Duel #8
A crisp, wet snap of muscle and bone rang out so cleanly it almost made me drop my guard from sheer satisfaction.
Of course, finding that sound pleasant didn’t mean I had a sadistic streak. It was pure relief—the end was finally in sight.
Using my entire body, I twisted with everything I had, and the knight’s arm turned into a mangled ruin. The injury was severe enough that healing it during this bout would be impossible. In other words, he no longer had the strength to grip a sword.
“Y-you bastard… how dare you…!”
The knight ground his teeth as he stared at me from a distance that had somehow opened between us. Even through the pain, having his sword stripped away was a humiliation no knight could swallow. I would have been furious in his place too.
“How pitiful. How truly wretched.”
I gave the stolen sword a theatrical flourish and put on my most solemn, aristocratic face. Even to my own ears the words dripped with the perfect blend of noble arrogance and pure provocation.
“You… you piece of trash I’d love to tear apart!!”
The enraged knight charged, one arm flopping uselessly at his side. Pain and fury twisted his features into something desperate and almost pathetic, as if he still clung to a single stubborn thread of pride. I couldn’t really blame him. Getting your sword arm ruined by some kid you’d been looking down on would make anyone lose their temper. It would have been stranger if he hadn’t been angry.
Right after the taunt, I hammered my fist against the blade in my hand several times, thoroughly shattering the edge. Fragments of steel rained onto the floor, leaving nothing but a pathetic hilt. Just in case it got taken back, I made sure no one would ever use it again.
“Tch.”
The knight’s charge still looked ferocious, yet something about it felt hollow. Watching him lumber forward without a sword, one arm dangling, was like watching a man scream with his whole body for me to just finish him already. I clicked my tongue, dropped my hips low, and drove forward into a textbook wrestling tackle.
“Guh—?!”
The impact hit like two speeding carriages colliding. I could take it, but if I hadn’t twisted slightly at the last second my skull might have cracked. Of course I grimaced; the other guy had no chance of escaping the pain either. Slamming into someone while your arm was already twisted the wrong way had to hurt at least twice as badly as what I felt. His agonized groan proved it.
“You… you fucking dog…!!”
He spat street-thug curses and raised his good arm high, clearly planning to smash his fist into my exposed back and, if possible, shatter my spine. He never got the chance. I dropped even lower, wrapped both arms around his thighs, and heaved upward with everything I had.
“Wha—whaaat…?!”
As I straightened, his upper body flipped toward the ground. Between his bulk and the weight of the armor, lifting him was no joke. Without mana reinforcing my body I wouldn’t even have tried.
“Huuup!”
I wrenched his legs over hard. The knight made a stupid, dazed sound as momentum took him. He soared in a grand, humiliating arc and slammed onto the training ground floor back-first. It felt exactly like flipping a dinner table.
“Guhk!”
A strangled moan tore out of him. Hitting the ground in full armor was still a vicious shock; armor reduced cuts, but it didn’t work like an airbag. I didn’t waste the opening. I seized one of his legs the same way I’d taken the arm and twisted with all my strength. Maybe because the joint was larger, or maybe because I put more force into it, the sound that followed was far more sickening than the arm had been. Everything happened in the blink of an eye.
“Ghk—ghkhaaaa!!”
The scream was so raw he could barely form it, yet it still carried across the entire training ground. Hearing that voice and seeing his face contort, I almost felt a flicker of pity. Almost. I twisted the other leg just as hard. Another tortured cry forced its way past his lips. With both legs ruined like that, walking was out of the question.
“Hoo…”
Only after confirming the knight could no longer move did I finally allow myself a breath. Both legs wrecked, no sword, only one working arm left. I wasn’t about to get careless, but the situation was overwhelmingly in my favor.
“Ah! Zion…!”
While I stared down at the knight, Helena’s cry reached me. Relief that I was unhurt outweighed any joy in the sound. I couldn’t see her face, but I was certain it matched her voice. The duel, however, was not over yet. I forced my head not to turn toward her and shifted my gaze to the knight’s remaining good arm. If he hadn’t been armored I would have simply shattered a smaller joint with a strike. The full plate forced me into joint locks instead. Even light armor would have made this cleaner. What a shame.
“What will you do? Will you surrender?”
I offered the thoroughly humiliated knight a chance to keep his life. I had never killed anyone just because I wanted to, and I preferred to avoid even necessary kills whenever possible.
“D-damn you…! Just… kill me!”
Instead of begging, he demanded death with a face twisted in rage. He looked like a man who could not forgive himself for letting a single moment of carelessness bring him this low—and who knew that even if he survived, the respect he once enjoyed was gone forever. If anyone asked how I knew, I would simply tell them to look at the contempt in Duke Kilinaire’s eyes.
“…Understood.”
I offered no empty words about ending his suffering. I simply pinned his remaining upper arm under my boot so he couldn’t move, drew the dirk from inside my jacket, and leaned down to drive it into his throat.
“Then farewell.”
“W-wait…!”
The knight’s panicked shout came the instant I crouched and began to thrust. Facing the end, he seemed to change his mind—but it was already far too late. The tip of the dirk was a hair’s breadth from his Adam’s apple when he cried out.
“Ghk… ghrk…”
Bloody foam boiled from his lips. His eyes, which had been forced wide open, lost their light until only the whites remained. When I checked beneath his nose there was no breath. He was finished. Still, I twisted the blade once inside his neck before withdrawing it. Cruel, perhaps, but a knight deserved a proper confirmation kill.
“He’s dead.”
“…Mm. Very well. This bout goes to Zion Altram.”
I bowed my head with a heavy voice, and the king declared my victory in an equally subdued tone. His preferred side—the ducal house—had won, so he should have been pleased, yet the method left a sour taste. That I understood. None of it changed the fact that I had won.
“I’m so glad you’re safe…!”
The moment I stepped down from the training ground Helena seized both my hands and smiled. The atmosphere made smiling feel almost indecent, and plenty of eyes found it strange, but others seemed to understand. She had just clawed a little further away from the brink of being sold as a slave, after all.
“I am the one who is glad I could win. It is all thanks to Lady Helena’s training.”
“Really… I’m so, so glad…”
I soothed Helena as she kept murmuring how fortunate it was, and over her shoulder I caught Ellen’s eye as she climbed onto the training ground and gave her a small nod of encouragement. There was no chance to speak, so that would have to do. Fortunately Ellen read my intent; she smirked and returned the nod.
“Redhood…”
“Even if victory is urgent, to drag in filth like that…”
The disgust that had cooled during my duel with Helena flared back to life. The contemptuous looks and voices aimed at Ellen were enough to wither someone who wasn’t even the target. The woman herself, however, wore exactly the unbothered expression she had promised.
“Tch…”
The knight facing Ellen clicked his tongue, yet the tension in his frame was obvious. Whatever people thought of dark elves, Ellen’s infamous name and skill needed no introduction. One side looked far too relaxed for someone who had been “playing it up,” while the other was wound tight.
“Begin.”
Whatever the outcome, this was clearly the final bout. The king’s signal fell, and man and woman moved at the same instant.
“This can’t be…”
Barely thirty seconds after the duel began, Duke Albus Kilinaire could not close his mouth at the atrocity unfolding before him. His entire body, hands included, trembled violently; his mind had gone blank as fresh paper. If the fight had merely looked bleak, or even somewhat disadvantageous, he might have managed. At least he could have steeled himself a little. Reality offered no such mercy, and so his thoughts remained pure white.
“Hoo…”
Ellen had, without meaning to, shattered Albus Kilinaire’s spirit, yet she herself seemed unaware as she simply exhaled in relief. She had fired a massive water orb born of spirit magic to block the knight’s vision, then used the opening to drive arrows cleanly through the joints of both arms and legs—and still she looked calm. Every action that seemed reflexive and mindless had in fact been calculated. Zion, watching her unhurried form, realized as much, but something else surprised him more: the gap between calling one spirit and the next was vanishingly short. It was almost as if she had pre-loaded her shots. The only other explanation was that she could command two spirits at once, but that was beyond Zion’s knowledge. The one thing he could be certain of was that consecutive victories for Helena’s side had brought the entire duel to an end.
“The victor is… Ellen Redhood. With two victories out of three bouts for House Krauser, Duke Kilinaire will fulfill the agreed conditions.”
The king frowned as he watched the knight’s head, severed by a wind cutter, roll across the floor. A win for House Krauser was exactly what he had wanted, yet the result was far too gruesome. After a throat stab earlier, now a clean decapitation. Having watched the arterial fountain and the neat cross-section with his own eyes only made it worse.
“Heh… heheheh…”
Duke Kilinaire felt the same, yet the blood spraying from the knight mattered little to him. What crushed him was the simple, suffocating fact that the knight’s death meant his own defeat—and that he now had to pay the price. It was stifling. Unbearably so. Even with a mind too blank to form thoughts, his heart pounded painfully and a heavy stone seemed to sit on his chest. He wanted to see no one. If this was a nightmare, he desperately wished to wake. He had begun with such confidence; when Helena made her mistake he had even believed the matter was half-solved…
“Duke… or rather, I suppose I should call you former Duke now.”
Why, of all people, did that loathsome Duke of Krauser have to approach him with that stiff expression and open her mouth?
“I apologize for speaking while you are still in shock, but I will enforce the conditions at once. From this moment Albus Kilinaire is no longer a duke. Until the day he closes his eyes he will live in the monastery near the border margrave’s domain. And…”