Settlement
Settlement
"Let's see you block this, then."
With Eldmia's low mutter, what followed was a chain of attacks nearly impossible to track with the naked eye.
In that brief torrent of blows, Gish felt a chill run down his spine. Beyond simply being threatening, this insane flurry was deeply familiar to him.
"Where the fuck did you learn this...!"
Demonfolk.
It was almost identical to the tactics used by those goddamned skirmisher units who attacked with lightning-fast, suicidal bursts.
"Picked it up from a member of the Demonfolk I ran into on the road."
"How the hell do you just run into a member of the Demonfolk on the road!"
The fact that it was so similar it instantly dragged up memories from years past meant the claim of meeting a member of the Demonfolk itself probably wasn't a lie. But where the hell? Did he go to the front lines? Was his age a lie, and he was actually about ten years older?
Even in the middle of all this, Gish couldn't ignore that bastard's tongue.
"Seemed like his own special trick, anyway!"
But ultimately, it was only an imitation. Gish didn't know how Eldmia was mimicking the Demonfolk bastards' explosive bursts, but it wasn't something a human body could reproduce so casually.
And it had a fatal flaw. Even Demonfolk couldn't maintain that state for long.
"You should've properly understood the technique before you copied it!"
A drawn-out battle forced it to stop. Even for Demonfolk, and a human couldn't even last half as long. There were plenty of knights who had tried to half-ass an imitation and died for it.
He wouldn't last ten exchanges before his stamina ran dry.
"Demonfolk techniques aren't something humans can mimic!"
"Well, that bastard seemed like he was about to keel over himself if he kept it up for long."
He should've been cornered, yet Eldmia calmly continued speaking, with the leisure to reply in an oddly composed voice.
"But since that bastard couldn't hold out and died in the end, wouldn't that be why I'm still here breathing?"
At that composed, flat answer that carried no hint of a lie, Gish felt a powerful unease and, biting down hard, stepped forward to break the chain of attacks.
The countermeasure he'd learned from facing countless bastards. When you lacked the skill, you had to stake your life; even with enough skill, it was never easy, but that was the only way.
Dive in, break the flow, switch the offensive, and endure until the Demonfolk member's strength ran out.
"Then you'll know this too!"
If he'd really fought them, Eldmia would know that fact too.
So Gish thrust his sword with all his strength, trying to break the flurry and cut off Eldmia's breath, but—
"I do know. Because I did the same."
Eldmia casually deflected the blade rushing toward his neck and continued his assault.
"You're no pushover, seriously!"
"And you're far too much of a pushover compared to all that strutting around."
Separate from forcing a smile and fending off the following attacks, a vague unease washed over Gish.
He narrowly dodged, slashed back, and the moment their blades clashed, a split-second battle of counters began, forcing him to react on instinct, but Eldmia still continued the exchange calmly, without a single hitch in his breathing.
Continuing the exchange wasn't hard in itself, but the problem was that while his own stamina was clearly being whittled down, the other side was far too unfazed.
It was like a machine built for swordsmanship training. A machine where slashing one way prompted a set counter, and you had to find another way to block it. Maybe not on the battlefield, but in a one-on-one fight to the death, this was the worst kind of opponent.
"You bastard, you lying about your age?!"
"If you haven't been swinging a blade since you were eight, shut your mouth."
Born a commoner, but having picked up a wooden sword at eight, Gish felt dumbfounded by Eldmia's answer.
Before he'd spent five years rolling around on the hellish front lines against Demonfolk, he'd only understood swordsmanship through theory. He took pride in having shown some talent walking the typical learning path, becoming a knight's squire at fourteen, but if you asked if he truly understood the purpose of swordsmanship and mechanical training back then, the answer was absolutely not.
He too had once been an immature brat swinging a sword just for show. So how could a fifteen-year-old kid be this strong just because he started holding a sword at eight?
Something fundamentally different...
"Khuck!"
Snapping to his senses as a wound opened on his thigh from a sword thrust he didn't even have time to react to, Gish was appalled. Not because the attack was unexpected, but because the blade had cut him through a section clearly covered by his armor.
"Spacing out on me?"
That tongue. That mouth was the problem. The things Eldmia casually spat out were so absurd that Gish's thoughts kept wandering elsewhere.
But that was a separate issue from a sword capable of piercing his armor.
"The armor seems ordinary, though?"
"A magic sword...!"
"...No. Let's not talk."
So that was why they'd said he used a good sword!
Losing strength bit by bit, Gish had planned to block to some degree with his armor, but now he felt cold sweat trickle as he pulled his body back. Eldmia would surely pursue him closely without letting the distance widen, just like before, but he had to at least make an attempt.
"...Huh?"
But Eldmia, who he'd been certain would pursue, briefly withdrew his sword and tilted his head.
"You fucking killed one or two Demonfolk, got scared and ran, and then bullshitted your way to being called 'The Butcher,' didn't you?"
Struggling to suppress the surge of rage that nearly made him lash out, Gish tried to regain his cool.
Even after such an intense exchange, Eldmia only had the very slightest disruption in his breathing. That alone had already long since erased the belligerent confidence and leisure Gish had initially shown. Having assessed his own skill coldly and taken pride in it, Gish now accepted his current situation as extremely dire.
He hadn't thought much of pushing into the mansion because he could've done it himself. The fact that most of the dead bastards had their heads cut off was impressive, but it was a level he could reach if he had to—he just never felt the need.
But to do all that and then not be out of breath even once while fighting a knight who'd survived the battlefields and reached Expert level—that was blatantly abnormal.
Yet in this blatantly abnormal situation, Gish felt a familiar sensation. That feeling he'd experienced just once, the one that had shattered his will to fight. That single experience was what had driven Gish to flee the war against the Demonfolk and fight only fellow humans.
The nightmare of a bastard who wielded overwhelming violence like water was a centurion of the Demon King's Army.
"You... are you a member of the Demonfolk?"
"The fact that you're spouting nonsense—I guess I hit a nerve?"
The Ten Swords of the King could probably exhibit that level of strength.
But the truly terrifying part was that, unlike humans, Demonfolk who didn't use aura or Mana had a bottomless depth you could never gauge.
Just like Eldmia now.
"You never seen the horns on Demonfolk's heads?"
But to his question, Eldmia only gave a flat reply with a sneer.
"Otherwise, your strength right now makes no sense."
"Why doesn't it make sense? I know a guy from Ravil who swings around a metal slab of a war hammer no different from a siege ram without any aura. Maybe you're just weak?"
"You even meet the Dragon Blood Clan of Ravil?"
"Dragon what?"
At the reaction of not knowing what he was talking about, the usual Gish would have continued the conversation, but this time, he made up his mind to exploit the opening.
Judging by that monstrous stamina, a long fight was too dangerous. Full power. No, he had to finish it with one desperate, all-out strike. So Gish charged at Eldmia, using every ounce of aura he could muster in a single burst.
"Fuck."
Even the shortest-distance thrust aimed at his throat was reacted to as if it were the most natural thing in the world, Eldmia's sword whipping around with a short curse to cleanly deflect the attack—it was a stupefying sight. It was such a clean, efficient motion that if he hadn't personally attempted the attack, he would've suspected they'd arranged it together beforehand.
Because of that, Gish, whose extremely tense, aura-enhanced nerves had let him perceive the entire sequence, became certain.
'This thing isn't human.'
He had desperately hoped it wouldn't be blocked, but in the end, Gish released his sword without a shred of hesitation and drew the two daggers hidden beneath his shoulder armor. Discarding his sword to close in with concealed weapons was truly a blow to his pride, but that only applied when facing humans.
The idiots who shouted chivalry while hunting monsters were the first to die on the battlefield.
Even the finest knight would have to brace for a fatal wound from this attack. Unlike ordinary swordsmen, the daggers an Aura Expert staked his life on swinging from close quarters were nearly impossible to dodge, even for a fighter of equal caliber.
Having committed from the start with the resolve to discard his sword, Gish felt victory within his grasp as he watched his daggers close in without hesitation.
"There are roughly two ways to piss people off."
That was, until Eldmia's kick flew up from below toward his solar plexus.
-Crunch!
It was not a sound a kick to armor, much less a rising kick from below, should ever make, but Gish had no time to question it as he felt his crumpled breastplate shatter his lungs and dropped the daggers he had been holding.
"The first is to stop talking mid-sentence."
Even as his mind went blank from the searing agony, unable to even form a proper question, Eldmia continued to speak in that flat tone.
Unable to stop his body from collapsing, forgetting even to breathe, Gish sank to the floor and looked at Eldmia, mustering his last shred of tenacity.
"The second is..."
But there was no other intent behind the action. He just couldn't help but focus once more on whatever the hell that cursed mouth was spouting.
'Yeah, what's the other one.'
He tried to voice it, but what came out wasn't words, just blood.
Whether his lungs were damaged, the thought he couldn't voice swirled in a mind that hadn't yet fully processed the pain, and Gish sensed his death. Even if Eldmia suddenly showed mercy, he wouldn't survive the state the mansion was in.
'To think I'd die like this...'
As Gish thought that, Eldmia looked down at him flatly and swung his sword.
'Wait, what was the secon...'
Right to the very, very end, without realizing he'd been toyed with by the wordplay that had irritated him so much, a shining blade flew toward his neck.