Mushoku Tensei (LN) - Volume 25 - Chapter 4

Chapter 4:

The Mad Dog King vs. the Former Sword God

BEFORE THEY KNEW IT, Eris and the others were far away from the ravine. This was because the moment after the Ogre God moved, Gall Falion started running away from the battlefield.

“You prefer this spot?”

They were inside the forest when Gall came to a halt, though it was a relatively open area. Barely a minute had passed, but Gall was fast; they’d run a significant distance from the ravine. Eris was a bit nervous about leaving Rudeus, but she focused her attention on the enemy in front of her.

“The Ogre God doesn’t distinguish between friend and foe when he goes on the rampage. Let’s stay out of his way,” Gall said. He squared off against Eris.

He didn’t draw his sword, as if to say he was happy to do this bare-handed. To Eris’s eyes, his stance looked wide open to attack. She raised her own weapon, the Phoenix Dragon Sword, above her head. Her opponent was still the former Sword God. She wasn’t quite sure if she should attack that opening.

“…You look well,” Gall said. Unexpected pleasantries. Then again, Gall was a person like she was. There was nothing weird about him saying words. On the other hand, given the situation, hearing this man reach for words instead of his sword was, to Eris at least, fairly strange.

She cocked her head, suspicious. Gall scoffed. “Remember Gino? Gino Britz?”

“…Yeah, I remember the guy. Nothing special.” At this, Gall laughed again.

“Yeah, him. He was strong for his age, but nothing special.” He looked up at the sky. The trees swayed in the wind, leaves rustling. There was no sign of birds or forest animals. In the distance, they could hear trees falling and something ripping. That was the sound of the Ogre God fighting. Possibly the North God. Hard to say.

Gall’s words continued over the noise. “Now he’s the Sword God.”

“…I know.”

“Do you, now… Didn’t think your ears were that sharp. You go there to see him or something? Ah, well. Anyway, that’s how it is. I surrendered the Sword God title to him.”

Eris thought back on how she and Rudeus had gone to the Sword Sanctum to make this man, her enemy, into her ally. She hadn’t met Gino Britz then. Even when Sword God Gall Falion told her now that he wasn’t the Sword God, it didn’t quite click for her. All she remembered was the sizable shock she’d had at finding the Sword Sanctum in such a drastically different state.

“What’s that bastard’s deal anyway? Going on about marrying Nina out of nowhere. So I told him, if he wants to marry Nina, he’s gotta get stronger than me—and what d’you think the bastard did? He got stronger.” Gall looked properly amused. His mouth curved as he reminisced.

“It was over in an instant. Even when I was young, I only swung a sword that heavy that fast once, maybe twice… No, maybe I was never that strong.”

Gall waved his hand as though he’d remembered something. His hand chopped the air with such speed it seemed like it might produce a shockwave. He began to sweep it back, then stopped short.

“I don’t strike twice, you hear? I don’t get it.”

Then, he folded his arms again. “I don’t get it because ever since I was born, I was the strongest. I was born into this. I guess for normal folks, that moment comes where you must grow up…”

He looked up at the sky again. “Not the strongest any more though, are you?” he muttered under his breath, apparently to himself. After a brief pause, he continued: “Whatever. The brat got everything he wanted. The girl he was sweet on, the Sword God title… At the Sword Sanctum, he’s got everyone’s respect now. Won’t be long before Gino’s the name people think when they hear Sword God.”

Here, Gall looked at Eris, finally observing her straight on.

“What are you, compared to that?” he asked.

“…What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Dragon God Orsted was your enemy, but you snare yourself a man and now you’re wagging your tail for him?” Gall let out a short laugh, but he wasn’t smiling. There was rage in his face as he glared at Eris.

“I left my dream to you. My dream of crushing that titan, the Dragon God Orsted. Moronic, thinking about it now. Why the hell did I entrust that to you? You’ve had your fangs all pulled out. Berserker Sword King? Hah. There’s none of that in you now. Getting yourself a man’s all well and good, but wife number three? You settled for that?” 

He spat all of this out quickly, but none of it bothered Eris. So what? was all she could think to say. She didn’t know what he was on about. She didn’t remember him entrusting her with anything.

So, Eris said, “…You lost your nerve, huh?”

The Sword God’s pupils contracted. The murder in his eyes grew concentrated and shifted to his hands.

“I expel you from our tradition,” he said.

“Whatever.”

“I’ll never let you call yourself Sword King again.”

“Make me, if you think you’ve got it in you,” Eris retorted. She was ready to fight. If anything, she was confused about why they were still talking.

“You think you can beat me?”

“Obviously. You’re nothing. I’ll send your soul back to its maker with a single strike.”

“Hah… You know, that’s the second time anyone’s ever called me ‘nothing’.” Gall Falion readied himself, standing to conceal his blade. He widened his stance, lowered his weight, and put his hand on the hilt of his sword, ready to draw. It was the stance for the unbeatable strike favored by Sword King Ghislaine Dedoldia.

Eris saw this and clenched her back teeth. The core of Sword God Style was striking with a heavy blade as fast as possible. Within that style, there were three stances. The first was a mid-range stance, the basic stance of Sword God Style that could counter any technique. The second was a high stance, an aggressive stance suited to those who broke through an opponent’s technique to push them back. The final was the draw stance, a defensive stance suited to those who read their opponent’s technique and sniffed out the perfect moment to strike.

Essentially: those who read their opponent favored the draw stance, those who broke their opponent favored the high stance, and those who specialized in neither favored the mid-range stance. Eris, who had an innate sense of rhythm and actively sought to break her opponents, favored the high stance. Ghislaine, who with her beastfolk’s smell and hearing excelled in reacting instinctively, favored the draw stance.

Gall Falion had assumed the draw stance. The former Sword God could fight from any of the stances, but here, he’d chosen the draw stance. He’d judged that he could read Eris. Even knowing that, Eris wasn’t afraid. She kept her breathing shallow while slowly, slowly closing the distance between them.

In that moment, Gall felt something wrong. Eris was strangely silent.

As the name ‘Mad Dog’ suggested, when she’d been at the Sword Sanctum, she’d bared her teeth and attacked with an idiot’s directness…but now, she held back.

There was one thing that hadn’t changed—her expression. She was smiling. There was a smug, unpleasant grin plastered on her face, even as she stood with the serenity of a monk in training.

Looking at her face, Gall found himself wanting to close the distance and cleave her in half. He wasn’t going to. He merely put his back to a great tree and waited, as still as if time had stopped.

Neither of them said a word. It was an unusual scene. If anyone who knew the two of them had seen it, they’d have found it utterly bizarre. Both Eris and Gall liked to attack first. Only the bold rose to the top of the Sword God ranks.

Yet they didn’t move. The tree leaves that danced on the breeze like snow were the only indication time hadn’t stopped. It was like a scene from a time almost forgotten. Take Gino Britz, who had just come up in the earlier conversation, for example. He had seen a fight using Sword God Style once before, a few years ago, on the day that Eris became a Sword King. In the fight between Eris Greyrat and Nina Falion, neither girl had moved. Neither of them moved an inch. Someone unfamiliar with high-level Sword God Style warriors might have assumed this was how they fought.

Except they were moving. It was slow, only a fingertip at a time, but Eris was closing the distance between them. Now, they were just close enough for their sword tips to cross. Eris was within striking distance. They were still far apart—too far for one hoping to deal a decisive blow. They weren’t close enough yet for either to use their strongest attack.

In the fight between Eris and Nina, the one who’d moved first had lost. Nina had loosed a perfect Sword of Light, but Eris had outdone her with speed.

For Gall Falion, for the man who had once been the Sword God, outdoing Eris would be easy. He could cleverly get out of her range, time it so that the point of his blade reached its mark just before hers. He didn’t, though. Gall Falion stood unmoving. He didn’t close the distance between them, nor did he change his angle. He stayed still and observed Eris, only Eris, as though she were the only other thing in the world.

By inches, Eris got into range for a killing blow. She was in position to use her ultimate, most reliable strike.

Eris felt a tiny, tiny flicker of uncertainty. Gall Falion’s defense was perfect. If she used Sword of Light here and now, she thought she could cut him down—former Sword God or not. All the same, her opponent was Gall Falion. She remembered the moment of her humiliation on the day she’d arrived at the Sword Sanctum. She hadn’t even seen him in the moment he’d sent her flying.

A moment later, Gall Falion moved. He went in, with perfect execution, for a finishing blow.

“Sword of Light.”

She attacked with the most powerful sword technique in Sword God Style. Gall’s eyes caught it—the moment he gripped the hilt of his sword. It wasn’t the Reflection Blade. It was unmistakably Sword of Light. It just wasn’t like any Sword of Light Gall had ever seen.

“Water God Style Secret Technique: Flow.”

A slippery sensation swiped across Eris’s palms. From her stance, with her sword raised high above her head, she’d struck with a Sword of Light, met Gall’s lightning-fast intercepting strike, and been deflected. She’d sliced the tree behind Gall in two on a diagonal. Just before their blades parted, Gall applied the slightest pressure, making Eris’s torso ever so slightly tilt. Still in that posture at the end of her stroke, Eris was knocked off balance. That was more than enough. With Eris’s defenses down, Gall’s eyes found her neck.

He struck back. Perhaps it was the price he paid for using the teachings of another, unfamiliar style, but his strike could hardly be called fast. It didn’t reach the speed of light—speed of sound at best. At that distance, at that range, you didn’t need Sword of Light to kill your opponent. Any strike to cut off their head would do.

The blade came down like a guillotine. There was a sharp noise, like a clang or a cling, as metal met metal. His sword stopped. It was digging into Eris’s neck, but it had halted.

Gall’s eyes went wide. A man had appeared behind Eris, a warrior with green hair, a warrior carrying a white spear. He stood as if he were hiding behind Eris, blocking Gall’s blade like a guardian spirit.

If that had been Sword of Light, Gall thought for a split second. Then—

“Gyaaaaah!”

Eris’s body twisted as she drew her sword from her right hip and raked it across Gall Falion’s body.

“…Ngh!” He swiftly leapt back, hitting the ground with a thud.

When his legs reached the ground, his torso wasn’t on top of them. Gall Falion’s upper half was airborne. It spun around three times, then fell back to earth.

***

Gall Falion watched his legs slowly topple over. He took in his own defeat.

“Damn…” he muttered from where he lay looking at the sky. He hadn’t seen the Superd hiding behind Eris. No, he had seen him. He just hadn’t paid any attention. With an opponent of her level, he hadn’t thought it mattered.

The truth was, Ruijerd hadn’t seen Eris’s Sword of Light. It was so fast that even a legendary warrior like him couldn’t perceive it. But Gall’s second strike was a different story. It wasn’t anywhere near that speed. He’d swung with the bare minimum power he needed to cut her head off. He’d been careless. Even then, an average warrior wouldn’t have had time to stop him. That had been Ruijerd Superdia standing by; the veteran warrior of Dead End. He’d lived for centuries. Of course he’d seen it. Of course he stopped it. Gall had misjudged Ruijerd. Eris had trusted the Superd to have her back. If Eris had held any uncertainty, if she’d doubted even for a moment that Ruijerd might not stop the blow, then Gall Falion might have had his opening.

“Why didn’t you use a Sword God Style technique?” Eris demanded of Gall where he lay on his back, as blood dripped from her neck. The battle had only lasted a moment, but her forehead was drenched with sweat.

“I thought I’d lose.”

From the first strike, if he’d raised his sword above his head like Eris and attacked with a top-speed Sword of Light, he would have won—and he hadn’t done that. He couldn’t. In the back of his mind, he’d seen his fight with Gino Britz. He’d never doubted his sword or his skill then, and Gino had torn through both with total ease, and he’d lost. He’d shattered his right hand as his opponent threw him onto his ass in the training hall. He remembered everyone’s eyes, and Gino looking down at him. That memory had dulled the will behind his first Sword of Light. Gall Falion was a genius swordsman. He had the name of Sword God, but he was full of enough brilliance to rise to Water Emperor if he’d been in a Water God Style hall. That was why he’d used the Water God Style technique. He was confident that he couldn’t lose with that. Defiant, even.

He couldn’t have done it back when he went by the name of Sword God. He had to act the part. As Sword God, he’d felt a sense of duty to only use Sword God Style techniques. Not this time. There was no downside in using a Water God Style technique to parry Sword of Light so that he could then use a surer method. That was why he’d tried to provoke Eris with his words, to make her move first. For that matter, cutting off Rudeus’s arms as Geese had instructed him to was another thing he never would have done in his former position. The gears must have been out of alignment from the start, ever since he lost to Gino Britz. Gall Falion’s old confidence was gone along with his old strength. The greatest swordsman of them all no longer existed.

“You were right. I’m a nobody who’s lost his nerve,” Gall said. He didn’t make excuses. The person who believed in her skill had won, and the one who couldn’t had lost. It was that simple. Everything he’d said before the battle sounded pathetic now. If he was going to make speeches like that, he should have attacked first. He really was a nobody—to Eris, he probably looked lower than a village drunk.

The sense that he had to fight Orsted, that he couldn’t end things here, that he wanted one last bit of glory… That was what had pressed him to accept Geese’s invitation. He couldn’t believe he’d thought he could challenge Orsted as he was. He could hardly bring himself to laugh at the thought.

“…Who knows what I was thinking.”

Looking down at him, Eris thought, How pitiful. An unintelligible sadness welled up inside her as she watched this man, who had once made her tremble, meet his end.

That was why she asked him, “…Do you have any last words?”

Gall moved just his eyes to look up at Eris. That girl with the red hair. Ever since the first time he saw her, he’d thought she had a gift. She was rough around the edges, but she had more raw potential than Ghislaine. But he hadn’t for a second thought that she’d be the one to kill him. He’d always thought of her as below him—that if they fought, he would always win.

“The sword you wield only for yourself is pure, and a pure sword is the sharpest. People change. A blade you wield for another will be strong, but it will be influenced by them. Hesitate once, and afterward, you’ll be haunted by that hesitation. Your blade will dull. That’s what happened to me. I met a woman, then had a child. I trained my students. While I was hung up on crap like what the Sword God ought to do, I went dull.” As Gall’s grasp on consciousness grew weaker, he felt the words continue to pour out of him. He didn’t have anything he needed to say. He didn’t have any words he wanted to leave behind. He hadn’t thought before about what he might say at the moment of his death. He didn’t think he’d die in a place like this. His thoughts simply came pouring out of his mouth.

“Eris. I always knew you were something. You stayed strong. I thought you’d been taken in by love, but you’re free. You’re still free.”

A thick stream of blood came gurgling out of his mouth, but Gall didn’t bother to wipe it away. He held the sword he still gripped out to Eris.

“…Take it.”

“All right.”

The act bore no relation to his words, but Eris accepted it at once. Gall’s hand, so close to death, was frighteningly cold, but the grip on his sword was hot.

“Hah…” Gall exhaled as he watched her take the sword. He didn’t have enough strength left to take another breath.

“The strong live free… I like that…” His arm fell.

Sword God Gall Falion was dead.

Eris knelt in silence. She took the scabbard from Gall’s waist, sheathed the sword in it, then pushed it through her own belt.

“Whew…” She let out a deep breath as she took a scroll from her pocket. It was a beginner-tier scroll of healing magic. She’d held on to it in case of an emergency ever since she’d received it. She held it up to the spot where blood trickled from her neck, then poured mana into it. The wound closed in an instant.

“…Eris.”

“Let’s go help Rudeus.”

“Yes.”

With that, the two of them turned to go…but after a few steps, Eris stopped. She turned back. Taking in Gall Falion’s awful corpse, she clenched her fist. Then, she recited a spell. Long, long ago, Rudeus had told Eris that if nothing else, she ought to remember this spell. She and Ghislaine had practiced it over and over again.

“—Fire Ball.” A flaming sphere burst from Eris’s hand and set Gall Falion’s body alight. Eris didn’t wait to watch as the flames engulfed it. She turned and set off quickly from that place. The fire spread to the nearby trees, giving off a plume of smoke like a beacon. It went on burning, undisturbed, until the flames naturally died away.