First Broadcast (2)

With a sharp click, I sheathed the blade still glowing blue-hot. Residual wind circled once around me, then scattered into nothing. I smoothed the hem of my cloak and looked out over the half-ruined arena.

"Huh. More of them survived than I expected."

Thinking about it, Diamond was a rank granted to only one percent of the entire player base. Reaching that high meant you at least knew the basics of swordsmanship and mana control. They must have twisted their bodies just enough to slip past the edge. I clicked my tongue, a little disappointed. This wasn't my real body, so the technique hadn't come out at full strength.

The swordsmanship gallery, though, seemed to be having a very different reaction.

"The replication rate isn't anything special. This game's swordsmanship fidelity is just weird — if you use the proper form, that number is what you're supposed to get."

The Sky Sword had never been designed for other people to watch and learn in the first place. It was a slapdash martial art, a patchwork of techniques strung together purely because each one had felt insanely strong when I actually cut something with it. To recreate a sword style woven from every school imaginable and fitted to my own body, you needed overwhelming talent — and combat experience that went beyond even that.

"Not that I'm complaining. It's hard to beat the authenticity of someone who's actually used this stuff in a real war."

"You're not wrong."

I was good with a sword, and I wasn't human either. Born as a test subject, I was missing a few of the basic human rights.

I said it like it was nothing and watched the swordsmen charge in. As if the emotion called "fear" had been surgically removed from them, they kept coming even after watching three hundred of their comrades die. That was fine by me. Predicting the movements of people charging in like machines, stripped of feeling, wasn't hard at all.

"If AI were better than people, we wouldn't have needed to go out and fight in the first place."

I added it under my breath and took hold of the hilt. With their numbers cut by more than half, the remaining swordsmen's movements were starting to organize into something more systematic.

The range restriction on long-distance attacks was about ten meters. Right along that line, awakened fighters began gathering their abilities. At the same time, ten swordsmen crashed toward me.

"And they wouldn't be throwing such simple attacks, either."

I drew my sword and ten trajectories bloomed into view. Every single one of them crossed at my throat. They were honest, unadorned cuts — and powerful for it — but once I'd read the path before the thrust even landed, the attack was already meaningless.

I stepped back two paces and thrust. Eleven blades collided.

Screeeee—!

Sparks exploded. With a strange metallic scream, the swords held a brief equilibrium, then began forcing their way toward me. I wasn't particularly rattled. I was, after all, taking the full weight of ten grown men swinging downward on my own.

The moment I knew I couldn't hold any longer, I shifted my center of gravity a fraction to the side.

"If you dodge like this, the whole thing falls apart."

The second I pulled out of my braced stance, the ten blades that had been crushing down on me skidded along the flat of my sword and slid past. As they lost their balance and pitched forward, I spun and brought my blade down on them.

BOOM—!

A sound like a bomb going off, and a geyser of earth erupted. Through the rain of dirt and dust, I could see the panicked faces of the fighters who had been preparing their abilities. They hastily unleashed everything they had been gathering.

Fire roared, lightning whipped, ice gathered. As if to say that if swordsmanship alone couldn't settle it, sheer volume of power would crush me, every ability they had came screaming in.

"Oh… so now you're getting serious?"

I opened my own power to meet them. The mana I had left was a fifth of the total. Instead of coating the blade with it, I spun it outward, beginning to weave a massive current of wind around myself.

"But you're already too late."

My eyes took the world apart and put it back together again. The flame sword falling like a meteor, the bladesman rushing in like a thunderbolt, the ice formula freezing everything around it — none of them could slip past my gaze. I could see every trajectory the magic was drawing, every point it was aiming for.

So I decided to twist all of it.

I swept the sword in a wide arc, and the wind focused along the tip roared into a single vast current. I turned the point toward the sky. The gathered wind detonated, and a colossal vortex surged upward.

Wind swallowed the meteor, shredded the oncoming lightning, and smashed the rising crystals of ice to pieces. A vortex that had already consumed everything within ten meters began dragging the enemies beyond that range toward its center.

Standing right in the middle of it, I smiled brightly and asked,

"So? Pretty unbeatable, right?"

"Don't worry. I don't kill people over stuff like that."

I cut down the swordsmen who had forced their way through the wind and answered my viewers at a leisurely pace. Dealing with people who had already spent their strength was something I could do one-handed.

"Pfft. Maybe?"

With a soft click I sheathed my sword, cutting down the last enemy as he lunged. The shattered, ruined arena dissolved into particles and vanished.

The world around me turned back into a plain white room. The arbitrarily adjusted body that had stood nearly six feet tall disappeared, and my viewpoint dropped sharply back to normal. Not wanting to show that, I swung the camera around.

"Sorry, but I have no intention of showing my face~"

Even if the Sword Saint's identity was classified, the soldiers who had crawled through Siberia with me knew what I looked like. That alone made me careful about this kind of thing.

To them, I was an idol.

I didn't want the hero of the Seven-Year Siberia War — the Sword Saint who had split the sky — to be seen as some shut-in rotting in a corner of a gallery. I didn't want contempt. I didn't want to be despised. I was already exhausted enough. If I had to hear those kinds of words, I didn't think I could keep going.

I knew I had no right to be happy after abandoning my sister and my comrades and running away… but I had still done my best. I didn't want to be condemned. I wanted attention too. I wanted to be loved too.

"Yeah, well, that still won't get a rise out of me~ I'm not rage-face-revealing or anything~ Imagine whatever you want~"

So I laughed off the gallery's comments. I was too tired for a long argument. I just wanted to brush it off as a joke.

"Nah, I just know you guys too well. I'm your ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠ju-ttak, you idiots."

I said it with a sneer and, as a demonstration, cut down one of the more snide ones. Chat immediately started trembling with things like "Someone died!"

It was cute enough that a little laugh slipped out before I could stop it. Resting my chin in my hand and watching the chat roll in was fun in its own way.

Maybe it was because I hadn't ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠felt this comfortable in a long time.

Seven years since I'd been possessed into this body, and almost every conversation I'd had had been nothing but sharp commands and screams on a battlefield. I'd seen far too many times how people change when death is right in front of them. After watching what human nature looks like — how a person transforms under the fear of dying — building actual human relationships had become impossibly hard for me.

"Hey, you guys know this?"

That was why this kind of relationship felt easy. Hiding behind the mask of anonymity, writing nonsense at each other and laughing — I liked that atmosphere.

"I know way more about you than you think. You guys are precious… you're my friends."

The stream paused for a beat, then a wall of long comments started hammering in. There were only about a hundred people left in the room, but the firepower felt like a thousand had gathered.

A small laugh escaped me. For all the noise they made, I could tell they liked what I'd said. That feeling was really, really good.

So I steadied my slightly trembling voice and went on.

"I remember most of the regulars, you know. Like 214.60, who only ever writes reviews for weird games buried at the bottom of the Play Store. Or 223.50, who bootlicks guns in the swordsmanship gallery and keeps starting Sword vs. Gun Civil War Cups. Or IaiMaster, who tries anime sword techniques in real life?"

"No, it's fine. Watching you guys is actually really entertaining."

I was a shitposter myself — the kind who uploaded bait images to the gallery. Banning other people when I was like that felt a little too hypocritical, so I'd just left them alone and watched the show.

"Still, if I had to pick the one who sticks with me the most, it'd probably be our 219.55 — the one who brought that Civil War Cup."

I ignored the flaming chat and opened the gallery. Those comments would settle soon enough once they saw what was about to happen to 219.55.

I reopened the notice that had already piled up past a hundred replies. The moment I copied a specific section, laughter bloomed across the raging chat.

"I said it at the start, didn't I? If I win, I'd pick one guy from the peanut gallery's side and make him a par-ttak."

‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠

"Nope~ Too late!"

I ignored the frantic message, smiled brightly, and banned 219.55.

Along with the note: Get the armband and unban yourself lol!