The Martial Way (武) 2
The duel opened with Siren's one-sided onslaught.
Her blade never stopped moving, driving Ash back at every turn.
"That's about right. What even is that? He's just blocking."
Nymph, a member of Witchcraft, scoffed. Beside her, Lamia glanced at her PDA and let a satisfied smile spread across her face.
"Oh, don't be so harsh. It's doing wonders for our view count, isn't it?"
Even at this very moment, donations and chat messages were exploding upward across the PDA's screen, and the wider they surged, the deeper Lamia's smile grew.
"You know, this kind of event isn't bad at all. Sucks for them over there, though."
Lamia jerked her chin toward the opposite side of the arena — Ash's team.
Just as she said, the mood on their side was the complete inverse.
"Ah... Old man...!"
Akina covered her mouth with trembling hands, while Jack and Dullahan shook their heads as if they couldn't bear to watch.
Except for one.
Ifrit's expression barely changed at all as she watched the duel, heart-shaped light flickering in her eyes.
Thanks to her custom optical implants optimized for marksmanship, she could see something the others could not.
No. Ash isn't being pushed back. If anything...
He was overwhelming her.
He was 'deflecting' every single one of Siren's attacks with nothing but the barest movements and minimal swordplay.
It was an artistry like twisting the current of a great river with a single pebble.
Something like that is possible...? How?
A breathtaking, incomprehensible sight — even watching it, she couldn't grasp it.
Somehow, a shiver ran through Ifrit's whole body.
He's just a monster, that's what...!
And sure enough.
In a single instant, Siren lost her center of gravity and collapsed to the floor. It was the moment Ash took one step forward.
"...Huh? What?"
A flustered voice burst from Nymph's lips. The chat window was flooded with question marks in a heartbeat.
Siren, who'd been dominating with overwhelming skill — why?
"Siren! Come on! Get up!"
Lamia shouted desperately, but it was as if Siren couldn't hear her. She simply stared up at Ash from where she'd fallen, dazed.
Her face wore an unreadable expression — a tangle of terror and awe.
The situation began to unravel in the strangest way.
"Oh, damn it all...!"
This was no look befitting the dignity of the 'Number One Ranked' idol.
"Kill the stream! Now!"
At Nymph's cry, the Witchcraft channel scrambled to shut down — and in that very instant, a shout erupted from the opposite side.
"Jack! Turn the stream ON! Right now!"
While Jack O'Lantern scrambled to launch the drones, Nymph and Lamia glared daggers their way.
Ifrit met those glares and raised her middle finger.
"What, you bitches? This is good stuff and you want to keep it all to yourselves? That's no way for an idol to behave."
"Hehe! I told you, didn't I? Our old man is suuuper strong!"
"There you go! Chew on that, you lot!"
[Technically we were winning the whole time lololol]
It was a primal provocation, but given the circumstances, it landed perfectly. Anyone could tell just by watching Nymph's and Lamia's faces curdle.
Meanwhile, Jack O'Lantern finished setting up the broadcast.
"What should the stream title be? Something clickbaity!"
"Obviously."
Ifrit pondered for a moment, then snapped her fingers.
"Let's go with 'Siren Was Way Too Easy.' Throw Witchcraft in the tags too. Their stream's down, so all their viewers will come flooding over here."
"Ka-ha-ha! Oh, that's good!"
A pumpkin-shaped drone, every bit its master's twin, went sailing into the air. And it was in exactly that moment that Siren's entire body was swallowed by a cloud of frigid vapor.
* * *
"Here I come!"
Out of the billowing sea mist, Siren emerged with a cry that was almost like a song.
The difference from before was beyond compare. Her body tore toward Ash in a trail of blue afterimages.
Rat-tat-tat-tang!
The merciless barrage of slashes Ifrit had warned about — more than ten strikes per second.
It was unquestionably an assault on a whole different level from before. Where speed met that dazzling brilliance and ferocity, the clumsy openings of earlier were sealed away in an instant.
This was the true strength of Halloween's Number One.
A calamity of a blade, the kind you could see coming and still fail to stop.
And Ash —
had been waiting for precisely this moment.
The truth was, he hadn't started this strange wager of a duel for mere credits.
He simply didn't want someone like Siren — unpredictable, her mental state visibly unstable — lurking behind his back.
Through the wager, he meant to narrow her options and cage her behavior within a predictable range.
In fact, Ash had originally intended to demand Siren's right arm as the stakes. Something heavy enough that it would be reckless to bet on a single duel.
If she refused, fine. If she accepted, no harm done either — either way, he'd be honoring Ifrit's wishes.
That was the plan.
But after Ifrit's advice, he had decided to amend it.
'Swinging a sword using data stored in an arm. What a grotesque way to fight.'
To Ash, it had been nothing short of a shock.
To a man who had lived his whole life alongside the sword, a blade that leaned on nothing but data and programs was a profanity against the martial way itself.
Discussing the sword with such a cheap parlor trick?
The audacity.
Just as the Halloween Society was blind to everything but the single currency of 'popularity,' Ash too held one value above all others.
That value was the martial way. Wu. The art of war.
And so, Ash changed the plan.
He would break it — all of it.
So that everyone could be freed from the curse binding that arm.
Crrrack!
Blue arcs of lightning flickered across Ash's optical sensors. The change didn't stop there — blue sparks crackled in bursts along his steel body.
The complete release of the Neuro Art.
The power of brain-force surging through his artificial neural network drove his computational capacity and body-synchronization rate to their absolute limits.
Even now, Siren's blade rained down like a sudden storm. Ash's optical sensors, rippling with electricity, met it head-on.
KAAANG!
The frost-white blade collided with the sparking sword, and the shockwave of their clash rang through the hollow.
Between the crossed blades, Ash and Siren locked eyes.
"H-heheh...! What do you think? A little more impressive now, right?"
Ash answered.
"Truly splendid swordsmanship."
"Heheh, right? I—"
"So Undine was, indeed, a remarkable swordswoman."
"...What?"
"But tell me — where is your will in all this?"
Siren's face began to stiffen, little by little.
"Who is it that I am fighting?"
He had struck the mark.
Siren's expression crumbled at once.
"...Don't act like you know everything! Even if you are Ash, that's going too—"
"Words carry no weight. Least of all from one who bears a sword."
"...Hnngh!"
She swung her blade again with ferocious intensity.
Every one of those attacks traced precisely the same trajectories as before, as if measured with a ruler — but the speed and force packed inside them were something on another plane entirely.
Kakakakakang!
The two blades met and parted over and over at blistering speed — movement far beyond what ordinary eyes could hope to follow.
Amid the ceaseless storm of her blade dance, Siren's eyes blazed with madness. Fury and a desperate need to prove herself were spilling over all at once.
Ash glared back with equal fire.
From those steel optical sensors poured something astonishingly alive — an unyielding, iron-hard will.
The moment his teal optical sensors flared—
Ash walked forward, into the very heart of the oncoming storm of blades.
It was the Dragon-Form Step, unleashed at close quarters. That uncanny, serpentine footwork, gliding as it claimed every direction, carved through the dense sea mist and reduced every attack to nothing.
Evading the full fury of her strikes by a paper's breadth — it was nothing short of artistry.
"...!"
Astonishment flooded Siren's eyes.
She had never seen anything like it. Never even heard of it.
Dodging a relentless hail of sword strikes with nothing but shifts of the body and changes in center of gravity!
The pride that had been swelling within her vanished like a lantern before the wind, and in its place, error messages poured in by the hundreds.
Confronted with movement she had never once witnessed, every combat processor that had sustained her until now ground to a halt.
She had never faced an opponent who moved like this — so alien, so impossible to predict even one step ahead.
Neither had Siren.
Nor had Undine.
And so every system crashed at once.
[ERROR!]
[UNIDENTIFIED MOVEMENT PATTERN]
[COMBAT PROTOCOL NOT FOUND]
[SYSTEM OVERLOAD. . .]
[SHUTTING DOWN. . .]
Thud.
Amid the blinking red error messages, Siren's entire body abruptly lurched. And with it, the swordstorm that had been splitting into dozens of blades vanished in an instant.
"Huh? Wha—? Why is this..."
It was almost laughable.
With no data, the combat protocols seized up — and that froze everything Siren was.
All because it had detected a movement pattern it had never once encountered.
Siren herself, having never experienced anything like it, was utterly flustered.
Ash studied her for a moment, then let his sword droop as he spoke.
"Honestly, this isn't even funny anymore."
"A-Ash! Wait! Just hold on, why is this..."
"Let me ask you once more."
A low electronic tone resonated.
"Who is it that I am fighting?"
His quiet words bored straight into her mind.
"You? Or that arm?"
A brief question.
It split Siren's head wide open.
The truth was, Siren genuinely loved the sword. She had been a fan of Elementary Girls, too.
Or more precisely, a fan of Undine.
She was a girl who had dreamed of becoming a Pathfinder while watching Undine — the woman who roamed the ruins leaning on nothing but a single blade.
And then, by chance, she had come to possess Undine's arm.
The legacy of a superhuman idol was extraordinary in every respect. Not just the base specs, but the built-in combat data and programs were staggering.
Without her lifting a finger, without her even thinking about it, the arm solved everything on its own.
That was how Siren became an idol. How she became Number One.
Ridiculously, until a few moments ago, she had believed it all to be her own achievement.
Who is it that I am fighting?
A reputation built on power that was never hers. And she was realizing it, this very moment.
An old memory flickered through her mind.
A shabby back alley in Sanctum.
Herself, swinging an old iron pipe like a sword, imitating Undine in the hologram.
Back then, there had been no data. No cyberware.
Nothing but pure, unclouded longing for the sword.
"Shall we continue?"
Ash's question pulled her back from her reverie.
Siren slowly raised her head.
Teal optical sensors and black eyes gazed at one another.
"...Can I?"
"Of course."
Ash lifted his sword once more.
"It is a wager, is it not? There must be a winner and a loser."
"Haven't we already decided that?"
"Would you concede defeat, then?"
Siren connected to her own systems.
> ACCESSING COMBAT SUBSYSTEMS. . .
> ALL COMBAT SYSTEMS OFFLINE
> SHUTDOWN COMPLETE.
Then she shut down, completely, every combat processor that had been sustaining her.
The tattoos that had glowed blue reverted to their original color. The stuttering in her body's movements ceased.
Siren inhaled — deep and slow — like a person breathing for the very first time.
"No. We haven't even started yet."
"Now that's more like it."
Siren raised her sword once more.
Then she charged at Ash and swung.
It was a crude, clumsy attack, stripped of every trace of the miraculous speed and sharpness she had displayed before.
But Ash could tell.
Her sword had finally begun to carry her own will.
She was adjusting her angles in her own way to break through his guard, correcting her balance, struggling forward — bit by tiny bit — to close the distance.
And watching her, a faint sound of laughter flowed from Ash's voice module for the first time.
"Yes. That is it."
For the first time, Ash took the initiative.
His languid blade traced a soft arc and met Siren's blade in a clean clash.
The dance of the machine and the witch carried on for a long while yet.