Sharpening the Rusty Blade
KWA-GA-GA-GA-GA-GWANG—!
The sounds of clashing blows piled one atop another in quick succession.
Because the impacts overlapped, dozens of exchanges sounded, at a careless glance, like a single drawn-out strike.
The lion's claws and the spirit's blade. Every time these two weapons—which had never yet met a worthy opponent—collided, brilliant sparks scattered through the dust, leaving behind traces of their struggle.
Before one could fade, another burst free, and a gorgeous afterglow scattered in continuous trails like a fireworks display.
"Hup!"
"Ggh..."
Crack-boom— KWA-GA-GWANG!
A brief stalemate. The claws and the blade, each whittling away at the other, locked together—and then, at last, the thunder born from the sword engulfed the lion.
That blade—once wielded by a hero of old, later reforged by a one-eyed blacksmith and his personal smith—unleashed a roar of tremendous force that surpassed even ordinary magic swords.
It was an attack powerful enough to wipe out even the deepest-floor monsters in a single stroke. Yet the opponent didn't so much as flinch before launching his next assault.
The Colossus pressed his attack, treating that terrifying lightning like a mere static charge. Vesta clicked his tongue at that monster's stamina and defense, and swiftly broke away.
Where Vesta had only one arm, the Colossus's attacks rained in from every direction. Worse, each individual claw was a fearsome weapon that the Destroyer's could not even begin to compare with.
Against a warrior bearing both spear and shield, even the spirit's weapon found it hard to hold its own.
A terrifying opponent. Truly, it was hard to believe they were the same species.
Even a man like this had fallen to the Black Dragon. Once more, Vesta was reminded of just how absurd the thing he had done truly was.
And of how many sacrifices it had been built upon.
And it would not be a matter confined to his generation alone.
Not just his own people, but the Zeus Familia and the Hera Familia, and further still, the ancient heroes who had lived in ages long past.
Their hopes had been passed down, and the era in which he lived had simply been where that fruit finally ripened. He reminded himself of it once more: he was merely one of them, a man lucky enough to be handed the role of tasting that glory.
But now was no time to lose himself in such sentiments. That was that, and this was this. For now, he would focus on nothing but winning this bout.
He twisted his head sharply. In the same instant, the lion's claws swept past by a hair's breadth, and several strands of white hair were sheared away, fluttering pitifully into the air.
...He had less room than he'd thought. Even with his best predictions, it was a close call. Part of it was that the man was adapting to his movements, but this was...
'He's getting faster?'
Astonishingly, the Colossus appeared to still be loosening up. To think he still wasn't at full power—so the title of strongest adventurer in history hadn't come free after all...
'What do I do?'
If this went on, the odds were high that an attack would land eventually. In a close-quarters fight like this, high-speed maneuvering built on his charge was unusable.
First, he should safely open the distance, then build up acceleration again...
"..."
Stop. His legs halted.
"Hm?"
The Colossus stopped too, following his lead—though it felt less like the man had chosen to stop, and more like he'd stopped because Vesta had.
Regardless, Vesta couldn't lift his head, drowning in a surging wave of self-loathing.
What? Open the distance "safely"? Build up acceleration "again"?
'Pathetic bastard.'
The curse he flung at himself struck deep. In that instant, he grasped, viscerally, how long he had let himself rest easy.
Just how dulled had he become?
He wasn't talking about technique or senses. This was a matter of resolve.
'An adventurer who fears adventure.'
Of course, being an adventurer didn't mean constantly gambling your life away.
But—but still. This world was not so forgiving a place that you could carry a lukewarm thought like "safely" into a fight where lives hung in the balance and expect to live through it.
Only moments ago he'd been prattling on about blazing new paths, and the instant things got a little dangerous, he'd disgracefully begun plotting his retreat.
'Absolutely not.'
How could he ever show his face after such cowardice?
It was true that the adventures he'd walked were sorry enough to be called a chronicle of retreats. But even so, there were fights from which one must not run.
This was one of them. He could feel it: if he backed down here, then somewhere down the line, he would find himself blocked by something and simply give up again.
"Hoo—"
He let out a long breath. In that single exhale, he cast off the hesitation inside him.
He scrubbed away the rust that had worked its way into his soul.
He whetted his dulled heart sharp again.
Bearing his honed resolve, he fixed his eyes once more on the enemy before him.
"Thank you."
Perhaps the Colossus had sensed his change; as the man regarded him with a fresh, appraising eye, Vesta offered his gratitude.
He hadn't noticed. He hadn't realized his resolve had rusted this badly.
That it had dulled this far.
Most likely, the Colossus had caught sight of this heart that even Vesta himself had overlooked. That must have been why the man had found him wanting and wagered this contest in the first place.
'Honestly. How humiliating.'
It had always been this way. The moment he let his guard down, he slackened, stretched, and started taking the easy road.
He was still failing to escape being a pathetic, half-baked greenhorn.
Now especially so. If no one stood beside him to shake him awake, there was no telling how far he would fall apart.
If the Colossus hadn't shown him, how far would he have sunk? Perhaps he was already at rock bottom...
"Thanks to you, my eyes have been opened."
"Is that so."
The Colossus offered nothing more than a curt reply. Perhaps he disliked the pause in the fighting.
In that case, they would simply begin again. Vesta wanted to restore this rotting state of mind of his to what it should be, too.
"Hoo—"
He drew in a deep breath, and in the same moment, shoved every bothersome thing away into a corner of his mind.
Adventure. He steadied his heart back to the way it had been in those days.
Tensing his gut and legs. Glaring at his opponent. Gripping his weapon tight.
He charged—
"HAAAAAAA!!"
The rabbit's war cry once more proclaimed the start of the battle.
The lion roared a welcome, and the two men clashed again.
But there was one difference from before.
Zzzt—
'?!'
White light bloomed in two places at once.
One was on a single foot, just as before.
And the other was on the sword wreathed in lightning.
The foot grinding against the ground exploded forward.
One second of stored charge. A speed with which the lion was by now thoroughly familiar.
He swung his prized claws at exactly the right timing. A perfect strike, swung at the perfect moment. Every experience up to now said that method could produce only straight-line movement.
So reading the direction of the charging foot to predict the angle of approach was an easy task. Swinging his claws in time with that speed had been almost trivially simple.
The lion's claws would carve through the rabbit and slit his throat. The lion believed it without a shadow of doubt.
"What...?"
But his hand sliced through empty air.
Barely had he registered the baffling absence of any impact when he spotted the rabbit standing in the razor-thin margin just beyond the reach of his hand.
Looking down, he found one patch of the ground completely torn up. Seeing it, Maxim understood.
His opponent had accelerated on one leg while braking with the other. Just as the lion had read the rabbit's timing, the rabbit had now learned to read his range.
No—wait, that was wrong. He didn't mean to slight his opponent, but the man had never moved like this before. He had preferred to dodge in wide arcs or parry with his weapon, wary of the lion's claws.
The Colossus hadn't thought that a mistake. His claws were exactly that dangerous. If anything, he'd been impressed that the boy had held out this long against them.
A weapon capable of blocking his claws, and the speed to slip clear of his strikes. The opponent had answered his attacks with two methods, and answered them well.
But that last maneuver had been a hair's breadth from being shredded by his claws—and no one would have blinked. A dodge that left barely a single layer of skin between them, a fighting style completely unlike everything that had come before.
Was his life of no concern to him at all? Before the question could even form, the rabbit's fangs flashed against the lion.
"Ghk?!"
In the same instant the rabbit grazed past him, a searing sensation flared along his flank.
Tracing the feeling, he found something red running down his side.
A crimson liquid, welling from a gap he'd have sworn couldn't be wounded.
His own blood. A shameful amount, barely a single drop—but it was the first wound the rabbit had ever dealt the lion.
At the sight of it, the lion's eyes went wide. Him, bleeding. How long had it been since anything like this?
Shk— the corner of his mouth curled upward. With a fight that had only just begun, his body was burning hotter and hotter. To think there existed someone who could cross blades with him like this—what in the world was this creature made of?
Making no effort to hide the grin creeping across his face, the lion's gaze locked onto the rabbit.
He'd received it, so now it was time to return the favor. It was only a scratch—but even a hundred wounds this shallow held no terror for him.
From the look of it, that attack was a skill that grew stronger the longer the power accumulated. Once released, it had to begin gathering from zero all over again.
So producing anything beyond that level of power would be difficult. There was no reason to be on guard...
Zzzt—
"What...?"
As if to sweep the thought away, the rabbit's attack came flying again.
This time with a strike even more powerful than the last.
'How...? He shouldn't have had the time to gather more power than that last blow...?'
The reason became clear almost immediately.
Particles of light still clinging to the sword even after the strike.
He was maintaining the charge while attacking.
Simultaneous Charging.
Unlike in the past, when he'd had to devote himself to charging alone to build power, now he could strike while charging at the same time.
True, the power was lower than a fully released blow—but a force that climbed ever higher was not something to be dismissed.
Strength rising little by little—and with it, damage beginning to accumulate little by little.
The edge still wasn't especially effective, so the blows were closer to bludgeons than slashes, but the mounting force had begun punching through the hide and reaching the flesh beneath.
'Impressive.'
The escalating power alone was one thing, but if that moment-of-release strike landed square, even his hide wouldn't come away whole.
And even setting that aside, an attack that kept growing stronger was threatening in itself. If it intensified with every strike independent of that skill, did the boy have the [Consecutive Attack] development ability as well?
In any case, he had to break this torrent of relentless offense. The Colossus swept his arm in a wide arc, trying to shake the rabbit loose—
"What...?"
By a hair's breadth—truly leaving just one layer of hide in reserve—the rabbit achieved a dodge that could only be called flawless.
'He got faster?'
It was the only explanation. In the brief moment the lion faltered at movement on an entirely different level from before, three attacks came flying in.
After several more exchanges, the Colossus understood. The strikes weren't missing because the rabbit had gotten faster.
It was that, as the struggle continued, the rust built up over long years was peeling away, and his dulled senses were sharpening.
Honing his own rusted-through self to a fine edge, executing dodges so razor-thin they bordered on recklessness, and staking his life on fearless assaults—it was a way of moving the lion, born strong, could never comprehend. Born with overwhelming power, the lion simply could not understand the rabbit's weakness.
The rabbit who had racked his meager brain to shore up that weakness, who had marched forward wearing defeat like a coat of mud—the lion who had always stood at the summit could never understand him.
But one thing, at least, he could understand: the trail the rabbit had walked to get here.
'I see. So you, too...'
He had already been, quite fully, an adventurer.
The Colossus had briefly forgotten that this, too, was a man who had arrived here through countless adventures.
He had stood at the peak for so long that he'd come to take that seat for granted—even though the world was full of the strong, full of people struggling desperately to grow stronger!
"Krkkrk..."
A laugh escaped him unbidden. How many times now had fighting this rabbit taught him something?
In that moment, the lion finally admitted it: he, too, was still a flawed, incomplete being.
At some point, he realized, he too had been carrying his own arrogance. And now, at last, he cast it off.
"My thanks."
Just as the rabbit had done moments before, the lion offered his courtesies to the benefactor who had granted him an insight.
And he prepared a gift of his own in return. The greatest repayment he could give.
He would present the rabbit with the finest strike he possessed. With that resolve, the lion reached for the pillar beside him—and gripped the handle fixed to its end.
The lion did not use weapons. Because everything that had made him what he was had always been his most powerful weapon.
Hide that would never be pierced. Legs that would never buckle. Claws that had split everything in their path.
The Colossus had need of neither weapon nor armor. So what meaning could there be in such a man taking up a weapon?
Did it carry some special effect?
Was the enemy one difficult to handle by hand alone?
Or was it merely an occasional hobby?
None of those. The reason he took up a weapon was one, and one thing only—
"Beyond the far reaches of the wilderness,"
⟨ ... ⟩
—because it was to unleash his magic.
The instant the first line left his lips, the air itself seemed to sink.
Along with his focus, an overwhelming dread bore down upon the space.
The rabbit grasped the change at once and threw himself into a furious assault. His instincts screamed that the spell must never be completed.
Two powers climbing steadily higher. The lion took the rabbit's attacks head-on, and the rabbit, sword in hand to cut the lion's song short, hammered into him without mercy.
"—Ringing out across the tempest-torn sea,"
But the lion's song did not stop.
Shockwaves burrowed through his hide. Still closer to bludgeoning than cutting, but unlike the earlier blows that had barely registered, a dull, heavy impact had begun to pile up within the lion's body.
Yet without a flicker of concern, the lion carried the song on. The lion had never learned difficult techniques like parallel chanting. There had never been any need.
His hide was the fortress of the indestructible. As the bearer of an absolutely impenetrable shield, he had never once felt the need to master simultaneous casting.
And that conviction had not changed now, either.
The light-laden blade crashed into the lion's face. His upper body bent back at a severe angle—but still the lion continued the song in a steady, unshaken voice.
"—It is the father's roar that shakes the heavens,"
And then, at last, it was complete.
"—the wrath of the heavens divine, proclaiming the end of all things."
⟨ Sound of the Twin Skulls ⟩
The pillar—no, the colossal club he had taken for a pillar—began to steep in a dull, heavy light.
Watching that light, fierce as lightning yet swelling with ponderous weight, the rabbit knew by instinct.
The end of this battle was drawing near.
"..."
There was nothing left to say. Even by the rabbit's own judgment, it was not a bad way to close things out.
Beyond proving his strength here and now, he would think of nothing else.
White light and savage lightning came to rest upon their respective weapons.
A moment of stillness. A fleeting instant that felt like eternity hung between the two of them.
And then it shattered.
"UOOOOOOO!!"
"AAAAAAAHH!!"
It seemed they had each taken a single step—and in the next breath, the two men collided.
Pouring every ounce of strength into the weapons in their grips, they swung at full power to smash one another to pieces.
"[Sound of the Twin Skulls]"
The Colossus's magic activated. And in the same instant, he released everything he had gathered.
Nearly a full minute of stored charge. The suppressed light broke free and collided with that terrifying thunder.
It was a collision of forces so vast that even far-off Orario could feel it. Ordinary folk thought an earthquake had struck; every strong soul in the city felt the swell of that colossal power.
The locked forces, straining against each other in perfect balance, howled without cease, each striving to hurl the other back and obliterate everything around them.
And Vesta saw it.
The pillar wreathed in lightning, smashing clean through his light.
The moment he registered that his single strike was being crushed, the blow struck the rabbit's body dead-on—and the rabbit's consciousness vanished entirely, right then and there.
And now, at the Zeus Familia home.
"This brat is..."
"You know him, old man?"
Zeus was flustered by the sudden arrival of this white-haired boy(?)—yet while ignoring Zard's question, he reeled in stunned disbelief.
No—why in the world is this kid here?!