Ishura - Volume 3 - Chapter 17

Chapter 17: The First Match

When it came to Mizial the Iron-Piercing Plumeshade’s nomination as Twenty-Second General of Aureatia, there may not have been a single soul who could explain the reason why.

He was all of sixteen years old. He was bold on the battlefield and would express his candid opinions during council sessions, but unlike Hidow, for example, he wasn’t someone who possessed acumen from the start of his tenure among the Twenty-Nine Officials. At first, he had social standing, and then he was simply driven by that position to acquire the abilities demanded of him.

Around the time the wartime regime known as the Aureatia Twenty-Nine Officials was born, he was merely there occupying his seat. There was some sort of political adjustment between the three kingdoms, and as a representative in name only of a certain family, whose leader died right before the formation of the Twenty-Nine, it was young Mizial who sat in the seat.

It was a ludicrous story, but at the time, there were also rumors that he may have been the illegitimate child of the royalty from the True Northern Kingdom, first to be ruined by the revolution of madness. In any case, at that time, there had been a powerful backer supporting Mizial behind the scenes.

However, during the chaotic, drawn-out war with the True Demon King, the powers supporting him disappeared one after another, and before anyone knew it, they had all vanished entirely.

With this, only Mizial remained. In the Twenty-Nine Officials, even when compared to Hidow the Clamp or Elea the Red Tag, he stood out as young, the youngest bureaucrat of all.

“Pardon me for calling at this late hour! I’m with the Miroffa Farming Tools Co.”

“Okay, okaaaay! Gimme a seeeec!”

Mizial replied to the voice outside the mansion, still sunk back deep into the soft chair in his spacious room. He didn’t plan on going himself. A servant would head for the door before long.

The other man in the room, sitting down by the fireplace, listened to the exchange, confused.

“Do you have a farm somewhere?”

“Nooope. Why, something bothering you?”

“Well, it’s a farming tool salesperson in the middle of the night. Not really the time of day to summon ’em here, is it?”

This dwarf’s whole body could be mistaken for a weapon storehouse, his dangerous dress enough to make those who saw it tremble in fear. Even inside the residence of his own sponsor, he showed no intentions of letting a single one of his swords leave his side.

A living legend—he went by the name Toroa the Awful.

“Ah! Hey so, Toroa, tell me. You ever cultivate a field before?”

“It was a daily chore. I’d always wake up early in the morning and begin with tending the vegetable garden.”

“Wooow! That’s a surprise. What d’you eat? Did you really kidnap bad children, tear off their heads or whatever, and gulp them all down?”

Toroa couldn’t suppress a wry grin. How exactly was that tiny father of his supposed to gulp down an entire minia’s head?

The legend his father left behind had turned into a genuine fear and taken root in populated settlements. However, parts of that legend included such preposterous rumors and anecdotes that he couldn’t hold back his laughter.

The citizens of Aureatia used such stories to frighten children who misbehaved—and even enjoyed fabricated verses that spoke of Toroa the Awful’s adventures.

Some sort of fiction, far removed from their daily lives. A monster associated with the fantasy known as enchanted swords. They were all stories totally uninvolved with the citizenry going about living their daily lives.

In the end, Toroa the Awful had been unable to become genuine terror, like the True Demon King.

Contrary to expectations, though, Toroa didn’t dislike these diverse range of stories. It made it feel like his father truly had lived in this world—and that even if his path had been one of butchery and regrets, there was a totally unknown someone out there who accepted his existence, too.

“Nothing that could compare with food in Aureatia, but the stuff I ate was probably a lot better than you’re imagining. Boar meat soup… Now, that’s a favorite. The kind simmered with moonstalks. When potato season rolls around, I’d mash them up and mix them with goat cheese. Then you wrap that in potato leaves. That was another favorite of mine…”

“Hmmm. Kinda boring, huh?”

A bit taken aback from the response, Toroa looked at Mizial.

Still sprawled out on the couch, he was gazing up indifferently at the ceiling.

Even when speaking to the legendary symbol of fear, Toroa the Awful, Mizial didn’t show an ounce of self-humility or denigration.

“I mean, c’mon, Toroa the Awful can’t be eating normal stuff like that.”

“What do you want me to say, then? I can’t help it if that’s what I actually ate.”

“Awww, who cares about the truth. No one’s gonna know either way, right? What about saying, like, you dived in the ocean and killed krakens with your bare teeth. Or like you have some enchanted meat sword that sprouts these berries every day that are dripping in blood!”

“…Or that I boil down mandrake poison and drink it with my alcohol?”

“Yeah, yeah, that type of stuff! It’s cool!”

Aureatia’s Twenty-Second General gleefully cackled.

“It’s gotta be stuff like that; I’m serious. I mean, you’re Toroa the Awful, after all… Toroa the Awful even came back from hell, right?”

“…………Yeah.”

Toroa pictured it. Somewhere out in Wyte was this terrifying monster, and every day he trekked down to the sea to eat krakens. With his mouth split from ear to ear, he’d drain his cup of boiled mandrake poison wine with a broad grin.

That awful monster would roam the night, kidnap bad children—and come back to life even after death to kill those who dared to wield enchanted swords.

“What was hell like?”

“Hell…hell was…… Let’s see. Terribly cold, and everywhere I stepped there were blades. A hell where…the ones who accumulated sins of the sword in life were dropped.”

With it was one other sight only he was able to imagine.

The image of his tiny father tackling the ordeals of that vast, endless, and far-off world.

For instance……holding on to a single enchanted sword, just like he did when he was alive.

“Powerful and wicked dragons, and terrifying self-proclaimed demon kings…the kind that left their name in the histories—they were there, too. That’s why, in order to rise back in this world, I was forced to cut them all down one by one.”

“Hee-hee-hee…! So, Toroa, you’re saying you were able to beat all those guys?”

“I sure am.”

Toroa the Awful cut down enemies far larger than himself, one after another.

The enchanted sword streaking though the air like the wind—and that tiny body jumping from the rocky ground surface of swords, racing upside down, and continuously cutting down the fiends of hell all by himself.

This sole answer was the only thing he always firmly believed in, more than anyone else.

“Because Toroa the Awful’s the strongest out there.”

Deep down in their hearts, the boy and the dwarf were both the same. The two of them liked the tales of Toroa the Awful.

Toroa the Awful knew the reason why Mizial chose to sponsor him.

The dead of night. At an hour when all were asleep, a single-rider carriage departed from Mizial’s mansion.

Just as Mizial had requested, its cargo remained loaded.

When he first gained his seat within the Twenty-Nine Officials, everyone around him had viewed it as a nominal position.

It wasn’t only a matter of his ability. They didn’t think it’d be at all possible for him to bear the heavy responsibilities of being a politician.

However, it was not so. The Twenty-Second General was a mediocre child in most senses of the word, but in one particular way, he possessed talent that far exceeded anyone else. It was clearly this talent that kept his heart true while surrounded by schemes and trickery—and what guided him to military exploits beyond his physical stature on the battlefield.

“…All right, now. No one’s around here, right?”

He stepped out of the carriage into a deserted old town plaza.

It was the location where Toroa the Awful and Psianop the Inexhaustible Stagnation agreed to have their showdown.

A match at close quarters where both combatants could display the full extent of their abilities. Aureatia had marked this plaza as a potential location for the Sixways Exhibition’s matches, and the shops tasked with furnishing the event proper had chartered the surrounding residences as seats for the audience.

As he checked the condition of the sand he felt under the sole of his shoe, Mizial unloaded the cloth sacks piled up in the carriage bed.

He didn’t have much time to prepare. He needed to complete everything before the night was over.

“Hmm, hmm, hmmmm, hmm-hmm, hmm.”

Nevertheless, the preparations simply involved scattering the white powder inside the bags over the battleground. Large-scale schemes weren’t in his nature, and it was too much of a pain to push the responsibility for making it all happen onto someone else. As a result, Mizial had thought up an act of sabotage that was possible just with his own individual strength.

Something Mizial could handle while humming to himself, while also fully aware he should be making sure that no one nearby found out about his actions. He was a mediocre child in most senses of the word, but in one particular way, he possessed talent that far exceeded anyone else.

It was the talent of self-assurance.

When he attended the Twenty-Nine Officials meetings, surrounded by a silent pressure that tried to make the young boy conform, he had never once showed any diffidence or atrophy.

Unafraid of powerlessness or futility, he was able to gain knowledge on the power he needed as it interested him.

Even on the battlefield, facing off against a self-proclaimed demon king, he was capable of charging alone deep into the enemy’s camp, like a runaway carriage, cutting his way through and taking the enemy general’s head with his own Aureatian general hands.

It was because of this talent that Mizial the Iron-Piercing Plumeshade continued to be the youngest, and in some senses the most peculiar, general among the Twenty-Nine Officials.

“……Ah.”

The voice didn’t belong to Mizial. It was a faint voice, like the whispers of a butterfly, that he could hear from the darkness of an alleyway.

Mizial’s hands stopped moving, and he shifted his eyes in its direction.

“Hmm? Is someone there? Heeeello?”

Even after being witnessed in the middle of his sabotage, he showed, what was a fair thing to say, no sense of tension whatsoever. His talent of knowing no fear made even his apprehensions toward his own safety extremely diluted.

If anything, the person who appeared out of the shadows was the frightened one.

“U-um, that’s you, Mizial, right?” the voice asked, feeble, like a frail birdsong or an infirmed person on their deathbed.

“I—I wondered what you were doing, um……o-out in a place like this… I-it’s late at night, so…”

“Oh. Awww, shoot. It’s you, Qwell. Shucks.”

He could make out her long bangs that covered half of her face—and the large eyes peeking out through the gaps in her hair. Tenth General of Aureatia, Qwell the Wax Flower.

In complete contrast to Mizial, she was a woman with a feeble demeanor, as if she was always terrified. She was the sponsor of Toroa the Awful’s opponent tomorrow—Psianop the Inexhaustible Stagnation.

“…Um, so. That bag. What is it?”

“Lime.”

Mizial replied without any hint of guilt. Ultimately, she would figure it out if she traced things back to the Miroffa Farming Tools Co. What he had planned on mixing into the sand on the battlefield was calcium oxide, used as an ingredient in soil conditioner.

“It’s been on my mind for a while, actually. What’d happen to an ooze if you poured lime over it? Would it dry up alive, after all? Maybe it’d get burned? Makes you wonder, doesn’t it, Qwell?”

“Huh…? Wait, but there, that’s where Psianop’s going to be fighting, right…? Hold on. Th-that’s against the rules, right…? A-am I wrong…?”

The reason he had agreed to fight here in the old town plaza instead of the castle garden theater lay in the characteristics of the soil. The sand was fine enough that he could inconspicuously mix calcium oxide in with it.

Even if the opponent was a martial artist beyond all reason, without a minian body shape, the starting base for his techniques was always going to be the earth beneath his feet. The calcium oxide reaction, producing heat by absorbing moisture, would prove fatal to an ooze during both parts of the process.

“I mean, it won’t hurt any of the citizens, right? What’s the big deal? Wanna help me, Qwell? It’s gonna be fun, trust me.”

There was no deceit in his words. Nor did he doubt that Toroa the Awful would come out victorious, either.

It was pure curiosity. He wanted to see if things would play out that way, even for the unrivaled ooze champion. That was his sole reason.

Having spent his formative years with a cold and distant elder, even now at sixteen, Mizial was more childish than other kids his age, and he never corrected his immature behavior.

“Um, well, I—I don’t think you should do that…”

“Why? Actually… What’re you doing here yourself, Qwell?”

Their positions were of a criminal and an eyewitness, but his attitude made it seem like the exact opposite. At the very least, Mizial didn’t think that being seen by her would deal him a significant blow.

Exactly as she appeared at first glance, Qwell’s personality wasn’t one fixated on gaining power. She shouldn’t have been overly concerned about whether Psianop won.

“Huh…? Wait. Th-they said traps and ambushes were all fair game, right? Wh-what then, um…is weird about me being here…?”

“……”

Mizial realized he had misjudged her entirely.

A loud clang reverberated around them.

Mizial finally became aware of the fact that Qwell was holding a weapon. In other words, she came there with the possibility of combat in mind from the start.

The thick blade, seemingly capable of slicing through heavy armored cavalry, horse and all, glittered on top of the stone pavement. It was a long-handled silver ax, boasting such a colossal size that a person of ordinary strength wouldn’t possibly be able to lift its handle.

“Um, well, s-so that means…I—I can do that stuff, too, right……?”

“……C’mon now, Qwell! Let’s not do this.”

Mizial was half smiling while he took out his balance-weight-like weapons, which were suspended from strings.

Holding them between both fingers, the weapons traced slight arcs before they began to spin.

“The Twenty-Nine Officials…can’t be fighting among themselves, right?”

He had the gift of self-assurance. He gave his remark knowing well enough the gap in fighting strength between the two of them.

Mizial was in an unusual position among the Twenty-Nine Officials, but Qwell was an exceptional case, in a different sense.

A breeze came, brushing aside Qwell’s long bangs, and he got a peek at her other eye for just a brief moment.

It was then he learned that the big, round iris emitted a silver glow.

…She was a minia, the same as the rest of the Twenty-Nine Officials. At the very least, her outward appearance and government registry dictated as much.

“Ah…M-Mizial. Um……don’t tell me…you think, just because we’re both members of the Twenty-Nine, you won’t get killed? Oh dear…”

“Huh? What……? What’re you talking about?”

Qwell’s tone still maintained the same shaking helplessness to it, but the ax she gripped in both hands as she spoke took a sharp path upward, instantly raised over her head.

Mizial took a single step backward. Now that he had made an enemy of her, the probability of his sabotage’s success was essentially zero.

Below her bangs, she flashed a bashful smile.

“……Tee-hee… Just kidding. I was joking.”

The Tenth General, Qwell the Wax Flower.

Excluding Rosclay the Absolute, she was said to have the greatest individual fighting strength among all the Twenty-Nine Officials.

“I promise I won’t kill you.”

The first match, signaling the beginning of the Sixways Exhibition, was held right as it struck midday.

The craftsmen and merchants all finished up the day’s work earlier than usual. In the old town, the stage for the first match, street stalls thronged the area for the spectators looking to grab an early lunch before the match, and all the shops that set up there raked in profits that more than offset the tremendous stall tax levied by Aureatia.

Street performers scattered gaudy rainbows of confetti, and the royal winds band delighted the citizenry’s ears.

The uproar was more magnificent than any festival held in Aureatia before, but as the time drew closer, little by little…step by step…it quieted down into what was almost a tense stillness.

The first match. Toroa the Awful versus Psianop the Inexhaustible Stagnation.

It was Toroa the Awful. Most people had heard his name in ghost stories from a young age, or someone from a far-off town would claim they saw the aftermath of some butchery, and if it was caused by a gruesome murderer with a single sword, there was always the suspicion that the sword was actually one of Toroa’s enchanted blades.

Did he really exist? Was this the genuine article? Just what did he look like?

The air was still and silent, as if frozen in terror. Curiosity accompanied with terror.

A special event to wholeheartedly draw the eyes and ears of the citizens from the first day of the competition. Aureatia’s strategy had been minutely planned out, starting with the decision to place Toroa the Awful in the first match.

…Amid the tense atmosphere, someone spoke up.

“It’s an ooze…”

It was the entrance to the battlefield on the opposite end of where Toroa the Awful was supposed to appear.

The creature, protected by Aureatian guards as it walked through the crowd, was a transparent protoplasm with no fixed form—unmistakably an ooze.

No one could believe their eyes. This was supposed to be Toroa the Awful’s opponent, Psianop the Inexhaustible Stagnation, then?

“…You fought somewhere yesterday?” the ooze, continuing on to the battlefield, asked Qwell walking behind him.

“Eh?! Wh-what?” the Tenth General replied, puzzled. Doing her utmost to avoid contact with the crowd around her, she was casting her eyes, hidden behind her thick bangs, at the ground more than usual.

“Um. How did you know…?”

“Be stranger not to pick up from someone’s mannerisms if they had been in a fight the day prior. Combat is an exercise done with one’s full body and soul. More marks left behind than just scars and fatigue.”

“Y-you got me…… That’s right. A little scrap with Mizial…last night…”

The reality that she had, for the past three days, disappeared somewhere for the whole night, did not go unnoticed to Psianop. Her opponent, the Twenty-Second General, Mizial, had been part of Toroa’s camp. It was fair to see it as proof that there was an exchange of some pre-match sabotage.

For this past small month, Psianop had been attacked twice by soldiers of unknown affiliation. The other participants were likely in the same situations themselves—so long as they weren’t on the side of the perpetrators.

“Then did you lay some sort of trap, Qwell?”

“…I—I didn’t do anything.”

“You sure about that?”

“Th-the Sixways Exhibition…isn’t going to be decided by one’s skill, but with trickery, so…,” Qwell replied in a high-pitched voice.

However, it was different somewhat from her normal tone, filled with passion.

“I can’t think up that sort of stuff, but…I—I can put a stop to it. That’s why I stood guard the whole time.”

“Schemes are another form of strength. There are times when not fighting is the real victory.”

“…But! That’s not what real strength is!”

Psianop stopped and looked back at Qwell.

The long-handled war ax that she had used across countless battles was trembling as she hugged it close in her arms.

“That’s why, Psianop, you…! Y-you wouldn’t want to use any tricks, even if they gave you the advantage, right? If—if you’re really proud of your mighty strength…th-then all that’s, tee-hee-hee……nonsense. B-because, it’s not genuine…”

“……”

“…I haven’t used any tricks. Please believe me.”

It wasn’t a coincidence that Psianop had met Qwell. He had left his home believing such a person had to be out there.

Someone who brushed aside the brilliant glory of the past, as well as race or outward appearances resembling themselves…who espoused pure strength, was guaranteed to arise during a long-lasting age of strife. Psianop believed in his own strength, trusting that such a person was bound to choose him.

“Makes no difference.”

His enemy was a living legend. He was bound to be strong. There wasn’t likely to be anyone who would doubt his strength.

To Psianop, set to challenge the true legend of this age, this “hero,” this living legend, would serve as his benchmark.

“I’ll win. That’s the way I see it.”

Slightly earlier in the day.

“Awww… I ended up looking super uncool. A huge failure.”

The Twenty-Second General Mizial, returning to the mansion that morning, had both arms and his right toes brutally broken, and after being left unable to use a carriage, he opened up the door and immediately collapsed.

Toroa, hearing the whole picture of his plans to defeat the ooze, was totally appalled, but at the same time, he was impressed that a child like him would think up such a clever trick.

“Sorry, Toroa. It would’ve been so fun if things went better, too. Definitely can’t hope to beat Qwell, either.”

“I don’t want an apology. I never knew about any of this in the first place.”

“That’s not what I mean.”

Since Mizial’s broken arms were in a fixed position, he couldn’t even get out of bed with his own strength. The fact that the tone of his voice was completely unchanged from the night before came as a result of his innate impudence.

“Toroa, you came here because you wanted to fight Alus the Star Runner, right? You can’t afford to waste your time fighting someone like Psianop, then.”

“…That’s true. That’s the meaning of my existence. I won’t die until I can get Hillensingen back.”

“It really would’ve been better to have you fight in the first round, but Hidow had to go and get in the way. I’m not really good with that stuff, to be honest……never have been.”

“………Is that what it was?”

He had thought the tournament chart was almost too convenient for him. If he defeated Psianop the Inexhaustible Stagnation, he’d be able to face off against his destined opponent in the second round.

It was all the result of Mizial’s pressuring. All for the sake of Toroa the Awful’s sole objective. He gave a grim smile. Even given all of that, the idea of trying to easily skip past the first round’s fight was an all-too-childish one.

“Psianop…apparently holed up in the Gokashae Sand Sea and spent the whole time on his own, training and disciplining himself.”

“…That’s not a big deal.”

“It is. Since I did the same thing.”

How many times had he actually crossed swords with his father? When it came to enchanted sword combat, the answer was zero. If one wielded an enchanted sword, one’s enemy would die. Both he and his father didn’t want to cut down their only family.

Without any opponents to fight, the days he spent practicing his swings with an enchanted sword all by himself still lingered in his heart.

The tree leaning slightly to the right. The sun rising up, then sinking below, the Wyte Mountains’ ridgeline.

Drenched in sweat, and thinking back over the day’s results, he’d travel back home with his father, the setting sun lighting the way.

…Within it all was the loneliness found from the spiritual search for truth.

Whether he was facing a lone ooze or not, Toroa was never going to look down on a martial artist like him.

“Will you be able to see the match?”

“Hmm…… I wonder. I’m all banged up like this, and I’d look super lame if someone was carrying me around, too, but…”

“But you want to see me fight.”

“…Yeah. Guess I’ll go watch.”

Toroa gripped his sword. All the swords he held were enchanted, killing any enemy they were brandished toward.

Against an opponent that he bore no malice, would he be able to use them to cut him down?

I can do it.

He had already confirmed he could do just that amid the swirling Particle Storm.

I am Toroa the Awful.

The masses were silent as they watched the two fighters facing each other. They both stayed silent, but the scene was impossible to look away from. The crowd gazed at one fighter with dread, and they were perplexed by the other.

A clear, resonant voice broke the silence.

“Both sides shall agree to the accords of the true duel!”

Standing between both combatants was a solemn woman who appeared rigid and sturdy.

She was Aureatia’s Twenty-Sixth Minister, tasked with observing the match, Meeka the Whispered.

“If one of the combatants is knocked down and doesn’t get up, or if one of the combatants forfeits the match on their own, the match will be decided. All matters beyond these two conditions will be impartially judged by me, Meeka the Whispered, as one of Aureatia’s Twenty-Nine Officials. Any objections from either of you?!”

“Perfect.”

“No objections.”

The pair, facing each other at close range, responded.

Toroa the Awful hadn’t drawn his sword.

Meeka looked over the two of them with a scowl and withdrew to the top of the recently installed stone staircase.

However, for this true duel…given it was between two fighters like Toroa and Psianop, masters of combat at close quarters, an adjudicator like her wasn’t necessary to begin with. For this battle, the final outcome was guaranteed to be clear to all who saw it.

“At the sound of the band’s gunshot, you may begin.”

Everyone took a big gulp and observed the pair.

Someone began counting off in their mind. Two, three, then—

“Half a step slow.”

“……”

Psianop let out a bizarre murmur.

Toroa the Awful hadn’t yet drawn his sword—

A gunshot.

Both of them stepped forward, and a cyclonic dust cloud flew up in to the air.

Toroa appeared to have swung his enchanted sword and missed, long before it would reach Psianop. However, Psianop dodged, far beyond the sword’s reach. It was if he could see the slash’s elongated trajectory. Maintaining the same movement speed, he slipped through and struck.

Hit soundly in the liver, Toroa’s large body was sent flying two whole houses’ distance away. Flipping himself upright in midair, he landed on the ground, his feet leaving behind lines on the ground.

“…Your movements just now.”

Though he knew it would leave him disadvantaged, he couldn’t help betraying his amazement. Toroa was certain there were no records of any other minian race using this enchanted sword, nor should the ooze have had any opportunities to hear about its abilities.

“Do you know about this sword?”

“You were a half step slow to get in your stance. Therefore, the sword’s range was a half step’s worth in front of you.”

It was the Divine Blade Ketelk.

An enchanted sword that elongated the trajectory of its invisible slash beyond the outer edge of its actual blade, disrupting the range of combat at close quarters.

It was impossible to see the whole attack without being aware of its abilities.

Psianop had dodged it.

“Jab punch.”

The name of the ultrafast move, sent out at a speed that outstripped the magic sword, was spoken as though he was centering his mind for the next attack.

The martial artist was the one to connect first.

Toroa the Awful never thought he was strong.

He believed he was weak.

Back when he fervently practiced the sword in the mountains, he never once felt that he had surpassed his father. His assumed opponent was, at all times, a singular imaginary enchanted swordsman, and the inexperienced Toroa always ended up bested by his own ideal.

He was a swordsman being used by enchanted swords. This self-consciousness may have been completely contrary to his opponent Psianop the Inexhaustible Stagnation’s many accumulated years of believing in solitude that he was the strongest of all.

It was not himself but the enchanted swords he wielded that were all-powerful, along with the enchanted swordsman who used to brandish them.

…Therefore, he couldn’t accept defeat. He couldn’t sully their ultimate strength with a pitiful failure. With it, he was a man who had given up his weak self.

…He must not have moved perfectly, either.

It was directly after landing the jab. He felt it in his bones before he even took his first breath.

His fastest possible jab, to hit me just as he evaded Divine Sword Ketelk… If I had been struck harder, that would have ended everything.

Though it seemed like a light feint, he could tell that the blow would be enough to rend the average person’s torso asunder with a direct hit. Toroa was able to parry its force and get blown back.

Without making a strong opening step, he had cleared their first clash without dying.

Divine Sword Ketelk created an invisible slash that extended out beyond the blade itself. Naturally, the substance-less slash didn’t necessitate a strong opening step. Simply brushing up against an out-of-range opponent’s space was enough. The wielder could be a child and still be capable of cleaving a fully armored knight in two.

“…Plan on making amends for your backer’s skullduggery?”

Another difficult-to-decipher mumble escaped from Psianop.

Toroa the Awful didn’t waver. They were five paces apart.

If Psianop tried to back off farther, he’d be in Inrate, the Sickle of Repose’s range. If his opening step came from mid-distance, there was Nel Tseu the enchanted fire sword to bring instant death. Or he would bring him down with Vajgir, the enchanted sword of poison and frost.

“If you’re trying to create an opening by talking to me, it won’t work. If you take a step into my range, I’ll cut you down.”

“Range? Pfft.”

He still hasn’t taken his opening step.

Psianop was aiming for the momentary opening when Toroa swung his enchanted sword. Next time, Toroa would take advantage of Psianop’s attack to counter with one of his own.

Not yet…

The enchanted sword dangling from a chain on his waist automatically sprang into the air.

“From the start—”

The ooze’s strike, twisting in toward him, dug into Toroa’s right clavicle as he tried to release his sword for the counterattack.

A semitranslucent pseudopod wrapped itself around Toroa, burrowing under his armpit and constricting both his shoulders.

He couldn’t move.

“You’ve been in my range.”

“…………!”

He couldn’t see it.

Toroa had been closely observing him for any indication of the ooze’s movements.

Even Toroa the Awful wasn’t able to realize the truth until he was hit with the attack.

Psianop should have already started moving a long time ago.

In the Beyond, it was known as the shukuchi technique—or by some as the footless way.

Accelerating not by kicking off the ground, but by shifting one’s center of gravity. It was a type of martial arts footwork that applies the speed of collapsing down on a focal point to the first initial step. A movement technique that didn’t let the opponent read one’s opening motion.

Was there anyone in the world who could possibly be able to read the center of gravity of an ooze’s physical body, with its constantly shifting form?

“Hngh… Mgh!”

“You didn’t have your blade drawn at the start. Why? An attempt to make amends for your dishonesty?”

Toroa was gripping Nel Tseu the enchanted fire sword. While still in his stance to slice forward in front of him with it, both his neck and shoulders were completely immobilized.

If there was indeed an ooze martial artist out in the world, then among their limitless possible choices of attack, the technique worthy of the most fear was not their punches. A set structure was universal among all living creatures. Psianop was the only one capable of unilaterally ignoring that structure and destroying his enemy’s physical body.

“Kata-gatame. It’s the name of this technique.”

Toroa was unable to move. His shoulder was blocking his own carotid. While it was based on a technique described in the books within the sand labyrinth, it had changed completely and was now a technique that resulted in death.

Toroa struggled with the end of his left arm from the elbow down, that he was just barely able to move freely. The enchanted sword of fire dropped powerlessly from his hand.

Psianop was right there in front of him yet remained completely unable to slash him. Even his left elbow had its mobility, able sever Psianop in two, cleverly constrained, leaving him no room to resist.

“……!”

The buzz of the crowd grew distant. This was the end.

No, it’s not.

His reason for not drawing his sword at the start wasn’t a way to address Mizial’s dishonesty. It was because that was Toroa’s most powerful stance.

Psianop didn’t know the shape that Toroa’s accumulated training had taken. He was a living weapons storehouse. Cords. Chains. Hinged mechanisms. No matter where the enchanted sword was tied up on his body, Toroa was always a single motion from being able to draw it.

The diverging combat branches afforded by the sheer number of enchanted swords demanded a close-to-unlimited acumen of the wielder. However, the voices of the enchanted swords would tell him which sword he needed to draw next—

“…!”

Psianop instantly withdrew his pseudopod. A silver flash of an enchanted sword passed right through where they had been.

“…Mol…ting!”

Toroa sliced through his own shoulder.

Not Psianop, escaping during the opening directly after Toroa’s motion.

The ooze shifted in to punch with the whole of his body mass. However.

“—Graaah!”

Toroa shouted and intercepted the attack with a swarm of stabs, like beams of light. Countless thrusts all occurring at the exact same time.

There was recoil from one of the stabs. He would skewer Psianop al—

“Is that—”

Getting hit by the thrust, Psianop was sent flying. He murmured.

“—a phantom enchanted sword?”

It hadn’t run him through. He had definitely been able to stab him, but there was a peculiar response, almost as if all the stress focused at that one point had been swept away. Psianop had simply been sent flying from the force of the thrust and remained unharmed.

For a surprise attack he had sacrificed his own arm to make, it was an all-too-pitiful result.

However, on the one hand.

“…Hah, gaugh!”

There wasn’t a single drop of blood flowing out of Toroa’s right shoulder, escaped from the hold. The enchanted sword he used himself to slash this part of his body was already loaded back in its sheath, returned in the single motion of his counterattack moments before.

It could make what it cut reverse back as if it had never been pierced at all. If there was one specific situation in real combat to utilize such a special technique, it was to escape from restraints. An atypical enchanted sword, shaped like a machine part component—Gidymel the Minute Hand.

This hidden technique, called Molting, was the only one that could actually materialize Gidymel the Minute Hand’s functionality of prolonging or fully rejecting causality.

“……Will you be able to dodge—”

Without even a breath’s pause, Psianop went on the move. Toroa had drawn his next enchanted sword. The slash of the blade still proved too far to reach. Though, it was not the elongated slash of the Divine Sword Ketelk from before.

“—from this distance, Inexhaustible Stagnation?!”

An inescapable tempest wind assailed Psianop. Mushain the enchanted wind sword. Psianop couldn’t hold his ground where he stood. At the same time, Toroa kicked up the enchanted fire sword at his feet. He triggered its secret technique.

“Gathering…Clouds!”

The heat, flowing into the swirling current of air, birthed flames with a frightening directional range. The buildings of the old town collapsed just from the shock wave. The audience loosed clamorous screams.

He’s gone. Where’s Psianop?

Toroa swung the enchanted wind sword directly to his side to counterattack.

A needlelike kick descended in from that direction and was repelled after hitting a point along the sword hilt.

The wire that connected the enchanted wind sword to his back was severed.

“Shook up, weren’t you? From your own attack.”

Psianop had leaped from the momentum of the first gust—kicking off the edge of a building and being assaulted from the sky—and contorted himself into the exact shape of a bullet to break through the air resistance.

“You’re thinking that you don’t want to get the city involved in the fight.”

“Quiet……!”

Wailsever. Toroa drew the enchanted weapon with its crystal blade. The sword’s vibrations sent out an invisible force, similar to a sonic wave, however, Psianop deflected it with a minimal parry and closed the distance between them. A powerful strike to the chest. Drilling destruction. Breaking through the door of what once seemed to be a merchant’s shop, he crashed hard on the pile of old desks.

“Gnhaugh!”

The moment the strike found its mark, it had been disrupted by Wailsever’s wave of vibration. He was holding out right on the verge of losing his life.

Psianop spoke.

“You’ll send out that illusionary stab again.”

The countless piercing thrusts he sent out just as he was getting back up was an illusion from Downpour’s Needle. Psianop was no longer deceived by it. He slipped through and evaded the attack.

Movement. The sound of cutting through the air. His sight lines. He was always gauging his enemies, making predictions more difficult than seeing the path of a bullet, yet proving accurate all the same.

It was inches in front of him. The multi-spiral pseudopod sent out a knife-hand strike. He intercepted.

Sword of poison and frost…

The pseudopod, formed into a true blade, tracked an amorphous path and evaded the enchanted sword of poison and frost that Toroa had launched in sync with his opponent’s breathing. He blocked the slash closing in on his head with Downpour’s Needle. He was blown backward. An instantaneous heavy strike that nearly broke Downpour’s Needle itself. Shattering the wooden wall, he was once again lying inside one of the buildings.

In the middle of his attack, Psianop had dodged Toroa’s own. With an ooze’s body, did that mean he was even capable of evading attacks perfectly timed to strike when his own attack was about to land? Above that, he…had distinctly dodged the enchanted sword of poison and frost.

Just as he had with Wailsever. He was discerning the characteristics of enchanted swords Toroa had never shown him.

“Enchanted swords only have two kinds of functionality,” Psianop declared as he smoothly slid out from the burst-open building wall.

“A function that lets you easily hit an opponent—and a function to kill an opponent when it connects. The functions of any sword generally don’t go much beyond that to begin with.”

This was the unknown member of the First Party.

Deciding to grow stronger by making use of all the things his body was capable of, he had also mastered flustering and inciting his opponent with his words. A technique that Toroa did not possess.

“…Think you’ll be able to remain unhit……up until the end?”

The enchanted sword of poison and frost in his right hand. Downpour’s Needle in his left.

“Go ahead and try.”

“Don’t take me lightly. I saw the abilities of that phantom thrusting sword just now. You dazzle your opponent’s visual judgment by mixing a thrust attack in with the entrancing illusion and then launch a lethal attack from the enchanted sword in your other hand.”

They were in a narrow alleyway, with tall buildings flanking them on both sides. As he continued to speak, Psianop closed the distance between them.

“You centered your gravity diagonally behind you, didn’t you? If you pulled out that sword with the long-range slash, you’d probably reach me at this distance. But if I happen to read its trajectory and get in close, you’re not going to be able to shift to defense with that sword.”

He mercilessly drew in closer. This was the pressure exuded by the ooze, a race none of the minian races had ever concerned themselves with.

“The enchanted swords that can handle both guarding and attacking are that sound wave sword and the two types of illusion swords. But I’ve already hit the phantom thrusting sword with two of my strikes. I’ll be able to shatter it with one more, no matter how well you manage to block it.”

There was truth in Psianop’s words. Something that the enchanted sword wielder himself knew most of all.

He couldn’t block Psianop’s attacks with Downpour’s Needle anymore. However, Wailsever, with its blade of crystal, would be similarly destroyed if he used it to block one of the ooze’s attacks.

“And I’m only two more steps away from being in your range.”

Before he had finished speaking, Psianop dashed forward. Toroa stabbed at him with the phantom thrusting sword. While evading the attack, Psianop lightly brushed the cart along the side of the alley.

“Disordered Flock!”

“It’s useless!”

Psianop flowed inside Toroa’s attack range. He slashed down from above with the enchanted sword of poison and frost. The cart flying in blocked the attack. Toroa’s Herculean strength sent the splintered remains of the cart scattering in all directions.

The lethal blade ultimately didn’t reach, after all.

Had he calculated the exact trajectory to guard against his enchanted sword and threw the loaded cart up into the air? Psianop had only lightly touched it while he was mid-dodge. Toroa couldn’t see at all as the ooze had the complete flow of his power directly under his will.

“If you’re trying to tire me out—”

Maintaining his favorable distance, Psianop continued to speak.

A strike. He was trying to seize hold of Toroa’s joints, even if he evaded the attack. He could dodge the two punches, aiming at different places simultaneously, but then the fourth, then sixth, attacks would chain together after them. Psianop’s movements were completely inscrutable, and with his terrifying mobility, he was always literally one step ahead.

He’d survive at sword distance. He retreated.

“That’s because you’re panicking. Right, Toroa the Awful?”

“…You’re a real chatty ooze…!”

He had gotten out of the kata-gatame that Psianop had used on Toroa a few moments ago.

However, when Psianop was using it, the technique was one of instant death. If Toroa had stayed in that position for just another breath longer, Toroa would have been destroyed without any external wounds to speak of or, even worse, ended up dead from the blood flow to his head being cut off.

Should he instantly escape it, he would be unable to close the seam he’d open with his escape.

From birth, the notions of exhaustion and fatigue had been foreign concepts to him.

Nevertheless, the strikes from Psianop the Inexhaustible Stagnation, together with the precision of their force, quite literally surpassed any weapon.

Even the vitality of the monster that came back from hell would reach its limits eventually.

One move was lethal. As he held out against that one move, he was being pushed up against a wall. He was deteriorating.

“Again with the enchanted fire sword. Block with the hilt.”

He’s holding the advantage.

Toroa cleaved sideways with the enchanted fire sword. With the hit, Psianop evaded the trajectory of the sword’s instant death and launched a punch at Toroa. A lighter punch than the one before—however, he was still launched into the air.

In midair, if I defend—

The ooze was right in front of his eyes. The shukuchi technique. The flurry of punches he launched right afterward thrust into him. He coughed up blood. A rib broke and cut into his flesh. Another punch came right after.

“Am I correct in my estimation, Toroa the Awful?”

If I could just—just manage to kill the momentum of the hit.

He blocked with an enchanted sword hilt. His arms and central line were all he was protecting.

Everything happened exactly as Psianop had said it would. He had foreseen everything. Whenever Toroa tried to make a move, Psianop was already there, one step ahead of him. If he didn’t continue to handle him with his enchanted sword techniques, or without Toroa’s tenacious physique, one attack likely had enough power to scatter his body and limbs in all directions.

He’s too…strong!

“There’s the wall.”

With Psianop’s single sentence, he knew.

There were words to make him waver. However, it was the truth. Toroa could no longer escape from the impact of his punches.

The ooze was right before his eyes. He couldn’t escape.

Death was—

“Not…yet!”

Toroa’s giant body flew straight up into the air without any warning. The wedge that had flown up onto the roof of one of the buildings was pulling up Toroa’s body itself with its invisible magnetic force as he gripped the hilt in his hands.

The previous punch had been blocked with an enchanted sword hilt. It may have looked like a sword with only a hilt and no blade—splitting the blade from the hilt into numerous wedge shapes and controlling them with magnetic force, the name of the enchanted sword was Wicked Sword Selfesk.

Psianop could instantly maneuver in any possible direction, without betraying any initial motion whatsoever. However, even still, as long as he was a hand-to-hand fighter, there would always be one position that’d become a blind spot.

He’s reading—

The enchanted swordsman of horror stories was looking down at the city from the air.

He’s reading all my movements. But that doesn’t mean he’s seen through all my secret techniques.

Causality rejection from Molting. Wicked Sword Selfesk and its main body made from invisible magnetic force. There were secret techniques among his enchanted swords that even Psianop, continuously taking the initiative against any and all actions, couldn’t completely see through.

A respite of one second—

In which case, the only way for his enchanted swords to best Psianop…

Let’s see how you handle multiple swords at once!

He drew his enchanted sword.

“Wailsever.”

He drew his enchanted sword.

“Wicked Sword Selfesk.”

He drew two more.

“Divine Sword Ketelk. Nel Tseu the enchanted fire sword.”

Two swords for each arm. Every last ounce of his remaining energy needed to be spent on delivering the final blow. Down below, at Psianop the Inexhaustible Stagnation…four swords, all at once.

“Four-chain attack! Song of Feather Swarm!”

The crystal blade trembled, and Wailsever released a vibrating shock. There was some slight interference preventing it from being an effective attack from this distance, but it arrived faster than Psianop could take his opening step. In that second that Psianop was prevented from making his initial move, the Wicked Sword Selfesk showered him in a rain of wedge blades. Psianop deflected the wedges coming from his right side. It wasn’t over.

Raining down on him, mixed in with the hail from Selfesk, was Nel Tseu the enchanted fire sword, thrown from Toroa’s hands. It didn’t directly hit its mark. However, an intense amount of heat poured into the spot where it landed and exploded—the secret technique Gathering Clouds. Devastating, fatal, power.

Adding to it all, a long-range thrust from the heavens to the ground below. The secret technique of Divine Sword Ketelk, known as—Peck.

A shock wave attack. Blocking him off. An explosion. And then…

All of it… Every single motion was done the instant Toroa jumped into the air and fell back down to the ground.

In other words, it meant it was the same exact moment when Psianop made his assessment.

Psianop approached Toroa. With impossibly explosive force, he kicked against the wall and jumped up in Toroa’s direction. The only direction where the unexpected course threw off the aim of the thrusting attack—and the explosion on the ground nor the blades closing in on him could not reach.

From the heavens and from the earth, the unarmed and the fully clad swords, face-to-face.

“The long-range thrust… That special technique—”

It was all over in an instant. It was an instantaneous judgment.

Therefore, it was then that Psianop knew. The sword Toroa had gripped in his hand wasn’t the Divine Sword Ketelk.

“—was a feint?!”

Yelling out a secret technique and brandishing a sword didn’t necessarily mean it was what he had used. The Lance of Faima. Now had come the time he could utilize it properly.

There was viscous sawing sound.

A vibrating slash. Right as they passed by each other, it destroyed Psianop’s body, cutting it into tiny pieces of flesh.

“Flapping.”

Landing back on the ground, he opened his eyes.

Toroa the Awful heaved a deep sigh.

“Hng……aah.”

Psianop’s soft body was rent, and the percolating liquid wet the sand of the plaza.

Just what sort of special technique was it?

The Lance of Faima reacted to anything that approached Toroa at high speed.

Using the automatic powers it utilized to hound its target, he turned his wrist right and left over and over again, like a pendulum of terrifying speed, and cut into his approaching enemy with its superspeed swings.

“Just,” the heavily wounded Psianop muttered.

The ultimate martial artist, seeing through every attack that came his way and evading them all, was finally dealt a decisive blow.

“…Just, three left.”

A terrifying enemy.

The meaning of his low mumbling, like the foreboding of a death god, was clear to Toroa, too. Psianop was counting how many bullets his opponent had left over.

Vajgir, the enchanted sword of poison and frost. Karmic Castigation. Inrate, the Sickle of Repose. There were three enchanted swords Toroa had yet to use in their match. He had never shown this many of his enchanted swords, not even to the Particle Storm, not even to Mestelexil the Box of Desperate Knowledge.

“……You’re strong.”

No. I’m just weak.

At this point, there was nothing more. His skill was an imitation of a past enchanted swordsman. Simultaneously deploying everything at once had been the sole, extreme limit of his dedication, that Toroa the Awful had arrived at himself.

Even then, even after laying out all the strength he himself could muster.

It still wasn’t enough to take his life, huh?

Deploying a total of five enchanted swords’ ultimate techniques, and he remained unable to kill one single ooze.

At this point, there was nothing more. Nothing that he himself could do.

“…Giving up?”

He wasn’t talking to Psianop. The rebuking question escaped his throat.

After using up all his strength, the fight was going to end with it not being enough. If he was a lone fighter, then perhaps it would have been fine to arrive at such an end. But he was shouldering the name of Toroa the Awful.

He couldn’t give up.

“Not yet… I’m…I’m still here. Not yet…”

His opponent was unbelievably strong. Likely even stronger than his father. A powerful fighter isolated to the realm of the fantastical.

If he entrusted himself completely to the enchanted swords, could he win? More than he ever had before.

“Don’t leave me behind. I… I am, Toroa the Awful!”

Toroa the Awful had never once believed he was strong.

He believed he was weak.

It was not himself but the enchanted swords he wielded that were all-powerful, along with the enchanted swordsman who used to brandish them.

…Therefore, he couldn’t accept defeat. He couldn’t sully their ultimate strength with a pitiful defeat. With it, he was a man who had given up his weak self.

“Found some serenity of mind, did you……?”

Psianop’s voice sounded far off in the distance. Toroa the Awful’s breathing was deep and long.

The history of enchanted swords was a history of slaughter. Someone had made them, someone had wielded them, and there was one who cut them all down. Just as fatigue and scars were not the only evidence of a fight, all their histories had clearly been carved inside the enchanted swords. He thought about the scary stories of Toroa the Awful that people continued to pass down to one another.

A monstrosity. He would become an enchanted sword monstrosity.

If such a monstrosity did exist in this world, it wouldn’t lose to anyone.

Psianop moved. He acted faster than Psianop’s figure was reflected inside his brain’s consciousness. Molting. Divine Sword Ketelk’s superspeed long-range thrust. It didn’t hit Psianop. However, with the superspeed long-range thrust still extending, when he then reaped sideways with the Divine Sword Ketelk—

“……!”

Behind Psianop, a residential building was severed in half from the second floor up. Still keeping the elongated enchanted sword in his hands, Toroa closed the distance himself. Psianop released a lethal punch. Toroa stuck the enchanted flame sword in the ground and sent both himself and his enemy flying with a violent burst of wind.

“You think if you clear your mind of thoughts…”

With it, Psianop was blown backward, in the direction of the debris from the cleaved residential house—

“…that I won’t still be able to read them?”

The large mass of a full house floor, moments before it would’ve made contact with Psianop, shifted its direction directly to the side and dug itself into the plaza. Tearing up all the cobblestones as it went, it crashed into the fountain and broke apart. The audience’s screams echoed through the old town.

Such was the power contained within Psianop’s punches.

“Graaaaugh…!”

Toroa let out a bestial roar from deep within his throat.

His forward-leaning battle posture lowered even deeper, and the hilts of Nel Tseu the enchanted fire sword and Wicked Sword Selfesk were thrust into the ground, like the legs of a quadrupedal animal.

He had killed people before.

Though they were bandits who had swarmed in to plunder his father’s enchanted swords, he had cruelly killed them, foes someone like Toroa could’ve handled without any need for death.

In the pages of history, many enchanted swordsmen had stained their hands with mass slaughter. The ones who did so on the battlefield were known as champions, while those who did so in peaceful villages were known as horrifying murderers.

Toroa understood these wielders’ thoughts. All enchanted swords existed to cut others down, and the ones who held them allowed them to do that. As long as they held the form of a sword, they’d never once be used to save an enemy’s life.

Controlling the enchanted swords gripped in either hand like the legs of a bug, he jumped off the ground, then off the walls.

His right leg reacted automatically to Psianop’s intercepting attack, and he cleaved across with the sword attached to it.

The slash had definitely connected and slid off Psianop’s surface as though the power behind it had been swept away. The counterattack was coming. Toroa hurled the enchanted fire sword into the air.

Once again, he caused an explosion and mixed himself up in the blast.

Raising his head from his quadrupedal stance, he looked at his enemy. The enemy. The Enemy—the crowd. There were so many people looking at his enchanted swords. So many people looking at Toroa the Awful. Toroa must have looked on the same way himself.

“Grrrrrrrrr…”

Kill them all. The voices of the enchanted swords were yelling at him.

That was his true gift—accepting and taking in all the enchanted swords’ thoughts. It didn’t hurt. His body felt far lighter than when he fought while holding on to his own consciousness.

“…I’m right here.”

For reasons unknown to him, his enemy Psianop informed Toroa where exactly he was.

The enchanted swords’ bloodlust, scattering among the roars of the crowd, once again converged at a single point.

Twisting his body, he threw Wailsever. It flew faster than a bullet.

“……!”

The sonic wave’s impact was repelled. He didn’t need to think. Toroa once again threw himself at his enemy.

It felt almost as if his own physical body had become one with the enchanted swords. Nel Tseu the enchanted fire sword. Downpour’s Needle. Vajgir, the enchanted sword of poison and frost. Downpour’s Needle—

A monstrosity. He would become an enchanted sword monstrosity.

The cluster of slashes he sent out simultaneously pierced through three buildings, destroying them.

The tremendous explosion came three times.

The debris, the fragments, fluttered. Amid the vortex of destruction, unable to even make out his enemy’s silhouette, Toroa the Awful was sneering.

“I kill people who simply witness what I do. Innocent people.”

As he watched his own rampage, as if the work of someone else, this was what he pondered. Had his father wished for that—and thus done so from the start?

Maybe, in fact, his father had been the same, too.

Had he wanted to ensure that the victims of his enchanted swordsmanship hadn’t died in vain?

If that was the case… As long as he, too, remained Toroa the Awful, we would do the same.

That’s not it.

Toroa was aware. He had been heavily burned by his own enchanted swords’ ability.

If he was his normal self, this wouldn’t have happened. His arm automatically drew his next sword. Psianop closed the distance to try to forestall him. From the ooze’s flank came wedge blades swarming in like locusts.

The blade of the Wicked Sword Selfesk had been scattered by the previous attack. It had then turned into a storm, swirling in a vortex of magnetic force.

Destruction filled the streets. The roadside trees were hewed before being completely cut to splinters inside its circular radius.

Is this how an enchanted sword fights?

“Unsophisticated! Sophomoric! You’re just—”

Psianop irately muttered as he smacked down each of the blades flying in at him. Toroa himself knew the meaning of the ooze’s words. It was simply destruction. It wasn’t power that could truly defeat his enemy. The enchanted fire sword moved Toroa. To induce an explosion with its maximum size of Gathering Clouds possible—aimed at Psianop.

Engulfing the audience watching the match with it.

I can’t do it. After all, I’m just—

Right before it could happen, Toroa punched his own right arm with his left. He sent the enchanted fire sword flying. The explosive flames, bursting in midair, were led toward the canal, running through the iron railing and vaporizing the waters enough to see the river’s bottom.

“…Toroa the Awful. You’re—”

“…Just using techniques borrowed from another.”

“Hmph.”

“That’s what you were going to say, eh, Psianop?”

Even if he sent the force of the previous secret technique at Psianop, he was convinced it wouldn’t have brought him victory. It was simple destructive force that meaninglessly spread injury and harm.

If he did that, it’d be just the same as when he killed those bandits on Wyte Mountain.

“You’re strong. I didn’t realize such a master swordsman existed beyond the First Party.”

“I’ll surpass you.”

Toroa’s own honed skills, nor his rampage from entrusting his whole self to his enchanted swords, had not been enough to surpass Psianop.

He knew he had to stop clinging so hard to being his own self. But at the same time, he couldn’t surrender control over to something outside himself.

Mushain the enchanted wind sword. Nel Tseu the enchanted fire sword. I’ve lost two. I don’t have the time to gather Wicked Sword Selfesk’s scattered blades back together again, either. In that case…I have only one way left to settle this.

In the next moment, as Toroa brought his breathing under control, Psianop was closing in. Even after being deeply gouged by Disordered Flock, he didn’t think twice at all about rushing back into combat at close quarters. Therein lay his strength.

The enchanted sword of poison and frost.

The automatically counterattacking Lance of Faima’s chain was gripped hard and stopped in its tracks. The Disordered Flock technique had hit Psianop precisely because, in that one moment, it was a perfectly unexpected attack. Psianop’s pseudopod pulled the chain toward him. He would break Toroa’s stance…a goal that the enchanted swordsman had read perfectly. He had already cut off the chain from its base.

Psianop. You’re strong. It’s not only the fierceness of your offense, either. Right now… I don’t think there’s anyone in the world who could out-read you.

Psianop continued his merciless onslaught, and Toroa handled his attacks.

Maybe, if I were Alus the Star Runner.

The thought suddenly crossed his mind. He was in the midst of a magnificent battle, so why did he have the composure for thoughts like that?

If he were Alus the Star Runner, soaring through the sky, then he probably wouldn’t have kept letting his opponent into melee range—but was that really so?

Psianop had completely read all the enchanted swords nigh impossibly unpredictable techniques and showed that he could rush up into the air without a foothold. Even Toroa would have done the same in order to bring down Alus the Star Runner.

His opponent had read his slash. Sent flying, Toroa’s body crashed through a residential house’s wall.

They’d either open up space or slip inside each other’s range. Reacting with razor-thin room to spare, they both avoided instant death.

…Nevertheless, there was a clear point of difference between the start of the fight and now.

A simultaneous four-point jab. He’ll slam the blade from the side and turn it away. Aiming for my liver.

It was the flow of Toroa’s thoughts.

“Won’t step forward. Drawing attention with a step to the right.”

Toroa the Awful’s breathing still remained deep and long.

Circling around from the right, Psianop tried to grab Toroa’s joints. Toroa could tell.

“As little ground contact as possible, kicking—”

“You think—”

He dodged the incoming blow. He avoided a fatal wound without forcing his slash to meet the attack. Psianop’s motions remained impenetrable. Not everything went exactly as Toroa had predicted.

“You think you’re going to read my movements instead?!”

His technique and enchanted swords were both inherited from his father.

Where then did Toroa the Awful’s true strength, his own strength, lie?

No. Dad told me. I should’ve known from the very start.

That his overly kind disposition took in the thoughts of the enchanted swords and was hindering his own technique.

Toroa had begun to track Psianop’s agility as he slipped past Toroa’s defenses, not allowing any moment to react.

It was the same feeling he had when he faced the Particle Storm. When Toroa had fought Mestelexil, commanding an endless supply of unknown weaponry, it felt as if Toroa knew everything down to where his opponent’s gun barrel would aim next.

I get it. I understand.

He knew that terrifying golem was a child who loved his mother.

Or he understood that the heartless ooze held a lot of pride in his own strength.

He didn’t have supernatural senses like Clairvoyance. Nor was the tremendous amount of combat experience accumulated within the enchanted swords the actual memories of the battles he himself had fought and won. However, it was enough to face off against the enemy in front of him and continue fighting.

Toroa the Awful was able to take in thoughts and ideas.

His enemy’s will, their wishes.

…That’s right. My thoughts and ideas aren’t necessary. But I know that isn’t this the complete picture. There’s meaning in having me be here. From this completely limitless accumulation of these enchanted swords’ thoughts and ideas…the one truly making the choices is me.

Psianop’s fist drew in close to his heart. He suppressed the attack with a side blow from a hilt and responded with the enchanted sword of poison and frost. The pseudopod morphed and, from a tight distance, ripped apart the armor on Toroa’s gauntlet. The intuition-led swing followed closely after Psianop’s atypical dodge. Shattering a wall, Psianop opened up space between them. Toroa ran in pursuit. A flash of the Divine Sword Ketelk—and the large storehouse above its elongated attack was cut in two. Psianop once again sneaked inside Toroa’s range. But he followed up with Disordered Flock. The ooze handled the attack. Then he dodged. Toroa pulled back moments before Psianop could grab the sword tip.

The sky was above them. Dashing through the streets, at the other end of the numerous obstacles he destroyed or slipped past, he realized he had made it outside at some point.

He could see a carriage in the distance. He knew there was someone watching over the match from inside.

It was Mizial.

He’s…

Diagonally in front to his right. Kicking off the wall and coming straight into Toroa’s reach. The enemy moved exactly as Toroa had predicted.

…caught up.

The thoughts and ideas he saw…had at last responded completely to the most strange and atypical of martial artists.

At this point, there was nowhere higher to go.

Not for himself.

Nor even for his enchanted swords.

In that case, he’d take in Psianop’s thoughts and ideas, too.

Go ahead and read me. All the swords in the world. All the skill throughout history. I’m not alone. Go ahead! Try reading all the enchanted swordsman who came before me!

He sent out Downpour’s Needle. Disordered Flock, the illusionary thrusting technique that he had demonstrated many times over. It would hit Psianop’s interception head-on, smashing and breaking its true form. He understood that was what the ooze would do.

The trajectory of the phantoms created by the sword grew chaotic, filling up Psianop’s entire line of sight with wild abandon.

“…!”

Even if the enchanted sword was destroyed, that didn’t mean its abilities were lost. It was a technique aiming to have the sword broken from the very start. A onetime-use technique, only able to take his enemy by surprise because of the similar techniques he had aimed at the ooze already—Avian Death.

Then.

Then, Toroa the Awful, with his cords. Chains. Hinged mechanisms.

With every conceivable preparation at his disposal, he could send out all of the enchanted swords, wielding them with his whole body.

“Nest…Descent!”

The thrust he launched, prepared to abandoned Downpour’s Needle from the start, was replaced halfway through the motion to the enchanted sword with the forked blade—Vajgir, the enchanted sword of poison and frost.

Naturally, it couldn’t be connected through Psianop’s evasion, reading all of Toroa’s attacks ahead of him.

However, the same wasn’t so for the blood from his gauntlet that he had sent flowing through the sword blade.

A drop of Toroa’s blood that had passed through the thrusting sword blade fell onto Psianop.

Without the opening in the ooze’s presence of mind, that he had pried open with Avian Death, even that one droplet wouldn’t have found its mark. He knew, too, that Psianop possessed such a level of skill.

He knew. Therefore, he surpassed him.

“Wh-what did you…?! Augh…!”

The protoplasm violently expanded outward.

Psianop’s body began mutating into a delicate crystal substance.

The enchanted sword of crystallized corrosion that instantly infected and eroded away any organic body that touched its blade. Even a single drop of blood became a transmission agent.

“Did you think…,” Toroa the Awful motioned to the champion, unlike any the enchanted swordsmen of history had ever encountered, “…you’d be able to remain undamaged until the very end?”

“Not…yet!”

During the final moments he would be able to act, Psianop rushed to try to get his enemy in range.

Toroa already knew he’d make this choice. His final enchanted sword was Inrate, the Sickle of Repose.

“Chirp!”

“Spear…hand…!”

A flash of a sword. Psianop the Inexhaustible Stagnation was cut across in two.

The Chirp his father learned was a technique that simply used a grip on the base of the scythe’s blade to counter extremely close-range attacks. It may have been too simple of a move to truly be designated the enchanted swords’ “secret technique.”

However, he had etched Downpour’s Needle’s Distorted Flock in Psianop’s consciousness by repeating it over and over again. It was only against opponents conditioned not to believe the visible illusions before them that Inrate, the Sickle of Repose, raising neither wind nor sound, turned into a true threat, one impossible to counterattack.

“Hrngh…! Hah.”

Toroa fell on both knees. When Psianop had gotten past his defenses in the ooze’s moment of final desperation, he realized both his knees had been punched with a sharp, piercing strike. Spearhand. Terrifying speed, up until the very end.

Making use of every last one of his enchanted swords, he had won.

He couldn’t…

“You can’t get up,” a voice told him from behind. Toroa held out on his almost broken knees and endured. Why?

A sweat, warning him of serious danger, spouted forth on his back.

“You’re able to instantly change weapons by rolling your wrist. Given your need to match your arms up with that movement, for those enchanted sword techniques you use… Their essence actually lies not in both your arms, but the footwork, which becomes your base point to shift your weight. Am I correct in my estimation?”

He went to turn around. In the left edge of his sights, half of Psianop’s severed body was melting away.

The half that was afflicted by the enchanted sword of poison and frost.

……In that one moment…

His opponent was an ooze. Be that as it may, he made that judgment in that split second?

Had he really cut off the half of his body corroded by poison and made such a sublime read of the situation just to avoid having his core cellular nucleus severed in two by the attack?

Was Psianop the Inexhaustible Stagnation capable of such feats?

No. It was impossible. He couldn’t have possibly foreseen Toroa’s attack.

No matter how simple of an organism an ooze may have been, it should’ve been alive after losing half of its body volume.

“Popoperopa. Parpepy. Peep por ppe. Por pupeon. Perpipeor.” (To Psianop’s pulsation. Suspended ripple. Tie the sequence. Full large moon. Circulate.)

There was no way he could still be alive. If he was a normal ooze.

Toroa had been able to trace his opponent Psianop’s thoughts.

“Psi…anop…!”

“You may claim to have risen back from hell…Toroa the Awful.”

However, Toroa was not the only one who had inherited the thoughts and minds from another before him—

“This technique belonged to Neft the Nirvana.”

There wasn’t anyone out there who knew all the methods the warrior known as Psianop had at his disposal.

“I-I’m—I’m Toroa the Awful.”

“…I neglected to mention, but in the beginning of the match, I punched through your liver. You likely haven’t noticed the pain. You kept fighting through ragged breaths. Much like how you used your illusions to guide my actions, I focused my punches on your upper body, so in the decisive moment, you wouldn’t be able to protect your lower body.”

“Not……yet! Not yet, Toroa…must…!”

“You’ll try to attack me. Turn your shoulder, take your step, and that’ll be the end of it.”

The technique that used the explosive power of his upper body would be finished with just a half of an opening step. Even from this range.

An invisible elongated thrust, narrowed down to a single point and piercing across long distances—the name of the technique was…

“…Peck!”

“My estimations—”

The foot that took his step slipped off the ground.

With it, he collapsed. With just a half step, Toroa the Awful’s sight sunk to the ground.

The Divine Sword Ketelk that was supposed to launch the finishing blow slipped out of his hand.

As if both of his legs had been severed in half, he was unable to stand.

“—are absolute.”

“…Looks like you won.”

They were in a spot unbecoming of a victorious combatant—the shade of an alleyway, hidden from the crowd. Qwell the Wax Flower had her eyes cast to the ground as always as she came out to greet her hero candidate.

For Psianop as well, it served him better to hide from the eyes of the crowd and the other candidates.

“Didn’t I tell you that was my estimation of the outcome?”

“Eh-heh… I—I suppose you did…… But um……in the end there, those Life Arts…”

“Who do you think I am? I stand here having learned the techniques of Neft the Nirvana of the First Party. Whether I am torn in half or otherwise, I am immortal.”

In fact, there existed no other living creature with a higher aptitude for cellular regeneration Life Arts than the ooze, almost entirely constructed from simple protoplasm. As long as his internal nucleus was left behind, he could regenerate the rest of his body back to almost perfect functionality. He hadn’t mastered Life Arts to Neft the Nirvana’s level, but when it came to the relative effectiveness of the regeneration itself, he had almost the same degree of immortality that the lycan possessed.

Toroa the Awful had been unable to anticipate it. Before Psianop the Inexhaustible Stagnation, there had never existed an ooze who had mastered such a skill.

“…I knew it. You can win…! S-since you were able to defeat the Toroa the Awful…! I’m sure you’ll be strongest of all, Psianop…!”

“I’m told it uses five years.”

“……Huh?”

“Before this match, I faced a situation that required me to use regenerative Life Arts on this body of mine. I plan on doing the same in the remaining matches as well. With each regeneration, I lose five years of my cellular life span.”

He believed it was a worthy battle to do so.

As worthy as the battle with Neft the Nirvana—or perhaps even more so.

“Um, b-but ooze life spans, um…”

“Hmph.”

Psianop chuckled.

He had spent twenty-one years in the sand labyrinth. There were four more matches until the finals, and he had used full regeneration once during his battle against Neft.

An ooze’s life span was said to last, at most, fifty years.

“…That dwarf was really strong. If that last sword of his possessed an instant-kill technique, I would have been dead. The true duel accords or whatever might be better for Aureatia’s purposes, but…”

The final sword, Inrate, the Sickle of Repose, had been an enchanted sword with functionality that made it easier to hit opponents.

It was precisely because it had come directly after he had sent out the enchanted sword of poison and frost, with its instant death functionality, that he anticipated the final two swords didn’t share that functionality—all he could do was hope he was right. Either way, in that situation, an all-or-nothing attack was the only choice to get out of danger.

Toroa the Awful had possessed the strength to force him to choose that singular option.

It might have been his haughtiness as the victor.

However, as a someone who wished for an all-out, decisive fight as a warrior, he truly felt it from the bottom of his heart—

“…I’m glad I didn’t end up having to kill him.”

Match one. Victory goes to Psianop the Inexhaustible Stagnation.