The Second Match - 4

There was a continuous, incessant creaking sound.

Though he didn't think he would fail, he may have had some sort of hunch that things might end up this way.

He had challenged more strong opponents than anyone else. He had

experienced the limitless possibilities, both fortunate and unfortunate, that occurred when going up against powerful opponents who far surpassed his own stature.

If he hadn't, then he wouldn't have activated Chiklorakk the Eternity Machine.

It creaked with the sound of metallic friction. The sound reverberated from inside Alus's body. A very unpleasant sensation.

In Alus's hazy field of version, first he looked at his right toe. The part of him once thought to be frozen and lost was already being replaced by a peculiar metallic contraption combined from a cogwheel and crank.

Chiklorakk the Eternity Machine, simply a minute gear of unknown composition that was smaller than the tip of a minia's pinkie—yet it was the most valuable item from Vikeon the Smoldering's hoard.

The gear turned the inside of his body. He could feel the sensation from his pulverized backbone as well. In his left thigh and rib. As well as his left wing. The gears were propagating through his body, imitating organic life, and forcibly propelling them to action.

Why the hell did you break your damn wing anyway?

"What was I supposed to do…?" he dimly replied to the intermingled traces of the past.

Although accidental, he had been hit with a painfully severe counterattack.

Even the Greatshield of the Dead's defenses were too slow to respond. The item was supposed to be activated in response to the enemy's attack, and since each use brought intense pain and corrosion, the shield couldn't be used while also maintaining control of his flight position.

Being swept into the explosive when the attack came was another mistake.

In his normal state, Alus might have been able to dodge the tail attack, even coming in at extreme speeds, right before it hit him. However, in the middle of being swept away, it was impossible for him to change his trajectory.

He had shut out his unrivaled enemy's offense and devoted his everything to the one strike he'd need to turn the tables. That had been the cause of his defeat.

"...…Consider the source, take countermeasures. Consider the source, take countermeasures…consider the source, take countermeasures... Consider the source, take countermeasures."

Even now, Alus the Star Runner could do this.

He wasn't able to do everything from the start. He constantly added to the things he was able to accomplish—

First, it was defeating the strongest wyvern in his own flock.

Then the terrifying ogre in the forest. The biological apex of the desert, the wurm. The powerful warrior from a suppression squad. Then it was a champion. A legend. And finally, a dragon.

Alus was smacked out of the air by Lucnoca's attack, but despite that, he had kept his grip on Hillensingen the enchanted light sword. His greed prevented him from letting go of his treasures even in life-and-death crises, leaving him one final method of attack at his disposal.

…Harghent. I'm going to beat Harghent...

He would exhaust every option he had. No matter what sort of treasure he'd have to throw away, he was going to beat him.

Because it was a promise to his only friend.

"…Ahhh, ah… Alus the Star Runner... You must still be alive, right? After all, you took those claws of mine just fine. This couldn't possibly be enough to do you in now. So please, show me more…"

Unlike moments before, Lucnoca the Winter was grieving. "I wanted to fight even more. Truly..."

The wonderful champion, Alus the Star Runner, died. In a terribly boring and dull way. So many multitudes of warriors, all making her despondent.

Therefore, it caught her off guard. "...!"

A sound like a long whistle.

Letting out a shrill cry as it cut through the air, the blade violently flew around Lucnoca's vicinity. It was an enchanted sword, by the name Trembling Bird, but of course, this wasn't an attack.

"Kysle ko kyakowak. Kestek ko gbakyau—" (From Alus to Hillensingen. A hailstorm to heaven and earth—)

The instant her attention turned to the enchanted sword's shriek, a shadow closed in on her from directly below. She didn't know the abilities of Rotten Soil Sun. She naturally recognized the figure in the corner of her eyes to be Alus the Star Runner.

Still not intending to make any attack, she extended her claw and instantly smacked the shadow out of the sky.

She shouted in delight. "Aaah!"

You're still alive, was what she was going to say.

Realizing once again that she had knocked it out of the way herself, she

looked as it turned into a splotch on the ground. There was one other thing that had flown toward her from the same direction.

The bullets fired from Rotten Soil Sun didn't start and end with the single shot shaped to copy the wyvern. Alus had sent another small lump of mud hidden inside the other's bulk.

The light overflowing from it dazzled Lucnoca's eyes.

Something then appeared from within the lump of mud—Hillensingen the enchanted light sword.

The claw that knocked the decoy out of the sky was guarding against the line of fire. However, the light blade easily penetrated right through it.

The strongest of enchanted swords, with no possible method of defending against its slash.

The white dragon turned her head away and avoided the flying slash. The twofold and threefold deception was meaningless. Lucnoca the Winter possessed the reflexive speed to immediately move to the defensive after all of it.

"Kaameksa koikak. Syaskakko kemno. Kairokr aino." (Right eye axis. Changing circle. Circulate.) "Trembling Bird. Rotten Soil Sun. Hillensingen the enchanted light sword."

The enchanted light sword pursued her in midair.

Under the effects of Alus's Power Arts, it ran from the front of her neck to the back, burning away her nigh invincible dragon scales.

"Incredible… Oh my! Alus!"

If her dodge had been just slightly less effective, it would've sent a lethal dose through her neck. It was something she had never once received in her long history—the largest wound she ever had.

And that wasn't the end of it.

If the attack cut up her tail, seized her claws, and came from directly below her, she couldn't even shower her opponent in her breath. Because her own enormous body would be included in the attack radius.

"Why, to be able to fight like this—!"

When Lucnoca uttered this, the wyvern champion was inside the reach of her claws. Her breath, her dragon claws, and her tail... Within this range, none of them could reach him.

Inside his right toe was the magic bullet.

The magic poison bullets of Arboreal Sky Tree, first causing their victim's nerves to rupture. Even when he directly grabbed hold of it, the physical toe, flesh replaced with iron, didn't possess any nerves to erode. Right now, his own

body was a magic bullet, shooting faster than a gunshot across the horizon.

 Aiming at her neck, where her dragon scales had been torn off, he would surpass the strongest of all dragons' reflex speed.

"…"

…But he was unable.

The mass of Alus's torso was vertically rent in half. He lost his entire left wing.

…Lucnoca muttered, dumbfounded. "…Oh dear. I've done it now."

Then she spit out half of the champion's body she had chomped off. "Honestly... How could I act like such a brute?"

The wyvern champion had disabled her tail, slipped through her claws, and even inhibited her breath as he challenged the dragon.

It hadn't been enough. Beyond all of those were her fangs.

On the actual brink of death for the first time in her eternal history, the spinal reflex speed of the dragon's maw far surpassed the maximum direct flight velocity of the strongest of all wyverns.

A reactive speed that even Lucnoca the Winter herself found to be completely unexpected.

It wasn't the sort of personal growth that occurred under extreme situations, like Alus the Star Runner had accumulated over the years.

It was the basic instincts of a wild animal. Like her eradicating breath, nothing but a latent ability that the strongest of all creatures had possessed from the start.

"Why, I didn't know I was so fast."

It was simply that no one had seen her utilize her full strength before. Even Lucnoca the Winter herself didn't know her limits.

There hadn't been a single person, anyone in the vast, wide world, who had backed her that far into a corner.

"..."

The rogue who had conquered everything far and wide on the horizon had fallen.

Trembling Bird. Rotten Soil Sun. Hillensingen the enchanted light sword.

Together with all his treasures, together with the sparkling brilliance of the world, he fell down into the ruptured earth's abyss.

—What if Lucnoca the Winter's tail attack hadn't accidently caught him?

If he hadn't been wounded by that attack. If his muscles hadn't gone numb in the cold air? If he had thrown his gun away and made his bag lighter... If he hadn't been born with three arms?

It was he, the one lone wyvern, who was the champion to get the closest to taking Lucnoca the Winter's life.

…I was right.

In the final moments of his fading consciousness, he thought.

…Harghent's an amazing guy, after all...

"N-not yet..."

Harghent stood up and staggered ahead.

Alus the Star Runner had fallen. Down into that deep, dark abyss. To the bottom of the frozen earth.

The severe frost had almost been like death itself, but now he couldn't even bring himself to keep the blanket around him. Without anything to cling to, Harghent shouted, smeared in tears and snot.

"Not yet!"

He would still rise back up again. Alus wasn't defeated yet. Harghent hadn't won yet. Alus the Star Runner was a champion, after all.

He had been his star, grabbing everything he wanted, never daunted by any hardship.

Even if that hardship was Lucnoca the Winter, he knew, surely…

"…Isn't that right, Alus…?! It's not over yet, it's not over…! Aaaaaah…" His knees buckled in front of the horizon's unchanging stillness.

All that remained there was the cold temperature of despair and fated resignation.

Alus was there. Out in the distance was his greatest enemy. Harghent screamed.

"Someone!"

The elderly Sixth General screamed like a child.

"Someone pull Alus out of there! Someone…! It's Alus! H-he's… He's my friend! Someone! Someone…! Somebody…!"

The voice didn't reach anyone.

Hidow the Clamp, and that giant throng of spectators, had vanished at some point and gone away.

This uninhabited ice field, this scene of desolation itself. It was nothing less than the apex landscape.

"Someone, anyone…! Hck, hrngh…hngaaaah…!" "Aaah, that truly was a delight. Now, Harghent."

Lucnoca the Winter landed down behind Harghent's crouching back.

The dragon, who once prided herself on her pure-white beauty, unviolated by anything…was in pitiful state as she bled copiously from her tail, with her neck wickedly burned and her left claw severed, and yet—

"Come now…! It's not all going to just end after that, right? This is barely the beginning of the first round, after all! I'm sure the next one, too... Of course! There's even stronger champions waiting to give even more wonderful battles, right?!"

In her several hundred years of life, she had never once tasted excitement like this before.

The solitary and removed landscape seemed to glisten in her eyes. She thought that there still remained things she could love about this world.

For her, denied any hope of battle itself, those wounds were exactly what she had wanted more than anything else

"More, more, and more battles like that…! Ahhh, I truly can't wait for the next battle! The next champion!"

Match Two. Winner, Lucnoca the Winter.