Ottar, clad in golden armor, stood like a dazzling sun upon a faraway hillside.
Isagi stepped down from the carriage.
He had to admit — the strongest in the city at this moment bore more than a passing resemblance to the Zard of old.
As a boar-man among the Demi-human races, he was hulking and powerful; from afar he truly did look like nothing so much as a giant golden boar.
Zard's armor, however, had been black; by comparison, Isagi still preferred Zard a little more.
Gold was just a touch too conspicuous.
Ottar's weapon, on the other hand, was somewhat like Zard's — a greatsword, equally heavy, equally dim, preserving only its pitch-black color.
Isagi reviewed the intelligence he had on hand.
That weapon was named [Tyrant Black Sword], and had cost four hundred and ten million Valis. It was the "strongest melee armament" that Goibniu, the God of Smithing, had managed to hammer out, leading every senior smith of his entire Familia.
Its raw material, it was said, was a rare drop from the Monster Rex Udaeus — something called [Udaeus's Black Sword].
That brought something back to Isagi's mind.
The weapon Udaeus had once wielded — the same one that had also dropped for him when he had traveled back a thousand years before.
Only that now, that weapon had become his own [Moonlight Greatsword], and had brought with it the special ability to "warp" everything around it.
Fate, truly.
Isagi felt, for some reason, a touch of something like emotion.
He himself had once gone back to the past and defeated Zard; and the Ottar of those days had likewise relied on defeating Zard during the Great Conflict to smoothly level up to Lv. 7.
Which brought, naturally, the next question.
"Between you and Zard, who is stronger?"
"I don't know."
The boar-man youth answered from across the distance, his voice low and weighty.
And it was the truth, too.
Because Ottar genuinely did not know.
He had seen Zard at the peak of his strength — that man who with a single stroke could split open mountain ridges, that man who with a single stroke could slay Udaeus.
The swordsmanship he had displayed — was it truly only at the level of "technique"?
He did not understand it.
Because back then Ottar's level had still been too low; facing Zard, whatever the man did, he could not have understood it. That had been a strong one beyond anything he could imagine, the like of whom he had never seen and never even heard of.
Yet now, here today, he himself could perform those very same feats.
And yet even so, still he did not understand.
In the end, Ottar had never fought a Zard at his absolute prime — and so, naturally, he had no way of answering the young man's question.
Quite so.
At this, Isagi could only nod.
Because the Zard he himself had defeated had not been a Zard giving his all either — including the Zard who, back during the Great Conflict, had fought Ottar.
That being the case, then, brought up the next question.
Facing the current strongest in the city — could he, himself, actually win?
Isagi was a thoroughly pragmatic man, and didn't believe that so-called combat was a matter of shouting some "courage" or "bonds" and then charging in headfirst to win—
That sort of thing simply was not possible.
"Never fight a battle without confidence" — and so, before the War Game began, Isagi had carefully considered and analyzed this very question.
Earlier.
What he had said to the girls had been—
"Even if we don't win a single [Duel], it doesn't matter — it won't affect the outcome of the War Game one way or the other."
The "not winning a single [Duel]" included himself.
That was the objective fact of the matter.
For someone who had only just leveled up to Lv. 6 to challenge the city's strongest adventurer — who had already been Lv. 7 for many years, and who, per the intelligence reports, lacked only the [Excelia] to level up to Lv. 8—
saying there was a thousand-percent chance of winning was simply impossible.
But that didn't matter. What mattered was the attempt.
And the possibility.
Isagi narrowed his eyes faintly. Goddess Freya was using him as the opponent for her own Familia's child, or — to put it more coldly — as a "whetstone" — none of that mattered to him in the slightest, because hadn't he been thinking precisely the same thing?
A battle against high-level adventurers was, in any case, something one might chance upon but could not seek out.
After all, a member of the Goddess of Justice's Familia could hardly, in broad daylight, simply walk up to people they spotted in the city and start attacking them.
And so—
Isagi, with no rush, drew bottle after bottle of pill medicines from the pitch-black cloak he wore, and at his leisurely pace began layering "BUFFs" onto himself.
Dragonlight Strength-Doubling Pill, Enhanced Vigor Pill, Ascension Powder, Lightbody Powder, Jeweled Scale Pill, Bone-Hardening Medicine...
Useful or not, he downed every last one of them, and then directly cast the spell — the forbidden technique.
The very same recipe as in the previous battle against Zard.
Isagi planned to try this approach first — to test out, with his strongest "stat numbers," what Ottar's "numbers" actually looked like at present.
"Transform."
[Wolf's Devouring Feast] began to activate.
Flowing steel covered Isagi's body bit by bit, and the moonlight-shimmering greatsword was once again drawn out from his mouth.
The young man was the first to strike, charging straight at Ottar.
A single stroke.
The earth shook, the mountains trembled.
Pure force cracked open the very hillside on which the boar-man youth stood; the heavy blanket of snow over it accordingly began to collapse, rolling down as if the heavens themselves were tilting, accompanied by stones bursting apart in every direction.
And Ottar, standing at the dead center of it all, took the young man's stroke fully upon his weapon.
Very heavy.
And so, very good.
Ottar never doubted the goddess's judgment, but to trust her and to actually feel it for himself were still two different things; in this moment, the colossal, tangible weight conveyed through his hands sent his heart surging with feeling such as he had not known in a very long while.
And so, what came along with it was his fighting spirit.
Just as Zard's appraisal of Isagi had been the highest possible — "he can eat the hits."
At this moment, to Ottar—
the young man before him called back to mind the era when Zeus's and Hera's Familias had dominated the city.
But it still wasn't enough.
If it was only this, then in the eyes of that god and that goddess of old, it would have rated as no more than "a touch above average." So it absolutely wasn't enough.
"Is that all?"
The two greatswords blurred into high-speed afterimages.
Both sides stood rooted in place, yet the steel in their hands clashed back and forth at a pace bordering on the invisible, colliding again and again — shattering the ground and pressing it flat. The keening of metal-on-metal even broke apart the thick snow-laden clouds in the sky overhead.
In the blink of an eye—
The snow-swirling mountain woods cleared into bright open skies for ten thousand li.
Even the gods and spectators back in the distant city felt the very ground beneath their feet trembling — a pure sense of force conveyed by the impacts themselves.
Terrifying.
The adventurers of the city, too, were seeing — for the first time in a very long while, and outside the Dungeon at that — Ottar give his all in this fashion—
The past of the Great Conflict had been rewritten.
Ottar had never fought Zard to the death within the city, and so, what it actually looked like for the city's strongest adventurer to fight at full force — that was something they had not seen in a very, very long time.
But what could be seen plainly with the naked eye—
As time passed, anyone could tell that Isagi was being suppressed, and was gradually slipping into the worse position.
At this moment.
After the [Duel] ended, the girls naturally could not go back to the carriage, but were instead to return to the city to stand by; they had already made it back into the throng-packed hamburger shop.
Aphrodite and the Goddess Artemis, together with Chloe and the others, were still keeping the shop open for business.
And just at this jam-packed moment—
Ryuu-senpai and the others rushed into the hamburger shop and quickly slipped behind the counter, gazing at the Divine Mirror that had been unfolded inside the shop in this moment.
What they then saw was the great steel wolf, at this very moment, with fresh blood seeping out from the seams of its armor.
The [Wolf's Devouring Feast] upon Isagi was on the verge of being completely drowned in deep crimson — though that, in fact, was hardly anything strange; in the Dungeon, this happened all the time.
So.
Isagi, at this moment, in fact did not really mind.
Though his body hurt to the point of agony, and each swing of his weapon brought a violent recoil that further accelerated the rate at which the armor was draining away his life force.
Neither side's blade had actually wounded the other's body.
But even so, the terrifying intensity of this war of attrition was enough to set hearts trembling with dread.
Soon enough, Isagi confirmed one fact.
Namely that Ottar's "stats" were utterly outrageous — even monstrous; in actual fact, the boar-man youth's ability values at this moment were [Strength "999"], [Endurance "999"], [Dexterity "991"], [Agility "989"]—
Only his [Magic] was relatively poor, at "566."
If not for monsters of nature like Isagi, then Ottar's title of strongest in the city would be one well-earned and well-deserved.
He had no weak spot.
And his strong points were extraordinarily strong.
[Defense].
Ottar, in truth, was not a frontline fighter who excelled at offense; quite the contrary, he was the kind of guy with hide thick and flesh tough.
Skill: "I Fight, Therefore I Am."
· While in combat, temporarily possesses the development ability 「Healing Force」 (continuously restores stamina and heals oneself);
· While in combat, temporarily possesses the development ability 「Spirit Recovery」 (continuously restores mental energy);
· While in combat, all development abilities the user possesses are increased in level;
· The skill's effects scale with the increase of the user's own ability values;
This guy came built-in with his own "recovery hot springs."
Within the city, powerful adventurers were very, very few — and at the same time, each had his or her own brand of outrageousness.
A war of attrition like this was extremely, extremely unfavorable to Isagi.
So.
A face-off of "stat numbers," it would seem, simply would not do — at least, not for the present version of himself.
Isagi accordingly disengaged from the battle, and Ottar did not give chase.
This was not a fight to the death, and so, evidently out of a certain kind of respect, the boar-man youth — the city's strongest — was willing to wait, and see what the young man planned to do next.
At this, Isagi did not waste time, either.
He merely first pulled out his Monkey Wine and chugged a few mouthfuls of it, restoring his condition to full; then, waiting in place for a few minutes to let himself exit his "in combat" state, he immediately swapped to a different character card.
This time.
It was [Land of Reeds].
If "stat numbers" wouldn't do, then he would win on technique — let's see whether the "secret art of the sword saint" could defeat Ottar in terms of weapon mastery.
And the change came quickly.
Taking the place of the greatsword in his hands were two long blades — the pitch-black [Blade of Ten Thousand Bones], along with the azure [Moonshade].
Beneath the grey, leaden sky—
A dazzling, brilliant blue crescent surged skyward, almost as if lighting up everything in the world.
To this, Ottar merely swung the greatsword in his hand, and the blade — composed of pure mana — was simply shattered just like that.
But following immediately on its heels was the young man's figure, already arriving right in front of him.
He raised the weapons in his hands.
And then, almost on pure instinct, Ottar seized upon the opening in the young man's attack, and instead launched a counter first.
Striking second but landing first.
But that was deliberate, on Isagi's part.
The [Blade of Ten Thousand Bones] in his hand shifted from slash to guard, and accompanied by a dazzling burst of golden light and a spray of sparks, the perfect "parry" caused Ottar's strike to come to nothing — while at the same time sending the man himself reeling back half a step.
"?"
He furrowed his brow slightly.
Because Isagi had changed his approach, Ottar was visibly a touch unaccustomed to it.
The young man was no longer going hard-against-hard, but had, by some technique that Ottar himself could not fathom, dissolved the strike that had just landed.
And his counter came in at breakneck speed.
The famed blade [Moonshade] in Isagi's left hand then vanished, replaced by a grey-cloth-wrapped hunting rifle.
Gunsmoke and the report came at the same instant.
But Ottar still blocked the incoming bullet with his greatsword, and so attack and defense shifted once more; the very next moment, Isagi had to brace himself once again to receive the heavy blow from the city's strongest.
This was not simple.
The "parry" was a master's skill — a true technical craft.
At this moment, in Isagi's eyes, the ten thousand things of the world had seemingly vanished. All that remained was that heavy greatsword crashing down again and again.
He had only one chance.
In a single instant, he had to swing the long blade in his hand and have it land — just exactly — on a tiny precise spot on the underside of that enormously broad, heavy greatsword blade; the timing had to be without the slightest deviation. Faster or slower by even a hair, and the "parry" would fail — and the result would be his own self taking that heavy, killing strike.
That was right.
Of Ottar's attacks, Isagi could be sure — he "couldn't eat a single one."
It was that difficult.
But he had to do it. He had no choice but to do it!
And so the world seemed once again to enter a cycle — only this time, the noise and motion of it were a great, great deal smaller than just before.
What had been a collision between strength-hulks had, in the blink of an eye, seemingly become a contest of "technique."
In the eyes of the spectators—
The dull, ground-cracking sounds gradually ceased; the cloud layers that had been shaken apart began slowly to gather back together; the city, too, no longer heard those violent tremors of moments ago.
However.
Each clash of long blade and greatsword still carried with it a certain heart-stopping terror.
Block, counter, block, counter.
Pure suppression — the kind that admitted not the slightest margin for error.
The ordinary residents of the city probably couldn't quite make sense of it, and low-level adventurers almost certainly weren't grasping much either.
But to professional "high-class" practitioners like Ryuu and the others—
they could see the harrowing precision concealed within, and it was simply at a level too astounding to imagine.
Isagi was still being suppressed.
But how had the young man managed it — going for so long without taking a wound?!
Compared with moments ago, there did seem to have been a real improvement now.
But.
One single oversight, one single misstep, and the young man was certain to take a grievous injury — and that had Ryuu, Lefiya, and the others sweating cold despite themselves.
This was simply far too risky!!
And in this moment, Isagi was simply utterly focused — not even caring that every single one of his counter-strikes was producing not the slightest effect.
It didn't matter.
The young man wasn't even thinking about what would happen next, or whether continuing on like this would do him any good at all.
"Focus" was not an empty word.
At this moment, Isagi once more reached that same "state" he had reached before.
Everything before his eyes had vanished, save for the weapons in his own hands, and the weapon in his opponent's.
Everything became simple, beyond all measure.
Pure.
The world had nothing left in it any longer — save only that pure "nothingness."
____
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