“It might have been different if I were a noble... No, even if I’d been a knight like you already were at the time.” Was the curl of his lips there from self-deprecation? “It’s more than a simple spell forged into this sword to strengthen it. If that’s all there was, it’d be no different from any other magic sword. The name ‘Sword Eater’ comes from the powerful curse that was also incorporated into the blade. This sword slowly imparts that curse into other weapons every time they touch, and when another weapon has its fill of the curse, it shatters... ‘eaten.’” He gestured with his chin to the discarded hilt of the faussar, tossed uselessly to the ground. “Just like that cleaver.”
After his speech, he laughed again. “But I’ve never truly had to rely on Sword Eater’s power...truly waited, with bated breath, feeling like my entrails were being squeezed with every breath I took, for my opponent’s sword to break, until you! You, Gaius Beldarus!” Wyatt spat something that had been filling his mouth. Red fluid, speckled with bits of broken tooth, spattered on the ground.
“I’ve made use of so many things...endured and sacrificed so much in order to find my way here...to be standing here... You wouldn’t call me a cheat, would you, Beldarus?”
“I wouldn’t.”
It’s part of a warrior’s duty to seek, obtain, and utilize the weapons and methods required for victory. Concepts such as “fairness” or “cowardice” mean nothing in the pursuit of this.
“Your sins lie elsewhere. What I cannot forgive is that you sacrificed innocent lives for the sake of your conspiracy.”
“You dare speak of righteousness when you turned your back on the path of a warrior?!”
Wyatt stepped forward, armor glowing, and launched a vicious slash at his opponent’s windpipe. Gaius retreated, but too late. The blade cut through the leather protecting his hastily raised arm and bit into his flesh.
“Ugh?!”
“You’re not getting away!”
Next he aimed for the torso, the thighs, the arms again. Gaius did his best to dodge, but the cursed blade chased after him. Cuts opened up in his coat of plate, exposing the armor underneath. The leather armor covering his limbs was in an even sorrier state, covered with blood. However, the flames still burned bright in the Kobold King’s eyes.
After several more attacks, Wyatt went for a one-armed thrust and Gaius twisted to avoid it. The king thrust an arm through a nearby wall and pulled something out from the other side, sweeping it to the side with a whoosh. The attack surely would have broken bones if it had connected, but it just grazed Wyatt’s nose.
“Tssh?!”
The red-armored knight had jumped back to avoid a wooden post used in the construction of one of the pit dwellings. Gaius had helped to erect most of the dwellings in the village, but the earlier buildings had been hastily constructed by the kobolds alone, so some of the materials hadn’t been properly fastened together. The dwellings all shared the same layout, so it was easy enough for Gaius to imagine where the supports would be from the outside. He had simply ripped one out of the structure with his monstrous strength.
Realizing what the weapon his opponent now wielded was, Wyatt quickly changed his fighting stance. He was surprised, of course, but this didn’t change his superior position; that piece of lumber was no match for his Sword Eater.
That was not the extent of the Kobold King’s counterattack, however. Gaius hadn’t merely swung the lumber. After forcing Wyatt to retreat with the horizontal swing, he used the same motion of the swing as the windup to heave the beam directly at Wyatt, holding the wooden post directly from the bottom and using his arm as a spear-thrower to launch the post forward.
Whoosh! The lumber flew in a straight line instead of an arc, which was harder to defend against, and it had been launched with Gaius’s absurd strength. It was practically a point-blank shot from an ancient ballista. The post flew almost straight for Wyatt’s face, and the red-armored knight barely managed to avoid a fatal strike by snapping his head to one side. Instead, the missile tore into his cheek, ripping his left ear completely off as it sailed past him, scraping against his skull.
“Monster...!”
Without giving him a moment to catch his breath, Gaius was suddenly grappling Wyatt. He took hold of Wyatt’s right wrist and elbow with both hands, circling his arms around the smaller man to pin his arm. His aim, however, was obviously not to immobilize the arm, but to destroy it.
Wyatt wasted no time in activating the Scarlet Plate and ramming a strengthened headbutt into Gaius’s face. The Kobold King twisted his neck down just as quickly to take the blow on his forehead instead of to his nose.
Clunk! There was a sound like two boulders colliding as the men impacted, then pulled apart from each other. If there had been more distance between the two of them, their heads could have picked up more momentum and their skulls might have shattered; Wyatt’s would have definitely been the first to break. Still, that suicidal attack had just barely allowed him to escape.
“Gruooh...” The shout was the howling of a great beast.
The Kobold King still tried to grab at his foe, but the guildmaster managed to regain some distance from him and get back into a proper fighting stance, his sword flashing defensively.
“You’re so powerful, even unarmed...! It’s incredible! Incredible, Beldarus!” Wyatt’s voice shook as he let slip his true admiration for his enemy. “...But that’s why I won’t give you another chance!”
Gaius tried to make his next move, but Wyatt quickly defended with a slash. He would never let the man get away to pick up a weapon he might have hidden nearby. Wyatt concentrated power from the Scarlet Plate into all the necessary ways to hinder Gaius, to force him back, to crush him down. Each slash, each step reduced Gaius, whittled him down. Wyatt cut at him, not even giving him the chance to turn tail and run. Even as Wyatt could feel his own bones splitting, his joints wrenching, his flesh tearing, he kept his target pinned, driving him slowly out of the village to prevent any chance of the man launching a counterattack.
Once they were beyond the fence enclosing the village, there were no more residences. There was nothing to grab, nothing to block him with. Nothing to use as a shield. Gaius was being steadily beaten down more and more, as the fight grew decidedly one-sided.
“Glrbh!” The burden on his internal organs must have just become too much to bear. The knight in the red armor suddenly spat a bloody froth and staggered. Gaius didn’t miss the opportunity he was given and grabbed Wyatt.
...But his one chance to recover was denied just before he could accomplish it. Wyatt recovered from his momentary daze and activated the patterns on his armor once more. There was a horrible wet snap! as Wyatt’s knee connected with Gaius’s gut, and his massive body left the ground, flying back towards the village.
“Gfoh!”
“Gw...Aaaah!”
A groan and a scream both went up. Wyatt collapsed to his knees. Gaius was only in the air for a second before—crack!—he crashed into a still-burning structure.
＊
...This was the first structure the adventurers had set fire to. It was a small shed where burial tools were kept. Gaius had been pushed back so far from the village outskirts that he’d been driven all the way to the kobolds’ burial ground.
The impact completely destroyed the shed and Gaius rolled along the ground past it, scattering pieces of wood as he went, until he finally crashed into some stakes sticking out of the ground, snapping them as he came to a stop.
“Oof, ouch... Hey, meathead! You all right?! Pull yourself together!” The elder’s voice came from Gaius’s rucksack, but when the latter tried to spit the dirt out of his mouth to respond, bloody mud came out instead. “Answer me, you dolt!”
“...I’m...fine...”
“You’re obviously not, you numbskull! You’re really going to die if you keep this up, you know! Just run for now! Get out of there!”
Gaius didn’t answer him. He merely lay on the ground, unable to even summon the strength to sit up. He felt heavy. His bones, his organs, every part of him was screaming in protest. ...Still, running was not an option. If he ran, there would be no one left to stop Wyatt. That would mean everyone’s death. So...
So...
“Hey... You’re not thinking of letting yourself die to stop him, are you?!”
Once again, Gaius didn’t respond. He merely stared at the ground in silence.
“Stop! Don’t!”
“I can still...pull it off now.”
“No, you can’t! You can’t, Gaius!”
If he took a hit from Wyatt’s blade, he could get close enough to snap his neck. Or crush his exposed face. Really, all he had to do was immobilize the other man. He knew he could do that if he allowed himself to get hit. If he gave up his life.
“I’ll finish this...I’ll make sure of it.”
“Don’t, you idiot! Does your idiocy know no bounds?!”
“I get that...a lot.”
Gaius gathered all his strength and made to sit up, when...
...You really are a stupid male, aren’t you?
...he heard a familiar voice. Or maybe it was just a hallucination brought on by his pain and distress. But when he saw it, Gaius definitely heard her voice.