4. John Armstrong
4. John Armstrong
One year after <John Armstrong> premiered, <John Armstrong 2> was released.
John Armstrong had set not only the Empire but the entire world ablaze, and public support allowed its sequel to premiere only a year later.
The key factor in the series being able to premiere so quickly was the existence of the Sanctuary.
Filming inside a Sanctuary meant no editing or CG processing was necessary, and with a priest's blessing and a magic tower's illusion magic, the background could be swapped out in an instant, eliminating the need to run around from location to location.
So filming wrapped swiftly and smoothly, and before the heat from the first film had even cooled, the second had returned.
<John Armstrong 2: Locked and Loaded>
John 2 for short.
The masterpiece that would shake the world finally made its debut.
=======================================
Charles.
For him, living as an ordinary guard in a kingdom, the John Series was a masterpiece that could be called a turning point in his life.
Maybe it was because John's combat style in that film suited him so well that he was able to distinguish himself enough to earn a special promotion from guard to knight.
Afterward, he recommended the John Series to his squires and fellow guards and became one of its most fervent devotees.
- I am invincible, and John is God!
And on the day John 2 premiered, he took annual leave and booked a first-class seat at the theater.
With a pounding heart, he sat down and waited, and then the movie began.
Boom!
The film was bold and unconventional from its opening scene.
A mansion deep in the forest.
Its ceiling collapsed and John fell through to the floor below.
In the first film, John had annihilated the crime syndicate that murdered his wife, and now he was being hunted by a corrupt nobleman who had been in league with that very syndicate.
From the upper floor, a knight pursuing him jumped down through the broken ceiling.
Thud!
Encased from head to toe in armor, the knight approached John with heavy footsteps.
Bang, bang!
John's favorite pistol spat fire.
But the bullets that flew out with such force merely ricocheted off the armor with a sharp ping.
Charles chewed his lip at the sight.
It was unfair, but that was the limitation of the pistol.
Bullets were much smaller than crossbow bolts and could hold only limited enchantments. They could never penetrate armor layered with every kind of magic.
Even Charles, who copied John's tactics, used a magic crossbow. Pistols were too obsolete to justify on romantic appeal alone.
The knight drew the crossbow he carried on his back and fired at John.
The sound of air being torn filled the theater as John rolled across the floor.
'The noble must have gotten serious.'
The knight carried a newly manufactured Beryl M76A Anti-Materiel Crossbow and wore armor rated Protection Level 5—monstrous specifications.
By comparison, John had an old-model pistol and an ordinary suit that could at best stop a bullet.
Anyone could see John was at a disadvantage.
He scrambled from cover to cover to escape the knight's crossbow while the knight pursued him as though enjoying a hunt.
From the very beginning, the relentless chase kept every audience member in the theater holding their breath.
Then, the moment the knight reached John's cover, the tables turned.
Using a corner to trick his line of sight, John appeared right behind the knight.
No matter how sturdy the armor, the moment the fight became hand-to-hand combat, it was John's turn.
John knocked away the crossbow and wrapped a curtain tieback cord around the knight's neck.
The knight also slipped his fingers between the cord and his throat to secure an airway, and with his free hand, fumbled for the dagger at his waist.
At that, John immediately shifted his stance, locked in an armbar, and then seized the curtain cord wrapped around the neck again, pulling it taut as he practically lay back.
The weight of a grown man bore down on the curtain cord around the knight's neck; the knight thrashed and then soon went still.
John held that position for several minutes after the knight stopped moving before finally releasing him.
Bang!
'As expected!'
The confirmation shot was one of the John Series' signatures.
He opened the knight's helmet visor, fired a shot, and checked the knight's equipment.
Two daggers and a flare.
He didn't even glance at the crossbow before he started moving again.
Leaving the room where he'd struggled with the knight and passing through the mansion's drawing room, he stopped in front of a shotgun hanging on the wall.
'No way?'
Just as the pistol was a disregarded weapon, the shotgun, too, was little more than a historical relic.
A noble with a taste for antique weapons might carry one during hunting season, but it was utterly unsuited to killing a heavily-armored elite knight.
But John seemed to like the shotgun, because he picked it up, examined it from every angle, and then headed for the storage room.
There, he took a saw out of a drawer and cut the barrel down.
After inspecting the gun from several angles, he nodded in satisfaction, hooked it to his holster, and left the storage room.
'Why go to all that trouble?'
A sawed-off shotgun had undeniable romantic appeal, but its practicality was questionable.
However, Charles soon dismissed his doubts about John.
John was his god, and Charles's own tactical judgment could not compare.
And in the ensuing battle, he came to understand his god's will.
Thwump.
With the sound of flesh bursting, the knight's head vanished.
The sight of an enemy he'd struggled against just moments ago being blown away in a single blow was exhilarating beyond words.
John had shoved the shotgun right under the knight's chin and fired at point-blank range.
No matter how much technology advanced and armor improved, the armor under the chin, at the neck, had to remain relatively thin for movement.
Furthermore, a shotgun, unlike a pistol, could fire slug rounds, which meant it could hold a greater amount of magic power.
That explained why he had sawed it off.
With a longer barrel, he wouldn't have been able to jam the gun right into that spot.
And so John went on, weakening his enemies with his pistol and finishing them with his shotgun, over and over, until he had wiped out an entire platoon of the knight order.
'The blacksmiths are going to be swamped for a while.'
It was well known that sales for the company that made the pen had quintupled after Part 1's <One Pen, Five Thugs> scene.
It looked like the smithy that made that shotgun would be swamped with customers for the foreseeable future.
He quickly checked the gun's condition and climbed into the knight order's vehicle.
And instead of getting far away from the city of the nobleman hunting him, he headed straight for his mansion.
Then the movie's title rose up.
<John Armstrong 2: Locked and Loaded>
That alone sent Charles's hype surging to the very brink of passing out.
*
The movie from then on was a non-stop whirlwind.
It wasn't just fighting without end.
At times it revealed more of the worldbuilding, and it included breathing room and intermittent comedy.
But when it needed to, it pushed so relentlessly it was suffocating.
The masterful pacing kept Charles from looking away from the screen for even a second.
And then the final highlight.
After single-handedly annihilating the nobleman's entire knight order, he finally reached the nobleman himself.
"John. Must we really go this far?"
Bang.
That was John, all right.
He was the kind of man who killed three more people in the time others wasted on one or two useless lines.
The battle began with John's gunfire.
What was unexpected was that the corrupt noble—Bin—was a considerable fighter himself.
A retired former Hero.
That title was not a light one.
He dodged bullets and threatened John with sword aura.
Under normal circumstances, he wouldn't have worried about John losing.
He might have been a knight who never became a Hero, but he had blown holes through the foreheads of the Heroes who mocked him throughout the film.
But in that moment, no one could be certain of John's victory.
He had faced too many enemies on the way here, and his body was already a wreck.
The fight was brutal.
John and Bin fought a death struggle, each trading broken bones.
Compared with the spectacular battles that came before it, this was a filthy, desperate brawl.
When John fell first and Bin alone remained standing, the entire theater cried out in dismay.
'Ah— no!!'
He thankfully had just barely held onto a thread of reason, so he didn't cry out, but he stamped his feet as if he might leap up at any moment.
That was when the situation changed.
As Bin approached to finish John off, John, lying on the floor, twisted Bin's ankle and brought him down.
Bin struggled in his own way, but the joint lock that had first targeted the leg shifted before he knew it to an arm, then to the neck, then back to an arm, ensnaring Bin like a snake.
When Bin finally made a mistake, John wrenched his shoulder and crushed his knee, neutralizing him.
John pulled the pistol he'd kept in his holster back out and swiftly finished off the neutralized Bin with his signature double tap.
'Wow...'
If he were in that situation, could he pull off the exact same thing?
Charles ran a mental simulation and soon reached the conclusion that it was impossible.
'Then I just have to train.'
For several months after the film's release, his comrades in the knight order would probably spend all day at the training grounds practicing grappling.
He could just grab a decent partner from among them and train.
His revenge complete, John clutched his blood-soaked shirt and headed for the cemetery.
He slumped down in front of his wife's headstone, laid down a single cosmos flower she had loved, and lay down to sleep.
The next day.
The groundskeeper, having finished his patrol of the large public cemetery, spotted John.
Grumbling that the poor fellow was at it again, the groundskeeper approached to wake him.
But then he saw John's slack, drooping hand and a pair of cosmos flowers placed beside him, so he pulled his hat down low and muttered.
"Sleep out here and your mouth will freeze crooked, my friend."
***
When the film ended, the audience went home lost in the afterglow.
But wherever you went, there were always some who got overly invested in a work.
"Uwaaahhh!!!"
Charles, who had been sniffling in a corner of the theater, burst into loud wails the moment he stepped out of the building.
The peculiar thing, however, was that Charles was not the only person out there doing that.
"John!!! John!!!"
Still, people were kind.
They had slipped out through the theater's back door and gathered in a secluded place, evidently afraid of spoiling the film.
They didn't ask each other why they were crying.
They were all of one heart anyway.
They had been moved by Part 2's quality, which surpassed Part 1.
It had finished the final villain with fan service for Part 1's fans.
And John's epic had concluded without a single blemish.
It was disappointing that the series ended after only two films, but considering how some long-running franchises became blinded by profit and ruined their characters, it was an excellent conclusion.
The problem was that the hero they admired had met such a lonely, desolate end that they could not contain their grief.
"Sniffle."
They spent hours sniffling and exchanging impressions in that corner. Each time the next screening ended, new members joined them, until a strange crowd formed behind the theater.
"Daddy. What's wrong with those people?"
"I wonder? Did something happen?"
When curious citizens occasionally asked them why they were like that, they didn't say, because as devotees of John, they could never bring themselves to spoil it, so they just told them to watch the movie themselves.
Then those people, now curious, would watch the movie and come back to join the group.
People analyzed the film, debated it, and re-enacted it.
In that process, Charles the knight was the one who understood John most deeply, and so he naturally became the group's leader.
"Comrades. Today, we hereby declare the founding of the 'John Armstrong Research Society' in this place."
And so, the place where the world's first official John fan club was founded was, ironically, not its country of origin, the Empire, but the Knight Kingdom next door.
======================================
John 2 plunged the world into shock.
The first one had also been excellent.
Enough that over half of the Empire's citizens had watched the film, and beyond that, it even became known in the neighboring kingdom.
Put another way, Part 1's success had remained largely confined to the Empire. Elsewhere, it had been only a moderate hit.
The 'moderate' success of Part 1 was, however, only a statistical measure, and it did not reflect the depth of its fanbase.
The vast majority of those who saw Part 1 even once became zealots like Charles and spread the word to everyone around them, and through that word of mouth, the news of Part 2's premiere arrived just as the John Series was about to become famous.
After hearing Part 1 praised until their ears hurt, people decided to sample Part 2 for themselves...
And it whipped the whole world into a frenzy.
- The Knight Commander of the Leven Kingdom made remarks hinting at a new tactical manual based on John 2.
- The Zain Magic Country: John 2's use of firearms is applicable to combat wizards as well.
- The Hyphen Kingdom's Council of Elders made an outrageous claim about John 2: 'John's combat methods belong to us elves. He is nothing but an imitator.'
There was some nonsense in the middle, but the consensus was that John 2 had yet again created a new paradigm for tactics.
Intelligence agencies from every nation flooded the Empire with spies to uncover the actor behind John, even at the risk of open conflict. The Imperial Counterintelligence Department was put through hell as a result.
"...So, filming is prohibited for a while."
"...Yeah."
There was no way I wasn't unhappy about it, but there was nothing I could do.
With the Counterintelligence Department barely keeping my identity hidden, if I shouted, 'Heehee! Fire!' and began another production, my uncle—the department's deputy director—might come tear out my hair.
And besides, as a former soldier in my past life, the importance of security was etched into my soul, so I resolved to listen to my father.
I had always intended to end the John Series while the applause was still loud, so the plan stopped at Part 2.
I decided I'd take a break from filming for a while and prepare for entering the academy.
*
"You?"
"Going to the academy???"
The Sage (director) and the Prophet (screenwriter) of our film crew looked at me with eyes wide as saucers.
"Why are you looking at me like that?"
"I mean, you going to the academy is unexpected."
"Why? I told you. I'm still a minor, remember?"
"We thought you were joking. Look at your build."
The Sage had a point.
At a strapping 180 centimeters, I had a frame that no passerby could easily mistake for a student's.
But what could I do about it?
I was still a fresh and youthful (?) minor whose growth plates hadn't closed yet.