The Farewell Beating (3)
Crash—!!
The instant the duel began, Albert’s blade scythed toward Orion’s side.
He closed to a distance where a simple stretch of the arm would have been enough to touch—and still Orion did not so much as shift his weight. A sadistic smile crept across Albert’s face.
It really was just my imagination.
The thought circled through his mind. A man who had received countless offers from other noble houses losing to some lowborn foreigner? Impossible. It simply could not happen.
What Albert failed to understand was this: when a man is driven into a corner, clear thinking becomes impossible.
Slip—
In the split second before the edge could graze him, Orion slipped past Albert’s sword with a motion so spare it barely seemed like movement at all.
That single attack erased any lingering notion that the man might be a novice. Albert had charged in with murderous killing intent thick enough to choke the air—and Orion had not even blinked.
Albert’s pupils began to tremble.
Shing—
Panic lasted only a heartbeat. Without breaking the flow of his previous strike, Albert whipped the blade upward toward Orion’s shoulder. The silver longsword screamed past Orion’s face with a sound sharp enough to freeze the spine—and failed to shear so much as a single strand of hair.
Albert fell back to reset his stance.
…Th-this can’t be right.
Reason was beginning to go numb. Could he really dismiss this as simple luck?
He lifted his head and looked at Orion. The man wore an expression of pure, unbothered leisure, as if inviting Albert to come at him whenever he pleased.
Albert’s gaze flicked toward the watching crowd.
—What’s gotten into the Commander?
—Is he sick or something?
Or worse—
—Wait… so the rumors were true?
The murmuring swelled. Albert forced his voice into something that almost sounded composed.
“H-hoh. Dodging the Knight Commander’s blade… you’re not entirely useless, I’ll grant you.”
Orion only shrugged, as if he had nothing left worth saying. Cold sweat slid down the channel of Albert’s spine. The hand gripping his sword twitched. Anxiety and fear coiled tight in his gut.
And just as everything he had built began to shake loose from the roots—
No.
Albert’s entire presence shifted. His survival instinct had finished its last desperate round of self-justification.
What had begun as a duel was about to become a killing.
“I shall show you the courtesy of taking this spar seriously.”
Eyes brimming with murderous intent, Albert leveled his sword at Orion. A white radiance began to seep from the blade and the air around it.
Aura.
A technique in which a swordsman channels mana into a weapon, reading its flow until the blade answers as freely as a limb. Anyone with mana could attempt it—but to truly fuse it into swordsmanship required polishing one’s craft to the absolute limit.
Curiosity flickered in Orion’s eyes; he had never seen the phenomenon before. The onlookers, however, reacted with pure horror.
—Hey. Hey. This is getting real, isn’t it?
—At this rate we’re all going to die!
A technique meant to make the slaughter of magical beasts easier—turned on a human being. There was only one way to read that: Albert intended to kill.
“I’m coming.”
“By all means.”
And so the duel began in earnest. The crowd held its breath and watched.
BOOM—!!!
The frozen earth shattered as if struck by a hammer, clods of dirt exploding into the air. Cloak whipping behind him, Albert closed the distance at a ferocious sprint.
CLANG—!!!
Orion turned aside a blade that had grown markedly heavier. Yet Albert’s sword came on with unnatural speed.
Clang-clang-clang-clang-clang-clang—!!!
The title of Knight Commander was clearly more than empty decoration. Strike after strike poured in without a single opening to reset. The gaps between blows were almost nonexistent.
As time wore on, stamina should have ebbed and speed should have fallen. Instead, Albert only grew faster. His patterns were anything but simple; the blade lanced through unexpected angles, probing and piercing wherever Orion least expected it.
“Do you have any idea how much I have built with these two hands?!”
“No idea. Obviously.”
A vein stood out on Albert’s forehead. The assault never let up. The number of attacks only climbed.
Roughly ten minutes of continuous exchange.
Orion’s mouth curved upward.
This should be enough, right?
Somewhere in the middle Albert had put on that strange white-glowing display, like some kind of bluster made visible—but it had been more curious than threatening. The only reason Orion had dragged the match out this long was simple pity.
This ought to have preserved a scrap of the man’s honor.
CLANG—!!!
Orion knocked Albert’s sword aside.
“W-what?!”
Albert’s eyes flew wide. Orion, by contrast, looked thoroughly bored. He did not have time to waste on a dull spar like this.
“I need to go eat now.”
I’m hungry, you idiot.
Hoh. What a fascinating man.
The moment the training grounds erupted into noise, Karen—who had been watching from the very beginning—fixed her full attention on the duel between Albert and Orion.
Is he not even a match for that man?
She could feel it clearly: Orion was overwhelming Albert. At a glance the exchange looked fierce. To anyone who could not read the difference in power, it might even have seemed that Albert was battering Orion without mercy. After all, Albert had done nothing but attack, and Orion had done nothing but defend.
But whose daughter was she?
She had grown up watching Derrick Agnes—once called the strongest warrior in the empire. Karen’s own martial skill was not especially deep, yet she could still measure the scale of true strength.
A fierce, hammering exchange. To ordinary eyes, Albert held the upper hand. Yet Albert’s face was etched with exhaustion, while Orion’s expression remained as calm as ever, without so much as a single bead of sweat.
A thoroughly bizarre situation.
She already knew Orion was considerably skilled. But his opponent was Albert—Knight Commander of the Agnes Knights. Albert had conducted countless monster subjugations and just as many duels against other humans. Orion had to have far less sparring experience than a man like that.
Power that transcends skill built through experience…?
For a human being, experience was everything. There was nothing in the world that theory alone could perfect. The ability to solve a crisis with only the materials at hand, in a situation that shifted by the second, evolved through experience. Even with lesser raw ability, enough experience could place a person above their opponent.
And yet—
Just what is that power?
Orion’s presence shifted. He abandoned defense and settled into the posture of a man about to attack.
In that instant, Karen understood.
Albert could die and come back to life a hundred times and still never defeat the man standing in front of him.
Overwhelming pressure rolled out from Orion. It was nothing like Aura, nothing like any mystical manipulation of mana. It was simply the crushing difference in raw power. Watching it alone was enough to raise gooseflesh on her arms.
Instinct told her anything further would be dangerous. If the duel continued, Albert’s life would be at risk. Bloodshed within the knight order could not be permitted. A death was not out of the question.
Karen moved to stop the match.
But—
Whoosh—!!
Orion’s strike reached Albert faster than her voice ever could.
CLANG—!!
Orion smashed Albert’s sword aside. The silver longsword spun through the air dozens of times and buried itself point-first in front of the fountain. Albert crumpled to his knees before Orion like a vanquished man surrendering to his conqueror.
Heavens. I’ve let a monster through the gates.
Karen, who juggled countless duties at once, was in the habit of scrubbing anything useless from her mind the moment it appeared. But the duel she had witnessed today would linger for a long time yet—like a pure white flash of light she had seen once before.
To anyone watching, victor and loser had already been decided. And yet not a single person opened their mouth. Silence settled over the grounds.
A brand-new chick defeating the Knight Commander? Was such a thing even conceivable? No one dared to move.
Then someone began to walk forward, footsteps steady on the packed earth.
“Are you all right?”
It was Orion. He stepped up to Albert and held out a hand.
Albert sat slumped on the ground, staring with hollow eyes as if his soul had left his body. Losing a farewell beating was bound to sting. Still—he had brought this on himself. Orion had been dragged into the mess against his will, so he felt not the slightest twinge of guilt.
“Get up first. Oh, and if you get on your knees and beg, I might forgive you. Once.”
Then again, Orion was the sort of man who felt pity when he saw elderly people picking through scrap paper on the street. That same pity extended, briefly, to Albert—and left him feeling oddly pleased with himself.
—Pffft, what a devil.
—He’s ridiculously annoying!
—Heh, look at him gloating after winning.
Criticism began to pour toward Orion. The silence that had blanketed the drill yard filled with fresh murmuring. Albert’s fingertips trembled; Orion had turned him into a laughingstock.
“Don’t you dare laugh!!!!”
A roar loud enough to split eardrums tore across the grounds. Its owner was, of course, Albert. He scrambled forward on all fours, wrenched his sword free, and lurched upright.
“Do you think!!! I, Albert Alstein!!!! would lose like this!!!!!??”
It was wretched. It was humiliating. The surrounding knights said nothing to their former superior’s face, but their eyes alone were enough to eat him alive. A knight order prized honor above all else. Albert’s display had gone past shameful and landed somewhere near repulsive.
Sensing those stares, Albert whipped his sword toward them, cold sweat pouring down his face.
“No—no!!!! That bastard must have used some kind of trick!!! He’s a coward!!!!”
No one answered. Albert’s pupils shook as if caught in an earthquake. Cornered beyond reason, he lunged to kill Orion.
And then—
“Enough.”
Karen, who had been watching the entire time, cut his rampage short.