Ch.755Tell me your name.

“A sudden question asking for my name. If I were human, I would have ignored it and continued fighting, but…”

“Ugh…!”

In elven society, where respect for family and tradition was so firmly established that it had become custom, not answering someone who asked your name was a terrible insult.

How terrible? Terrible enough that you’d be openly called a rat who had sullied the honor of your family and race, becoming the target of vicious social lynching for the rest of your life.

It was so bad that an elf who had actually committed such an offense reportedly left behind the final words, “Even if I had rolled in bed with Werebeasts, I wouldn’t have faced such contempt,” before taking their own life.

Think about it. Considering elves’ lifespan, this wasn’t just ten years of torment, but over five hundred years of nation-wide collective harassment. Enduring that wouldn’t make you an elf, but a Buddha.

So the guardian facing me, despite understanding this was my trap, had no choice but to raise his left hand before his face in greeting and reveal his name. Following the ancient, musty elven etiquette that reeked of decay.

“…I am the guardian of the great mother World Tree and glorious Alvheim. Tersillius Zephinia Carnel—”

“Too long!”

Of course, I wasn’t going to wait for him to finish.

I shoved Durandal forward, forcing down his sword, and thrust Frosting toward his exposed neck.

“Kuk, how underhanded…!”

He had clearly anticipated this and hurriedly twisted his body to avoid it, but his stance, already being pushed back by my sword pressure, collapsed even further.

“You barbaric creature with no manners!”

“It’s your fault for having such a ridiculously long name!”

I swung my right foot low to sweep his legs while laughing.

A booming explosion. He hastily summoned an earth elemental to wrap around his leg, preventing it from being completely blown off, but he lost his balance, spinning half a turn and exposing a huge opening.

“Kheuk-!”

“Te-whatever your name was? Anyway, farewell!”

Durandal’s blade plunged down like an awl. His pupils trembled.

“Get away!”

He frantically shot a fire elemental that struck my face and exploded, but it was nothing more than a futile struggle. Of all elementals, he chose fire? What rotten luck.

“What a shame?”

With my face engulfed in flames, I smiled at him and thrust Durandal toward his heart—

“Tersillius!”

[Behind you!]

I couldn’t complete the thrust. Instead, I had to twist my body, draw my Red Scale Short Sword, and swing it to block another guardian’s blade that was lunging at me.

– CLANG!

The sacred sword and short sword collided, scattering sharp metallic sounds. A series of thrusts undulating like a snake. This one’s swordsmanship was also impressively refined.

“And who are—”

“Eirnesia Fulbercus Drahereckes! The one who will kill you!”

Ah, this trick won’t work again.

The guardian named Eirnesia quickly stated her name before I could even ask and continued her attack without pause.

It seemed getting fooled once was enough. This was the textbook response. When someone asks your name, you must stop attacking and introduce yourself formally, but there’s no need when you volunteer your name first.

“You think you have the skill for that?”

Well, I didn’t expect the same trick to work twice. I just tried it on the off chance.

I continuously parried Eirnesia’s sword with my Red Scale Short Sword in my left hand, while blocking the fierce attacks of Tersillius—who had sprung back up with a face that had aged a hundred years—with Durandal in my right.

Atop a high wind elemental circling the battlefield, four blades clashed like a rainstorm, scattering sparks.

“You’re not bad with a sword? I thought guardians just sat on high elementals and shot arrows.”

I shook off my tattered, torn clothes while paying my own form of tribute to their skills.

I was trying to conserve Defying Fate as much as possible, but even so, there were no swordsmen in the entire empire or the great plains who could put up this much of a fight against me now.

“Did you think we, who have lived far longer than your short-lived kind, wouldn’t have mastered swordsmanship in all that time? Your arrogance is astonishing. Even your ancestors weren’t this bad.”

“How old are you? From the way you talk, you must have eaten up several hundred years.”

I continued the conversation while blocking, deflecting, and evading the two swords attacking me relentlessly from both sides.

“Mere hundreds? Is that the limit of your imagination?”

“Then I guess you’re about fifteen hundred years old.”

That would make them elderly even among elves. Though they seemed remarkably fit for such an age.

“Fifteen hundred years, how impressive.”

“Now do you understand? No matter how much your short-lived kind struggles—”

No, I wasn’t complimenting their skills.

“Two fifteen-hundred-year-olds can’t beat me alone. Where did all those years go?”

“…What?”

I shook my head slightly with a contemptuous sneer.

“And you’re still alive. I wonder how you survived when the Great’s Twelve Knights were active. Did you strip naked, lie face down, and beg for your lives?”

“Y-you… vulgar…!”

Had I touched a racial nerve? Guardian Eirnesia’s face instantly contorted like a demon’s.

Even with elves’ delicate features, when twisted to that extent, she looked no different from a kobold.

“Ah, sorry. Did I hit a sore spot? Come to think of it, I might have been too rude to someone who could be my relative. Your bloodline might be mixed with the descendants of the Twelve Knights.”

“How dare a short-lived creature… How dare you insult my purity? If it weren’t for Heaven’s Wall, someone like you—!”

…She was a virgin after living fifteen hundred years? That was shocking in its own way.

Unable to bear my provocation suggesting she had survived by bearing the enemy’s children, Eirnesia ground her teeth and shot toward me like an arrow.

Her movements were linear, her blade tip trembling with anger. She had become perfect prey. I could clearly see where she was aiming just by looking at her eyes.

I lowered my stance slightly and pulled back my Red Scale Short Sword, ready to deflect her obvious attack and counter-thrust through her anger-distorted face.

“Eirnesia! Calm yourself!”

However, Tersillius intervened urgently to stop her, causing my carefully crafted provocation to fail in its purpose.

Drenched by the water splash Tersillius had summoned, Eirnesia stopped mid-charge with a start and regained her senses in the blink of an eye.

“Haah… Sorry, Tersillius. I almost fell for it.”

I clicked my tongue in disappointment and lowered my raised blade. Talk about bad timing, ruining a perfectly good opportunity.

“But really, what is this woman? Is she truly a descendant of the Twelve Knights? Her manner of speech is so… rude and vulgar that even street thugs would bow their heads and ask to learn from her.”

“Do not exchange words with it. That thing is merely a savage beast.”

Tersillius glared at me with contempt-filled eyes and spat out his words.

“Calling me a beast just because I didn’t accept your greeting? That’s harsh.”

“……Ha.”

Apparently intent on following his own advice not to exchange words with me, Tersillius responded with only a short, derisive laugh and raised his sword tip.

“You have enough skill to be arrogant, but in the end, you’re just a short-lived creature who relies on cheap provocations to create openings. You’re not a difficult opponent if we ignore your barking.”

“Oh, is that so? Shouldn’t you say such things after you’ve actually managed to wound me?”

I sneered with a smirk.

Though my armor had been scratched here and there by their sword strikes, I was reminding them that my body hadn’t suffered any significant wounds yet.

However, Tersillius ignored my mockery through gritted teeth, focusing only on his companion.

“We’ll change the battlefield. Not here, but on the ground. Since his flying speed exceeds ours, the wind elemental is useless.”

“Right. That would be better.”

As Eirnesia nodded, the wind elemental that had been our foothold instantly vanished. From twenty meters up in the sky.

“Ha, you think that will change anything?”

I transformed my fall into flight by emitting Karma flames and rushed toward them, swinging my sword and short sword.

“It will.”

But unlike the other two guardians who had fallen helplessly after losing the wind elemental and allowed Demian and Millia to attack them, these two summoned lower elementals as stepping stones even as they fell, somehow managing to defend against my slashes.

Until our feet finally reached the ground.

And then.

“GRAAAAARGH!”

The next moment, a stone giant with no lower body and an ice giant that looked like an unfinished clay doll appeared simultaneously, roaring fiercely as they swung their massive fists toward me.