Chapter 14:
With the Moon Shining Down on Us
INSIDE THE WALL of raging winds, Javagiir and I faced each other alone. Javagiir casually scratched his head with a bony hand. “You split up, eh? Seems like the toughest one among you is that elf girl of yours. Filia.”
“Maybe so. She can do anything. She’s my invaluable partner. Honestly, she’s too good for me. All I can do for her is beat your sorry hide.”
“Ha, all right. If you think you can handle me, then bring it.”
Javagiir’s aura was incredibly intense; I could feel it from where I was standing. It was almost hard to breathe. My blood rushed through my body, my fighting spirit roused. Come on—if I wasn’t thrilled by this, would I even be a man?!
I put up my fists and looked straight at Javagiir. “Hey. I gotta request. Make sure this is fun for me!”
I rushed in.
Right as I did, Javagiir cast earth magic to raise a prison of earth around me. In an instant, every speck of light vanished, and my field of vision went totally dark.
“Kids these days, eh? So many of you greenhorns out there are forgetting your place. Three years ago, I single-handedly stopped a monster outbreak on the frontier. Really, saying something so foolish to Javagiir Garyundur, the Hollow Soldier? Look, I got no clue what your rank is, but I’ve been an adventurer for ten years now. Don’t you think it’s polite to show respect to your elders?”
I heard Javagiir’s voice coming from outside the earthen walls, all smug—and all wrong. C’mon, he had to be super naïve if he thought he’d trapped me in such a crappy prison.
“Hooah!”
Paying no to the walls surrounding me, I just charged straight ahead. The walls shattered against my body. Keeping my momentum going, I got up close to Javagiir and struck—just once.
My fist slammed into his slender abdomen, knocking the wind from his lungs. He flew through the air. I tried to perform a follow-up attack, but the ground beneath my feet was too unstable—he’d been ready with more earth magic, and I couldn’t get in close enough.
“Ugh, hey, come on, be considerate, will ya? I am your senior, right? How old are you anyway? I’m twenty-seven.” Javagiir stood up, wobbling a bit, while spitting out some blood that had pooled inside his mouth.
And he still had his hands in his coat pockets, as usual. How in the world was he still conscious, even though he was so thin? He had to be using magic to strengthen himself.
“Don’t give me that dumb age crap, ‘senior’!”
“Dumb? That’s upsetting. Very upsetting. Why, it’s the most upsetting thing I’ve ever heard.” As he spoke, Javagiir took something out of both of his pockets. Something brown and round…something…
Donut-y.
Clutched in his hands were your average donuts, both of which had holes right in their centers. I watched Javagir’s movements carefully. Taking out donuts in the middle of a battle? Not a move I’d expected, not at all.
“This donut shop is too…upsetting. ‘Donuts Sans Holes’? Are you kidding me? That’s not a thing. They’re not donuts! I’m fine with you people exposing your ignorance, but spreading it around? That is an act that screams for a purge. Have I said something wrong? Huh?”
He stuck his long, slender tongue in and out of the donut hole at such a speed that it would’ve been invisible to the normal human eye.
“Ahhh, I just can’t get enough of this feeling of emptiness…the meaningless penetration of a donut! It’s sublime! You think so too, don’t you? An untongueable donut isn’t a donut at all, right?”
“I don’t understand a word you’re saying.” I could never in a million years have imagined doing something like this right in the middle of a life-or-death battle. This was wild.
“Too many people in our world search for a meaning that simply is not there. Donuts teach us that there is no such thing as the true meaning of life. Ah, how sacred…ugh, I can’t believe I’m crying now. You bastard.” Just as Javagiir said, tears were streaming down his sunken cheeks. He continued monologuing without even wiping them away. “And now, this shop! ‘Donuts Sans Holes’? That’s just unacceptable! Completely unacceptable! A store that sells fake donuts, completely unashamedly in broad daylight? I could never allow that! This shop should be met with scorn! It’s a betrayal of all things donut!”
A vein in Javagiir’s forehead bulged. He angrily spat his words, as if expressing total disgust and loathing with the world. The color of the tears flowing from his eyes changed from clear to red. While I couldn’t understand a word he was saying, Javagiir’s face was tinged with delight as he darted his tongue in and out of the donut hole again. “Bleehh, Bleehh! Ah, this is just tooooooooooo much fun!”
“So, like…are you high?” I asked.
“High?! The only thing I’m high on is donuts! They’re all I need! And donuts only need me! We’re madly in love with one another! We’re comrades in arms who have committed to each other’s futures!” Javagiir brought the donut to his lips and kissed it.
Ohhh—now I understood. This guy was just like me: Donuts to him were like muscles are to me. That made this a battle of pride. A battle over the uncompromising dignity we had carved into our souls!
“All right, then. Let’s see whose bonds are stronger: The bond you have with donuts, or the bond I have with muscle. How ’bout it?”
All this was the wrong way for him to express his feelings, but those feelings were still real. Then again, my muscles… My muscles and I, we couldn’t lose. I swung my fist down. The pressure from my fist split the ground open, and the fissure continued splitting toward Javagiir.
“Hooah!”
He moved to avoid it, and that created an opening. I fired off a Pistol Punch. Javagiir didn’t protect himself, instead putting his life on the line to fire off earth magic bullets with reckless abandon. But my body was harder than iron. The bullets that struck me lost all their momentum the second they hit my skin, and they clattered to the ground.
“Your body… So, you’ve got a physical enhancement ability after all, huh?” he spat. “Ugh. This is why I hate muscle-brained meatheads. Can’t even have a proper conversation with ’em!”
“It’s not an ability. It’s muscle.”
“That doesn’t make any sense. See, I can’t have a conversation with you!”
“I don’t wanna hear that from the likes of you. Ready to go?”
Get in close and punch—that was the strategy I was best at, and it was my most powerful to boot. Brushing aside his earth magic counterattack, I rushed in toward Javagiir.
“Guh!”
“Too late.” Without giving Javagiir time to react, I punched him in the torso as hard as I could. Then, without even taking a breath, I rushed in for a follow-up. “HOOOOOAAAAAHHHH!”
I delivered each and every punch with full force. I put my body and soul into every hit. And with every hit Javagiir took, more blood spilled from his mouth. He might’ve already gone unconscious. If he were a normal opponent, he would’ve been knocked out cold for sure.
But I knew battle, and my instincts told me that it wasn’t going to end like this.
Javagiir’s arms, legs, and torso—his body was so slender, but he started to emit an energy that didn’t match his physique. The sensation was different from anything I’d felt before, and I put some distance between us.
“Heh, not bad. Never thought you’d drive me into a corner like this.”
Javagiir stood, his body covered in blood. But from the way he was moving, he looked like a puppet being controlled by strings. It was as if his limbs were already broken. He clearly wasn’t standing up on his own power. Something else had taken over.
“Even I can’t control him. I had him sealed inside my body. But when my power weakens, he possesses me as he likes,” Javagiir lamented, almost self-deprecating.
It seemed he was only able to use his mouth; the spirit had already taken control of the rest of his body. And this spirit…it was strong. The energy his body radiated now was clearly different from that of the other black shadows. Even at this distance, I could feel it. It was like electricity shooting through me.
The intense air of intimidation penetrated me down to my very bones. It had to be a truly fiendish spirit, if even a master necromancer couldn’t tame it. “So that’s your trump card, huh?”
“I’m not sure I’d call it a trump card, honestly. I suppose if it was one…it’d be like drawing the Joker, baby. I can’t say that I’ve won now that it’s come to this, but—he he—you’re sure as hell not gonna win either. Nothing to say but ‘my condolences.’ You’re gonna die.”