Fang
My heart grew calm.
The heart that had been in constant turmoil ever since my body changed was now as still as a lake without a single breath of wind.
"Let me introduce myself again."
Everything I had been agonizing over until now. That I was not some vulgar female who would be happy just laying eggs. That I might never return to my original body and simply resign myself to this one. And every other wild speculation and delusion about the person I was becoming.
"My name is Ren."
The moment my hand closed around the hilt of my sword, every last one of those worries scattered like wind.
The instant I drew the blade, all that remained in the world was me and my sword — and the things I had to cut down.
"I'm a swordsman."
I raised the tip of my blade and leveled it at the enemy as I spoke. The fact that I was myself could only be proven by the sword.
Watching Ren raise her sword, Luciella carefully took Huey's hand — a hand that was steadily losing its human shape.
"Master."
"…Yeah."
With a look of resigned necessity, Huey lifted his trembling hand, pulled the familiar red talisman from his robes, and swallowed it.
"Ghhk."
"Are you all right?"
As the scales covering his entire body slowly faded away, Huey's form was revealed — covered in burns far worse than before.
"No, I'm not…"
"Honestly. You go charging off without thinking just because the woman you like got a little hurt, and this is what happens."
"…Shut it."
They had agreed to reassess the situation if the first strike failed — and Huey had gone and moved on his own. Luciella puffed out her cheeks in protest.
"A pudding or two is not going to cover this."
"Fine. Got it. Just stay back for now."
Osmon, who moments ago had been thrashing about as if he meant to kill them, had somehow completely turned his back and was now focused solely on Ren. Unease prickling at them, Huey and Luciella forced their barely cooperative bodies into motion and carefully made their way toward the water sphere where Frederica was trapped.
Then — a chill ran down their spines.
Without thinking, both of them turned their heads toward Ren.
And at the end of that gaze —
With her sword fully drawn, Ren cast aside the scabbard she had been cradling in her wings, letting it clatter to the ground. Then, without a moment's hesitation, she threw herself toward the water's surface.
"Ren!"
It looked for all the world like she was diving in. Huey cried out her name in alarm.
"…Huh?"
"What on earth…"
A moment later, Huey and Luciella witnessed something they could scarcely believe.
Because Ren — whom they had fully expected to plunge into the water — was instead racing across the surface at high speed, kicking off the water as she ran.
While the two of them stood frozen at the incomprehensible sight of a person running on water, Frederica — who had shattered the water sphere while Osmon's attention was fixed on Ren — approached, wringing out her thoroughly soaked hair.
"A technique for walking on water. Lotus."
"Frederica."
"How…?"
Seeing Huey and Luciella regard her with wariness incomparable to their first meeting, Frederica put a little distance between them, her expression bitter, as if trying to put them at ease.
"Don't worry too much. As long as Ren is here, I won't go back to the way I was."
Then, watching Ren race across the water, she let out a breath of relief and spoke again.
"Thankfully, the gamble paid off."
Even the person who made the medicine had doubted its efficacy — but at this level, under these circumstances, it was more than enough of a success.
And so Frederica and the other two, exhausted as they were, quietly settled in to watch Ren.
Sword drawn, eyes sharp, Ren never took her gaze off Osmon as she ran across the water's surface.
Watching her, Osmon stretched out a hand and began manipulating streams of water to attack — but in that same instant, Ren vanished.
"…!?"
Before he could even blink, she had closed the distance in a flash and was swinging her blade at his throat.
A ringing clash of steel on hardened space.
But Osmon had apparently prepared for a sudden assault. Ren's sword stopped short of his neck, colliding with a patch of space that had gone black and solid.
"Tch."
Ren clicked her tongue in frustration even as she twisted her body, dodging a spike of water that erupted from beneath her feet, then brought her sword down in another strike from above.
A sharp slash — and at the same moment, Osmon's form flickered and vanished.
Having cleaved nothing but the useless water spike, Ren looked out toward the distant sky, grumbling at the blade that had chipped in the earlier collision.
"This is why I hate cheap junk. Two swings and the edge is already gone."
She leveled her sword at Osmon, whose face was completely swallowed by a writhing mass of black energy, and bared her teeth in a grin.
"What are you waiting for? Still trying to size me up?"
"Bring it all out. I'll smash every last bit of it."
Immediately after, the water that filled all of Swinford began to heave and surge.
A low, groaning roar like a ship's horn rolled across the city. Far in the distance, a small wave began to rise. That small wave grew steadily larger until, before long, it had become a colossal tsunami of overwhelming mass, ready to sweep the entire city away.
And then —
With a thunderous crash, even the buildings that had somehow retained their shape were smashed to pieces. Ren glanced back at Huey's group, who were scrambling desperately to decide which way to flee from the massive wave, then smirked and raised her sword.
"Well… fine. I'll play along."
Facing the enormous tsunami that had drawn right up to her, blotting out heaven and earth as if it meant to swallow her whole, Ren instead swung her blade from high to low with quiet contempt.
And then — by the sword of a human who by all rights should have been crushed without resistance —
The tsunami split cleanly in half, as if a miracle of the gods had occurred.
The collapsed wave fell as a powerless rain, soaking everything around them. Between the falling water, Ren alone stood with crimson eyes blazing, staring Osmon down.
A moment later, at Osmon's gesture, every drop of water filling Swinford began to gather in midair.
The converging water formed a cocoon of murky current, thick with blood and corpses, mud and debris. And from that cocoon was born —
A colossal serpent with nine heads, roaring to the sky.
That massive serpent was the very reason Osmon had once earned the epithet Storm Serpent.
Looking at the nine-headed snake that fixed her with clear murderous intent, Ren spoke with a soft smile.
"Yes. That's more like it."
Toward Osmon, who was surely watching her from beyond the murky current — and toward Huey, who would likewise be watching from far away — she said:
"Watch carefully."
Then attacks came crashing in from every direction at once.
And on the waterlogged, muddy ground, Ren moved as if dancing — sometimes fluid, sometimes dazzling — weaving through every assault.
"There won't be many chances to give a demonstration."
Cold sweat beaded on her skin as pain slowly bloomed from deep within her body, but outwardly she showed nothing. She began to reenact with her body everything she had once taught Huey.
After a stretch of pure evasion —
Blades of storm tore up the earth as they surged toward her. And from the moment those storm blades began to rage, Ren's movements changed.
Where she had been smoothly dodging every attack that came at her on the ground, she now kicked off the rubble of a building and leapt sharply into the open air.
Immediately, the serpent's nine heads lunged with jaws wide open, aiming for Ren as she hung suspended above them.
"Look out—!"
Huey cried out in panic at the sight — and in that same moment, Ren, who had seemed to leap defenselessly into becoming the serpent's prey, stepped on empty air and leapt again.
A technique for treading the void. Dandelion.
Once, twice, three times. Stepping on nothing at all, Ren closed the distance to Osmon in an instant.
She twisted her waist as if about to swing her sword at him — and then Osmon vanished once more, leaving only a grotesque, gurgling laugh behind.
"You really put on a show earlier, didn't you."
As if she had been waiting for it, Ren spun around to face the nine heads of the serpent rushing at her — and Osmon beyond them. From her blade, a crimson aura had begun to rise like heat haze.
The haze thinned into threads that wrapped around the sword, then wove themselves densely into the shape of a razor-sharp edge.
Osmon felt a chill at the sight and hardened the space before him — but Ren paid it no mind. Crimson eyes flashing, she swung her sword in a great arc through empty air.
And along that trajectory, a crimson slash cleaved the nine-headed serpent apart, shattered the blackened, solidified space, and — with a single clean cut — carved through Osmon along with the divine radiance that had been protecting him.
"Kh… huurk."
This crimson slash was one of the reasons the Ren of the past had been called the Sword Saint.
The name of the technique was —
"I told you, didn't I?"
Sword Wind —
"You'll regret not killing me when you had the chance."
— Fang.