Silence struck the yard all at once. Mouths fell open. No one could say how it had happened because no one had truly seen it.
A maid dropped the silver pitcher in her hands. It hit the stone with a sharp clang, and water spilled across the ground like sweat cast loose from a beaten body.
Head Knight Gregorius did not stare in simple shock. His gaze dropped to the marks Joji's boots had left behind. Tiny flickers still danced over the stone.
Thunder. A rare force, and one held by very few.
If Joji had forged a style like this through his own insight alone, then he was no ordinary genius.
He was a monster.
The murmurs began to rise. Sir Engine raised his hands again.
"These bouts have grown rather wearisome."
Daisy rushed to Joji's side from where she had been standing off to the edge.
She had been waiting for this moment, for him to ask for rest at last.
All the words she had practiced by the bench came hurrying back at once.
"Sir Joji, if these exchanges have wearied you, then you should rest," she said, though the plea in her voice would not stay hidden. "No one here will call you a coward, nor say your resolve is lacking."
She spoke with as much steadiness as she could muster. As if moved by the same thought, the maids nearby nodded in agreement.
Among them stood a blond maid as young and striking as Daisy, watching Joji closely with narrowed eyes as she tried to judge what, exactly, had changed in him.
Sir Engine met Daisy as she came near and caught her lightly by the hands, turning her once before setting her gently back upon the bench.
Then he stepped into place again, his feet returning to the arena floor.
"Such concern cannot go unheard," he said.
Then he turned toward Gregorius and bowed his head.
"Head Knight Gregorius, my mind bears a shameless request."
Sir Engine lifted his gaze.
"Grant me this chance. It is something I have long yearned for."
He dropped to one knee before Gregorius, with a sincerity so plain that even the hard men in mail shifted where they stood.
Several knights looked ready to accept before Gregorius raised a hand.
"What request?"
"Grant me this. Let me stand against all seventeen at once," Sir Engine said flatly.
A gasp moved through the crowd, sharp with disbelief at the audacity of it.
Head Knight Gregorius studied the kneeling figure before him. The poise. The stillness. The wrongness in the air around him.
Then he gave his answer, his voice carrying across the yard.
"By my authority, it is permitted."
Gregorius moved at once.
"Archers, come. Cavalrymen, come."
He took command like a man who despised hesitation. That, he assumed, was the shape of Joji's desire.
Over the course of his life, Head Knight Gregorius had seen such men before.
Men who tried to wrench greater strength from themselves by courting death.
Sir Engine sensed the misunderstanding. A brief flicker of surprise passed over his face, but it vanished at once beneath that same noble calm.
Then Sir Engine gestured toward the sword rack with an open palm.
"Might I beg three more swords, in addition to the one I already bear?"
Gregorius weighed the request for a moment, then gave a short wave.
"Do what you must."
The Head Knight glanced around, then jogged a few paces to the duchess's side and lowered his voice.
"Duchess, it would be wise to bring the healers. Just in case," Head Knight Gregorius whispered.
Duchess Rosalind gave a small nod. In truth, she was as incredulous as any of them.
Even she had not expected Joji to go this far.
She too dreamed of the duchy standing as an independent state, yet she had rebuked him harshly because she could not allow others to think she felt the same.
The reason was simple. Even at the peak of Rank 6 as a Grand Magus, she knew she was not strong enough.
So she could only watch Joji struggle and hope her daughter might truly find happiness with such a man.
Sir Engine took up two swords in hand. A third ran straight along his back like a second spine, while the fourth rested sheathed at his hip.
"Joji of Sins Crossroads," he announced as he settled into his stance.
There would be no more delay.
Head Knight Gregorius looked left, then right, making certain the lines were set, the men prepared, and the distance clear. Then he lowered his hand.
"Begin."
The archers loosed the instant Gregorius's hand fell. Bowstrings thrummed like a swarm of angry bees.
A continuous barrage of arrows hissed toward Sir Engine, the famed Everhart Rapid Fire Combat leaving Sir Engine almost no room to slip or breathe.
The cavaliers gave him no respite either. Their mounts thundered forward at once, riders and horses flowing with aura as one.
Even Joji, watching through his own borrowed eyes, felt a chill at the sheer speed of a mounted knight in full charge.
"Come, Sir Joji. Taste our lance," called the lead cavalier.
Sir Engine read the field in a glance, then vanished from where he stood and slipped backward.
One of the swords in his hand spun once before he released it, sending the blade whirling high above him.
Head Knight Gregorius frowned, unable to tell what style the young Joji was attempting.
Then Sir Engine reversed his grip on the second training sword, holding it near the middle of the dull blade with the tip jutting out.
The falling sword spun into the exact line he needed. Aura surged into his arm. He struck the airborne weapon by the hilt.
Steel rang.
The thrown sword shot forward like a ball off a bat, spinning hard and flying straight.
The lead cavalier's eyes widened. He tried to bring up his lance, but the length of it betrayed him.
Sword and steel helm met with a sharp crash. The blow tore the lead cavalier clean from the saddle.
His lance fell to the ground, and his horse screamed and skidded to a halt, breaking the charge apart.
{Measure of Completion: 84 of 100}
Before the cavaliers' eyes could follow, Sir Engine was already in the middle of them all, not fazed, being pinned between the opposing horses.
"There he is. After him," one of the cavaliers shouted, pointing him out.
Sir Engine snatched up the fallen lance and poured aura into the long weapon.
He drew his right arm back as far as it would go, then hurled the steel like a javelin at the phalanx where the archers had taken cover behind their shielded pikemen.
The pikemen reacted at once. Shields locked tight. The heavy lance drove into their formation and wedged itself between the overlapping shields, leaving no easy way for Sir Engine to reclaim it.
Just as he intended. He rushed in close.
Pikes shot out from behind the shield wall in the same instant, their three meter reach thrusting forward fast enough to catch any man off guard.
Not Sir Engine. He stepped onto the tip of the nearest pike and used it as a foothold, balancing there for the smallest breath of time.
The cavaliers who had just circled back could only stare, their mouths hanging open behind their helms.
Then concentrated aura gathered in Sir Engine's palm. He struck the flat butt of the lodged lance with that golden force.
The aura ran through the steel like a living current, gold flooding down its length in a sharp rushing wave.
The moment it reached the buried tip, it burst. The explosion went off inside the shield formation.
The pikemen never saw it coming. Their tight tortoise broke apart from within, men and shields flung outward as though the whole formation had been rigged to blow.
"Argh. My shield."
"What kind of sorcery is this?"
{Measure of Completion: 98 of 100}
Sir Engine surged into the gap, snatched up two fallen shields, and flooded them with aura until they hummed in his hands.
He charged the archers like a battering beast, head lowered and shoulders set.
But the Everhart Rapid Fire Combat was not made to fear shielded men. It was made to kill them.
Their arrows were built to punch through steel, and the closer a man pressed an archer, the deadlier they became.
Sir Engine narrowed his eyes as the shields dented and warped beneath the barrage.
Even so, he could not stop. He still had to complete this mission for Joji.
By now, he judged the display had done enough to restore the young man's name, so he turned his full attention to the task.
With a sharp snap of his wrists, he hurled both shields. They missed by a deliberate margin, arcing high and vanishing into the dark above the yard.
Then he drew the two swords at his waist and began knocking the blunted arrows from the air one after another.
Sparks burst around him as ten archers boxed him in, while squires beyond them rushed fresh quivers forward to keep the storm alive.
Sir Engine could already feel the swords wearing down in his hands.
The piercing aura of the second Everhart Tempest Art, Emerald Blade Wind, ate through steel with destructive hunger.
Daisy shut her eyes. She could not bear to watch.
Then the three most aggressive archers behind Sir Engine leapt twenty feet into the air, timing themselves with a fresh cavalry charge at the worst possible moment.
Horses came on in groups of three and four, closing around him as though he were some great beast marked for the hunt.
Sir Engine only smiled. The crowd watching held its breath.
Frozen in that instant, he looked utterly surrounded. Completely cornered.
Three lances a couple of gallops away.
Arrow volleys came from ten with different heights.
A bowman who spotted something flying behind the cavaliers could only widen his eyes before he could shout.
The two shields came down out of the inky night sky.
Two cavaliers on the outermost back, was left unaware.
The shields caught two cavaliers at the back of the head with a sickening thud and dumped them from their saddles.
Sir Engine, with all his grace, flew out in the middle of the chaos and parried as he ascended.
"I yield," Sir Engine shouted.
Then dropped both swords when the new quivers were about to arrive.
"This Joji is spent. I had come for only a hundred men. I must beg my fellow knights' pardon for the inadequacy of my body," Sir Engine said, then bowed to all eight directions with fluid dignity.
{Measure of Completion: 100 of 100}
Boos rolled in from the Guards and Squires watching at the edges of the yard.
Sir Engine paid their attitude no mind. He was not dispensing free stamina potions.
This was willpower, reduced to a system and driven like a machine.
From somewhere deep within, he felt Joji's attention sharpen.
Joji was beginning to understand that this was not truly like a game.
Yes, he might have completed the mission over the course of three days.
But because he had forced it through in a single day, and against a small platoon of knights, no less, something else had happened in the process.
He had built a name for himself.
Joji was no mind reader, but even he could sense the shift.
He stood better in their hearts than he had that morning.
Sir Engine then coughed, more for effect than need, and turned to address the crowd before doubt could settle in.
"I thank you all for the aid you have lent my progress. What you have seen is only a small fragment of the art I am shaping."
"It is deeply flawed, fit only for desperate hours, and little else."
That, the knights understood. Strength bought at a price no man could afford twice.
The sort a man used only when the field was already lost and he meant to fight to the death anyway.
The yard slowly loosened after that. Men laughed.
They shoved one another by the shoulder and spoke of drink.
"Come on. Let us find a cup and wet our throats."
"Ho, where is Sir Joji?"
"Aye. Where did he go?"
They looked around and found no trace of him.
A few traded glances, each understanding more than he cared to say aloud.
Joji's room lay down the corridor to the left.
Sir Engine carried him right. He pushed open a familiar door and slipped inside.
The first thing that met him was the scent of flowers, then the softer warmth of a young woman's room.
Clean pink linen. Crushed petals. A sweetness that lingered in the air.
Sir Engine crossed the room and collapsed onto the bed with his boots still on, smearing mud, blood, and fine steel dust across the sheets.
Daisy's room.
{We are all men here, Sir Joji. We would not rob you of your body in so cherished a moment.}
When Joji took back control of the body, exhaustion hit him with a violence he had never known.
It felt as though his soul had been forced into stone.
He could not move a single muscle, yet everything burned.
Even his jaw had locked shut, and all he could do was lie there and let tears gather from the sheer intensity of the pain.
Joji slept like the dead. When Daisy entered some time later, she stopped at the sight of him, hesitated, then quietly lay down on the cleaner side of the bed.
She was tired too, worn thin from worrying over the stubborn man beside her.