The Second Match - 3

Sixth General Harghent the Still was also looking out at the same scene, clutching his knees to his chest underneath his blanket.

The cloudlessly noontime wasteland was now sealed in winter.

It was a time period that existed in the Beyond, when the world died out. Meanwhile in this land, bereft of seasons, spring would never come. Once Winter had visited, the world remained in eternal death.

There was a sense of an unopposable and inevitable end in the cold air that traveled all the way to where he sat.

A temperature of despair and fated resignation, like he had felt in Igania Ice Lake.

…Nevertheless, Harghent looked unblinking at that distant scene.

His eyes were bloodshot and crackled with fire inside the blanket. He was the only one who had believed it.

"Not yet."

Lucnoca the Winter was truly the strongest legend of all.

So strong that she had lost her opportunities to fight. So strong that she was brimming with pride and negligence—and still had more to spare.

"...He hasn't, done it yet…! Not yet…! Not yet!"

He continued to mutter words for no one to hear as his teeth rattled in the cold.

The idea to run away hadn't even crossed his mind.

It wasn't due to his bravery. He never had that choice in the first place.

Alus the Star Runner was putting his whole soul on the line. A contest that would never come again, that Harghent had sunk the piddling remnants of his pride and future entirely into.

He wasn't a sham like Rosclay. He was the only wyvern and the only true dragon-slaying hero in the land. If he could just defeat Alus in this first round, there would no longer be anyone who could defeat Lucnoca the Winter.

"Alus."

The white dragon once again showered the land with her ruthless breath.

Her attack, aimed down below her, didn't destroy a large area like the one before it.

Instead—a radius of thirty odd meters of the earth collapsed like mud and caved in deep into the ground.

The dragon breath of Lucnoca the Winter didn't possess any physical impact whatsoever.

Such phenomenon occurred simply due to the extreme cooling.

If all the space between molecules, extending several kilometers belowground, were lost in the instant cooling, was it possible for a topographical

shift, almost like a meteor crater, to appear?

As it was understood in the Beyond, when under extremely low temperatures, matter didn't maintain its volume. Condensed, pulverized, its entire structure changed completely. In the real, macroscopic world, when that exact phenomenon happened, how did that reality present itself? Even among the residents of the Beyond, no one had seen anything like it with their own eyes.

"…Alus!"

Amid the vortex of ruination, he knew Alus had to be there.

Biting down on his lip hard enough to draw blood, Harghent was trembling.

What emotion exactly was making him tremble, even he himself didn't know.

He simply repeated those words over and over again. "N-not yet… Not yet…!"

He saw the world behind him crumble away.

Alus didn't fully comprehend exactly what type of phenomenon was occurring behind him. All he understood was that the scope of the attack was far beyond anything he could defend against with the Greatshield of the Dead.

"…Heshed Elis the Fire Pipe's..."

Even after seeing such destruction, Alus the Star Runner...felt more regretful about losing one of his magic items than the right toe that had frozen and torn off.

When he killed Vikeon the Smoldering, Alus had pierced his flank with a long spear, but what magic item had allowed him to pierce through a dragon's flesh? Even Harghent the Still didn't know the answer to that question.

Heshed Elis the Fire Pipe was a simple iron pipe, not even loaded with gunpowder, but any object that touched its gun barrel would be launched with extraordinary force. As long it was aimed at a gap where their scales were torn off, the magic gun could even finish off a dragon.

He had been faced with a dilemma where instead of using it offensively, he was forced to use it for an emergency escape. Stuck to the ultracold ground, he had launched himself out from the extinction zone, sacrificing a right toe in the process.

"..."

Inside a small jar, he lit the magic item's—Ground Runner's—flame and refreshed the air around him to stop it from freezing his lungs.

While Lucnoca had yet to find Alus, he checked the workings of his favorite gun. Picked out from among all the mass-produced guns he had swapped in during his long days of adventuring, it was a musket with a nearly miraculous degree of accuracy. Keeping the central mechanism untouched, he specialized the grip for wyvern hands; it was a weapon he placed more trust in than any of his legendary magic items, but—

"…Gunpowder's no good, then."

The percussion cap gunpowder was frigidly cold. Even if he did pull the trigger, it'd likely misfire. At the very least, during this battle, his arboreal magic bullets, poison magic bullets, and lightning bullets were now all unusable.

Kio's Hand, that he had used to twist off Vikeon's arm, had been cut apart, and Heshed Elis the Fire Pipe, used to pierce through his flesh, was lost. The winter of world finality had even killed his lifeless magic tools.

"...I wonder...what sort of treasure...Lucnoca the Winter has...?"

Now that he had lost three different weapons at his disposal, if anything, it made it obvious what his next method of attack should be.

The only method that could pierce through the dragon scales' defenses and take her life in one attack.

Using Hillensingen the enchanted light sword was his only option.

Kicking off the ground with his wounded leg, the wyvern once again flew into the air.

As long as he was up in the sky, where Lucnoca's breath hadn't frozen anything over, he could still fly. While he was flying, his crippled leg wouldn't put him at a disadvantage, either.

There was a clear fact of reality. He needed to get in close, or he would lose.

The all-powerful breath, sweeping death across all the eyes could see, was harder and harder to escape the farther he was from Lucnoca.

Even supposing he could defend against the power of breath itself with the Greatshield of the Dead, the ultracold world left behind prevented the activity of any living creature. Though it may have meant he'd be dealt a lethal blow being caught in the vacuum as before, his only option was expending all his strength to continue attacking from her blind spot.

Lucnoca the Winter came into view in front of him.

He could see her take flight, as if in response to his approach. He heard her clear voice.

"That isn't all you have now, is it?"

Closing in the distance in a straight line, Alus flew at comet-like speeds.

The white dragon hadn't turned her face to him, but she had noticed the presence of her opponent streaking in from the southeast.

"Right, Alus the Star Runner? Ooh, I'm so happy. Very, very, very happy, in fact. Everything about you is just oh so delightful!"

Her Ice Arts breath was coming. Alus's wings buffeted the air. A mere moment before it came, the wyvern turned along an acute angle.

He needed to be going at his maximum, life-threatening speed. Faster than Lucnoca's eyes could keep up.

However.

"Co chwelne." (To Kouto Winds.)

—However, Lucnoca caught him directly in front of her.

After their last exchange, Alus had placed Lucnoca at the top among all the other legends he had fought up until now. The destructive scale of their clash wasn't the only reason why. Even when it came to simple physical ability... she was so overwhelmingly superior it was impudent to even compare her to the others.

Why was she able to keep up her activity within this frozen hellscape, born from her own breath?

Why could she face the violent vortex gale, sucking everything into an air vacuum, and not stir an inch?

It was because her body could endure it all.

Dragons were the only living creatures that could possibly survive the aftermath effects of their own dragon breath.

Save for a single young elf girl exception—the Word-Maker never bestowed Word Arts that the user's body couldn't handle.

The strongest physical abilities in the land were even able to follow a silhouette going faster than the eye could see.

"Cyulcascarz." (Wither and fall at the edge of light.) Termination spread.

The view was annihilated in white.

Even if that one breath was to finish things, Lucnoca would still do the same.

As long as she was able to fight without any reservations and with all her strength, just once, then that was fine with her.

No matter how much of a frail wyvern he may have been, just the fact that she had been able to fight without any show of mercy meant that Alus the Star Runner was an irreplaceable presence to her.

The earth once again split open. Even the clouds vanished into mist.

Her Word Arts, ostensibly only supposed to affect the winds, transformed the depths of the earth's crust into eternally frozen soil, simply from the aftermath of the atmospheric cooling. All in a single breath incantation, shorter than the Thermal Arts minia used to produce sparks.

Showered in cold air, the silhouette, just like every single champion before him, had disappointingly vanished.

"Uh-hoo, hoo, hoo, hoo, hoo…! Uh-hoo, hoo, hoo! Aaah… it's been a hundred years since I've had a battle like this. Why, maybe even longer than that. I doubt I'll enjoy myself this much anytime soon again."

Eventually, another champion would appear who would demand her full power.

Lucnoca would end up waiting in solitude at that Ice Lake, anticipating more than that one encounter.

The vacuum born from the breath's aftermath began to swallow the surrounding atmosphere like a tidal wave.

All of it happened in an instant.

—And if there was someone who knew all of that. " "

If someone had already suffered the aftermath once, then they could match their acceleration with the torrent of wind.

From a blind spot on the dragons' flank.

There existed a magic item called Rotting Soil Sun.

It was a sphere formed from a clod of dirt, and it could launch blades or bullets formed from the mud endlessly fountaining forth. That mud could even, for example…form something resembling a wyvern gliding on folded wings.

In the middle of his ultra-high-speed maneuvering, he used his flight inertia to abandon the substitute behind him and force the all-powerful dragon's sights that were following him to stop mid-pursuit. He made her launch a breath attack at the substitute.

No matter how much kinetic visual acuity, or how fast her reaction speeds were, differentiating between two tiny shadows in a split second, while tracking Alus the Star Runner at his max speed, was impossible for any legend.

"Hillensingen."

Quietly, feebly, he was finishing his mumbling. He always made sure to get his boasting in.

It was his only method of attack that could trivialize the dragon scale defenses and end everything in a single, split-second attack.

Multiplied by the speed of the vacuum winds, as well as Alus's own speed, the attack—

"The enchanted li—"

He collided with something massive.

With a loud crunch, Alus's world dissolved away. "…Oh my!"

Lucnoca the Winter was slow to notice. Yet she shouted in despair.

"Oh no…! You were still alive?! Oh, heaven's me, what have I done…?!"

The light blade had cut deep, slicing the tip of her massive tail clean through to the bone.

However, that same tail had just slammed Alus to the ground under its massive weight.

"…Why, I truly didn't notice at all! What a terrible failure on my part…! My opponent was still alive, and I wasted my chance! If I had known, oh how much more fun I could have!"

—It hadn't been an attack.

The strongest dragon of all had simply changed her direction in midair.

Her tail, swung around to adjust her position, had just, in a stroke of misfortune, lined up with the trajectory of Alus's attack.

The instant-kill suicide rush, surpassing the efforts of all the other champions in history, was defeated by plain bad luck.

She was too strong. Just moving her body had more than enough power to butcher another life.

She needed to actively try to enjoy herself or else she wouldn't have been able.

"Sorry, Alus the Star Runner! Oh, I'm so sorry…! Let's play some, shall we?

Come now, Alus the Star Runner, please…!"

Denying even the fight itself, it was a single sight of desolation.

He had a vivid memory. Just how long ago was it?

The rain that had continued from the night before gradually began to recede, now only intermittently showering.

Looking through the gaps in the wood panels of the crumbling cabin, abandoned on the shoreline cliffs, he spent the whole day gazing at the tide going in and out.

"Hey."

Lifting himself up away from the fissure in the rotted wood wall, that face had appeared again.

Names. Now that he thought about it, the minia all had names. Names that, among wyverns, were only given to the strong and clever upper ranks of the flock.

What was it again? "Harghent."

"Don't go saying my name so easily like that."

The young boy frantically turned around and looked behind him. He seemed much more worried about anyone from the village approaching the shack than the young wyvern himself.

"If it came out that I was sheltering a wyvern of all things, I could get beaten to death."

"...Really... Then, I'll...be careful."

"You even know what 'being careful' actually means? That's something you

gotta do yourself. Why the hell did you break your damn wing anyway?" Harghent looked at the splint fixed up to his right wing.

As dragonkin, wyverns generally had a strong vitality. Broken bones for them should've healed faster than a minia's, but it seemed like it would still be some time until his would be perfectly linked back together again.

"...? Because I ran into something…"

"Yeah, and I'm asking why the hell'd you run into something. Normal wyverns don't have that stuff happen."

"Because...I'm not normal, then...?"

The young boy scratched his head. At the time, he hadn't been able to answer properly, but looking back, he now understood that his answer to Harghent when

they first met had been vague.

Unlike other wyverns, he had unnecessary body parts. One on the left of his torso. Two on the right. This particular wyvern had three arms, unlike any of the wyverns that had been documented up until then.

They ruined his flight stability. He had collided into sea cliffs, normally not something that happened to a wyvern, and broken his wing. That was likely behind it all.

"If you can't fly super well, then the same thing's just going to happen again once it's healed."

"......... Maybe..."

"What kind of answer is 'maybe,' huh? Seriously, I don't got a clue what's going on in that head'a yours."

Harghent always seemed to be in a bad mood, but at the time, he didn't understand it at all. Most minians, when looking at a wyvern, were filled with anger and boiling with an urge to kill them.

"You really need a bit more…a little bit more sense of urgency—that you can't keep going on like this, okay? Consider the source and take countermeasures."

"But...I can't fly well...so I can't do that, either, right…? Nothing I can do."

"Then learn how, dammit! The day you popped outta your egg, could you fly? Hell, what about Word Arts? Were you chitchatting with 'em like you are now right from the get-go?"

He struggled to understand Harghent's point.

Were they words of concern for a wyvern like him? They couldn't have been. It didn't make any sense for a minia to do something like that. It hadn't made any sense from the start, when he first sheltered him in this shack.

Harghent sat down and nibbled at the lunch he had brought with him. They were some kind of dried tree nuts and were as crude and wretched as any wyvern's meal. His clothes were fraying all over, and one of the soles of his shoes was beginning to peel off.

"Comes a day for everyone out there, when they're able to do something they couldn't do before. It's growth. Yeah, that's right, growth. You gotta grow, too."

"...Then...what do I do?" "Huh?"

"Once...I'm able to fly... What do I do?"

"I mean, c'mon... Once you're able to fly, you'll be able to get your hands

on all sorts of stuff, right? Can get yourself some tasty food, for one, and female wyverns prefer males that're good fliers, right? Not that I got any clue, but… Also, you could even become a big shot in your flock!"

"Hmm… So that's the type of stuff...you want, Harghent..." "D-damn right I do!"

Harghent's expression grew increasingly dour, and he kicked the nearby wooden wall panel.

The loud sound surprised him, but he was inept at expressing any intense emotions from birth. This surprise probably wasn't made clear to Harghent, either.

"Haven't you ever felt frustrated and humiliated from constantly being looked down on by someone who can't do anything?! Those aristocrat bastards kick us servants around like we're a bunch of useless fools! Both my dad and my mom, too… All they ever did was give these disgusting smiles and ingratiate themselves! I'm different. I'm going to become someone important; just watch… I'll grow up and make all those pompous bastards see how great I really am…!"

"All of that's..."

He cocked his head. Minia logic was strange.

"All of that's about you, though... It's got nothing to do with me…"

"It's the same thing! It's all the same…! You're alive, aren't you?! Then you gotta have wants, too! Show 'em all that you can fly just as well as everyone else!"

At the time, had he understood that Harghent was seeing himself in the wyvern who had been left behind by his flock?

Whether he did or not, the fact remained that he felt an innocent curiosity toward the intense emotions he was witnessing for the first time in his life, the exact opposite of his own.

He possessed a passion the wyvern himself didn't. "...…Okay. I'll try, then… What do I need to do to grow?"

"...Just have to start with what you can, right…? Ever grabbed something in your hands before? Or moved your fingers independent of one another? Even with your wing injured, you can handle that right now. You add to the number of things you can do, little by little."

"…Then what about you, Harghent? What do you need to do...to become important…?"

"Me?"

The question prompted Harghent's first smile.

"Me, well, heh, heh, heh…! I'm the first one among the other guys my age to bring down a wyvern…! So I've got a gift for archery. I'll hunt down more and more of your brethren like this and work my way up to greatness… It'll just be wyverns for now. But someday I'm gonna be able to take down bigger and better targets, not just wyverns. That's how I'll get to be a general in the kingdom. I'll have enough money to last a lifetime, and everyone'll praise me."

They were, at most, his deepest inner thoughts that could only lay bare to the injured wyvern in front of him. Ambitions that he absolutely couldn't mention in front of any of the other villagers. Just how difficult, how far in the distant future, would it be until he got there?

In minia society, it was shameful. The weak weren't supposed to speak about dreams beyond their station.

The boy held a small bow in his hands. Compared to an adult's bow, its power was much, much weaker.

Nevertheless—even if it was simply dumb luck and had nothing to do with his skill level at all, Proud Bow was still the weapon that shot down his very first wyvern.

"Once I'm a general, I really wanna become a champion! I'm gonna leave my name in history…! I'll even take on a dragon—and bring them down with this Dragon Slayer ballista of mine!

"Hmmm… Pretty amazing..."

His conversational acknowledgment came across almost like a half-hearted reply, but he truly felt that way from the bottom of his heart.

That was why, at that moment, he decided he would try to imitate the young boy.

Because that was surely what it meant to be alive. "...You're an amazing guy, Harghent..."