15

Darius, seeing Ains get blown back and crash into the wall with a loud impact, assumed Talidge had won.

Unlike Darius, Talidge kept his eyes fixed on the dust cloud, a deep crease forming between his brows.

‘It’s irritating, but I didn’t feel any give—no ribs cracking, no wrist snapping.’

Without answering Darius, Talidge stared as the dust began to clear.

There stood Ains, perfectly calm, desperately trying to spit out the sand that had gotten into his mouth.

“Ains-san! …Thank goodness.”

“Yes, Lady Kirishiya.”

Relieved, Kirishiya sat back down.

“…So I still didn’t fully catch him.”

Ains wore a bitter expression, still feeling grit in his mouth, but he gave up on removing it without rinsing and raised his sword again.

“I see. An attack specialized in sheer weight. You’re a different kind of swordsman from Sophia.”

The biggest reason Talidge had reached Sword King class was his extraordinary, uncommonly tough body. If a mage required the innate gift of total mana capacity, then a swordsman’s innate talent could only be called the body itself.

Those with long arms held an advantage in reach. A body built to develop superior tendons and muscle more easily possessed not only explosive speed, but also tremendous raw power as latent potential.

Talidge’s ascent as a swordsman lay in that. Even if his sense for mana control was merely average, if the body being strengthened was itself a rare concentration of talent, then the threat became overwhelming.

Talidge was Sword King class.

Ains had read that level of skill.

In sword technique, Talidge likely fell far short of Sophia. But the body that more than compensated for that technique—the body that turned him into a threat—was Talidge’s true strength.

Ains still did not look fired up, but he shifted into a posture to counter.

His gaze locked onto Talidge.

Talidge met Ains’s eyes. The stare was cold, and yet the palm gripping the greatsword began to sweat.

‘…The next exchange might be the last.’

Talidge alternated wiping his sweaty palms on his trousers, then clenched the sword again with scarred hands and thickened skin.

From far at the edge, Ains sprinted in.

With effortless weight transfer, efficient body movement, and physical reinforcement achieved through peerless mana control, Ains’s motion was elevated beyond what an ordinary person could track.

There was no small explosion like when Talidge stepped in.

In the instant the sand at the ground seemed to stir, Ains vanished from that spot.

By the time Talidge saw him again, Ains was already closing to within striking range.

“…Ghk!”

Talidge pushed the maximum reinforcement he could manage into his tendons and muscles. Forced enhancement placed strain on the joints, but Talidge had no room to care about that now.

He raised the greatsword—one that an ordinary person could barely even swing—in a single instant.

Ains had dived into close range, but Talidge’s brute, unnatural motion almost made him click his tongue.

Between Ains, who still had to swing, and Talidge, who had already finished setting his blade and only needed to bring it down, there was no doubt which would strike first: Talidge.

So Ains decided to target the opening immediately after Talidge’s downward swing. But if he lost his attacking intent, Talidge would sense it. Therefore, Ains committed as if he would follow through and strike to the end.

Just as Ains expected, Talidge’s greatsword came down first—bathed in the western sun, leaving behind a crimson afterimage as it surged toward Ains.

Keeping his intent to evade concealed while having the trajectory mapped in his head, Ains sidestepped to the right.

Talidge’s greatsword failed to catch Ains and instead gouged the ground where he had been.

‘This is over…’

There was no joy in Ains—only the relief of it finally ending.

From his evasive stance, Ains stepped in to deliver a finishing slash—and in that very moment, he felt the ground beneath his feet swell.

A formless, unknown danger prickled at his instincts.

“…What!?”

Ains saw it.

Because he had avoided by stepping sideways, Talidge’s greatsword—after missing, slamming into the earth, and failing to lose momentum—kept carving through the ground and forced its way up from below, the dulled edge flashing as it surged toward Ains’s torso from underground.

Ains’s one-handed sword, which had been poised to land a hit on Talidge, redirected without ever turning its blade toward Talidge’s body—shifting into a defensive posture against the heavy strike rising from beneath.

The greatsword surged up in a storm of sand, and it crashed violently against Ains’s one-handed sword.

“…!”

Ains was knocked backward, a fierce numbness shooting through his left hand.

Talidge’s forced follow-up finally created a large opening—but the rebounding Ains had already been pushed out of sword range.

And more than that—

The one-handed sword in Ains’s left hand snapped cleanly in half at its midpoint, and one half of the blade spun weakly through the air.

Talidge still had not fully recovered his posture, but his face already held certainty of victory.

“Talidge, well done!”

Darius sprang up from his chair.

In contrast, Laika, Kirishiya, and Seidel stared anxiously at Ains—his body momentarily lifted off the ground, while the broken half-blade turned helplessly in the air.

With Ains’s weapon destroyed, Talidge—still holding a weapon—had the advantage. Haral, acting as judge, could even declare the result on the spot.

‘What a pain! If I were using magic, this little swordplay game would’ve been over without ever crossing blades! But that smug face is annoying, too.’

Ains was not finished.

He hurled the remaining stump of the broken sword straight at Talidge’s face.

“Pointless struggle!”

Talidge dodged it with nothing more than a movement of his head and shoulders.

In that opening, Ains kicked off the ground with his right foot, then used his mana-reinforced left prosthetic leg to kick the airborne half of the broken blade—sending it flying.