"That bastard."
Lien murmured as he watched. Had he been hiding something like that?
"Oh."
Cypress, rather than the needle the enemy used as a dirty trick, focused on Pel, who had avoided it. It was an excellent reaction speed. It wasn't inferior even compared to a beastkin.
Among those watching, there wasn't a single person who wasn't surprised, but Enkrid, Rem, and Ragna were calm. All three had the same thought. If he couldn't even dodge something like that, he would have died a long time ago. That didn't mean they had no feelings, though.
"He's really annoying, huh?"
Dunbakel said.
"The problem is it's not just annoying."
Enkrid replied, and Rem nodded. No one had any intention of getting involved in their fight.
It was a fight that began with the words "knights' tournament," and it was a duel. Whether they died or lived, those two had to settle it between the two of them.
Crang, when no one was looking, wiped the sweat pooled in his palm on his cloak. He used as a sweat rag the symbolic cloak embroidered with sunwater, the one worn when the king goes out onto the battlefield. That was how much sweat he was holding as he watched.
"Worried?"
Enkrid asked. Crang had been watching the fight not somewhere else, but right beside Enkrid. Of course, to Crang's eyes, he couldn't really see anything properly.
The king took a breath and spoke. The fact his legs weren't trembling in a situation like this was impressive by itself, but because he didn't think it was impressive at all, those words came out.
"Losing doesn't matter. But just watching someone step out and fight in my place… no matter how many times I do it, I can't get used to it."
Enkrid nodded at those words. There were many things he could have said here.
For example, he could have told him not to worry, that Pel would win and come back, to trust Pel. Or it wouldn't have been bad to say that even if he lost, it wasn't your fault, I ordered it.
But Enkrid didn't say any of those things. He simply recalled Jaxon, who had been facing five knights.
Why had Jaxon fought that fiercely? Why had he guarded what was behind him even at the cost of his life?
'You can't do that just because someone else told you to.'
If that were the case, you couldn't properly use Will, either. Will is willpower. Will without willpower following it is nothing but a shell.
'You can't stop five knights with something like that.'
Therefore, Jaxon truly and sincerely held that spot. It wasn't to look good to someone, and it wasn't because he wanted a reward.
Enkrid didn't ask, but if someone asked Jaxon why he went that far, Enkrid felt like he knew the answer without even hearing it.
'Just because.'
He would have said just because.
A man who had been enough to seize everything in the shadows—no, who had seized everything—now came up into the light, and instead of holding everything, he started a life of protecting, letting go of half of what he held.
That was something you couldn't do unless you wanted it yourself. Therefore, the only thing to say now was this.
"His background is a shepherd. His name is Pel."
"Why are you saying that all of a sudden?"
Crang asked back.
"His affiliation is the Mad Order of Knights. I believe that bastard will win, but he doesn't even need that belief. He isn't standing here for the sake of one king."
Crang understood at once and nodded.
"I see."
Everyone standing here was standing by their own convictions and willpower. It was telling him not to forget that.
"Everyone stands to protect what they believe in. Without that belief, Will won't even react."
Will is willpower, and a knight is someone who uses Will.
If you can't set your willpower straight, you can't become a knight.
In that sense, Pel is a knight. Inside him, too, a pillar of willpower that had stood straight long ago must be firmly planted.
"Well, if he dies, it's his fate. In the west, that's what they say."
Rem added a line.
"So this friend's fate reaches only this far?"
Cypress added.
The fight was still unfolding in real time. From their side's eyes, should they say he was holding on by a miracle?
Pel was like a scarecrow that wouldn't fall, even as he tottered on the edge. Like a flower that had barely bloomed on the brink of a cliff. Like a little boat drifting before a wave.
The scarecrow did not fall in the end, the flower held its place in the end, and the little boat, by some miracle, rode over the waves and kept itself intact.
"I told you he won't lose."
Enkrid said. It wasn't that he knew anything. It was nothing but pure belief.
Crang decided what he would do here.
"Win, Pel! When you come back, I'll introduce you to a maiden of the royal family!"
Cheering. Shouldn't he at least do something like this with energy?
"...Your Majesty."
The captain of the guard called him. The king often did odd things. This time, too, it looked like that—but.
"Yeah! Win!"
At his words, the unit responded. It was as if discipline gathered and clumped together, forming a single current. As the mood rose, the fight on the battlefield also rode that flow and changed.
Heat gathered around the two who were fighting, and a whirlwind rose.
At some point, because sound had been continuing, they hadn't noticed, but a tatatatata— sound, like a woodpecker pecking at a tree, was continuously ringing out.
Of course, the woodpecker making that sound would be as big as an elephant. The repeated bursting sounds were closer to a roar.
In the midst of it, the captain of the guard couldn't bear his conscience pricking him and spoke.
"Where in the royal family is there a maiden?"
This royal family's bloodline was scarce. That was why the aristocratic council wanted the king to have many heirs. Matters about those heirs had even been one of the agenda items in deliberation by the Council of Ten. There were no princesses in the royal family.
"You've misunderstood what I meant. I meant a maidservant who works for the royal family."
Your Majesty, most people call that a scam. As the captain of the guard swallowed the words he wanted to say, the king, who had whispered, smiled softly. The king, who had shaken off—or hidden—his anxiety, said,
"If we lose, it's over anyway. We should think about after we win."
The fight belongs to comrades and guardian gods—right now, it belonged to a knight named Pel.
***
The alias "Fastest Knight" makes all eyes focus on the sword. Thanks to that, how easy had it been to deceive opponents?
Rados scattered the needles he had hidden in his left hand. The technique he had honed for years was comparable even to an assassin's.
From the moment the opponent barely dodged, it was his time.
The days he had trained solely for speed were projected into Will and exploded. A blade faster than ever flew like a swallow and pierced. He had taken one of the opponent's arms.
The blood clinging to the blade annoyed him, so he flicked it off, put his left hand behind him, and extended only the sword in his right hand forward. Now the opponent would be anxious, bothered by his left hand.
All of this was tactics to win.
Should you call this the southern style of fighting?
Tricking and being tricked, and the one who gets tricked is treated like an idiot—that's the south.
If you were the sort to fall for an evil spirit's whisper, you weren't treated as a knight, not even as a warrior.
Rados waited for the opponent to say things like it was dirty, it was cowardly.
If he struck with his sword then, it would be another advantage.
But the opponent didn't say anything. He clenched and unclenched his left hand a few times, checking the wound, and only kept his eyes fixed.
What was interesting was that in the opponent's eyes, there wasn't even the slightest hint of injustice about the method he had just been hit with.
'Not a bad opponent.'
Rados judged.
'Then next?'
It would still be best to push his specialty. Rados worships speed. That was why his clothes were light and his sword was light.
He wore armor made of thin snake scales, and even his boots were only things as light as that.
All of it was for fast cutting. The moment he extended his left foot, Will changed his body to be as light as a feather.
If he connected that directly into a thrust where he extended his sword, that was Rados's proud thrust.
His steps made no sound of kicking the ground. Before he moved, he was quiet, and once he started moving, he became a storm. That was the essence of the swordsmanship he had honed.
It was a thrust that had always punched holes into an opponent's body, but the blade he thrust this time failed to achieve its purpose.
Instead of matching speed with speed, the opponent raised the sword's guard in front of his face and used it like a shield to block.
Rados struck the guard with the tip of his sword and pulled back. Speed is strength. As if proving it, the tip of his sword, striking and retreating, broke the opponent's posture.
It was natural, since he had barely blocked while unable to use one arm, and to Rados it looked like the time to play his winning hand. This wasn't even a fight meant to be dragged out this long to begin with.
He wrapped a spell object around the inside of his left palm. It was for when he needed it—loosening his grip on the blade, pulling, and gaining friction. That was how he got a momentary acceleration of the sword.
He used that now. He pulled the sword in an instant, caught it with his left hand and released, swinging as if drawing the sword.
Against an opponent who had been reacting to a few thrusts, a horizontal slash became a threatening move. Especially when it was a cut that felt faster than a thrust.
His expectation was not fulfilled this time either. The opponent once again barely held on. He raised the sword with the black blade vertically and blocked. Every movement was simple and plain. Thanks to that, though he was slow, he barely managed to block. It was as if the goddess of fate had decided to help.
"You're lucky."
Rados said. Blood pooled on the blade that had withdrawn.
The opponent had dropped to one knee and braced his leg against the black blade as he endured, so it had cut part of his thigh.
With that, he had also taken away part of his mobility.
"I didn't think you'd last this long."
As Rados spoke again, Pel straightened his sword and asked,
"If you lose, what happens to you?"
Instead of asking back, Rados simply watched the opponent's eyes. Was it a provocation? Or had he lost his mind?
If you used burst acceleration over and over, you sometimes felt like your brain was burning. Maybe it was that. The opponent had been barely keeping up with his speed.
'Did his head break?'
In the end, Rados judged it was neither. The bastard's eyes were clear.
"If I lose, I become extremely ashamed. That's my situation. So it's hard for me to lose."
Pel said.
"You're insane."
Rados charged again. Entering the world of silence, he thrust three times in a row. Thrusts aimed at the head, the chest, and the thigh. A triple consecutive thrust was another one of his specialties.
Clang!
The opponent held his sword at a slant and brought it into the thrust trajectories to block. In other words, with a single motion, he blocked three attacks. It was an astonishing skill.
With the blade's flat, he blocked the thigh-aimed thrust, and with the guard, he blocked what targeted the face again. What aimed between them, he blocked near the ricasso of the sword.
Both weapons were truly sturdy. Not even a tooth of the blade chipped. One was a relic, and the other was an engraved weapon that, though thin, had specially emphasized durability, so it was natural.
Clang!
Rados struck again. Neither of them did the pathetic thing of trying to read each other's breathing.
They only struck in succession and pressed. Block and knock aside, and block again and knock aside again.
They repeated that, and repeated it again.
A hot wind blew between them, and a whirlwind rose. Sweat cooled in the hot heat.
The two pieces of metal colliding in succession threw sparks. The scattered sparks mixed into the whirlwind, and a heated wind blew.
In the world of silence, a voice was heard in his ear as if it cut off.
"Ad-ap-ta-tion, com-plete."
It was what Pel said.
They weren't moving at a speed where they could even have a conversation to begin with, so what reason could there be to deliberately say that, breaking it into one syllable at a time?
He didn't know, but it was just showing off. There were people who couldn't resist doing this in certain moments.
Just as those words said, Pel adapted to the speed.
At first, he seemed faster than Rem, but compared to him, the motions were simple. Clearly faster than Ragna, though.
'Light.'
Rather than simply light movement, if he compared it, the weight loaded into the sword was like a feather. Then was he as fierce as Enkrid? Did he give the dizzying feeling like the ember-killing Enkrid showed?
Not that either.
'You're not even as good as the prig.'
He couldn't even count how many exchanges had passed between them. The moment Pel saw the opening he had thought of, he simply charged in with his sword forward.
It was like a charge with the sword set up like a shield.
Point Thrust, the technique Rados boasted, pierced Pel's left abdomen. He pulled the sword out as quickly as he had thrust. Pel swung his sword even as blood poured from his stomach. When Pel swung once, Rados had thrust once and even defended.
"Got you, bastard."
Pel said proudly.
The world of silence broke. A kwaaa— noise hit his ears, and the two of them stopped.
The whirlwind that had formed around them spread out as a fierce wind.
The swords of the two who had stopped were stuck tight together. Rados tried to pry them apart with strength, but it was hopeless.
Pel, in a bind state, even pressed his body in. Rados, at some point, scattered sand with his left hand. Pel closed his eyes and lowered his head halfway before that. The sand hit his forehead and hair and fell.
Pel was from a shepherd background. And shepherds are people familiar with fights like this.
How many times in the wasteland had they fought fair and square, staking honor?
"You got caught, you."
Pel said, tilting his head up at an angle. In Rados's eyes, the light in Pel's eyes looked like an evil spirit had possessed him.
In a bind state, a thin sword can't easily display its power. That didn't mean Rados had absolutely no talent in unarmed fighting, either. He hooked Pel's foot and shoved. Pel simply endured with strength. It was a shove like kicking away an ankle, but it was firm like the roots of a thousand-year old tree.
The days of being tormented by Audin had not been in vain.
'All the time I poured in.'
That time with a different density made the result now.
Pel endured, and Rados showed an opening. He should have abandoned even his engraved weapon and withdrawn, but he didn't. The swords were stuck tight together, and he was being pressured.
Pel, still in the posture of pressing downward, slammed his forehead into the bridge of the opponent's nose.
Thud!
Rados blocked again. His left palm caught Pel's forehead. Pel lifted his face and bit off his finger.
Crunch!
"Ghk."
Rados swallowed his breath. Would a knight feel no pain? He lost his left thumb. With blood streaming from the corner of his mouth, Pel smiled.
How could it not be fun, when the blood flowing from his mouth was clearly the opponent's?
Rados swung his fist, and Pel twisted his head to dodge, closing in even tighter as he hooked a leg.
He had reversed the technique the opponent had used.
Thump.
And the two of them fell to the ground. It was the moment the fight that had raised a hot wind turned into a dogfight.