Ch.701Last

“Kuuugh….”

I grabbed my dizzy head and staggered, looking at Orhan who was swaying just like me.

“You’re… bleeding?”

Blood trickled down between his disheveled hair. Like me, his forehead was cracked and bleeding. Just like when he dodged my knee strike earlier, and now this.

Clearly, he wasn’t able to deploy Unyielding Flesh.

“Is that amazing Unyielding Flesh reaching its limit?”

“Limit… you think so?”

The next moment, Orhan’s foot slammed into my side.

“Kyahak…!”

The impact turned my insides upside down. Blood gushed up my throat. The strike was twice as fast as usual, so I couldn’t react in time.

With a heavy pain, I flew horizontally twenty meters and crashed into an abandoned house, demolishing it. Walls and pillars shattered, and the collapsed roof poured down on my head.

“Not yet!”

A rapidly approaching fighting spirit. Orhan was coming. At a much faster speed than when he was uninjured, despite having his heart destroyed.

I get it now. It wasn’t that he couldn’t use Unyielding Flesh—he chose not to. He abandoned maintaining the invulnerability that would be pierced anyway, redirecting that Karma toward physical enhancement instead.

…In other words, I could now beat him without holding back.

“You damn bastard…!”

I shook off the debris piled on my sprawled body and charged toward him.

“Just die already-!”

Sword and blade collided, spitting sparks, and our legs crossed with thunderous sounds.

Since both of us had lost an arm, our attacks were simple, but the power and speed behind each strike surpassed our previous fight when our bodies were intact.

Every time blades grazed flesh, armor was sliced away and blood sprayed, while hammer-like kicks crushed bones and muscles.

Not just me, but Orhan too groaned and became wounded with each blow he took.

“Kaaaahp!”

“Kyaaaak!”

Orhan and I roared with blood-tinged howls as we clashed fiercely, tearing apart everything around us.

The stone pavement completely shattered under Orhan’s footstep, and a stray vacuum blade diagonally cut through a church spire standing tall.

With a rumbling sound, the upper part of the spire slid down and crashed to the ground, raising a cloud of dust.

“Ha, you dodged that?”

“Of course I dodged…!”

After avoiding my aerial strike by bending his waist deeply, Orhan sprang up and rammed his shoulder into me. It was like being charged by a human-shaped battering ram.

“Not there!”

I gripped my sword with my teeth, and with my freed right hand, I grabbed Orhan’s shoulder, spun my body, and kicked him away.

Crack.

“Kheuk…!”

I clearly felt the sensation of breaking armor and crushing bone. With his own charging momentum plus the force of my kick, he flew like a child hit by a truck, crashing through five buildings and demolishing them all.

The earth shook as if an earthquake had struck, and thick dust clouds covered everything like fog.

“Not yet!”

With a shout full of fighting spirit, the dust fog suddenly split. Orhan charged like a dragon coiling through clouds and drove his right foot into my abdomen.

Like he had done, I flew away, demolishing a row of buildings with my back. Everyone engaged in urban warfare nearby was swept away by the collapsing buildings.

“Uwaaaaak!”

“R-run! You’ll die if you get caught in this!”

“Keep your distance! Don’t approach that area! You’ll be swept away!”

Regardless of whether they were Imperial soldiers or Ka’har, the survivors screamed and hurriedly fled.

The clash of superhumans who transcended even heroes. For those with human sensibilities, it was truly a disaster no different from a landslide in a storm.

—-

Orhan persisted tenaciously, unbelievably tenaciously. Despite his destroyed heart, massive blood loss, exhausted body, and the underworld’s cold penetrating him, he fought on.

I wondered if this was how my opponents felt. His vitality was truly more persistent than a monster’s.

…But even that was finally reaching its limit.

“Kuh, uuuugh…!”

Orhan grimaced and gritted his teeth. His complexion had turned from pale to almost bluish-black. It was the face of someone near death.

In the middle of what had become ruins, Orhan and I faced each other with wounds carved all over our bodies, blades locked together.

“Haa… haa… what’s wrong…? You’re staggering.”

“Kuuk….”

As I pushed down harder with Durandal, Orhan’s knees trembled and began to buckle as he tried to hold me off with his Crimson Blade like a shield. As if he could no longer endure.

“…It seems you’ve truly reached your limit now.”

I pressed down on him with my sword blade and managed a strained smile.

I too was nearly at my limit from exhaustion, but I was still in much better condition than Orhan, whose heart had burst and who was cursed.

Judging by how the severed part of my left arm was growing cold like ice, the curse seemed to be seeping into me as well… but I could still endure. Thanks to the Stigmata, perhaps.

“Kuuuk…!”

Purple blood flowed from between Orhan’s clenched teeth. Unable to withstand the pressure, he fell to his knees. At that moment, I was certain of victory.

After a battle where we had both inflicted and received so much damage, finally.

“No strength left to speak? Then, die like this.”

I added my body weight to Durandal’s blade, pressing down on him. The blue-silver blade descended gradually, digging into Orhan’s shoulder.

“…You’ve grown strong, Haschal. Befitting my child… Imelia’s… child.”

And then.

Orhan spoke with difficulty.

“This fight has convinced me… Now… no one, absolutely no one can harm you anymore….”

“…What?”

I tilted my head questioningly. What was he babbling about proudly? He was about to be cut down by the very person he was addressing.

…Or perhaps by Ka’har standards, even that was something to be proud of?

“I failed… Caught between desire and duty… I chose duty, and this is the result. It was unlike me….”

Whether he heard my question or not, Orhan stared into empty space with half-closed eyes and continued muttering.

Having lost all strength, he dropped even his Crimson Blade and continued speaking, coughing blood, as if lamenting his fate.

“…So? What are you trying to say?”

Instead of cutting off his head, I thrust Durandal into the ground and leaned on it, listening to his final words.

Since these were his dying words, I thought I should hear him out and perhaps relay them to Hersella.

Given the circumstances, I couldn’t keep my promise to let her handle the fight with Orhan, so I should at least do this much.

“So… live as you wish. Cut through with your strength anything that tries to bind you… and achieve what you desire. That… that is the warrior’s way….”

“…Should you be saying that? How do you know what I’ll wish for? As I said before, I might slaughter over thirty prairie warriors for revenge.”

I had no such intention, but Hersella might be different.

“No…. Ludwig might, but you… you wouldn’t.”

Orhan coughed blood and smiled faintly.

“I remembered what Imelia said… Ironically, only now…. The sword you wield, Imelia’s sword… wouldn’t follow someone intent on such deeds….”

“…That’s true.”

Indeed, in the game, Durandal doesn’t recognize Hersella as its master and is wielded as a mere magical sword before breaking.

“And also… there was something else… I wanted to say, needed to say… but I can’t remember….”

His voice grew weaker and sank. Orhan’s breathing became faint. Whether all the blood had drained from his body, even the bleeding from his wounds had stopped.

“Imelia… if only… we had left together… back then….”

Those were the last words Orhan left behind.

The strongest warrior of the prairie closed his unfocused eyes and lay down in his own blood.

With a sigh that had no conclusion.

“Haah….”

I collapsed beside him and, with a trembling right hand, searched my pocket for a cigarette and put it between my lips.

“Well, you left quite an unsettling last message….”

I wonder if I should relay this to Hersella. Given her personality, she might cause quite a scene.

I sighed and ignited the Kenaz rune to set Orhan’s corpse on fire.

To prove he was dead, it would be more efficient to cut off his head and display it on a pole… but I didn’t particularly want to do that.

– Whoosh!

As the body caught fire and began to blaze, I lit my cigarette from it and exhaled smoke toward the sky.

Was it because the tension had eased, or because of severe blood loss?

My head was dizzy, and I had no strength left in my body.

…This is tough.

I smoked my cigarette beside the makeshift funeral pyre, tending to my wounds.

I removed Frosting fixed to my left shoulder and tore strips from my clothes to tightly bind my shattered left arm to stop the bleeding.

With only one arm remaining, it took longer than expected to make the knots using my right hand and teeth. Long enough to finish an entire cigarette.

Then, I tossed the finished cigarette next to Orhan’s body, now reduced to bones, and grabbed Durandal’s hilt to stand up.

I had to move again. Even though Orhan was dead, the war itself wasn’t over.