Chapter 76 - Common Sense for Academy Festivals (6)

Every so-called “trained” agent packed countless intentions into even the smallest action. Just as the furious Ivan was doing by calling Pavel down from the statue.

To dare stand before the former King's statue, to dare look down on him from its pedestal and dismiss the Royal Guard's years of service as meaningless—that was unforgivable.

But at the same time, he needed to eliminate variables by keeping his opponent's attention fixed on him. When the opponent's objective and the “move” he had prepared were unknown, minimizing variables yielded the best results.

And that meant...

'He has help.'

The same applied to his opponent. Pavel, too, was a “trained” agent. Whether he was persuading Ivan or fanning his anger, the situation itself was intended to keep Ivan rooted to this spot.

Moreover, confronting Ivan head-on implied the presence of an accomplice. Pavel surely knew he could not fight Ivan and carry out a terrorist attack at the same time.

“...”

Without shifting his gaze, Ivan took stock of his surroundings. He searched for something out of place among the festivalgoers, among the crowd surrounding him. More precisely...

'Eyes on me.'

This was not a sense that particularly deserved to be called a sixth sense. Most people were sensitive to the gaze of others. It was essentially inborn—a basic sense possessed by every kind of prey animal and social animal.

And humans excelled at turning the senses selected by nature into refined techniques.

'Three.'

Merely sensing someone's gaze was not enough to calculate both their position and direction. But humans were not motionless objects. Even when they thought they were standing still, they constantly made minute movements in response to their breathing, emotions, and surroundings.

With enough training, even that characteristic could be developed into a technique: letting the tiny shifts in viewing angle flow naturally, analyzing the background through peripheral vision while keeping one's gaze seemingly nailed to the opponent.

That process yielded three suspects in all. Now there was one way to confirm who they were.

CLICK.

The hand behind his back closes around the pistol's grip. With the cold sound of metal scraping against metal, Pavel, who hears it too, follows the movement with his eyes and lowers his stance.

A tenth of a second. A split-second reaction. A battle between superhumans can begin in a moment this brief, with nothing more than their eyes and their responses.

BANG!!

As soon as Pavel recognized the object drawn from Ivan's sleeve as a pistol, puzzlement crossed his face. A mere pistol could not hurt a superhuman. And he was pointing the muzzle at the sky—

'The sky...?'

Pavel's expression hardened. He leaped forward almost simultaneously with the flash from the pistol in Ivan's hand.

The belt around his waist came undone.

CLATTER, CLATTER, CLATTER.

To the sound of winding chains, the belt in Pavel's hand elongated and stiffened. A product of magical engineering.

[Dragonstrike Spear, Orlov's Needle]

By the time Pavel reached Ivan, a fully formed spear was already gripped in his hand.

WHOOOSH.

The surrounding crowd had yet to react. Time tilted and slowed until every ripple in a passerby's sleeve was visible. Within that frozen time, the spearhead shot forward, faster than sound.

Ivan's eyes followed the movement of the shaft from beginning to end. A blackened dagger—an ordinary military knife—spun in his hand and settled into a firm grip.

SCREECH!!

The clash of superhumans had begun.

Between one moment and the next. In the gap where moments halted and instants stood still.

With gazes, mana, senses, and fury.

* * *

Battles between superhumans were not mythic spectacles. They were not fantastical contests of majestic blows and mysterious secret arts.

Stripped bare, they were far more desperate. Distance, instants, fragments of time. A struggle within those gaps to touch the opponent's body even once.

It was because time was relative. Even among those grouped together as superhumans, individual abilities naturally differed.

There were clear limits to accelerating the nerves with mana. The time one could seize could not exceed physical limitations. Yet even for superhumans, shaving a tenth or a hundredth of a second off a human body's response time meant grinding away at their own limits every moment.

Thus, there were advantages to be found in the intervals between superhumans. Not everyone could live within the same time. Someone would always move faster, more precisely, and with finer control than someone else.

CLANG!!

The spear flashed toward Ivan's neck like a shaft of light. He brought his dagger up, twisting the shaft aside, and shifted his gaze.

Pavel's eyes held bewilderment and anger. Their meaning was roughly this:

'Why on earth? And how dare you?'

Different emotions, but the same cause. He was furious that Ivan had squandered the first strike.

A first strike meant something different in a battle between superhumans. It was a kind of strategic surprise attack, delivered before the intervals of time between them could be brought into order.

Ivan's devotion of all his efforts to defense after yielding that initial advantage was proof enough. For a long while after their fierce clash began, he struggled to escape the defensive.

CLANG!

Facing a long spear with a dagger was an acrobatic feat in itself. Pavel had to admit it: Ivan's skills were far beyond those of the young recruit he last remembered.

That was what angered him. How dare he yield the first strike to the commander of the Guard? Fire into the sky? Even if there was little he could accomplish with a mere pistol, even so.

Arrogance. And now Ivan was paying the price.

CLANG! CLANG! SKRRRCH!!

Sweeping blows, sharp interrupted strikes, thrusts that shot toward his neck, both shoulders, heart, solar plexus, abdomen, and both thighs almost simultaneously.

This was the pinnacle of skill a person could acquire with a single weapon. Technique that had reached its very essence. And yet Ivan's eyes followed the path of every blow.

CRUNCH! RIIIING!

Pavel conceded that Ivan's mana reinforcement of his nerves surpassed his own. At times, Ivan fully tracked and countered strikes that even Pavel, the man wielding the spear, could not follow with his own eyes. His nerves were nothing short of monstrous.

But the disparity in their equipment canceled all of that out. With the first strike secured and a long spear in hand, against an opponent armed with nothing but a dagger—even if that opponent were the Hero Maximilien, victory was within reach...!

CLANG!!

The dagger shuddered violently after deflecting the spearhead. This was not a matter of reach. It was a matter of force.

A polearm did not generate greater force because its wielder had stronger muscles. In concentrating muscular strength at its tip, a polearm could make full use of centrifugal force and thrust. With sufficient technique, the potential of a dagger became something one could dismiss as negligible.

The very fact that Ivan was blocking the spearhead with a single dagger deserved to be called a miracle.

SKRRRCH, CRACK.

With a chilling sound, the dagger snapped at the base of its blade. Released from the time of superhumans, the blade traced a slow arc as it plunged toward the ground.

“It's over, Ivan...!”

Unlike a standard-issue dagger, the Dragonstrike Spear was an heirloom of House Orlov. Its very craftsmanship was in a different league. In other words, Ivan's defeat had been all but decided the instant the battle began...

CLICK.

The muzzle of a pistol settled lightly atop the incoming spearhead.

“I've seen it all now, Pavel.”

Ivan had taken his gaze off the spearhead and was staring straight into Pavel's eyes.

Seen it? Seen what?

Pavel's eyes wavered. Certainly, Ivan's gaze had followed the spearhead from the start of the battle... Certainly, that was extraordinary visual tracking, but...

BANG!!

Sparks burst from the muzzle resting on the spearhead. Struck by the bullet, the spearhead shook, its trajectory twisting. It scraped past Ivan's cheek and struck empty air before stopping.

Throughout it all, Ivan stood motionless, looking into Pavel's eyes. As though he had known as a matter of course that the strike would miss. Even though he was within a range where a single sideways flick of the wrist could take his entire head off.

With piercingly blue eyes, he stared deep into Pavel's.

“Under the laws of the Royal Guard, I, Ivan Petrovich, shall exact the price of betrayal from former commander of the Guard Pavel Sergeyevich Orlov.”

CLICK.

With the scrape of metal against metal, Ivan raised his pistol in a firm grip and glared at Pavel.

“Pavel Sergeyevich Orlov is hereby stripped of his office as commander of the Guard.”

BANG!!

* * *

Enrique had often told her disciple Lucia about the Hero's Party in those days.

The one who walked ahead of everyone, Maximilien.

The one who stood most upright, Gilles Vert.

The most ferocious one, Einar.

The most insufferable bastard, Veolgrin.

The slightly unsettling woman, Patricia.

The most beautiful assassin in the world, Enrique. (According to herself.)

And...

[“The lad with the best eyes.”]

[“The best eyes?”]

[“Yes. He was like that even when he was still green. Normally, people's instincts make them close their eyes in danger, don't they?”]

That was why reflex training began at the basic level, desensitizing trainees to blades and fists so they would not look away from a blade rushing toward their eyes. Ivan had never needed that.

[“Even when all his other skills were nothing special, the boy was a born observer.”]

Because he observed well, he learned quickly. Whether survival skills or fighting techniques, nothing needed to be demonstrated twice for him.

None of his other talents stood out. He was neither particularly strong nor particularly quick. But his vision alone was truly transcendent. He could pull his weight simply by watching.

[“So we all ended up thinking of him as part of the party.”]

The Hero's Party had seven members, including Ivan the scout. Because they had thought of it that way, they had been dismayed more than once by the absence of their scout when they finally reached the Demon King's castle.

It was all memories now.

[“But, Master. This business of seeing...?”]

[“Once he's seen it, he has its measure. That's how he is.”]

It was not that he learned it. Nor could he reproduce it perfectly. Had he possessed that sort of talent, he would have been the hero.

Rather, Ivan's talent was closer to never forgetting what he had seen once. From the moment he had fully “seen” something, the same attack or trick would never work on him.

He occasionally used strange expressions like “pattern recognition.” But regardless.

[“And do you know what he says after all that? ‘A trained agent never falls for the same thing twice.’ Can you believe him!”]

[“What agent in the world gets training like that!”]

Enrique had burst into peals of laughter.