THIS Is a Martial Art...?
THIS counts as a martial art...?
Whump—
Fresh blood spattered against the floor.
Crunch—
The spear had left my hand, and I stood there grinding my teeth. That throw should have punched clean through his chest, but...
"Ha! This bastard's a real piece of work?"
The white armor wrapped around his body had swatted my poor, innocent spear to pieces. Thanks to which, everything made of blood simply went back to being blood.
"Hold on! There's something I need to ask—"
"Shut up and die."
Cutting his words off at the root, I gave my right hand a flick.
"Devour him."
From the floor — drenched so thoroughly in blood that its original color was long gone — something enormous rose, its jaws yawning wide...
Gulp—
And then it swallowed Mikhail whole.
"Chew him up good now. Can't have a single hair left showing..."
Once upon a time, they said, he had been the best in the world — but at the moment he was every bit as fallen as I was.
Crunch— crunch—
Perhaps that was why — though ordinarily this was something he could have sliced his way out of in a heartbeat — he couldn't seem to get free.
"Haha....."
Was it because I'd finally achieved a goal I'd abandoned long ago? Just as I let out that hollow laugh, unable to keep the tangle of feelings off my face—
Crrrrrunch—
It had swallowed him armor and all, so the sound I'd taken for that thing's jaws at work kept growing louder and louder...
Riiiip—
"Phew....."
Both gauntlets jammed into those jaws, Mikhail tore his way free at last — and apart from a scattering of afterimage wounds, he looked none the worse for wear.
Well, of course he did...
The holy sword, the sacred armor, the crown... this is properly fucked up.
He was wearing every holy relic my memory had to offer, all at once.
Only now did I come to understand that what one nameless holy knight from the days when tigers still smoked their pipes had screamed, veins standing out on his neck — there are no holy relics left, so how did you come to carry them?! — had been no lie at all.
"Ha... so he wasn't a runaway. He was a dyed-in-the-wool thief?"
I muttered it, staring at the spectacle with an expression of pure incredulity.
Truth be told, the most dumbfounded people present were the spectators watching this duel-that-wasn't.
Before the match began, the Mad Blood Ghost had stated it plainly: a bout between Transcendent Realm martial artists. The Sword Saint and the Sword Queen seated off to one side? Masters of the Profound Realm like them did not cross blades with one another. Whether that was to forestall some unthinkable catastrophe, or simply because old men's joints ached too much for it, who could say — though the Poison King, young by the standards of that crowd and famous for living entirely by his own temper, rather tipped the scales toward the latter...
At any rate, unlike those back-room elders who did nothing but talk of shattering mountains and cleaving the heavens, those at the Transcendent Realm did still come to blows from time to time — so the crowd had turned up brimming with expectation.
"A master of the sword against a master of the brawl... this should be a good one."
"That said, the Mad Blood Ghost looks to have lost his marbles again today, so perhaps that young man Hail might even take the win..."
"Looks like it'll come down to whether he can close the distance..."
But their predictions had derailed from the very first exchange.
The moment Dang Muyeong shaped a blood-red sphere and began flinging out things no one could identify...
"Er... that looks kind of like a finger-flick qi strike, doesn't it..."
"To my eye it reads as volleys of hardened qi, mind you."
And then something uncannily like the Sky-Filling Flower Rain unfurled...
"The Sky-Filling Flower Rain! I heard even the Poison King used it once before — but to see it with my own two eyes!"
"Yes, I heard you the first time — now stop slapping my shoulder! All excited just because you recognized a technique, honestly."
Up to that point, everyone had been watching with great enjoyment.
But then Mikhail summoned a sword and threw up a barrier...
"What in the world is that technique..."
A blood-red serpent coiled around it yet again...
"No....."
Monsters... armor... At a spectacle that kept breeding the most fundamental of doubts — could any of this even be called martial arts? — every last mouth in the crowd sealed itself shut.
"THIS is a martial art.....?"
Into the hush that had settled over the stands, that one unguarded thought slipped out — and every soul present fervently seconded it in the privacy of their hearts...
Meanwhile, atop the duel stage — already smashed beyond recognition — a clash of monsters was in full swing.
The coppery reek of blood stinging every breath... thorns of congealed blood erupting from the ground, only to be casually shattered by the armored man... yet more of those bizarre beast-shaped horrors surging in... and the young lord of a great clan, wheezing, weeping tears of blood. It was a scene that could scarcely be called a battle of warriors, and still the fighting raged fierce enough to hold the crowd spellbound.
One thing was odd, though. Where Dang Muyeong attacked like a man who had caught his parents' murderer, hell-bent on ending it then and there, Mikhail did nothing but defend, opening his mouth again and again as if he were trying to say something.....
"Shut up and just die!!!"
Dang Muyeong made his refusal to hear any of it abundantly clear as he flung out those blood-red energies — energies no one could any longer swear were hardened qi at all.
And so, before anyone noticed, the afterimage wounds had begun piling up across Mikhail's body.
All blood spilled upon this stage returns to its master.
As I screwed my face into a grimace and crossed my hands—
Sss— sssshh—
the pure-white armor began to run red.
"Khuck....."
And in that same breath, the man went on retching up blood.
Yet still he stood, both legs driven into the earth, stubbornly holding his ground...
"Fuck... just die already!"
Apparently the old saying about vermin that simply refuse to die hadn't come from nowhere. Watching a man bleed out enough to leave any ordinary person a dried-out mummy — without so much as a flicker of pallor — I was shrieking with tears of blood streaming down my face.
This was, on paper, a friendly exhibition match, yet the bout had drifted to within a hair's breadth of a genuine death match. And as for what the referee was doing—
"Th—!"
"Shh now. Let it be for the moment. Should aught go amiss, I shall step in at once."
Restrained by the Sword Saint, the poor man could neither advance nor retreat, and only stamped his feet in place...
'Please... let Benefactor Mikhail prevail.....'
However one looked at it, Mikhail appeared in his eyes as a noble warrior facing down a heinous villain — and so he cheered him on with all his heart.
Meanwhile, down below the stage, Jegal Baekhwa had her hands clasped tight together in prayer as well...
"My lord... be strong. A vile wretch like that simply must be cut down..."
What kind of martial art was any of that...
No — was it even a martial art to begin with...
There was not the slightest chance that the sight of that despicable villain — cheaply leaning on his weapons and his divine relics — tormenting her frail, delicate fiancé would look anything but foul to her eyes.
Drip— drop—
For her fiancé, who fought on even as he wept tears of blood, she poured out one fervent prayer after another.
Standing atop what was now too embarrassing to even call a duel stage, the two men made a remarkably well-matched pair.
Across both their exposed skins, vessels had burst, dark welts of bruising rising...
"Khhuh....."
One of them coughed up blood; the other wept it.
'Hold on... come on, hold on!!!'
The god said to have granted me this power didn't exist anywhere in this world — but thanks to that cursed strength still steeped in my flesh and blood, I was hammering out force far beyond anything reasonable. And in its wake, this godforsaken body of mine — groaning and threatening to come apart at the seams for the first time in months — I was forcing to hold together by sheer bloody-minded stubbornness.
Thud—
Had that desperate prayer of mine reached the heavens after all?
At last he sank onto one knee, leaning against his sword to keep himself upright.
'Just a little more!!!'
"Khuck... are you... human.....?"
At the question, asked in a voice already three parts dead, I finally offered my first reply.
"Fuck... can't you tell by looking? I'm human..."
"I'm... sorry....."
Those were his last words before he flopped over flat. I released the brand and forged another spear—
Grrrnnn—
—and just as I was about to drag this goddamn body, which wouldn't heed a single word from its own master, into motion by brute force and finish the job—
"Heh heh heh... that's quite enough now. The outcome has been decided."
An old man stepped into my path.
He could stand there all he liked. I hurled the spear anyway—
THWACK—
The spear that left my hand was blocked, pathetically, by the old man's scabbard — and then that very scabbard cracked me across the skull, and the lights went out.
'Fuck.....'
"Then the victory is this young one's."
The Sword Saint caught Dang Muyeong as he crumpled and made his declaration...
"Whooaa...ah....."
Faced with that hollow ending, the crowd offered up the most listless applause imaginable, awkwardness written on every face.
The Seven Clan Alliance delegation, of course, more than made up for it with thunderous cheering.
An unfamiliar ceiling...
How long had I been out?
The moment my eyes opened, I swept my surroundings on pure reflex.
Haah— haah—
And the instant I spotted that detestable bastard sleeping the very picture of serenity beside me, breathing those soft little breaths, a Blood Orb was already taking shape in my palm—
THWACK—
A bolt of agony cracked across the back of my neck, and my consciousness plunged beneath the waves once more.
A somehow familiar ceiling...
The moment consciousness returned, I began shaping a Blood Orb—
THWACK—
Out cold again.
A familiar ceiling...
And yet again, the moment I came to.....
"He woke a while ago, so I have already seen him off. That's enough of that."
At the old man's voice I glanced around — and the bastard had vanished at some point.
"You insane old man...!"
The moment I turned my head to snarl at the old man who had foiled my vengeance at every turn—
Fwoosh—
—the pressure rolling off him, which for one instant conjured the illusion of a blade sweeping across my throat, made me flinch and choose my next words very carefully.
"Elder... where might the bas— the gentleman who was lying beside me have gone?"
"Hm? Off to hunt him down and kill him, are you?"
"Aw, come on... just wanted to have a little chat, that's all."
At that, the Sword Saint stroked his beard and gave his answer.
"As it happens, the young man did leave a word behind. Said he was sorry... and that I was to tell you he would surely make atonement."
The bastard had chosen to run yet again, and I did my best to smother the fury churning in my gut...
"By the by — that power you used in the duel just now. What in the world was it, exactly?"
"I beg... your pardon?"
And so I found myself faced with the task of somehow scraping together a plan for the thing I had done with no plan whatsoever.
Meanwhile, someone else was making their way along at a leisurely stroll... though the speed of that stroll was swift enough to rival a bird in flight.