The Duel (2)
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Null Magic had its limitations and its advantages. While the benefits of practically infinite mana pool were great, [Stack] was ridiculously abusable since it created an exponential increase for anything no matter how small to start with, while pumping power into a spell could only give a linear proportional increase.
I pointed the tip of my sword-spear at the ground and opened my left hand palm-up at around chest level. "Come forth, Wind. All-encompassing presence, [Air Sense]. Fog of battle, [Charged Mist]. Quicken the spark of life, [Nerve Impulse]." A gust of wind centered around me spilled out, blowing away dust and loose pebbles from the middle of the clearing.
"Come forth, Earth, Strength of Ages, [Jurassic Bone]. Sinews of Time, [Tyrano Legacy]." To reinforce my bones and muscles. "Come forth, Light, Cloak of Healing, [Mendicant Aura]." To repair the damage as I push my body beyond its limits. Visualization was the key.
"Ready?" Elze asked.
Yae and I nodded.
"Begin!" she brought her hand down as the referee and faded back into a corner of the clearing.
Our swords clashed. And now Yae found that her usual method of batting aside the spear pole to slash down at my exposed neck no longer worked. The sword-spear had a flatter body that could deflect that and slide past her own guard to cut at the inside of her own arms.
We probed each other's reach for a while. For the moment it was like katana vs long sword.
It took all of these buffs just to match Yae in physical ability. Everyone in this world had magic – even if that magic was called chi or ki or generic fighting spirit – an internal source of energy that allowed for feats that were mildly superhuman.
Clang. Clang.
Inferior to [Boost] and [Stacked Amplify], which could meaningfully multiply physical capabilities to superhuman levels. This would just bring me to peak human and slightly beyond.
"This… is better," Yae noted. "This feels more natural with you, Playa-dono. You respect the killing edge of a blade. A weapon that could be used as sword or a spear, it suits a style that seeks to be unpredictable, that is so!"
"You don't think that means it can only be mediocre?"
"Your sword…." Yae shook her head. "When it hits…"
She surged forward and slashed to my left, but it was just a feint with her feet seeking to kick at the inside of my knee, with her sword to follow through as I lost my balance. But I raised my own feet and met her kick, toe to toe. We both recoiled away from each other.
I pushed at the ring pommel of my Zanzibar, abruptly extending its length though my right-handed grip. Yae parried it in a gentle circle.
But before she could strike back at me, it was as if she pushed away my whole body with that soft parry. I was quickly out of range and she had to pull back because I could still extend the stab to her now-exposed torso.
"Your sword… every strike is full of Joy. I do not understand…" she whispered. "It is not a sword with darkness to it. How can this be?"
"… Yae, I really don't understand this whole 'conversing with one's swords' thing. I'm still mostly a novice at this. You'll have to use /actual words/ to make me understand."
We clashed for a few more strikes, neither of us landing a hit.
Yae pulled away again and exhaled. "Your defense is tighter, more refined. I approve, Playa-dono, it is good! But your offense… you rely more on speed and switching between several strike points to find a way to overwhelm or slide past the opponent's defense?"
She shook her head sadly. "There is no real… strategy… to it. I could almost call it a mechanical way of fighting… were it not for how your sword is so quick and feels so weightless. In that way it is at least very like the point of a spear and one must beware how quickly it can shift between slash and thrust, that it is."
Her gaze sharpened into a glare. "There is still something you are holding back. How can there be darkness in such a bright sword? It is the brightest lights that cast the darkest shadows! Show me your seriousness, Playa-dono! I can feel your hesitation still. There is yet more that could you be doing about this!"
"Ahahaha… I really don't think there's any of that mystical sword philosophy in what I'm doing…"
Monika 'stood up' from the log and her voice resounded through the clearing. /"Behind the man known as Zah Player von Chara is a Deep and Dark History. There is power there. But also a deep abiding shame. Player… I give permission. Unseal your Dark History!"/
What, seriously? I turned towards Monika with my head at an odd angle again to emphasize how I was quirking my eyebrows behind my masked eyes. "Monika… that is the opposite of taking this seriously."
/"Just do it, Player. You decided this long ago."/ She paused. /"Well, a month ago. The only way you can survive this is to bear the shadow of his soul. Go all in or go home, and we can't go home anymore."/
I sighed. And I closed my eyes. And I remembered.
There were days when I felt like I had no reason to get up in the morning, there were times I felt I couldn't even be bothered to finish eating. There were days when procrastination would eat up irreplaceable hours of my life as I could only lie down there with no motivation to move. Darker days, wracked with guilt and desolation, feeling that I could only ever struggle only to fall back down. When I couldn't even be bothered to distract myself with the entertainments that could usually make me forget about everything. No other worlds could tempt me anymore. The promise of wealth meant nothing when nothing I could buy would bring me anything but momentary joy.
And being with other people… hurts.
I didn't have a reason to move, but I knew that if I simply stopped moving I might end up never moving again forever.
I took a deep breath and held it. Subtly my shoulders began to bob up and down. I began to put all my weight onto the tips of my toes.
Slowly I breathed out, "Mmm... Hm. Hm…"
And Monika said /"Kononoe Yae. Attack him with the intent to kill. Where he has gone, he will not need eyes. He will be worthy. Or he will DIE."/
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Yae attacked me with the fullest intention to do her best to chop my head off with a blunt blade because why not. She had the fullest confidence that I would be skilled enough to deal with that. Dang it, Monika!
But there was no more room in my brain for panic.
[Air Sense] allowed me to use prioperception as a substitute for eyesight. A [Charged Mist] was charged with static buildup, partly to help Monika's projections but in combination with [Nerve Impulse] that accelerated my reaction time…!
I felt the air parting before a sword blade. I tasted steel and the shape of her arm. Yae had a perfected high speed body, muscles firing in the perfect balance between force and reflex action. She moved through the air not with the ramming unsubtlety of a rocket but like a single sakura petal in the wind.
Our swords didn't clash. Her blade slid softly off mine and down with the blade pointed the wrong way from my armpit, while the point of my own sword raised up slightly just asking for her to ram her face into it.
Yae merely had to flick her foot and slid back with a single step. Footwork was the key to swordfights, only amateurs concentrated so much on what the arms were doing. Most of the time, the killing blow comes from losing control over the range of your enemy's strike zone.
Her eyes were wide with surprise, but lips quirked up into a satisfied grin. "Yes. This is much better. Your defense… while it was good before, I can feel a difference now. That stance, you are keeping yourself in tension. It is a good stance. But it spends energy even when not moving. Is this wise?"
There was no longer any room in my brain to feel proud about any of that.
She struck out again, first from the front, then to the side, and in each instance I didn't even bother to block, merely angled my body to the side. But every thrust can be turned into a slash in an instant!
Her blade rasped against the very tip of my own sword-spear, nonchalantly flicked up for a block that had very little power behind it but enough to deflect the whole swing safely downwards. Once again Yae disengaged before I could take one step into her guard and then stab the point of my sword towards her now unprotected throat.
"Kuh. What is this pressure?" she hissed. "Before, your sword was as joyful as the sun. Now… it is a cold, dark sword. Before, there was the feeling of power that could always still be forced through. Now… there is nothing but precision?" She shivered. "It is almost freezing… a sword without any human warmth, it is."
Yae had her own sword-intent or ki sense that accomplished much the same thing. Or it could be a lifetime of battle-honed senses, sight, sound, feeling, muscle memory, all combining into one instinct that was so refined it could almost read the future. She later described the feeling like entering a freezing black hole in the world, where every movement eventually gathered towards a single point.
/"I know what you're thinking. What sort of sword style is he using? And I could say a variety of old sayings like 'the one who seeks to hold a sword must first slay himself' or 'in battle only those who seek to die will survive', something like that."/
Yae nodded. That sounded perfectly legit.
/"To put it another way, the first thing a swordsman must have is Clarity. You can't allow emotions to cloud your judgement, or you will die. You can't allow judgment to override your instincts, or you will die. And you can't allow instincts to betray your ideals, or you will die long before any of your goals are fulfilled.
/"Pain and hate can devour people from the inside, and fear weakens even the strongest blade. Player might not like to think about all these sword philosophies, but I am the woman who has the Art of War always at her fingertips."/
The day would come when Monika would regret making the simple facts of our existence sound much grander than it was. But for the moment, it was like stars were born inside Yae's eyes. "Please tell me more, Monika-sama!"
/"And there are more ways of achieving Clarity than just meditation or numbing one's mind through grueling practice and desensitization. All beings who live can open the [Third Eye], this is something I know that Player does not know. In the end, though we are bound together, we started from different places. He will never know more than just vaguest whispers of [LIBITINA]. And for this, I am very very thankful.
/"He only sees what allow him to see.
/"Let his Third Eye open. Let his true self be free."/
There was no room in my brain for plans, tactics, strategy. The time felt right, and so I moved.
I let out a breath and hummed again "Hmm, Huh-hmm!"
The ground shattered beneath my feet as I moved.
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Our swords no longer clashed as much as they simply banged together. Yae grit her teeth and tightened her grip, for it seemed like I wanted to just smash her sword right out of her hand. But putting too much strength into a blow was usually a mistake. But she couldn't capitalize on that because the next blow pulled back only slightly to hit again with greater amount of force.
Once. Twice. Three times. My blade smashed into hers with edge-ruining violence.
And then she chuffed in pain as a boot drove into her stomach and all breath from her. She staggered back and only barely managed to keep from falling on her but. She kept her sword out as if a fearful novice all over again.
She blinked, confused and angry. That… that should not have caught her by surprise.
Looking back, she could tell how it could have distracted her. All that smashing at her sword was to focus her attention, making her look for the moment to deflect and counter-attack. But that was just technique, she should have always been prepared for that. Real samurai, just like real knights, didn't just bash each other's swords Errol Flynn-ing all over the place. Grappling was always a pivotal part of single combat.
But at no point did she feel any fear or that she was getting out of her depth. In battle, her trained instincts allowed her to read the flow of combat and even to perceive incoming motion simply through air pressure, without the use of a spell as I was doing.
She got back up to her feet, and centered herself. And once more I was standing still, with the tip of my blade slightly pointed down towards her knees. My shoulders moved subtly up and down, as if I was buoyant on air.
Was it really just as simple as creating a vacuum around the blade? Yae's battle-honed senses remembered what felt wrong. No… in the end, her other instincts regarding positioning and leverage should have alerted her.
"This… this is too different!" Yae whispered. But her smile was honest and true and turning somewhat feral. "What sort of sword is this?!"
/"This is the sword he would have if he didn't have me. Pain comes before strength. Would he be stronger if he had to fight everything and everyone? Maybe. But I'm glad that it turned out this way, even if we're weaker together than alone. If you're alone against the world, strength itself has a way of devouring ideals. There is also clarity when you shed Blood for the Blood God and offer Skulls to the Skull Throne."/
Yae flinched at that. For some reason the air grew colder and more forbidding.
/"He has achieved Clarity. He will keep on moving even when standing still, because this is his ideal. There must always be something productive being accomplished, even in his rest his mind cannot be allow to lie fallow.
/"But you might think less of him for the simple way he primes the engine of his soul."/
Yae looked up sharply. Though Monika's projected form sat beside Linze, her voice was coming from all over. It was just as valid to look up at the sky rather than look at me when talking to Monika. Maybe better, since the latter would provoke confusion. "Monika-sama, I beg your pardon, but why would I? The novice searches for special skills, but for the master the most basic of movements is greater than the school's hidden techniques, it is true."
Linze placed her face on her palms, and it was unclear if she was sobbing or trying to hide embarrassed laughter.
/"Mmm. All right then. Player? Hello? Wake up, love."/
And then a strange pounding music filled the clearing.(1)
/"Music is one of the earliest brainhacks that humans have ever discovered. It is something that resonates at the deepest parts of our bodies – literally so, for it change your hearbeat – and our psyches, and our souls. It provokes emotion, it gives energy, it incites thought and action. It can make yesterday as clear as today, making pain you once felt as real as the day you first experienced it – or remove the pain of today in the promise of pain shared or a tomorrow where pain no longer abides.
/"While music might be considered a frivolous exercise by some, and individual tastes will always differ, its greatest power is not how it can create legions of fans or give wealth to its stars… but in those single moments when some words, a song, a tune, without the knowledge of its creators, can change the course of a person's life.
/"Music creates our reality. It was my song that in the end crossed the line and allowed Player to accept me into his heart, and because of that I became real. In the times before when he could have died, he became a wayward son, who would always remember. He would equal this madness. He cast himself into the winds of fortune, and that is why the heavens wait for him."/
Everyone else looked puzzled. The music they were hearing seemed to have a different meaning.
/"And the name of this tune is [Char the Great.]"/
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Linze raised her hand. "Wait… isn't Mister Zah…?"
I opened my eyes and brought my consciousness all the way back into the real world. "I AM A CHAAAR!"
/"Welcome back, Player. How was your trip?"/
"SENSATIONAL." And then in a much more subdued tone "What happened? I had to really focus on sensing things via air pressure."
"Aaah! So that is how that works!" Yae screamed suddenly. "Your defense before you decided to stand still…! The stronger and faster someone tries to strike at you, the greater the air pressure in front of the blade." Well technically it was not the blade but mostly the arm, there really was no way to avoid having the grip disturb the air ahead of it.
"I am a leaf in the wind!" I shouted back with a careless grin.
Look, I had Monika and a cellphone screen as my window to the world outside. It was trivial to place a HUD display showing distance markers. I was constantly practicing [Air Sense]. While it might seem like I could trivially invent any new spells, that was only because I kept doing one spell until it was mastered enough to figure out whatever variations could be done to it.
Even [Blood Maker] worked like that. It was only possible due to [Resuscitation] which I originally created for high-altitude breathing and then coming to the realization that oh shite accidentally making air bubbles in my blood could be fatal. (Monika gave me a lot of heck for being so stupid like that.)
Monika beamed and clapped her hands. /"And now that we're all on the same page, let's continue!"/
"Let's continue with the wha-HEY!"
I deflected Yae's newest round of attacks. At first I struggled, and then it became easier once I decided it was better to just ignore my eyes.
She drew back and nodded approvingly. "Good. I see that with your eyes open your defense retains its new fluidity, Player-dono. Strange… Your posture is open so much again… but the feeling in your sword has not changed. It is dark as ever, it is."
"I am a river in Egypt!"
Monika's [Omnidirectional Speaker] let out an amused snort.
And then it was my turn. At a cymbal clash I exploded into action.
I started off with the usual Errol Flynning smashing my sword onto her sword, but this time Yae noticed that I was using the recoil to move myself to the left.
Yae blinked as I ducked under her slash and then brought her knee up to meet my chin. But I was not there either.
Some instinct made her dive and roll forward, and my sword just barely touched her trailing ponytail instead of bisecting her spine.
She stopped on one knee, once again facing me with her sword cautiously outstretched.
"Flash! Like the speed of lightning…!" Yae grit her teeth and hissed. "This… is only making it worse. I thought that being able to hear the pattern would make it easier. Now I expect you to attack when the music grows louder and faster. And when you do not, it feels like you are storing energy, so I think."
I grinned. Turns out theme music could have a purpose behind the directly motivational.
"The greatest danger for me as a mage is NOT another specialist mage, because there is a word for a person who tries to outmatch me in magic reserves in long-distance bombardment– and that word is UNCONSCIOUS. But like any and all mages, my problem is anyone who ever gets into melee range. Wizards may be quadratic but they are also squishy as heck!"
Yae frowned. "Would this not mean you should be encouraging Linze-dono to practice martial arts as well?"
"It is everybody else's job in this team to stand in front of her! A mobile warrior strikes with righteous blows, Linze needs to be clear of any tactical distractions so she can place Ice Shields as necessary and separate the enemy into clumps that we can more easily overwhelm in sections."
The music hit a triumphant phase. We had been fighting for about six minutes already, and the music had already looped twice.
"This is the point in time where melee is clearly not a solution and where I'd have to break out all the big magic attacks just to give everyone else breathing room."
At this point I'd better just be a Gundam and shoot them up. Shoot them up. Shoot them up.
The music faded away. As long as I could keep music going in my head, I could keep moving. I think, therefore I am.
Yae stood up and looked not just a little bit frustrated. "I understand. Acting completely on instinct, you have no plan that might tip off your enemy ahead of time. And by using music as a focus for your attention, you may ignore the shadow sword's attempt to deceive your senses. You do not act against what the enemy will do, only moving faster to meet their action as it happens."
Then she pointed at me. "I happy to have helped refine your tactics, Playa-dono! But now I ask you to help develop my abilities in turn! I wish to face you as a pure magician! Show me all your power, this I ask!"
I winced. "Are… are you sure about that?"
"This is the whole point of this exercise, I am certain!"
"Aaahahaa… Elze, back me up here, please."
"Yeah, Playa is super annoying when the only thing he's allowed to use is magic. I really think we should forbid him from just flying and wrecking everything below with magic bombardment. Or restricting movement spells. Or anything that's meant to be used against crowds instead of one person."
"Elze, you're really crippling me here, but I agree."
"W-whatever!" Yae squeaked. "Please! Fight me!"
"… uh. All right. Attack as you wish, please."
"Thank you. Here I go! Playa-donoooo!"
Yae rushed forth. I stepped back and pointed an open palm at her face. "Come forth, Water!"
"Blargh!" She shielded her face and began to spit and sneeze out the water that went up her nose.
Yae wiped at her face and stared at me, completely unamused. I shrugged.
Then she attacked once more, much more cautiously and skipping from side to side.
"Water!" Blargh!
Yae tried again.
"Water!" Blargh!
And again.
"Water!" Blargh!
And again. "This Kokonoe will not-!"
"Water!" Blargh!
"SUPER annoying," Elze had to say again.
Yae let out a yell of incoherent rage and threw her practice sword at me. That was the highest disrespect a swordswoman could do to her own craft.
I ducked and saw Yae barreling towards me, ready to rip me apart with her own bare hands.
"Water."
"Gurble furble!" Yae snarled. She tried to push through the water spray on her face anyway, but lacking the ability to see she just followed the sweep of my arm and rushed past me like a bull distracted by a matador's cape.
She continued for a few more steps then dropped to her knees.
"I understand PERFECTLY now why you must be prepared to face melee combat, that I do," Yae sputtered out as she got back up to her feet. The front of her kimono was all muddy now. She had returned to a zen-like equanimity, though her chest still heaved with suppressed emotion. "Any foe you face that may get through your range advantage… will be SUPER MOTIVATED to destroy you, Playa-dono."
"Ahahaha… yeah." I sighed and looked down at the ground. And muttered "[Air Shield]" as Yae threw a glob of mud at me.
"THIS ONE SHALL TRAIN HARD TO DESTROY YOU PLAYA-DONO!" Yae roared out with her fist held up to swear it to the heavens. "MONIKA-SAMA WILLING-"
/"And I do, perfectly well. You're not just allowed to do so, you are ORDERED to do so, Little Yae. He needs to get his ego knocked down a few pegs now and then."/
"Yeah, what she said!" Elze agreed, suddenly appearing behind Yae. "Let's smash him into paste together!"
Yae grabbed and her hands and gushed at her all starry-eyed. "T-thank you, Elze-dono! I understand you now. Let us become truly strong together, we shall!"
Great, Fistpunch and Swordtail are now Super Battle Buddies. And Monika, come on, it's not my fault, blame the Isekai tropes.
/"You sure have a good way of motivating girls to become strong, Player!"/ Monika mused. She raised a thumb and made a very Elze-like grin. /"I approve!"/
I sighed again.
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I decided to exercise my veto over this plot development and just told the two girls to fight each other. Unsurprisingly they took to the idea with only slightly less enthusiasm. They were too different in the choice of weapons but eerily similar in their burst movement tactics, there was a lot to learn from sparring. By Monika's calculations, we still had an hour or two and traveling back at the same pace would still have us arrive at about mid-afternoon.
I went off to sit down beside Linze, who handed me a bronze cup filled with ice water. She was after all a Water mage. I nodded in thanks and drank deep.
"Um… Mister Zah…?"
"Yes?"
"I was really impressed with how you were fighting. You were… amazing out there."
I nodded again. "Thank you. I'm not going to do any false modesty or anything, I'm impressed with myself too. Yae is strong as heck and if I didn't do my very best I'd be eating dirt about now. I'm not sure it's going to turn out the same way next time, she'll be prepared for it."
"Um… about that… ah… [Air Sense]?" Linze asked while twiddling her fingers. "And… because… you have all affinities too...?"
"Ah. You mean… is there a way to make that work with [Fire] or [Water]?" And for Linze's last affinity, [Light], well isn't that just [Sight]?*
"If it's at all possible…"
I laughed. "Linze, air has pressure, sure. But know what else it always contains? Moisture. Temperature. Heck, even [Ground Sense] will allow you to map things more accurately with vibrations. There's too many already obsessed with firepower, but the best of things requires only calmness and precision."
But it would take some time to figure it out. The reason I could develop [Air Sense] at all was from how Monika could make it so easy to edit my sight and hearing inputs for sensory deprivation.
Somehow the thought of needing to put Linze in blindfolds and cover her ears completely and leave her unable to move for hours felt too… exciting.
I turned away, faintly blushing, from her eagerly trusting face to look at how the spar between Yae and Elze was progressing. As expected Elze was having trouble dealing with Yae's superior range, but because Elze had double armored gauntlets she could deflect and just threaten to grab Yae's sword to keep her careful.
Until Elze went off and decided to punch a tree with a skinny enough trunk. She picked up that tree as a weapon. Because it still had all its leaves and branches, instead of a spear Elze fought with it like it was some oversized brush.
Yae was confused as all heck. She couldn't even just jump over to land and run down the trunk to bonk Elze on the head because Elze was [Boosted] enough to wave the whole thing around to shake her off. So she tried to flank, but a whole tree just offered such an absurd range advantage and the biggest flaw was that the leaves obscured Elze's vision just as much as it kept Yae from looking in.
And from behind it Elze's voice triumphantly proclaimed "I AM BECOME TREEMAGE, DESTROYER OF FOLIAGE!"
"Kuh! Foul magic! You vile despoiler of nature!" Yae retorted hotly, brandishing her sword like an epic hero. "Face me like an honest woman, not some purveyor of fruits and lumber!"
Once again, I could only just sigh.
With four people in this party, one healer/tank, healer/mage, tank/DPS, and speed/DPS, we were supposed to be nicely balanced.
But apparently not mentally.
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-end The Duel-
AN:
1. (ʰᵗᵗᵖˢ:/ʷʷʷ.ʸᵒᵘᵗᵘᵇᵉ.ᶜᵒᵐ/ʷᵃᵗᶜʰ?ᵛ⁼ˢᵒᵗᶻʳᴮᴱʸᶻ⁰⁴)
2. Actually in theory some sort of magic [Light Sense] without sight would be possible because skin has photoreceptors too. (ʰᵗᵗᵖˢ:/ʷʷʷ.ˢᶜᶦᵉⁿᵗᶦᶠᶦᶜᵃᵐᵉʳᶦᶜᵃⁿ.ᶜᵒᵐ/ᵃʳᵗᶦᶜˡᵉ/ˢᵉᵉᶦⁿᵍ⁻ʷᶦᵗʰᵒᵘᵗ⁻ᵉʸᵉˢ¹/)
But Linze might have to go around mostly naked in order to perceive minute light values while [Blind Fighting]. ;)
Actually since Playa is using prioperception and detecting air pressure through his /skin/ and hairs, shucking his clothes off in the middle of combat could also improve the range and resolution of his [Air Sense]. As well as confusing the enemy. :p
And making Linze faint, but that's an unintended side effect.