Listening to the distant peals of thunder rolling on and on.
Ryuu could distinctly feel that Allen Fromel had grown even more impatient.
He wanted to defeat her faster — before Hedin.
This guy.
Was the kind of person who was always pitting himself against himself — those were Anya's own words. The dumb little cat-cat rarely spoke about her older brother, but Ryuu and Isagi had, more or less, still heard her talk about the two siblings' past.
Truthfully, it wasn't anything particularly remarkable, nor anything especially complicated.
Anya and Allen Fromel had been born in a northern kingdom far from the city. One day, the [Visiting Dragon] arrived at her hometown — and so, for as long as the cat-girl could remember, she and her older brother had been living all alone in what was essentially a world of ruins.
There was nothing in that place; even simply staying alive demanded that one give it everything.
The thing they spent the most time on every day was looking for food, and for that, fighting other survivors — even killing them.
Her brother was always complaining she got in the way, but he kept her at his side from beginning to end. Until, that is, the day the beautiful goddess appeared before the two of them and asked whether they were willing to join the Freya Familia.
Word had it that, at the very start, the goddess had only wanted Allen Fromel to join the Familia, and Anya was just a bundled-in extra — those were the bits of gossip the cat-girl had frequently overheard from other Familia members after she came to the city.
And the result?
Was that during training at [Folkvangr], Anya would beat them all half to death, by way of revenge.
But she didn't win every fight either.
Allen Fromel leveled up extremely fast, while Anya was always half a beat behind. The gap in strength between the two of them had already been huge since childhood — and once they had become adventurers, that gap had only grown wider.
Until, on one particular expedition.
Because they had pushed too deep into the Dungeon, the two of them fell into danger — and Allen Fromel nearly died because of Anya.
And so.
The cat-girl, on account of her weakness, was expelled from the Familia. And it was then that she finally understood — those bits of idle chatter from her former Familia comrades had not been groundless rumors at all, but the simple truth.
The goddess had needed only his chariot; she herself was nothing more than a defective extra that had been reluctantly accepted.
"Because you were worried your little sister would die, you wouldn't let her become an adventurer — instead you wanted her to live a perfectly ordinary, perfectly happy life as a normal person. Is saying something like that really so hard for you?"
"Shut up."
"Tsundere bastard."
That had been Isagi's verdict, back when he had first heard the story of the brother and sister.
And now.
Ryuu had sent those same words back to Allen Fromel, word for word — and the result, naturally, was that—
the tsundere got angry.
"I told you to shut up!"
The Goddess's Chariot launched itself into another charge, in a stance that promised to grind every single thing to dust, and with a thunderous roar, once more let loose a sonic boom that seemed it might snap the whole world in two.
Ryuu was long since prepared.
In a single instant, she twisted her body, and using the grappling hooks in her hands she swiftly dodged off to one side, then leaped up once more, shifting her position over and over so that Allen Fromel could not lock onto her.
Then, using the explosion of a deep-green orb of light beside her as cover — the intense white glare and the rolling, burning flames — she rapidly closed in on the cat-man youth.
Allen Fromel's greatest strength was his speed.
As Freya Familia's vice-captain, he did not possess any particularly bizarre skills or magic.
He was extraordinarily pure — and for that very reason, extraordinarily strong.
Ryuu was very nearly giving it everything she had, even borrowing the power of Yuufi, the spirit of the wind that currently wreathed the entire Beio Mountain Range, in order to just barely keep up with Allen Fromel at full sprint, and maintain a relentless close-quarters engagement with him.
Whether doing this actually accomplished anything, frankly, was something of an open question.
As fellow Lv. 6 adventurers.
These senior figures like Allen Fromel did possess two advantages that could not be ignored.
The first was that, because they had reached Lv. 6 long ago, the ability values they had built up through years of real combat were far higher than those of someone like herself who had only just leveled up.
The second advantage was the "experience" that came with time, and their "grasp" of their own strength.
But she had her own advantage too.
That was her experience of "high-intensity combat"!
For Allen Fromel, aside from daily training with the other Lv. 6 adventurers in the Familia, fights against opponents of equal level — let alone of even higher intensity — were few and far between.
This was a bottleneck that high-level adventurers were certain to encounter.
But she was different.
Ever since she had begun adventuring together with Isagi, encountering stronger, more dangerous enemies had been simply a matter of routine.
Evenly matched battles?
Such a thing had never existed for them. Every single fight was one in which a moment's carelessness meant death; thinking back on it now, Ryuu realized that she herself had already walked the line between life and death more times than she could count. So...
A veteran Lv. 6 adventurer, placed inside the Dungeon, was probably at least the equal of a powerful monster at Lv. 7 — or even Lv. 8.
But so what?
It wasn't as if she had never faced enemies like that before!
Attack, attack, attack!!
The blazing flames burning all around would not be extinguished, just like the courage of her friend that had remained steadfast unto death; she had transformed into a true crimson firework, accompanying Ryuu at every moment, at her left side and at her right.
And then.
The swing of the sword!
The flames danced — and yet seemed also to be withering away.
Through countless past days and nights, she had endured countless battles, countless rounds of training, countless hours of quiet contemplation.
The black-haired Far East swordswoman had always sat quietly by her side. The words she spoke to Ryuu had never been many — and precisely because of that, Ryuu could recall every single thing Kaguya had ever said.
She had used "vicious" words to mock Ryuu's swordsmanship, and through that mockery she had corrected it, pushed it forward—
It had to be admitted.
Now that she had been raised to Lv. 6, many of Kaguya's pieces of advice had, for Ryuu, become "very much outdated."
No matter how thorough her theory had been.
The swordswoman from those past days could not possibly have foreseen realms she herself had never reached.
But that was all right. Because all Ryuu had to do was keep walking forward along the path that had been laid down before; the Ryuu of today had long since understood the simple truth — one need only keep moving forward, that was all.
So long as today's self was stronger than yesterday's, and tomorrow's self stronger than today's, even by just a little, that was enough.
Besides.
When it came to "swordsmanship" — Ais and Isagi were both excellent teachers, were they not?
The swordsmen of the Far East had always been astonishingly ferocious. There was, as the saying went, the glory of dying but no humiliation of living; everything, every single thing, was carried out with the sole purpose of killing the enemy, and there were no other thoughts beyond that.
Ryuu felt as though she could almost touch that realm.
She could even begin to understand the "nonsense" that Isagi had spoken in the past.
That state where nothing existed, where the body, too, seemed to simply move of its own accord, where every single thing became natural, flowing along with the heart's whim, without any hesitation or any obstruction.
"!!!"
The flames had already swept across the wilds.
From Allen Fromel's perspective, the maiden seemed to be everywhere at once. The tip of her sword, glinting with a chill light, was like the stars overflowing across the night sky, or like the cherry blossoms scattering on the wind — everywhere, and impossible to pin down — and at times, even the killing intent that ought to have been there simply vanished.
The sword in Ryuu's hand seemed truly to have become the twinkling stars biting into the edge of the heavens, or the soft pink cherry petals drifting silently down.
If his speed had not genuinely been quick enough — quick enough to evade in the split second before the sword's tip pierced his armor — Allen Fromel by now would surely have had ten thousand holes punched through his body.
[How troublesome.]
Disgust.
The displeasure welling up from the depths of his heart very nearly threatened to swallow Allen Fromel whole.
So he decided to start showing some of his real ability.
"Wheel of gold, collar of silver—"
The cat-man youth began to chant softly.
His voice was not loud, but to Ryuu it was distinctly audible. And the maiden noticed that, the moment Allen Fromel let the very first syllable escape his lips—
his speed grew faster still.
Even the world around her began to warp and distort, dissolving into blurred afterimages that the eye could not catch hold of at all.
[So fast.]
But still within expectations — still not even as fast as Alfia.
And.
As an adventurer long famed throughout the city, the intelligence on Allen Fromel was extremely detailed, and so Ryuu knew that this was the cat-man youth's magic, [Geraneze Frome].
Its effects were:
· Significantly raises the [Agility] stat.
· The faster the sprint, the greater the power.
· Removes the user's own speed cap.
This magic had only one effect — to accelerate Allen Fromel himself, accelerate him, accelerate him further, and then — sprint!
The cat-man youth's speed grew so fast that the eye could no longer track him at all.
Amid the flames, all that could be faintly glimpsed were the few silvery threadlike traces drawn by the longspear in his hand.
"Love of loathing, phantasm of bones — here lies thy destiny."
Allen Fromel completely shook off Ryuu's pursuit. In what felt like a heartbeat, the maiden realized that her opponent had vanished entirely from her perception.
She had lost him.
But the next second, Allen Fromel — still muttering the words of his chant — reappeared right before Ryuu's eyes.
"Vanish, golden wheel, before the wheel-rut slays thee."
The longspear came in with an unstoppable, world-crushing momentum, and the instant it arrived, it shattered and flattened everything around it. The small mountain forest could not possibly bear that kind of pressure; in the blink of an eye, the area even became, in a certain sense, a "vacuum zone."
Trees, deep snow, raging wind—
Every single thing vanished, including even the ground that had been there a moment before.
At this moment.
In the eyes of the gods and the spectators back in the city, the mere aftershock of Allen Fromel's charge had already "annihilated" the entire stretch of mountain forest the two of them stood in.
What Ryuu felt was a pressure of unimaginable magnitude.
As though she had been plunged into the abyss of the deep sea, every single part of her body was creaking and groaning under the strain.
If not for the instinct of survival, which still made the maiden hurl herself off to one side, this one blow alone might well have been enough to decide the match.
But.
It wasn't over — not even close.
This was only the beginning.
"Whip of glory, lips of favor — here lies the price!"
Allen Fromel's magic was still continuing.
His body, too, had begun to creak and groan violently — that was the shriek of a body unable to bear the burden of its own speed.
Moreover, the "ultimate technique" that came with this magic inflicted damage on the user himself that was greater than one might imagine.
At this moment Allen Fromel was charging again and again.
A single blow that missed — and he would forcibly "halt" himself, then instantly pivot and charge again.
For the cat-man youth, the backlash that accompanied forcing himself to stop in such a way left his body howling in agony each and every time.
But even so.
He still did not stop. Because the Goddess's Chariot could only ever charge ever onward — either victory, or annihilation. There would never come a moment in which he turned and fled.
And besides—
this was nothing — nothing at all!
The city's [Gale] could not possibly be stronger than the "vast darkness" that had destroyed his homeland. If he wanted to take his revenge on the Black Dragon, then every enemy he faced from here on out had to be ground utterly into dust!
So.
Forward, forward, forward, forward!!
Endless sonic booms continued to detonate through the mountain range, but even sound itself could no longer keep pace with the cat-man youth's speed.
All that people could see was that the once-rolling mountain forest had begun to erupt, patch after patch, in following the trail of [Gale], and following the maiden's increasingly desperate retreat.
Everything around her was being annihilated, vanishing.
Allen Fromel's speed grew faster and faster still, until at one particular moment, the silver tip of his spear just barely grazed past the maiden's cheek in a single flash.
It did not strike true.
But at such close distance, the sheer impact alone was enough to send the maiden's slender body hurtling through the air.
After her mind went blank for a single instant.
Ryuu realized she seemed to have been flung up into the sky.
The once-endlessly-rolling mountain range grew smaller and smaller before her eyes, and yet even so, hot on her heels still came the longspear in Allen Fromel's hand.
Even from that great a distance, he had relied purely on his own speed and arrived right in front of her once more.
When a person is suspended midair, it is difficult to control one's own motion.
Because there is no point of leverage, the trajectory of the body is, in a certain sense, "fixed."
And that, too, was the reason why battles between true experts so very rarely involved "leaping into the air."
And right now.
Ryuu could no longer evade.
Everything was as though it had turned into slow motion, until the maiden felt — wind.
The blizzard that had been raging through the Beio Mountain Range disappeared, and at this most critical of moments, every last bit of the little spirit Yuufi's power became the elven maiden's "weapon."
And so.
Allen Fromel first felt the invisible "shield."
Surging currents of air froze the longspear in his hand right in front of the maiden's body — no matter how he pushed, it could not advance another inch. Then, immense pushing forces suddenly came welling in from all four directions, and just like that, the cat-man youth's body began to "sway."
On the other side, an invisible gentle breeze enveloped the maiden's body, swiftly bearing her downward, ferrying her back to the ground as quickly as it could.
Yuufi was an intermediate-rank wind spirit.
And so the "wind" she could use was, after all, still a step removed from Ais's "wind."
She could not, with such fineness, control the flow of the wind so as to let one dance and move and fight freely through the skies.
But this much was enough.
Ryuu had gained a little bit of room to breathe — the tiny spirit had spent every last drop of her power to help her ward off Allen Fromel's killing strike.
And now, it was time for her own counterattack!
Looking at the rolling mountains stretching out before her.
The first thing the elven maiden did was decide to first thoroughly conceal her own presence.
And then.
As she searched for Allen Fromel's whereabouts, Ryuu decided that what she would do next was to use strategy — and, in a certain sense of the word, an extremely "underhanded" style of combat—
[How is Ryuu-senpai's side faring?]
As her magic surged.
Lefiya still had the presence of mind to glance off into the distance — that earth-shaking sound that had just come from over there had set hearts racing.
No wonder Isagi had said earlier:
[Even if you don't win a single one, that's fine. Don't push yourselves.]
What the hell?!
Could it be that losing all of the [Duel]s could still count as a win?!
The girls didn't understand — but of course they could not just outright concede the moment things began. After all, this was an opportunity that was hard to come by, and at the same time, it was their own battle to fight—
"Focus."
A cold voice came from not far in front of her.
Accompanied by the crackling burst of lightning.
At this moment, the situation on Lefiya's side was hardly any better.
Around the two mages, the mountain forest had likewise long since been leveled flat — all around there was nothing but scorched black mountain stone, and the tiny floating points of iridescent color left behind by residual magic.
____
👻🔥Walnut-chan🔥👻
🔥 New history: A Martial Arts Master Will Never Be Humiliated
🎯 100 Powerstones = +1 Bonus Chapter for everyone