He had killed people before.
Though they were bandits who had swarmed in to plunder his father's enchanted swords, he had cruelly killed them, foes someone like Toroa could've handled without any need for death.
In the pages of history, many enchanted swordsmen had stained their hands with mass slaughter. The ones who did so on the battlefield were known as champions, while those who did so in peaceful villages were known as horrifying murderers.
Toroa understood these wielders' thoughts. All enchanted swords existed to cut others down, and the ones who held them allowed them to do that. As long as they held the form of a sword, they'd never once be used to save an enemy's life.
Controlling the enchanted swords gripped in either hand like the legs of a bug, he jumped off the ground, then off the walls.
His right leg reacted automatically to Psianop's intercepting attack, and he cleaved across with the sword attached to it.
The slash had definitely connected and slid off Psianop's surface as though the power behind it had been swept away. The counterattack was coming. Toroa hurled the enchanted fire sword into the air.
Once again, he caused an explosion and mixed himself up in the blast.
Raising his head from his quadrupedal stance, he looked at his enemy. The enemy. The Enemy—the crowd. There were so many people looking at his enchanted swords. So many people looking at Toroa the Awful. Toroa must have looked on the same way himself.
"Grrrrrrrrr…"
Kill them all. The voices of the enchanted swords were yelling at him.
That was his true gift—accepting and taking in all the enchanted swords' thoughts. It didn't hurt. His body felt far lighter than when he fought while holding on to his own consciousness.
"…I'm right here."
For reasons unknown to him, his enemy Psianop informed Toroa where exactly he was.
The enchanted swords' bloodlust, scattering among the roars of the crowd, once again converged at a single point.
Twisting his body, he threw Wailsever. It flew faster than a bullet. "...!"
The sonic wave's impact was repelled. He didn't need to think. Toroa once again threw himself at his enemy.
It felt almost as if his own physical body had become one with the enchanted swords. Nel Tseu the enchanted fire sword. Downpour's Needle. Vajgir, the enchanted sword of poison and frost. Downpour's Needle—
A monstrosity. He would become an enchanted sword monstrosity.
The cluster of slashes he sent out simultaneously pierced through three buildings, destroying them.
The tremendous explosion came three times.
The debris, the fragments, fluttered. Amid the vortex of destruction, unable to even make out his enemy's silhouette, Toroa the Awful was sneering.
"I kill people who simply witness what I do. Innocent people."
As he watched his own rampage, as if the work of someone else, this was
what he pondered. Had his father wished for that—and thus done so from the start?
Maybe, in fact, his father had been the same, too.
Had he wanted to ensure that the victims of his enchanted swordsmanship hadn't died in vain?
If that was the case… As long as he, too, remained Toroa the Awful, we would do the same.
That's not it.
Toroa was aware. He had been heavily burned by his own enchanted swords' ability.
If he was his normal self, this wouldn't have happened. His arm automatically drew his next sword. Psianop closed the distance to try to forestall him. From the ooze's flank came wedge blades swarming in like locusts.
The blade of the Wicked Sword Selfesk had been scattered by the previous attack. It had then turned into a storm, swirling in a vortex of magnetic force.
Destruction filled the streets. The roadside trees were hewed before being completely cut to splinters inside its circular radius.
Is this how an enchanted sword fights?
"Unsophisticated! Sophomoric! You're just—"
Psianop irately muttered as he smacked down each of the blades flying in at him. Toroa himself knew the meaning of the ooze's words. It was simply destruction. It wasn't power that could truly defeat his enemy. The enchanted fire sword moved Toroa. To induce an explosion with its maximum size of Gathering Clouds possible—aimed at Psianop.
Engulfing the audience watching the match with it.
I can't do it. After all, I'm just—
Right before it could happen, Toroa punched his own right arm with his left. He sent the enchanted fire sword flying. The explosive flames, bursting in midair, were led toward the canal, running through the iron railing and vaporizing the waters enough to see the river's bottom.
"…Toroa the Awful. You're—"
"…Just using techniques borrowed from another."
"Hmph."
"That's what you were going to say, eh, Psianop?"
Even if he sent the force of the previous secret technique at Psianop, he was convinced it wouldn't have brought him victory. It was simple destructive force that meaninglessly spread injury and harm.
If he did that, it'd be just the same as when he killed those bandits on Wyte Mountain.
"You're strong. I didn't realize such a master swordsman existed beyond the First Party."
"I'll surpass you."
Toroa's own honed skills, nor his rampage from entrusting his whole self to his enchanted swords, had not been enough to surpass Psianop.
He knew he had to stop clinging so hard to being his own self. But at the same time, he couldn't surrender control over to something outside himself.
Mushain the enchanted wind sword. Nel Tseu the enchanted fire sword. I've lost two. I don't have the time to gather Wicked Sword Selfesk's scattered blades back together again, either. In that case…I have only one way left to settle this.
In the next moment, as Toroa brought his breathing under control, Psianop was closing in. Even after being deeply gouged by Disordered Flock, he didn't think twice at all about rushing back into combat at close quarters. Therein lay his strength.
The enchanted sword of poison and frost.
The automatically counterattacking Lance of Faima's chain was gripped hard and stopped in its tracks. The Disordered Flock technique had hit Psianop precisely because, in that one moment, it was a perfectly unexpected attack. Psianop's pseudopod pulled the chain toward him. He would break Toroa's stance…a goal that the enchanted swordsman had read perfectly. He had already cut off the chain from its base.
Psianop. You're strong. It's not only the fierceness of your offense, either.
Right now… I don't think there's anyone in the world who could out-read you. Psianop continued his merciless onslaught, and Toroa handled his attacks. Maybe, if I were Alus the Star Runner.
The thought suddenly crossed his mind. He was in the midst of a magnificent battle, so why did he have the composure for thoughts like that?
If he were Alus the Star Runner, soaring through the sky, then he probably wouldn't have kept letting his opponent into melee range—but was that really so?
Psianop had completely read all the enchanted swords nigh impossibly unpredictable techniques and showed that he could rush up into the air without a foothold. Even Toroa would have done the same in order to bring down Alus the Star Runner.
His opponent had read his slash. Sent flying, Toroa's body crashed through a residential house's wall.
They'd either open up space or slip inside each other's range. Reacting with razor-thin room to spare, they both avoided instant death.
…Nevertheless, there was a clear point of difference between the start of the fight and now.
A simultaneous four-point jab. He'll slam the blade from the side and turn it away. Aiming for my liver.
It was the flow of Toroa's thoughts.
"Won't step forward. Drawing attention with a step to the right." Toroa the Awful's breathing still remained deep and long.
Circling around from the right, Psianop tried to grab Toroa's joints. Toroa could tell.
"As little ground contact as possible, kicking—" "You think—"
He dodged the incoming blow. He avoided a fatal wound without forcing his slash to meet the attack. Psianop's motions remained impenetrable. Not everything went exactly as Toroa had predicted.
"You think you're going to read my movements instead?!"
His technique and enchanted swords were both inherited from his father. Where then did Toroa the Awful's true strength, his own strength, lie?
No. Dad told me. I should've known from the very start.
That his overly kind disposition took in the thoughts of the enchanted swords and was hindering his own technique.
Toroa had begun to track Psianop's agility as he slipped past Toroa's defenses, not allowing any moment to react.
It was the same feeling he had when he faced the Particle Storm. When Toroa had fought Mestelexil, commanding an endless supply of unknown weaponry, it felt as if Toroa knew everything down to where his opponent's gun barrel would aim next.
I get it. I understand.
He knew that terrifying golem was a child who loved his mother.
Or he understood that the heartless ooze held a lot of pride in his own
strength.
He didn't have supernatural senses like Clairvoyance. Nor was the tremendous amount of combat experience accumulated within the enchanted swords the actual memories of the battles he himself had fought and won. However, it was enough to face off against the enemy in front of him and continue fighting.
Toroa the Awful was able to take in thoughts and ideas. His enemy's will, their wishes.
…That's right. My thoughts and ideas aren't necessary. But I know that isn't this the complete picture. There's meaning in having me be here. From this completely limitless accumulation of these enchanted swords' thoughts and ideas…the one truly making the choices is me.
Psianop's fist drew in close to his heart. He suppressed the attack with a side blow from a hilt and responded with the enchanted sword of poison and frost. The pseudopod morphed and, from a tight distance, ripped apart the armor on Toroa's gauntlet. The intuition-led swing followed closely after Psianop's atypical dodge. Shattering a wall, Psianop opened up space between them. Toroa ran in pursuit. A flash of the Divine Sword Ketelk—and the large storehouse above its elongated attack was cut in two. Psianop once again sneaked inside Toroa's range. But he followed up with Disordered Flock. The ooze handled the attack. Then he dodged. Toroa pulled back moments before Psianop could grab the sword tip.
The sky was above them. Dashing through the streets, at the other end of the numerous obstacles he destroyed or slipped past, he realized he had made it outside at some point.
He could see a carriage in the distance. He knew there was someone watching over the match from inside.
It was Mizial.
He's…
Diagonally in front to his right. Kicking off the wall and coming straight into Toroa's reach. The enemy moved exactly as Toroa had predicted.
…caught up.
The thoughts and ideas he saw…had at last responded completely to the most strange and atypical of martial artists.
At this point, there was nowhere higher to go. Not for himself.
Nor even for his enchanted swords.
In that case, he'd take in Psianop's thoughts and ideas, too.
Go ahead and read me. All the swords in the world. All the skill throughout history. I'm not alone. Go ahead! Try reading all the enchanted swordsman who came before me!
He sent out Downpour's Needle. Disordered Flock, the illusionary thrusting technique that he had demonstrated many times over. It would hit Psianop's interception head-on, smashing and breaking its true form. He understood that was what the ooze would do.
The trajectory of the phantoms created by the sword grew chaotic, filling up Psianop's entire line of sight with wild abandon.
"…!"
Even if the enchanted sword was destroyed, that didn't mean its abilities were lost. It was a technique aiming to have the sword broken from the very start. A onetime-use technique, only able to take his enemy by surprise because of the similar techniques he had aimed at the ooze already—Avian Death.
Then.
Then, Toroa the Awful, with his cords. Chains. Hinged mechanisms.
With every conceivable preparation at his disposal, he could send out all of the enchanted swords, wielding them with his whole body.
"Nest…Descent!"
The thrust he launched, prepared to abandoned Downpour's Needle from the start, was replaced halfway through the motion to the enchanted sword with the forked blade—Vajgir, the enchanted sword of poison and frost.
Naturally, it couldn't be connected through Psianop's evasion, reading all of Toroa's attacks ahead of him.
However, the same wasn't so for the blood from his gauntlet that he had sent flowing through the sword blade.
A drop of Toroa's blood that had passed through the thrusting sword blade fell onto Psianop.
Without the opening in the ooze's presence of mind, that he had pried open with Avian Death, even that one droplet wouldn't have found its mark. He knew, too, that Psianop possessed such a level of skill.
He knew. Therefore, he surpassed him. "Wh-what did you…?! Augh…!"
The protoplasm violently expanded outward.
Psianop's body began mutating into a delicate crystal substance.
The enchanted sword of crystallized corrosion that instantly infected and
eroded away any organic body that touched its blade. Even a single drop of blood became a transmission agent.
"Did you think…," Toroa the Awful motioned to the champion, unlike any the enchanted swordsmen of history had ever encountered, "…you'd be able to remain undamaged until the very end?"
"Not…yet!"
During the final moments he would be able to act, Psianop rushed to try to get his enemy in range.
Toroa already knew he'd make this choice. His final enchanted sword was Inrate, the Sickle of Repose.
"Chirp!" "Spear…hand…!"
A flash of a sword. Psianop the Inexhaustible Stagnation was cut across in two.
The Chirp his father learned was a technique that simply used a grip on the base of the scythe's blade to counter extremely close-range attacks. It may have been too simple of a move to truly be designated the enchanted swords' "secret technique."
However, he had etched Downpour's Needle's Distorted Flock in Psianop's consciousness by repeating it over and over again. It was only against opponents conditioned not to believe the visible illusions before them that Inrate, the Sickle of Repose, raising neither wind nor sound, turned into a true threat, one impossible to counterattack.
"Hrngh…! Hah."
Toroa fell on both knees. When Psianop had gotten past his defenses in the ooze's moment of final desperation, he realized both his knees had been punched with a sharp, piercing strike. Spearhand. Terrifying speed, up until the very end.
Making use of every last one of his enchanted swords, he had won.
He couldn't…
"You can't get up," a voice told him from behind. Toroa held out on his almost broken knees and endured. Why?
A sweat, warning him of serious danger, spouted forth on his back.
"You're able to instantly change weapons by rolling your wrist. Given your need to match your arms up with that movement, for those enchanted sword techniques you use… Their essence actually lies not in both your arms, but the footwork, which becomes your base point to shift your weight. Am I correct in my estimation?"
He went to turn around. In the left edge of his sights, half of Psianop's severed body was melting away.
The half that was afflicted by the enchanted sword of poison and frost.
...In that one moment…
His opponent was an ooze. Be that as it may, he made that judgment in that split second?
Had he really cut off the half of his body corroded by poison and made such a sublime read of the situation just to avoid having his core cellular nucleus severed in two by the attack?
Was Psianop the Inexhaustible Stagnation capable of such feats?
No. It was impossible. He couldn't have possibly foreseen Toroa's attack.
No matter how simple of an organism an ooze may have been, it should've been alive after losing half of its body volume.
"Popoperopa. Parpepy. Peep por ppe. Por pupeon. Perpipeor." (To Psianop's pulsation. Suspended ripple. Tie the sequence. Full large moon. Circulate.)
There was no way he could still be alive. If he was a normal ooze. Toroa had been able to trace his opponent Psianop's thoughts. "Psi…anop…!"
"You may claim to have risen back from hell…Toroa the Awful."
However, Toroa was not the only one who had inherited the thoughts and minds from another before him—
"This technique belonged to Neft the Nirvana."
There wasn't anyone out there who knew all the methods the warrior known as Psianop had at his disposal.
"I-I'm—I'm Toroa the Awful."
"…I neglected to mention, but in the beginning of the match, I punched through your liver. You likely haven't noticed the pain. You kept fighting through ragged breaths. Much like how you used your illusions to guide my actions, I focused my punches on your upper body, so in the decisive moment, you wouldn't be able to protect your lower body."
"Not...yet! Not yet, Toroa…must…!"
"You'll try to attack me. Turn your shoulder, take your step, and that'll be the end of it."
The technique that used the explosive power of his upper body would be finished with just a half of an opening step. Even from this range.
An invisible elongated thrust, narrowed down to a single point and piercing
across long distances—the name of the technique was… "…Peck!"
"My estimations—"
The foot that took his step slipped off the ground.
With it, he collapsed. With just a half step, Toroa the Awful's sight sunk to the ground.
The Divine Sword Ketelk that was supposed to launch the finishing blow slipped out of his hand.
As if both of his legs had been severed in half, he was unable to stand. "—are absolute."
"…Looks like you won."
They were in a spot unbecoming of a victorious combatant—the shade of an alleyway, hidden from the crowd. Qwell the Wax Flower had her eyes cast to the ground as always as she came out to greet her hero candidate.
For Psianop as well, it served him better to hide from the eyes of the crowd and the other candidates.
"Didn't I tell you that was my estimation of the outcome?"
"Eh-heh… I—I suppose you did... But um...in the end there, those Life Arts…"
"Who do you think I am? I stand here having learned the techniques of Neft the Nirvana of the First Party. Whether I am torn in half or otherwise, I am immortal."
In fact, there existed no other living creature with a higher aptitude for cellular regeneration Life Arts than the ooze, almost entirely constructed from simple protoplasm. As long as his internal nucleus was left behind, he could regenerate the rest of his body back to almost perfect functionality. He hadn't mastered Life Arts to Neft the Nirvana's level, but when it came to the relative effectiveness of the regeneration itself, he had almost the same degree of immortality that the lycan possessed.
Toroa the Awful had been unable to anticipate it. Before Psianop the Inexhaustible Stagnation, there had never existed an ooze who had mastered such a skill.
"…I knew it. You can win…! S-since you were able to defeat the Toroa the Awful…! I'm sure you'll be strongest of all, Psianop…!"
"I'm told it uses five years." "...Huh?"
"Before this match, I faced a situation that required me to use regenerative Life Arts on this body of mine. I plan on doing the same in the remaining matches as well. With each regeneration, I lose five years of my cellular life span."
He believed it was a worthy battle to do so.
As worthy as the battle with Neft the Nirvana—or perhaps even more so. "Um, b-but ooze life spans, um…"
"Hmph."
Psianop chuckled.
He had spent twenty-one years in the sand labyrinth. There were four more matches until the finals, and he had used full regeneration once during his battle against Neft.
An ooze's life span was said to last, at most, fifty years.
"…That dwarf was really strong. If that last sword of his possessed an instant-kill technique, I would have been dead. The true duel accords or whatever might be better for Aureatia's purposes, but…"
The final sword, Inrate, the Sickle of Repose, had been an enchanted sword with functionality that made it easier to hit opponents.
It was precisely because it had come directly after he had sent out the enchanted sword of poison and frost, with its instant death functionality, that he anticipated the final two swords didn't share that functionality—all he could do was hope he was right. Either way, in that situation, an all-or-nothing attack was the only choice to get out of danger.
Toroa the Awful had possessed the strength to force him to choose that singular option.
It might have been his haughtiness as the victor.
However, as a someone who wished for an all-out, decisive fight as a warrior, he truly felt it from the bottom of his heart—
"…I'm glad I didn't end up having to kill him."
Match one. Victory goes to Psianop the Inexhaustible Stagnation.