Chapter 285: 『Heavenly Sword』
Chapter 285: 『Heavenly Sword』
We stared intently at each other.
It wasn't that we were looking for a way to avoid the fight, nor were we waiting for an opening.
Both I and, presumably, the Heavenly Sword knew that such a stroke of luck wouldn't happen.
Ultimately, this was a battle of pride.
The one who moved first was admitting they were the lesser of the two.
This wasn't just my delusion. It was always like this when I sparred with that idiot.
Once, when I asked him why he didn't launch a preemptive strike even after seeing an opening in my defense:
‘Isn't taking the first move a bit unseemly for a senior? It’s the same in chess and shogi. The more skilled player yields the first move.’
I looked it up later, but no such rule existed.
Regardless, his words had infuriated me so much that I swung my hammer without any telegraphing motion. Jianping, unable to dodge, got clobbered, and the whole place turned into a mess—but that’s a story for another time.
Anyway, in our first spar after that incident, we ended up staring at each other for about ten minutes.
I have a fond memory of the Heavenly Demon Sword God, wondering if we’d both gone mad, slamming his iron fists into our heads. As a result, we eventually agreed to take turns attacking first.
But that was a very long time ago.
I couldn't even remember who had taken the last preemptive strike.
All that remained was this act of glaring.
Even when a rock rolled down and struck my head, or when that idiot’s unnecessarily long martial robes fluttered in the wind and obscured his vision—
Seeing us both standing still despite such once-in-a-lifetime opportunities...
Damn it, I guess I’m in no position to criticize Jianping for posing.
It can't be helped. I threw my pride away a long time ago while doing this kind of work.
With that thought, I immediately lowered my stance.
In fact, logically speaking, this was the right path.
The Heavenly Sword held the high ground, and I only had a Pry Bar.
I was at a clear disadvantage.
If I had my hammer, I could have increased its size and used it as a shield to charge. But breaking through the Heavenly Sword’s overwhelming reach with just a Pry Bar was nearly impossible.
Among existing Heroes, if one were to pick the representative melee specialists:
It would be me, the Heavenly Sword, and Misha.
However, our combat styles were vastly different.
I was ultra-close range, a power type.
The Heavenly Sword was a technique-based generalist who covered close, medium, and long ranges depending on the situation.
Misha’s style involved enduring attacks with his overwhelming physique while twisting The Enemy’s joints and flesh, accumulating continuous damage through the natural phenomena surrounding his body.
Of course, each of us had a technique or two to cover our weaknesses.
But for the current me, it was fair to say I had none of that.
After all, most of my power relied on hammer transformation.
Lately, it seemed Yumil had learned things like short-range teleportation in addition to her transformation magic. I wondered why I, the original body, didn't have anything like that.
Anyway, to prevent the catastrophe of being toyed with at medium range.
I gritted my teeth and crouched low.
I watched to see if the Heavenly Sword would react.
As expected, perhaps intending to yield the first move, the Heavenly Sword remained in his stance, his purple robes fluttering.
The moment I confirmed that.
Boom.
I kicked off the ground.
The passage behind me collapsed, and stones scattered in all directions, making a mess of the urban environment.
But it couldn't be helped.
I had already confirmed there were no people nearby. The only damage they would suffer was the property loss of waking up to find their dojo or shop had collapsed.
Besides, wasn't this whole situation caused by the Heavenly Sword splitting the earth and falling down, then refusing to let me go?
So, whether it was compensation or whatever, the Heavenly Sword could deal with it.
Now then.
Time to focus on the battle.
This fight wouldn't be easy enough for me to spare attention for what was happening around me.
I dashed along the rocky mountain, cutting through the darkness.
As if judging this to be an attack, the Heavenly Sword smiled and waved his hand.
At a glance, it was a tiny movement, barely recognizable as an action.
The hand holding the Hwando simply flickered up and down slightly.
However, that too was a Form.
A Form that had reached the pinnacle of efficiency, one that neither I nor most martial artists could ever replicate.
Therefore.
Abandoning all other senses and trusting only in instinct.
I raised the Pry Bar diagonally above my head.
Screeeech. Cl-cl-cl-cl-clank.
A sword strike, swinging down rapidly from above.
Fortunately, I had reacted correctly. The attack scraped down the Pry Bar and split the ground instead of my skull.
It was a razor-thin, line-like cut.
The extremely controlled power left only a linear mark without causing collateral damage to the surroundings.
Because the surrounding damage was minimal, one might think it wasn't that strong. But that would be a mistake.
The power contained in that single cut was equal to a swing of my hammer.
It was simply expressed in such a restrained form because wide-scale destruction "wasn't stylish."
I wondered what the Heavenly Demon Sword God would have said if he saw that.
Would he have scolded him for wasting power on useless things, or would he have said it was good to see him not damaging the surroundings?
I would never know the answer now.
But what was certain was that every single one of those sword strikes was lethal.
And that the first move that crazy bastard threw was meant to split me in half vertically.
...What is this idiot doing?
Did he realize it was me and assume I’d be able to block this much?
Or is he such a fool that he forgot that killing the Black Marauder might cause a total disaster?
Either way, he’s definitely lost it.
However, my thoughts ended quickly.
I saw the Heavenly Sword’s hand flicker again.
I’d heard in the past that the angle of the wrist and the direction of force determined which strike would descend, but frankly, even after hearing the explanation, it was impossible to tell the difference.
So, just like before, relying solely on instinctive intuition.
Clang.
I blocked the attack.
A horizontal slash aimed precisely at my waist, coming from left to right.
This is no joke.
First, an attack to split me left and right.
Now, an attack to split me top and bottom.
It might be the Heavenly Sword’s idea of humor, but for me, it was a brush with death.
I had started the fight expecting him to use at least somewhat non-lethal attacks, but if I’d been hit by either of those two, I’d have taken an express train straight to heaven.
Even though I knew my judgment was wrong, I couldn't run away now.
I had already charged forward. To turn back from here, I would have to stay within the Heavenly Sword’s attack range for even longer than before.
Tsk.
Fine, I just have to win, right?
The moment that thought finished, the Heavenly Sword waved his hand again.
I immediately slammed the Pry Bar into the ground, braking hard.
Perhaps not expecting that, I felt the Heavenly Sword flinch.
Grind, grind, grind.
The sound of my Pry Bar plowing the earth overlapped with the sound of the Heavenly Sword’s strike cutting the ground.
A missed swing due to the sudden stop.
I immediately wrenched the Pry Bar up from the ground.
As the Pry Bar emerged, it launched countless stones and boulders toward the Heavenly Sword.
"Tsk."
With the sound of the Heavenly Sword clicking his tongue.
For the first time, his body swayed significantly.
His Hwando blurred here and there as he took a defensive stance.
Then, where countless silver flashes had passed, only stone fragments losing all momentum and falling to the ground remained, along with floating dust.
The Heavenly Sword seemed to want to catch his breath. He resumed his stance and lifted his head, but—
"Foolish."
It was already too late.
The Heavenly Sword was likely flustered by the sound coming from below his line of sight.
Normally, like our Master, he could have just shrouded his Hwando in massive Sword Qi and swung it wide once to handle both offense and defense.
But the Heavenly Sword, in his quest to look cool, had formed a sword-shroud with his blade.
No matter how many hundreds or thousands of swings created that shroud.
A defense made only of lines is bound to have holes unless the number of lines is infinite.
And those holes gave me the opening to dig in.
As the leader of a group, it’s fine to maintain dignity, but to win, you have to know how to play dirty like me.
From a Martial Artist’s perspective, my stone-shrapnel attack was surely a "dirty" trick.
However, combined with the Heavenly Sword’s mistake, it yielded a sufficient result.
"Now, it's close quarters."
My specialty.
I immediately swung the Pry Bar.
As a reward for the first attack, I swung from top to bottom.
Clang.
The attack was blocked, as expected.
It didn't matter.
I hadn't even considered that this attack would succeed.
Following up, I immediately recovered the deflected Pry Bar and swung from right to left.
I mimicked the second attack the Heavenly Sword had used on me.
This, too, was blocked by the Heavenly Sword’s Hwando, which he had shifted from horizontal to vertical with a light flick of his wrist.
At the same time, noticing something, I lifted my left foot.
Screeeech.
A sword strike grazed the spot where my left foot had been.
The act of flicking his wrist just now must have constituted a Form in itself.
Tsk.
His movements have gotten even tighter since I last saw him.
If he can trigger an attack just by moving his wrist like that, it basically means offense and defense are happening simultaneously.
I thought that, but—
It was still okay.
The strike that had just scraped the ground where my foot was had less power than the first two, and its activation speed was within the range I could see and dodge.
I just needed to pay a bit more attention.
In any case, we had exchanged two attacks each.
Now, it was a brawl.
Clang, clang.
Grind, grind, grind.
Silver flashes and black trajectories covered the area.
Even I was attacking based half on instinct.
My head felt like it was on fire.
My body was twisting.
I narrowed my detection range to only perceive what happened within the narrow reach of my Pry Bar.
Yet, the sheer volume of information gained from that space was enough to overload my brain.
My body, too, was constantly transcending its limits.
Silver sword strikes poured down hundreds, thousands of times per second.
The human range of motion was too narrow to block and dodge all of them.
Consequently, my joints were constantly popping out of place, and muscles that were forced to bend in directions they shouldn't have were tearing.
But because the speed was so high, it started to feel natural.
If someone were to watch us fight from the outside.
Wouldn't it look like a Silver Sphere and a black sphere colliding?
That was how fast our attacks were, and even our trajectories were inconsistent.
Of course, in terms of frequency, my attacks were far fewer.
Perhaps because the battle had dragged on, the sword strikes the Heavenly Sword had left on the ground about a hundred moves ago—
The faint energy contained within them reacted to other strikes, manifesting as a Form.
Though smaller and weaker, they emitted new sword strikes.
At first, there weren't many of these. But now, after tens of thousands of exchanges.
A single swing from the Heavenly Sword resulted in dozens of strikes pouring down.
To counter this.
I was using the extreme of my Bestowal Technique.
By gathering all the Otherworldly Power in the vicinity and infusing it into the Pry Bar.
A Sword Qi-style Bestowal Technique that expanded my attack range like a massive blunt weapon.
These were methods I had used in the past when my hammer didn't have its full power.
I had forgotten these techniques because changing The Hammer’s shape and weight was far more useful, faster, and required less power than using mana like this.
But clashing blades with the Heavenly Sword like this.
Those old tricks came back to me.
It was probably because neither of us was using massive, flashy techniques.
What we were doing was a simple sword dance.
Though compared to decades ago.
The quality was overwhelmingly different.
Neither of us made an attack that strayed from the "line."
I swung only my Pry Bar.
The Heavenly Sword swung only Forms based on sword paths.
Like a spar we used to have with wooden swords.
However, just as we had changed.
Our power had changed as well.
The surrounding environment had long since been plowed over.
Every sword strike or shockwave that leaked out destroyed the surroundings.
Due to the attacks slammed into the ground, the high piles of stones had already been ground away and vanished.
I didn't have the leisure to grasp the surrounding information, so I didn't know exactly how it had changed, but it had likely turned into some kind of pit.
But neither I nor, presumably, the Heavenly Sword.
Cared about that.
The Heavenly Sword was smiling.
And probably, so was I.
We were simply enjoying this infinitely continuing exchange.
This clash between those with the greatest power on Earth—no one.
Not even I knew how long it would last.
But The End came quite abruptly.
Twitch.
The Heavenly Sword’s rhythm broke.
It wasn't an off-beat attack or anything like that.
His movements, which had been flowing like water, simply snapped for a moment.
The first mistake to emerge from this infinite exchange.
Seeing that, I immediately followed up with an attack.
Why the Heavenly Sword’s attack had stopped, what the situation was.
Such things weren't worth considering for me, who had become a machine thinking only of the next move, intoxicated by the heat of battle.
The rapidly descending Pry Bar struck the Heavenly Sword’s left arm, shattering the bone.
Crack.
The sensation of crushing someone's limb.
A stimulus I hadn't experienced once during this entire fight.
As that specific sensation was transmitted through my mind.
I broke free from the shackles of combat and was finally able to observe my surroundings.
And soon, I realized why the Heavenly Sword had made that choice.
"...Tsk."
I clicked my tongue.
Because I realized that the end of this banquet.
Was my fault.
As I had expected, this place had turned into one giant crater.
A colosseum created by grinding away a part of the city like a blender, caught in countless shockwaves and Sword Qi.
And behind the Heavenly Sword’s back.
There were three men.
The three villains who had been struck and crushed by rocks before this battle began.
I didn't know how they had ended up there.
But to protect their lives.
The Heavenly Sword’s attack must have stopped.
...I guess I lost this one.
It was a clear result.
The Heavenly Sword had protected his own body and the lives of others amidst an unexpected situation.
While I hadn't even realized that the unexpected situation had occurred.
Even though I wasn't in perfect condition.
A loss is a loss.
Therefore, swallowing my frustration.
"Heavenly Sword, you win."
After saying that and offering a Martial Artist’s courtesy.
I moved my legs quickly and threw myself into the darkness of the night.