It Was Never Just Swordplay (3)
Is a shield a weapon, or is it armor?
The answer to that question is a simple one.
It depends on how you use it.
I flung my body over the top of the oncoming shield.
The instant of impact.
A full-body rotation scattered the shock, and even that wasn't enough — I rode the rebound to climb up the shield itself instead.
A straight line can be swallowed by a circle.
A point can be dyed into a line.
And a gap can be filled, point by point.
…I don't know what it is, exactly.
Something I came to understand simply by doing it.
But even now, I don't know what principle it works on, or why it's possible at all.
Still.
I am no scholar.
And so there's no need to be desperate about understanding it with my head.
…So long as it works.
So long as I can pull it off.
Anything will do.
"Huh?"
Even though I'd rammed that small body of mine into him like a charging bull, I was the one being pushed back — what in the world was this?
Not only that — I'd clearly been hit. The sensation was unmistakable.
So why was he casually climbing up my shield?
That agility, trampling my forearm as if it were a stepping stone.
"Where do you think you're going with another one of those petty tricks!"
A misunderstanding.
Not once, not a single time, had I ever treated an opponent as enough of a fool to fall for the same move twice.
So if he believed otherwise, that was precisely his delusion.
But such thinking would become a gap.
Feinting toward my head, then twisting his body away from my shoulder at the last moment — running down my arm like an acrobat, threading between my waist and my legs — and finally.
He buried the hand axe, for better or worse, into my groin.
It was less a weapon than a tool, an implement.
But it made no difference.
This, too, depended on how you used it.
"GUAAAGH!"
Even for a body tempered as a whole, hardening one's vitals — one's groin no less — is another matter entirely.
Forge yourself as hard as steel and you'll still be flesh, and because you are flesh, a seam will always exist somewhere.
More than that.
Even the force clinging to his body, the very strength that strained to throw me off—
I could turn it into my own driving power.
And disturbing the flow of mana on contact, dulling his senses, throwing off his reactions—
None of that was any problem at all.
At the very first exchange, I could have easily neutralized the axe warrior and finished it.
But this, I kept hidden.
They had a firm suspicion that touching him was dangerous — that much was true.
But when crisis strikes, if one intense impression is hammered deep enough—
Prejudice forms without your knowing it.
And to prepare all the better against it, you instead grow clumsier, stiffer.
So it goes: instinct always seems to protect you, yet what breaks you down in turn is precisely those clumsy, half-digested instinctive responses, gestures, reactions.
Primal judgment, when you get down to it, is the greatest villain that betrays your true self.
It blocks courageous action, breeds cowardice, magnifies nothing into terror until you break.
It hinders even the attempt to challenge any of it, and in the end drives you to your knees by your own hand.
"AGH! GUAAAGH!"
To defeat yourself means to suppress and conquer even those prejudices, those fixed and calcified preconceptions — to subdue instinct itself.
…Though the Demon King ranted and raved about it at the time.
Then and now, I doubt there was ever a more essential piece of advice.
"Not bad! Not bad at all!"
"……."
Cariel gave his sword a single rotation, then settled the blade in his right hand near his side.
The point of the sword angled diagonally from dead front—
Even one-handed, this was Portes.
His left arm drew in tight, the hand curled to shield his face and jaw—
And his folded left elbow rose into a point, like an arrowhead seeking a target.
"What in the world is that stance supposed to be?"
The warrior asked, half-lowering his spear shaft, sounding genuinely curious.
"……."
"Fine then. See for yourself."
Then I'd have to oblige the man's expectations!
"KRAAAAGH!"
A howling roar bore down on me together with the lowered spear, its tip flashing at the end of its thrust.
"—!!"
I dropped my stance in one motion, nearly sitting, and with the sword in my right hand alone — Vetita.
I raised the hilt, deflected as best I could the spear shaft that slammed down my blade with enough force to snap it—
And at the same time, I stretched out my remaining hand and seized it.
The shaft.
My whole body was dragged headlong toward him.
If the spear's retraction had been a fraction faster—
The hand that had so proudly caught that shaft, still gripping his blade, would have been rendered rags on the spot.
I was aware it was a dangerous gamble.
But without audacity, no gap in power can be overturned.
With overwhelming strength, technique, trickery, schemes, tactics—
Such things might be entirely worthless.
But without overwhelming strength.
In the end, you have no choice but to exercise cunning.
To simply be carried along was to throw my own body onto the line between life and death.
Like a serpent, I coiled my whole body up along the spear shaft.
"Huh?!"
I stared hard into his dumbfounded face, observing his eyes, his bearing.
Faster than his gaze, faster than the shift of his expression—
the instinctive movements optimized through familiar motion.
I read them at the level of muscle before it moved—
discerning the flow of mana threading through his whole body a beat ahead—
leaping past the stages of thought and sensation—
answering the warnings of my own optimized instinct in kind.
…and drove in.
With that, I flung out my sword.
"UOO—!"
A blade rushing for his face.
And at the very same moment—
I climbed straight up his spear shaft and hand—
drew the hand axe—
and—
CRACK!
"GUH!"
His enormous hand.
Right between his fingers, into the gaps beneath his nails—
I drove the hand axe in.
It had found purchase after all.
A single strike, powered by the force I'd stored up while climbing against the shaft.
But this would not be the killing blow.
"Enough of your tricks—!"
He seized my fingers still fast to him—
swung me around as if rotating his whole body—
and broke them.
Crunch!
"—GAAAAGH!"
Even shattered fingers are no reason for a body to flip over.
But if you don't roll with the direction of the break, you won't end at the line where it merely bends.
That instinct compelled even that massive frame to bow its body willingly.
If it had been the wrist, the attempt itself would have been impossible.
A large frame means this kind of takedown is possible too.
Had his build been slightly ambiguous, or far larger still—
my attempt would likewise have been reduced to futility.
I had no certainty. But I had no other option either.
CRASH!
Even rolling across the ground — even mounting his body — I held no advantage.
A child atop a grown man's body — how would that confer the upper hand?
But.
"You rat-sized little—! Where do you get off—!"
The sword, flung to the ground.
As he rolled across the earth, and I rolled after him—
I had snatched it up long before.
At the same time I climbed his arm and pinned his head between both my knees.
I brought the sword's point level with his eyes.
"U—ooh?"
He must have sensed it.
Before he could react—
I struck down, and tore my body away.
"GUAAAAGH!"
Had I hesitated for even a moment, that hand would have caught me, and it would have been over.
In a form I wanted no part of.
Having put a vast distance between us, Cariel picked the sword up once more.
The direct sword of Saint Cariel.
The sight of him struggling even to stand — unable to bear drawing Elhermina's sword, seared into his memory — might have looked pitiful at a glance.
To me, it was a scene that chilled me to the bone.
"You crazy bastard! A brat with guts like that! Where did you leave your liver behind?! Even recklessness has its limits!"
He forced himself upright, fighting down the pain.
Had I been too shallow?
The sensation of piercing through the eyeball, of scraping within it, had been distinct — but who could say?
Because I'd pulled my hand away so fast, perhaps I failed to finish it.
But in that moment, there was no other choice.
No reason to grieve, no reason for regret.
Even if it wasn't the best possible outcome, that could never be grounds for despair.
This wasn't my last chance, either.
"GRRRRGH!"
They say a wounded beast is more terrifying, don't they?
Then.
Is an unharmed beast not frightening?
It's all the same, in the end.
It depends entirely on how you take it.
If I'm afraid and trembling, the odds stretch endlessly against me.
So think of it the other way?
The number of openings only multiplies instead.
"Ha—hahahaha! Yes! I concede it! You are a strange little brat, nothing like Cariel! But at least in the grit and valor to face us down! You seem worthy of carrying that name!"
"……."
"Good. Then consider yourself ready! Just as you wished — let us reenact that battle together! Overturn that miserable past and remake it as a battle of glory! Let us remake it once more!"
What? Ready?
"?!"
All at once.
My mind was going hazy.
"……."
My whole body sagged, my vision dimmed, my throat burned, and no matter how I breathed, the air never came — my breath simply would not settle.
"Yes! That is exactly the state his body was in! When he faced us! Far from full strength! And yet! Why were we utterly helpless before him?!"
The warrior's cry was half a scream.
"……."
It was hard even to keep my eyes open.
Sound evaporated, my vision swam.
This feeling, this sensation of every sense closing, one by one—
'Yes.'
Even after he returned from that place, he was never given so much as a cup of water.
He couldn't eat properly, even that much.
Even then, all he did was soothe the anxious young men of the village.
And then.
Toward that crowd approaching the village, far off in the distance—
he walked forward.
…There was no hesitation in that stride.
Only a desperate prayer, and longing.
"……."
But.
In this state, how was I supposed to fight at all?
Merely holding the sword was an ordeal.
Standing on two legs was itself a penance.
"……."
And still, I had nothing to say.
When had the world ever turned the way I wanted it to?
Unreasonableness was simply the rule.
No one likes to recite the circumstances stacked against them.
And whether one is valiant or weak, whoever chooses a battlefield always wishes to dominate it, to hold the advantage.
On that point, at least, there is little difference.
To wish for a disadvantaged battlefield is nothing but the hubris of one who would inscribe glory in his own hand.
To believe that one can churn a battlefield like the heroes who ruled their age.
That with sublime generalship, one can command the field at will.
Such fantasies. Delusions of grandeur. Mistaken belief.
…They will addict you, and drive you headlong into a cold and dark abyss.
It may be a tomb. Or a cruel processing ground, heaping corpses to be buried and burned.
"Now! It begins! Will you sit there and wallow?!"
"……."
I had no strength left to speak.
My throat had split open, and my mouth was dried to dust.
But.
I forced my body upright.
"Come, then. Show us your limits. If you truly carry Cariel's name. If you carry his strength and his skill!"
Defeat us gladly, if you can!
"That the legend has not ended! That our struggle was not in vain!"
The earth's axis shook.
Every one of the onlookers began to advance upon me.
Trampling the ground, leaving footprints across the plain — their pointless march was, in truth, no more than a hollow illusion.
And yet, to what I was now, it felt utterly merciless.
"…Let's begin."
Less a voice than a breath escaping my lips — a powerless puff of air.
But so what?
I straightened my back.
If my stance collapses, everything I've learned becomes useless.
The body is drained, and with it, my will gutters out like a fire losing its last ember.
What remains is instinct.
An enemy stands before me; to cut him down is to live.
It is that simple.
Everything grows monotonous, and simple.
"……."
They come.
Ten of them, perhaps twenty.
I can't even count properly.
My head won't turn.
I'm looking, and it doesn't register.
For a moment, consciousness cut out.
I nearly fainted.
The tension is absolute, but my body won't obey.
'No answer there.'
I am not like him.
Saint Cariel tempered himself steadily, walked into real battles, and even afterward, kept honing himself, and—
'No.'
There's no need for excuses.
And self-justification, at that.
A needless thought.
Spending consciousness, spending thought, on that is truly, utterly wasteful.
I strip away the negative emotions.
Cut them out.
Haven't I proclaimed it enough — that I have no emotions, that I'm dead inside, broken, ruined?
'Was even that, in the end, a kind of vanity?'
Even a sigh won't come.
I lower my stance.
First — what must I do?
'I don't know.'
Defend? Counter? Evade? Strike first?
I don't know.
Truly, now, nothing comes to mind.
I couldn't see anything either.
And so perhaps that was why.
"……?"
When that phantom came into view.
I wondered if what I was seeing was real at all.
Before I knew it, my gaze was stolen away.
Compared to the bulk of the barbarian warriors standing before me—
his back looked endlessly small.
But faintly, his eyes and lips seemed to part.
'…….'
Follow me.
At last, the warriors crashed down.
That momentum, that pressure—
like the dream-battlefield manifested from the Demon King's malice—
like those imaginary heavy cavalry who had crushed and rammed me there, time after time.
To sweep me away alone, they flung their whole strength at me in a wave.
And within that wave.
Unthinking, I took a step forward.
The only thing I'd recalled, in that instant before—
was chasing after his back, nothing more.