Chapter 64
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 64
Ken Noma didn't deny my deduction. It was Ken, not Tora, who had received Kinuan's backing.
I didn't know much about Tora, but I felt like I understood Ken Noma. He had mastered the Akies Combat Style to a considerable degree—there'd be few in the Lower District who could match him.
Based on everything I'd uncovered so far, Tora didn't have the capability to command someone like Ken Noma as a subordinate.
No, it was the reverse. Kinuan had extended his influence over the Lower District through Ken Noma, and Ken Noma had propped Tora up as the boss to use him as a shield.
That was the relationship map taking shape in my mind.
'There are countless ways to kill Ken.'
Visions of myself crushing his skull flickered before my eyes like a rapid succession of afterimages.
No matter how skilled he was, right now he was a crippled wreck whose brain had been forcibly awakened through drugs. His limbs were budget-grade cybernetic prosthetics, and his mastery of the Akies Combat Style was no higher than mine.
But killing him gained me nothing. Capturing him alive was the only profitable outcome.
Even with beasts, taking one alive is far harder than killing it. When the target was human, it was harder still.
Whirrr!
Ken adjusted his two-handed grip on his sword. The tip traced a semi-circular arc before dropping cleanly toward the floor.
His posture was immaculate. Before he'd been crippled, he must have been a genuinely formidable fighter. I was almost curious how Aleph had managed to subdue him. Probably some underhanded trick—which would explain why Ken was gnashing his teeth like this.
Thud!
I kicked off the ground and lunged forward.
I swung Crucis, aiming to shatter Ken's blade. His sword was of decent make, but my Crucis was a high-compression heavy weapon forged in the Imperial Workshop. A direct clash would leave his blade shattering like glass.
Whoosh!
Ken was a seasoned swordsman. He refused to trade blows, slipping aside with the barest movement. His ability to read me was exceptional—though I couldn't tell whether that was natural talent or the drugs at work.
Swish!
His thrusts, aimed solely at the biological parts of my body, were razor-sharp. The tip of his blade threaded into the gaps between my limbs.
'Should I just kill him?'
Ken was troublesome enough to plant that thought in my head. One slip, and I felt like I might be the one to go down.
"Akies?"
I didn't answer his question.
It seemed he'd only just recognized it after watching me move. Even among practitioners of the same Akies Combat Style, those with high-performance prosthetics displayed the style's signature motions far less frequently.
I stayed silent.
If Ken had learned the Akies Combat Style from Kinuan... that would make him my fellow disciple. Well, it was absurd to care about something like that now.
'What a tragic waste of talent, Ken.'
Had he turned that talent toward serving the Empire, he'd have climbed to a fairly high position.
Our fight was unlike an ordinary battle. Both of us held a high level of mastery in the Akies Combat Style. Our attacks and defenses aligned so perfectly it was as if we'd choreographed them in advance. Because we were reading four or five moves ahead, our footwork and positioning would be impossible to follow through ordinary intuition.
Even Grace, a former Imperial Guard Cadet, wouldn't be able to fully grasp this fight. Gabriel didn't stand a chance of understanding it.
'To capture Ken alive, I have to read the flow... further, more, higher.'
I accelerated my thoughts.
I recalled Kinuan's advice. I still wasn't using my brain to its full capacity. To operate an ultra-high-performance full-armor prosthetic like Legion, an Imperial Guardsman had to drastically expand the nervous system resources and bandwidth of their brain. I'd undergone that training for nearly four years.
I could draw out more. I had to scrape the very bottom of my reserves.
I was already processing every calculation within my perceived field of vision and available information. And yet, brain resources still remained unused.
I found a way to put them to work.
'...Dual-thinking.'
Creating a second stream of thought. Like using the left and right hands for entirely different tasks.
But this was a delicate method. The human brain isn't a computer. Consciously splitting your thoughts to process two things at once is extraordinarily difficult.
So the second stream had to follow a defined rule and symmetry. It needed to be simpler, derived from the first. The second stream couldn't be wholly independent of the main one—it functioned as a kind of auxiliary process.
'The immediate battle in front of me goes to the first stream.'
Let the second, auxiliary stream track the larger, macroscopic flow.
The auxiliary stream would devise a more efficient method of combat based on environmental data feeding in through my senses. It was an extension of the 3D tactical map. In essence, it constantly ran simulations in advance, placing the enemy and myself within that map, while linking to the first stream to receive real-time information about the enemy and surroundings—correcting the gap between simulation and reality.
There was nothing truly extraordinary about it. This was simply how the Akies Combat Style worked. The only difference was that by isolating the auxiliary stream, I could calculate faster and across more possibilities. Most importantly, no matter how the calculations multiplied, they wouldn't interfere with the combat stream that demanded split-second reactions.
...The explanation runs long, but in short, it was simple. I'd finished the optimization.
Slash!
Ken's blade swept across my chest.
My evasion had come a fraction of a second too late. I couldn't stop him from cutting my skin. I'd neglected the real-time fight while restructuring my thought streams.
Drip.
Blood trickled from my chest, soaking into my clothes.
'The original, first stream is the combat stream. It handles the fight right in front of me—a fast-reacting process looking two or three moves ahead.'
'The second stream is the tactical stream. It leaves immediate reactions to the first. The tactical stream paints the big picture, calculating not two or three moves, but three or four seconds into the future.'
I didn't know if this dual-thinking I'd improvised was the next stage Kinuan had spoken of. But it was the only thing that came to mind right now.
Guided by my tactical stream, I would corner Ken Noma. Drive him into a place he couldn't escape, then sever his arms and legs.
I moved according to my tactical objective: capture alive. Accepting the short-term risk, I stepped boldly into the depths of Ken's range.
Clang!
I blocked his blade with my left arm. Before I could grab it, Ken pulled his body and arm back in a single motion, retreating.
By the time he realized it, his back was against the wall. To his left stood a half-toppled display cabinet—no room to dodge that way.
That left him only the front and the right. I planted myself as if to seal off both paths and swung wide. A perfect checkmate.
Whoosh!
Ken stepped forward, almost as though offering his neck to my blade. Knowing my goal was to take him alive, he was deliberately baiting me by exposing it.
'I anticipated even this, Ken Noma.'
I'd predicted he would do exactly this. I had once used the very same tactic against a "strong opponent trying to capture me alive." My accumulated real-combat experience was paying off.
When I fought Rick Kaiser, I'd deliberately thrown away my safety net and staked my life on the line. Only then does the enemy hesitate.
Once swung, a high-compression heavy weapon like Crucis is hard to redirect. My body moves as if dragged along by the blade. Brake wrong, and my arm would shatter.
Whoosh!
So mid-swing, I let go of the sword entirely. The blade flew off, tearing through the floor like a boomerang.
Whoosh!
Freed of the weapon, I kicked off the ground. My body shot into the air like a darting bee, rising over Ken Noma's head, vaulting clean over him.
You're defenseless, Ken.
The back of his neck and his spine lay wide open.
Crunch!
I came down, driving my knee into his back. The sound of his spine shattering rang out.
Ken didn't even scream. Somehow, he tried to twist his body and swing his sword. But it was already too late.
Crack!
I seized his right arm and snapped it. The raw output of my prosthetic body was overwhelming. Once caught in my grip, there was no escape for him.
Breaking him this easily almost made me feel like I was cheating.
If Ken had possessed a prosthetic body on par with mine, he wouldn't have gone down so easily. A desire to fight him at his full strength stirred in a corner of my heart.
Regardless, what mattered right now was taking him alive.
Crunch!
Before Ken could bite down and kill himself, I shoved my hand into his mouth and wrenched his lower jaw. The joint shattered, dislocating it entirely.
Ken was completely neutralized.
"Phew..."
A long breath slipped out. I lifted my head against a throbbing headache.
As the situation wound down, Grace and Gabriel walked into the office. I ordered Gabriel to carry Aleph and Ken to the arena's medical room.
Gabriel slung one over each shoulder and strode out into the hallway.
"You're even more skilled than I thought, Lord Luka," Grace said, stepping to my side.
I dropped into a chair to rest. Dual-thinking had piled not just double, but several times the strain on my brain. Short as the fight had been, the nervous system fatigue had built up enough that my fingertips were trembling.
"...Are you an Imperial Guard Cadet?" Grace asked, cautious.
As a former cadet herself, she must have felt a jolt of déjà vu watching me fight. The principles of my combat style, after all, stemmed from the Imperial Guard's Standard Combat Style and the Akies Combat Style.
"None of your business," I replied flatly. I'd already expected her to figure it out.
"I won't tell Diva for now. It seems like rather dangerous information," Grace said, reaching her own conclusion. She wasn't some blindly loyal doll. If anything, she felt more like a guardian who genuinely cherished Martina Diva.
* * *
I had Ken Noma sent to a hospital to be detained and treated—a place that offered proper medical care in the Lower District.
Ken was confined, limbless, a gag stuffed in his mouth. On top of all that, he was out of his mind from acute drug poisoning. Meaningful communication would be impossible for some time.
"Ugh, ugh, ah, ahhh! D-Don't! I said don't!"
Aleph was screaming from his hospital bed.
The tortured Aleph was just as far gone. His post-surgery face was severely lopsided, like a patchwork stitched together from mismatched parts. Whether from psychological damage or his twisted lips, his speech came out slurred.
The sharp, opportunistic Aleph was nowhere to be found.
"He's beyond recovery," I murmured, taking in his wretched state.
Aleph was in no shape to run the arena. Even if he clawed his way back to normal, a comeback would be difficult.
The arena wasn't a legitimate business. It was an enterprise run by a gang. They wouldn't sit around waiting for Aleph to heal.
A gang is no different from a pack of beasts—a weakened leader is simply cast out. The moment Aleph was ruined, the arena faction began fracturing around its surviving executives.
Those executives would fight over the position of arena manager the instant they finished reorganizing.
"Can't La Vie en Rose take over the arena?" I asked Grace as we stepped out of the hospital room.
Grace shook her head.
"An arena takeover would draw fierce backlash from within La Vie en Rose itself. Gang or not, we have our own traditions and rules. And the moment we touch the arena business, the other gangs will move to check us hard. No gang wants to watch one faction grow unchecked."
"Hmm. Gabriel doesn't have the business sense to run an arena..."
Gabriel had no head for business. Neither did I.
I pushed the arena to the back of my mind. When it came down to it, its future had nothing to do with me.
Even so, I'd left chaos behind in the Lower District. Because of my intervention, the balance of the Lower District was beginning to teeter.