Betting One's Life (2)
Aspen nearly dropped her sword for the third time. In contrast, her opponent was relaxed enough to mutter to himself.
If a void-touched corpse still retained enough sanity to speak, two conditions were required. First, the person had to have been utterly twisted in life. So warped that even the Abyss, which hated all living things, would consider them useful. Some kind of personnel evaluation on their part, one might say. Second, they had to be an exceptionally powerful warrior. This bastard clearly had no shortage of the second condition.
His height was at least one and a half times hers, and the weight difference easily exceeded double. Add in the innate gap in muscle quality between human and lizardman, and…
Damn it. This is exactly when I miss Nathan like crazy. He could’ve just taken this head-on.
Once again, the one-and-a-half-meter kopesh came swinging down with raw power. The stone floor of the corridor shattered violently.
What nonsense. Ignoring the command entirely, Aspen backpedaled to evade. She swallowed a scream as pain shot through her twisted ankle.
“This is life? What kind of Zen dialogue is that in the middle of a fight?”
The question might reveal her exhaustion, but she needed to buy time. Her muscles were already screaming.
“Where the hell did a corpse who just crawled out of the ground get a sword like that?”
After clashing blades with her father—a top Federation engineer—and a Red Blade swordsman of equal caliber, followed by this relentless series of brutal battles against entirely different kinds of powerhouses, the strain had fallen squarely on her body. Her muscles, pushed to their limit, howled in protest. She was losing in both size and physical durability. If she kept trading blows like this, she’d be cut down before she could even use any techniques.
Fortunately, her opponent was willing to converse. He seemed certain of his victory.
The black tongue of the approaching void-touched lizardman flicked across the dried blood on the kopesh.
“Not me what?”
Aspen’s eyebrows twitched.
“Sorry to disappoint. If I’m not a worthy opponent, there’s no point in tormenting me, right? How about you just let me go?”
The lizardman let out a booming laugh.
This was the afterlife doctrine of the snake-headed lizardmen who worshipped Coatle. Only by covering their scales in the blood of worthy foes could a warrior of their race enter the Hall of Coatle.
But Aspen had no intention of becoming an admission fee to paradise.
She steadied her trembling legs.
“When you think you might actually die, all sorts of thoughts pop into your head.”
The heavily bruised skin around Aspen’s eyes curved like crescent moons.
“Heh. Damn it. I should’ve slapped that pink-haired bitch at least once.”
The lizardman shook his head and swung his massive kopesh with ferocious speed. The time he had given her to rest had been purely for his own enjoyment—the thrilling moment when steel met steel, vibrating through bone and shoulder.
But that desire would no longer be satisfied.
Aspen’s body collapsed forward. She seemed to have lost consciousness, falling toward the ground. Her blood-red hair. Her forehead. The sword tip that had slipped from her fingers.
Oh dear.
Pity flickered in the void-touched’s eyes, as if looking at a broken toy. Of course, he didn’t stop the swing of his blade. His opponent had done her best with her small, fragile warm-blood body. Thanks to that, he had enjoyed himself enough. So he intended to end her cleanly with a single strike, cutting her in half without further torment.
The kopesh, weighted with that final mercy, sliced through the already battered floor.
Instead of being thrown to the ground, the longsword was now slicing through the lizardman’s belly.
Flowing Sword.
What has no intent cannot be predicted. What has no form cannot be blocked. No matter how strong one is, they cannot stop water from seeping through. Like a flowing spring slipping between stones, it pierces the gaps in perception. This was the technique of Catalo Peres, founder of the Peres family.
In a way, it was also the reason Aspen was suffering so much here today. It was the very technique she had taken from her father Andau and the red-armored warrior—the right to become family head and guardian.
The unnoticed blade slowly tilted forward, tearing through the peritoneum. The lizardman roared and kneed the embraced Aspen, who had slipped inside the reach of his great blade.
But Aspen’s body slipped lightly downward. What the lizardman saw was an afterimage flowing like a snake climbing a branch, redirecting the impact.
So this is what it feels like.
On that day in the Floating Arena when she had nearly died, this was the technique she had tried to use against the chimera. She hadn’t been able to read the timing and had nearly died instead.
After rolling once and landing, Aspen was still inside the reach of the lizardman’s arms and legs. A position where she could refuse direct clashes and strike a fatal blow at any moment. Her longsword slammed into his flank, and the lizardman howled.
Cowardly? If technique and training are cowardly, then what of innate body and talent?
Humans are weak. Most intelligent species are watched over by some god, yet humans are the rare exception without one. Against larger, stronger races blessed by their own chief deities and the monsters of the Abyss, only a tiny number of superhumans among humanity can compete with pure strength.
In this thoroughly unkind world, the only thing humanity—born as the weak—can do is win by any means necessary.
Therefore, this was not some noble knight’s duel for the sake of lust. Nor was it the domain of romance’s apostles drunk on the adoration of peasants. This was Aspen Peres’s technique, honed solely for survival and slaughter, unleashed without reservation.
She severed grasping fingers and cut tendons. She stabbed joints without hesitation and moved into blind spots. The lizardman, trying to respond somehow with his kopesh, suddenly realized the corridor was too narrow to swing a polearm effectively.
Only then did he understand. This human had not been pushed back out of necessity. She had deliberately retreated to lure him into a narrower space. To overcome her disadvantage of narrower vision in the dark compared to him, and to negate the disadvantage of being smaller.
Like a lion that had underestimated a wolverine and had its belly shredded, the lizardman finally began to retreat.
Then Aspen advanced, stepping forward. For the first time since the duel began, the direction of their steps had reversed.
The massive lizardman, who had been strong from the moment of his birth, could not endure that fact.
Ignoring the sword tip stabbing into his thigh bone, he roared wildly and charged forward. The light Aspen was pushed back far too easily and rolled across the floor.
She rose in a hurry, pulling her sword back as if frightened and blocking with one arm. Honest terror from the weak.
Satisfied, the lizardman brought his blade down upon it.
Aspen’s forearm vanished from its trajectory like lightning. She spun once and raised her sword high. Waiting until his kopesh struck the ground, she brought her blade down on the arm pinned beneath him.
This was a technique taught by Zelter Peres. Bait and switch.
The shock from the kopesh rebounding off the floor, combined with Aspen’s full-weight strike. The opposing forces caused the dinosaur-like hardness of his right arm bone to snap like dry kindling.
Maddened like a beast struck by an arrow, the lizardman charged again. Was it the excitement that kept him from feeling the pain? Or had the Abyss dulled even his senses?
Aspen ducked under the fist and used the returning force against him. She hooked her sword tip on his wing joint and flipped him in the direction he had come from.
This was a technique learned from Novic Peres. Full Moon Slash.
The lizardman was thrown off balance and crashed to the ground. The impact of his own weight striking his lungs forced a choked gasp from him. His breathing had been completely taken away. The strength in his arms was no longer what it had been.
Then he was no longer a threat.
Aspen deflected the clumsy counterattack of the staggering opponent with the flat of her blade and advanced again. A mid-level cut into the gap before he could raise his weapon, an upward cut to prevent a downward strike. When he tried to grab her, she spun and kicked. After planting her foot again, she severed the fingers trying to catch her kicking leg. She deflected his swinging blade and released it. She reversed her grip on the sword that had spun half a turn in her hand. She stabbed naturally into the now-exposed chest.
A series of movements flowing into one. This was her mother’s technique, from when she had been a Heresy Inquisitor. Vampire Stake.
A horrifying sensation as if fighting multiple people at once. Barely catching the sword before it pierced his heart, the lizardman groaned.
Breathing like steam through clenched teeth, Aspen tried to twist the embedded blade to tear through his flesh. And inwardly, she apologized.
To her father, and to the elders of the family.
I was a bit immature, wasn’t I? Saying I’d inherit this shitty family, calling everyone deserters. I can’t judge those who built and protected this swordsmanship with a single incident and call them cowards.
This was the trace of those who would do anything to win. The Peres do not lose.
If there was no deeper reason behind their flight to the Heavens, and if that later proved to be a true defeat, it didn’t matter. From now on, she would simply pour all her strength into making them victors.
The lizardman gritted his teeth and grabbed the longsword. Even with his guts spilling out and a sword in his chest, he still had strength left. It was an unfair act that would have been impossible for a human, but Aspen didn’t care. If she were the type to lose to something like that, she wouldn’t be a Peres.
When the firmly gripped sword wouldn’t budge, Aspen reached for the second sheath at her waist. The lizardman recoiled in shock. The final trick. That sheath was empty. She had given the spare blade to Nathan at the fork in the path.
In the moment the lizardman was thrown off guard, Aspen kicked his knee. Then she pulled the sword free from his forward-leaning chest. The void-touched tried to grab it desperately, but his remaining fingers were instead sliced off.
The moment his body bent forward, Aspen struck upward in one clean motion and then brought it down again. A perfect decapitation using both edges of the longsword in a single fluid action. This was her father’s. The famous technique of Andau Peres, which had even changed the name of the family’s sword. The Green Ghost’s Guillotine.
But her strength had run out at the final moment. The lizardman’s tough windpipe did not snap immediately. Kneeling with his head dangling by a thread, he somehow managed to keep breathing with ragged gasps.
And then he suddenly began to laugh.
Leaning against the wall, Aspen frowned. Leaving him to spout such insane nonsense was only to catch her breath. If she could have, she would have killed him without listening.
“Shut that toad-like mouth.”
“The real coward is you, you worthless bastard who’s been killing anyone in sight while using some meaningless dream as an excuse. If you wanted to die so badly to a strong opponent, why didn’t you just hang yourself and end it?”
The void-touched’s eyes widened.
“And I’ve got bad news for you, nameless lizardman. You’re not a warrior, so you can’t go to Coatle’s heaven. You’re nothing but a copy created by the Abyss, or a mere murderer who sold himself to an evil god.”
The moment he stammered, trying to say something in response, Aspen struck the remaining joint of his neck like she was chopping wood. The head, now the texture of coal, fell to the ground with a wet thud.
“That feels so much better. Sleep well, you bullshit philosopher.”
Aspen, who had collapsed from the pain, glanced behind her for no particular reason. Had that idiot elf managed to escape safely? Or had she run into another void-touched and failed to get away?
It was a pessimistic thought, but entirely possible. Now that this powerful void-touched who had been controlling the rest had fallen, dozens of mindless ones were already screaming and charging from beyond.
“Damn it. Why the hell am I worrying? She’s the bitch who stole my successor. I should just hope she gets eaten by a monster.”
This was a situation where she needed to worry about herself first. She was completely alone this time. No one would come to save her now.
Yet she could not simply bow her head. So Aspen stood and raised her sword.
“Come. The Peres do not lose.”
The moment the charging void-touched opened their maws and rushed in—
“Aspen—!”
The corridor above their heads exploded.
“Get back—!”
“You should’ve said you were using magic earlier, Brother Pontima! Aspen almost died!”
Aside from the back of her head stinging, Aspen was fortunately unharmed. The moment she heard Pontima’s voice, she had thrown herself backward.
Sunlight poured in, revealing the dust-covered Aspen. She looked up at the shattered ceiling and laughed in disbelief.
The warriors of Peres were flying through the air, blocking out the sun. Riding griffins stolen from the Federation.
“Come forward, Aspen—!”
At the familiar voice, Aspen broke into a wide grin. Telling her to retreat, then to come forward. He was supposed to be the family head, yet here he was training hunting dogs.
But Aspen obediently followed. As she dashed forward, something flashed before her eyes. The beak of a griffin stamped with the Heavenly God’s emblem, and a strong hand.
Aspen quickly grabbed the hand and leaped up. Andau, who had snatched his daughter like a circus trick and seated her behind him, paid the price for overusing his injured arm at that moment. Thanks to his final display of paternal dignity, Andau barely held back a groan.
The same was true for Aspen, who had been holding on tightly. The father and daughter who had beaten each other with wooden swords just a day and a half ago spent a brief moment appreciating each other’s pained expressions. The instant they both realized the other was secretly enjoying this, their second round began—this time with tongues as weapons.
“Is it okay for the family head to show off while riding stolen goods?”
“You throw your life away so easily but never listen to a word I say. I figured you’d be covered in blood, bruised all over, and exhausted. Is your body alright, current family head?”
Aspen glared at Andau. Andau Peres narrowed his eyes right back at his daughter. Thanks to Aspen starting to giggle, their second fight didn’t last long.
“I’m sorry, Dad. You know I love you, right?”
“…I’m glad you’re alive, you brat.”
The ceasefire was that simple and quick. Andau Peres, embarrassed and at a loss for words, shook his head and focused on controlling the griffin. Aspen burst into laughter as they soared into the sky.
---------
“What about me—achoo! Hic. Am I not even in your thoughts? You won’t even say I’m okay?”
When Benny giggled, the flustered Nathan could only blink.
“Where is she? She’s fine, that’s why she can say things like that. Up there. In the sky—achoo!”
Benny pointed upward with a dripping wet finger. Above the courthouse building, a flock of griffins was circling in the air. On the back of one of them, a tiny silhouette could be seen excitedly waving both hands.
The stomach that had been flipping violently finally settled back into place. Nathan let out a deep breath, stroking his chest as he sat down.