He hadn’t been able to counter Ox’s attacks by any measure worth reporting, and though their match resulted in a draw, it was only because Horse hadn’t died—to him, the tie felt like utter defeat.
But his betting odds hadn’t languished in the middling ranks simply because of the great number of physical wounds he had. By virtue of simply having survived Ox, Horse’s popularity should have risen, if anything, but his actions after the fight made for a tremendously poor impression.
Horse fled into the vault of a major bank, barricaded himself inside, and then did nothing. The man with the impenetrable defense had shut himself away to wait for an attack to come. From no possible perspective did the strategy make any sense. With the time limit imposed by the poison jewels, no great leaps of logic were needed to realize that holing up somewhere wouldn’t work.
The only conclusion to be drawn from Horse’s actions was that the nearly two-meter-tall warrior was afraid to face Ox again, and now, broken and demoralized, he had confined himself away from the battle. That his odds hadn’t plummeted all the way to last place was a small miracle.
Of course, Horse didn’t know of the odds assigned to him by the gods on high, and he cared nothing for what others thought of him—but no one found him more a disappointment than he did. Contempt and disgust might have even been better words for what he felt toward himself.
He wasn’t lacking in excuses for the stalemate had he wanted to take solace in them. When he encountered Ox, Horse didn’t think it was going to turn into a fight. Maybe he should have known better, but they shared something in common—both had supported Monkey’s proposal in the starting room. Then, when Rabbit had raised his hand, Ox and Horse lowered theirs in unison. Even though the collapsing floor cut Monkey’s alliance short, the two men could have been considered a moderate faction by virtue of showing interest in a peaceful solution, should one have existed.
When by chance he encountered Ox, Horse hoped the two could team up. With Ox’s sword-fighting skills and Horse’s defense combined, teaming up would have been like equipping themselves with the spear that could pierce all shields, and the shield that could block all spears—unstoppable force and immovable object working in tandem. So great would be their advantage they might have been able to shape the battle as they wished. But that didn’t happen.
Horse felt ashamed—ashamed that he had let himself hope he would be so lucky. So strong was his shame that he wanted to tear out his hair. Of course, with his impenetrable defense, he couldn’t have plucked a single eyelash even if he tried with all his might. His flesh had been carved with wounds even he couldn’t have made.
In his present state of mind, Horse wouldn’t have felt any better knowing that his judgment had been fundamentally correct—he and Ox were the moderates among the twelve fighters of the Twelfth Zodiac War. Horse was Horse, but the Natural-Born Slayer—though he brought merciless massacres to every battlefield he graced—didn’t fight because he enjoyed it. If calling a professional soldier a moderate would be too much of a stretch, think of it this way: fighting was only a job to him, as opposed to Ox’s polar opposites, Rabbit and Tiger, who fought in order to kill and took pleasure in combat.
Though Horse couldn’t know it, Ox had an unobvious reason for forcing the fight. After the eleven combatants were separated, the muscled giant ran into Ox first. But Ox had encountered another before him—although to be precise, he didn’t encounter this other fighter, because he was very careful to steer clear of the ashen-faced walking corpse belonging to the woman who used to be the Fighter of the Boar. At that point, Ox didn’t know that Rabbit was the one controlling her, but he inferred from her presence that a necromanticist was among the twelve combatants.
The moment Ox reached that conclusion, finding a peaceful resolution to the Zodiac War was no longer an option for him. Instead, he decided he needed to kill as many of his opponents with his own hands as he could. A necromanticist gained dominance over those whom he killed—if Ox stood idly by, this adversary could forge an unbreakable alliance of up to eleven people. The only way Ox could prevent this outcome was to kill the other fighters before they were killed by the necromanticist. Though the moderate Ox might have allied himself with his opponents under different circumstances, killing them had become an act of mercy; it was the least he could do for them. Compared with the necromanticist defiling their corpses, a quick and painless death at the hand of the Natural-Born Slayer might deliver them more peace in the afterlife. Unlike Horse, his moderate counterpart, Ox possessed the pure talent that allowed him to make that decision.
Regardless, Horse had no way of knowing Ox’s intentions, and when abruptly faced with the battle, the giant hadn’t been mentally prepared. The Natural, on the other hand, having already decided to kill the other fighters, was vastly more resolute.
But excuses were only excuses. The battle had been abrupt, but Ox didn’t catch him unaware or unguarded; the matador gave the proper introduction and even allowed Horse time to prepare himself before lunging with that saber. Ox’s conduct had been beyond reproach, and the fight was fair.
Though thrown into disarray at first, Horse was soon fighting to kill, and the ultimate stalemate mortified him. No wonder he wanted to hide. It bears repeating that the mere act of surviving against that master saber-wielder was a spectacular feat—but that made for cold comfort when the bodybuilder’s devotion to his muscles was practically religious. In a sense, Ox’s attacks had pierced his defenses and inflicted critical damage to the core of who he was. Even if Horse had from now to the end of the Zodiac War, it was not an injury from which he would easily recover.
But for a man who boasted such an impenetrable defense—or rather, if that label no longer applied, then a peerlessly robust defense—to now barricade himself in a bank vault was like protecting a steel statue with a plastic case. It was nonsensical.
Withdrawing from the battle was the lowest course of action a warrior could take, but as a human, as a living being, the choice was not necessarily a bad one. Looking at it from a different perspective—from a proper distance—the notion was hard to dismiss as merely foolish—not when winning this Zodiac War required collecting the swallowed poison jewels. If just one participant vacated the field of battle, the rest would all die from the poison. The way the contest was set up, even the weakest fighter, who might have little chance at victory, possessed the real potential to make the rest die with him.