The First Match - 3

Toroa the Awful never thought he was strong.

He believed he was weak.

Back when he fervently practiced the sword in the mountains, he never once felt that he had surpassed his father. His assumed opponent was, at all times, a singular imaginary enchanted swordsman, and the inexperienced Toroa always ended up bested by his own ideal.

He was a swordsman being used by enchanted swords. This self- consciousness may have been completely contrary to his opponent Psianop the Inexhaustible Stagnation's many accumulated years of believing in solitude that he was the strongest of all.

It was not himself but the enchanted swords he wielded that were all- powerful, along with the enchanted swordsman who used to brandish them.

…Therefore, he couldn't accept defeat. He couldn't sully their ultimate strength with a pitiful failure. With it, he was a man who had given up his weak self.

…He must not have moved perfectly, either.

It was directly after landing the jab. He felt it in his bones before he even took his first breath.

His fastest possible jab, to hit me just as he evaded Divine Sword Ketelk… If I had been struck harder, that would have ended everything.

Though it seemed like a light feint, he could tell that the blow would be enough to rend the average person's torso asunder with a direct hit. Toroa was able to parry its force and get blown back.

Without making a strong opening step, he had cleared their first clash without

dying.

Divine Sword Ketelk created an invisible slash that extended out beyond the blade itself. Naturally, the substance-less slash didn't necessitate a strong opening step. Simply brushing up against an out-of-range opponent's space was enough. The wielder could be a child and still be capable of cleaving a fully armored knight in two.

"…Plan on making amends for your backer's skullduggery?" Another difficult-to-decipher mumble escaped from Psianop. Toroa the Awful didn't waver. They were five paces apart.

If Psianop tried to back off farther, he'd be in Inrate, the Sickle of Repose's range. If his opening step came from mid-distance, there was Nel Tseu the enchanted fire sword to bring instant death. Or he would bring him down with Vajgir, the enchanted sword of poison and frost.

"If you're trying to create an opening by talking to me, it won't work. If you take a step into my range, I'll cut you down."

"Range? Pfft."

He still hasn't taken his opening step.

Psianop was aiming for the momentary opening when Toroa swung his enchanted sword. Next time, Toroa would take advantage of Psianop's attack to counter with one of his own.

Not yet…

The enchanted sword dangling from a chain on his waist automatically sprang into the air.

"From the start—"

The ooze's strike, twisting in toward him, dug into Toroa's right clavicle as he tried to release his sword for the counterattack.

A semitranslucent pseudopod wrapped itself around Toroa, burrowing under his armpit and constricting both his shoulders.

He couldn't move.

"You've been in my range." " !"

He couldn't see it.

Toroa had been closely observing him for any indication of the ooze's movements.

Even Toroa the Awful wasn't able to realize the truth until he was hit with the attack.

Psianop should have already started moving a long time ago.

In the Beyond, it was known as the shukuchi technique—or by some as the footless way.

Accelerating not by kicking off the ground, but by shifting one's center of gravity. It was a type of martial arts footwork that applies the speed of collapsing down on a focal point to the first initial step. A movement technique that didn't let the opponent read one's opening motion.

Was there anyone in the world who could possibly be able to read the center of gravity of an ooze's physical body, with its constantly shifting form?

"Hngh… Mgh!"

"You didn't have your blade drawn at the start. Why? An attempt to make amends for your dishonesty?"

Toroa was gripping Nel Tseu the enchanted fire sword. While still in his stance to slice forward in front of him with it, both his neck and shoulders were completely immobilized.

If there was indeed an ooze martial artist out in the world, then among their limitless possible choices of attack, the technique worthy of the most fear was not their punches. A set structure was universal among all living creatures. Psianop was the only one capable of unilaterally ignoring that structure and destroying his enemy's physical body.

"Kata-gatame. It's the name of this technique."

Toroa was unable to move. His shoulder was blocking his own carotid. While it was based on a technique described in the books within the sand labyrinth, it had changed completely and was now a technique that resulted in death.

Toroa struggled with the end of his left arm from the elbow down, that he was just barely able to move freely. The enchanted sword of fire dropped powerlessly from his hand.

Psianop was right there in front of him yet remained completely unable to slash him. Even his left elbow had its mobility, able sever Psianop in two, cleverly constrained, leaving him no room to resist.

"...!"

The buzz of the crowd grew distant. This was the end.

No, it's not.

His reason for not drawing his sword at the start wasn't a way to address Mizial's dishonesty. It was because that was Toroa's most powerful stance.

Psianop didn't know the shape that Toroa's accumulated training had taken. He was a living weapons storehouse. Cords. Chains. Hinged mechanisms. No matter where the enchanted sword was tied up on his body, Toroa was always a

single motion from being able to draw it.

The diverging combat branches afforded by the sheer number of enchanted swords demanded a close-to-unlimited acumen of the wielder. However, the voices of the enchanted swords would tell him which sword he needed to draw next—

"…!"

Psianop instantly withdrew his pseudopod. A silver flash of an enchanted sword passed right through where they had been.

"…Mol…ting!"

Toroa sliced through his own shoulder.

Not Psianop, escaping during the opening directly after Toroa's motion. The ooze shifted in to punch with the whole of his body mass. However. "—Graaah!"

Toroa shouted and intercepted the attack with a swarm of stabs, like beams of light. Countless thrusts all occurring at the exact same time.

There was recoil from one of the stabs. He would skewer Psianop al— "Is that—"

Getting hit by the thrust, Psianop was sent flying. He murmured. "—a phantom enchanted sword?"

It hadn't run him through. He had definitely been able to stab him, but there was a peculiar response, almost as if all the stress focused at that one point had been swept away. Psianop had simply been sent flying from the force of the thrust and remained unharmed.

For a surprise attack he had sacrificed his own arm to make, it was an all-too- pitiful result.

However, on the one hand.

"…Hah, gaugh!"

There wasn't a single drop of blood flowing out of Toroa's right shoulder, escaped from the hold. The enchanted sword he used himself to slash this part of his body was already loaded back in its sheath, returned in the single motion of his counterattack moments before.

It could make what it cut reverse back as if it had never been pierced at all. If there was one specific situation in real combat to utilize such a special technique, it was to escape from restraints. An atypical enchanted sword, shaped like a machine part component—Gidymel the Minute Hand.

This hidden technique, called Molting, was the only one that could actually materialize Gidymel the Minute Hand's functionality of prolonging or fully

rejecting causality.

"...Will you be able to dodge—"

Without even a breath's pause, Psianop went on the move. Toroa had drawn his next enchanted sword. The slash of the blade still proved too far to reach. Though, it was not the elongated slash of the Divine Sword Ketelk from before.

"—from this distance, Inexhaustible Stagnation?!"

An inescapable tempest wind assailed Psianop. Mushain the enchanted wind sword. Psianop couldn't hold his ground where he stood. At the same time, Toroa kicked up the enchanted fire sword at his feet. He triggered its secret technique.

"Gathering…Clouds!"

The heat, flowing into the swirling current of air, birthed flames with a frightening directional range. The buildings of the old town collapsed just from the shock wave. The audience loosed clamorous screams.

He's gone. Where's Psianop?

Toroa swung the enchanted wind sword directly to his side to counterattack.

A needlelike kick descended in from that direction and was repelled after hitting a point along the sword hilt.

The wire that connected the enchanted wind sword to his back was severed. "Shook up, weren't you? From your own attack."

Psianop had leaped from the momentum of the first gust—kicking off the edge of a building and being assaulted from the sky—and contorted himself into the exact shape of a bullet to break through the air resistance.

"You're thinking that you don't want to get the city involved in the fight." "Quiet...!"

Wailsever. Toroa drew the enchanted weapon with its crystal blade. The sword's vibrations sent out an invisible force, similar to a sonic wave, however, Psianop deflected it with a minimal parry and closed the distance between them. A powerful strike to the chest. Drilling destruction. Breaking through the door of what once seemed to be a merchant's shop, he crashed hard on the pile of old desks.

"Gnhaugh!"

The moment the strike found its mark, it had been disrupted by Wailsever's wave of vibration. He was holding out right on the verge of losing his life.

Psianop spoke.

"You'll send out that illusionary stab again."

The countless piercing thrusts he sent out just as he was getting back up was

an illusion from Downpour's Needle. Psianop was no longer deceived by it. He slipped through and evaded the attack.

Movement. The sound of cutting through the air. His sight lines. He was always gauging his enemies, making predictions more difficult than seeing the path of a bullet, yet proving accurate all the same.

It was inches in front of him. The multi-spiral pseudopod sent out a knife- hand strike. He intercepted.

Sword of poison and frost…

The pseudopod, formed into a true blade, tracked an amorphous path and evaded the enchanted sword of poison and frost that Toroa had launched in sync with his opponent's breathing. He blocked the slash closing in on his head with Downpour's Needle. He was blown backward. An instantaneous heavy strike that nearly broke Downpour's Needle itself. Shattering the wooden wall, he was once again lying inside one of the buildings.

In the middle of his attack, Psianop had dodged Toroa's own. With an ooze's body, did that mean he was even capable of evading attacks perfectly timed to strike when his own attack was about to land? Above that, he…had distinctly dodged the enchanted sword of poison and frost.

Just as he had with Wailsever. He was discerning the characteristics of enchanted swords Toroa had never shown him.

"Enchanted swords only have two kinds of functionality," Psianop declared as he smoothly slid out from the burst-open building wall.

"A function that lets you easily hit an opponent—and a function to kill an opponent when it connects. The functions of any sword generally don't go much beyond that to begin with."

This was the unknown member of the First Party.

Deciding to grow stronger by making use of all the things his body was capable of, he had also mastered flustering and inciting his opponent with his words. A technique that Toroa did not possess.

"…Think you'll be able to remain unhit...up until the end?"

The enchanted sword of poison and frost in his right hand. Downpour's Needle in his left.

"Go ahead and try."

"Don't take me lightly. I saw the abilities of that phantom thrusting sword just now. You dazzle your opponent's visual judgment by mixing a thrust attack in with the entrancing illusion and then launch a lethal attack from the enchanted sword in your other hand."

They were in a narrow alleyway, with tall buildings flanking them on both sides. As he continued to speak, Psianop closed the distance between them.

"You centered your gravity diagonally behind you, didn't you? If you pulled out that sword with the long-range slash, you'd probably reach me at this distance. But if I happen to read its trajectory and get in close, you're not going to be able to shift to defense with that sword."

He mercilessly drew in closer. This was the pressure exuded by the ooze, a race none of the minian races had ever concerned themselves with.

"The enchanted swords that can handle both guarding and attacking are that sound wave sword and the two types of illusion swords. But I've already hit the phantom thrusting sword with two of my strikes. I'll be able to shatter it with one more, no matter how well you manage to block it."

There was truth in Psianop's words. Something that the enchanted sword wielder himself knew most of all.

He couldn't block Psianop's attacks with Downpour's Needle anymore. However, Wailsever, with its blade of crystal, would be similarly destroyed if he used it to block one of the ooze's attacks.

"And I'm only two more steps away from being in your range."

Before he had finished speaking, Psianop dashed forward. Toroa stabbed at him with the phantom thrusting sword. While evading the attack, Psianop lightly brushed the cart along the side of the alley.

"Disordered Flock!" "It's useless!"

Psianop flowed inside Toroa's attack range. He slashed down from above with the enchanted sword of poison and frost. The cart flying in blocked the attack. Toroa's Herculean strength sent the splintered remains of the cart scattering in all directions.

The lethal blade ultimately didn't reach, after all.

Had he calculated the exact trajectory to guard against his enchanted sword and threw the loaded cart up into the air? Psianop had only lightly touched it while he was mid-dodge. Toroa couldn't see at all as the ooze had the complete flow of his power directly under his will.

"If you're trying to tire me out—"

Maintaining his favorable distance, Psianop continued to speak.

A strike. He was trying to seize hold of Toroa's joints, even if he evaded the attack. He could dodge the two punches, aiming at different places simultaneously, but then the fourth, then sixth, attacks would chain together after

them. Psianop's movements were completely inscrutable, and with his terrifying mobility, he was always literally one step ahead.

He'd survive at sword distance. He retreated.

"That's because you're panicking. Right, Toroa the Awful?" "…You're a real chatty ooze…!"

He had gotten out of the kata-gatame that Psianop had used on Toroa a few moments ago.

However, when Psianop was using it, the technique was one of instant death. If Toroa had stayed in that position for just another breath longer, Toroa would have been destroyed without any external wounds to speak of or, even worse, ended up dead from the blood flow to his head being cut off.

Should he instantly escape it, he would be unable to close the seam he'd open with his escape.

From birth, the notions of exhaustion and fatigue had been foreign concepts to him.

Nevertheless, the strikes from Psianop the Inexhaustible Stagnation, together with the precision of their force, quite literally surpassed any weapon.

Even the vitality of the monster that came back from hell would reach its limits eventually.

One move was lethal. As he held out against that one move, he was being pushed up against a wall. He was deteriorating.

"Again with the enchanted fire sword. Block with the hilt."

He's holding the advantage.

Toroa cleaved sideways with the enchanted fire sword. With the hit, Psianop evaded the trajectory of the sword's instant death and launched a punch at Toroa. A lighter punch than the one before—however, he was still launched into the air.

In midair, if I defend—

The ooze was right in front of his eyes. The shukuchi technique. The flurry of punches he launched right afterward thrust into him. He coughed up blood. A rib broke and cut into his flesh. Another punch came right after.

"Am I correct in my estimation, Toroa the Awful?"

If I could just—just manage to kill the momentum of the hit.

He blocked with an enchanted sword hilt. His arms and central line were all he was protecting.

Everything happened exactly as Psianop had said it would. He had foreseen everything. Whenever Toroa tried to make a move, Psianop was already there, one step ahead of him. If he didn't continue to handle him with his enchanted

sword techniques, or without Toroa's tenacious physique, one attack likely had enough power to scatter his body and limbs in all directions.

He's too…strong!

"There's the wall."

With Psianop's single sentence, he knew.

There were words to make him waver. However, it was the truth. Toroa could no longer escape from the impact of his punches.

The ooze was right before his eyes. He couldn't escape. Death was—

"Not…yet!"

Toroa's giant body flew straight up into the air without any warning. The wedge that had flown up onto the roof of one of the buildings was pulling up Toroa's body itself with its invisible magnetic force as he gripped the hilt in his hands.

The previous punch had been blocked with an enchanted sword hilt. It may have looked like a sword with only a hilt and no blade—splitting the blade from the hilt into numerous wedge shapes and controlling them with magnetic force, the name of the enchanted sword was Wicked Sword Selfesk.

Psianop could instantly maneuver in any possible direction, without betraying any initial motion whatsoever. However, even still, as long as he was a hand-to- hand fighter, there would always be one position that'd become a blind spot.

He's reading—

The enchanted swordsman of horror stories was looking down at the city from the air.

He's reading all my movements. But that doesn't mean he's seen through all my secret techniques.

Causality rejection from Molting. Wicked Sword Selfesk and its main body made from invisible magnetic force. There were secret techniques among his enchanted swords that even Psianop, continuously taking the initiative against any and all actions, couldn't completely see through.

A respite of one second—

In which case, the only way for his enchanted swords to best Psianop…

Let's see how you handle multiple swords at once!

He drew his enchanted sword. "Wailsever."

He drew his enchanted sword. "Wicked Sword Selfesk."

He drew two more.

"Divine Sword Ketelk. Nel Tseu the enchanted fire sword."

Two swords for each arm. Every last ounce of his remaining energy needed to be spent on delivering the final blow. Down below, at Psianop the Inexhaustible Stagnation…four swords, all at once.

"Four-chain attack! Song of Feather Swarm!"

The crystal blade trembled, and Wailsever released a vibrating shock. There was some slight interference preventing it from being an effective attack from this distance, but it arrived faster than Psianop could take his opening step. In that second that Psianop was prevented from making his initial move, the Wicked Sword Selfesk showered him in a rain of wedge blades. Psianop deflected the wedges coming from his right side. It wasn't over.

Raining down on him, mixed in with the hail from Selfesk, was Nel Tseu the enchanted fire sword, thrown from Toroa's hands. It didn't directly hit its mark. However, an intense amount of heat poured into the spot where it landed and exploded—the secret technique Gathering Clouds. Devastating, fatal, power.

Adding to it all, a long-range thrust from the heavens to the ground below.

The secret technique of Divine Sword Ketelk, known as—Peck.

A shock wave attack. Blocking him off. An explosion. And then…

All of it… Every single motion was done the instant Toroa jumped into the air and fell back down to the ground.

In other words, it meant it was the same exact moment when Psianop made his assessment.

Psianop approached Toroa. With impossibly explosive force, he kicked against the wall and jumped up in Toroa's direction. The only direction where the unexpected course threw off the aim of the thrusting attack—and the explosion on the ground nor the blades closing in on him could not reach.

From the heavens and from the earth, the unarmed and the fully clad swords, face-to-face.

"The long-range thrust… That special technique—"

It was all over in an instant. It was an instantaneous judgment.

Therefore, it was then that Psianop knew. The sword Toroa had gripped in his hand wasn't the Divine Sword Ketelk.

"—was a feint?!"

Yelling out a secret technique and brandishing a sword didn't necessarily mean it was what he had used. The Lance of Faima. Now had come the time he could utilize it properly.

There was viscous sawing sound.

A vibrating slash. Right as they passed by each other, it destroyed Psianop's body, cutting it into tiny pieces of flesh.

"Flapping."

Landing back on the ground, he opened his eyes. Toroa the Awful heaved a deep sigh. "Hng...aah."

Psianop's soft body was rent, and the percolating liquid wet the sand of the plaza.

Just what sort of special technique was it?

The Lance of Faima reacted to anything that approached Toroa at high speed. Using the automatic powers it utilized to hound its target, he turned his wrist right and left over and over again, like a pendulum of terrifying speed, and cut

into his approaching enemy with its superspeed swings. "Just," the heavily wounded Psianop muttered.

The ultimate martial artist, seeing through every attack that came his way and evading them all, was finally dealt a decisive blow.

"…Just, three left." A terrifying enemy.

The meaning of his low mumbling, like the foreboding of a death god, was clear to Toroa, too. Psianop was counting how many bullets his opponent had left over.

Vajgir, the enchanted sword of poison and frost. Karmic Castigation. Inrate, the Sickle of Repose. There were three enchanted swords Toroa had yet to use in their match. He had never shown this many of his enchanted swords, not even to the Particle Storm, not even to Mestelexil the Box of Desperate Knowledge.

"...You're strong."

No. I'm just weak.

At this point, there was nothing more. His skill was an imitation of a past enchanted swordsman. Simultaneously deploying everything at once had been the sole, extreme limit of his dedication, that Toroa the Awful had arrived at himself.

Even then, even after laying out all the strength he himself could muster.

It still wasn't enough to take his life, huh?

Deploying a total of five enchanted swords' ultimate techniques, and he remained unable to kill one single ooze.

At this point, there was nothing more. Nothing that he himself could do.

"…Giving up?"

He wasn't talking to Psianop. The rebuking question escaped his throat.

After using up all his strength, the fight was going to end with it not being enough. If he was a lone fighter, then perhaps it would have been fine to arrive at such an end. But he was shouldering the name of Toroa the Awful.

He couldn't give up.

"Not yet… I'm…I'm still here. Not yet…"

His opponent was unbelievably strong. Likely even stronger than his father.

A powerful fighter isolated to the realm of the fantastical.

If he entrusted himself completely to the enchanted swords, could he win?

More than he ever had before.

"Don't leave me behind. I… I am, Toroa the Awful!" Toroa the Awful had never once believed he was strong. He believed he was weak.

It was not himself but the enchanted swords he wielded that were all- powerful, along with the enchanted swordsman who used to brandish them.

…Therefore, he couldn't accept defeat. He couldn't sully their ultimate strength with a pitiful defeat. With it, he was a man who had given up his weak self.

"Found some serenity of mind, did you...?"

Psianop's voice sounded far off in the distance. Toroa the Awful's breathing was deep and long.

The history of enchanted swords was a history of slaughter. Someone had made them, someone had wielded them, and there was one who cut them all down. Just as fatigue and scars were not the only evidence of a fight, all their histories had clearly been carved inside the enchanted swords. He thought about the scary stories of Toroa the Awful that people continued to pass down to one another.

A monstrosity. He would become an enchanted sword monstrosity.

If such a monstrosity did exist in this world, it wouldn't lose to anyone.

Psianop moved. He acted faster than Psianop's figure was reflected inside his brain's consciousness. Molting. Divine Sword Ketelk's superspeed long-range thrust. It didn't hit Psianop. However, with the superspeed long-range thrust still extending, when he then reaped sideways with the Divine Sword Ketelk—

"...!"

Behind Psianop, a residential building was severed in half from the second floor up. Still keeping the elongated enchanted sword in his hands, Toroa closed the distance himself. Psianop released a lethal punch. Toroa stuck the enchanted flame sword in the ground and sent both himself and his enemy flying with a violent burst of wind.

"You think if you clear your mind of thoughts…"

With it, Psianop was blown backward, in the direction of the debris from the cleaved residential house—

"…that I won't still be able to read them?"

The large mass of a full house floor, moments before it would've made contact with Psianop, shifted its direction directly to the side and dug itself into the plaza. Tearing up all the cobblestones as it went, it crashed into the fountain and broke apart. The audience's screams echoed through the old town.

Such was the power contained within Psianop's punches.

"Graaaaugh…!"

Toroa let out a bestial roar from deep within his throat.

His forward-leaning battle posture lowered even deeper, and the hilts of Nel Tseu the enchanted fire sword and Wicked Sword Selfesk were thrust into the ground, like the legs of a quadrupedal animal.