Ghoul Versus Ghoul? (4)
Rumble!
Clouds black enough that rain might fall at any moment had spread thick across the sky. Let the storm gather and the rain come down as it pleased; the Colosseum would take no harm from it.
"We may proceed. I see no problem."
"You know how much coin went into this place. A few raindrops won't so much as scratch it."
So long as the Holy Law lay open over the grounds, no foreign matter could enter its domain. If thunder and lightning set out in earnest to strike the Colosseum, that would be another matter. Short of that, there would be no trouble.
And so, beneath that unsettled sky, the battles against the rock trolls went on. No one showed a miracle as vast as the one the young lion of the North had already displayed, and still the crowd marveled.
"They're all decent enough."
"This year has no shortage of talent."
There were quite a few retired old knights among the spectators, and as they watched the first-years fight it out, satisfaction sat plain on their faces. Ability might still fall short, but the potential was, without question, like a clutch of excellent golden eggs.
"Ho. So that's the unusual art from the rumors, the one different from the Fighting Art?"
"A one-shot method. Even so, the power is certainly good."
The bears, on the whole, drew the judgment that they were something fresh. They had shown a respectable level of ability, as if their victory over the mages in the War Game had been no fluke. Some fought better than Barry Cops, and some worse, but a hard fight was still a hard fight. Their refusal to break had been admirable.
And then the ones who came after the bears.
They were the students to whom Lee Han had granted the name of the young-master group, and the judgment passed on them was of another order.
KRAAA!
Ooooh!
Admiring cries rose of their own accord. Those who had learned the upper Fighting Art were bound to be strong, but for their age the level was considerably fine. No—past considerable, and into excellent. They looked fit to walk straight into the knight order of a small or mid-sized domain, and skilled enough that one wondered whether they might not seize a senior knight's place in a single step.
"Remarkable. For youngsters these days, they've learned the basics properly."
"Yes. That is how it is done. Training nothing but the Fighting Art is no shortcut. What matters is to be diligent, and to learn every single thing with all one's effort."
If the eighteen bears were still lacking in many respects—decent mercenaries of the upper-middle rank, with a great deal left to learn—then these were something like knight trainees, possessed of a purity one did not see in the noble sons of late. A purity that did not lean on tricks, and knew how to strive upright.
"Good. Truly good!"
The old knights who had lived through the late king's era showed their pleasure. They were certain these children would make their names before long. Strive that upright, and you would become known whether you wished it or not.
Watching knight trainees display an honest skill for the first time in a long while, the old knights felt a deep contentment and supposed the surprises were finished. Those who appeared next forced the astonishment back into their mouths.
CRACK!
KUUUUNG!
"...What are those?"
"Not first-year level. No—those three could choose any knight order they liked and enlist this very day."
"So the young lord of Lionel was not the only freak of nature? Heh heh..."
Overwhelming the rock troll. No—more precisely, toying with it. Faced with the three, the old knights, who could not have been sure of victory even in their own prime, let out admiration and a groan in the same breath.
"Was his name Kunta? They said the strength of the barbarian warriors once scourged the continent. I can see why."
"The grandson of the lord of Offen, is he? Heh heh. As expected of the Sword Duke's house. Blood like that does not wander."
"The Mercenary King. That monster has finally raised one the very image of his younger self."
Far beyond the level of students. Not talents still fit to be taught, but talents who ought to be made knights at once. If the young envied that flash, like the gleam of an uncut gem, and grew gloomy for it, then the old, witnessing the vigor of youth, found their heads nodding. They had known that the young knights of the Royal Capital were falling without end, and yet, confirming how many excellent seeds waited among those who would bear the next generation, they were very nearly moved.
"Which brat taught them, I wonder?"
Even as they asked, they knew how to look straight at reality. Among the young of late, had there been anyone who taught children so faithful to the basics, and by methods so unlike a noble's?
That they could not yet conceive of a sword-faculty instructor having made them so was not because they were narrow-minded. It was a suspicion sitting in one corner of the heart, born of the negligence in which the previous instructors had gathered.
While the old knights' thoughts were deepening in that way—
"Hm?"
"...A cute child has come out?"
"Heh heh. Surely that child does not mean to fight now?"
They had thought every first-year was already out. There were girl students, yes, but the young ladies who filled their marks with debate and the remaining subjects mostly forfeited the final one.
And yet. Surely not.
"Spirited."
"Heh heh. The lord of Offen from the old days rises fresh before my eyes."
A girl student took the stage with her chin up. Levi Fault drew her sword and, with that slender body, stood squarely before the monster of stone.
"Hoo!"
Levi Fault's heart was trembling. At Vulcan the senior brothers had taken boars, and variant bears on the march, stacking up experience, but the Levi of those days—unskilled, and with nothing much to show—had been unable to join such hunts. In the War Game the day before, the girl had only given orders. In truth, she had done nothing but set a fork to a table already laid. And yet so many people watched her with a strange expectation that, for Levi, it was nothing but bewildering, and a burden.
Even so.
Coming out here was my choice.
So however frightened she was, she could not run. Everyone had tried to tear that choice out of her hands. Was her score not already enough from the other work? There would be another chance, so she should not do this. Many had tried to persuade her.
But Levi Fault accepted every shortcoming with humility and stood in this place.
I have to prove myself!
Levi steadied the tremor and fixed her attention on nothing but the rapier's cold grip. The girl in light leather armor gradually drew one hand behind her, eased her front foot forward, turned her body side-on, and kept her eyes alone directed ahead.
A sword form that noble children learned as a matter of course. She took the stance well known as the basic guard of classical fencing, and closed her hand hard around the rapier.
[GRR?]
The rock monster lowered its posture, faced with an opponent far more fragile than it had expected. Her presence was so slight that it mistook her for some small animal, a rabbit.
But Levi—
"Thank you for underestimating me."
Whoosh!
She drove off her foot in that same stance, and the rapier cut the wind.
A momentary shift of her center of gravity through Gyeong, and a reinforcement of the sword. And that rapier, exactly—
Thuk!
[GRR!?]
She stabbed the rock monster's eye, deep. She had put the point clean into that minute pupil.
The monster writhed in pain, and in the instant before it could thrash in violence, Levi snatched the rapier back and moved straight to its left flank. Movement like flowing water. It was a passage that told, plainly enough, how hard she had drilled the basic steps, until the skin of her feet split.
"Hoo, hoo."
She bought time to drag in her breath. Fortunately she had moved to the side of the eye she had stabbed, so it would be difficult for the thing to find her. The rock monster's only weakness was its narrow field of vision, and senses that were dull besides. Levi was striking precisely at the clumsy points an artificial monster possessed.
But carelessness was forbidden.
KWAANG!
It regenerates, just as I thought.
Its eye restored by rapid regeneration, the monster came after the girl. Unlike its carelessness a moment before, rage was written all over it. But the girl was sharp, and she knew how to keep her composure. As if she had stored away Arno's advice from the sidelines.
Lord Arno said it. If we of the Hundred and Eight Arhats keep a cool eye and wait for the opening, we can fight a fine match.
It was as he had said. Keep calm, and she could see. This monster, too, had been made by artifice. Set beside a wild beast, it was no better than a model.
Even so, she had no confidence that her weak strength and clumsy blade-work could truly defeat the thing. A small anxiety climbed, and set her chest trembling again.
Snap out of it!
She flinched. The instructor's bark, her master's roar, rang through her mind and shocked her awake.
The best defense is attack, and the best attack is swinging your blade while looking one move ahead of your opponent. That fencing the nobles learn like basic etiquette was a sword art made on the battlefield to begin with. So if a swordsman's ability is there to back it, it can be as powerful a sword art as you like.
Yes. I understand.
It was nothing but a shout echoing in her head, but Levi followed it faithfully. Clumsy or not, the sword art she had learned was not simply weak, just as the instructor had said.
The original name of the sword-fencing that stood as fencing's ancestor was Escrime. A sword art that held defense and attack in the same word, and even now there were those praised as masters of the sword for learning Escrime alone.
In the end, the basics of every sword art come down to thrusting, cutting, deflecting, and striking. So remember just one thing. You are going to turn the other one into paste, no matter what.
Yes, Master.
Whoosh!
Levi was an honor student. She did not forget her master's teaching, because she knew how to put it into practice. The girl used the same tactic and kept attacking the monster. Sometimes she stabbed the eyes; watching for a gap, she struck the jaw, the neck, the ankles with the blade, and cut again. When it looked dangerous, she evaded, and then came the defensive motion.
What mattered was this: she mixed in Gyeong only when she attacked, amplifying the force just enough, and never spent Gyeong on evasion or on any other motion.
I have to conserve my stamina!
Levi kept answering it while watching, as a whole, how her stamina was spent and what state the monster was in. In the end the thing was an artificial monster with nothing but instinct. Making a toy of it was easy. All that was required was the boldness to stand before a monster, and a stubborn honesty.
And Levi had them.
I can do this!
That boldness, that stubbornness, that thing called nerve. It was nothing but what her master had beaten into her by rote, but even if it was rote, putting it into practice was a disciple's duty. And so Levi Fault kept charging, though she fell and though she tired, until at last—
Kuuuung...
"Haaahk, haaah...!"
Thirty-nine minutes and fifty-nine seconds. The time it took the girl, first of them, and alone, to bring the monster down.
"........."
Silence hung over the place. No one had predicted Levi's victory, and the surprise of it slowly spread through the crowd. It was not only her classmates. Everyone watching the stage had failed to foresee it.
The victory was nothing more than the monster collapsing on its own once the power in the blood that made it had run out, and still no one passed a narrow judgment. To cheapen a swordsman who had done her utmost and been ruined for it was something even a considerable fool would not do.
"That kid is something else. Isn't she, young master?"
"...Yes. She is brave. She certainly has talent."
"Bear-Girl, body weak, but head good. And she has a warrior's heart. So she won."
"A warrior's heart?"
"Our tribe, even if talent lacking, a person with a warrior's heart was always respected. A person with a warrior's heart always became a great warrior."
Bone, talent, ability, and the rest. Possess such things, and learning would surely be quick, and yet those who became warriors in the true sense were rare. On the stage of real combat, few could actually put out fine sword-work. In that sense, Levi Fault was excellent. She could not be anything but one who held a warrior's heart, a brave will. So the praise Kunta spoke now was the highest compliment a barbarian could give another person.
"Bear-Girl will become strong. Maybe stronger than Kunta."
"...You mean we must not let our guard down simply because we are stronger than her at this moment. I understand you well."
The courage the girl had shown was more precious than the Sword Ki Roen had displayed earlier. Everyone watched her with grave faces, and slowly the cheers poured over her. It had taken her more time than anyone, but it was honorable, and it was excellent. Indeed, it would not be too much to call it a brave knight's duel. She had earned the right to be cheered.
"Ah..."
Levi was still panting, her whole body gone slack, and yet, before the feverish cheers pouring toward her, her head lifted of its own accord.
What just happened?
It still did not feel real. She had only swung the rapier in a trance, stabbing and slipping away like a coward, over and over. Then at some moment the monster was not moving, and she too had sunk down. So it did not feel like reality. She could not even tell whether something like her had truly beaten that monster, or how she had stood against a beast more than ten times her size. Her head felt like a blank sheet of paper. But the applause, the fervent cheering meant for her, forcibly woke her to what was real.
"I... I won."
She had won. Done entirely by herself. Her first victory in life, in the most literal sense.
The tears surged.
Levi Fault's eyes brimmed. How was she supposed to name this feeling welling up? Even the two words, accomplishment and thrill, could hardly express everything she felt now. And in that, she understood. Here, in this place, now, she had truly broken the egg that wrapped her. She had become a swordswoman in the true sense.
"Aaaah!"
Unable to contain the joy of it, the girl threw both arms wide, lifted them high to the sky, and screamed as if she were simply howling.
Waaaaah!!
The crowd watching took it for a victor's performance and looked on, pleased. Was it not excellent showmanship? It was a misunderstanding. Later, once Levi came to her senses, every time she tried to fall asleep she would be so ashamed she was past embarrassment, and kick the blankets off—one mortifying page of personal history being sealed in that moment. But now she cared about nothing. She was only sending up a roar of joy.
And Levi, looking up at the sky as she poured that joy out—
"—Huh?"
Her face drained white at once.
Huuuung!
......What was that?
Levi Fault stared up at it in a daze, but the blankness lasted only a moment.
Ssshhh!
An unknowable chill climbed in her, and terror fell over the girl.
Kururung—!
The storm clouds. The dark mass that had been looking down on the earth began, all at once, to turn with violent life. The clouds, shaped like the circle of a whirlwind, gradually widened at the center.
"What is that..."
"......"
Starting from Levi's reaction, more and more people read the ominous motion in the clouds, and everyone who looked up—with no one first among them—saw the same sight, and felt the same cold.
The heart of the storm clouds, akin to pitch black, a thing that planted a deep terror. And from within that dark space—
Sssk!!
"!!!!?"
People could not even scream. An unidentified arm, appeared without warning. It was far too large, and far too horrible. So they were afraid, and even the will to flee was taken from them. The appearance of a being that announced resistance was impossible—that even running was impossible—sometimes did nothing but paralyze a person's very instinct to survive.
"R-run..."
Levi Fault, scrambling up in haste, wanted to shout for them to run, but even her voice would not come properly. She had already spent all her stamina, and a monster of that size was descending from the sky. It was emerging slowly, but the ill omen pouring off the monster's arm would not let her body move an inch.
Fear.
The pressure that great beasts, monsters, and their like emitted by nature. It planted terror in living things as a matter of course and paralyzed the body. A frail human could not even dream of standing against that thing.
Death was coming.
It was the only thought people could summon now, and not even their lives flashed before their eyes. Only the black shadow, darkening as the arm drew near, covered them.
A tear tracked down.
"Ah..."
At some moment Levi was crying. Before a terror of death that could not even be resisted, a person had nothing but bleak tears, and Levi let her head fall. The day of victory she had thought the greatest moment of her life. That the day of that victory could be dyed in despair in a single instant left her hollow, and wretched.
...And yet, why.
Shring.
"Why am I still drawing my sword?"
In what she believed was the last moment of her life, Levi found herself still drawing the blade, and along with the question she wanted an answer. Why she was drawing her sword.
......The girl wanted to know.
"!!"
An answer that resolved her question reached her, and Levi's eyes flew wide as she looked toward the direction of the voice. There—
"Still, I'll praise you for keeping hold of the sword to the end. Extra credit for you, Student Levi Fault."
"Ah—!"
There stood the most reliable master on the continent, so far as the girl knew, and Levi Fault, without realizing it, sagged in relief and cried again. Tears of relief, different from the despairing tears of a moment before.
"What's a grown woman doing crying."
He scolded the crying girl, and still smiled at her warmly. He felt she was commendable, the girl who had not given up until the end. But that, too, was only for a moment.
He looked at the sky.
"You the one who made my Bear-Girl cry?"
Lee Han snarled, and drove a kick into the six-hundred-kilogram log spear his telekinetic slave was holding aloft.
Thud—!
With every ounce of his strength.
It might not pierce the sun. A castle wall, though, it would run through with ease.
A ballista was fired at the sky.