True Iai Slash
Precarious. On the knife’s edge — as if she might be caught at any moment.
That was exactly how Alice moved.
It was like walking a tightrope with the monster.
To keep the Metakentos from giving up and fleeing, she deliberately dangled herself just within reach, luring it on with a teasing sway of her “tail.”
Whoosh—!
Alice dropped low and slid. The Metakentos’s pincer-leg cleaved through the empty air where she had just stood.
“Hup!”
From there, Alice drew her tachi.
With a short cry of effort, she spun once through the air in a smooth, fluid arc. At the same time she cut through a mass of vines overhead, sending everything tangled in them crashing down at once.
The long-snared heaps of timber came thundering down, startling the Metakentos into a flinch.
“She’s good…”
Fiore murmured the words in quiet admiration as she watched.
Alice knew, down to the last detail, where she needed to be and what she needed to do. A brief survey of the ground was enough for her to turn every feature of the terrain to her advantage — her spatial awareness was exceptional. Layer that onto those uncanny movements, and the way she toyed with the monster left nothing to criticize.
Well — of course. She had done this in the game, too.
To Fiore, who knew nothing of that, Alice’s performance was nothing short of astonishing.
“What do you think?”
“Remarkable. She certainly doesn’t look like Rank 20.”
Pina felt her own pride swell at Fiore’s words.
Fiore regarded her for a moment. A peculiar light drifted through those characteristically hollow eyes. Her lips fluttered like a sparrow’s.
“That’s not even the half of it, you know. Alice-nim is something else when she actually faces a monster head-on. You’ll be really shocked when you see it, Fiore…-nim. Even a gathering hunter like me thinks she’s incredible.”
“…Is that so? Let’s catch up for now. The Metakentos seems agitated — we should be able to close the distance a little.”
“Ah — wait for me! You’re too fast, Fiore…-nim!”
Cute.
Fiore thought she understood, now, why Alice quietly looked after Pina and held her so dear.
She scooped the grumbling girl up under one arm.
“Eep?”
“You’re light. Excuse me a moment, then.”
And with that, Fiore ran, Pina still tucked against her side.
She hadn’t slung her over a shoulder or put her on her back. She simply carried her under one arm and ran.
Alice was already far ahead with the Metakentos. In the present situation, hauling Pina along was more efficient than matching her pace.
“Urgh…”
Not for Pina, of course.
She clamped a hand over her mouth. Being bounced around, lashed to someone else’s body, was doing nothing kind to her stomach.
“Just hold on a little longer.”
That’s easy for you to say!
Pina screamed the words she would never dare say to Fiore’s face. Still, just as Fiore had promised, a little endurance was all it took before her feet found the ground again.
Pina collapsed onto the earth as if her legs had given out.
Fiore smiled faintly at the sight of her sprawled and spent, then lifted her gaze. What she needed to watch now was not Pina, but Alice.
She found herself looking forward to whatever fight Alice was about to put on display.
By then, Alice and the Metakentos had already reached the place they had chosen.
The most open of the spots Alice had marked in advance. She glanced at the red spray paint she had left on a tree.
This was where she would fight the Metakentos.
A broad clearing, sparse of vines. Here, they would settle which of them was the harder blade.
――――Kiiii!!!
“You’re loud.”
I didn’t run because I was afraid of you.
Alice calmly drew her tachi and leveled it forward.
Matillo’s masterpiece.
The Rock-Cutting Blade forged from the claws and carapace of the rock-armored beast Kometras — the Comet Blade.
This sword held the grudge of a beast that had never become a knight of iron plate. Set into its hilt was the essence of a Luga-lac that desired nothing but combat.
The hunter who carried that blade was a hunter who meant to kill monsters.
The light in Alice’s eyes changed. That ever-languid, half-asleep expression shifted all at once into something steeled and hard. A faint red sheen drifted through her peach-pink irises.
In this moment, Alice chose to recreate the vision from her dream.
Not the rigid commands and combos of a game, but movement born of facing the reality she had once turned away from.
In this fight, she would find her freedom.
The Metakentos’s wings shivered; then it charged.
Alice exhaled, slow and steady, and confirmed the optimal route.
Residual Shadow Slash.
She slipped sideways in a smooth glide, dropped low, and flicked her tachi through a light cut. The stroke grazed one of the Metakentos’s legs, and she was already outside its charge range.
“…Mm.”
She must not forget the objective.
The goal was not a kill, but a capture. Until she used the anesthetic, she needed to bring the creature as close to combat-incapable as possible.
Get in close.
Alice kicked off the ground and rushed the Metakentos. She pressed right up against it and went for its pincers.
Kagagak—.
An ordinary steel sword would simply have been knocked aside — but the Rock-Cutting Blade had been forged from the byproducts of a mid-tier monster. There was little risk of it bouncing off so easily.
The Metakentos raised its forelegs. It was a six-legged insect, but the two limbs grown forward had developed into thick pincers. It knew their value well, and put them to versatile use — scooping earth, seizing objects nearby and swinging them.
Here comes the pattern.
The Metakentos swept the ground twice.
Alice did not retreat. Instead she closed in tighter still, slipping into its blind spot to evade. Monsters were huge; more than a few of them left gaps between their legs that an attacker could pass through. Lingering there risked being crushed — but as a brief transit, it made an excellent escape route. Especially against bug-like creatures like this one.
Alice flowed through Residual Shadow Slash after Residual Shadow Slash, slipping past the Metakentos’s attacks while stringing her own strikes together. Every beat of it connected without a single hard break — smooth, continuous.
In a fight with a monster, the flow of offense must never be interrupted except by evasion. Speed and decisiveness: that was the motto of every hunter, and it was Alice’s way of fighting.
The tachi, in particular, excelled at keeping that flow alive. It was outstanding for clinging stubbornly and bringing a target down. That did not mean its attacks were weak, either. When cut after cut stacked up, when the body heated and power filled the hands, the blade became something fully tempered — and then it delivered a single decisive blow.
“Hah…”
Alice let out a breath. At the same time she gripped the hilt as if to crush it, thrust her arms overhead, and raised the tachi high toward the sky.
Dragon Bone Cleave.
She stamped forward hard and brought the blade down in a two-handed, sweeping cut. A simple overhead slash — but the force in it carried a hunter’s full power.
Shraak—!
――――Kiiirr!!
The Metakentos staggered back in pain, scraping its wings together.
Fadududu—.
In an instant it unfurled those wings and took to the air. Sand and dust billowed up; the thrashing of its wings filled the clearing. Because of its massively developed forelegs, it could not stay aloft for long. Those wings existed for one purpose: a sudden, crushing ambush.
It hurled its body forward.
Ambush pattern.
One of the Metakentos’s strongest attacks, locked in Alice’s memory. Against this pattern, holding a diagonal line while advancing was far easier than dodging to the side or rear.
Alice sheathed her tachi and ran. But running alone would not quite close the distance.
“Hup!”
If it catches me, I’m done.
She forced her body into a dive and rolled clear of the ambush.
Kugugung—!
The trees behind where she had stood were shredded by the Metakentos’s pincers and toppled. Alice rolled hard across the ground, then rose, brushed the dirt from herself, and drew her tachi again.
She looked at the blade.
The Luga-lac’s essence, its gauge full, was waiting for her. A dark-crimson aura bled from the tachi. The essence wanted its power used. Alice, for her part, intended to unleash it.
The Metakentos, having slammed hard into the ground and the trees, staggered as it turned its back. The impact of its flight had transferred straight into its own body; even a monster would struggle to absorb that much of its own bulk.
That brief pause after the ambush.
Now.
The common skill of a tachi’s essence was simple.
It only cut.
Alice gripped the tachi tight and slid it into its scabbard. She was not sheathing it for freedom of movement. She was sealing the essence’s power inside the scabbard so none of it could leak away. Force that would not fully fit spilled upward like smoke between the scabbard and the guard.
Alice waited for her moment.
For the instant the Metakentos turned back toward her.
And when it did — when it twisted around to find her —
the moment their eyes met, Alice drew.
True Iai Slash.
Her blade left the scabbard. Steeped in power, the tachi glowed a searing red. Alice swept it sideways in a great horizontal arc. The essence’s force, held inside the scabbard, gathered along the blade and poured itself wholly into the attack.
A dark-crimson line scored the air along the edge.
It was a single stroke that fused a hunter’s full strength with a monster’s power.
The line etched itself across the Metakentos’s pincer-carapace.
Crack—.
Then the dark-crimson line detonated.
――――KIIiiii!!!
The line vanished. Fractures raced outward, and the outer shell of the pincer shattered.
The Metakentos collapsed — driven into a groggy state by the successive, crushing impacts.
“…Hmph.”
Alice regarded it without expression and flicked the blood from her blade tip.
The Metakentos was no hunter.
It was prey.