Executioner
Executioner
In that instant, the surging fist was fast, powerful, and blazing hot.
The soot and the acrid smell of burning, ground deep into both sleeves that caught the blow—that was its heat.
Watching the incoming punch, Richard felt his breath stretch thin.
Within time sliced into fine, snapping threads, Richard's life flashed before his eyes.
On the threshold of those fleeting visions, he thought,
That attack isn't something I can deflect.
Richard feared that fist.
Or, if he was being precise, he feared not the fist itself, but what it would set in motion.
Richard spoke to his wise and gentle teacher, who would no longer be able to listen.
'Master, I am afraid.'
There was no answer.
'I am not afraid to die. But that I failed to protect you, that I have done nothing but sully your teachings—'
Beyond endurance.
'I am full of regret and fear.'
If only he had fled.
'I am afraid.'
If only he had joined Itar when he set out with Aslan's company.
'I fear the moment my will is rendered worthless, my resolve is broken, and I achieve nothing.'
If only he had left the moment the premonition struck.
'I think I am a sapling destined to snap before the typhoon.'
If only he could have wielded his techniques just a little better.
'I cannot weather the typhoon.'
If only he were stronger.
A thousand "if only"s flickered past, and a single tear slid down Richard's face.
His heart felt like it was sinking straight through the floor, but he simply reached out, with a strange calm.
Reaching his arm toward the fist hurtling at him, he recalled the sight of his master's back.
The back his master had shown him at the very end.
The moment he felt the heat and light against his arm, Richard moved.
Then become the wind.
Whether it was a hallucination,
a memory Richard had buried,
or some lingering remnant of his master—
he didn't know the origin of the words, but with them, Richard's body deflected the blow.
His knee bent a little wider to the side than usual, his wrist moved fluidly. Despite the scorching breath in his lungs, Richard's body rotated clockwise.
CRAAASH!
Blast of dust. An attack glancing off target. The arm twisted back at the shoulder, bent clear past his spine the moment it connected. The Warrior Monk dropped to one knee, realizing his fist had been turned aside once again.
And in the heart of that chaos, Richard stood.
"...You...!"
The Warrior Monk didn't finish the sentence, instead swinging his fist upward. An attack rising from below—that was death.
THWUMP. The instant sole met fist, Richard's body lifted. He rode the force, flipping once lightly through the air before landing.
Blood welled up and ran down his arm, spattering the ground, but Richard was still standing.
His two arms hung slack at his sides. Loim locked eyes with him, then, with a violent shake of his beard, lunged forward.
"Don't you look at me with those eyes, with those eyes!"
With that howl, both fists blazed, surging forward with a sharp crackle. Heat shimmer boiled in the air, filling the space between them.
"Wait, sto—!"
Before Demis could even finish restraining his comrade, the fist reached Richard. Richard regarded the blow that meant to pulp him, and thought,
'My technique is imperfect. I'm not flawless like my master.'
There was a real chance he would die when this was over. But not yet. Not now.
Richard had something he had to do.
"Right here, right now."
He would prove it.
The twin fists surged. Barely visible to the eye. Acceleration so extreme that even Richard's superior physique and mana-tattoo-enhanced vision could only register faint afterimages.
A volley that would shatter any shield that tried to block it head-on, pulping both armor and the man inside.
Each successive blow a certain death—Richard received them.
BOOM-BOOM-BOOM-BOOM-BOOM!
The resonant sound of destruction. The noise of Richard's unrefined technique clashing against the onslaught.
And in that clash, blood flowed from his body.
Blood poured, bones crunched.
When he deflected a trajectory aimed at his skull with his elbow, the elbow split open, baring bone.
Muscles felt like they had been crushed to pulp. Parts of him that had been moving a second ago now refused to function.
Still, he kept receiving them.
Sinking inward, away from the agony that swarmed him, he unleashed his techniques in a blind, single-minded flow.
He concentrated to his absolute limit, erasing everything but the attacks before his eyes.
Only one thing was necessary: fighting spirit.
Forgetting everything else, Richard thought only of surviving the typhoon bearing down on him.
Six punches aimed at his head. He flicked them aside with his wrists, turned them with the back of his hand, caught one in his palm and spun, shoved another with his elbow.
The mangled elbow flashed white, blood streamed from his wrist, the skin on the back of his hand peeled away, and his arm broke once more—but Richard survived.
"You— you— you!"
The voice screaming at him was barely a blur. Richard weathered the relentless cascade of attacks.
Inside that storm, he recalled the phrases his master had once taught him.
The oral formula for Itar's Adaptation. Phrases his master himself had described as short and unremarkable.
If a boulder comes at you, become a boulder and endure.
If a wind blows, become the wind and flow.
If flames pour down, become the flame and meld.
Do not resist.
Do not submit.
Simply adapt.
And into those phrases, an impurity fell—a quiet intrusion.
'So... don't stop.'
A familiar voice, full of warmth.
Amid tears, Richard reached out as though to grasp that voice. He met an overhead blow meant to pulp his upper body, spun with it, and deflected.
He couldn't tell if it was a hallucination, or someone's actual voice. It just felt like someone had given him a push. A warmth spread across his back. Like something—maybe even blood—was flowing there.
And with those words, Richard adjusted his stance.
First, he turned his body.
Then he rotated his outstretched arm to the side and flipped his grip.
The resulting posture might have looked like the opening of a dance, but no one there thought so.
One hand pointed to the sky, the other to the earth.
It was the stance Itar had assumed before he had stopped them all.
"What...?"
Loim's bewildered mutter. Demis, watching with what seemed like curiosity. And in the man's hand, the remains of Richard's master.
Richard looked at his master's face among those remains. He shut his eyes, just for a moment, then opened them again.
Innate talent for combat, and an instant's flash of enlightenment.
A state of hyper-concentration so profound he forgot even himself, combined with a situation broader and more dangerous than any real battle.
And there, at last, the technique blossomed.
It was the result of confronting the fundamentals he had built all this time and witnessing a defensive art that had reached a divine threshold—one he never should have been capable of achieving.
Itar's Completed Adaptation.
A perfection that had been just one step away.
Richard grasped it, and moved.
A storm of violence rained down toward his head. Richard received it.
No—receiving wasn't enough.
He plucked one attack with his fingertips, spun away with the motion, and slammed his bared elbow into the Warrior Monk's flank.
The carapace that hadn't shown a single crack against Itar's counterattacks caved inward with a loud CRACK.
"Wha—?!"
An attack carrying the augmented strength of mana tattoos, high-purity martial arts, and centrifugal force channeled through Itar's Adaptation.
Unlike Itar, whose teeth couldn't even graze their hides, this was a warrior primed for struggle.
Faced with the bearing of a fighter who had finally completed himself, Loim faltered.
And then Demis, who had been watching from the rear, leaped in.
"Combined assault, match my pace!"
"Grrk...!"
Loim ground his teeth in humiliation, and the Warrior Monks' combined attack began.
A fast, hammer-like punch, and fists blazing crimson, surging forward wreathed in heat shimmer.
A typhoon of red-and-black violence, whirling. Richard watched the two ferocious charges bearing down on him.
Fierce combinations so fast he could only barely catch their afterglow. Relentless, driving attacks. A coordinated assault that never interfered with each other's movements, lashing out at maximum efficiency.
But that made them predictable.
Their trajectories would never overlap; they would always be positioned to cover each other's gaps.
At the very end, that was how Itar had countered their volley with a volley of his own, using each other's force against them.
If that was the case, Richard could do it too.
By the time his breath started to carry flecks of blood, Richard assumed his stance once more.
"Co... me."
Words, short. But the attack that followed was long and heavy. Richard didn't meet it head-on.
He only adapted.
The wind shrieked. Stone and soil exploded in all directions. And at the center, Richard stood firm.
Feet planted, he stretched out his arms and received the attacks aimed at his skull.
Before they could break him, he twisted his body and let them slide past. The moment a deflected fist slammed into the dirt, he drove his knee into Loim's eye.
The bulging orb burst. The Warrior Monk suppressed the agony and swung an uppercut. Richard stepped onto the fist itself, used it to vault straight up, and seized Demis from behind.
"What in the—!"
A cry of horror. Before the sound had even faded, Richard's fist drummed against his spine. Carapace scattered, and the mana tattoos blazed bright across Richard's skin.
The two Warrior Monks recoiled, exchanged a glance, and lunged again. Richard set his stance.
Muscles tore, bones twisted, blood surged up from his throat—still, Richard adapted.
He parried a skull-bound blow with his wrist. When the follow-up punch grazed his waist, he spun into a kick.
The kicking foot split open, blood and shredded leather flying. Richard seized the return kick, deflected it, and drove his fist into the man's nape, again and again.
Blood soaked his face. He caught a two-handed overhead smash, jumped in place, and hammered his fist down on the crown of the man's skull.
Amid tattered carapace and spattered fluids, Richard kept moving.
His counters grew thicker, and the Warrior Monks' attacks began to thin. And at last they understood:
they were being overwhelmed.
Watching the man who had become the typhoon inside the typhoon, Loim and Demis inevitably thought of something.
Defeat.
CRASH!
A wild punch pounded the ground. When the two follow-up swings forced them to step back, Richard stood without so much as a twitch.
He remembered the answer his master had given him once, when he had asked how he could smile through all of it.
The answer he had given when Richard asked if he wasn't afraid.
He smiled because he was afraid.
When Richard couldn't understand, Itar had smiled gently and told him that he hoped Richard would never forget that fear.
Then, one day, he would be able to smile too.
Richard slowly, painfully tugged the corners of his mouth upward—an effort more grueling than throwing a punch or deflecting death with his shredded arms.
"What... what in the hell are you...?"
"This can't be, this can't be happening...!"
Demis and Loim already knew the answer.
The truth boring into their skulls didn't need proof.
But they couldn't accept it.
Even seeing it with their own eyes, they couldn't believe it.
"I am... Richard. Richard... Auris Hill... singer...."
His wide gray eyes gleamed with a chilling light. And the Warrior Monks knew.
"The Master of Martial Arts."
That those words were the truth.
That right here, right now, the title had passed to a new bearer.
