord.
And now….
"…Damn it."
Slammed into the ceiling and falling toward the floor, Lee Han couldn't help a hollow laugh. He could feel that there had not been one inch of falsehood in what that old man had said.
Kuuung!
Lee Han spun his body fast and kicked off the empty air. If he dropped in a daze, the injury would only be worse, so he caught his balance at once with Air Walk—and even while he did, his eyes and ears were fixed solely on the one who had kicked him.
If the great evil spirit's voice was unpleasant to the point of disgust, this was an alien voice, the sort one might hear when a recording was played at eight times the speed.
And yet the owner of that voice could not be seen. Only the voice could be heard….
"So it was raising something strange inside the body."
Lee Han soon realized the alien voice was coming from within the great evil spirit's body. And sure enough—
Hwaaak.
In a fleeting instant, the presence felt from the great evil spirit's body began to change. Little by little the color of the eyes shifted, and then—
"By my God's command, I will erase you."
Kwaang!
In an instant, it closed to the tip of Lee Han's nose.
The one who had let the great evil spirit reign as a god of war. In a sense, a god of war in the truest meaning.
"—Ninshubur."
"I never permitted a trifling human like you to speak my name."
Huuuuuk!
Ninshubur. The ancient great warrior's blow lashed Lee Han's face at the speed of a bullet, and Lee Han's body dropped as if it would plunge headlong.
KWAAAAANG!!
Shaking the earth as he went….
It was a blow that truly shook the ground, worthy of the ancient great warrior, and he looked on without expression at the insolent one driven into the earth.
Not only had the wretch dared to wound his God—he had made that God weep. The impious…!
Pusyuk!
"……?"
…What?
At the pain surging up, Ninshubur's eyes flew wide before he knew it.
"The arm that struck…."
It was broken.
"—For a thing that calls itself a god of war, the body's a weakling."
Ptui.
Lee Han spat the dirt from his mouth and rose lightly.
Clods pattered off him. He had been buried underground for a moment, but it was far better than the time some bastard of a spell-slinger had flipped the earth over and buried him.
And more than anything….
"…The strength is one thing, but the body's gotten damn tough, too."
At this rate, it seemed an ordinary blow would never again leave a wound on this body.