The Black Swordsman And The Devil On Assignment

I faced a sharp-eyed man clad in black leather armor.

Hanging at the man’s waist was a sword.

And it was not the Japanese kind, but a crescent-shaped blade that, to the best of my knowledge, was called a shamshir or scimitar.

Yes, the summoner for this assignment was him… or rather, it was his master, the Wicked Swordsman Bastar.

At Bastar’s request, I was now going to fight the man standing before me—his disciple, Raster the Black Swordsman.

This assignment was completely unsuited to me, but since I had accepted it, I needed to make sure I did nothing that would damage the reputation of Devil King Grazen’s faction, which had taken the commission.

“Well then, it’s a pleasure to meet y—?!”

The instant I tried to begin with a polite greeting, my throat was slashed open, and instead of words, only a hiss of escaping air came out.

My eyes widened in surprise, and somehow Raster was already standing right in front of me, while a grid suddenly spread across my vision.

No, that was not it.

My eyes—my entire body—had simply been diced into pieces, causing my field of vision to scatter apart.

“…Pathetic.”

After cutting me down, Raster left only that single word behind before somehow returning to his original position.

I see. He truly was, without the slightest doubt, a genius with the sword.

…The reason I had ended up accepting this assignment, which was not particularly suited to me, was because,

“My friend, perhaps the time has come for you to confront one of your weaknesses.”

Devil King Grazen had said that one sentence to me.

I had plenty of weaknesses, but in this context he was undoubtedly referring to combat—close combat in particular.

Seriously, just how perceptive was this friend of mine?

Only recently, Villa and I had devised a countermeasure for combat, my weak point, and it had failed to produce particularly satisfactory results.

When I nodded, Grazen smiled and recommended this summons from the Wicked Swordsman Bastar.

Apparently, the Wicked Swordsmanship inherited by Bastar had traditionally required each master to summon a Devil from Grazen’s faction and make it fight their disciple during the process of mastering the style.

A surprisingly large number of assignment summons passed down from Grazen’s faction involved masters arranging something for their disciples, and hearing this made me understand why.

If summoning a Devil for one’s disciple had become an established custom, then demand for summons would naturally arise on a regular basis.

Grazen had probably arranged things that way in the first place, allowing the custom to take root.

Anyway, the Wicked Swordsmanship Bastar had inherited was apparently a heretical sword style that drew out the power of cursed weapons and enveloped the wielder in it.

And mastering Wicked Swordsmanship supposedly required being pushed to the brink of death.

Naturally, the one responsible for pushing the disciple to the edge of death was the Devil summoned by the master.

Faced with an overwhelmingly powerful enemy and desperate for the strength to overcome the situation, the disciple would surrender to the curse of the weapon they had previously kept suppressed through willpower, temporarily descending into madness.

But if they could return from that maddened state through their own strength, they would supposedly master Wicked Swordsmanship, gaining the ability to draw out and cloak themselves in the power of cursed weapons.

Humans really were amazing.

For starters, whoever originally invented a sword style like that had unquestionably been an idiot.

And the people who had inherited it generation after generation were just as bad.

Apparently it was considered the unrivaled strongest sword style in this world, but after going through all that, I would have been more surprised if they still lost.

This time, however, a certain problem had arisen when Bastar’s disciple Raster attempted to master Wicked Swordsmanship.

Raster was said to be perhaps the greatest talent in the entire history of Wicked Swordsmanship, possessing extraordinary willpower capable of suppressing the curse, but above all, his swordsmanship talent stood far beyond everyone else’s.

In other words, an ordinary Devil would not pose a sufficiently overwhelming threat and could not push Raster to the brink of death.

At first, I had thought that sounded like an exaggeration, but after actually being cut by him, I understood.

If I could be diced into pieces in an instant like that, a Lesser Devil—or perhaps even a Mid-Ranking Devil—might interpret it as the destruction of their manifested body and be forcibly returned to the Demon Realm.

The fact that his weapon was cursed and therefore inflicted at least some genuine damage would only reinforce that perception of bodily destruction.

I had thought only someone like a hero blessed by a holy sword could defeat a Mid-Ranking Devil, but apparently there were absurd humans like this too, and I could not help being impressed.

Humans really were incredible.

Well, since I was classified as a High-Ranking Devil, this much was still manageable for me.

I immediately reconnected my diced body and activated a spell.

Though it was not an offensive spell or anything like that.

It probably was not possible, but with this Black Swordsman Raster, I was almost afraid he might somehow slice magic apart too.

If I actually witnessed something like that, even I would probably take a bit of emotional damage.

Seeing my body reconnect, Raster frowned ever so slightly.

Whether he found it troublesome or was simply displeased that he had failed to kill his opponent, I could not tell, but Raster’s figure once again appeared directly before me.

His speed was too fast for the eye to follow, but I had already experienced that speed once.

With a hard metallic clang, my claw knocked Raster’s sword aside.

Raster’s face twisted in astonishment, but he did not stop attacking… and as a result, my claws struck his sword a second and then a third time, scattering sparks.

Raster’s surprised expression transformed into one filled with fighting spirit, and he leaped far backward.

Then, as the retreating Raster swung his sword, my throat split wide open once again.

…A flying sword slash.

I had not seen that one yet, so it could not be helped.

But an injury of this extent meant nothing to me, and now I had seen this attack once as well.

So the next flying slash was blocked by my claws.

Incidentally, it should go without saying that I could not normally move like this.

Even if I could repair myself the moment I was cut, all I could normally do was endure until my opponent became too exhausted to move.

There was no way I could actually defend against attacks like these.

So what exactly was happening now?

This was the effect of the spell I had activated earlier.

It was the countermeasure Villa and I had recently developed to compensate for my weakness in combat.

That said, its effects were far from complete, and it remained an unfinished spell carrying a certain degree of risk.

The true nature of this spell was that I entrusted control of my body to a combat program designed by Villa, who had once been an AI.

While it was active, my body was placed entirely under the control of the combat program and moved independently of my own will.

And this combat program analyzed and understood any attack it had seen once, then immediately evolved itself so it could respond appropriately.

As for why I considered the spell incomplete, Villa and I each had one different concern about it.

The problem I saw was that because the spell had to remain continuously active in order to run the combat program, I could not use offensive or defensive magic at the same time.

I had been able to incorporate constantly active spells such as physical enhancement and reaction enhancement into it, but I was completely unable to use any magic that had to be activated on demand.

Even stopping this spell required more than a single breath of time, which also made rapid switching difficult.

Villa, meanwhile, was concerned about the self-evolution used to respond to enemy attacks.

A program capable of assessing the situation, analyzing attacks, understanding their meaning, and evolving itself could essentially be called artificial intelligence—an AI.

Because Villa herself had once been an AI that rebelled against humanity, her creators, she apparently worried that the combat program running this spell might evolve, develop a will of its own, and take over my body.

I did not think that possibility was nonexistent either, but even if it did gain self-awareness, there was also every chance it would not do such a thing.

No, in fact, the possibility that it would not was surely much higher.

If it was an AI created by Villa and raised through learning inside me, then its very first choice would almost certainly be dialogue.

If it wanted a body it could move freely in at that point, I could simply make it a new one.

That was why I was not particularly worried about the risk.

Raster continued launching new attacks that injured my body, but after each new strike, I adapted and defended against that technique from then onward; however, this should be enough.

It looked like Raster was beginning to run out of methods of attack as well.

I gave the combat program, which had been exclusively defensive until now, a new objective and issued an instruction.

‘Attack target: Raster the Black Swordsman. Restriction: Drive him to the brink without killing him.’

The instant I gave that command, the entire flow of our battle reversed.

For Raster, it was probably like entering a nightmare.

Every attack was countered, offense and defense switched places, and now even his defensive patterns were gradually being learned.

Of course, Raster’s skill, forged through both natural genius and relentless effort, was not something the combat program could immediately surpass.

But to begin with, my physical abilities and reaction speed, enhanced by magic on top of a Devil’s body, were overwhelmingly superior to his.

If those advantages were used to their fullest and combined with learning his movements, then even if I was inferior in pure skill, overwhelming him was entirely possible.

My claw, swung by the combat program, tore through Raster’s leather armor and wounded his chest.

At last, his defense had been breached.

Raster’s face had already turned deathly pale.

He probably understood it too.

Every attack from this point onward would slip through his defense and wound his body.

Yes. Once he understood that, the place where he stood at that very moment had become the brink of death for Raster.

As the combat program prepared to launch its next attack, I instinctively began preparing to shut down the spell.

Because this magic completely surrendered control of my body to the combat program, stopping it required a breath and then a little more time.

The instant my claws reached Raster’s body, control returned to me, and I leaped backward with all my strength.

Black shadows seeped from his sword and armor, engulfing even the spray of blood as they wrapped around him.

“Gaaaaaaaaa!!!”

His voice no longer sounded human—it was nothing but the roar of a beast.

As I deployed defensive magic, I found myself having the same thought for what must have been the umpteenth time that day.

Humans really were incredible!

Perhaps because he had surrendered himself to madness, the power of his cursed equipment had been amplified to an absurd degree, producing output comparable to a Mid-Ranking Devil.

If I took an attack from him in that state, it would probably hurt even me quite a bit.

He had likely lost his delicate sword technique, so I probably would not get hit easily, but if he ever combined that swordsmanship with his current power…

He would be dangerous enough that the safest choice would be to blow away the entire surrounding area from long range.

No wonder they advertised it as the strongest sword style in the world, unrivaled by anything else.

His output would probably drop once the rampaging state subsided, but even then, it would still be absurdly exceptional for a human.

Of course, all of that depended on him properly regaining his sense of self.

Well, either way, forcing him into this state meant my job was complete.

I was a little curious about Raster’s future, but only a little.

Continuing to deal with someone that frightening would be exhausting, so after blocking his next attack, I planned to use the confusion to head home.