71. I Can Do This All Day Too

Our bodies have a durability stat. The total amount of it, and the rate at which it gets chipped away, vary from person to person, but one thing is certain: durability has a limit.

Someone might object, “Don’t go slapping a careless ceiling on human growth!” But the moment you deny it, some unexpected accident comes along to prove the point. So I can say it with full confidence: there’s a limit to what one person can do alone.

— To live is to have the courage to throw yourself into countless human relationships.

It was something my teacher once said to me.

— You don’t have to force yourself to act.

Back then, I’d misunderstood what my teacher meant. I thought that I, hovering at the edge of things with my awkward smile, had become an uncomfortable burden. But that short little sentence had in truth been concern meant for me, and I only understood that after my teacher was gone.

.

.

.

“Be a good boy and die!”

Beta, draped in Eligos’s husk, thrust his spear out, its force amplified by the black horse’s acceleration. Normally I wouldn’t have tried to meet something like that head-on. But the me of right now wasn’t alone.

Throw a punch, and there’s one spot where the force gathers hardest. I called it the focal point of force. For me, in a punch, that point was the middle finger: the instant I clenched my fist tight, the force pooled around the middle-finger knuckle, and landing that point on an opponent was what let me hit so much harder.

I got plenty of mileage out of it.

I’d put the method to good use back in my school days. The same held true for the sword. Whether thrusting a blade straight forward, swinging at an opponent’s flank, or cutting clean down from above, the principle didn’t change. To deflect an attack, the key was to strike where the opponent’s focal point of force was weakest. And of course, the spear Beta thrust with all his might had a focal point of its own.

— BAM!

I read its trajectory all the way through, then knocked it aside at the flank, where that focal point hadn’t yet gathered.

“Uh… uwah!?”

At that, Beta lurched hard and all but slid off the black horse.

“Hiiiiiiieee—!”

The horse barely caught its balance, though, so he kept his seat.

“Wh-what are you?”

“What do you think.”

I reset my stance and answered him coolly.

“The man who’s going to become House Arne’s heir — and the swordsman who’s going to beat the crap out of you.”

“You crazy bastard!”

Maybe it shook him that I’d parried a strike thrown in dead earnest so easily, because Beta didn’t come rushing back in.

“You coming? Because if you don’t, I will.”

“Shut up, shut up! You blocked that on pure luck — don’t get cocky!”

“For luck, you sure wobbled an awful lot there.”

I kept up the standoff, drifting close and pulling back without committing, prodding Beta a little harder. The truth was, I’d pushed my body too hard going a full round with Sylvia’s bunch.

I’d smashed Sylvia’s lot before the strain set in, but…

I needed a moment to catch my breath. I played it off like nothing was wrong, but parrying Beta’s spear had left my hands buzzing and numb.

On top of that, Eve couldn’t get into the fight just yet, and there was a good reason for it.

To work the illusion that had saved Elli, I’d let Seraphina freeze me, and my body had filled with an icy chill. Before I’d fully recovered from it, I’d thrown myself into battle, and the aftermath had left my durability on the verge of shattering. Fatigue I hadn’t noticed piling up now weighed on me heavy as lead, and an exhaustion deep enough to drop me asleep the moment my head touched the ground had sunk its hooks into me.

The knotted muscles in my calves loosened. But the moment my legs eased, my elbows began to tingle, and the instant they did, that sensation vanished too.

Eve had read my body’s condition through Overclock and was clearing away whatever would get in the way of the fight.

I gave a nod and went back to goading Beta.

“You stole such a fine body, and you still can’t beat little old me — floundering around like this. Aren’t you even ashamed?”

“I just didn’t have enough time! If I’d had the time, I could’ve possessed a far better body than this one!”

“Hah.”

The sheer absurdity dragged a dry laugh out of me. Right now, Beta was wearing the body of an outrageously powerful demon named Eligos.

He’s saying that — to my face? To me, of all people, the one possessing Arden’s body?

A body so thickly caked in curses I couldn’t even wash it myself. A body that coughed up blood at all hours, that even while lying perfectly still could be struck without warning by horrific pain, as though someone were driving an awl into my lungs. A body that had once been swimming along the very ridgeline of death, and that ran more or less normally now only because I’d somehow endured those ghastly days.

“You’re spoiled rotten, you really are. Rotten.”

“What would you know, running your mouth like that!”

“What do you mean, what would I know! Anyone can see that body of yours looks stronger than me.”

“Damn it, I should’ve gone with a better one! Of all things, the first one ready to go had to be this woman…!”

“Whoa — there’s more of them?”

“That’s none of your concern!”

He’d cursed Gamma up and down for leaking information, yet here he was, ceaselessly handing me far more important intel himself.

So once the preparations are finished, they can descend into reality anytime they please?

Come to think of it, Beta and Gamma had called themselves the second and third servants. Which meant there were still more of their comrades out there, the puppeteer among them.

So we really are heading for the future I know.

If all of them came down into reality and began wreaking havoc… a world swallowed whole by demons would come to pass.

“Even so — how did you beat my sister?”

Seraphina, who’d been holding herself upright on her sword, had finally been carried off by Lillian.

I’d hoped it would all come together nice and easy.

I’d been hoping that, somehow, Seraphina would find a way to settle her duel with the master on her own. Sitting back and letting myself get carried off wasn’t my style, but the way things were unfolding, this was no time to fuss over style.

Valerian still hadn’t woken, and Elli was in critical condition. As for who was still in fighting shape: there was Leo, guarding Lucius at the second gate, and Lillian, who’d only just shaken off her broken, dazed state, along with…

“Woof!”

…one half-tamed mutt. That was the lot of them.

“Want me to tell you?”

When I nodded, he leveled the black spear at me and spoke.

“But first — you spill how a worm like you blocked an attack that even that woman couldn’t stop.”

“Guess I’m just stronger than Sister Seraphina.”

“Don’t talk crap! You, stronger than the Empire’s Knight Commander?”

“Could be.”

“Oh, really?”

“Yeah.”

“In that case…”

Beta hauled hard on the reins, and the black horse blew the arena sand apart and charged. The huge black spear, riding the momentum of a nearly one-ton armored warhorse, ripped the air with a shriek like a scream.

“Prove it, you worm!”

Beta lowered his body over the horse and thrust the black spear out. The tip came rushing in and walled off the space dead ahead of me, leaving nowhere to dodge.

Instead of backing away, I sprinted straight at the black horse with everything I had. An instant before we collided, I bent my knees and threw my upper body back as far as it would go.

— Shoooosh!

The moment I pressed flat to the ground, the black spear skimmed past the bridge of my nose by a few centimeters. From the height of the horse he rode, the spear’s angle simply couldn’t reach all the way down to the floor, and I’d burrowed straight into that absolute blind spot.

“Hiiiiiiieee—!”

The black horse wailed as it watched me slide beneath it.

Too late!

I had no intention of letting the horse’s belly simply pass over my face. Still on my back, I raised my sword and drew a long line from its chest all the way to its hindquarters.

— Shrrrk!

The feel of the cut opening its belly registered through my hands. Before long the black horse lost its balance and staggered, and the moment I slipped out from between its hind legs, I used the recoil to snap upright.

“Gah! You little rat!”

Its center of gravity gone, the horse’s forelegs buckled and it pitched forward. Unable to ride out the violent heaving, Beta spilled gracelessly onto the sand, and the riderless horse kicked out its hind legs, thrashing in agony.

Rather than chase Beta as he staggered to his feet, I went to the horse, its belly split open and screaming.

“I’m sorry.”

With a quiet apology, I drove my sword in and took the horse’s neck in a single stroke. I didn’t want to leave it in pain any longer than I had to.

“You’ll regret throwing that chance away!”

In the meantime, Beta had picked himself up and dusted himself off, and now he came charging in, eyes blazing. I steadied my breath and roughly wiped the horse’s blood from my face.

— Clang—! Clang!

Beta’s spearwork turned far sharper and more dogged than it had been from horseback. In place of a rider’s charging force, the irregular angles of a spear braced against solid ground came storming in from every direction.

“How long are you going to keep playing defense!”

With no opening to counter, all I could do was weather the downpour of his offense.

“There’s no way your body’s still fine! I know full well your arms and legs are screaming!”

Just as he said, had it not been for Pain Suppression, the pain would’ve made me drop my sword.

“You know what? Unlike you, this body never tires!”

True to his shouting, the battle dragged on and on. Beta’s swinging spear, meeting a sword now caked with the black horse’s congealing blood, slowly began to lose its original color.

“A demon’s body really is the best! I could fight all day long!”

The once-black shaft had become a red spear now, glistening with a sickening sheen.

“Come on, answer me! Do you feel the terror of death yet!?”

Facing Beta as he hammered away, certain of his victory, I spat out the blood pooled at the corner of my mouth.

— Ptooey!

The instant that gob of blood punched through the slit of his helm and struck him dead in the eye, fogging his vision, I readjusted my grip on the sword.

“Sorry, but I can do this all day too.”

Beta staggered back and groped to wipe the blood from his eye, but I had no intention of releasing the offensive I’d fought so hard to seize. Without a single thought for what came after, I swung my sword with the one-track resolve to cut down the enemy in front of me.

— Clang! Ka-clang! Clang—!

I still had no real swordsmanship of my own to speak of. Down in the underground training ground I’d traced my ancestors’ sword-marks and soaked up their techniques every way I could, and yet a vague, nagging unease had always lingered in me.

So the swordsmanship was never the problem.

House Arne’s swordsmanship was superb. It had, after all, produced countless heroes and knights who’d commanded the whole world from atop its foundation.

But ask me whether that swordsmanship was the strongest of all, one that could chew through every matchup the world had to offer, and I’d have said no. And so, though I’d analyzed the family’s techniques to perfection and rendered them into data, I’d never made them the bedrock of my own. With nothing more than a vague expectation that I’d someday obtain the strongest swordsmanship, I’d treated the family arts as little more than tools in a toolbox, pulled out and used as the situation called for. But over the course of this final trial, I’d arrived at a single realization.

My mindset had been wrong from the very beginning.

All those hours in the underground training ground with no opponent, cleaving the empty air, chasing blindly after my ancestors’ shadows. All those moments facing Kairon’s phantom, feeling in my very bones just how weak I was. All those times I tested the limits of my blade against lesser demons, foes overwhelmingly weaker than me. And now, the desperate strikes I swung with my life on the line against Beta in the body of Eligos.

Each time the situation shifted, each time the enemy before me changed, my sword took a different shape. I’d been so certain, proud even, that I understood the family’s swordsmanship perfectly. I’d memorized the trajectory of every form and hammered the distribution of force into my head as hard numbers. But watching my sword change with each situation, I finally grasped my own arrogance.

Swordsmanship is boundless.

Those intricate techniques I’d believed I knew were, in truth, no more than the tip of a vast iceberg. Of the deep, sprawling essence the family’s swordsmanship held, I hadn’t understood so much as a single line. Before I could dream any grand dream of forging a swordsmanship all my own, I realized I’d only just turned the first page of the thick book called “the Sword.”

Listen to me, feeling like I’ve become some swordsman — a newbie who hasn’t even held a sword properly for a year.

Though maybe I’d just swallowed a proper red pill.

I can’t wait. My heart’s racing. For the me that’s yet to come.

And with a glad heart, I swung my ignorance at the bastard’s heart.