Master of the Bow
Master of the Bow
Feathers hard and sharp as steel stitched the empty air. Aslan's eyes alone could not read their trajectories, but his heightened Luck traced every path with perfect clarity. At the end of those paths was Tiyamal Clo, still in the middle of breaking away.
Aslan moved without hesitation. His outstretched Purity painted the steel rain with a white crescent.
Three feathers ricocheted away. Each was a thick, long blade the size of a shortsword. They merely wore the shape of a bird's feathers — they were not actual plumage.
The priest in human form snatched the feathers back from the air and swung them crosswise, one blade in a reverse grip, the other in a standard grip.
White flame and sparks from the stone sword lit the air in quick succession. Stymphalos grimaced and hurled the feather daggers from his hands.
A throw with no preparatory motion. Normally, that made it impossible to predict or evade. Normally.
But Aslan was the Master of Combat. He had slain priests by the hundreds. On top of that, his heightened Luck now surpassed even his own instincts. An attack he once would have absorbed on a less critical part of his body was instead deflected by the pommel of Kal.
Clang. The blade-feather ricocheted into the air. Beyond it, Aslan's teal eyes gleamed clearly.
What lay beyond was even more incomprehensible.
Stymphalos was small-bodied, yet his strength was unmistakably that of a priest.
His muscles, reinforced by hydraulic pressure, let him crush an ordinary human barehanded. The feathers that composed his cloak were a metal alloy hard enough to chew through standard steel swords with ease.
Yet Aslan deflected those alloy-feather attacks with the edge of Kal and blocked them with the pommel. It was abnormal, but not surprising.
The opponent was the Master of Combat.
Stymphalos was a priest who had lived a very long time. His age easily exceeded two centuries—a lifespan on par with the current high priests. That longevity had given him his own philosophy of survival and victory, his own knowledge.
And by that philosophy and knowledge, Stymphalos was not careless.
The fact that his opponent was a mere human, the fact that he possessed no special divine authority — none of it mattered.
Stymphalos swept his cloak wide and gathered its feather blades. The cluster of feathers looked like a single-edged sword.
Whirrrr!
Grrrk-grrrk-grrrk-grrrk!
That single-edged sword began to rotate. The feathers tore free of their moorings, grinding violently against one another. The motion could shred metal and flesh alike.
It was a chainsaw—but not an ordinary one.
It was not simply a rotating chain; it was a mass of moving blades the length of shortswords. Sheer durability and technique could not block that kind of interlocking mass.
Even blocking with the blood sword wreathed in Purity would only make it rebound. Against that violent motion, no defensive technique could be executed in time.
So he would not block it. He would shove it aside. Aslan tightened his grip on Purity and drew breath.
Thunder Call.
A pale thunder coalesced beneath the white flame, and the sword thrust forward. It collided with the feathers whirling like a chainsaw.
Kwarurururung!
A deafening roar erupted. The chainsaw burst backward. Pain shot through Aslan's wrist. Even that brief jolt was crippling.
But forcing it back was enough. Aslan reversed Seobsaeng and slashed diagonally upward. His target was the chest. As far as he knew, Stymphalos's weak point was the sternum where his core resided.
Claaaaaang!
Stymphalos gathered the feather-cloak that had been his chainsaw and shielded his chest. The alloy feathers easily shed the blade-stroke.
'He trusts his defenses and absorbs it. A man like that should be counterattacking.'
Aslan clicked his tongue softly and recovered his blade. He swept both crossed swords back. If Stymphalos had absorbed the strike, Aslan would have followed up with Heart Piercing and dealt a fatal wound.
'He's not a priest who survived two hundred years for nothing. Cautious.'
Stymphalos was originally a scholar who became a priest. Fighting was not his nature, and so, even after two centuries of battle, he remained cautious.
Even in combat, Stymphalos never gambled on a decisive blow.
That made him troublesome. He leveraged his own capabilities steadily and never grew overconfident. Aslan found this fight more arduous than facing Ereta.
Ereta was certainly a higher difficulty, but Stymphalos was more frustrating.
Having reached his judgment, Aslan raised both swords in a cross and thrust them forward. At the end of the thrust's arc was the priest, calmly analyzing Aslan's combat capability.
Stymphalos thought.
'His muscle strength surpasses any ordinary human. Even with conditioning, that's absurd. Magic?'
And there was something beyond muscle strength. When Aslan deflected with his sword, there was an element of technique that Stymphalos could not grasp. Aslan's wild magic-reinforced strength was something Stymphalos could not understand but could still predict.
The two figures' standoff stretched through the silence, then broke. Aslan lunged with both longswords held true, and Stymphalos answered the assault with a volley of feathers.
*
While Aslan fought Stymphalos and bought time, Tiyamal Clo had left the battlefield.
Once clear, Tiyamal's first act was to open the distance.
Widen the gap, erase his tracks, and head for the spot most perfectly suited for a sniper's shot.
As he crossed the forest, the terrain slowly rose, and the higher it rose, the more the barren wind wailed through the trees.
An impenetrable wall of trees, a thick curtain of mist, a howling gale and the keening of beasts — yet Tiyamal pressed on unwaveringly.
His sight, his hearing, his sense of smell: none of them were particularly useful.
Tiyamal's sense of touch was preternaturally refined. Touch was his innate gift.
He read the grain of the trees with his fingertips and perceived his surroundings through the wind against his body.
It was a transcendent sense no one else could imitate.
And he sniped based on that transcendent sense.
Sight was supplementary. His hearing and smell were mediocre at best.
That was why Tiyamal could snipe even in a forest choked by ancient trees.
Even in a mountain crowded with boulders, even in a gorge where cutting winds blew.
He could pierce whatever he aimed for.
Innate dragon-kin muscle strength, superhuman touch, and a genius for archery — together, they created an archery so sublime that even the God of War coveted it.
A transcendent archery that the God of War himself would struggle to replicate even if he stole it.
At last, Tiyamal stopped.
As the wind raked his scales, he shut his eyes in stillness. Through the wind stroking his scales, he sensed.
'...The bastard's a whole other monster. Fighting like that.'
His tactile sense reflected Aslan's form through the breeze drifting from the battlefield.
Aslan's fighting had reached heights no other human could reproduce.
'Huh, dodging that like that.'
Aslan slashed his blade sharply, then pulled it back, twisting his waist into a spin. He rose lightly into the air, evading the attack aimed at his ankle. Flipping midair, he let the blade miss and turned the evasion into a counterattack.
The blade's edge struck a joint with a metallic screech before tearing through, and the priest continued his assault as if nothing had happened. Even amid that onslaught, Aslan doggedly swung his swords and parried the blows.
It was clearly more than a stalling action. Tiyamal could see it.
He, too, was a Master.
"Then I'd best get to work myself."
He had put a good kilometer between them. Tiyamal let go of his worries, opened his eyes, and began methodically stripping off his clothes.
He draped his discarded garments over a branch. Standing stark naked, he felt the wind blowing across his entire body — especially the wind blowing against his groin.
He always shot his bow with his sense of touch. Thus, his accuracy was proportional to that sense.
His most accurate shots came when he was completely nude, facing the headwind.
Half-naked was one thing, but when completely naked, an arrow shot by Tiyamal had never missed.
Timing was the critical factor. To shoot with maximum effectiveness, Tiyamal inverted his bow.
He aimed the spike, resembling a dragon's claw, at the ground, then drew an arrow.
A handcrafted arrow made by shaving and shaping a spear shaft or a ballista bolt. When shot from Tiyamal's enormous bow, it carried power exceeding that of siege artillery.
He nocked the long arrow against the string woven from steel wire and moved the bowstave.
His eyes set the direction; his touch made the micro-adjustments. Within that superhuman perception, Tiyamal had become the Master of the Bow.
He raised the bow high. As if overturning a mountain, he lifted his arms wide with the bow held high.
Drawing the bow down, he pulled the string. The metal groaned tautly, and Tiyamal's muscles flared and swelled.
His physique seemed to double its original breadth. In actual size, it was only about a 1.25-fold expansion, but his sheer presence alone made it look that way.
Imbuing his arrow with that presence, Tiyamal twisted his arms, now swollen to the size of his own head. Twisting the string made the arrow spin.
Finally, he drove the dragon-claw spike deep into the earth. The deeply anchored bow stood firm, its vibrations stilled.
Sssss, hooo—his exhaled breath bled from his overheated body. At the very last, Tiyamal closed his eyes. The driving wind guided his bow.
He lifted the corners of his lips and waited for the optimal moment.
*
Jjaeng!
The sound of metal on metal. Amid it, Aslan did not flinch; he kept moving.
Every attack aimed at his head, flank, leg, ankle, wrist — he swatted, ducked, and shed them all.
The moment he let a single blow land, the fight would end. Without Equalization, Aslan had no appetite for injuries.
If he did not have both arms and both legs intact, he could not defeat Stymphalos.
Aslan drew a breath and held his sword at an angle.
The moment the blade blackened within the white flame, it traced a long arc.
Knight Slayer.
A cutting ring rang out. Knight Slayer — a technique that ignored physical form and sliced what lay beyond. A technique for piercing a knight's heart past their heavy armor.
The counter was straightforward. At the moment the cut came, twist the trajectory to avoid a mortal wound, or thrust an obstruction into the swing's path to cancel the penetration.
That was exactly what Stymphalos did. As the stroke of Knight Slayer flashed toward him, he shoved his feather cloak into its path, erased the technique, and absorbed the blow with his body. With a metallic shriek, he took the impact on his elbow.
Swishhh!
He held a sword in the blocking hand and drove the dagger in his other hand forward. Aslan lowered his springy body deeply to dodge. The dagger stabbed empty air and then snapped sideways, hurtling toward him.
Claaang!
Aslan barely caught the hurtling strike, his teeth showing as he slid back.
Remaining Fighting Spirit: 1. Several uses of Knight Slayer and Heart Piercing had drained it. It was already scraping bottom.
His mana, too, was below half. Nothing he threw out casually could leave even a scratch on Stymphalos.
A mere slashing strike could not deal meaningful damage, and when he used a strong attack, the high-defense cloak blocked it.
Aslan's attack power alone could not bring Stymphalos down.
Aslan knew this very well.
He had known it before the fight even began.
That was why Aslan's objective was not to defeat Stymphalos personally.
If it had been, he would have brought different means, different weapons, different magic.
As Aslan panted, Stymphalos let his voice drop, almost regretfully.
"This... seems to be a poor matchup, Master of Combat. Your attacks don't seem to land."
Aslan did not answer. He panted and shook out his sword-wrist.
"Will you continue? The Predator has set you as a priority elimination target, but he has promised you excellent treatment should you convert. Though, to be fair, you have refused one hundred and twenty-seven contract offers."
Stymphalos already felt certain of victory. Fighting Aslan had confirmed that Aslan's striking power gave him no path to win.
Because of that, Stymphalos was now urging Aslan to switch sides.
Watching this, Aslan recalled his tally.
The number of perk-techniques he had used: six.
Not a single one had missed.
All six cuts had landed exactly as intended.
From the very beginning, Aslan had no intention of defeating this high-defense priest with his own hands.
He uses every tool available.
That was Aslan's creed.
Still listening to the ongoing overture, Aslan sheathed his swords.
"...Hm?"
Even Stymphalos, in the middle of his persuasion, stopped and looked puzzled.
Stowing Seobsaeng behind his waist and even withdrawing the blood sword Purity to his hip — it looked like giving up the fight.
'This is not... surrender.'
But it was not surrender. Stymphalos watched Aslan calmly put away his swords. In surrender, he should have been resentful or wary of a possible attack. Aslan was neither.
'Something is wrong.'
Many things were wrong.
Sheathing his swords even though his attacks could not land.
The companion who had fled at the start being nowhere in sight.
Aslan standing motionless, gazing steadily at Stymphalos.
The wind now blowing squarely against Aslan's back.
Amid all these uncanny signs, Stymphalos tried to act as he always did.
First, move from the spot and then assess the situation.
"Urgh?!"
If only his body had been able to move.
Stymphalos realized that everything from his joints to his internal skeleton had been jarred out of alignment. Nothing moved. His misaligned bones and joints gave off a grinding screech. Belatedly, he recalled every single spot that Aslan's blade had swept across.
Six joints and skeletal points had been sliced, and now they were grating.
"I am the Master of Combat."
To the flustered priest struggling to move, Aslan spoke in a low voice.
It sounded like a declaration — or like a death sentence quietly delivered.
Regardless of the emotion Aslan himself carried, Stymphalos felt a sense of danger so acute it made hair he did not even possess stand on end.
"Do you know what that means?"
Aslan's voice carried the conviction of someone certain of victory—the very conviction Stymphalos had held only seconds before.
"You—!"
To the stunned, shouting Stymphalos, Aslan spoke coldly.
"It means you've already lost, you miserable bastard."
Kwaaaaaa!
Aslan ceased speaking and shifted his body to the side. From behind him, a massive arrow hurtled through the space he had just vacated.
The arrow came with the force of a condensed storm.
That force drove straight through the gap in Stymphalos's opened cloak and pierced his sternum.
Crrrunch!
Metal buckled and ripped apart. It split. Through the tearing metal, the core was impaled. The orb that had radiated heat and energy shattered into fragments.
"Keuk—!"
Stymphalos staggered backward. As he reeled toward his death, Aslan stepped forward.
His leg was tinted milky-white. He poured his last dregs of Fighting Spirit into it and unleashed the kick.
The spinning kick, tracing a beautiful arc, carried thunder within it.
"Thunder Call."
Kwa-rurururung!
With those quiet words, the spinning kick struck the arrow's end.
It drove past the metal fletching and into the shaft. In that instant, Stymphalos felt his entire world compress into a single point.
His compressed life exploded backward.
"Ah."
Kwajijijik—
"Sl-Aslaaaaaaaan!"
Puh-suhk!
And then, Stymphalos's chest blew apart. His upper and lower body separated.
As the severed torso flew through the sky and slammed into the ground, Aslan withdrew his extended leg.
Stepping over the shattered metal corpse of the priest, Aslan turned his head.
In the distance, from the direction the arrow had flown, Tiyamal stood naked. A red, nude figure almost like a speck.
Aslan let out an incredulous laugh. Tiyamal Clo had to be the first to ever kill a priest while stark naked.