He looked his opponent in the eyes and was met with a lifeless gaze that seemed to bore through his skull. The kid’s expression was worse than hostile—it was devoid of all emotion. He seemed like an entirely different person.
“Ha-ha-ha… It’s time to see what Vanit Slayer is truly capable of!”
Pyrovault pulled an orange vial out of his coat and crushed it in his hand. Flame exploded upward and coalesced into seven birds that flew at Karamori. But though they darted about and tried to attack with unpredictable movements, they were promptly dispatched with seven quick gunshots.
Shocked by the kid’s impossibly precise gunfire, Pyrovault picked up his anchor from his severed arm, having already planned for his next attack. He triggered a torrent of invisible slashes with his mind, targeting the spot where Karamori was standing, and each one ripped through the air with merciless speed and strength.
The kid avoided them all.
“You gotta be kidding!”
His speed was astonishing. Before drawing the sword, Karamori had been fast enough that it was hard to follow his actions, but now, it looked like he was teleporting. And yet, his movement didn’t feel inhuman. He simply performed every action with the perfect precision of a well-oiled machine.
The next thing Pyrovault knew, Karamori was right in front of him.
“…!”
The azure blade arced toward him, its chains trailing behind. Pyrovault broke into a cold sweat.
“Let’s see you dodge this!”
Pyrovault swung at the air before him with countless invisible slashes. He meant them to act as a shield that would tear the kid apart if he passed through it.
But he underestimated his opponent. The youth didn’t slow in his strike; instead, he twisted into unnatural positions and evaded each of the swings in turn.
The impossible sight made Pyrovault’s smile tighten.
“Are you even human?!”
There was no answer.
Pyrovault’s gaze collided with Karamori’s lifeless pupils—and that’s when he realized the kid was reading his mind. He was watching his eyes, his gestures, and his facial expressions to foresee his every move. That was how he’d predicted the trajectory of the invisible slashes.
The large man’s face spasmed. Everything the younger man was doing was humanly possible; the precise gunshots, the sharp defensive movements, the human foresight—none of it was supernatural. But while these stunts were theoretically possible, no ordinary person should ever be able to fight so flawlessly.
He was superhuman within the realms of human. That was Shin Karamori’s true strength.
Karamori caught Pyrovault’s attention wavering and instantly closed the distance between them. By the time the larger man cursed to himself, it was too late. He held up his anchor in self-defense, but it might as well have been made of paper for all the good it did him, as Karamori’s blade tore through flesh and metal alike.
“Ah!”
My eyes snap open.
I notice that the fire that enveloped us earlier is gone.
Archive and I are both uninjured. She protected us with a spell just before the fire reached us.
I look around, and what I see sets my heart thundering in my chest. Nearby, a stranger is holding an unnaturally dull sword above a man in a black coat, who has cuts all over his body and is sitting weakly on his knees.
No, not a stranger. That’s Karamori.
I feel my blood drain from my face.
His expression is cold, and his eyes are devoid of light. He looks nothing like the cheerful Karamori I’ve come to know. The unsettling black mark covering his arm and most of his face doesn’t help, either.
The sword he’s holding is the one that he’s refused to draw ever since I met him. Even I, knowing nothing about his and Archive’s world, can feel the wickedness of that dull blue blade.
They’re both so covered in blood that I feel like some of it must be mine. It’s a terribly brutal sight.
“I see. So he drew it,” Archive says next to me.
The blue blade flashes toward the large man’s neck.
I reflexively avert my eyes, but the visceral sound of metal cutting through flesh still reaches me. A groan escapes my lips even though I’m not the one being beheaded. I’m too scared to look up and see what happened to that man.
Terrifyingly, I hear the same sound over and over again, as the sword continues to slice through flesh.
Terror pervades my entire body, overwhelming all other emotions.
“Wh-what’s Karamori doing?” I ask.
“He drew Tyrfing. The sword offers him greater power when free of its scabbard. However, it also takes over his body.”
Does that mean Karamori is being possessed by the sword?
Archive begins to twist the red string in her hands. She settles it into a star shape, and before I can think about what that might mean, a strange wall of words forms around me. It’s some kind of barrier, translucent like frosted glass.
“Whatever you do, do not move from that spot,” she says.
“What’s going on…?”
“The Norse myth of Tyrfing survives in modern society. It tells of a sword sharp enough to cut through anything, which grants a wish to the wielder before guiding them to ruin. It also says that when it is drawn, it will not return to its scabbard until it claims a life.”
I gulp. They’d told me that Karamori’s abnormal strength came from trading his fate for the sword. But nothing about how every time he draws it, he’s forced to kill someone…
If he draws the sword, it possesses him. If he doesn’t, it owns his fate anyway.
He’s…basically the sword’s slave…
“…The myth, however, gets one key detail wrong,” Archive continues. “The cost for drawing the sword isn’t killing one person; it’s killing until the sword is satisfied.”
“Until it’s s-satisfied…?” I repeat, unable to believe what I’ve just heard.
Does that mean the number of deaths doesn’t matter? He just has to keep killing as long as the sword wants, without any idea of when it will end?
Wait… Archive and I are the only other two people here…
My hands begin to shake.
That means we… He’s going to…
“Do not worry. As long as you stay in there, everything will be—”
Archive’s head flies across the room.
I can’t see clearly through the translucent barrier, but there’s no doubt about it. I saw Archive’s head get cut off, and I saw Karamori standing there with his sword held high. His eyes were cold.
Blood spatters and clings to the barrier around me.
I try to scream but can’t even manage a whimper. A person I was talking to only a second ago…is dead.