58. The Arena (2)

The red wall blazed up fiercely, cleaving the space between us and Seraphina clean in two. On her side of it, no opponent had yet stepped out to face her.

The pointless tension in the air had Elli pressed to my side, plucking anxiously at the edge of my sleeve.

“Young Master, will she really be all right?”

“Who exactly are you worried about? That’s the Empire’s Knight Commander standing out there.”

Living around Valerian must have thrown off Elli’s sense of judgment. However mighty an underling of the Abyss’s third gate might be, was Seraphina, one of the strongest swordsmen in the entire Empire, really at a level worth fretting over?

But Elli glared at me and cried out.

“No! I mean me! What am I supposed to do?!”

“Ahh.”

Elli shot me another glare, then spilled what was really bothering her.

“Wouldn’t it have been better if I’d gone out first? Strategically, wouldn’t it have made more sense to wear the enemy down, or at least scout their attack patterns?”

Just as I’d misread Elli’s worry a moment ago, she too had completely misread the rules of this arena.

“Looks like you didn’t quite catch what that robed man said earlier. If even one of the three of us loses, the master of the arena won’t show up no matter what.”

“Then if I drop out and the two of you challenge again…”

“No.”

I cut Elli off flatly.

“The moment you set foot in here, there’s no leaving. And besides — you’ve gotten stronger too.”

Bloodstains caked the front of her shirt, the marks of a fierce fight against the lesser demons in the first gate. Just as Seraphina had done with Lillian and me, Valerian must have put Elli and Leo through the wringer to train them too. She’d surely sunk into despair as the lesser demons swarmed in, crossing the line between life and death more times than she could count; but in the end, Elli had survived.

“Then all three of us have to win! I’ll do my best!”

“Yeah, you’d better wring out strength you don’t even have. After all, they say the ones who fail just become the sand of this place.”

“…”

Ironically, Elli had come through so splendidly up to now that she had no real sense a defeat here would mean her permanent erasure. The fact that her life was on the line stirred no fear in her at all.

“Lose once, and there’s no next round. I’m telling you that you die.”

Only now did Elli’s face turn grave, the gravity of the situation finally sinking in. Eyes fixed anxiously on Seraphina, she hugged her shield tight to her chest.

Still, there’s no way I’m losing Elli here.

I’d only meant to cure her blindness to the danger, not to scare her. So now it was time to breathe her confidence back into her. I reached out and gently ruffled her tousled bob.

“Don’t worry. Who do you think I am? I’ve got a plan for everything. You just have to trust me, that’s all. Got it?”

At the touch of my hand, Elli flinched for a moment, then dropped her head low.

“I always trust you, Young Master. It’s only my own lack of skill that’s the problem.”

“No, you’re doing great. More than enough.”

Quite apart from wanting to shore up her confidence, that part was sincere. How could I not be proud of Elli, enduring Valerian’s training just to be of use to me?

“…You haven’t ruffled my hair in such a long time. Hehe.”

Elli grinned like a fool and nuzzled her head into my hand.

“And watch closely. There’s a reason I sent Sister out first, you know.”

KA-THOOM—! KA-THOOM—!

The instant my words ended, the floor of the arena shrieked and shook. From the red wall on the far side, a colossal hulk came lumbering out.

Wider than a grown man laid out flat, it hefted a massive shield that loomed well past the height of any ordinary man. Elli’s own shield was no small thing, but beside the slab that brute carried, hers looked like a toy.

“Elli.”

I jerked my chin toward the hulk striding out from beyond the wall.

“In a place like this, seizing the initiative is everything. And this arena has a fixed law to it.”

At my words, Elli looked up at me with frightened eyes.

“Do you think you and I could knock that shield brute over?”

Elli’s gaze ran along the thickness of the hulk’s shield. A shield on that scale wouldn’t just soak up ordinary blows; most attacks would be neutralized against it outright.

“No… No matter what, I don’t think there’s any way I could break through that.”

Elli’s voice carried a clear self-assessment. I’d never actually seen how she fought, but since she stubbornly leaned on her shield alone with no secondary weapon, the outcome was plain as day.

A clash between two shield-soldiers would have them shoving at each other all day in a tedious test of strength, until whichever side ran out of stamina first finally fell. And on that count, it was obvious Elli stood at a tremendous disadvantage against that hulk.

“I told you, didn’t I. There’s a definite law to this place.”

“A law?”

“Yeah. Elli, right now, what role on the battlefield does that thing look like to you?”

“Maybe the one who stands at the very front and blocks the enemy’s attacks? It looks like a shield-soldier, same as me.”

“Right. And the outcome of a war is always decided by how efficiently you can bring that wall down.”

Eligos’s arena revealed its master only after every challenger had claimed victory. The gimmick was notorious, a pattern that drew endless complaints; but it ran on a fixed sequence, and a fixed sequence could be dealt with.

Eligos was a demon cast in the shape of a knight. Where House Arne reeked of rough, feral private soldiery, Eligos carried the thoroughly disciplined air of an Imperial knight.

Just as a war opens with shield-soldiers on the first line, spearmen on the second, and mages on the third, the underlings Eligos sent out appeared in a fixed order set by tactical deployment. Which was why I’d deliberately matched Seraphina against that hulk.

“I sent Sister to the front on purpose. Because she’s got the overwhelming firepower to smash that obnoxious wall in one stroke, without leaving it any room to think.”

The hulk hid behind its shield, waiting on Seraphina’s move.

“If you locked shields with that thing, you’d be stuck in a shoving match for a good half a day. And if I went out, I’d wear myself out hammering away at that giant shield. In this game where it’s over the moment any one of us loses, I can’t make a gamble that uncertain.”

For all its bulk, the hulk was cautious. It stayed tucked behind its shield, holding to a defensive stance. Watching it, I went on, as though calling the play before it happened.

“Watch closely — speaking as a fellow shield-soldier.”

As if my words were the signal, Seraphina raised her left hand.

Jiing—!

The air of the arena screamed in an instant. A magic circle bloomed at Seraphina’s fingertips and glowed an ever-deeper blue.

The hulk must have instinctively sensed the danger; it tucked itself even more tightly behind its shield.

I leveled a finger at the hulk.

“Just holding out isn’t the answer.”

The deep-blue mana condensed at her fingertips tangled together like a skein of thread, then struck the hulk’s shield dead-on.

KRRRK! KRRRRRK!

White frost raced across the giant shield in an instant. This was no mere ice glazing the surface; Seraphina’s magic rode along the grain of the shield, forcibly warping the very density of its core.

“…!”

Sensing the danger a beat too late, the hulk stamped down to fling the shield away. But it was already too late. The arm gripping the shield, and even the massive torso, had already fused into one with it, frozen into a pale, blue-white taxidermy.

Seraphina walked up unhurriedly and tapped the shield with a single finger.

KAWHAAANG—!

It was like swinging a hammer down on a colossal tower of glass. The hulk and its shield burst into thousands of frost shards and scattered in every direction.

Not a single drop of blood was shed. Not from Seraphina, not from the hulk.

“…Ah.”

Elli stared at the spectacle, utterly spellbound.

Here was an attack that could be neither blocked by throwing your weight into it nor weathered through sheer muscle.

“Well? Could you block Sister’s attack?”

At my question, Elli shook her head, her eyes full of shock.

“…No way. What shield-soldier in the world could ever block that?”

Elli’s voice was trembling. Seraphina’s attack denied the very reason a shield-soldier existed: the act of holding the line.

“You can’t block it.”

“…Huh?”

The look on Elli’s face was priceless. Something like, you tell me to watch closely as a fellow shield-soldier, and then you say that?

“You can’t block it by just standing there holding firm like that.”

I launched straight into a breakdown of that one-sided fight for her.

“That thing saw Sister’s sword and naturally judged her a swordsman. So it figured it’d become an unbreakable wall and drag things into a long fight, doubling down on defense. But Sister is a magic-swordsman who wields both magic and swordsmanship to their utmost.”

In battle, an error in reading the matchup leads straight to death.

“Just because you’ve got a shield doesn’t mean you should commit purely to defense — that’s handing your opponent the time to cast a powerful spell, right to their face. Of course, if your side had a skilled mage to cast resistance magic on you, or you were wearing armor woven with magic resistance, that’d be another story. But pin all your faith on the shield with no countermeasure, like that thing did, and you won’t escape that fate.”

Listening to my review, Elli sank into deep thought, then asked again.

“Then what if that shield-soldier had figured out partway through that Lady Seraphina was a mage? What should it have done then?”

What Elli was really asking was how she, a shield-soldier, ought to survive the day she someday faced an overwhelming mage like that herself.

“What else would you do. There are two ways.”

I raised two fingers.

“Either you hurl your shield before the spell fires and cancel out the cast, or you throw the shield away entirely and charge the mage.”

“Throw away… the shield?”

Elli’s eyes went wide.

To her, the shield was something like a lifeline. No, it surely meant more than that. In modern terms, it was about the same as telling a soldier to head into battle without even a gun.

But I nodded firmly and went on with my explanation.

“That’s right. You throw away the shield, close the distance, and force a melee. Driving the mage so hard they don’t get so much as a moment to chant — that’s the only means a shield-soldier has of dealing with a mage.”

“…”

“If you’d rather cling to your shield and end up smashed to pieces like that thing, then by all means, hold on to it.”

At my venom-laced advice, Elli agonized for a long while.

Agonize, and then agonize some more. That’s how you get stronger.

Shounen manga loves that whole line about breaking past your limits and coming out stronger. Right now, Elli stood face to face with that very limit.

“I understand what you’re saying, Young Master. But it’s not as though a mage can’t fight in melee. Like the Lady.”

Somewhere along the way, Elli had cast Seraphina as her imaginary opponent. What if she faced someone like the Lady, wielding both sword and magic at once?

I answered her, my chest full of pride.

“Then you just die cleanly, I guess. What else can you do?”

“…”

At my words, Elli lost her tongue, her face going blank.

“Humans like Sister, who handle both the sword well and magic at its utmost, are rare in this world. On the off chance you meet such a being among the enemy ranks, you’d best just accept it.”

What can you do? An ant can’t kill a human no matter how hard it tries. Though I think I once heard about an ant in some book that actually pulls it off.

In any case, Elli ignored me and called out brightly toward Seraphina as she came back from the battlefield.

“Well done, my lady! You were truly amazing!”

Seraphina, who had walked off the battlefield with utter indifference, straightened the collar of her coat, which hadn’t so much as caught the smell of blood, as she came over to us.

“Arden is right. People skilled in both sword and magic alike are rare even across the whole of the Empire. We do put the knights through parallel training, but most of them hit a wall and give up.”

Her hearing had to be sharp; she’d evidently caught the advice I’d given Elli all the way from over there.

At Seraphina’s words, I shot Elli a triumphant wink.

“Hear that? So your odds of dying in a melee against a mage are very low indeed.”

“You’re right. Hearing it from the Lady, I finally feel reassured.”

“You’re saying you don’t trust me?”

Only now did Elli let out an easy laugh at my joke.

The air had grown so much lighter that I was on the verge of letting my own guard down. And at that very moment, the robed man’s voice rang out.

“Let the next challenger step onto the battlefield.”