Because This Isn't a Story (3)
Water is a truly wretched space in which to fight. The resistance of the water itself is one thing; the complete absence of footing makes it impossible to put any real force behind a blow.
But when you have no teeth, you chew with your gums.
We eventually learned how to fight in the water.
Boom!
If the lack of footing was the problem, then we simply fought by pushing off the lakebed.
Boom, boom!
Having already gauged the depth of the water while clearing the weeds from the bottom turned out to be a masterstroke.
I found a relatively shallow stretch and traded blows with Berserk. When I cloaked my strikes in mana, the water’s resistance around the point of impact dropped to nearly nothing.
Thanks to that, fists that moved almost as fast as they would on land hammered into each other’s guards. Every collision forced the water aside with a burst of bubbles, carving out a fleeting pocket of space—and I was fairly certain that wasn’t just my imagination.
Burble!
Berserk’s arm snared me and flung me backward. Resistance only lessened during an attack; the rest of the time I still moved like I was underwater, so I didn’t travel far.
Of course, that wasn’t entirely a blessing. Because I hadn’t been thrown far enough, the time it took Berserk to close on me was correspondingly short.
I twisted past the somewhat sluggish punch coming my way, planted a foot against her solar plexus, and shoved. She went tumbling back with a dull thud; the reaction sent me drifting the opposite direction.
Now.
I expelled the last of my air and kicked upward. I could endure every other misery of this underwater arena—except the need to breathe.
If I’d known it would come to this, I never would have returned the underwater breathing apparatus! The brief regret rose with my body toward the surface.
Yank!
Berserk wasn’t about to let me go so easily. She seized my ankle and hauled me back down.
In the dim light her face showed not the slightest intention of surfacing. She looked entirely too confident that her lung capacity was better than mine.
Crash!
A dull impact rang out as my legs slammed into the sandy bottom. Sand billowed outward in a cloud that looked exactly like dust.
Thud!
Cheeks still puffed with held breath, Berserk drove a fist at me. I got my forearm up in time to block, but the blow still shoved me two and a half steps back.
A subtle ache lingered in the arm. From experience, that level of pain meant a bruise was already forming.
Burble!
Having landed a solid hit, Berserk kicked off the bottom with a grinning face. Seemed her breath was running short as well.
But was this concept of mine ever the type to simply take a beating?
I snatched her ankle and slammed her into the lakebed the same way she had done to me. My own air was genuinely at its limit now.
So what then?
If I wasn’t confident I could hold my breath long enough to reach the surface, I would simply remove the water that was in the way.
I gathered a dense mass of mana in my palm and fired it straight up.
KRA-BOOM!
A black pillar shot skyward in a perfect line, shoving the water aside. The force was so violent that a volume of water far greater than the pillar itself was displaced, peeling the lake away from me and the ground around my feet.
Berserk’s eyes went round as the current flung her backward.
Then she could just swim out on her own.
I squinted against the sudden sunlight and stomped the lakebed. The moment the displaced water began swirling back in, my mana-wreathed body rocketed upward.
Huuuh. Air flooded my burning lungs just as my body broke the surface.
“……!?”
And as I began to fall again, a black silhouette surged up after me at terrifying speed.
“Gah!”
Boom!
The surface exploded outward in a perfect circle as Berserk burst free. A halberd was already in her hands.
We were only fighting with fists!? Sure, the earlier agreement had allowed weapons, but she had been throwing punches, so I had assumed today was pure hand-to-hand!
I scowled in disbelief—though that didn’t stop me from reacting.
My hand closed cleanly around True Two-Hander.
CLANG!
Mana-wrapped weapons collided and sent shockwaves rolling outward. The surface of the lake cratered beneath us as our bodies were hurled in opposite directions.
Sssssshhh!
The force was so great that neither of us sank; instead we skidded across the water on our feet. The backward shove simply outpaced gravity’s pull.
Thud!
Something finally slammed into my back. A glance told me it was one of the pillars of the bridge leading to the Magic Tower.
Maybe because I had coated my entire body in mana, the impact barely registered for me… but the railing had crumpled rather badly, and I did feel a faint twinge of guilt.
Along with a sudden economic concern about how much the repairs would cost.
“Y-you’re insane.”
But fretting about it now wouldn’t change anything. Instead of dwelling on repair bills, I tried to calculate how far I had flown.
Judging by the marks, we had definitely been fighting over there.
One clash of weapons had thrown us this far? Ridiculous.
I draped an arm over the bridge railing and studied the white foam and swirling eddies that marked the site of our rampage.
My gaze stayed locked on the direction Berserk had been flung.
I had been driven toward the Magic Tower bridge that spanned the middle of the lake; she had been thrown all the way to the opposite shore.
“A-a person?”
At this point the fight could probably be considered over.
I set the two-hander on the bridge first, then hauled myself up with my arms.
“Th-the sword!”
The person who had been standing on the bridge squeaked and fled…
Sorry about that. I’m not actually a dangerous person. I wasn’t trying to do anything like this, either.
But what was I supposed to say to someone already running away? I settled for shaking the water from my body instead of offering excuses.
I felt strangely light.
Why? Hard to say.
Because I had escaped the situation without worrying about breaking character?
Because the emotions that had been rising in my throat had been crushed flat by sheer absurdity and evaporated?
Or because the cool lake water had washed away the redness around my eyes and the few tears I had finally let fall?
Because when I was beating on Berserk I had managed to pack every last scrap of personal frustration into my fists?
Because once you focus on a fight, not only do the distractions vanish—every useless thought disappears with them?
It could have been all of those things. Or none of them.
Before any of that, I simply realized that for the first time in a very long while, fighting had felt fun.
It wasn’t a strange feeling.
This was a fight that had begun by mutual agreement—outwardly it looked like Berserk had dragged me into it, but the truth was I had given permission, so agreement was the correct word.
In other words, I could throw myself into pure competitive spirit without worrying that I might kill Berserk or that she might kill me.
Exactly like playing a match in a game.
And would anyone else die because of this fight? Was there something I was compulsively obligated to protect?
No. No matter how this fight ended, no one’s future would change and no larger balance would shift.
Which meant there was not a single element here that could stress me out.
It felt like enjoying a long-overdue casual game session.
“—Hah.”
Of course… well. The platinum-colored blur that was presumably Berserk sprinting along the water’s edge did look a little ridiculous.
She was moving fast enough that I doubted she intended to stroll over, declare the fight finished, and chat.
I had thought the fight was over.
But I didn’t mind. No—I didn’t mind at all.
I had always liked this kind of back-and-forth brawl; that was why I only ever played action RPGs.
When we first met I had avoided getting involved because it seemed like it would become a hassle. Now that I was already tangled up in it, there was no reason left to care about appearances.
“De—mon—Knight!”
So I took a proper grip on the sword I had been dangling loosely.
As long as Berserk’s fighting spirit was still burning, the concept would never back down—and I had no intention of running either.
“Come at me, idiot.”
Ah, but doesn’t this feel a little like PvP with a friend?
Like truly playing for fun.
“I’ll show you the difference in our calibers.”
A lukewarm rivulet of water, warmed by my own body heat, slid down my cheek.
The moment she finished her important business, the fierce White Wind collapsed onto the sofa. Even a Great Sage could do nothing about the fatigue accumulated from traveling back and forth through the Great Forest.
Knock knock!
Yet the world was somehow always this cruel.
Less than an hour after she had closed her eyes, a knock pierced the soundproofing magic.
White Wind, who had been snoring lightly, half-woke and flailed—then rolled off the sofa in what felt like an inevitable sequence of events.
Knock knock!
“Uh, uhhh.”
Aigoo, my back. White Wind groaned and flicked a finger. The door clicked open.
“…Were you sleeping?”
The visitor paused at the threshold, hesitating before the darkened room. The voice that reached her ears left White Wind momentarily speechless.
“…After everything we just went through, you think I wouldn’t sleep?”
They had camped outdoors twice on the way and arrived in the city during the day, so technically it wasn’t time for bed yet.
But the two-day trek out of the Great Forest had been anything but easy. Magic had lessened the discomfort, yet camping out was hardly the sort of rest that fully restored one’s stamina.
White Wind found the Archmage’s perfectly composed face even more mysterious.
He was younger, had the endurance built from years of adventuring, and there was the racial difference to consider—but this still felt excessive, didn’t it?
“Mm. Once you’ve traveled with the Demon Knight for a while, this level of hardship becomes routine.”
“Exactly what kind of forced marches have you been on? More importantly—does the Demon Knight even sleep?”
“Not that… but he does have a habit of running off alone, much like this time.”
So rather than the Hero leading the party, one of the party members was the one dragging everyone along.
Considering the Demon Knight’s personality, though, it wasn’t an especially strange picture.
And the Hero’s own temperament wasn’t exactly the type to take charge either—strictly speaking, she still seemed too inexperienced with the world to have found her center yet.
“Fine. So what’s the business?”
White Wind clicked her tongue in pity.
He was getting old enough that he could settle into a branch office or open a little research lab and take it easy—yet here he was, still grinding himself down. Though, thinking about what had happened back then, it was unlikely he would ever open a lab again.
Anyway, she was already awake.
White Wind lit the lights and heated water, determined to finish waking herself properly. Tea leaves with a stimulating effect floated into the air at her gesture.
“I only came with a minor request. Nothing serious or lengthy, so there’s no need to brew tea.”
“Oh, really?”
Then she wouldn’t stand on ceremony.
White Wind set the tea leaves down again and fetched honey instead. She also swapped the heating water for milk. Nothing beat honeyed milk as a sleep aid.
“If I had known you would be sleeping, I would have put this off a little longer.”
“Forget it—I’m already up. More importantly, a ‘minor request’ coming from you…”
White Wind raked a comb through her wild hair with one hand while drumming the table with the other.
“Does it have anything to do with the thing I was going to ask you about?”
“…You had something to ask me? You?”
“Yep.”
The milk finished heating. White Wind scooped a generous dollop of honey and dunked it straight into the white liquid. Golden syrup sank into the pale milk.
“It’s nothing major. I gave the Demon Knight a certain item, see? But it was a little dangerous, so I put a formula on it that makes anyone who isn’t a mana user hesitant to touch it—so ordinary people wouldn’t get hurt.”
“…And?”
“And then, wonder of wonders! While I was laid up with my injuries, it vanished without a trace. Isn’t that amazing?”
“…….”
It had fully dissolved. White Wind fished out the spoon. Ting. The spoon and teacup chimed softly against each other.
“It was you, right? You took it, didn’t you?”
As if on cue, the Archmage also stirred honey into his own heated milk. Plop. Ripples spread across the surface.
“If you already knew, why ask?”
“Ahahaha!”
The instant the answer reached her ears, White Wind burst out laughing.
Of course. A warrior wouldn’t recognize the item’s value, and a mage would have no reason to cart a bomb around. She had only suspected… yet who would have thought it was actually true?
Especially coming from someone who, until recently, had treated the Demon Knight rather coldly.
“I thought you’d softened up a little after the Great Forest, and I was right. Did what I said bother you that much?”
“Naturally. How could it not?”
“Haha. Then the favor you came to ask is related to that as well.”
“If the Demon Knight has requested a new chest piece, then yes. Something similar. I’ve come to ask you to remove the explosive magic from it.”
“Ahaha!”
White Wind laughed loudly again. Truly, there were days when he defied every expectation and days when he followed her predictions without the slightest deviation. That was the Archmage for you.
“But what am I supposed to do? This time it wasn’t a gift—it was payment for a contract. I can’t just strip it out on a whim.”
“Is that so? Then subcontract the work to me.”
“Then the Magic Tower would become an organization that doesn’t even properly inspect its deliveries. For people who live on reputation, that’s a difficult request.”
And yet she liked that he was that sort of person. A place called the pinnacle of intellect needed exactly that kind of humanity more than anything.
“Reputation born of principle. Of course it matters. But does it truly stand above a single life?”
Knowledge was a blade without eyes, power without a self.
“What if it runs wild?”
“It won’t. This incident has convinced me of that. That is my faith—the trust between people that I wish to place above principle.”
If someone who understood compassion, like the Archmage, refused to wield knowledge, then where would that blade ultimately point?
“You’re asking me to abandon my reputation for the sake of your trust. That’s a bit much.”
“I apologize.”
“But… it’s not bad. I decided not to trust your judgment when it comes to people, but what the hell—I’ll try trusting you one more time.”
More importantly, no separate contract had been drawn up for the chest piece. Even if the Demon Knight tried to raise a fuss, no evidence of the original terms existed in the world.
So accepting the request cost her nothing. White Wind granted her friend’s wish out of the purest calculation of profit and loss.
“In exchange, give back what you took. I’ll dismantle it and reuse the parts.”
“Gladly.”
And she had even saved on material costs. Perfect gain all around.
BANG BANG BANG!
“……?”
Yet it seemed karma existed in this world after all.
“Where exactly did you learn to knock like that?”
“My deepest apologies, Great Sage. The matter is simply that serious…”
“If this isn’t as serious as the business I just finished, I’m cutting your department’s research budget. Speak.”
“Th-that is… the Demon Knight and his companion…”
“What about them?”
“They have reduced the bridge connecting the Magic Tower to the village into fine fragments.”
White Wind, who had been about to pull a fast one on the grounds that no contract existed, spat the mouthful of milk she had been holding the moment the disaster crashed through the door.