The Knight Demon (3)
Najin hurled his sword high into the sky and drew his spear. Gripping the spear with both hands that had held the sword, he thrust it forward in one continuous motion that flowed as smoothly as water.
Ramming.
In the instant Najin drove the spear home, everything in the city froze as one. The cityscape folding in toward Najin and Argo, the waves of brick and buildings, even the rain of arrows—all of it was pinned in place.
A halt lasting only a fraction of a second, the barest of instants.
This was no freeze wrought by magic or Mystery. It was precisely the opposite: a deadlock born of force and impact acting in the reverse direction. And of course, such a stalemate could not last long.
Th-thrrrrrum…
Because the power erupting from the tip of Najin’s spear was greater than the force folding the city, the scales of equilibrium tipped toward him. The storm bursting from the spear tip shoved the folding city back the other way.
Kakakakakakakak!
The wave of buildings and bricks was shredded by the storm. The rain of arrows was swept aside. Like a ship’s prow splitting waves, like an icebreaker smashing through a glacier, the Ramming pulverized everything that barred Najin’s path without exception.
Argo, witnessing the sight, bulged his eyes wide; behind him, Schmitz and the priests of the Holy Body Church had no choice but to do the same. Anyone would. Seeing a city surging in like a wave pierced clean through in a single blow—it would be stranger not to be astonished.
"…"
Najin wordlessly stretched his hand upward. The longsword he had flung sky-high before unleashing Ramming dropped precisely into his outstretched palm. Catching the longsword, Najin looked ahead and clicked his tongue.
If it had been him, he’d have smashed straight through to that bell tower. I’m not there yet.
-Full awakening? Or single?
Both of them. Either way, I think they’d have punched through to that tower.
-They’re both transcendentals, you know.
So I’ve still got a long way to go.
Merlin glared at Najin with a look that said What is this kid even saying?, and the gaze of Argo standing beside him was not much different.
Of course Argo could not read Najin’s thoughts, but he could at least tell that Najin was not satisfied with the blow he had just delivered.
That look says it wasn’t enough—that this falls short.
Argo looked ahead. There lay the landscape of a city with a clean road carved through it. Glancing at the boy who had opened a thoroughfare straight through the center of Free City Pavanne, Argo laughed as if he could not believe it.
That’s not enough? That? Where in the world?
He wanted to demand an explanation, but there was no time. At the far edge of the open view, before the bell tower, the demon revealed itself.
The Knight Demon, Orgis.
The moment he saw the demon’s true form, Najin’s expression crumpled hard. So that was what a demon made of knights meant? Najin understood the name Knight Demon in an instant.
Orgis did not take a human shape. It more resembled a beast crawling the earth—but unlike ordinary beasts that crawl on four legs, Orgis had many. Quite a few, in fact.
Roughly forty legs sprouted from either side. Those legs were composed of parts of knights’ bodies. Heads, legs, arms, torsos of countless knights—the corpses of so many knights had become legs propping Orgis up.
A demon made of knights.
Moving by the arms and legs of knights.
A demon held aloft by knights.
Its very existence was a desecration and a mockery of the concept of the knight. Najin felt the nape of his neck prickle. The corner of his mouth twitched.
"Sir Argo."
Najin’s and Argo’s gazes crossed for a moment. Words were unnecessary. They already knew the plan. After nodding to each other, Najin and Argo kicked off the ground and began to run.
The moment Najin and Argo began to run, Orgis moved in answer.
There was no need to use all eighty legs simply to walk the earth. Humans live on two; beasts manage perfectly well on four. But as if mocking them, Orgis used every last one of its eighty legs.
The sight looked at once like a rolling ball and like a spider scuttling across a wall.
-Ugh… ughhh… blurgh!
The sight was so revolting that Merlin dry-heaved; Najin clicked his tongue. Grotesque and ridiculous as the movement was, he could not deny its efficiency.
Dozens of hands seized buildings and hauled the body forward; dozens more feet kicked off the ground and accelerated. Orgis closed the distance in a blink and lunged at Najin.
Left. Right. Diagonal. Spear, sword, mace, chain. Six on the diagonal, then seven, next three…
Najin’s eyes flickered rapidly.
He calculated the dozens of arms and legs Orgis was swinging, the weapons they gripped, and every trajectory. The instant he finished the calculation and moved to act—
Thwack.
Hidden limbs burst from Orgis’s back. The number of vectors doubled in a heartbeat, and Najin scowled. Too late to recompute. He simply moved first.
Seven spears punched in. Five arrows loosed. Eight maces, twelve longswords, five greatswords, three rapiers, seven war hammers…
Nearly every attack landed at once. Spears thrust, swords cut, axes chopped down. The arms erupting from Orgis’s back endlessly drew longbows; the arrows they fired were not ordinary shafts but the longswords and rapiers the knights themselves had once held.
Kang! Kagagagagang!
Each individual strike was trivial, yet the interlocking force they generated could not be ignored. Though he faced a single demon, Najin felt as though he were fighting dozens of knights at once.
A full squad of knights. Well-drilled knights executing a perfect combined assault. Knightly orders that had once flown different banners now moved as one beneath Orgis’s demonic standard.
The knights’ weapons no longer shone. As corpses, they could not draw out sword-light or aura. What replaced them was the demonic energy the creature itself produced.
Jet-black demonic energy flickered in place of sword-light. It wrapped the knights’ limbs and the weapons they gripped, burning black.
"…"
Najin’s face hardened to stone as he faced them. The desecration of corpses, the humiliation, the grotesque parody—the demon before him called another to mind.
The Demon of Revelry. The Revelry Emperor.
Exactly the sort of thing that madwoman would do. Recalling the jesters she had once commanded, Najin clenched his teeth.
"Sir Argo!"
At Najin’s shout, Argo drove into Orgis’s flank. He stabbed precisely into the opening Najin had created while receiving the onslaught, and Orgis bled—if only a little.
Tak. Spin.
Even as he swung his sword, Argo twisted his body. One strike flowing into the next—the swordsmanship of Atanga. Just as the second blow was about to draw more blood, Orgis leapt far backward.
—————!
With its dozens of legs it opened the distance in a single bound, then roared and drove its limbs into the ground. At that moment the city pulsed once, hard—like a single living creature.
Once more the city began to “fold.”
This time, however, it did not surge in like a wave. Buildings and bricks gaped open like jaws, watching Najin and Argo as if guarding Orgis’s perimeter—half-folded, leaving only the thinnest of gaps.
Both of them knew perfectly well what would happen the instant they were caught between those jaws—wedged between upper and lower plate.
The Knight Demon had unleashed the power of the Bookmark.
Watching that form, Argo smiled bitterly. Roughly twenty years ago he had faced the same situation. Back then, too, Orgis had spread the Masterpiece’s power around itself “just like this.”
「About that thing,」 his comrade had said.
「Couldn’t we use it the other way around?」
Pointing at the Knight Demon, his friend had gone on:
「Let’s go, Argo.」
「You’re right. We’re weaker than that thing. Filthy weak. It’s already chewed up seniors far stronger than us. But is that a reason to back down?」
「I’ll ask you again, Argo.」
「Do you think that’s a reason for a knight of Atanga to retreat?」
「If you turn tail just because the enemy is strong, who would call you a knight? I am a knight. What about you, Argo?」
Recalling that exchange, Argo smiled. Back then he had been unable to answer his friend. Now…
Argo looked ahead.
The opponent was a formidable foe—one of the upper ranks even among Sword Seekers. The nightmare of that day stood there stronger than it had been twenty years ago. Then it had only folded trees and stones; now it was folding an entire city.
All the better.
Thinking that, Argo twisted the corner of his mouth upward. There was no need to open his mouth and answer. He would give, in action, the reply he had failed to give twenty years before.
Tak.
Argo kicked off the ground and ran. This was different from the day he had watched his friend’s back charging ahead. This time Argo ran at the very front.
I am a knight too, Ivan.
I can’t just leave you as the only one.
This time…
Feeling Najin racing close behind him, Argo smiled.
"You follow me."
The Fourth Masterpiece: Bookmark.
After the sacrifice of dozens of knights, they had finally learned the activation condition and the ability of the Bookmark. It was as follows.
Just as one slips a bookmark between the pages of a book and closes it, the Masterpiece “Bookmark” activates when it is inserted into something. The problem was that the scope of that ability was absurdly broad.
The Bookmark could fold anything the owner recognized as a “book”—anything at all. As long as the target was not a living being with a soul, truly anything.
Depending on perception, trees, cities, the ground itself, whole villages—the range of the ability could expand without limit. That alone made it sufficiently dangerous… yet if that had been all, it would never have killed dozens of knights.
What killed them was the ability that activated the moment something was caught between the folds.
An object trapped between page and page. Something slipped into the crease of a book—the Masterpiece Bookmark defined that object as a bookmark. In other words, the instant a target was caught between what the owner recognized as pages, the target itself turned into a bookmark.
Into a paper-thin plate.
Into a human-shaped bookmark.
The girl who had stumbled upon the Masterpiece had thought her bed and blanket looked just like the leaves of a book, as if she were lying between pages, and she had fallen asleep.
「Mama? Mama? Mama, where did you go?」
When she opened her eyes, the parents beside her had become bookmarks. Outside the village it was the same. A village full of bookmarks. At that point the Masterpiece went berserk. It recognized the bookmark-filled village itself as “a single book.”
That was the inside story of the Masterpiece recovery operation that had killed dozens of knights—and the ability of the Bookmark revealed only after the sacrifice of those knights and a hundred soldiers.
「And the story is that the Knight Demon took that power.」
Hearing the tale, Ivan had spoken.
「Look carefully. That demon bastard never includes himself inside the folding range, does he? The original owner of a Masterpiece is usually exempt from its effects.」
「A Knight Demon is, after all, a demon made of ‘knights’ corpses.’ And it draws power from those corpses.」
「We thought of them as parts of Orgis’s body… but what if Orgis treats them as tools?」
Then, Ivan had laughed.
「Argo. There’s something we’re good at, isn’t there?」
「Parrying.」
「Let’s knock it away. Toward the part that’s folding.」
Recalling those words—
Kakakakakang!
Argo wound his single longsword around the arms and legs Orgis thrust at him, around the spears and blades they gripped, and knocked them aside. In the past he had broken a sweat merely receiving one attack; now he could deflect three spears and blades at once.
Parrying.
The technique of striking aside an opponent’s attack.
Atanga swordsmanship exists to break the enemy head-on. That is why, within Atanga’s art, parrying is both the foundation and the most crucial principle.
As a practitioner of Atanga’s swordsmanship, Argo was of course skilled at parrying—yet the word “skilled” fell short of describing what he could do.
After the failed pursuit of the Knight Demon long ago, Argo had thrown himself even deeper into parrying. He had submerged himself in the technique. Twenty-odd years later, Argo’s parrying had reached a singularity.
Ka—aaang!
Argo’s parrying did not merely knock an attack aside or bounce it away. With precise, delicate control he guided the opponent’s strike exactly where he wanted it to go.
The limbs of Orgis that had been wound about Argo’s sword bent in unnatural directions.
The “pages” formed of pieces of the city tried to close over Argo—but what was caught between those pages was not Argo. It was the limbs of Orgis that he had parried into place.
Crrrack.
The pages closed over Orgis’s limbs. In that instant three of the arms and legs composing Orgis’s body turned into thin plates. Seizing the moment, Najin slipped in and cleanly severed the parts that had become bookmarks.
Severing a demon’s limbs was difficult; severing a bookmark was all too easy.