"Nothingness" is "martial."
Perhaps when all is said and done, it really is just focus carried to some extreme degree.
But something this simple is already enough.
Nothing else matters. What matters is everything in front of him, right now.
Isagi felt as though he were playing some endless, simple little game — like Tetris, where all you have to do is plug every gap; like that little Galaga-style space shooter, where all you have to do is wipe every last enemy off the screen.
No fancy maneuvers, no need for reactions. The only thing required was: at the right moment, do the right thing.
Forever.
Forever.
Forever.
This was not easy.
Isagi began searching for an opportunity to strike back. After a parry, Ottar would expose, for the span of a single breath, an opening — that much had already been established.
But ordinary attacks had no effect.
Whether he used [Moonlight Greatsword], or [Moon Hidden], or the various hunters' firearms and weaponry—
Ordinary attacks, even when they connected, could barely inflict any damage on Ottar.
The [City's Strongest] of the present age — what he excelled at was [Defense].
With his stat values already lagging behind to begin with, the idea of breaking down this boar-man's guard was, quite simply, impossible.
So he had to throw a haymaker!
And so, Isagi activated the original ability of the [Blade of Myriad Bones] — [Death Declaration].
Across the body of the towering, gold-armored man, the [Death Lines] began to surface.
Isagi felt a stab of pain in his eyes.
It was an abnormal bodily reaction brought on by too-intense focus. A person, after all, was not a machine — this degree of concentration was continuously burning through his own "functioning."
But he had no choice but to keep going.
Isagi could only, once again, fix his attention on those almost-nonexistent [Death Lines].
Compared to before—
They were so faint as to verge on the impossible, appearing only within the briefest of instants, like a fleeting dream, indistinguishable from "nonexistence" itself.
It was the kind of thing one could understand at a glance — and at a degree no ordinary human being could ever achieve.
Precise, no margin for error.
At the instant of its appearance, strike it with the long blade in his hand, then cut in — following along its line of extension, neither hurried nor slow, bit by bit "slicing it open."
Isagi's breathing began to grow ragged.
But it was the same rule as ever: for an adventurer, there was no such thing as "can or cannot do it" — only "must do it."
And so.
Isagi was about to swing.
Ottar gave no sign of being on his guard about this — because he had next to no intelligence whatsoever on Isagi.
What skills the boy had, what magic he could use, what style and manner he fought in — Ottar knew none of it.
The reason was simple, too.
Isagi rarely raised his hand inside the city, and as for the situation of practice sessions within Astrea Familia, no one was going to let any of it slip.
But this didn't matter — if anything, it gave Ottar a kind of thrill.
And in this very moment.
As a seasoned adventurer, the man suddenly became aware of danger.
It was the first time since the battle had begun that he felt as though his heart were being clamped in something's grip — that suffocating sensation.
It was no illusion, but something very real — that overwhelmingly violent breath of danger was spilling out into the air all around.
Isagi could no longer keep it concealed.
Because it was simply too intense, too savage.
So—
Faced with this single blow of Isagi's, Ottar's mind, in the span of an instant, considered a great many things.
Defense, evasion, counterattack… there was so very much he could do, the methods of counter were so varied — all he had to do was pick one of them out…
And yet.
It was at that very moment.
Crimson blood had already burst open across the front of his chest.
"Hm?"
Was it that he himself had been too slow?
Ottar couldn't help but voice such a question. In this instant, time itself seemed to have lost all meaning — because he couldn't even comprehend just when, exactly, he had been cut.
Before any of it, the long blade in the boy's hand had already come down.
Effortlessly slicing open the golden armor on his body, carving across his skin, plunging into the flesh within.
It wasn't just Isagi.
Even Ottar himself found this beyond belief.
A moment later, what he felt was a kind of release — because Isagi's motion had suddenly halted. Even that pitch-black blade had stopped lodged inside his body, not fully drawn back out.
The boy had used up every last ounce of his strength.
Or rather — his body had been thoroughly wrung dry by that single strike just now.
Hahh—
From within that great-wolf-shaped, fully-spiked helmet, only the sound of an unbearably heavy, hoarse breath came drifting out.
At the very instant a person's body sustains a grievous wound, they feel nothing at all.
And what comes after.
Is cold, heaviness, drowsiness — and only at the very end, the unbearably violent pain.
Isagi realized that the blow just now had not only wounded Ottar but had also, in that very same instant, nearly wrung dry every drop of his own life force.
[The use of power comes at a cost.]
Even if that power inherently belonged to him.
The [Sword Saint Secret Art] had maxed out the proficiency level of every weapon he carried; in a certain sense, then, no matter the "technique" of any weapon, he could perform and use it.
This was an ability the Skill had forcibly bestowed upon him — but possession was one thing; the former him had not understood it.
How exactly was it done?
What did one need to do, exactly, to be able to do it?
Isagi had been mulling over these very questions all along. And the result was that the instant he pulled it off, this technique forcibly granted by the Skill devoured his own self.
In the end, it came down to insufficient level.
Hahh—
But it didn't matter. He could come back to life again anyway. And besides — he hadn't actually died, had he?
Isagi remained without movement for a long, long while.
And so, Ottar too did not move. He didn't even pull the pitch-black long blade the boy had run into his body back out.
The golden armor was stained red over most of its surface with blood, then congealed, hardening into a slightly uneven scab.
Ottar gazed at the boy in front of him.
Watched as, seeming finally to have recovered a touch of strength, he loosened his grip on the blade — and then took out a gourd, and once again began "glug, glug, glug," drinking from it.
Very good.
Well then — the battle ended here.
Ottar drew out the long blade still buried in one side of his chest, returned it to the boy before him, and put away his own weapon.
"?"
The gods and the audience did not understand.
But to Ottar the battle was already over — because the objective he and the goddess had in mind could not be achieved here.
He did not seek a fair fight.
What did it mean to be "evenly matched"?
Same level?
Same stat values?
The monsters in the depths of the Dungeon were never going to spell that out for you. The villains of the Dark Familia were never going to spell that out for you either.
Ottar was a [Warrior], but he did not seek a fair fight.
In this moment.
His sheathing of his weapon was not because Isagi was now weaker than him, and the battle therefore meaningless.
Rather, it was that with Isagi's current strength, even if Isagi defeated him, it would not be enough to yield the [Excelia] required to level up to Lv. 8.
This was Ottar's judgment at this moment.
The warrior of the [Goddess of Beauty] would, naturally and at every moment, hold his goddess's will as the highest priority.
Ottar understood.
That Goddess Freya, for so very long, had kept her gaze fixed on this boy of Astrea Familia — she meant for him to become her opponent.
But the goddess's judgment was, even so, just a little premature.
Best to wait a while longer.
Best of all, to wait until the other side's level even surpassed his own.
At this moment, Ottar's blood was surging — that heart of his that had once burned itself out now seemed, again, on the verge of casting out tiny sparks.
Burn, burn, burn!
[City's Strongest]?
The boar-man youth, who had once seen those who were truly the strongest, knew very well that the current him — placed amongst those people — was no more than "slightly above average."
So it was not enough. Far from enough.
Neither himself in this moment, nor the others within their Familia, nor the city, nor every adventurer in the world.
So he would go on waiting.
Ottar lowered his eyes slightly. He knew the time was already close — but the [Hero] would inevitably descend, and so he had to wait until the very last moment.
It would not be many years now.
Ottar silently turned away and left. And so, this [Duel] had no winner and no loser — only a draw—
——
The battles that followed were much as Isagi had predicted.
On the Loki Familia side, the remaining Finn and Gareth had no great interest in this [Duel].
All the more so since the remaining opponents were Ais and Tiona. And so, the [War Game] in the end turned, instead, into a contest between the goddesses themselves.
Inside the bustling hamburger shop—
Isagi, so as not to cause trouble, slipped quietly in through the back door and into the kitchen. Together with the girls who had been gathered here since well before, he watched the progress of the battle through the shop's Divine Mirror.
Watching as the two carriages, one ahead and one behind, raced at full tilt through the heavy snow — neck and neck in every sense of the word.
And so—
"Isagi, how are we going to win?"
Lefiya, at his side, quietly leaned in. The girl had not forgotten that, before the [War Game] had begun, the boy had said as much—
Even if everyone else lost it wouldn't matter, so long as the chariot race itself was won.
"Right, right — don't tell me there's some [Secret Route]?!"
Off to one side, Aphrodite was clamoring too.
The lovely little [Goddess of Beauty] had a one-thousand-percent interest in joining in the fun. To which, Isagi had no way to answer.
There was, of course, nothing of the sort as a [Secret Route].
The Beio Mountain Range was largely untrodden by people, but as far as mountain roads navigable by carriage went, when you got down to it, there were only those few. They were the roads once used by merchant caravans for "smuggling."
That was, in fact, the most peculiar thing about this [War Game].
Because—
The paths through the mountain forest were in fact very many — but the great majority were fine for an adventurer to cross alone, while letting a carriage through was simply not feasible.
After a screening like that, what one found was that the usable roads were really all pretty much the same.
On top of which—
His own side, owing to Goddess Demeter, simply had a somewhat better grasp of the mountain range; that was all. But the two goddesses, Freya and Loki, were not fools either — when push came to shove, they could simply stick close on the heels of his own side's carriage.
"So what do we do?"
"Don't tell me we're still going to use little Yuufi to——"
No.
Yuufi's mission had already been completed.
Besides, the little one had helped Ryuu-senpai fend off a fatal blow from a Lv. 6 adventurer; in truth, she had already used up the bulk of her power. At this very moment, she was sound asleep inside the carriage, no longer at all capable of conjuring another blizzard.
"Wait."
Isagi simply spoke the word softly.
The boy's air of perfect, calm assurance left the other girls thoroughly unable to puzzle it out.
And so, this [War Game] eventually evolved into a "race" between the goddesses, and very quickly, as time wore on, it gradually slipped into night.
Crossing the Beio Mountain Range was not the work of a single day. And although the [Duel] component had run its course, the goddesses' under-the-table contest of wills was, even so, quite the riveting spectacle.
Even so.
Isagi reckoned that most of the gods and audience members were still paying attention to this [War Game] all because of Freya.
So long as the [Goddess of Beauty] existed, she would naturally draw the eyes of every soul around her.
Isagi, who was constantly with Aphrodite, had long grown used to it.
Just like that, the night deepened bit by bit.
Even in the taverns and gambling halls where the lights stayed on all night, and in the Pleasure Quarter, no one noticed: amidst the silent, towering mountain range, a beautiful little girl drifting along inside a bubble was, even as she wandered, calmly "absorbing" the residual magic power left behind from the day's battles between Lefiya, Isagi, and the others.
Lefiya in particular — for the girl had, after all, ended up unleashing her [Explosion Magic], and on top of that there were the sacred relics of the Elven race.
All this left the little one's tummy nicely full — and her body, naturally, brimming with power.
And this, this was Isagi's final "trump card"!
Little jellyfish Saika!!
Likewise a member of Astrea Familia.
Saika, at this moment, was going to use her ability to help the Familia inevitably win this [War Game]—
One of the most important rules of this "race" was that the adventurers, no matter what, could not influence the carriage's "travel."
The rule was simple, but the contents bundled inside it were extremely tangled — and so, if a foul was committed, the gods would have to issue a ruling.
So then.
What exactly was permitted, and what was not?
First — adventurers directly attacking the opposing carriage to make it stop was obviously not allowed; nor was it allowed for the adventurers to use some kind of skill or magic, or even simply hoist their own side's carriage up bodily, to speed up the carriage's arrival at the finish.
What was permitted was this—
Drawing in monsters to attack or besiege the opposing carriage (a move Freya Familia had already used);
Using a skill or magic to manufacture harsh environmental conditions affecting the opposing carriage's speed (a move Astrea Familia had already used);
Neither of these two moves had been ruled fouls by the gods, so they could be used.
Extending from that, then — so long as the outcome did not appear to be targeted at any one side, but rather produced effects on both, it was fine.
What Saika was going to do was precisely one such thing.
To put it another way, Haruhime had been knocked out too early; there was no way to use her [level-up magic] to give Saika a further level-up boost. Otherwise, the effect might have been better still.
Be that as it may.
All that was left to do now was wait — all the way until the final, decisive sprint.
For the goddesses of both sides, this too was a [War Game] they could not afford to lose.
Granted, there weren't really any so-called "consequences" to it.
But the goddesses' pride had, inexplicably, set them at odds with each other, until, in the end, just as the two carriages were about to break out of the mountain forest and onto the endless great plains beyond—
In accordance with Isagi's instructions.
Saika began to bring her full power to bear. Using the magic power she had absorbed earlier, the little jellyfish drifting inside her water bubble activated the ability and magic that belonged to her, and her alone.
The tiny little jellyfish manifested her true form.
From the cute little girl who had been drifting inside her water bubble, she transformed into an enormous jellyfish — and her body kept "swelling" larger.
[Martial Soul True Form]!
Just kidding.
This was a yokai revealing its true form!!
Immediately after, the magic power that had been swallowed up by the little jellyfish came spilling back out, transforming into countless phantom-colored bubbles, and in an instant the entire mountain forest was enveloped within them…
...
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