Chapter 51

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The crimson sunset looked both bloodstained and ablaze. Beneath it, more than a hundred pairs of eyes watched the duel, each holding a different feeling.

Some watched in support, some in anticipation, some brimming with curiosity. And some...

Marie could see Ricard's back. The boy facing his opponent did not tremble. Rather than brave, he seemed to have no attachment to life. Oddly enough, that was how he struck her.

The enemies climbed the heights for a closer view of the duel. They were scattered here and there, but they had come so close that it was worrying. Surely they shouldn't be allowed that near.

Yet the boy paid them no mind, as though it made no difference whether a hundred men attacked him or a thousand.

The red sun hung between Ricard and his opponent, Oeberstein. Far away, it was slowly sinking behind a ridge.

Its light painted Ricard's left side and his opponent's right side red, leaving their opposite sides dark in shadow.

Who would make the first move? In a duel with live blades, that was always the most important question.

Greater skill did not make a fight last longer. Quite the opposite: most ended in an instant.

Often, the first exchange decided everything. Even the victor might suffer grievous wounds. That was the nature of sword fighting.

Anyone facing such a duel therefore had to commit all their skill, their entire life, to the tip of their blade. Sometimes even their death.

The red sun sank lower and lower. The spectators were beginning to worry that night would fall before anything happened.

As the world slowly, gradually lost its light, there came a brief instant when it grew distinctly darker.

At that moment, Oeberstein stepped swiftly forward. His footwork was light and brisk.

But his sword would swing only after the step. That was true of every sword stroke. Otherwise, it would lose its power.

So Ricard watched his opponent's eyes while taking in his whole body, and shifted a little to the right before the advancing foot even touched the ground.

But in that fleeting instant, Ricard sensed that the distance was wrong. In other words, his opponent had not truly committed to the attack.

As his opponent's foot came down again, someone sprang from behind a rock to the right. So this was what they had been after.

His opponent's foot struck the ground. Two swords sliced through empty air without meeting.

WHOOSH! SWISH!

"Riki!"

"Th-those...!"

The onlookers were shocked. They had staged a one-on-one duel to set up an ambush.

The man who had suddenly appeared charged at Ricard. Ricard hastily turned toward him. But even that charge was a feint.

Rather than close all the way in, the ambusher ran swiftly around him, flicking throwing knives from both hands in rapid succession.

The knives were imbued with mana. They looked capable of punching through iron plate. With techniques like these, the man could certainly have made quite a name for himself in his region.

More frightening still, the first knife was meant to draw a dodge, the second to cut off retreat, and only the third was the real attack. It was meticulously planned.

Indeed, Ricard evaded the first two knives, but not the third.

His torso twisted and snapped backward. From a distance, anyone would have thought the knife had struck him.

"Rickyyy!"

His friends cried out. But the closest person to Ricard was Oeberstein. He rushed in to finish the job for certain.

But what was this? Suddenly, a knife point appeared before his eyes. Ricard had snatched the third knife out of the air and thrown it at him. Wait, was that even possible? It couldn't be.

For an instant, Oeberstein felt time slow down. But he knew better than anyone that he could not dodge it. All that did was prolong the terror and despair of his approaching death.

THUNK!

The knife struck Oeberstein squarely between the eyes. The entire blade sank in, reaching his brain, leaving only the handle exposed. Its force snapped his head backward.

The other man, who had been moving in with a knife to help kill Ricard, faltered at the unexpected turn. To his eyes, Ricard's cloak seemed to spin like a top with the violence of his movement.

The red cloak swept sharply aside, and a sword point shot out from behind it, straight at him.

"Urk!"

He had never imagined anything like this. His feet tangled, and he staggered as though about to fall backward. In the end, he merely thrust a hand forward, without even managing a defense.

Ricard's sword pierced his palm, kept going, and drove cleanly through his throat.

"Ghk!"

As though there were no need to check whether the man was dead, Ricard immediately pulled his sword free and flicked it through the air to shed the blood.

Then he swept his disheveled cloak aside with one hand and glanced left and right, as if checking whether anyone else meant to attack.

Two corpses lay sprawled on the ground. Despite the surprise attack, Ricard had killed both skilled opponents and stood perfectly composed, without a trace of dismay. He did not even bother to show off.

Admiration escaped friend and foe alike. Not even a rehearsed acrobatic performance could match that. It was the very pinnacle of skill.

"Wow..."

Even the friends who had been rushing to help him stopped in their tracks and stared blankly. What had just happened?

But there was another problem: Reinhart, leader of the Widowmakers clan.

"Those cowardly fucking bastards!"

Apparently furious at the cowardly attempt to ambush someone during a sacred duel, he came down the slope, dragging his enormous club along the ground.

The earth did not actually shake, but he was so huge that his pounding steps made it feel as though it did.

"You filthy sons of bitches! You still call yourselves men!? Have you no shame!? Huh!? What are you looking at, you fuckers!?"

The sun had already set, leaving everything dim, but his booming voice made his presence unmistakable. And once their leader moved, his men came pouring down after him.

Ricard was briefly taken aback. Wait, this didn't seem right. Who was guarding the tower?

Just then, several men rushed at him. They harbored the vain dream that killing Ricard would earn them one of the vacant places among the Nine Swords of the Empire.

But because each of them shared that ambition, they were competitors rather than allies.

"Move! Out of my way!"

"I was first!"

Ricard quickly scanned his surroundings once more, then charged at them instead. Veering diagonally toward their outer flank, he swung his sword in the dim evening light.

WHOOSH!

Air whistled as Ricard's blade and his opponent's weapon passed each other. The enemy's weapon cut empty air, while Ricard sliced through the tendons beneath his armpit.

The arm dangled, not quite severed.

"Aaargh!"

From that point on, the enemies threw caution aside and rushed in, tangling with one another.

Reinhart, thundering down the heights, took a great swing of his club and smashed one of them.

"Shameless bastards!"

CRUNCH!

The attack simply crushed everything beneath its tremendous weight, weapons and armor alike. Having killed one enemy, he swung his club from side to side.

It looked as though he was merely flailing about, but the blows were so powerful that no one dared approach.

As the enemies hesitantly backed away, Reinhart's men surged at them.

"You fucking bastards!"

"Fuck off unless you want your wives widowed!"

"Long live the Widowmakers!"

The Beringen Guild's forces were vastly outnumbered, but things were already half a shambles, and in the evening gloom, no one could tell what was happening.

The hundred or so enemies split into those attacking Ricard, those fleeing the Widowmakers clan, and those who simply watched from a safe distance.

Most astonishing of all were the men rushing to loot equipment from their own comrades' corpses. Perhaps they cared nothing about who won the guild war and only wanted to make some money.

Everyone did whatever they pleased, creating utter chaos. It was less a battle than a brawl between people carrying blades.

Amid all this, however, the cleverer enemies tried to seize the tower under cover of the confusion.

Even with his surroundings so difficult to make out, Ricard caught their movements precisely.

Those attacking him were too tangled up with one another to mount a proper assault, so they required little attention.

But the enemies swarming up toward the tower were a clear threat.

"I'm fine! Defend the tower!"

In truth, Ricard did not even know where his friends were. The sun had set before he knew it, and darkness was gathering rapidly.

Amid the confusion, Ricard quickly assessed the battle. Trying to stop Reinhart now would not salvage the situation. It was too late to return to defend the tower, too.

So he simply plunged into the enemy. Dark shapes crowded his vision, and he swung wherever he could. Arms were severed, flanks sliced open, and heads sent flying.

The enemies could not distinguish friend from foe. They did not even know who was cutting them down.

"Fuck!"

"Aaaaaaargh!"

"Who is that!? Get out of the way!"

Seizing that opening, Ricard broke through them and raced down the heights.

Meanwhile, Boribori had picked out Ricard's voice clearly despite the din. To protect the tower, he planted himself squarely across the narrow path leading up to it.

Because Boribori's swordsmanship was based on writing characters, his weakness was a lack of nimble footwork, which inevitably limited his use of space.

But when fighting from a fixed position, he was truly terrifying.

Sure enough, he swung his sword swiftly at the enemies charging him. His mana-laden blade left sweeping black afterimages darker than the night.

Swishes and sharp chops rang out, like a butcher hacking and slicing meat.

Heads and limbs dropped to the ground before him, one after another.

Boribori retreated little by little, calmly swinging his sword. Unaware of the dismembered bodies at their feet, the enemies tripped over them and tumbled down in a heap.

"Boribori! Boribori the Quarterer!"

Someone shouted it. It was infuriating that people kept coming up with such awful nicknames, but there was nothing the person bearing one could do. Other people chose them.

There was one problem, however. He could handle enemies attacking head-on, but those throwing iron weights and nets from a distance were another matter.

For all their appearance, each was a fighter of some standing back home. Their skill with their various weapons was anything but amateur.

An iron weight struck the fingers gripping Boribori's sword.

CRACK!

"Ugh!"

His right index and middle fingers broke at once. Gritting his teeth, he tightened his other hand and remaining fingers, managing to keep hold of his sword. But he could no longer fight at his best.

"Bori!"

It was Marie's voice. The enemies blocked her from view. She seemed to be somewhere beyond them.

"I'm fine!"

He wasn't fine, but he shouted that he was. He had to let his allies know he was still alive, or they would falter. Besides, he hadn't been hit anywhere vital. If he gritted his teeth and fought, he could somehow hold on.

CLANG! CLINK! CLANG!

Blades clashed near and far. Now and then, someone's dying scream rang out.

His breathing grew labored, and lights flashed here and there in the dark like fireflies.

Those flashes marked the fighting of people proficient in mana. They might not be Sword Masters, but they could at least channel some mana into their weapons.

Around those fighters, the chaos seemed to be resolving itself. Marie was among them.

When she struck the exposed backs of the enemies trying to reach the tower, they scattered to either side.

This had never been a planned operation, and their resolve was not particularly strong. Once they decided it was hopeless, they dispersed in every direction and rushed down the heights.

Dismembered corpses lay piled knee-high in the narrow path. Marie finally managed to reach Boribori.

"Are you all right?"

"M-my fingers are a little... Where's Riki?"

"I don't know..."

"He'll be all right."

Boribori spoke with absolute conviction. Marie wondered how he could be so certain, but there was something more urgent to attend to.

"Let's treat your injury first."

"Okay."

They started walking toward the tower. Just then, flames surged high into the air far below the heights. Both their heads instinctively snapped toward them.

Ricard had set the fire. Once the battle had dissolved into a melee, he had committed to what he considered the best move available.

Since friend and foe were indistinguishable anyway, he had rushed into the enemy camp to burn their supplies.

He ambushed and killed the enemies who had remained far from the fighting in that poor excuse for a camp, reassuring themselves that they would be safe. Then he used nearby campfires and torches to set everything he could ablaze.

The fire spread in moments, illuminating the Kaitz heights in place of the sun. The unsettling red glow reached halfway up the slopes, exposing the chaos that darkness had concealed.

The sudden blaze dealt a severe psychological blow to the enemies fighting on the heights. Regardless of their numerical advantage, it abruptly struck them that they had nowhere to return to.

Worse, most of the bodies strewn around them plainly belonged to their own side. They might have been better off not knowing in the dark, but now that they could see, fear seized them. Were they losing?

Then they saw Ricard coming back up the heights, sword in hand. He was not running, but walking slowly.

Astonishingly, rather than slip back under cover of darkness after his surprise attack, he was boldly climbing toward a large group of enemies in full view.

His red cloak fluttered, making him look even larger. The shadow at his feet stretched to a giant's size and writhed wildly.

Ricard panted heavily. Like a machine, he calculated how many more enemies he could kill with his remaining strength. Dozens of tactics arose in his mind accordingly.

That one was clumsy. That one had some skill. That one had little stamina left. Moving right as he fought would let him exploit their flank. Such thoughts spun through his mind like clockwork.

Even their weapons and the condition of those weapons registered in his mind without conscious effort.

He looked at the enemies with eyes absorbed in those calculations—not fear, not courage, not madness.

To the men standing dumbstruck before him, Ricard looked nothing like a human being. An inexplicable aura emanated from him. This bastard wasn't human.

Then one man fled. That was all it took. Everyone ran without waiting to see what anyone else would do.

Still on his way up the heights, Ricard stopped when the enemies before him fled and glanced around, as though surveying the scene.

Corpses lay strewn around him, and the terrible blaze below lit his figure.

To those watching from afar, it was utterly horrifying, like a deliberately staged scene. His immense shadow seemed to dance with glee.

Those who lay dead, those who had fled, and the one who stood alone. The contrast was stark.

Reinhart, too, watched Ricard from a distance. He himself was practically bathed in enemy blood, yet the sight of Ricard reminded him of the first time he had seen Steiner.

Things that were not human roamed this world. A human could not kill a monster. Only another monster could do that. So Reinhart believed.

In the end, the boy in the red cloak was no human either.

But to Ricard, the scene around him was familiar. No—it was something intimately familiar that he had briefly forgotten.

Fire and steel, blood and death. He could see it all, smell it all. Past and present overlapped.

Perhaps it was exhaustion, but his ears felt muffled. He could barely hear anything except the loud pounding of his heart and the sound of his own breathing.

It felt as though a hand had thrust up from the abyss, seized his ankle, and begun dragging him down. Into deep water—or into the past.