Thud!
Ingis had one arm and one leg broken.
His arm broke because he missed the arc of the opponent's bludgeon, and his leg broke because he was overwhelmed in a contest of strength and got hit. Every time he blocked, invisible shockwaves pounded his body.
"Surrender, kneel, and I'll spare you. Swear your loyalty."
The opponent said this. Ingis, forced to hold his balance on one leg because of the broken one, answered.
"If I betray my oath, I won't even be able to fight properly—does that have any value?"
It was a question asked out of pure curiosity.
"There's a way, so just kneel."
"I refuse."
"You'll accept death? It's a pointless death."
The gap in capability was clear. Even so, he didn't feel wronged. If you put it that way, then everyone who had fallen by his hand until now would have been wronged and resentful, too.
Ingis also had a record of cutting down two southern knights.
"Whether it's pointless or not is something I decide."
That calm tone and unshaken core—those were what Cypress valued most in Ingis.
If you threw away your Will just because death was coming, you were denying the days you had lived.
"If there's something you believe in, you just head for it."
If the end was death, he could bear it. That was the teaching of the Red Cloak Order of Knights, and the conviction Ingis held.
"My name is Caelo. At least remember the name of the man who killed you."
Southern Caelo swung his weapon, thinking of the pup who had bolted without even listening to his name.
It was an engraved weapon, named Destruction. He enjoyed breaking opponents' weapons, so he also had the nickname Weapon Breaker.
Making a show of breaking weapons was half a smokescreen—this was a weapon embedded with various magics.
Weapon Breaker Caelo was evaluated as better at duels than Baerlich, the commander—one of the knights spoken of as the strongest in the South.
Ingis raised his sword toward the bludgeon dropping down over his head. He tried to divert it, knock it aside, calculate it—but nothing worked, so what was left was to take it with strength.
'He's faster than me, and stronger than me.'
Because he couldn't close that simple gap, this was the result. With one leg broken, he couldn't form a contest of force. But should he just die obediently?
He couldn't, so he tried to strike it aside with strength, let the lacking parts slip, endure, and calculate the next move. He was desperate. It wasn't the first time he'd faced a crisis like this, but this one was the most threatening. Death came close and brushed his nape.
'If I try to dodge, I die.'
Ingis met the weapon head-on and compressed his Will, pouring it into his sword. As a result born from instinctive judgment and talent, Will gathered on his blade.
Bang!
Even so, the result didn't change. Every collision of the enemy's bludgeon produced pressure, leaving shock through his whole body. This time, that shock was larger.
It was like a huge invisible fist had smashed his abdomen—Ingis's waist bent backward and he flew.
The sound of compressed air bursting was like the sound of all his guts exploding. If you could call it lucky, Ingis's guts didn't explode.
He rolled along the ground and vomited a mouthful of blood, but he still breathed, and the light in his eyes didn't die.
He stopped rolling, pressed his chest to the ground, and lifted only his head to watch the opponent. Those eyes still held light.
'Those eyes…'
They looked like he'd want to smash them.
Caelo had no reason to go easy, so he was about to charge—then he stopped his stepping foot in midair.
With his left foot lifted, his gaze turned somewhere other than Ingis. Refined pressure weighed down on his shoulders. Caelo stomped down the lifted foot with a thud, shook off the pressure, raised his bludgeon, and spoke.
"You damn bastard. I was going to come kill you the moment I finished this side."
The owner of that pressure came trudging over from one side. He looked like he'd come out for a night stroll.
His name was Ragna, and he belonged to the Mad Order of Knights.
No matter that it was Ragna, he didn't lose his way with an enemy right in front of him. From the start, he had chosen his opponent. He followed Enkrid's judgment because Enkrid called him, but if Enkrid hadn't been there, he would've come to face this bastard long ago.
"A corpse talking back?"
Ragna, the moment he arrived, scraped at the opponent's insides.
Ingis wasn't someone who laughed much normally, but now a drained little laugh slipped out.
It was the first time he'd seen someone say something like that with such a serious face in a situation like this. He hadn't said it as a joke, either.
'Ten out of ten, sincere.'
Right. Ragna was sincere. That one was already dead. In the previous match, a mage had gotten involved and he'd barely survived.
"You crazy bastard. I am Weapon Breaker Caelo!"
Fastest knight or whatever—no one could reach out carelessly in front of him. And yet this attitude toward him? It couldn't be tolerated.
As he spoke, he stepped in. He closed on the one who had come, took the distance he wanted, and brought the angular bludgeon down diagonally.
Caelo intended to break both wrists of that insolent bastard with the first blow.
The engraved weapon "Destruction" held several magics. One of them converted the impact created when it was swung into an invisible shockwave, and another made it so that if it hit precisely on a hexagonal edge, that impact would flow along the blade and transmit into the wrist of the one holding it.
'If you don't know, you have to get hit.'
With a first-time opponent, it was hard to recognize the magics embedded in an engraved weapon. If he reflexively drew up Will and blocked, then in that opening, he'd break at least one wrist.
Willpower became Will, naturally whirling inside the body and causing a change in its nature. Caelo had enough skill to show confidence. That was why the outcome of this fight wasn't his fault.
It was just that in this world, there were truly absurd geniuses.
Ragna already knew how to deal with him the first time he fought him. And on top of that, since they'd been separated for a moment, he'd even been given time to think about how to handle him.
A genius's time and an ordinary man's time are not the same. Here, both of them would be in the genius category, but even so, the difference was clear.
'A form that transmits shock if you block.'
A fighting style that profits off you dodging.
Caelo was the all-around type, with no weakness in strength, speed, or personal tactics. That was all.
Clang!
Destruction struck Sunrise. Caelo's eyes narrowed. He didn't see the result he wanted. Ragna let go of the sword grip for a brief moment, then grabbed it again.
'This crazy bastard?'
That made the magic embedded in his weapon useless. The shock that should have been transmitted through the grip scattered uselessly into empty air. And as for the pressure-made shockwave, he took it with his body, roughly.
Thung!
When the shockwave punched his abdomen, the dark-green cloak bent forward and blocked part of it, but it couldn't erase all of it, so he endured the rest with his body.
Because he'd let go of the sword for a moment and grabbed it again, Sunrise's blade had dropped downward and been pushed.
After that, every action Ragna took was smooth and without hesitation, as if it had all been for this one move.
He stretched his left leg forward in a straight line. It was a bold step. That leg invaded all the way between Caelo's two feet.
Caelo, with one hand, drew the shortsword he wore as a secondary weapon and stabbed, and with the hand holding Destruction, he pulled back to block the opponent's sword.
Puhk. The shortsword stabbed between the folds of the opponent's cloak. It was a cut faster than the cloak's movement. Ragna also wore layered leather and cloth armor, but it was a knight's thrust. The blade bit into flesh.
Then Sunrise, which had been dropped downward, surged up.
The sun rising was something no calamity could stop.
Eeeeeee.
Caelo's end was ringing. He didn't feel pain. A blade he couldn't recognize even with accelerated thinking pierced through his neck.
"Ah."
Ingis admired it purely.
'Make an opening with an attack the opponent can't expect, then strike at a speed they can't respond to.'
And in the middle of that, he just takes whatever blade flies in. Could there be a situation that showed "give flesh and take bone" this perfectly?
Caelo, to the very end, barely raised an arm to block, but Ragna's sword—almost as if it had expected the forearm to block—changed from a cutting motion into a thrusting motion.
It was like the flapping of a swallow's wings, freely roaming the sky, or like a snake's movement. It also looked like he was gripping lightning in his hand and swinging it.
What was certain was that it wasn't really even something you could call an art. He just swung his sword as fast and as flexibly as needed, at the needed moment.
"Now you can't talk back, can you?"
On the blade Ragna held, chiiik— the enemy's blood sizzled. It felt like the steam stank of fishy blood.
Even the place he'd been stabbed with the shortsword wasn't that deep. It was a blade he'd thrown out reflexively to make him dodge. Before that blade could tear up his insides, he just had to cut the enemy's neck.
Ragna was the kind of man who carried out insane thoughts like that as if it were nothing.
***
Shinar, about to watch Enkrid's back as he moved out, snatched a single arrow that came with no sound and no presence.
The pitch-black arrow was painted in a color that absorbed light, and its fletching used owl feathers that had become monsters. The shaft was soft as if it were velvet—material and form meant to swallow sound.
"Not a chance."
Shinar was a fairy who had mastered fighting while killing sound. And within the Mad Order of Knights, there existed a monster that even killed killing intent, throwing daggers.
Because she had seen that monster, Shinar repeatedly whipped herself. And besides, for madmen, it was basic to provoke each other and never lose their desire to improve. She was the master of Kirheis, but also a member of the Mad Order of Knights, so she had been faithful to that basic, and reached this point.
It was an arrow easier to block than Jaxon's dagger. The killing intent had been erased, but couldn't she still feel the momentum flying in?
She had blocked it relying purely on instinct, so she couldn't dare call it easy, but still.
"You blocked that."
The opponent was a southern fairy called the Black Forest clan. Her skin was black as pitch. A traitor of a clan that made the Demon-lands its home.
Even when a black fairy drew a sword, it made no sound. The blade was dark brown, and it carried a stinging scent. The sword's name was "Dead Leaf."
It wasn't a sword made by hammering iron. It was made by taking dozens of trees that had lived for hundreds of years and gained spirit, rotting them whole, then covering them with rotten soil again and again, storing poison in them.
Shinar also drew Naidel. The refreshing blue of spring and a dark-brown blade that symbolized poison pointed at each other.
"Cruel."
Shinar said. There wasn't a change in her expression, but if Enkrid had seen it, he would've known she was angry.
What were old trees with spirit? Wood Guards. The sword the opponent held was a sword made by killing dozens of Wood Guards—one of the fairy clans.
Even without seeing the process, she could tell, and anger rose up.
"It's a waste even to curse you."
When Shinar said it, the black fairy's eyes curved.
"Hypocrisy."
Either way, weren't they going to kill and be killed?
The black fairy treated poison as an organ. Shinar couldn't find a reason to drag time out. After a few exchanges, the black fairy secretly threw a dagger, and Shinar took the dagger and cut her neck.
The dagger lodged in Shinar's left thigh. Considering it pierced even the cloak's defense, this dagger, too, was paired with the weapon called "Dead Leaf."
"You said Black Forest clan? That alone wasn't enough to catch me."
Shinar said.
"You want to die together? My dagger is filled with the same rotten leaf poison, too."
As if using some kind of magic, the fairy answered with her neck half-cut. She was barely holding her own neck together and enduring. Blood gushed from the cut surface.
Maybe because she was a fairy, even with her neck cut, she didn't change expression much, and Shinar thought it was impressive she could open her mouth in that state.
"It's fine."
As always, Shinar answered without a trace of a smile.
The flames the salamander possessed burned away all poison. His fire was destruction that burned everything, and also symbolized regeneration. And if it was poison made from leaf mold soil, you could call it a perfect counter.
Fire burns away old poison. That was truth.
There was no sound and no presence, but Shinar burned the poison that had entered her body. Connected to the salamander through a mental image, a part of him passed through her body for a moment, then left.
The fairy knight the High Pontiff had prepared widened her eyes and dropped to her knees. She took two or three thin breaths, then her breathing stopped.
She died kneeling.
***
Lien's opponent had an ability to glimpse the future. Beyond a knight's insight, he actually foresaw what would happen, so his nickname was Prophet.
If you looked closely, it wasn't really foreknowledge, but a talent for reading the opponent's intent—but either way, this time, his opponent was too bad.
"You still held on a long time."
Lien's specialty was burrowing into the opponent's reach and snapping and breaking joints. He was a master of Eilcaraz-style martial arts.
The opponent predicted and "foretold" Lien's movements, escaping danger again and again and poking openings, but Lien didn't hesitate, he just charged stubbornly.
His shoulder got scraped by a blade and a bit of flesh tore off, but so what?
The moment he closed the distance like that, the opponent knight's complexion turned pale.
What kind of future had he seen? Had he seen his own end?
"Yeah? You saw it?"
Lien asked in the tone of a third-rate street punk.
There was no answer. The opponent, dead with his neck snapped, couldn't answer.
"Hoo."
His left arm was awkward because his shoulder had been stabbed, but it wasn't like he'd been stabbed somewhere truly bad.
Lien shook out both hands and turned his gaze to the other fights. The situation was mostly being cleaned up.
Looking at the scenes entering his eyes one by one, a thought naturally came to him.
'If they weren't here, we'd all be dead.'
Or would the master have made some absurd oath again and held on?
Either way, one thing was certain. The madmen were dominating the battlefield. Here and now, the strongest were them.
"You bastards! I am none other than Vice Commander Rem!"
From one side, a western barbarian shouted. There was no need for the injured one who had stayed in the rear to force himself out.
"Damn it!"
From back there, the King's exclamation came. He wasn't even a knight, but he sure had a loud voice.
It was a curse filled with the joy of victory.