Chapter 168: Creating an Opportunity - 9
Chapter 168: Creating an Opportunity - 9
Narsha let out a light laugh.
"Sure. If you're still breathing by then, I'll give you another chance to beg. Beg nicely, and I'll let you live."
Narsha, the small queen silhouetted against the darkness, flicked her hand in a casual gesture.
The armed men rushed the three of them as one.
"Watch yourselves. Don't come near me."
"What?"
Leticia, who had been about to step in front of Jiha, hesitated. Yura also turned back, startled.
Both were Uniques, among the mightiest warriors in Warsland.
Even if Jiha was stronger than the two of them, he couldn't possibly match a Unique's Mana recovery speed in a drawn-out fight, could he?
And even if he was stronger, wasn't it standard practice to group together when a small force faced superior numbers?
Leticia and Yura both had their doubts, but they followed the order and moved aside.
"Haaah..."
Irritated, Leticia launched herself at the escort guards and swung her leg.
With Mana coiled around her leg and a blade of wind, the guards never even got the chance to raise their swords before she sent them flying.
Yura likewise stayed airborne, raining down light bullets to take the guards out.
At a glance, fighting with two Uniques backing you up seemed safer—but it wasn't.
'Those two aren't the type who fight while protecting someone else.'
Most Uniques were solo combatants. They'd never done coordinated tactics on a battlefield.
If they tried to focus on guarding Jiha, they'd just trip over each other.
And victory was impossible if they fought purely defensively anyway.
Narsha could always just throw in more troops—or simply run away.
"Hm..."
Jiha spotted three escort guards charging at him and launched a Shadow Hand.
One of them must have already known about it—he retreated and dodged. Another slashed his sword through the Shadow Hand and shattered it.
The blade flared bright, and the Shadow Hand dissolved feebly.
'That's a nice sword.'
Kamain and Lungtao had scattered Shadow Hand with pure skill.
The one just now pulled it off purely because his sword was exceptional.
A whole unit armed with fine blades, every last one of them—these bastards weren't to be taken lightly.
Jiha kicked off the ground and drove his fist at the lead man's face.
"Huh?"
The guard's expression stiffened. He'd been about to swing his arm, but Jiha had closed the distance in a flash and thrown the punch first.
Crack!
Jiha's fist, thrown before the man could react, smashed his face in.
The other two, fresh off dealing with the Shadow Hand, turned grim at the sight.
Jiha charged again, drawing his Grade 3 shortsword.
"You bastard!"
Jiha moved his left arm as if to swing the sword, and the man in front naturally raised his blade to parry.
But Jiha used the motion of his left arm, the snap of his left wrist, to sell the feint—and then immediately kicked upward with his right foot.
"Gah?!"
A simple feint, but it worked.
'These bastards have weapons that are way too good... They love them to death.'
Crunch!
"Gyaaaaagh!!"
The man's knee shattered under Jiha's front kick, and he collapsed with a shriek.
Jiha turned to the last one, who hesitated for a beat—then drew a second sword. He was dual-wielding a longsword and a dagger. The third guard bared his teeth.
"You punk, don't underestimate me. I'm a squad lea—"
Shadow Hand erupted from beneath him, seized his ankle, and hurled him high overhead.
"Uwaaaagh?!"
Jiha had already turned toward the next threat.
Boom!!
Behind him came the thud of a body hitting the ground, bones snapping. Ahead, five more blocked his path.
'That's the trouble with weapons you earn by bowing and scraping to an arrogant bitch like her. You get the illusion that your own skill has somehow grown... So you can't help but love your weapon—you can't stand not to. And when you fight, you try to rely on the weapon in your hands alone.'
As Jiha closed in, the five readied their weapons—a hammer, a sword, an axe, a bow, a spear.
"That's all you people have."
A fight isn't decided by weapons alone.
He just had to teach them that.
Fifteen men down in a flash. Jiha advanced, and five more stepped in front of him.
Behind him, Leticia and Yura were steadily thinning the ranks, but they were simply matching force with force.
They hadn't taken a single scratch, but their takedown rate was sluggish.
"What a pain..."
Jiha pushed off the ground, leaped, and unfurled his Wings.
Thanks to his increased Mana, he could sustain flight for twenty seconds now.
"Wh—"
No matter how fine the guards' weapons were, they couldn't reach Jiha while he was flying high.
It wasn't that they lacked ranged weapons—but Jiha's Mana-powered flight was simply too swift for that.
Boom!!
He let himself free-fall, then extended his Wings again just before impact, landing at the rearmost line. Jiha fixed his eyes on the opponent directly ahead of him.
Narsha, who had sent over a hundred guards forward and stood watching with her arms crossed, raised a single eyebrow.
The expression of a human observing a monkey with a mildly impressive trick.
"So shadows aren't your only skill. You can fly, too? For a man, you've got quite the bag of tricks."
The three men guarding Narsha each took hold of their weapons.
Jiha walked straight toward them without a flicker of hesitation.
The first man thrust a polearm at him. Jiha kicked it aside to deflect, used the shaft as a pivot, and launched a spinning wheel kick that sent the man tumbling away.
Reinforcing his legs with Mana made it effortless.
"What..."
The second man lunged with a longsword. Jiha dropped low, feinting to meet the lunge with his shortsword—then slammed his empty fist into the man's gut.
Sure enough, the opponent had been fixated entirely on the blade. He took the strike to the abdomen and went rolling.
The last one adjusted his grip on a hand axe... and that was when the terrifying sound of a void-rending crack split the air.
Jiha flung himself sideways just in time. The man wasn't so lucky.
"Gruaaagh?!"
A blow lashed in from behind, and the guard was instantly reduced to a bloodied heap, writhing on the ground.
Narsha had snapped her whip while she watched.
Her small frame meant she was hidden from view behind her own guards—and she'd used that to her advantage.
Exquisitely done. Jiha had only dodged by reacting to the sound, since he'd seen her whip technique when she lashed Lungtao.
But that strike had unquestionably caught her own subordinate in the radius.
Narsha drew the whip back and tsked.
"I was aiming for a quick kill, but it missed. Now things are annoying."
"...."
"Why are you looking at me like that? Ah, right. 'Isn't it a bit much to hit your own people?' Is that what you're about to say? That Unique Asira once called it advice—something along those lines—and said the same thing. A demon spouting noble nonsense... really stuck in my craw."
Narsha snorted.
"There's no end of men who flock to me at the sight of my weapons. They keep swarming even if I do nothing. The endless swarm of them is revolting. What does it matter if I kill a few?"
"You remember every word of it, don't you."
"...What?"
Jiha said it calmly.
"Asira says she doesn't know you well, but you remember exactly what she said. It must've left quite the impression, huh?"
"...."
"Either no one's ever spoken to you that way before... or you felt called out just enough to—"
Crack!
The sound of the air tearing open. Jiha flung himself aside immediately.
Trickle.
He'd definitely dodged, but his cheek was still gashed open, blood running down.
'I can't just dodge by sight alone. That whip cuts everything around it too.'
A weapon forged by a Dirga—the finest weapon-smiths in Warsland—crafted personally by Narsha, a Unique among them, for her own use.
Literally a weapon imbued with the power of Void Rend.
'I can't gauge its effective range.'
How far did that void-rending force extend? How much distance did he actually need to give it? He had no sense of it.
Maybe he could get used to it with enough exposure—but a long fight against a Unique?
Considering a Unique's overwhelming Mana recovery speed, his only path to survival was a swift, decisive engagement.
But to overcome that whip, a prolonged fight seemed unavoidable.
Its raw power was simple, but in the hands of a Unique, it was a maddening weapon.
"A weapon that shows exactly who you are."
"I thought you might actually be useful... I take it back. Your mouth is too foul. Even if I keep you alive, I'll have to cut out your tongue first."
Narsha's voice was icy.
"Just in case, I'll leave your lower half intact. If you don't want to lose it, you'd better prove—desperately—that you're the most exceptional man available. If a better candidate for Helper shows up, you'll be useless, and I'll cut it off then."
"You really are Warsland through and through, aren't you. I don't know who the beauty queen of Warsland is, but I'll happily name you the queen bitch."
Cut out his tongue, then leave him intact below the waist as a stud candidate—only to cut that off too if another stud showed up. Wasn't that basically her declaration?
"Pet neutering isn't even this cold."
"You're not an animal. You're a slave."
Narsha regripped her whip.
A pale, bluish Mana flickered along it as the whip writhed like a snake.
Mana coiled around her, and Narsha smiled cruelly.
"There's no shame in being a slave. Every man in Warsland is my slave."
"And what happens when every other woman's blood pressure spikes?"
"It's the truth—what can I do? I never even asked for it, yet men just swear their loyalty and grovel with their palms out on their own. The world is crammed full of sons of bitches who bark that they'll do anything if I just give them a weapon."
Narsha scoffed.
"I've never once been the one to reach out to a man first. But if I call, there isn't a man alive who'd refuse. Who would turn down an offer to receive a fine weapon, and then, if he performs well, be made my Helper—with a chance to lay hands on me?"
"I get it. This is your first time experiencing a man who thinks you're a complete fool, isn't it? Everyone's first time hurts, but what can you do? This is reality."
Jiha said it with exaggerated solicitous care.
"Even if you were stripped naked, I wouldn't feel a damn thing. You runt."
"...."
Crack!
The whip came flying. Jiha leaped forward on a diagonal line.
He'd moved by reading her wrist snap, not the whip itself, and even then the attack was blindingly fast.
It lashed down, twisting like a living thing, cleaving the earth and making the ground shudder.
"You disgust me. I'll just kill you..."
Narsha's face twisted. She lashed the whip relentlessly.
Jiha kept evading on diagonals, pushing closer, but each near-dodge tore open new gashes and sprayed blood.
By the time he had closed half the distance to Narsha, his body was a patchwork of gashes, soaked in blood.
"Idiot. The closer you get, the harder it is to dodge—"
In the split second Narsha's face filled with contempt, Jiha hurled the shortsword in his hand straight at her head.
The sneering Narsha wrenched her body aside, but Jiha threw a follow-up dagger as he rushed in.
She dodged the two-throw combination frantically, and when Jiha closed to point-blank range, she swung her arm in frustration.
In close quarters, a whip was unwieldy. She had to go hand-to-hand.
"A mere man, how dare you!"
Whoosh!
A Unique's arm swung with Mana behind it. She clearly had no talent for hand-to-hand—the swing was sloppy and horizontal—but it was heavily reinforced with Mana.
On top of that, pale white armor suddenly bloomed from her skin and encased her entirely.
But Jiha drew the Gladius he'd been saving, swung it toward her arm—and layered the Wind Blade over it.
And on top of that, he activated the Gladius's Special Ability: extending its blade length.
Shnnnk!!
"...Ah."
A deep gash split her arm, blood spraying. Narsha staggered back, shocked.
A grievous wound, clear down to the bone. Her expression said she'd never imagined her Mana-hardened, armor-clad arm could be cut by a weapon like that.
A simple sword swing wouldn't have carved so deep... but the Wind Blade ignored defense.
Worse, he'd instantly extended the Gladius's edge, warping her sense of distance.
Even if she noticed the Wind Blade, he'd led her to assume she was safely out of range to be cut deeply.
Then, at the last instant, he'd activated it—and succeeded in inflicting a wound that nearly severed her arm.
Reflexively, she clamped her other hand over the gushing limb.
The sight of her own blood made her recoil.
Reading Narsha's reaction, Jiha made the call in an instant.
'I'm taking her head right here!'
If ever there was a chance to kill her, this was it.
The Gladius's blade extension had consumed more Mana than expected, but if he squeezed out every last drop, he could fire off one more Wind Blade.
Jiha lunged for her neck. Narsha, frozen stiff, simply stared blankly.
The queen who'd been so arrogantly cracking her whip just moments ago had gone utterly pale.
Boom!!
Just as Jiha surged forward to end it, pouring strength into his arm—a massive figure dropped down in front of Narsha, blocking his path.
Regret flashed through him, then was swallowed by a surge of danger. Jiha leaped backward.
The massive figure that had crashed down, shattering the ground, slowly straightened up.
A tiger beastman with a solemn face. Lungtao.
"Lu-Lungtao..."
Clutching her bleeding arm, Narsha exhaled in raw relief.
Then her eyes flashed murderously, and she pointed at Jiha.
"That bastard made me see my own blood! Kill him this instant!"
"...."
The tiger beastman, without a single wound on him, stood quietly watching Jiha.
Jiha, by contrast, was drenched in blood. Between using the Wind Blade and the Gladius's Special Ability, his Mana was below half.
"Lord Jiha!"
"Wait!"
Leticia and Yura were shouting from behind, sprinting toward him—but they were too far.
If Lungtao and Narsha coordinated, Jiha in his current state wouldn't last six seconds.
Utterly cornered, Jiha asked it like a man.
"Are you going to do it?"
Even if he died fighting, he'd die like a man.
With his head held high.