A howling blizzard raged, swallowing the city of Jade whole.
Within that absolute, bone-crushing cold, two men clashed, scattering sparks through the white void.
“Zeeiih!”
Having dismounted, the tall man wielded his long spear with nimble precision, driving the young swordsman in front of him back step by step.
A spear should have been a weapon poor at tight maneuvering. And yet, in terms of sheer number of strikes, the spearman was utterly overwhelming.
Oakley, with his holy flame blade, was being pushed onto the defensive.
“What’s wrong, Oakley?” Gerugoroi drawled, voice thick with amusement. “In the end, were you only ever a one-hit wonder with a good head on your shoulders?”
“Kh…!” Oakley spat blood, dropping to one knee.
Handling a long spear should have been cumbersome, but it felt like he was facing a dual-wielding fighter instead. The spear’s rhythm was that relentless.
The crushing difference lay in battle experience, pure and simple.
As the one leading the Raid Unit, Gerugoroi’s strength stood worlds apart from the swarm of lesser cultists.
He’s much stronger than me in raw power. I’ve only barely got the edge in speed, and that’s almost dead even!
Under different conditions, he could stand toe-to-toe with Joanne during training. With enough rounds, he could probably even take a point off her. What had Oakley struggling now was the sheer reach Gerugoroi commanded.
The man never let his spacing collapse, maintaining the full range of the long spear plus the length of both his arms, stabbing constantly with point and butt-end alike.
With only a sword, Oakley was pinned to a purely defensive role.
If I try to slip past the spear tip, he snaps the butt at me on the rebound. There’s practically no opening at all!
Joanne was a single-blade fighter. She overwhelmed him with sheer volume and unerring precision. Compared to her raw, brutal violence, Gerugoroi was clearly weaker. Weaker yet far more skilled.
He shifted the timing of his attacks just enough to throw Oakley off, using tiny movements of his eyes and fingers to force feints and mind games on him.
That was what made him so hard to deal with: strength and technique, plus psychological warfare. This man possessed everything Oakley wanted for himself.
He’s strong. I want that strength. Oakley glared at Gerugoroi with eyes starved for power.
He briefly considered breaking the spear somewhere around the midpoint but quickly dismissed the idea.
With carved grooves and holy fire wreathed along the blade, his sword was structurally weaker than usual; in a straight contest of durability, he’d probably lose.
So he threw himself into the spear’s zone with death in his heart instead.
Gerugoroi’s footwork was delicate even on the treacherous ground; he traced tight steps and refused to allow Oakley anywhere near the flame blade’s ideal range.
The deadline on Oakley’s right arm was ticking closer with every heartbeat.
His entire right side felt like it was about to burn away.
If I’m going to die to the holy fire anyway, I’d rather die moving forward.
Oakley took a deep step in, fully prepared to be hit.
The bald giant’s torso rose in a smooth motion, and he drove a thrust forward that seemed to tear the very air.
Oakley twisted his body, letting the spearhead pass by with nothing but a rotation of his hips, then grabbed the shaft with his bare hand as Gerugoroi tried to withdraw and widen the gap again.
The thrust had been a touch shallow, fired off roughly to chase away an opponent suddenly crashing into his guard.
Using the spear’s retraction as a springboard, Oakley kicked off and hurled himself forward, driving the momentum straight into a slash aimed at Gerugoroi’s flank.
What ran up his right hand was the jarring sensation of the blade being knocked aside by something hard as a wall.
“Guh!”
A grunt escaped Gerugoroi’s throat.
The Flame Blade had been deflected by his gauntlet; he’d managed a last-second guard.
But the long reach of the flame still seared half of his body, leaving him with no small amount of damage.
“You…” Gerugoroi hissed. “That flame… It is no ordinary fire, is it?”
“Yeah. They call it the phoenix flame or Holy Fire,” Oakley answered.
“No wonder it sinks into the bones…”
The man’s once-confident face twisted into a blend of agony and exultation. What could be more intoxicating than staking one’s life in battle?
Clenching his empty left hand into a fist, Gerugoroi spun his long spear, resetting his stance.
“This is… unbearably delightful,” he said with a laugh. “To have an executive candidate I can fight without a single regret is fortune beyond measure!”
A man who fed his soul with the joy of winning life through death, Gerugoroi paid no mind to his burns as he pressed the attack.
His long arms sent thrust after thrust spearing forth.
He aimed repeatedly for Oakley’s face, disrupting his sense of distance, and the unrelenting waves of strikes steadily carved away at Oakley’s body.
But humans learn and adapt. Just as he had with Joanne, Oakley began to pick out tiny flaws in Gerugoroi’s offense.
He knocked aside the clinging, sticky barrage of spear strikes with the Flame Blade and backed away to open up some space.
“What’s wrong?” Gerugoroi called. “All you’ve done is get pushed around.”
“The only one who matters is the one still standing at the end. All I need is a single blow.”
Gerugoroi’s spear had harvested countless Orthodoxy warriors.
Overwhelming experience against human opponents, technique honed in true killing fields, and a hard-earned certainty born of repeatedly winning battles of wits.
Layered together, those things had elevated his spearwork to something near miraculous. In other words, his spear was too fast.
At least when it came to his thrusts, Oakley could almost believe they were briefly breaking the sound barrier.
And that, he realized on instinct, was where the opening lay.
To break the stalemate, he began to wait, retreating again and again, letting the spear tip shave away at his flesh, watching closely for his moment.
As if mocking that hopeful calculation, Gerugoroi reached into his coat and pulled out a small sphere, then flicked it toward him.
The next instant, a brutal flash exploded across the silver-white world.
“Ggh!?” For several seconds, Oakley’s world was nothing but white. He swung his sword wildly as he stumbled backward, but he couldn’t guard everything. The spear tip pierced his left shoulder. “Gah!”
The spear twisted as Gerugoroi wrenched it, tearing the wound wider and hurling Oakley backward. As his vision slowly cleared, he saw Gerugoroi standing there as if nothing at all had happened.
He used a flashbang.
A man who talked about “duels to the death” like some honorable warrior, but in practice didn’t shy away from any tactic at all.
Or perhaps that knightly talk had all been part of the act from the very beginning.
Oakley pushed himself to his feet, testing his left shoulder with a sharp intake of breath. The spear hadn’t reached the bone, but it had torn into a blood vessel. The bleeding was heavy; he wouldn’t last long like this.
Retreating with everything he had earlier had at least kept the penetration shallow.
“A death match is a kill-or-be-killed fight where anything goes, isn’t it?” Gerugoroi said, his breath steaming in the frigid air as he exhaled. “Don’t make such a tragic face just because I used a little trick.”
He stepped in again, restarting his barrage. There wasn’t a crack anywhere in the flurry of his strikes. Pinned under that storm of steel, Oakley racked his brain. His only real chance against Gerugoroi lay in countering a thrust. But he’d squandered the first opportunity.
From here on, Gerugoroi would be meticulous about never letting him get a hand on the spear shaft again.
If I can’t grab it, then I’ll have to snare it instead.
Oakley raised his left hand in front of him, taking a stance that clearly telegraphed he was waiting for a decisive thrust.
Gerugoroi, of course, wasn’t naïve enough to oblige such an obvious gambit.