The Knight Demon (4)
“Ugh, kid. Najin. You know what? I once crossed blades with a ridiculously strong demon. Huh? I was a pretty famous knight back then, you know.”
“Ah, yes.”
“You don’t look like you believe me at all. It’s true, I swear.”
“Ivan, I’ve heard that exact line more than ten times already. You might not remember because you’re drunk, but I’m stuck listening to the same story over and over.”
“Huh? Really?”
“Want me to guess the next part? That demon had dozens of arms and was truly horrific—like a spider, right…?”
Ivan burst out laughing with a rough chuckle.
“It really was the kind of demon that belonged in a nightmare. That bastard killed a whole lot of my comrades. Even now just thinking about it makes the back of my neck tighten. What a damn shame. Truly.”
Still, he muttered, and drained his cup.
“Someone’ll take revenge for them. There’s one guy who comes to mind—if it’s him, he’d track that demon down no matter what and kill it. Obsessive bastard, that one.”
“Who is that?”
“There is someone. A guy whose parrying is absolutely second to none.”
Fighting a demon is an extremely troublesome affair.
As a race, demons already possess tenacious vitality, and on top of that they can wield powers close to Mystery. How else would a group like the Holy Blood Church even exist—dedicated solely to hunting them?
Demons are tough. Cutting one down is no easy task even for a swordsman who has reached the rank of Sword Seeker. That holds true the moment a demon climbs to mid-rank or higher.
So what of the demon before them now?
An ancient demon: Orgis.
He was a demon of antiquity who had existed long before the three-tier classification of lower, mid, and upper ranks had ever been established. A seasoned survivor from the age a thousand years ago, when King Arthur had slaughtered demons wherever she found them.
Seasoned? Hardly. He just never caught my eye, that’s all. ‘Hid well’ is the more accurate phrase than ‘seasoned.’
That was how Merlin put it, yet even she did not deny that Orgis was a powerful demon. As with most things, simply surviving for so long was itself proof of strength.
Ordinarily, facing Orgis would require at least a squad of Sword Seekers accompanied by Inquisitors well-versed in demons. If one intended to suppress him by pure force alone, a powerhouse bordering on Sword Master would be the minimum requirement.
Yet only two Sword Seekers stood here.
Argo had reached the realm of Blooming, but that was still far short of Sword Master. Najin could partially reproduce Sword Master techniques, yet he remained a swordsman who had only just Sprouted.
Sprouting. Blooming. Full Bloom.
Against a demon that demanded at least a Full Bloom swordsman, the two of them were swinging their blades. Anyone who heard the tale would surely say they had no regard for their own lives…
Kang! Kaaaaang!
Anyone who actually watched them fight would never say such a thing. Neither showed the slightest sign of being pressed; if anything, they were driving the demon back.
“Hup!”
Argo deflected every attack that came from every angle. He held only a single sword, yet he never limited himself to swinging his own weapon alone. A first-rate martial artist had to be able to treat the opponent’s weapons as his own as well.
Ka, kakakakakang!
First he bounced the nearest sword aside. The deflected blade struck the spear thrusting in from the side; the spear in turn knocked away the greatsword; the greatsword slammed into the hammer… Like a chain of falling dominoes, every one of Orgis’s attacks was sent flying.
Crack.
A few of them were caught by the Bookmark’s power and flattened into thin plates. Of course, neutralizing a handful of blades still left Orgis with dozens of arms remaining.
Knock five away and ten more came; block ten and twenty followed; then thirty again… No matter that Argo’s parrying had reached a singularity of skill, he could not bounce every last one alone.
Alone, maybe. But I’m not alone.
Argo was not facing Orgis by himself. At the precise instant, Najin cut in and knocked aside the demon’s blades. Metal rang without pause, a ceaseless clash even within a single second.
Just the two of them against a demon composed of more than a hundred knights. Without yielding a single step before those hundred-plus blades, Argo and Najin drove their feet hard into the ground.
Kuuung!
Najin slammed the earth and carved a long furrow through it. A massive mound of soil surged upward. The moment that soil “covered” anything, the Bookmark’s power would activate—yet Najin deliberately baited Orgis into using it.
The dirt mound moved of its own accord. Just as it was about to bury Najin, Argo’s parried limbs of Orgis crashed into the soil first.
Slap.
Eight arms transformed into thin sheets of paper. Najin sliced through the arms and the dirt mound together. Soil touched by his sword aura crumbled as if evaporating, and Najin’s eyes flashed.
Not the color of sunset—platinum-gold pupils.
The sword aura Najin forged was pure, snow-white, shot through with gleaming gold. Orgis felt instinctive terror. A fear carved into the soul itself, the natural enemy branded into the entire demonic race.
—————!
Faced with a sword aura that called Arthur to mind, Orgis howled and wrenched up its demonic energy. It looked for all the world like a beast seized by panic.
And any living creature, when its life is threatened, resists with savage force. Orgis began to pour out every reserve of power it had been husbanding, every scrap it had been saving.
Thwack.
From Orgis’s spine a single enormous arm erupted—dozens of knightly arms braided into one. In its grip hung a greatsword that dripped black, filthy water.
The instant that greatsword swept horizontally, Argo abandoned any thought of parrying. Najin likewise discarded the idea of striking it and dropped low at once. The greatsword scythed through the air above both their heads.
A colossal gust of wind. Immediately after came a crash—kuuuung!—the echo of something collapsing.
They did not need to look back. They already knew: along the line the greatsword had drawn, several buildings had simply ceased to exist.
Concepts like “fighting at full strength” or “a fair match” do not exist for demons. For a demon, a battle fought at full power is something to be avoided by default. Even victory brings no profit if too much strength has been spent.
But the moment a true threat to life is felt, the story changes. Having tasted fear from Najin, Orgis began to resist with everything it had.
Kwang! Kwaaaaaang!
Realizing that the power of the Masterpiece it wielded was instead devouring its own flesh, Orgis halted the Bookmark’s activation and tried to crush Najin and Argo by pure force alone.
Argo had seen that exact frenzy twenty years earlier.
It was the same back then.
When Ivan, Argo himself, and the other knights had turned the Bookmark’s power against Orgis and torn its limbs free, the demon had abandoned the Masterpiece and faced them with nothing but its raw strength.
And back then, Argo had been unable to weather Orgis’s onslaught. Clenching his teeth and enduring had been the most he could manage—and even that had only been possible thanks to the sacrifice of several comrades.
Back then I had to watch you flee.
Argo’s mouth twisted into a grin.
Now it’s different.
Twenty years. For twenty years Argo had studied how to fight Orgis. To a transcendent or a demon those decades might be no more than a blink, yet for a human they were ample time for an immature youth to become a fully tempered knight.
He displayed every technique he had honed without the slightest reservation.
A continuous chain of choices. Argo swung his sword without pause, catching Orgis’s blades; the crushing blows he could not handle, Najin took instead.
The Triumphant Sword—the swordsmanship Najin had learned from Alderan.
A style whose foundation was compressing aura upon the blade to its absolute limit, specialized for facing the strong. A sword meant to cut what cannot be cut.
Thud.
Najin no longer even registered Orgis’s lesser attacks. He kept his eyes fixed solely on the enormous greatsword that had sprouted from the demon’s spine and swung for that alone. If he concentrated on that single blade, he could receive it.
The problem is the dozens of spears and swords that lunge from the sides the moment I knock the greatsword away…
Deflecting the greatsword naturally demanded a large motion, and a large motion left a large opening. If Orgis exploited that opening, Najin would be helpless. He had only two arms; Orgis still possessed dozens.
Yet, as already said—
Najin was not fighting alone.
Kakakakakang!
Argo sealed Najin’s openings. What Argo could not receive, Najin took. Covering each other’s gaps, the two pressed Orgis hard.
Use the Masterpiece, demon.
They forced the choice upon it.
Are you so afraid the Masterpiece will eat your flesh that you’ll fight without it? But without it you cannot win. My blade is not so dull that you can conserve your strength against me.
Slash!
Orgis bled under Najin and Argo’s swords. Blood sprayed, rose again. As it continued to hemorrhage, Orgis at last began to employ the Masterpiece once more. Even so, the situation did not improve.
Crack.
Parries sent attacks flying; those attacks were then caught by the Masterpiece’s power and crushed into paper-thin sheets. And no knight exists who cannot cut paper. Having lost several arms in such hollow fashion, Orgis retreated still farther.
More than a hundred arms dwindled to fifty.
From fifty to thirty, to twenty…
The endless forest of blades had shrunk until their number could be counted with ease.
Tak.
Argo spurred himself forward.
As he swung his sword he remembered the past.
“Argo!”
“I know without you saying it, Ivan!”
The days he had swung a blade beside his closest comrade. Back then Argo had been green and weak; he had failed to execute the plan Ivan proposed. He had been unable to create the opening for the strike Ivan had always boasted of.
Twenty years later, Argo stood in this place once more.
His friend was not here. He had fallen as a criminal. Yet in that place a boy who had learned the sword from that very man was now swinging his blade.
Honestly…
Argo laughed.
Laughing, he shouted the words he had wanted to speak twenty years ago but never could.
“Now!”
Kakakakakang! Orgis’s remaining eight arms were all knocked away at once. Into the open front Najin surged. In a single breath he closed the distance, eyes wide.
And then—slash!
The strongest arm that had sprouted from Orgis’s back, the massive limb woven from dozens of knights’ arms, was severed by Najin in one stroke. Demonic blood fountained upward, and Orgis’s demonic energy plummeted in an instant.
The remaining eight arms dwindled one by one with every swing of their swords. Seven, six, five… two.
All that remained to the demon were two arms.
In the final moment, paradoxically, the demon stretched out those two human-like arms to shield its body. That was Orgis’s last thrashing.
Kuuung.
And Najin—
took a powerful step toward that demon. There was no need to debate what technique to use at the end.
The swordsmanship of Ivan, Knight of Atanga.
The single upward strike that smashes through an opponent’s technique and defense and carves open a gap. Najin’s blade sheared through the demon’s last two arms. It did not stop there; it carved a great wound through the demon’s body itself.
Shaaaaak!
Blood erupted. The demon’s body split wide, exposing the heart that had been hidden beneath hundreds of corpses. Ordinarily the second strike would have fallen next to cleave that heart—but in this instant even that was unnecessary.
Already at Najin’s side, Argo was swinging his sword.
Argo was a Knight of Atanga. The moment Najin completed the first strike, Argo had already, without hesitation, begun the blade that should follow. Thus, almost in the same breath that Najin finished the first blow, Argo’s sword dropped like a guillotine.
Seoguk.
The demon’s heart was split in two.