The Seventh Match - 4

The ninth arrow, aimed at Shalk in midair, had passed right over his head.

There was a change in Shalk's trajectory after his jump. This emergency evasion was an ace up his sleeve he had carried with him secretly until he had reached this distance.

If Mele had suspected that Shalk had the means to do so, then he definitely would have countered it in kind.

This guy's a damn monster. Way too strong.

Behind him. The tenth arrow touched down in his original landing spot.

If Shalk had made the slightest incorrect movement, he would've died, every part of him smashed into dust.

Too bad.

Just a bit farther to reach him—taking stock of this as he reaccelerated, a gloomy shadow loomed over Shalk's heart.

Mele the Horizon's Roar was a far more tremendous enemy than the legends, or Shalk's own expectations, had made him out to be.

The truth to these gloomy emotions was the delight in standing before Mele the Horizon's Roar and being able to battle with him.

As well as resignation.

I have to kill him.

This enemy couldn't be beat without killing him.

Mele the Horizon's Roar was too strong. Even if Shalk fully closed the distance between them, this enemy could surely bring out any number of sublime techniques to blast Shalk away.

If there was some method to outdo Mele in this match, it was to definitively end his life with a single strike exceeding the gigant's reaction speed.

Amid these thoughts, the landscape around him changed into light passing him by.

Mele had launched the next arrow.

It wasn't a rapid-fire volley. The interval between shots had been strangely long.

Facing the arrow, which was closing in with destructive relative velocity,

Shalk tried to consider what the pause could mean.

He attempted to evade. "!"

The arrow, piercing into the earth, was the one to thrash about and evade Shalk instead.

Twisting. Scattering. Snaking. Destruction.

Uh-oh.

He was surrounded.

This bizarre arrow had broken down the surrounding earth and lifted it up with its violent roiling. Shalk's way forward was blocked by a large mass of rock, and he had no footing for himself on the continuously splitting and breaking ground. It wasn't only in front of him, either. Right. Behind him to the left. He needed to decide in a split second on his alternative route.

Already accelerating close to his absolute limit, Shalk pulled out the white spear from his deformed bones and pierced the rock in front of him. Using the point of his thrust as a fulcrum, he made a sharp turn. A storm of rock, like buckshot, swept through the position he had just been standing in, scraping away everything with it.

The arrow. The arrow thrashing around. Where is its actual body?

Even in the midst of his high-speed turn, he could perceive the entire scene before him like a still-life painting transmitted piece by piece.

He confirmed the arrow diving into the ground about sixty meters up ahead of him. However, his high-speed senses alone couldn't estimate how its irregular trajectory would jump about.

Right? Left? Would it leap back?

He never took his sights off the arrow's movements. He sensed the initial motion as it began to reverse backward at super-high speed.

Don't get taken in. I just need to cope with what I can see.

In any case, sight was the only sense that would be any help. The explosive sound of the ground being struck, rupturing, and scattering about encircled Shalk's area. He needed to break through this hell, or he'd die.

The arrow reversed course. If anything, to chase after it…I need to go forward.

Both the arrow's trajectory and the onrushing rocks were merely being perceived as elongated phenomena via his high-speed thought process. From the perspective of any other living creature, everything had occurred in just a second. If he could just ascertain the optimal path forward, Shalk would

immediately be able to get out of range of this destructive surface attack.

He wouldn't use any emergency methods like before. The boulders, their relative velocity slower when compared with Shalk himself, seemed to be frozen in the air. He kicked off them in midair and accelerated.

He landed on the flat ground in front of him. Even this piece of bedrock was waning away, and he was able to recognize anew that the previous arrow was an attack meant to destroy the very geography itself.

However, even if his footing crumbled away in an instant, in a world of blinding speeds, it was enough. He evaded a colossal boulder flying and closing in on him with a lower stance.

He raced through the middle of the crumbling maze on the flat rock bed, as fast as electric signals through nerve synapses.

The arrow that Shalk chased after also bounded in every direction. There were no surprises from the arrow itself.

Geographic division. Rapid-fire sniper attacks. The Mystic Arrow.

He had completely dealt with all the ranged attacks. Now he wouldn't give Mele any time to nock the next arrow.

Shalk could very quickly get on top of the hill where Mele the Horizon's Roar stood. Closing the distance at max speed, with one decisive attack—

A crackling shock ran through him. "...!"

The bizarre arrow was flying right past Shalk.

Impossible.

He had only passed five paces behind it. He hadn't been directly hit at all.

Nevertheless, against the raw power behind the arrows Mele shot, at this distance, evasion wasn't an option. The wind pressure from the arrow's passage alone tore off his right arm from the shoulder of his now half-length body and sent it flying.

Where the hell did that come from?

Up until that exact moment, he was supposed to have been tracking the actual body of the bounding arrow. It couldn't possibly have gotten around behind him in an instant.

What was going on? He tried to comprehend things with his high-speed thinking.

"Ohhh."

He understood immediately. The arrow that suddenly jumped out, digging up and smashing the surface behind him, had just been a fragmented piece of the

tip.

The warped shape. Thrashing around and breaking apart. So it was a scatter

shot from the very beginning.

No time was left for him to rejoin his arm. He only had one arm left. Shalk ran.

"My body's gotten…lighter now!"

Shalk went up the hill like a reverse lightning bolt. He readied his white spear and held it straight.

Just beforehand, he extended out all the bones in his body wide.

He pierced his spear into the flat ground. He forcibly slowed himself with the air turbulence.

Impact.

Right in front of his eyes, an iron pillar stuck out of the ground. Abominable precision, right up to the very end.

Perhaps due to the instantaneous rapid release, there wasn't much power to it. Even then, Shalk could tell the shock wave from the impact alone had made all the joints in his body creak.

"…An iron arrow, eh?"

With just a single arrow, a fissure ran through the hill, and the side of the level ground Shalk stood on dropped a little.

A quick shot to stop his advance and prevent him from getting close.

Cayon the Skythunder, his sponsor, had been at Mele's side up until a few moments ago—he must have stopped Shalk from going farther like this to buy time for the man to escape.

"This arrow's a whole lot better behaved than that last one."

Which was why, for just long enough to make a sarcastic quip, Shalk decided to accommodate his adversary's intentions.

"Been waiting for ya."

Mele didn't exploit the opening, either.

This was the first and the only conversation exchanged between the equally peerless skeleton and gigant.

"Merre io article. Wikognen." (From Mele to Sartile needle. Move earth.) At the same time as Mele's incantation, Shalk stepped forward.

Fiercely flying out from the iron pillar's shadow, he had arrived inside Mele's bow range.

Mele the Horizon's Roar was an archer skilled at long-range sniper fire.

A battlefield where he couldn't keep space between himself and his opponent

curbed this specialty.

However.

That didn't mean that he wasn't skilled at close-range combat, either.

"Amzst, fotima." (Heaven's clasp, raindrop.)

While still continuing his incantation, Mele held his black bow and dropped his waist low.

The colossal weight of a twenty-meter-tall gigant. He had the gargantuan strength to change the terrain itself. His movements, in proportion to his massive frame, were fast.

While his indestructible bow was like a supermassive hammer. "—Slow."

A huge mass of flesh flew off—it was Mele's right thumb. Cleaving his leg in a spiral, the white gust ascended.

Before the vast amount of blood could even wet the ground, the swift death god had reached Mele's backbone.

It was faster than Mele could register the pain. Shalk's target was his spine.

"Far too slow."

Naturally ruinous power. Overwhelming speed. A transcendental weapon.

None of them held any meaning whatsoever.

It was impossible to perceive.

As long Shalk the Sound Slicer's spear was within range, there was no longer any time to counter it.

Therefore, the only thing left…

"Lettemiks." (Bloom.)

…was the speed of the mind.

The iron pillar that had just impaled the earth. It was a vessel that Mele the Horizon's Roar trusted more than any other and felt the most familiar with, resonating with him. His Word Arts could immediately communicate with it.

The mass of the tremendous pillar instantly transformed.

Wire—

The iron pillar split apart into countless pieces and came undone. An enormous and fine wave of wire closed in.

Right before Shalk could deliver the coup de grâce—Shalk, holding fast on to Mele's back, was forced to give up on his attack and dodge. This wasn't like any bullet or arrow. He wouldn't be able to evade the wire through the gaps in his bones.

If the wires passed through the openings and tangled in his bones, Shalk the Sound Slicer would be incapacitated.

This guy…

He dodged. Jumping off Mele's massive body, he escaped the space as it began to be blanketed over.

Mele had begun incanting Word Arts from the very start. His real goal hadn't been a close-range brawl with his black bow, but these iron wires.

…used his own body to slow me down!

Below his eyes was an eternally extending sea of iron wire. Shalk dangled down from his spear, stabbed into Mele's thigh, and was just barely holding out in midair.

If he fell, he'd stop. Coming to a stop before Mele the Horizon's Roar meant death.

He had to dig hard into Mele's body once more and stab deeply into his spinal cord. Either that or sever his main artery.

Even from this position, grabbing on solely with his arms, if Shalk transformed his body, then one more time…

Just a little…

Even that chance collapsed with what happened next.

An intense impact and acceleration assaulted Shalk's body, and he was thrown into the air.

The tip of his spear, which he'd thought had sunken deep into Mele's body, cast a futile arc in midair.

Shalk kicked his high-speed thoughts into gear. He had to think through what exactly just happened.

Mele jumped.

The action, nigh unbelievable when considering the gigant's appearance, had sent Shalk's body flying off its vise grip.

Mele's initial move to lower his body hadn't been to attack, but to prepare for this leap.

He went high. From high up in the air, Mele looked down over Shalk.

From the moment Shalk had stepped in to melee range, Shalk was instead backed into danger—

No.

The sea of iron wire was descending. The iron wire, pulsating as it expanded, tangled in Shalk's left arm. He had now been blocked from throwing the spear in his hand, too.

If he had his right arm. If he had just the slightest bit of time to stab with his spear.

…That's not it.

He didn't have the time to brandish his spear to throw. He didn't have the time to sever the iron wire and escape.

He didn't have the time to detach his bones and then reconstruct them. "…No… There's no way I'm slow…!"

The massive shadow blocking the sky got ready. To Mele, who was looking down from the heavens, the airspace Shalk descended through and the entire scenery laid out below—was in range of his cataclysmal bow.

The line of death—his line of sight. In the backlight of the sun behind him, only the light of his two eyes glared.

Which was why Shalk could fix his aim on them. Shalk launched his white spear.

"You're far—"

The white flash streaked and pierced the gigant's left eye.

It was a perfectly motionless release, faster than Mele's bow.

Immediately after. The arrow, launched together with a low groan, grazed Shalk and blasted his left leg off.

Before then annihilating the ground below. "That's all!"

The colossus fell. Shalk, too, having lost all his weapons, was sinking down into the sea of iron wire.

…If those eyes of yours aren't hollow holes like mine here.

How was Shalk the Sound Slicer, supposedly with all the methods at his disposal cut off, able to drill into Mele the Horizon's Roar's left eye? The inexplicable phenomenon had occurred at an earlier stage of the fight than that.

Shalk had dodged the ninth arrow, shot with full foresight into his evasion route, with abnormal midair mobility. With neither recoil from kicking debris nor some flight ability, he had been able to instantaneously and acutely change his trajectory angle.

The principle Shalk used for midair control was the recoil stemming from a powerful action.

Shalk the Sound Slicer launched the heavy stone debris secured right before his jump directly behind him and, like the rocket engines of the Beyond, gained reaction-based propulsion midjump without any footing.

Launching debris at high speed for emergency evasion. Launching his white spear to decide the fight.

The truth behind it all was the ultimate trump card Shalk had secretly brought to the match.

Right after the start of the match, why had Shalk mysteriously reversed course away from Mele?

Was the move not just to catch his enemy off guard, or was there some aim behind the movement itself?

What if he had known from the very start that there was something there at the spot he had shifted toward?

I even got a look at Alus the Star Runner's treasures, too!

"Heshed Elis the Fire Pipe…"

Shalk the Sound Slicer's entire body was tangled in the iron wire. At this point, he could no longer move. He had let go of his white spear, too.

"…is what it's called, apparently. Alus the Star Runner's treasure. Just wanted to make sure I told you that it wasn't that my skills bested yours."

One of the magic items that Alus had used right before Hidow the Clamp led everyone to evacuate.

Merely an iron pipe, not even loaded with gunpowder, it could shoot any object that touched the tip of its barrel with bullet-like speeds. It was a magical gun that had launched Alus out of range of Lucnoca's breath with power to spare.

Shalk had thought of two possibilities after gaining info on the second match from the tavern scoundrels—the first was that Lucnoca the Winter had made a direct hit, and Heshed Elis the Fire Pipe had been disintegrated as well.

Then there was the other. The possibility that after firing off Alus's body, Heshed Elis the Fire Pipe itself had also been launched outside the breath attack from the recoil.

Mari Wastes had been decided on for the seventh match.

If Alus the Star Runner's magical items were still stuck in the ground, then would Shalk be able to use them? Keeping his eyes on the area he estimated it'd landed and observing the bottom of the hill from before the match started was what made it possible for Shalk to come across the item.

It may have been the briefest moment possible. But in it had been a nigh- endless back-and-forth.

Just how closely had Shalk the Sound Slicer escaped his demise?

If he hadn't reversed back for the Fire Pipe, Mele would have seen through his potential areas of shelter, then Shalk would've taken his rapid-fire volley and died.

If the distance separating them had been just a bit farther apart, the terrain would have been divided apart, and he would have died.

If the arrow that had thrashed across the ground had moved differently, he would've died from a coincidental collision.

In the end, if the throw he'd aimed at Mele's eyeball had missed the mark, the arrow fired in return would've killed him.

"Can't stand up, Mele?"

He looked at Sine Riverstead's champion, collapsed on the ground and unmoving.

The conversation they'd exchanged had been a brief, single back-and-forth. "…Well then. You were one hell of an opponent."

Nevertheless, Shalk felt like he understood Mele. What the man was proud of, why he had fought.

Shalk turned around. He had to retrieve the other arm he had lost along the way.

"I'll let you have that spear. Mele the Horizon's Roar."

The seventh match was over. Shalk the Sound Slicer walked alone, blending in with the nighttime hustle and bustle.

He would go on living as if he was a low-class scoundrel.

Even as he won against champions, standing colossal above all others, he didn't need a single one of the glamorous luxuries of a champion.

…There's some who purposely wish to become a monster. Like a totally different creature… Merciless, without pain or fear, solely dedicated to battle…

Mele the Horizon's Roar had surely been that way.

He had fought like an incarnation of calamity and turned into carnage itself, his face looking completely different from the one he wore as the guardian of Sine Riverstead.

That couldn't have been out of hatred or loathing toward Shalk himself. Mele had been happy to have that sort of battle.

I'm the same type of monster. Unchanging, from the moment I was born.

—Who exactly was Shalk the Sound Slicer?

"But I get it now," he quietly murmured. The answer was certainly out there.

Somewhere out there in the world, in the middle of battle. "I… I really do need this fight."

Fighting. It may have been the only thing Shalk the Sound Slicer was capable of, but he certainly wasn't a lonely creature. There were indeed others like him in this land, and by continuing to fight, he had to eventually be able to learn the truth behind his identity, the identity he'd lost in death.

He would continue battling in this Sixways Exhibition. The skeleton, unknown to anyone and who didn't find anything necessary at all, had at last obtained a desire of his own.

Shalk had the next match to fight. Was he supposed to get a new spear for himself?

Perhaps he could have Hyakka buy him a present.

Mixed in the city crowds, Shalk felt his hand settling on something. The sensation made it clear what it was.

A white spear.

The one that he had lost in the middle of his fight. Something surprised him even more than this fact.

Although he was mixed in with the crowd—was there someone who pushed through a gap in Shalk's consciousness to hand something over to him?

Someone, only as tall as Shalk's thigh, seemed to pass right by his side. They spoke.

"…Alena?"

The ooze-like silhouette slipped into the flow of the crowd and disappeared. Shalk probably could have followed after him.

With Shalk the Sound Slicer's speed, surely both catching up and searching around to locate him would have been easier than spotting the moon in the night sky.

He didn't pursue.

With the white spear still in his hand, he couldn't even turn back around. It was an name he didn't know.

Nor was there any name like it in his memory as a skeleton. "… "

The seventh match was decided. "…Why're you sleeping? Get up."

Cayon sat down beside Mele, who remained collapsed on the ground, motionless.

All the onlookers who had watched the match were already nowhere to be seen.

The caravan that Shalk and Hyakka had boarded was likely back in Aureatia by now.

The magnificent battle to the death was settled, and there was nothing but silence over the frozen land.

"You are really such an idiot."

Aureatia's Twenty-Fifth General. Cayon the Skythunder.

Though a famed general, superbly resourceful and valiant, living through battles fierce enough to lose an arm, there were not many who knew his true origins.

The evening sun illuminating the chilled wastes also shone light on Cayon's cheeks.

"Why— Why didn't you fight…? You're this strong, so why? You wanted to fight, didn't you?"

There were a number of scars, bored by Mele's bow, carved into the Mari Wastes. Was there any other champion in this planet's history, besides Mele the Horizon's Roar, who was capable of performing such a feat with a bow and arrow?

He was a warrior. He'd left Sine Riverstead, and indeed, he had fought.

The champion's power, which had beaten back the True Demon King themselves, had been put on display for all the people to witness.

"You're such an idiot."

Even if he wasn't the hero who'd defeated the True Demon King.

Cayon wanted to boast that Sine Riverstead's true champion really did exist. Cayon wanted to show him fighting at full strength. The mightiest archer in

the land.

No matter what sort of other schemes he could have pulled over, that alone would have been enough.

He buried his head in his arm.

He had his back turned to Mele, just like he had on that day. "…Give it a rest already."

Cayon heard a voice.

"You got it all wrong. I don't want a runt like you giving me crap," Mele said…sounding displeased and still lying down on his back.

Cayon was at a loss for words, and he looked at Mele, who still had his eyes closed.

His tearful face twisted into a smile.

"Ha… Ah-ha-ha…! What the hell are you sleeping for…?" "'Cause getting up's a pain, why else?"

"You could've kept fighting after all."

"Damn right. May as well've been stabbed with a toothpick. That bastard Shalk the Sound Slicer's got a lotta nerve acting like a tough guy… Who the hell'd want a puny spear like this?"

His right leg had been pierced deep enough that he couldn't stand, and his left eye was pulverized. Even with such terrible wounds, Mele the warrior could've continued to fight.

He was supposed to have been wishing for just such a fight for so long.

Cayon could tell.

Closer to him than anyone else, he had seen Mele's face and the exhilaration in his heart.

No matter how close danger loomed, Cayon had an obligation to watch such a fight unfurl.

"What the hell, then? It was just stuff some kids said; you should've just forgotten all about it… E-everyone…called you a champion…"

"Gwa-ha-ha-ha-ha… Then don't cry about it, runt. You ain't gonna grow taller like that."

Still lying on his back, the gigant reached out his hand and rubbed Cayon with his pointer finger.

—Even then, Mele had stopped fighting.

Even as he hungered for the spiral of conflict, he hadn't truly thrown his everything into the genuine duel to the death.

"Mele… You were… You were a true champion, but… I'm sorry, Mele…"

Had the peaceful days with the villagers weakened Mele?

If he had spent all his time fighting, would he have been able to live the past two hundred and fifty years without knowing the hunger in his soul?

Even if he had never made his promise with Ilieh long ago, could he have continued to fire his arrows up at the shining stars every night without fail?

No. Surely that wasn't true.

Everything had made Mele the champion stronger. None of it was pointless. "Hell if I care. Whatever you chirped at me… I forgot all about it a long time

ago. So smile."

The gigant almost never called the children, even tinier than the already small minia, by their names.

It was perhaps because he feared growing too attached to the lives of such weak creatures.

…However, he remembered them. Forever. Without a single exception. "Go on, Misna. Smile."

He was always optimistically smiling.

Match seven. Winner, Shalk the Sound Slicer.