Opening Skirmish (4)
Merlin's magic detonated at point-blank range.
It was the same spell that had once frozen an entire region spanning tens of kilometers solid.
Merlin's unique magic: Silence.
Even when she had cast it at roughly half the power of her true body, it had frozen the Celestial Meteor and hundreds of thousands of sky whales without exception. To Najin's eyes, this casting was greater still, not lesser.
Had she contracted the range in exchange for elevating its force another tier? Even standing outside the spell's radius, Najin felt the surrounding air turn murderously cold—cold enough that a single breath made his lungs ache. If that was what it felt like on the periphery, what of Siegfried, who had taken the magic head-on?
His body was frozen pure white.
Frost coated him from head to toe, and even now white frost-flowers were blooming across his frame. Given the spell's power, it would not have been strange in the slightest if he had frozen to death on the spot.
Not strange… but.
Najin was certain. This would only bind his ankles. It would never be enough to kill Siegfried. A decisive blow had to follow.
Gritting his teeth, Najin wrenched Gram free from where it had bitten into his body. He staggered back, gasping, then clenched his jaw again. The moment he moved, the wounds that had been frozen shut tore open. Severed collarbone and ribs ground into flesh.
It hurt. It hurt beyond all measure.
Sparks danced before his eyes; bloody foam frothed between his clenched teeth—yet Najin moved. The instant Merlin began her second casting, he swung his sword.
From every direction, the ultimate techniques of the Transcendents crashed in.
Merlin's magic gathered the surrounding cold and detonated it.
Najin's sword stroke, pushed to the absolute limit of his output.
Attacks of a magnitude that could have slain a Constellation dozens of times over converged in a single instant. Before that entire storm, Siegfried still looked only at Najin.
And then—
Crack.
In time that seemed to crawl, Najin saw it: the ice encasing Siegfried's body spiderwebbing with fractures. He watched the frost-flowers that had bloomed across that body fall away like dying petals.
The tattoos engraved upon Siegfried's flesh blazed.
Tattoos that recorded the myth of Dragon-Slaying.
Every time Siegfried had slain a dragon, he had carved another mark into his own body. Those tattoos were more than mere pictures. Completed by bathing in dragon's blood, they produced an effect akin to sorcery.
"Warrior, sing of wrath."
The tattoos flared crimson. The instant they rippled like flame, the ice that had sealed his body shattered into countless shards.
Hiiiiissssss!
The heat of Siegfried's flesh met the ice and boiled into steam. Through the vapor, his eyes flashed.
In the next breath, Siegfried accelerated.
Having smashed the ice that bound him, he released his sword. The materialized Gram dissolved into lightning and scattered; every last flake of frost that had clung to the blade and hindered it fell away.
Crack.
He kicked as though to shove Najin aside. The kick landed faster than Najin's sword could reach. So great was the speed that the sound of air bursting—thoom—arrived only after the impact itself.
"Kh—urk…"
Najin's body shot away like a cannonball. In the space of a heartbeat the distance between them yawned wide, and Siegfried seized empty air and swung.
Lightning fell. The wrath of a god descended.
Gram, reappearing with the thunder, cleaved Merlin's magic apart. The cold that should have detonated scattered into nothing. The instant Gram moved, Merlin released her materialization; had she been a fraction slower, one of her arms would have been severed for certain.
Boom.
Siegfried's assault did not end there. Having driven the two greatest threats from the field, he raised a foot and stamped the earth.
The ground for a league around heaved as though a giant had stamped his heel. Steam erupted from his body like an explosion. The heat he generated did more than melt frost—heat haze shimmered across the surroundings.
Najin saw what followed.
He saw it, yet he could not comprehend it.
Caron's Thousand Swords, Gerd's Imperial Sword, Seongyuksin's Aurora, and Yuel Razian's Deconstruction Kill all reached Siegfried at nearly the same instant.
Barrages and ultimate techniques from the Constellations supporting from the rear followed hard behind them; spears and harpoon-arrows that split the air filled the sky and rained down.
Dozens of Constellations poured out their full power.
Even Najin held no confidence he could have survived that density of fire.
"Warrior of the Nibelungs, sing of wrath."
To Siegfried, it meant nothing.
2.
Siegfried swung Gram.
In countless heroic epics and histories, Gram was described as a longsword of roughly one hundred fifty centimeters. The blade now in his hand, however, was a greatsword that looked at least three or four meters long.
This was no sword meant for facing humans.
It was the result of Gram reshaping itself to match its master's will to cut down the dragons of the Abyss. The blade had grown thicker and longer than its original form, yet Siegfried's movements never slowed because of it.
Gram cuts what cannot be cut and pierces what cannot be pierced. That starkly simple Mystery takes all things as its target.
The edge parts the air. Whatever seeks to hold its wielder is severed. The moment that astonishing Mystery meshes with Siegfried's transcendent physique and the technique he has honed across a thousand years…
It produces acts that stand outside the laws.
Shhk.
Gram swept. Caron's Thousand Swords split without the least resistance. The instant the binding force that constituted the sword aura itself was severed, the ultimate technique the current Sword Saint had compressed and launched scattered without a sound.
Dragging the lightly swung blade, Siegfried reached out. He seized with a bare hand the pillar of light falling upon him—Seongyuksin's pride, the Aurora. At its essence the Aurora was nothing more than a vast quantity of starlight, condensed mana.
A dragon's flesh resists mana.
It swallows starlight and cages it within.
The descending pillar of light was caught in Siegfried's grip. The light that should have exploded upon impact was crushed in his hand and could not detonate. Still clutching the Aurora, Siegfried swung.
…He had mastered every weapon.
Whatever entered his hand became a weapon.
The Aurora lashed out toward the magic pouring down upon him. The explosions it spawned swept the spells away; the Gram that followed cleaved those spells in two.
The magic formulae that held mana were cut apart. Through the midair detonations of magic, Siegfried moved.
Still he did not stop.
He carved through the Deconstruction Kill Yuel Razian had fired and took one step forward.
That was the first second.
Siegfried gripped Gram in both hands and cut upward on a diagonal. Gerd's Imperial Sword, which had been racing toward him while splitting the earth, was broken clean in two. Through the scattering sword aura and the billowing dust, the Transcendents charged.
Caron, Seongyuksin, Gerd, Yuel Razian, Anton.
Five Constellations swung their weapons. Even though their ultimate techniques had been blocked with insulting ease, they paid it no mind and hurled themselves at Siegfried.
And they saw it.
They saw the eyes of Siegfried, who stood motionless in place, begin to move. That sight was familiar to Yuel and to Caron, for they had experienced this situation before.
Eyes that looked not upon the present but upon the future. Something alien born when transcendent dynamic vision meshed with foresight of a grade incomparable to the future-sight ordinary Transcendents possessed. Someone who moved their eyes in just that way had stood close to them.
Najin.
They felt a sensation similar to fighting Najin. The difference was that, unlike the still-growing Najin, the existence before them now was already complete.
The eyes that had been reading the future halted.
He moved.
With a single sweep of his sword he knocked aside all five attacks. No—the word "knocked aside" was insufficient. The moment they touched Gram, Seongyuksin's pillar of light was severed. Caron's blade snapped. Gerd's sword broke in two. Yuel's sword, and a great portion of her shoulder with it, was cut away. Anton's blade shattered.
Gram was a sword specialized in cutting force and penetration.
And it rested in the hand of the strongest swordsman in history.
Unless one brought Excalibur—or at the very least a Masterpiece—blocking Gram was impossible.
…Every one of them knew it.
That was why they had not brought famous blades. They had simply packed multiple weapons capable of enduring their own sword auras so that they could be swapped at any moment.
Flash.
Spatial gates opened behind them—opened by the mages who supported them. Seizing the weapons that dropped from those gates, they charged Siegfried once more.
Exchanges of blows continued.
Even when five Transcendents renowned for close combat rushed him at once, they failed to push Siegfried back; instead they themselves were driven. Blood sprayed. Severed flesh fell.
…Siegfried was simply strong.
He possessed no special authority. He was simply fast, possessed of a robust body, and held a sword that cut through anything. Piercing that simple strength was horrifyingly difficult.
They succeeded in pinning Siegfried in place for a full minute, yet that was their limit.
Shhk.
Seongyuksin's arm was severed. Yuel's leg was cut off. Gerd's arm was pierced through by Gram. One of Caron's ears was sliced away. Anton's shoulder was gouged open.
In a single stroke he had made five Constellations bleed at once.
Wounded and robbed of that one second, they could not block the attacks that followed.
Crack!
In that instant a spear shaft smashed into the flat of Gram. Gram's edge cut all things, but its flat did not. Even after that fact became known, few had employed such a tactic, for only a tiny handful of Constellations possessed the strength to alter Gram's trajectory by striking its flat.
One of that tiny handful now intervened on the field.
The Hundred-Man Spear—Bedivere.
Having finished repairing the sealing formation of Camlann that Siegfried had cut, he came at once to support the Constellations. The moment Bedivere's monstrous strength drove the spear shaft into the flat, Siegfried's movement locked for the first time with a heavy clunk.
The ground beneath his feet split. Beneath the colossal force pressing down from above, Siegfried's sword path wavered.
"Rotate."
Flinging the wounded backward, Bedivere took their place.
"You must take him in rotation. Do not think of wounding him. Fight with the sole intent of enduring."
While those who had been thrown back received treatment from waiting Transcendents, new Constellations filled the gaps.
They lasted less than five seconds before falling back.
Had Bedivere not intervened, they would not have retreated—they would have lost their heads. Even with dozens of Constellations rotating through the fight, Siegfried showed not the slightest sign of fatigue.
Bang.
Only Caron, whose wounds were lightest, remained in place and fought Siegfried alongside Bedivere. Watching those movements, Bedivere felt astonishment.
…Caron had already faced Siegfried once. Because of that, he roughly understood how to deal with him.
One needed only look at the equipment he had brought.
Every time the hem of Caron's robe fluttered, a new sword appeared from within. Moving with the knowledge that Gram would sever any weapon, Caron fought on. He lifted multiple blades at once and endured as though performing a circus act.
Even so, he could not avoid injury.
Caron's arm, already streaming blood from every part of his body, was finally cut away. The Constellations continued to rotate, yet the speed of their exchanges and the interval between wounds only grew shorter.
Flash.
By contrast, the longer the heat of battle accumulated, the faster Siegfried became.
Still as strong as ever.
Bedivere groaned inwardly.
It was not that the skill of those present was lacking, or that their ability fell short of pinning Siegfried down. No matter how outstanding their technique… they possessed no means of stopping Siegfried's weapon.
If one cannot block an opponent's sword in close combat, the techniques one may use shrink to a handful.
And Siegfried was a Sword Saint.
A being who unfolded tens of thousands of sword paths branching from four stances. The strongest swordsman who had reached beyond the extreme of the weapon called the sword. To face such a being while restricted to a limited set of techniques was no different from being told to die.
And so.
The eyes of Bedivere, still enduring against Siegfried, turned toward one place. There stood a youth who had vomited blood and was now settling into stance.
There is only you.
The only one who can face Siegfried is you.
Having struck Gram, Bedivere used the rebound to leap high. As though trading places with him, someone far off kicked off the earth and sprinted.
3.
Even Excalibur's regenerative power could not close the wounds. Gram severed all things, and it had cut even the pathways of mana within Najin's body.
With Merlin's emergency treatment preventing the wounds from simply tearing wider, Najin steadied his breathing.
The gulf that lay between the great hero of a thousand years past and himself.
Najin beheld that gulf for the first time. He felt it with his own body and saw it with both eyes. The image of Arthur that he had only vaguely sketched until now now stood sharp and clear.
A place far more distant than the ground upon which he stood.
Arthur stood over there, far away.
Even after claiming nine stars and ascending to transcendence, Arthur remained distant. And standing in that same place as Arthur was the man before him.
Siegfried.
An opponent strong enough to make one's blood freeze.
This is it.
Najin sucked in a ragged breath.
This is Camlann.
The opponent he would have to challenge before long.
Najin admitted it honestly.
After bringing down the Revelry Emperor, he had grown somewhat complacent. Everyone around him had praised him so highly that he had begun to regard himself as a powerhouse. He admitted he had been a little intoxicated by that sweetness.
Objectively speaking, of course, Najin was indeed an immense powerhouse. Within the Outer Land he was strong enough that no equal could be found.
But when the field of vision expanded to Camlann—
Najin was still weak.
Still, the road ahead of him stretched long.
"Kh—ptuh."
Spitting out the clot of blood that filled his mouth, Najin twisted the corner of his lips upward. Yes. Now he could feel it a little.
Merlin.
—Yeah. I'm listening.
Najin made one request of Merlin. Hearing it, Merlin let out a sigh that was equal parts incredulous and familiar, then nodded.
And Najin—
as he always had—lashed his own body onward.
To challenge his limits once more.