“Y-Yes...” Majic answered.
“I’ll handle him,” Orphen continued.
“But...”
“I’m going to fight him using every single technique I have in my possession. You won’t be able to keep up with me, will you? We can’t work together if neither of us knows what the other is about to do.”
He sensed hesitation in Majic’s response, so he spoke quickly in order to quash the boy’s doubts.
“I want you to do something more important than beating this one assassin. I want you to report the situation to Isabella. No matter what you have to do. There’s most likely another squad of Red Dragons attacking the tents of the wounded. I want you to protect them.”
“M-Me?”
“Hurry up and go... You’re the only one who can do this right now!” He raised his voice and Majic didn’t protest further. The boy spun on his heels and raced back the way they’d come.
Watching him run out of the corner of his eye, Orphen thought to himself, He’s faster than I thought, huh...
He couldn’t just start thinking of the clumsy boy as reliable, Orphen had to admit to himself. Majic might be one of the weakest casters on the continent. The same as he was five years ago—the inexperienced, unskilled, rash Krylancelo who had nothing but the title of Razor-Sharp Successor going for him.
Him then and him now.
Majic and him.
He didn’t know what was different between them. Or would the differences slowly fade over time, like how Krylancelo had naturally become Orphen? Maybe none of this would end up mattering.
So Majic... Figure it out. Orphen clenched his fist and stood ready, thinking to himself. You’ll become a caster of your own one day. It doesn’t have to be now. It’ll happen one day, for sure.
He was about to step forward when Jack’s voice stopped him.
“Chase him away, eh?” said the man in the priest’s robes, hanging his arms at his sides and letting the rim of his hat cover his eyes.
Orphen glanced at his right arm, but whatever damage it had sustained was healed now. They must have had ways of healing it back at the sanctuary.
Orphen steadied his breathing once more. He waited for his five senses to dominate the area just like he might control it with sorcery. He spread his awareness out all around him, sensing farther and more acutely.
“No. I almost went myself,” Orphen told him, and Jack’s mouth widened, his lips ticking up at the ends—it had to be a smile, but it didn’t seem anything like one.
“You’re not strong enough to protect them all... No one is. That fact is just another seed of despair. No one can avoid it.”
“I’m not going to protect them all. I’m not a superhero. I’m just a sorcerer.”
Orphen didn’t panic in the face of his enemy. No matter what Jack told him, he wasn’t about to falter. Not yet.
He imagined one move—the best possible move—to stop an opponent completely. No, it wasn’t just his imagination. Jack Frisbee’s fist could do exactly that.
Orphen thought harder as he stood ready. “I’m going to stop you here, though,” he told Jack. “It took me a little long, but it happens now.”
“Acceptance of one’s fate also fosters despair. Your fate cannot be avoided.” Jack ignored his provocation and continued, “You’re going to use every technique at your disposal to fight me, eh? Let me tell you, then... This power that I wield is the power of an evil spirit.”
He raised his right hand and pointed it at Orphen. “An evil spirit possesses my body. An evil spirit that cannot be exorcised. That is where my life began.”
Orphen remained silent, continuing to hone his concentration as he listened to the man in the priest’s robes ramble about his past. The words merely became part of the world he desired to create.
Jack had been keeping his voice down until now, but he suddenly spoke much louder. “One morning, I woke as a child to find that several of the bones in my body were broken. A local apothecary spotted a demon in my shadow. My parents tried every method they could to exorcise it and eventually grew weary...” He spread his arms wide as if to embrace something. His great, mountain-like arms towered toward the night sky.
“Nothing could be done. At its worst, the bones in all four of my limbs were broken. My body was mangled. Eventually, I couldn’t walk anymore. One day, when I could no longer even speak, my parents declared that it was I, myself, who was the demon. It was a country village. There’s no point in blaming them for being uneducated.”
“You’re free to talk, but I’m going to attack you when it’s convenient for me,” Orphen warned him, but Jack ignored him.
Still, Jack Frisbee left no openings as he spoke. His voice swirled around Orphen like a formless, inescapable evil spirit haunting a bedroom.
“I needed to escape, but I couldn’t even walk. That’s when I began to hear the voice. I obeyed the voice and I was able to protect myself. By obeying the voice, I was finally able to move my broken arms and legs. I fled the village...and entered a town. I must have been lucky. I met a martial arts teacher and learned what the evil spirit was for the first time.”
Jack made a sudden movement, but it wasn’t to charge forward and it wasn’t to attack. He snatched the hat from his head and threw it at his feet. His exposed head revealed lumps of flesh all over his face and forehead.
“My muscles have been abnormal since birth. They were powerful enough to crush my bones. My master taught me how to use that power. I had to waste nothing in my movements so that my bones could handle the strain. I had to make the smallest possible movements I could. The voice I heard taught me the most powerful martial arts completely naturally.”
Without even pausing to breathe, the man in the priest’s robes took a different stance, his face bared. He extended his fingers instead of making fists, holding his hands palm-up at his waist. The hands like spears declared his intent to do even more damage to the human body than he previously had.
This stance was to strike Orphen down, split him in two, and tear him apart.
“Honing one’s fists requires diligence. Living itself was diligence to my fists for me... If I did not do so, I would break my legs simply by standing. I would break my elbows simply by holding my hands out.”
“...Sounds like sorcery,” Orphen finally said.
Jack smirked. “It does, doesn’t it? You can’t live unless you control your power and your emotions.”
There was no more need to speak.
His enemy was an amalgamation of despair. Jack Frisbee despaired too. And he was most likely an enemy Orphen could not defeat with his fists... He rained despair down on even his opponent.
Orphen steadied his breathing and clenched his fists. He made his entire body into a lethal weapon. A thin, sharp knife that would pierce through his enemy upon contact.
From his vast combat experience, he called up similar situations. It’s the same as with Name Only... But Jack Frisbee’s abilities are natural, and he’s extremely skilled at controlling them. There’s no point in comparing them.
Jack Frisbee raised a battle cry.
With the shout that would likely extend from this moment into Orphen’s nightmares tonight, he struck out mercilessly fast.
The speed made it look like a head-on blow, but it was anything but. Jack charged at him with strange footwork, weaving left and right, the darkness coiling around him as he moved. The rhythm of his movements made Orphen feel like he was seeing things, lending further power to Jack’s arms as they whipped toward him.
Orphen leaped forward silently, but not to take the blow and not to flee it. Jack’s arm struck out like a whirlwind and Orphen sank low and spun to get past it...
He struck twice, hitting no vital areas, but making his fists connect with Jack’s body. He didn’t cause the juggernaut any pain though, merely finding out just how powerful his enemy’s body really was.
If they were both charging forward, they would have simply passed by each other—but Jack wasn’t moving forward. He leaned into one of his swings, easily turning. Every move he made was unnaturally quick.
And Orphen didn’t intend to simply show the man his back. He found an opening in his enemy’s relentless pursuit and slid into it, shoving Jack with his shoulder and back. It was like shoving a boulder.