Semester-End Party (13)
Not even a minute had passed since Cenar's axe came flying before I understood why Duke Patran had mentioned the Bedford family banner.
This woman, Cenar, was no pampered noble daughter.
She was someone who had wandered through countless battlefields and soaked her weapon in more blood than I could count.
WHAM! I clenched my teeth and bore the shock of the axe blade slamming down onto my shield.
Under normal circumstances, this would have been where I caught my breath — but against Cenar, there was no such grace period.
She was the kind of fighter who could press me with the axe in one hand while threatening me with the axe in the other.
Even now, an axe was flying straight for my arm. I confirmed her position through my shield, retreated a single step to evade the strike, then rolled sideways out of the path of the blow coming down at my skull.
"You're good at running away, at least. A dishonorable little brat through and through."
"Is it honorable to swing weapons at a girl far younger than yourself?♡ If we're ranking ugliness, I'd say the hag queen takes first place♡"
WHAM! Knocked backward by the impact rattling my shield, I watched the shards of stone trickling over the cliff's edge and let out a hollow laugh.
If I fell, I probably wouldn't be hurt — but my pride would shatter into a million pieces.
And that was unacceptable. Even against an opponent I couldn't beat, feeding her at least one solid hit was the only way I'd sleep at night.
Steadying my shield and lifting my gaze, I found Cenar twirling her axes like some street performer.
"The butcher's guild suits you far better than the throne, if you ask me♡ And here I thought you'd hidden your true nature so well all this time♡"
"That's the world of nobles for you, brat. Live the way you do — running your mouth when you shouldn't — and one day your head leaves your shoulders before you even notice."
The moment I deflected the axe hurled into the gap between her words, Cenar's feet were already moving.
Draw my gaze, then strike? Is that the plan?
I read the descending arc of the axe and shifted my shield — and in that instant, a crisp ringing sensation spread through my entire body.
A parry. In the breathing room it bought me, I moved to counterattack — but the moment I saw an axe resting in Cenar's supposedly empty hand, I had to wrench my shield back in a panic.
WHAM! I bit down hard against the shock transmitted through the shield.
She'd conjured another axe with mana in that split second?! So throwing the axe wasn't meant to draw my eyes at all — it was to make me drop my guard!
"You look adorable, scrambling so desperately to keep that shield up."
"And the hag queen bullying a girl half her age looks absolutely hideous!♡"
With the cliff at my back, I weathered Cenar's relentless barrage without a moment to breathe.
Her attacks were by no means unbearable.
Measured against Count Kent's blade, or the sword I'd crossed with Duke Burrow, this much was well within the range I could withstand.
The reason I was nonetheless being driven onto the back foot was the stark gulf in real combat experience.
Cenar knew how to fight human beings.
How to cloud an opponent's judgment.
How to slip around an unyielding shield.
How to drag curses out of her enemy's mouth.
Wandering through countless battlefields. Cleaving the heads from innumerable men with her own hands. The experience burned into her body as she stained victory banners with blood was more than enough to torment a girl who had never once stepped outside the Academy.
"Oh dear. Are you alright? If you can't find your way out, you'll go tumbling right off, you know?"
But it was not enough to put me down.
The dress Joy had picked out for me was torn in places too many to count. My pale skin, carved over with wound after wound, was flushing red. Every part of my body was crying out in pain.
And yet I still stood on two legs.
Still wore that calm, settled smile in the middle of the melee.
"You could knock me off?♡"
I spread divinity through my body and began to heal. Wounds that should have taken hours to close vanished in an instant — and the fresh wave of pain that came rushing in with them — but the smile never left my lips.
Compared to everything I'd endured before this, pain like this was nothing.
"I doubt the rusty axe of a hag queen grown soft and flabby from a life on the throne could manage that?♡"
I let my eyes curve into a smile and studied Cenar through the shield.
Over the course of defending again and again, I had seen a great deal.
I had memorized what Cenar possessed, analyzed it, and charted the road that led from analysis to victory.
My way of fighting — the doctrine I'd established ever since meeting that skeleton, a false hero who was more heroic than anyone alive. My combat logic, tempered and matured through every real battle since.
And it was telling me something now.
If Cenar could not force my mouth open in this very moment, then she had already lost.
"Doesn't matter how long I've been retired. Smashing a skinny little brat like you is easy."
"Oh, is it?♡ Because I feel awfully intact for something so easy♡ Are you sure it's easy?♡ Apparently your version of 'easy' and mine are very different♡"
If Cenar and I had met on an open plain, axes and mace clashing with no titles and no ties between us — if we had each moved for nothing but the other's death — I would have lost. The real, physical gulf between her and me was simply that vast.
But the situation as it stood was not that fight.
"You damn wench!"
The root of the problem was the raw power behind Cenar's offense.
The axes she swung were threatening, yes — but not fierce enough to shatter my defense outright.
Not because Cenar was weak.
The shield the gods had granted their hero had never once dimmed against any foe, however mighty.
It had held its form even in battle against the Evil God Agra. How, then, could a mere human hope to break it?
"Damn it!"
If the shield could not be broken, then the one hiding behind it had to become the target — and it was precisely here that Cenar's constraints lay.
She could not kill me.
She could not inflict a fatal wound on me.
The moment she tried, the monster known as Benedict Allen would become a calamity and come looking for her — that much was certain. So with my throat right in front of her, all she could do was hold her axe in check.
"Damn iit!"
She couldn't grind me down with a war of attrition and shallow cuts, either.
Time was on my side, not hers.
Before the party ended and all those nobles spilled outside. Before the monster called Benedict Allen was loosed from his leash. Before the private little salon the two of us were holding atop the clock tower became public knowledge for everyone to see.
Cenar had to make me open my mouth.
Because if she didn't, abandoning every political advantage she held and drawing her axes would have meant nothing.
Because she would never hear the information she wanted.
"Daaamn iiit!"
Little by little, Cenar's strikes accelerated, carving more and more wounds into my body — and I ignored every ounce of the pain.
The shallow cuts tracing my skin meant nothing at all.
As long as I didn't lose my shield.
As long as I didn't allow a single fatal opening.
She could never truly threaten me.
Lucy! Fall back!...
The moment that judgment of mine came crumbling down was, unmistakably, the instant a smile crept across the lips of Cenar — the woman I'd taken for the impatient one.
Without a flicker of hesitation, she hurled both axes and raised her hands skyward.
And into those hands formed a two-handed axe so massive it could have felled a tree that had stood for centuries.
I hastily wove a miracle over my shield — but failed to blunt the axe's full force. My defensive stance shattered, and Cenar's hands were free once more.
And the one-handed axe born anew smashed into the flank of my shield, collapsing my posture completely.
The barrier that had stood between us vanished, and Cenar's expressionless eyes looked down at me.
It was too late to recover my guard.
Swing the mace — carve out an opening—
"Kghk—!"
Far faster than the thought could finish, the mistress of the axe drove her blow into my abdomen.
My viscera felt like they'd been shaken loose; I was still staggering when the flat of an axe came flying at my head.
The world flashed white — and before I knew it, I was sprawled across the cold stone floor.
My shield was teetering on the very lip of the cliff. The hand gripping my mace was pinned beneath Cenar's high heel, feeding me nothing but pain.
"You really are infuriatingly tricky. How is a brat who hasn't even finished her first year this seasoned?"
The instant I tried to gather my divinity to escape this situation, an axe came whistling in, grazing my ear before embedding itself in the floor.
"I've already mapped out exactly how far I can wound you. If you don't like watching yourself hurt, don't move."
The moment I heard those words, I understood my fatal mistake.
Just as I had been watching her, Cenar had been watching me.
Every time she tapped at my shield, she studied how I moved it. Every time she carved another shallow wound into me, she measured exactly how far my recovery could reach.
And once she was certain of her own judgment, she staged her own disadvantage to lull me into complacency — then flipped the entire board in a single stroke.
"Relax. Answer a few questions properly, and nothing more will happen to you."
A crushing defeat, with no room left for excuses.
"You know what I'm going to ask."
Gazing up at that manufactured smile of hers, I thought.
If I told her everything she wanted to hear right now, she would accept it. Hating me was one thing — but she knew full well what it would mean if I defected to the First Prince's faction, so she wouldn't push the reprisal any further.
Who knew? I might even be able to hold this whole incident over her head someday.
"Of course I do♡ How could I not, when your thoughts are written all over that stupid face of yours, hag queen♡"
"Then answer."
"What, has the dementia set in already?♡ I answered ages ago♡ It's just such an old memory that it's slipped my mind♡"
And yet — I did not want to give her the words she wanted.
Never mind what Grandpa shouted. Never mind what my reason counseled. None of it mattered. I refused to watch the woman who had insulted my mother walk around smiling.
"Haha. What a filthy little bitch you are."
Cenar kicked my wrist with the heel of her shoe, knocking the mace from my grip, then casually rested that heel just above my sternum and smiled.
"Let's see how long you can keep this up."
"Ughaaaaak—!"
Her mana-reinforced heel shattered my divinity like it was nothing and began to bore into my flesh.
Little by little. Bit by bit.
Like a tool digging into the earth.
Punching a hole through my skin.
As if to let my organs meet the open air.
The endless pain went on and on—
—and then it stopped.
"What... is the meaning of this."
I fought my way back to my senses and turned my head — and there stood a pair of shoulders I knew all too well.
Shoulders so impossibly massive that no ordinary human frame could account for them — shoulders that made one certain giant's blood ran in those veins.
"Your Majesty, the Second Quee— no. Cenar."
Benedict Allen.
The name that appeared without fail whenever the continent's strongest were debated — the supreme knight who had reigned over battlefields as terror incarnate.
And the voice that flowed from his lips was so glacial it was impossible to believe it belonged to the same man who wore that adoring, foolish grin for me.
"You had best have a just reason for harming my daughter. Because if you do not, I make no promises about what I might do."