Ch.81Blood-Soaked City. Fernheim (8)

“The 3-on-3 quarterfinals are heating up! The real battle begins now! Both teams, please enter the arena!”

As we entered with the announcer’s energetic voice, we and our opponents sized each other up.

Everyone was impressively armed, and the muscles visible through the gaps in their armor looked incredibly threatening.

The enemy team consisted of a battler wielding twin axes, a ranger with a crossbow, and an elderly female spell caster who appeared to be around Simon’s age.

“They plan to crush us from a distance,” Simon said, and we nodded in agreement.

“I can handle the mage… somehow just block that crossbow.”

“Got it. Raisha, I’ll take the axe-wielder, you handle the ranger.”

“Yes!”

With our brief strategy meeting concluded, the announcer, who had been rambling on overhead, finally gave the command to begin killing each other.

“Match start!”

*

Piyak!

Unlike the sound of a longbow, a bolt was fired from the seemingly inadequate crossbow.

Unlike the small hand crossbows that noblewomen often carry for self-defense, this was a proper crossbow with a stirrup at the front for loading, but…

Tak!

“Wh-what?!”

Kwajik!

“Too slow.”

Unfortunately, it doesn’t work against me.

No matter how fast the bolt was, it was still slower than the severed rope that had once come at me.

I caught the bolt with my hand and snapped it in half, drawing gasps of amazement from the audience.

“Hey, hey, has he gone mad?!”

“That guy’s reaction speed is insane?!!”

“No way, he actually caught it?!”

I threw the bolt fragments to the ground and charged at the ranger, who was too shocked to reload.

“Raisha!”

“Yes!”

She began running to match my pace, while Simon chanted a spell to place a silence debuff on the enemy spell caster.

“..!…!…??”

“Damn it!”

Noticing that only hoarse sounds came from the mage’s throat, the ranger hastily loaded his crossbow and fired at me, but I snorted and deflected the arrow with my blade. Meanwhile, Raisha broke away from my side to intercept the twin-axe battler charging toward us.

Soon I heard the sound of axe and spear blade colliding, and the ranger, apparently deciding he could no longer use his crossbow effectively, set it down, planted his pavise shield in the ground, and drew a two-handed axe.

He seemed to be planning to counterattack with his axe the moment I tried to flank around the pavise shield to the left or right…

KWAAANG!!!

“Huh…?”

This is a greatsword.

It’s meant to tear through armor and shields.

Thud.

“Unbelievable! That enormous sword wasn’t just for show after all! He’s cut through both the pavise and the ranger in one strike, killing him instantly!”

Before me was the upper body of the ranger, his face frozen in disbelief, and at my feet lay his lower half, as if protesting the impossibility of what had just happened.

What a fool…

What did you think you could do by setting up a pavise?

What could you possibly do besides being split in half along with your shield?

“….You bastard!”

As I was retrieving my sword, the elderly mage, now free from the silence debuff, contorted her face and shot a flaming arrow at me.

It was the same as what Evelyn had fired in Rascal, but I used Tuta to create a shockwave that extinguished the arrow and twisted its trajectory, blocking the spell.

“What?!”

It wasn’t particularly strange.

Fire and lightning magic that lack physical form are vulnerable to external shocks.

To explain it more simply, think of how even a breath can disturb a burning campfire.

“My goodness! Now he’s even neutralizing magic! Is there nothing that can stop this brave warrior?!”

“A battler using magic? Impossible!”

“You fool! That’s mark magic!”

“So he blocked magic with something that’s not even magic?!”

“Holy shit? He actually did!”

The audience sounded like they had walnuts rolling around in their heads instead of brains, but I raised my sword again and approached the spell caster who was chanting another spell at me.

Whether her incantation would be faster or my splitting her head would be quicker, no one could tell, but one thing to note was that the spell caster wasn’t alone.

Crackle-zap!

“Kyaaaah!!!”

A high-pitched scream echoed, and in the distance, electrical power discharged with tremendous force.

Simon had unleashed lightning for my sake, and the old mage had made the serious error of ignoring him while focusing all her power on me.

Slash-!

My sword swung, and her head was cleanly severed.

With this, two of the three were dead by my hand, and only the twin-axe battler remained.

“Damn it! Die, you wretched girl!”

“Not so fast!”

The last survivor desperately tried to break away from Raisha before I arrived, but trying to overcome a halberd, which is optimized for blocking short weapons, with a short one-handed axe and no shield was nearly impossible.

Simon and I stood still, watching to see if Raisha could kill him, and realizing we were watching, she began to attack even more aggressively.

“Haaaah!”

“Gyaaak!!”

With a battle cry followed by a scream, the blade of her halberd shattered the axe handle and cut through the battler’s armor.

Thanks to his armor, his external wounds weren’t visible, but the armor that had withstood such an impact was dented and torn, and though there were no visible wounds, his insides must have been a mess.

Bang! Bang! Bang!

Raisha’s eyes gleamed fiercely as she repeatedly struck his body, and soon his armor was reduced to rags, his skin peeled away, and muscle and bone became visible.

“Arrrgh!”

“Die!!”

Finally, she thrust into the exposed part of the battler’s armor, bursting his heart. He coughed blood and died, and then the announcer’s voice boomed throughout the arena.

“Winner! The Iron Walker Party!”

“””Wooooooah!!!!”””

Amid the crowd’s wild cheers, we returned to the waiting room.

Now, only the finals remained.

*

“Phew. I have nine spells left now.”

“Wasn’t the lightning a spell?”

“That was just a technique. It can be activated with hand gestures, foot movements, or just by waving a staff.”

“I see.”

I sat on the sofa, embracing Raisha as she snuggled against me, and thought about the burgundy and ivory war horses we would receive if we won.

War horses are a subspecies created through genetic manipulation by the ancient empire for cavalry use. The manipulation was so extreme that they only resemble ordinary horses in appearance; they’re actually a different species and can’t even breed with regular horses.

Regular horses instinctively fear loud noises and sharp objects, and they die if their legs break, but war horses don’t fear loud noises or sharp objects. They have tough hides and strong legs that can’t be easily stopped by infantry weapons, even those made with the ancient empire’s technology.

Because of this, the knights of the ancient empire could mercilessly trample the weak, and ordinary soldiers who couldn’t use aura would flee at the sight of knights.

Well, that’s still the case even now.

“But there’s one thing I’m curious about.”

“What is it?”

“They clearly divided the tournament between those who can use aura and those who can’t, right?”

“That’s right.”

“But there’s only one war horse, isn’t there? Wouldn’t it be fraud if they gave us a different horse than the one in the picture?”

After pondering for a moment, Simon replied as if it were nothing special.

“They’ll probably use a duplication scroll or magic.”

“Ah.”

There was a much simpler method than I’d thought.

Duplication magic… why hadn’t I thought of that?

“Speaking of aura… when will I be able to use it?”

“Don’t be so impatient. There are downsides to awakening your aura.”

“Downsides?”

“You’ll have strength incomparably greater than ordinary people.”

“…Why is that a downside?”

“If you awaken your aura and fondle Raisha, she’ll be reduced to mush.”

“Oh my.”

“That’s why knights don’t visit brothels. If they ejaculate inside, the prostitutes would die from uterine rupture.”

“That’s terrifying…!”

Raisha trembled in my arms.

And so did I.

Uterine rupture from ejaculation!

Then Lord Keith, whom I had seen before, must have been a man who could instantly dispatch (in an ambiguous sense) most women.

“If someone has to awaken their aura, it would be better for Raisha to awaken before you. Crushed pelvis is better than a ruptured uterus. I can fix it with a healing spell.”

“You can’t save the uterus?”

“The uterus is different. I could repair it, but there’s no guarantee I could restore reproductive function.”

“I see…”

And so, the conversation that started with war horses and progressed to aura somehow concluded with talk of uterine rupture.

Is this… stream of consciousness?

I diligently fondled Raisha, and Raisha was diligently fondled.

Better touch a lot while I still can.