Chapter 30

A blank instant. The utter silence of the chamber is rent by one single, echoing sound: a high-pitched singing of the blade. The sword tip flies forth—the flash of the red blade, that is. It carries with it broken, shattered space. “Wha…?!” His eyes follow it. Yours don’t. You simply flick your wrist, flipping it over, the blade howling in your hands. You take one step in, allow your body to ride the pushback. Your arms flutter. You cut upward. “Hrrnngh…!” Too shallow. The blades brush each other—shhf. The man in black jumps backward, the smallest trace of blood oozing from his chest plate. The look on his face is one of—emotion. Shock, or horror, or anger. Whichever you choose to take it as, you don’t understand it. You don’t even seek to understand it. You simply laugh. You’re laughing. This is wonderful! So far into the fight—but you are still in danger. You take a modest step in, make a probing strike. If the man in black had still had his wits about him, you would probably have tasted his blade. Oops. Took that step without really thinking. Even that thought brings a smile to your face. “The…the otherworldly blade is broken…?” The murmur comes in a shaking voice, disbelieving. It’s Female Bishop. She had been crouching in a corner of the room, but now she looks at you with amazement. Her hand stretches out as if in quest of salvation, beseeching, but it does not reach you. You advance. Forward. Ever forward. On to the next thing. Proceeding to the next paragraphos. Pushing on and on. Because you have faith she’ll do the same. You don’t know if that faith reaches her or not. Either way, Female Bishop drops her outstretched hand. The slim fingers are wrapped firmly around the sword and scales. She rises to her feet. “Well! I might just have a little problem on my hands…,” the man in black mutters to himself. You mutter back that you think it’s fifty-fifty. What’s going to show up? What is he going to do? You judge your distance, ever vigilant. You know that with his blade broken, your opponent’s range won’t be what it was. The man in black looks at you—and then he smirks. “Very well. Maybe it’s time I started taking this fight…seriously!” In an instant, he begins to exude vastly more power. Not killing intent. Not simple rage. Nothing like that. The red-black shimmer emerging from the blade becomes something that is indeed otherworldly. No… It is death. The death of all those who have met their end in this dungeon. Monster, adventurer. That great pile of corpses whose deaths were swallowed up somewhere in the dungeon—this is where they went. They boosted the man in black. It is, truly, a shining darkness. The red light wraps itself around the man, entwining itself with him, melting into him. This is the true power, the special power, of the otherworldly blade. The man in black’s power increases. You think you sense something eldritch behind him. A swirling black shape. It looks like a winged demon; it looks like a wizened old mage. Ahhh. It must be whatever fearsome thing made this dungeon, its death now fodder. None know how or why it became the master of this Dungeon of the Dead. But if they did, you suppose, it would hardly matter. In this dungeon, be there ambition, be there monsters, be there a Dungeon Master, all are equal before the adventurer. Even the man in front of you now: If you strike him down, he can be killed. Just as, if you are struck down, you will die. “Time for turn two,” says the man, his white teeth flashing in something like a snarl. “Try to enjoy it, eh?” ‘Already enjoying it.’ Your answer mimics his question, but also mocks it, and you bring your katana into a fighting stance. You reach out slightly with one hand, holding your sword hand back—almost like you’re pulling the string of a bow. So how will he come at you? What will happen? His range has grown shorter, but you aren’t impatient enough to rush in. Seize the initiative, or let him make the first move? It’s a bad plan to let an unknown opponent take the lead, but it’s no better to dive headlong into danger. Shhf. You slide a foot forward, your sandal hushing against the stone floor. “O gods!” The prayer is like lightning that splits the darkness. “!!” You move too fast for the naked eye. Faster than thought. Your body seems to act on its own. The man in black’s mouth is moving, he’s mumbling, incanting—that’s the moment. The red light, the blade, stretches out. What was lost is restored, sharper than before. The great black stuff emanating from the man flares up and attacks. You simply meet it. “Kyyeeeeehhhh!” There is a red torrent of death, akin to Fusion Blast. The death entwining around the man’s blade assumes the form of a red-black bird and surges forward. The phoenix unleashed from the stroke flaps its wings of death, onward. Its aim—is not you. It is Female Bishop, who voiced that great prayer this moment. The blade! You match its movements, stretching out, striking with the sword in your hand. Only now do you realize the blade has a chip in it. A single notch square in the middle. Probably taken in some exchange with the otherworldly blade earlier. But. It will not bend, will not break. This is a good blade. Therefore. Therefore you strike back against the encroaching death. “Wha…?!” You don’t cut. Nor even simply deflect. Instead, you do as you did with the ninja before, sending the red flash back, piercing the chamber. The blade, which a moment earlier became before your eyes. The most secret technique of turning back another’s strike. Much like spell deflection, but also not. The lost third form. The realm of the ascended, the enlightened. The technique the tiger granted the child for sheer amusement now turns back death. “Gyah! Gaaah!” Is it a scream of pain or a cry of attack? The man in black makes this eerie sound as the conflagration of death scorches him; even as he burns, he raises the blade to strike again. Each time he does so, the death-bearing flashes of red light fall upon you like rain. And you beat them back. With a shout of your own, you turn, you dance, like the elf hero of old. One move. Another. A dance of attack and defense, where the slightest misstep will see you dead. Move after move. Ever forward. And behind you: Female Bishop howls. “O gods!” The sword and scales clatter as she thrusts them aloft, the room fills with a sound beyond the crash of swords. The bandage around her eyes, the blue ribbon tied at her chest: the proof of what her friends have entrusted her with. She touches each of these in turn, and then her holy sigil, her blind eyes upturned to heaven. Her sight pierces through the ceiling of the chamber, through the many floors of the dungeon, upward, ever upward. She calls out to the holy table of the stars where sit the players. “I have come this far as a pray-er!” It doesn’t matter if she’s been raped by goblins. It doesn’t matter if her former friends left her alone at the tavern. It doesn’t matter if she spent her days an object of mirth and ridicule at the bar table. It doesn’t even matter if her friends were swallowed by the Death within the dungeon, turned to ash and lost. She kept walking. Why? “I sought no reward! To be shown a path—that was enough!” Yes. She does not pray because she wants a miracle. Nor because she wants to be rescued. The players in heaven are always at the side of their Pray-er Characters. When they win, and when they lose. What more could an adventurer hope for than that? “What could a girl defiled by goblins ever—?” “That’s precisely why!” This time, this one time, Female Bishop states clearly her own hope and desire. It will be affected by the dice of Fate and Chance, of course. Even the gods cannot alter that outcome. You accept this. You celebrate it. It is a true blessing, you believe. But even so—indeed, even because— “At this moment, I demand you roll the dice with all your hearts! Or else”—she cries out at the gods—“I will never pray again!” There is an explosion of light. “Hnggaahhh…?!” The man in black—the Dungeon Master, formerly a billowing and growing shadow—instinctively hides his face from the flash. So do you. It’s as bright as if the sun, as if a bolt of lightning, has crashed to earth. Not something you can look directly at. You throw up your arms to cover your eyes. Squinting against the brightness, you look at her. Flare. It must be. It’s the only thing that could produce this overwhelming light, banishing the darkness of the dungeon and the shadows of this chamber. Wreathed in the encompassing holy shine, Female Bishop appears as something greater, something overwhelming. To you, she seems so large that you have to look up at her, so grand that you feel an impulse to kneel before her. Of course, it’s a phantom. The small young woman is still standing there, no bigger than she always is. But you can still feel that presence around her, enshrouding her. A woman in pure white vestments, proudly holding aloft the sword and scales—her eyes covered with a bandage. The phantom of a great bishop indeed, the very likeness of the Supreme God. This is the true and proper outcome of the adventure Female Bishop has walked. The place she has arrived, or will arrive, when a small girl gets up scared, shaking—but nonetheless endures, stands, and presses forward. She’s come this far to confront a catastrophe that threatens the whole Four-Cornered World. What sort of goddess would fail to answer the call of her devout believer, such that her light could penetrate even to the depths of the dark fortress? At this moment, that very deity is here…! “Impossible… She can’t have the Call God miracle, can she?!” “Yaaaah…!” With a shout that’s even more holy than it is adorable, the Supreme God—or rather, or also, Female Bishop—brings the sword and scales crashing down. One single stroke. That’s all it takes to make the shadow tremble. Another blow. The shadow is sundered. A third. The shadow surrounding the man in black writhes in agony. This is the primeval light, the boisterous footsteps that call out to the break of day. This is itself the light of dawn. “Begone from here, you miscreant!” Female Bishop speaks with profound compassion—but no mercy. In dispensing judgment, one wishes to take circumstances into account as much as possible, though in meting out punishment, personal feelings should in no way intervene. When facing evil, however, justice is needed. Not justice as dictated by the gods, but justice that people have deliberated upon, chosen, and taken for themselves.