Convincing (4)
Crack.
A vivid fracture split across the green jewel sealed inside the glass tube. The one who noticed it approached the table in silence.
Flutter.
With every step the loosely draped robe swayed and whispered. Where it slipped, the bare skin of neck, collarbones and shoulders lay covered in soft downy feathers.
“Now what is this…?”
He drew a hand from his pocket and brushed back his faded hair. The wrinkled hand, examined closely, was packed with tiny scales. Hooked talons gleamed with a faint luster.
Crack.
While he carefully stroked his scalp so the claws would not rake it, another flaw appeared on the jewel. The cleavage was not yet severe, yet if this continued the stone would shatter to pieces; that much was plain.
“I thought I would never use it in my lifetime.”
Even knowing that, the jewel’s master took no special measure. On the contrary, a flicker of excitement showed as he watched the gem slowly ruin itself.
Ruby-red irises caught the jewel’s reflected light and turned a muddy brown, the color of tree bark that crunched underfoot and wet earth that clung damply.
“What thoughts fill the heads of those who dare look up to the heavens?”
He lifted the glass tube until the jewel hung level with his eyes.
“Hm? Number 73.”
For an instant the moment of the jewel’s creation returned to him. This is a failure. That was when the gold of another land’s starlight had shone upon this tower.
“Slash.”
I had aimed for a clean severance of the arm, yet the final grade was only a three-centimeter gouge into the shoulder. Unlike the mana spears that stabbed in as points, a Chamgyeok cut as a line; I had kept it hidden until now and loosed it in a surprise attack, only for her to answer it and block most of the blow.
If I had known it would turn out this way I should have used it from the start. Clicking my tongue at the disappointing result, I swung the empty hand. Mana leapt from the nails, raked the air, and was instantly erased by the whip.
The shattered mana melted into the wind.
“A mere human.”
Even after that perfect defense—perfect, at least, in my eyes—my opponent voiced displeasure. No: rage.
My shirt was riddled with holes and blood streamed freely, yet she filled her eyes with fury over a mere nick to the shoulder.
Like an emerald that cracks at the slightest mishandling, those subtly glowing teal irises split. Light bent and reflected along the web-like fractures, casting a sharp, icy brilliance like shards of glass.
“I will tear your soul and hang it among the stars.”
“…Oh.”
I blinked at the words. She had phrased it grandly, but stripped bare it simply meant “I’ll kill you.” Whether human or inhuman, once people get angry their language turns simple. A useless realization.
“Go ahead and try.”
If rage simplified her movements as well I could relax, yet if she merely talked that way while her actions stayed pickled in reason, things would get awkward.
I was already being one-sidedly battered; if she got serious and the difficulty climbed any higher I would truly be in a bind.
With an awkward smile I properly drew up the mana I had been husbanding. In other words, I began spraying Chamgyeok alongside the mana spears.
For the record, there was no special reason I had held the skill back until now. A Chamgyeok inevitably took the form of an area attack whether I wanted it or not, and if I was going to use an area attack it seemed more efficient to do so when the surroundings were packed with fodder monsters.
Slash!
If I could thin out the small fry while trading with that knight, the burden on the walls would lessen by that much, would it not?
So dragging the early stages out had been a rather wise decision. I had not expected my body to end up this shredded, but still.
“Pathetic…!”
Boom-crash!
I launched myself clear of the teal trajectories. In a knight-versus-knight duel such large movements were forbidden, yet this was no proper one-on-one.
I flipped through the air, dodging her sword and the demons beneath my feet at once.
The opponent who ought to have been focusing on me was busy checking the demons pouring from all sides. The instant I planted my foot on a demon’s head I brought the sword down as though to cleave it.
An elegant curve cut the demon; at the same moment the opponent, blade raised, flicked my sword aside. The deflected blade-aura sliced her collar and continued on to carve the space behind her.
“Close…!”
Her sword itself, however, took my strike with ease. I had heard rapiers were usually fragile, yet whether hers was exceptional or my common knowledge was simply wrong, it remained obscenely intact.
No—if anything my own sword seemed to have taken a nick. I shut my mouth on the regretful remark as I eyed the longsword’s faintly chipped edge.
If the longsword shattered I would lose every means of opposing her.
Of course a two-hander still sat in the inventory, and that one had no durability worries… yet what I had learned in Manahfelt was how to fight with a longsword, not a true two-hander. And if I was this hard-pressed with a weapon I had actually trained with, trying to scrape by with a clumsier two-hander would probably get my head taken clean off.
For now I poured mana into the sword that had jammed itself into the ground. Using the blade as a conduit, the mana injected into the earth began raising spines like thorns.
BOOM!
The mana exploded forward along the sword as its axis. Hiss. Once again the veil formed by her sword sheared every scrap of my energy away, so nothing landed.
“You cannot defeat me.”
Yet that was mere trickery. Her swordsmanship, built brick by brick, was something I could watch forever without gaining the confidence to imitate it; that little stunt of hers, on the other hand, I understood the instant I saw it—so it was clearly a cheap trick.
“The fact that you’re suddenly opening your mouth tells me—”
I curved my lips as smoothly as I could. Buzz. Flying flies, winged ants and cockroaches burrowed into my clothes and clawed at my wounds, but I let them pass.
“—you’re starting to feel the heat?”
My sword flung out dozens of wild trajectories, spraying blade-aura as though it meant to dice the world into hundreds of cubes.
“I believe I followed the order to the letter. A replica that regards even the apprentice as fully human, yet still submits to the original. Combat power is an unavoidable shortcoming, so we can set that aside—are you saying there is some other defect?”
“Marvelous. That such a question should leave the mouth of one who claims to pursue wisdom. Do you truly not know, or do you merely pretend not to?”
“…Haha.”
“Seeker of knowledge, had you wished to obtain a human who obeys, you would never have come before me. Wealth, renown, knowledge—the moment a proper price is promised, many will bow their heads to me.”
“Then?”
“Being treated as human by humans means nothing. One must appear human to humans and demon to demons for the value to exist.”
“That is impossible.”
“Yes. So it seems. Therefore this bargain ends here. Once impossibility is confirmed there is no further reason to linger.”
“Marvelous.”
Boom. The instant her foot struck the rise, the ground sank in circular terraces. Mud leapt upward; demons were flung into the air.
The blade-auras that had been raking the earth could not cut the sunken soil and merely shredded the air above it.
“It is difficult enough to keep one’s mouth from running so frivolously.”
Yet all of that was only a secondary effect of the act she truly intended.
Air that had been flowing sluggishly for a heartbeat suddenly raced; her body was already upon me.
An attack from someone who understood the sword many times better than I.
I widened my eyes and watched. The surroundings gave no room to evade, so counterattack was my only choice.
Clash-clash-clash-clang!
Our blades tangled in an instant. Beginning with a high vertical cut, the locked swords spun and struck at a speed ordinary eyes could never follow, scattering metallic shrieks.
With wrist rotation alone she rebounded smoothly, shifted angles, and sliced for my hand. I barely blocked; she eased back half a step to avoid my thigh cut and aimed again for the head.
Block. Attack. Block the attack. Be blocked. The same cycle over and over.
There was no gap for a Chamgyeok. She seemed to know that the moment I swung wide a blade-aura would fly along the path, and she sealed every chance for me to swing toward her.
Thud!
Even then both of us had more than each other’s attacks to mind. Flutter. Insects that had arrived with the demons clung to our bodies, and gut-worms waiting beneath the earth were enemies as well.
I swatted a moth from my vision and swung. The palm-sized moth was heavy enough that the impact felt solid.
Clang! A rapier that had skewered a fist-sized fly met my sword.
Slash!
At the same moment gut-worms erupted from the ground. Our gazes locked for a heartbeat; as if by prior agreement both blades dropped. Slice! Her sword took the worm on the right, mine took the neck of the soil-ghoul on the left. Clang! Swords crossed again and parted.
We had both stepped back to avoid the slime that had burst up between us. Now. I recognized this distance as my opening.
“A transparent ploy.”
Whoosh!
Before I could even swing, the whip streaked like a serpent.
Crack! A single lash tore the air with a furious sound. A few insects caught in it crumbled in my sight. Leaving pity aside, I absolutely did not want to take that hit.
Grrr—khak!
I drove my blade into the belly of an approaching ghoul, grabbed its shoulder and vaulted over. Slash! The follow-up whip shredded the unfortunate ghoul’s flesh. As a shield it had been excellent.
Slice!
From behind the ghoul my sword swept along the horizon. With a strange noise a crescent moon crawled across the earth and faded. Half a beat later, demons’ bodies were bisected horizontally and fountained blood. The only one not cut in half was a single person.
The rapier that had stood like a shield before its master rose sideways like the rings of Saturn. Behind her a fan of demons that had barely survived still remained.
The radius I had cut was not even twenty meters across; beyond that more would be waiting.
“Hah.”
What mattered was that she had taken no damage at all.
Crunch. She crushed the twitching hand of a corpse under the heel of a white boot. Spattered mud and the blood that had been flowing over it flecked her shoe.
Even the loftiest existence is soiled once it stands in a mire; the sight was jarringly, uncomfortably alien.
“So tell me—what reason could you have for siding with the demons even after treatment like this?”
That was exactly why I could not fathom her motives. If she were on the demons’ side she was being attacked alongside me; if she were not, the damage she had already dealt the city made the whole thing even murkier.
“Reason, is it.”
The white-clad knight, soiled now, shattered an incoming swarm of insects with a single whip-crack and lifted her chin.
“By the terms of the pact I shall take this with me.”
“…And what will you do with it now?”
“A failure it may be, yet it is not without use. It will be put to proper purpose.”
“If possible, would you use it where I can watch? So I may observe, at least.”
“An amusing request.”
“So that is a no?”
“I shall leave you the green jewel you crafted in secret. Be content with that, seeker of knowledge.”
“…You knew?”
“Have you forgotten even the place from which your own research began?”
“….”
“Once it stabilizes I will come for it. That will be our final meeting.”
“Humans always attach meaning to such occasions. Even though most things in the world arise from currents that cannot be explained.”
I had expected her to explode again over the earlier shoulder wound, yet her voice remained surprisingly calm.
Crunch! Without turning her head she still surveyed the surroundings; a rapier plunged into the throat of a soil-ghoul that had been about to bite her.
“Still—very well.”
As though skewering meat, she slammed the impaled soil-ghoul into the ground. The skull could not endure the force; it tore free and only the upper half of the head hit the mud.
“Foolish one, since you insist on asking for a reason, I shall mercifully answer.”
Splat. The severed head lay eyes rolled back upon the mud. Blood-soaked earth and scraps of flesh tumbling across it looked like a fragment of Hell itself dragged into this place.
“Every act of mine exists to drag down the one who scorned me, a rebellion against the one who made it impossible for me even to stand at the starting line.”
And above that vision of Hell the teal declared:
“The first shall be you.”
Beneath the quietly recited voice, an inferiority complex seemed to seethe like molten rock.