[518] The Nameless Swordsman (2)
In the face of Fox's predatory stare, Rian slowly looked away.
Avoiding fights you could avoid was another lesson he'd learned from years of skirmishing on battlefields.
No — that wasn't true.
He'd seen plenty of men who weren't afraid to die and who clung to their convictions.
'Then what's the problem?'
It wasn't the simple fear that wounds hurt or that death ends everything.
He didn't have conviction in his sword.
The thought of throwing himself into an uncertain future again and again was sometimes more terrifying than the thought of dying.
Fox studied Rian's hard face, suddenly twigged to something, and burst out laughing.
"Heh heh, a wet-behind-the-ears brat."
It was common enough.
Green swordsmen who'd learned a little and swaggered around townsfolk with a speck of power.
There might be a few like that among thieves, too, but Fox was on another level.
Above all, he could use schema.
"Let's leave settling accounts for later…"
Fox muttered, then abruptly turned and glared at Silvia.
"What's this, Silvia? After all I've done for you, you go and bring in some other man? You really are just like any other woman."
Disgust creased Silvia's expression.
"You despicable man. I don't want to hear that from someone who covets his friend's wife."
Fox's face flushed.
He'd given up being a soldier and become a thief, but whenever he thought of Silvia's husband, his old comrade, the last shred of conscience pricked him.
"Shut up! He's dead! He's not in this world anymore!"
Fox mouthed the little phrase that drove guilt away.
"And I liked you since I was a kid. I want to be with you."
"Taking an interest in a married woman with a daughter isn't love. It's filthy obsession."
"Filthy obsession?"
Fox's face went cold as if he were a different man.
"You think that? I could have had you anytime. But filthy obsession, huh. Fine. From now on, I won't hold back either."
As Fox advanced, radiating menace, Riz stepped in front of her mother.
"Don't bully my mom! My dad won't forgive you!"
Fox's cold gaze cut through Riz.
"Riz, I don't want to hurt your mother. I'm trying to save her from this hellish life. I'm sure your father would thank me."
At his shameless words, Silvia felt dizzy.
"You're not sane. You're crazy."
"Heh heh, maybe so. But what good does staying sane do? If I can have you, I'd rather be crazy."
Realizing she couldn't persuade Fox, Silvia shoved Riz outside and shouted,
"Riz! Run!"
Then she grabbed the soup pot from the table and threw it at Fox.
"Hmph!"
As Fox batted the pot aside with a thick-fingered fist, Silvia suddenly lunged forward and plunged a fork into his abdomen.
Fox flinched at the shoulder but calmly checked the wound.
A kitchen fork wasn't going to penetrate steel-like muscle.
"How insolent…!"
Fox slapped Silvia, and she crumpled to the floor.
"Mom! Mom!"
Fox ignored Riz's cries.
"Don't blame me. You brought this on yourselves."
"Stop it."
Fox turned his eyes and saw Rian rising from his chair with an annoyed look.
He knew the man was big, but seeing him stand revealed a well-balanced, solid frame.
"You talking to me?"
"Even if he's mad, you don't do filthy things in front of a child."
"…You're right."
Fox twisted his neck and said,
"First I'll kill you. How about it? If you're so confident, come at me."
If he took the bait, an immeasurable weight would settle on Rian's shoulders.
"…"
Rian glanced at Riz.
The child's eyes shone with eager hope—the kind of selfishness only a child could have.
"Let's go. I don't want to stain this house with blood."
When Rian proposed they settle it outside, Fox's mouth twitched into a smile.
He couldn't ignore Rian's size.
"You punk, all show. Fine, let's go. We'll make sure the villagers learn who owns this house."
They stepped outside, and villagers who'd heard the commotion peered from beyond Fox's sight, watching.
Rian took in the twelve bandits surrounding him.
There would be no fairness, no even odds.
'Twelve to one, huh.'
Fox swung his greatsword in a wide arc and shouted,
"Hey, wet-behind-the-ears swordsman! What are you waiting for? You not going to attack? Don't tell me you're waiting for someone to ring a bell for you?"
A preemptive strike is efficient in any situation, but if you don't mean to throw your life away, the side with superior numbers has no need to rush in first.
Knowing that, Rian slowly shouldered his greatsword.
The heavy iron slab extended, its balance seeming to shift out beyond where it should, and the bandits' faces went pale.
It was murderous strength.
"Deputy captain, isn't that guy actually really strong?"
A subordinate whispered, and Fox's face tightened.
Saying that in front of the enemy would only sap morale.
"Shut up. He's alone anyway. If twelve of us rush him, anyone would die."
Rian's outward show of power had been impressive, but inside he was restless.
When he'd known nothing, all that mattered was charging until you survived, but the deeper his understanding of the sword grew, the more he saw how reckless and insane that was.
'Everything until now was luck. My sword isn't perfect. Maybe… I could die.'
Even if these were veterans scraped from battlefields, Rian ought to be able to cut them down on technique alone.
But was that truly the case?
Questions about his sword crowded his mind and wouldn't stop.
Without conviction he couldn't act; without action he'd make a fatal mistake at the decisive moment.
'Is my sword really right? Can I actually cut them down?'
Watching Rian grow paler, the bandits first looked baffled, then burst into laughter.
"Hahahah! What's with him? Totally scared. Turns out he's just a big dumb brute."
"Hey, what are you gonna do? You're gonna die now."
As Rian's momentum faltered, the bandits closed in automatically.
"Oppa…"
Disappointment crossed Riz's face, and Silvia, who'd been praying for Rian to win, went pale.
"Kill him!"
The bandits rushed. Instinctively checking behind him, Rian saw a longsword thrust aimed at his torso.
"Ugh!"
He blocked with the greatsword, but being pushed off balance, he swung wildly without checking his opponent's position.
'What a childish sword, Rian.'
Divine Transcendence was a Yaksha skill that drew on rage.
Without conviction in his blade, it was hard to concentrate will on a single act.
"What are you doing! Just go and stab him!"
Blades fell over Rian's head, some aiming for his belly.
'I can't dodge them all!'
Convinced of that, Rian twisted his torso and hoisted the greatsword above his head.
Contrary to expectation, defense and evasion executed perfectly.
Still, Rian was not satisfied and sank into self-reproach.
'It was luck. This isn't skill.'
He spun the greatsword like swinging a noose and struck; necks were cleaved cleanly.
'Not the right angle. Just a fluke.'
What Rian saw, the others could not.
Even Fox, who used schema, couldn't grasp the simple truth hidden in the high level Rian displayed.
"Damn it! He just got lucky!"
Rian stepped forward on one foot and slashed at a diagonal; two bandits split apart with a sickening smack.
When a single stroke cut two men clean through, the bandits finally understood the gravity of the situation.
"What… what is this bastard…!"
"Move, idiots!"
Fearing the shrinking numbers made things more dangerous, Fox hefted his blade and charged to cut Rian down himself.
With the leader joining in, the bandits should have overwhelmed Rian, but the fight stayed neck-and-neck.
'I've gone too deep. This isn't swordsmanship.'
He didn't even have the sense of a clean cut, and yet the bandits' numbers kept falling.
There was no sense of victory.
He wanted to perfectly realize the arc in his head and release it in a satisfying burst, but he had no way to prove its substance.
At times he couldn't tell whether he was performing swordsmanship or dancing like a madman.
Clang!
The sharp ring of steel snapped Rian back to the present. Eleven lay dead; only Fox remained.
"Damn!"
Against Rian's storm of attacks, Fox was repeatedly driven back.
He'd already boosted his physical capabilities with schema, but all he could manage was evasion.
In battle, the presence of schema made a difference as great as the barrier between species.
If that gap wasn't felt, the technical gap was enormous.
'What is this guy? He's not an ordinary swordsman.'
What made it worse was that despite such skill, Rian felt no hope at all.
'It's wrong! This is all wrong!'
Rian saw things Fox couldn't.
So every time he struck, a despair like death swallowed him.
'No.'
He didn't have a genius's knack for the shortest-distance thrust.
Only by swinging hundreds, thousands of times and tightening errors down to sub-millimeter levels could he climb to the next step.
'This isn't it.'
And yet he could see it.
Some ineffable, ideal state shimmered at the edge of perception.
Because that state flickered, all his measures fell apart.
"This isn't it!"
When Rian snapped, Divine Transcendence activated for the first time.
His greatsword sliced through the blade Fox had raised to block, split his torso vertically, and only then did the blade stop.
A stillness as if the world had paused.
When Fox's body slumped with a thud, the villagers finally began to file back into their houses.
He'd cut down twelve bandits by himself.
He was a master such a ruined village—without a scrap left to eat—had never seen.
"Hah…hah…"
For the first time since the fight began, Rian felt relief, but he couldn't recall the posture he'd just taken.
'What the hell was that…?'
Sheathing his sword, he looked around; besides Silvia and Riz, there was no one else.
'Did I win?'
No—he'd survived.
Luck layered on luck, coincidence upon coincidence, had kept him alive.
But how long could he keep holding out like this?
"Ah…"
Silvia, meeting Rian's eyes, let out an involuntary groan.
There was the look of someone who carried all the world's burdens.
But Rian, as if he wanted no pity, turned and inspected the corpses scattered around.
'I did it again.'
He hadn't been able to keep himself safe, and yet he'd meddled once more.
"Clear the bodies."
Rian said to the villagers who were probably listening.
"If you don't want to be held responsible, you'd better do it."
No one would want to take responsibility for today's events, so Rian didn't need to explain at length.
"Come inside. Tell me exactly what happened."
He said that and headed into the house first; Silvia, suddenly snapping back to her senses, followed him.
Riz stayed where she was, staring blankly at the grisly scene Rian had made.
"That guy… he's really strong, isn't he?"