Chapter 131. The Ten Strongest (1)
After they'd left the scene, with Berdia still there.
Ymir, having regrouped with Heira, finally let her exhausted body collapse to the ground.
"Ymir, are you all right?"
"I'm fine... just out of shape, that's all."
She tried to steady her breathing while making excuses, but her pounding heart showed no sign of slowing even after they'd escaped that place.
No matter how stubbornly she refused to admit it, there was no denying how dangerous the situation had been.
'Yeah, I really nearly died this time.'
Ymir quietly placed a hand on her own neck.
The cold sensation she'd felt when a blade had been leveled directly at her throat was still vivid.
She had the confidence not to blink even if a sword pierced her neck, but the psychological toll of a life-or-death battle was hard to ignore...
'...Got to be careful. Being in the party means I'll face even more dangerous things than this.'
Yes, rather than feeling frustrated or terrified right now, she needed to remember this defeat and turn it into experience.
Maybe in the past she wouldn't have cared, but now she had things to protect.
With the greenhorn hero, a lifelong companion, and a junior who depended on her—as the adult among them, there was no way she could just stand still.
"I'm fine, so let's head straight to Dave. It'd be a problem if we left him alone and something ugly happened to him."
Unlike themselves, who had been handling the aftermath and evacuating citizens, Dave had already gone ahead to pursue whoever was suspected of commissioning Serika's kidnapping.
But no matter how much of his own drug he'd taken, they still had to prepare for the worst.
The previous battle hadn't been easy, so Ymir couldn't help but be plagued by that anxiety.
"What about Berdia?"
Did she see things differently?
Just as she was about to leave, Heira looked back toward a certain spot and spoke carefully.
"Is it really all right to leave Berdia by herself?"
"...You mean that walking suit of armor?"
"That person is strong."
Ymir looked toward the path they had taken.
Toward Berdia, who was still there fighting long after they'd left the scene.
"She was quicker than any animal I've seen in the mountains over the past hundred years."
Heira spoke honestly about her impression.
One might dismiss them as mere wild beasts, but a hundred years of accumulated experience reached a level that could not be ignored.
She lacked social experience, but her skills alone rivaled those of the previous generation's sniper. That assessment was something Ymir, having spent the last month with her, felt more keenly than anyone.
"...Certainly. Someone who can break through that kind of firepower isn't going to be a pushover."
In the first place, they had poured out enough firepower to overturn the whole area.
Would anyone not find it absurd that a man could weave through it and bite down on an arrow aimed at his head?
"Then, shouldn't we go back and help..."
"No, she'll be fine."
Even so, Ymir held back Heira, who was voicing her unease, and urged her to head toward Dave instead.
The reason was simple.
Unlike Heira, Ymir had seen Berdia's strength firsthand.
"She'll be fine? Why?"
"Because that woman is stronger."
"...Berdia is?"
"Yes."
A tone full of certainty.
Ymir offered no further explanation.
The outcome of this fight was so obvious that no explanation was needed—she, having faced Berdia directly herself, knew that better than anyone.
***
Yes, in a battle between the strong, words were unnecessary.
Even when words and strikes were exchanged, the beginning of such a confrontation was usually a quiet one.
By gauging the opponent's strength and comparing it with one's own, one could roughly estimate who was superior.
"You've changed quite a bit since the old days."
Having sized up the Berdia before him, Bardos soon let out a snicker and began to study her.
"Do I look that way?"
Berdia answered curtly, in contrast.
She had likewise finished gauging his power, but she gave no outward sign of her assessment, merely maintaining her aloof composure.
Her opponent favored irregular tactics, relying more on traps and tools than his own skill.
On top of that, there was the fluctuation in combat strength caused by doping, so the variance once a full-scale fight began would differ greatly from what was visible.
"Right, the first time we met was when you were carrying out a quest under the royal family's orders, wasn't it?"
As the unusual man recalled old memories, he kept a cigarette in his mouth.
That had been their first meeting: back when she was a newly appointed officer who had just earned the position of Knight Commander, and he himself was still a professional adventurer making a name for himself.
"Even back then, you had strength that belied your young age, but you were so ridiculously inflexible that dealing with you was a pain in the ass."
"Whereas you were quite free-spirited and often showed a skeptical attitude toward your main duties. Adventurers tend to be like that, but given the responsibilities that come with a position, you should have set an example for others—yet I always found you distasteful, half-heartedly handling even orders from the royal family."
"Even if you found it unsightly, I was still a senior who'd eaten far more battlefield chow than you, yet there you were nagging me about every single thing. I thought you must have some nerve. And now that cheeky junior has become one of the Ten Greats... You really never know how the world's going to turn out."
A rookie to watch out for in the future.
His assessment from those days, when he had kept an eye on her, had not been wrong.
What he hadn't expected was that it would happen in less than ten years, when he'd assumed it would be twenty years later.
"Sure, sure. Just means the Ten Strongest of the Continent have gone stale."
"...Do you mean that sincerely?"
"Haha, what, did I say something wrong? Aside from you and maybe Darkan, the rest are all ancient or belong to the Long-lived Species."
Even one of those Long-lived Species had gone missing amid the fighting with the Demon King's army.
The others were nearly all dying old-timers or mere inheritors of tradition, so it was only natural that the assessment of her, newly ascended to the rank of the Ten Greats, would be lowered.
"...Arrogant as ever, then and now."
"I figure someone on my level's earned the right to be arrogant."
"That arrogance is only permitted because it accompanies responsibility. Do you think a man who cast aside that responsibility and fled to the underworld still has such a right?"
"Haha, give that 'with great power comes great responsibility' crap to a dog. I did all this to live well on my own terms, and people just pinned their expectations on me, telling me to do this and that... I got damn sick of it, you know?"
The Ten Strongest of the Continent, what a joke.
At first, he had thought he'd become someone great, but it didn't take long to realize it was nothing more than a pretty pretext for leading the masses.
They arbitrarily appointed him to that position, and if he didn't follow their orders, they arbitrarily branded him a criminal—how could someone who became an adventurer precisely for a free-spirited life ever welcome that?
"In that sense, life in the underworld is the best. Booze, drugs, women... Out here, as long as you've got power, no one nags you and you can do whatever the hell you want."
Of course, he'd grown tired of all that, but if he kept searching for something more stimulating to replace it, he'd find it again someday.
The problem, however, was that his conversation partner was ill-suited for eliciting sympathy.
"...In the past, I thought you were merely a frivolous man, but looking at you now, I see you've become utter trash. Bardos."
"You'd understand if you came out here and messed around for a while. Though with your disposition, you'll never set foot in a place like this your whole life."
A holy knight who had devoted everything to a great cause, falling into the existence of underworld scum?
That could only happen if she were suppressed by a power greater than her own and forcibly degraded into a sex slave.
Yes, he might not know about her strength, but he knew that her loftiness was not something he could break.
As he kept this point in mind, Berdia quietly closed her eyes and revealed her inner thoughts toward Bardos.
"...It is true that we will never truly understand each other. Even if we rose to the same position, what our eyes see is entirely different from beginning to end."
An adventurer who sought a life free from any oppression, longing for freedom, and a knight who had sworn to sacrifice body and mind for a great cause—they could walk no fate but separate ones.
Because Berdia understood this as well, she decided not to harbor the feeble hope of correcting Bardos's heart.
"Still, if you have any pride in your power... you won't think of running away now, will you?"
She simply clashed.
Standing before him, she merely steeled herself with that single thought.
"...I suppose I must. I'm someone with a thing called pride myself."
Though he wanted to avoid a losing battle, he still considered her his junior—could he really run away now?
Exuding that self-confidence, Bardos casually swept aside the garment wrapped around his body.
The blue smoke seeping from his mouth as the cloth fluttered away shrouded the surroundings, and his trained body began to reveal itself before Berdia.
A physique kept rigorously trained despite a dissolute life.
The combat strength derived from it was, likewise, no different than before.
Just because he had fallen to the underworld didn't mean the dagger in his hand had grown rusty.
"Well then, let's see for ourselves. Just how much stronger this junior who came to face me, Bardos, in single combat has become...!!"
A voice tinged with fighting spirit.
At the same time, his eyes flashed as he inhaled deeply from the cigarette in his mouth, and the blood rushing through his entire body began to accelerate madly.
The physical abilities explosively boosted by the drug made it easy to harness the mana driven by his heightened mind, and the eruption of physical force created by the sum of all these factors transformed his body into an afterimage.
-Shyaak!
A noise far too sharp to be called a body tearing through the air. By the time one registered the sound, Bardos was already positioned behind Berdia.
Speed amplified by his unique footwork.
A full-power slash, delivered with that acceleration, would shear through a target's neck in a single stroke.
'If she doesn't block it, she dies.'
No, even if she blocked it, he would carve through the guard as well.
If he released at once all the mana he had secretly gathered even while conversing with her.
-Ga-ddeuk!!
But as if to deny that expectation to his face, the dagger in Bardos's hand failed to bite into Berdia's neck.
She didn't block it. Bardos's dagger had already reached her neck.
Even if that neck was sheathed in armor, his dagger held the power to carve through the armor itself and sever the windpipe.
'What is this...?'
It was like striking a wall of steel...
The same feeling as when he'd struck the shield of the Grand Archmage he'd faced earlier with his bare hands.
'No, it's different. It's not just merely hard.'
Yes. If it were simply hard, he would have been pushed back or forced to retreat from the impact. Yet her body, having received his blade with her neck, showed not a single tremor on the spot.
Not just hard—as though it possessed an impossible weight as well.
"Light."
As if to confirm that his assessment was no illusion, Berdia soon spoke to Bardos.
"Infinitely light."
A voice little different from before, even after battle had been joined.
Bardos, sensing the danger in an attitude so unnervingly calm it felt almost bored, hastily retreated and glared at Berdia.
"...What did you do?"
Trembling hands and a face streaming with cold sweat.
As a face that had lost all traces of his earlier composure was revealed, Berdia let out a deep breath and spoke.
"Bardos. When you first saw me, you must have thought me weaker than yourself."
Yes, at least on the surface.
In terms of physical ability or the sense of mana driven by the unconscious, the strength she broadly exuded could be considered a step below his own.
She would struggle more than the two he had faced before, but she was by no means an opponent he could not defeat.
"That assessment is not wrong."
Berdia did not deny that point either.
"Perhaps I am far weaker now than when you first ascended to the rank of the Ten Greats."
Yet she remained unyielding.
Still maintaining her lofty bearing, she simply began to gradually emanate the strength forged from her heart.
Soon, a radiance enveloped her body and overlaid her armor, gradually taking form.
It was the power of the heart, immeasurable by the eye. Equipment forged from the faith of a clergywoman.
"Even if I stand alone upon the battlefield, all that I must protect stands behind me, lending me its strength..."
The magnificent armor thus completed was a faithful manifestation of the armaments of a goddess from myth.
Though that body might not have exceeded human limits, it was equipment permitted to be worn only by one whose spirit reached the heavens.
"Yes, I am a vassal sworn to the Arhen royal house, and the shrine maiden who serves the God of War. A warrior resolved to bear all responsibilities stemming therefrom..."
Anyone facing that equipment would feel it viscerally.
That what they beheld was indeed her responsibility...
The weight of the great undertaking of carrying all of humanity upon her shoulders.
"Bardos, can you truly withstand it?"
A heavy shield, forged from that very responsibility.
In this moment, before the turncoat who had cast aside his duty, it began to flaunt its radiance.