Remian and Corshas
Remian and Corshas.
The two of them sat in the stands with their mouths hanging open, staring at the Retaine split cleanly in half.
"..."
"It's just that his sword's good, right?"
Remian forced the words out, trying desperately to deny what he had just seen.
Corshas looked at him as if he were pathetic.
"Does it really look that way to you?"
"...No."
"As expected of the barbarian who's going to be my husband."
"Me?"
"Not you. Shin Yujun. I'd rather you didn't get the wrong idea. It disgusts me."
"Who got the wrong idea? I-it's just that you phrased it weird, that's all."
"Then drop it."
The first event, which had left everyone reeling, came to an end, and the second began at once. If the first had been a display of raw power, the second concerned speed—more precisely, reaction speed and kinetic vision. It was an event in which the Agility stat would decide nearly everything.
This one might actually work against me.
A flicker of worry passed through Yujun. He would have preferred to solve it with the Swordsmanship trait alone, but this trial hinged on instinctive sense and Agility. Even as he thought it, he opened his status window—and could not help his surprise.
Right. I did take down all six Tyragos by myself.
No level-up message had appeared, so he had absentmindedly let it slide.
So this is why those notification messages matter.
In any case, his level had reached 95. It felt like less of a jump than he had expected, but with not a single experience buff in effect, that was only natural. Hunting the same monster over and over also dulled the experience gain, and above all, the Tyragos had not been particularly high-level, which had surely played its part.
Level 95 should be more than enough.
He could not say how many of the barbarians competing against him might exceed that level, but he was confident none of them would surpass it by any wide margin.
The second event was every bit as primitive. A muscular barbarian stood atop a tall tower of rock and hurled stones the size of a fist, and the one on the stage had to strike them down with a weapon. There was a further condition: lift a foot, and you were eliminated on the spot. This event, too, had no fixed ranking. The barbarians assigned to judge simply awarded scores, and the more stones you blocked in succession, the better that score became.
From the explanation alone it sounded simple enough, but the one throwing the stones was an elite of the Golden Lion Tribe. He would not be throwing at full strength every time, not with so many throws required—but even so, there was no chance the incoming stones would be slow. They were hurled at speeds that slipped past the perception of ordinary juvenile barbarians. An elite barbarian's arm outmatched even a well-built catapult.
Thud!
"Guhk!"
Barbarians who failed to deflect the stones were struck, and the impacts boomed like someone pounding a drum. A single hit meant elimination. It could hardly be otherwise—the instant a stone connected, that barbarian was left unable to fight.
"The entire Souje Tribe is eliminated!"
The host barbarian's booming voice rolled across the whole arena. Every time the words total elimination rang out, the barbarians of the tribe in question burned with humiliation. For a people who placed their tribe's honor above all else, it was a harsh pronouncement—and yet not a single tribe had managed to avoid it. No one was in any position to claim they were better than the rest.
Next came the Raccoon Tribe, and they were no more able to escape total elimination. Even so, they lasted three times as long as the others.
Well, that much ought to earn them a higher score.
In the end, it had all come down to how long one could hold out.
The Poison Dagger Tribe took the stage ahead of the Ledordang Tribe once again. Three barbarians were eliminated early, leaving only Remian and Corshas. The two of them held on for nearly five minutes, but against stones that came without pause, faster and faster, they had no choice but to yield. They bit their lips hard in frustration, yet the barbarians filling the arena were applauding. Five minutes was easy to say—they had put on a tremendous performance, batting the endless stones aside or letting them slip past. It was worthy of praise that they had not only reacted to the stones, but held that state for so long.
After several more tribes suffered swift total elimination, the Ledordang Tribe's turn arrived. As he climbed onto the stage, Yujun offered the others a word.
"You can't be eliminated unless you take at least one hit, so try to get hit somewhere that doesn't hurt too much."
"If only it were as easy as you make it sound."
Boromian grumbled, but Yujun didn't so much as answer.
Standing on the stage, he roughly gauged the distance to the barbarian throwing the stones.
This might actually be possible.
The barbarian atop the rock tower didn't throw at Yujun. He seemed intent on eliminating the ones beside him first. Yujun held his sword and waited, and just as he had expected, Boromian and the rest were eliminated in an instant. He was the only one left.
Rotok, the barbarian on the tower, curled his lip in a thin, unpleasant smile. He had seen with perfect clarity how lightly Yujun had sheared through the Retaine ore, and the thought of soon watching this young, gifted barbarian drown in humiliation sent a thrill through him. He had rested well before the Ledordang Tribe came up, and so he put even more strength into the throw than he had against the others, hurling a stone straight at Yujun.
Shwick—!
Even among the elites, Rotok was exceptional in the throwing event. The speed was like a bullet leaving the barrel, and the comparison was no exaggeration—it was absurdly fast. Yujun swung his sword in a flash and sent the stone glancing away. He had caught it at an angle, so the blade took no damage at all. Rotok kept throwing at the same speed, without a pause.
The crowd began to murmur.
"Did he just speed up?"
"Looks like he's getting serious."
"You don't think somebody passed him orders because of the Retaine ore getting smashed?"
"Shin Yujun, was it? Poor kid. If this goes badly, he might actually die."
"For all that, isn't he holding up pretty well?"
"You think he smashed that Retaine for nothing? That one's the real thing."
"Still, he won't last more than a few minutes, will he?"
"That's because you don't know how terrifying that barbarian Rotok is. Talent or not, blocking the throws of Rotok in his prime is no small thing."
"But isn't this a little unfair? The Poison Dagger Tribe was taking them at a much slower speed than that."
"Yeah, true."
Contrary to the crowd's worries, Yujun kept receiving the stones and batting them aside with ease. He wasn't reacting on Agility alone. Once again the Swordsmanship trait was doing the heavy work—even if he only roughly knew where a stone was headed, the sword reached the correct point faster than his own awareness could follow. Movements that seemed, for all the world, to predict where each stone would fly. All of it was possible thanks to Swordsmanship.
No need to have worried. Swordsmanship really is good for everything.
Around the time Rotok began to grow visibly flustered, Yujun activated Super Concentration. There was something he wanted to try, and with room to spare, he saw no reason not to. The stones Rotok threw slowed noticeably before his eyes, enough that even his kinetic vision could trace their trajectories with ease. Until now he had only been deflecting. He meant to use this opening for a counter as well.
The moment a stone came within five feet, Yujun turned the sword so its spine led and moved. The feeling was closer to timing a baseball bat against an incoming pitch, not so different from a Major League batter's stance. He had only ever seen it on video, but with the superhuman abilities he had gained, Yujun could reproduce the motion without a single practice swing. No—he did better than that.
Crack—!
The stone that met Yujun's sword somehow didn't shatter, and flew back toward Rotok. It was possible because he had swung not so much to strike the stone as to drive it. Rotok hadn't entertained the slightest suspicion that a stone might come flying back at him, and of course he had no answer for the sudden reversal.
Boom—!
Struck hard in the thigh, Rotok toppled from the rock tower with a tremendous crash.
It actually worked.
Sending a stone not merely deflected, but aimed at a precise point, was no easy thing even for him. Without the Swordsmanship trait, it would have been impossible if he had died and come back a hundred times.
He'll be all right, won't he?
A capable barbarian, and it hadn't even struck a vital point—a blow like that shouldn't kill him. He hadn't originally meant to take it this far. He had planned to hold out for a while and then only pretend to take a hit, but Rotok's expression had changed his mind. Seeing the man grin ear to ear at the sight of barbarians in agony, Yujun couldn't help the anger that surged up in him. More than anything, the man simply looked too sly to tolerate.
Kam, the barbarian hosting the event, stood dumbstruck for a moment, then shouted in a rush.
"P-pass?"
After Yujun brought down the vicious Rotok, a nickname attached itself to him.
Event Breaker.
It had stuck because the moment he stepped forward, every event the Golden Lion Tribe had prepared collapsed into a muddled rush. Thanks to that, Yujun's stock kept rising. It went without saying that his score would be the highest—more precisely, the Ledordang Tribe's score. There was no such thing as an individual evaluation, after all.
So far, not a single barbarian had died over the course of the tribal competition. A few might well have died to Rotok's stones… but with Rotok knocked unconscious, another barbarian had taken over the throwing, and the force of the throws had dropped a notch. Thanks to that, the tribes that ran the event after the Ledordang Tribe came out ahead. And so the gazes turned on Yujun held goodwill and hostility in equal measure.
The tribal competition became the real thing starting with the third event. Five-on-five sparring—sparring in name only, combat in which killing one another was perfectly acceptable. War. This was where the most casualties would fall, and even barbarians left unable to fight by Rotok's stones would have to enter carrying their injuries. They couldn't complain about the disadvantage, either. Had they done well in the previous event, they would never have been disadvantaged to begin with. In that sense, team combat in the tribal competition was not so different from the way things had worked since the second event.
The Ledordang Tribe had been drawn into the first match. Their opponents, as ill luck would have it, were the Raccoon Tribe.
"Right from the first opponent..."
But the sparring would not begin immediately. Tomorrow morning, at first light. Yujun and the barbarians were told to gather again then. It seemed they were being granted at least a little time to recover.
"The sparring'll be more fun if everyone's in fighting shape."
So said Janiz.
"You'd do well to get some real rest. Even if Shin Yujun is the strongest in this competition, if he's laid up groaning, the enemy will come for you weaklings first."
As the barbarians nodded, Yujun spoke.
"Once the sparring is over, I'll be able to challenge the trial, correct?"
"That's right. When the scoring's finished, they'll call for you."
"I haven't made a bad impression, have I?"
"Even if you had, the Golden Lion Tribe judges fairly. You won't be put at a disadvantage."
"That's a relief."
"By the way, that counter you landed on Rotok... that was on purpose, wasn't it?"
"Yes."
"Felt damn satisfying."
"Why was that satisfying for you, Janiz?"
"I got thoroughly wrecked by that bastard myself, back when I was a juvenile barbarian."
"...So even stone-throwing had a tradition of its own."
"His infamy was considerable. Our Ledordang Tribe was particularly weak in that event."
"And the sparring?"
"That too."
"The first event?"
"That too."
"You were weak in all of them?"
"Yep."
"..."
"...Don't look at me like that. There are just so many formidable tribes."
"You're weak because you aren't formidable."
"Still, it's a good thing we have you. If you can distinguish yourself in the trial and bring back plenty of that substance called jorang, our tribe will be able to soar as well."
Janiz said it with a bright smile. Yujun, who fully intended to carry the jorang straight back to his original world, smiled in return.