Never in My Life Had I Faced a Swordsman

Clang!

He forced the greatsword back down as it rebounded overhead. His wrist screamed. His palm split open.

"Hup!"

Blood welled and soaked the hilt. Careful not to let the slick betray him, he seized the sword again. The muscles of his arm drew taut and strained; after such relentless abuse, even moving was no simple thing.

"───."

"Kh!"

He planted the greatsword upright ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠like a pillar and caught the blade flying for his waist.

Tong!

Instead of the clash of metal, a sound like a bell rang out. Sword was driven back without resistance, as if wheels had been bolted to his feet.

"A monster..."

Sword lifted the corner of his mouth. His blood was boiling. This was a formidable foe unlike Dan Miryu—and a proper one, a man who fought with a sword.

Sword against sword. Swordsman against swordsman. Warrior against warrior.

Was that not a romance no man could bear to pass up?

"Never in my life had I had cause to face a swordsman."

However many ability users there were, none of them took up a blade. It stood to reason. A gun beat a sword, and a honed superpower beat a gun. Most of them used tools suited to their abilities, and never laid a hand on anything so anachronistic as a sword.

The black-haired Great Shrine Maiden seemed to wield one... but well. Her level was too low to count her as a swordsman.

The first true swordsman Sword had ever seen alive was the Third Apostle before him now.

Perhaps that was why. From time to time he had wanted to settle a match blade to blade, the way they did in Chinese films. It was a faint, boyish dream still lingering in his chest.

"Never thought I'd get to fulfill it here..."

He met the incoming sword again with the greatsword.

An instant before the collision, the Third Apostle's blade bent like a snake. It was no superpower. It was technique—acrobatics honed to an extreme.

A viper flew for his throat. He barely twisted his head aside. The fang passed shallow. Pshuk. He had avoided a fatal wound. A little deeper, and he would have gone to meet his wife.

Crunch.

A roar of bone being crushed rang out.

"─!"

The Third Apostle's ghost-fire wavered. Sword grinned, then stamped down on the Third Apostle's foot, cutting short the retreat he had been about to make.

"Striking arts aren't bad, are they?"

Because the Third Apostle had gone for the throat, the space between them had collapsed. Hammering him with bare hands would be faster than recovering the sword and sending it out again.

Before the Third Apostle could answer at all—

A severing slash tore from the edge of the greatsword.

He had never meant to use his fists in the first place. Both hands were on the hilt. What was he supposed to punch with?

The Third Apostle's ghost-fire swelled all at once. Point-blank. Dodging was impossible.

Shwa-jak-jak!

The Third Apostle's conical hat was shredded without a trace. The Third Apostle himself, however, was no longer there.

"Whew."

Sword whistled.

"Seeing it in person really is something else."

He had already heard everything about the Third Apostle's ability from that damned Phantom. But until you saw a thing with your own eyes, it remained uncertain.

Srrk.

The Third Apostle, having slipped the attack, appeared again at a distance. With the hat gone, his face was laid entirely bare.

Not even as a courtesy could that face be called pleasant.

Bandages wound it round and round. Of skin, nothing showed but two eyes in which ghost-fire flickered. He had no nose, no mouth, no ears.

"......"

The Third Apostle took up his sword and set his stance. There was no agitation in him. Like a ghost, he only fixed upon his enemy.

"Can you talk? You seem to know how to scream."

"......"

The Third Apostle was silent, as if an answer were beneath him.

Sword shrugged.

"Well. Wasn't expecting much."

"......"

Fwoosh!

Flame rippled along the Third Apostle's sword—the same fire as the ghost-fire burning in his eyes.

Tak!

Kang!

"...What!"

The instant the Third Apostle stamped his foot, he was at the tip of Sword's nose. Sword-strokes poured in, beyond any comparison with what had come before.

The moment their blades met, a voice drove into his mind. Clinging, filthy. It was like a ghost's funeral song.

Kak-kak-kak!

Sword used his own weight to let the sword slide. Greatsword and blade ate into ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠each other's steel.

The sword's flame hungered for the greatsword. Sword raised a severing slash and swept the fire aside.

Within the scattering sparks lay a man's past. The man was holding a woman, and his face was happy.

His head ached. Someone's grudge was being hammered into him by force. He felt thoroughly sick. The longer the blades stayed locked, the worse it became.

"Save the sob stories for the radio!"

Sword swung the greatsword and shook the blade off. The sword wreathed in ghost-fire stopped dead in midair, then cut straight downward.

What kind of gorged, ill-gotten strength was that?

Overwhelming muscle that defied everything a body ought to be able to do. Strength that should never have come from a frame so slender. How strong would a man have to be to force a deflected sword back by raw power alone?

He could no longer meet the descending blade with the greatsword. The hilt—he dragged it in, wringing out everything he had and everything he didn't.

Unlike the Third Apostle, Sword was an ordinary human. At the unnatural motion his arm screamed. Muscle ruptured. Roll up the sleeve, and the arm would be black with blood-bruises.

Shwa-jak!

The severing slash that leapt from the hilt met the sword. Sparks flew, and again he saw the man's past.

This time the man was young. Elementary-school age, perhaps? Clad in a single miserable rag, he crawled through a back alley. For an instant, purely human pity rose in Sword. The child was pitiful.

"Haaaap!"

He roared. He wiped the stray thought away at once, but an opening still had its price.

The sword split his side. The searing sensation snapped his mind awake.

The greatsword shuddered. A condensed severing slash advanced on the Third Apostle, who blurred his body and slipped free of it. Sword pressed hard on his flank.

"Hoo."

It had not reached the organs. Even so—

"Damn it."

His vision had split in two. One side showed the present. The other was a landscape laid over it like virtual reality.

"Abominably troublesome."

Closing one eye did nothing; the other landscape refused to vanish. In effect he had lost an eye. No—it was worse than that. His very senses were being scrambled from one instant to the next.

"Is that why you're crying that it's unfair? You want someone to understand you?"

The Third Apostle raised his sword without a flicker of emotion.

Sword snorted.

"I heard that when that damned Phantom broke your sword, you wailed and threw a fit. Was I wrong?"

"──!"

The ghost-fire shrank, then swelled, as if he were gasping for breath.

"Must have rattled you. You had to make them ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠know, and you couldn't make them know a single thing."

The unknown man who appeared inside the grudge—that man was the Third Apostle of the past. Ordinary, unimpressive, nothing like what stood here now. Sword could not begin to guess what had to happen to a person for him to change like this.

What was certain was that the man's life had been a wretched one. If it was the past Sword had been shown, it was a story many people would grieve over.

But only that far.

From the moment he cast off being human and became a ghost, he was finished. And he was hardly the only human who had abandoned humanity.

Kugu-gugu!

"Round two."

"───!"

The Third Apostle's ghost-fire ballooned.

Sword's momentum changed.

A killing intent that did not fall short of what the Third Apostle gave off—no, that surpassed it—swept over them in an instant. It was an incomprehensible sight. The weaker fighter, driven back all this time, suddenly growing stronger? The only way to read it was that he had been hiding his strength.

"Third Apostle."

Sword's pupils stained red.

"You lost everything in a single moment. Your home, your family, yourself."

Sword touched his side. The wound had closed as if time itself had run backward.

"Was what you held before you died not the one you loved, but a sword?"

"Krk."

A rattling, phlegmy sound came from the Third Apostle. The ghost-fire wept tears of blood.

"Pitiful. They say he who rises by the sword falls by the sword. You're exactly that sort."

Shuuung!

The Third Apostle swung. Ghost-fire curved like a crescent and flew.

Whoong!

Sword swung at his leisure.

Kwakwakwa!

The crescent was swallowed by a greater crescent and vanished.

"Hoo. As expected, I can't hold this for long."

Sword pressed a hand to the corner of his eye. His head was noisy enough already, and the Third Apostle's ability had taken a bite out of his mind.

"Let's finish this. Quickly. Unlike you, I've got a family that's still alive."

"────!!!"

The Third Apostle howled.

Killing intent geysered up. Resentment and grudge—hatred for the world—blanketed the world. Meeting that killing intent head-on, Sword released his own.

That time when death had stood before his eyes. That time when he had transcended his limits without end. That time when he had stood against the transcendent of Life. That time when he had sold his soul to a demon...!

He looked back on those moments.

The realm of transcendence. Still a distant realm. But because he had once dwelled there, he could step inside it, if only for a moment.

Of course.

"Kuluk."

He would pay the price. He still had his life, so he probably would not die.

If I die before that, it's all for nothing.

The Third Apostle was not at full strength either. Neither was Sword. The probing exchange was over. Only the moment of collision remained.

"Sword-ghost. Shall we fight, and see which of us is more the ghost?"

"───!!!"

The evil spirit laughed like a madman, and the sword-ghost spilled its resentment.

Two ghosts collided.