A Nightmare Spilling from the West
A Nightmare Spilling from the West
The blade, thrust forward as if scraping against the shaft, shot toward the bastard's hands, trailing sparks.
I could feel the brute force trying to press me down so I couldn't push back, but it was fine. My sword would fly through his fingers faster than he could pin me completely. If I just timed the moment he tried to hold out—trusting only in the gauntlets he had on—and layered my sword with Magic Power, I could slice right through.
No matter how strong he was, he couldn't hold a weapon with his fingers cut off. Just as I pressed in to that knife-edge moment, sparks about to fly even against his gauntlets.
Water Buffalo Horn let go of his throwing spears without a shred of hesitation and threw a punch right at me.
"Fuck...!"
The upper body of the bastard, who was a full head taller than me, dropped low in an instant, his left palm driving my sword upward from below while his right fist launched a vicious uppercut aimed straight at my chin.
A deathly binary choice forced by the gap in skill—if I took the hit, it'd leave an opening for a counterattack, and if I dodged, the bigger motion would leave no choice but to concede a counter. There wasn't even a gap to hesitate, so to protect my head I trusted in the helmet that had deployed instantly and tried to headbutt the bastard's hurtling fist.
-CLANG!
"Ungh!"
That groan wasn't mine. I couldn't even fucking groan because it hurt so goddamn much.
A horrific impact that made me think if I hadn't yanked my body back in that split second, the force destabilizing me would've snapped my cervical vertebrae. Even though it held the essence of shock absorption that Luwiming had so confidently packed into it, the fact that it still dealt this much damage told me exactly what kind of batshit insane strength the bastard had.
The impact that sent my vision blooming white was normally enough to make my movements falter for a moment, but in the face of a mortal threat that was a luxury. As soon as the uppercut was blocked, I twisted my body and reversed the grip on my sword with lightning speed to shield my throat, stopping the bastard from swinging the left hand that had been propping up my blade into a knife-hand strike aimed at my neck.
-CLANG!
That was absolutely not the sound a gauntlet-clad hand makes hitting a sword. The shock—on a level where if I hadn't braced the blade with my right arm, it wouldn't have been a block but something that would've carried me away with it—wracked my whole body with a grinding creak, but considering, it was manageable. The bastard's stance hadn't been twisted, but a very nice opening had appeared between his arms.
Hoping that just the slightest touch would shear through everything, I wrapped my sword in Magic Power and snapped my wrist to turn it toward the bastard.
A motion that was nothing more or less than just turning the sword, without any swordsmanship or anything else. A swing prioritizing only speed, without any detectable battle spirit—with an ordinary sword, even if it touched him, it couldn't even scratch his armor.
"Ghaah?!"
That's definitely how it should have been, but for some reason the bastard reacted with a more ferocious and rapid response than ever, leaping backward with a bound. And as if that weren't enough, in the middle of that he grabbed the two throwing spears that were still hanging midair and slashed them down in an X-shape to block my sword.
"Damn it."
A golden opportunity that might have let me kill that monster in a single blow.
If my Magic Power recovery had been even a little bit slower, his throwing spears would've been entirely severed and my trump card almost exposed. My only consolation was that the helmet fully covered my face, hiding the expression drenched in disappointment.
The bastard, who'd escaped death that way by whatever means he'd sensed it, tilted his head quizzically even as he skillfully deflected and counterattacked the two knights assaulting him, then muttered as if unable to comprehend it.
"Hm? I definitely felt a chill down my spine. What was that?"
And then the sight of him smiling, as if he was looking forward to it, sent a chill down my spine.
Because that fucker just blocked two knights without even looking. I couldn't gauge exactly how capable those knights were, but at the very least, I couldn't do that.
In fact, the sight of him swinging his two arms as if they were completely independent creatures was bizarre beyond astonishment. It felt like I could hear the cracking sound of my own judgment—built through all my training and fighting up to now, believing that no matter what aura and Magic Power existed, technique ultimately never left the bounds of humanity—starting to splinter in my ears.
Was that really possible at the level they call a division commander? The front lines had been holding against multiple bastards like him?
The world was vast. Too goddamn vast.
"I think I understand why the headquarters took an interest in you."
While the mood over here was horror-thriller, Water Buffalo Horn—who was busy shooting his own personal action blockbuster by himself—lightly rolled his shoulders. And in that gap that wasn't quite a gap, the knights rushed in.
The moment the knights, unyielding despite being one-sidedly pummeled, dashed at him again, Water Buffalo Horn charged at me with an explosive speed as if he'd outright skipped through space.
"Show me a bit more, Eldmia."
The only reason I could react to the bastard's surprise attack, hoisting his crossed throwing spears up like scissors, was purely because I'd anticipated it—using my Magic Sight, I had seen the weird way the bastard's Magic Power was moving. And even then, all I could manage was to raise my sword forward and block.
Amid a massive impact that felt like getting hit by a car, I tried to prepare for the bastard's next attack, but Water Buffalo Horn simply ran onward like a tank, with me caught and pinned on the crossed spear shafts.
"For that, it'd be better without any distractions. Right?"
"Goddamn it...!"
Was he planning to leave the command post just like this? It was already astonishing that he was practically lifting and running with me through some exquisite control of force, but his speed was even more astonishing.
In just a few seconds, we'd smashed through tents, broken through the knights' encirclement, and seemed to have run a hundred meters. The fact that he could act so nonchalant while doing such insane shit was truly stupefying.
"I... get lonely, really easily!"
If I fought this bastard one-on-one right now, all I could put on was a talent show. There might never even be a chance to close the distance with him this much again.
Thinking that far, I judged that right now might be one of the few chances I'd get, and boldly poured Magic Power into my sword.
With a fierce grinding screech, the sword bit in. Because it was solid Magic-Armament Alloy, there was resistance like I'd never felt before, but it didn't matter. In this single moment, the amount of Magic Power in my sword outstripped the Magic Power I was using to operate my body.
I foresaw success as I saw Water Buffalo Horn, aghast as the blade split open his throwing spears and bored into them at a speed incomparable to when I'd just turned my sword with my wrist—but the blade stopped the exact instant it bisected the spears.
"Isn't this guy just a straight-up monster?"
Naturally, I hadn't stopped because I wanted to. It was just that the bastard had applied force to the cleanly severed throwing spears to catch and pin my sword.
I was pressing with full power, yet the blade wouldn't budge, like it was caught in a press machine, and I was so dumbfounded words failed me.
"Stop doing the goddamn impossible!"
"Those sound like my words!"
Along with Water Buffalo Horn's shout, a kick shot in, aimed at my abdomen.
Countless thoughts flashed through my mind in that instant, but in the end just letting go of the sword and stepping back was the best option. As if he'd been aiming for exactly that, the moment my hand left the sword, Water Buffalo Horn twisted his throwing spears and flung my blade aside.
"Now we're getting som—the hell is that now?"
And then he reacted like he couldn't believe his eyes when he saw me use Magic Power to retrieve my sword as it flew through the air and grab it again.
"You think I'd tell you if I were you?"
I'd wanted to keep both the Magic Grinder and the sword control technique in reserve as sure-kill techniques, but he wasn't an opponent I could afford to hold anything back against.
I had to mobilize everything I had and kill him somehow. As I resolved myself and steadied my stance, Water Buffalo Horn's gaze held more curiosity than hostility. Was hostility something you could only feel toward an opponent who could actually give you a fight? While I was thinking that I really didn't like that look, unexpected words popped out of the bastard's mouth.
"No matter how I look at it, aren't you closer to us than to these people? Why are you siding with them?"
"...What?"
Water Buffalo Horn's attitude as he scratched his head with the broken-off spear halves—still clutched tightly as if they were fine as they were—was absurd, but... conversation wasn't bad. The knights were running in to close the distance that this madman had opened in an instant, so buying as much time as possible was a gain.
"Before you say something like that, shouldn't you be asking just what the hell you bastards did to me, you know, out of basic courtesy?"
I adjusted my grip on the sword, steadied my stance, and acted out fury. I let Magic Power flow, ready to use the needles at any moment, and poured Magic Power not just into myself but into the bastard's cut-off spear halves as well. They were halved, so with a little effort, I could definitely launch them out.
"You don't even know you barged into a person's life however you pleased and ground it down under your dirty boots, and what? You're asking why I'm stuck fighting for the Kingdom's army instead of the Demon King's Army?"
At the words I spat out while calculating all sorts of things, Water Buffalo Horn still had a reaction of bemusement. No, it went past bemusement to an expression that said he couldn't even comprehend it.
"We did? You might not know this, but the Demon King's Army has already grasped a certain amount about you. A boy who appeared in the west alongside the Margrave of Levien. You'd never even made a name for yourself near the front lines before that. What reason could you possibly have to bear hostility toward us..."
Which was why the change in the bastard's expression was dramatic. As if he'd suddenly realized something...
"...A survivor?"
...Because in an instant, his expression flipped straight into shock. But it wasn't just the bastard's emotions that changed.
I too felt like fire was kindling in my head and heart that had been calm just moments ago. A survivor? Mentioning the west, then a story like that popping out—there was only one thing it could be.
My hometown. Our village.
"You know about the attack seven years ago."
Without any warning, the fury I'd kept neatly tucked away in a corner of my memory reared its head. No answer came back, but the bastard's expression, which said he absolutely could not believe it, told me everything.
That fucker knew.
"Thanks. I never doubted it, not even once, but to have a person involved confirm it with his own mouth like this—it really gives it a fresh feeling."
Whatever it took, I had to capture that bastard.
If anything, it was fortunate. Alone, the odds wouldn't have been even a tenth, but here I was smack in the middle of friendly forces. With the knights rushing at him from behind, we'd manage it somehow.
"Let's have a slightly more prudent conversation."
For the first time, Water Buffalo Horn, who had responded from start to finish with composure and laughter, didn't answer.