[679] Awakening of the Five Senses (3)
Rian did not deny Kido's words.
He'd grown sick of seeing how human nature showed itself in extreme situations.
Rian could endure more than most—not because his nature was different, but because he had learned to hold back.
"Come down. Let's finish this."
He cut simply because the other was an enemy.
Erasing countless meanings with a single objective—that was Rian's strength.
"Humans are so arrogant."
Kido leapt down from above, landed lightly, and swung his spear; a sharp whistle sounded.
'He's nimble.'
Rian, who had faced the Tempest Wig before, knew better than anyone how fast it could move.
'No, it's even faster.'
Kido vanished, and as Rian twisted his waist and set the greatsword upright, the blades met with a metallic clang.
"Hugh!"
But only sound remained.
Rian's skin crawled at Kido's agility; as Kido disappeared again, he realized his misjudgment.
'Not just faster.'
Much faster.
Although he hadn't seen the fight directly, Wig must have been struck before he could mount a proper counter.
Prrrri. Prrrri.
The flute noise from the spear was a fatal flaw that revealed position, but at that speed it became maddeningly distracting.
"Kiki, you really are different, Knight of Mach."
'He knows me?'
Kido, hanging from his spear and spinning like a cartwheel as he streaked across the ground, sent sparks flying wherever his blade struck.
Sparks spattered at four, five, six meter intervals and flared as if they'd pierced Rian from all sides.
"I'll cut you here!"
Before Rian could react, Kido rolled along the ground, swung his spear—and Rian kicked off the earth and launched upward.
"Hmph. You live with both feet on the ground, and yet..."
Kido, who had reached the landing spot first, threw himself onto his back, spun, and slashed the spear.
"Always looking up at the sky, aren't you."
Goblin Spearmanship—Blade Hell.
Rian couldn't use external gravity, but with divine transcendence he fought the fall's inertia and landed farther away.
"Kiki, you at least know one thing."
Kido rolled across the ground and in an instant was at Rian's feet, slashing his spear.
"Ugh!"
A searing pain flared at Rian's Achilles tendon.
Before Rian could retaliate, Kido widened the distance with a grin and raised his right hand.
"What do you see now, at your feet?"
He held a chunk of flesh torn from Rian's ankle.
"You... you've realized something."
Even if he hadn't been a goblin, he wouldn't have reached this technical level without cause.
Kido put the torn flesh in his mouth and chewed.
"..."
Rian felt nothing special, but he couldn't miss the deep expression that flickered in those snake-like pupils.
Goblin Avatar Art—Law of the Earth.
"All life clings to the ground."
While humans stared at the sky and imagined the cosmos, a goblin lay humbly prostrate, face to the earth.
"The earth embraces everything: it gives food, offers a place to lie down, takes in our waste—like a mother."
One day, struck by that thought, he gave up walking and crawled along the ground.
He tasted dirt, listened to the earth's vibrations, and observed everything living within it.
Finding already-awakened creatures surrendering their lives to the mother's womb of the earth moved him to tears.
It was the first time in his life the goblin had cried.
After a year, like a tadpole sprouting limbs, his arms and legs slowly formed.
At first he moved on his belly, but as strength returned to his fingers and toes he lifted his abdomen and crawled like an insect.
When mind and body finally assimilated with the earth, he understood.
Gravity.
The principle of movement when embraced by the earth.
That a goblin—creatures with less introspection than humans—could awaken Avatar Art showed how deep his reflection had been.
"You are a living being, too. As long as you are bound by the earth's law—gravity—you cannot catch me. Still want to continue?"
"I suppose so."
Rian slung the greatsword over his shoulder, shook the regenerating ankle, and stepped forward.
"After hearing your story, I thought of a way to win."
"Is that so?"
Kido spun his spear and the whistling swelled without end.
"Don't get your hopes up."
The moment he lifted both legs into the air, his body seemed to flicker and slip from view.
'It's certainly a speed hard for human eyes to follow...'
Rian, greatsword on his shoulder, lowered his center of gravity and twisted his body sharply.
'I am a Yaksha!'
Axing—Deny.
"What—?"
The scenery around Rian warped grotesquely; Kido slammed on the brakes.
At unimaginable speed the greatsword swept past Kido's face and Rian's muscles twisted with a dull crack.
"Yaaaah!"
Rian didn't stop and charged at Kido.
The landscape folding like a rug and surging was a feature of Deny—an effect that wrecks an opponent's perception.
"Uaaah!"
Kido, showing the ferocity of an aggressive goblin, also charged forward.
In a short instant dozens of strikes were exchanged and the clash of metal rang loud.
Goblin Spearmanship—One Hundred and Eight Agonies.
Blades surged from left and right almost simultaneously, leaving afterimages that spread in all directions.
Rian's movements matched the speed and deflected the blades.
'What on earth is this...'
When the war-sword-sized blade left afterimages, even the whistle was drowned by a gale.
The force was on another level, and impacts that felt like crushing hands made Kido curl up and roll on the ground.
"Kiiiii!"
He screamed and aimed for Rian's ankle, but Rian was already suspended in midair.
'He's fallen into it!'
Kido, with his limbs glued to the ground like an insect, slid toward the landing spot.
Even so it was faster than bipedal movement, and at the precise moment he hunched his body he unleashed Blade Hell.
"What—!"
In Kido's rapidly turning view, he still saw Rian nailed to the air.
'Magic?'
That couldn't be!
'Why isn't he falling? Could it be—?'
He had transcended gravity.
One who leaves the mother's womb—the earth—and flies toward the ideal.
The thought sent a shiver down his spine.
"Cut!"
When the will of divine transcendence applied Deny to the Law, the sky behind Rian split in two and surged forward.
"Gruuuuh!"
Kido halted his rotation in a panic and pushed with all his strength, but the greatsword plummeted like lightning where Rian had been.
KRAAAASH!
The ground split with a tremendous roar, dust billowing, and Rian sprang out.
"Wait! Stop!"
Kido shouted, but Rian's resolve, once made, did not waver an inch.
"Shirone!"
At that cry, Kido squeezed his eyes shut when he saw the greatsword.
"…must meet—"
Realizing he was alive because his tongue still moved, he opened his eyes a little and found the blade stopped right before his face.
'Lucky you're alive, but did he actually stop this?'
Rian's forearm twitched with the sound of muscles twisting as he canceled the inertia of enormous force.
"What is Shirone?"
It was the only keyword that could stop Rian, and Kido, relieved that his guess had been right, collapsed to the ground.
"Phew. So that was the Mach's ability. I dismissed him as having no schema and took him lightly, but he was a complete monster."
The tip of the greatsword pressed down on Kido's belly.
"Say one more sentence."
"Shirone needs me."
The words came out without a breath between them.
"And I need Shirone too."
"…What nonsense is that?"
"Shirone is looking for Ra Enemi. So am I. That's why I quit Speed Killer and came here."
Now that he thought about it, Kido was alone.
"You expect me to believe that? You're probably with Spectrum too—aren't you one of Ra Enemi's followers?"
"It's complicated."
Kido shook his head.
"I don't think he's real. He exists only as an incident. Of course he came to me too. He said he'd make me king of goblins, even king of humans. But I refused."
"Why? Isn't that what you all want?"
"I knew he killed my sister."
Rian frowned.
"I don't understand. You just said Ra Enemi exists only as an incident, and now you say he killed your sister?"
"He ate her."
Kido pointed at his throat with long fingers.
"After my sister died, I ate her corpse."
It wasn't unusual in goblin society.
"When you eat a creature, some of its memories surface. Not all, but certain ones. I call it the 'taste of memories.'"
Rian slowly sheathed the greatsword.
"At first I thought goblins were always like that, so I lived without much thought: I ate humans and whatever else. Then I realized I was the only goblin who liked reading books and playing music with a whistle."
Kido shook himself and stood.
"When I ate my sister, the presence most strongly imprinted in her memory was Ra Enemi. I don't know how, but she seemed to have died of shock in utter despair. Maybe he killed her to draw out my rage. But as you can see..."
Kido spread his arms and shrugged.
"I'm not your run-of-the-mill goblin."
"So? You want revenge?"
"I would, if I could. But that would only be an emotion borrowed from whatever creature I ate—goblins don't usually do revenge. Then I learned about you and Shirone."
Through Wig's flesh.
"And by eating some of your flesh, I learned the relationship between Shirone and Ra Enemi. From those memories, hearing, touch, and smell are gathered in Radum now. If I'm the one corresponding to taste—"
It was likely certain.
"Ra Enemi is designing something—colliding variables to induce events in specific patterns. Then our gathering here is inevitable. Among the five senses I don't know about sight, but I think it will reveal itself in time."
"Hmm, so variables collide and—"
He didn't understand.
Kido dropped the explanation and went straight to the point.
"Anyway, we have two choices. Live as Ra Enemi designed, or refuse it."
For Kido, who had awakened Avatar Art, reclaiming free will was as vital as life.
"To choose the latter, we have to know what Ra Enemi is designing. I can do that."
Kido bared his sharp teeth.
"If I materialize Ra Enemi through the five senses, I'll eat it. Through the taste of memories I'll steal Ra Enemi's blueprint."
'That would be good for Shirone.'
Before deciding, Rian glanced at Wig's corpse with a rueful look.
'Tempest Wig.'
They had risen to fame as swordsmen around the same time and he'd felt a kinship—but in what Shirone did there was no room for personal feelings.
'Sorry.'
It wasn't worth arguing over who was at fault in the fight.
He would, however, have to carry the guilt that he couldn't avenge a fellow mercenary.
'See you in Hell.'
"A knight's sword is used only for his lord's purpose," Rian said as he turned to leave.
"Come with me. Take him to Shirone."