Water Magician

Vol 3. Chapter 694: Bonus Part: Ryo and Abel’s Journey Home (22)

0694 A Strange Tale of the Demon Men Cult IV

“Let me give you my name one more time. I’m Dainan.”

“Come to think of it, I hadn’t given mine. I’m Abel.”

Dainan and Abel faced each other outside the village gate.

Not just Ryo, Anju, and Ronja, but nearly all of Farafao Village had climbed up onto the wall and were staring at the two men confronting each other.

“Ryo... can Lord Abel win?”

It was Ronja who asked, directly, though in a low voice.

He had heard Abel say he would avenge Anju.

That was why it was a question he did not want Anju to hear....

“Honestly, I don’t know. Servants of the Demon Men are very strong.”

Ryo answered honestly.

Of course he wanted Abel to win, and he did not think Abel would lose.

Even so... when fighting beings beyond the human realm, there was no telling what might happen.

“Back when he was still in the kingdom, Abel fought a servant of the Demon Men before.”

“Huh...”

Ronja went speechless at Ryo’s words.

“And what happened?”

“I heard he cut the servant’s head off.”

“Oh!”

“But the servant came back to life.”

“Wha...”

Ronja fell silent again.

That whole exchange, by the barest margin, did not seem to have reached Anju.

“As long as the Demon Man itself isn’t killed, they’ll probably keep reviving no matter how many times they’re cut down.”

“The Demon Man...”

Murmuring that, Ronja looked at the black-haired girl sitting with her legs crossed on a stone chair, calmly waiting for the fight between the two men to begin.

She was beautiful, strong-willed, and carried an overwhelming air of composure... but she did not look stronger than the servant who was about to fight.

“Attacking that girl would be bad...”

“Yes. We absolutely must not do that.”

Ryo {N•o•v•e•l•i•g•h•t} nodded firmly at Ronja’s confirmation.

A one-on-one duel between Abel and Dainan was about to begin, by the agreement of both sides.

A duel was a kind of covenant.

A binding rule that no one else would interfere.

A sacred fight carried out within the bounds of that vow and that restraint.

Anyone who broke it with some tasteless act would provoke fury.

“Right now, the only thing we can do is trust Abel and watch.”

When Ryo said that in a voice loud enough to carry, every villager on the wall nodded.

And then the fight began.

There had been no gong to signal the start.

Abel and Dainan were simply standing there with their beloved swords at the ready... and then, suddenly, it started.

Dainan struck first.

Maybe that was because Abel’s words beforehand had robbed him of some of his calm.

Maybe not.

Either way, that opening blow was ferocious.

Clang, clang, clang...

Even as his fierce opening strike was deflected, Dainan kept chaining attacks together.

Abel angled his sword and turned aside every single one.

The sword of Dainan, servant of the Demon Men, surpassed human limits in both strength and speed.

Abel’s sword answered it with technique.

Naturally, the shape of the fight became Dainan attacking and Abel defending, but...

A horizontal sweep was woven into Dainan’s flurry.

Instead of receiving it, Abel dodged.

More than any other strike, that altered Dainan’s flow, and his follow-through shifted out of line.

From that off-balance body, Dainan linked into yet another series of attacks, and Abel stepped in half a pace and thrust out his sword.

He received the strike at a point different from usual... a point where Dainan’s strength was not fully loaded into it.

Even a servant of the Demon Men, whose physical might dwarfed that of ordinary humans, could not ignore the laws of physics.

Dainan’s sword was knocked violently aside.

Attack and defense reversed.

Now Abel pressed, and Dainan defended.

“Ohhh!”

A cheer rose from the villagers of Farafao watching from the wall.

But Ryo did not join them.

As expected of Abel... but his opponent is strong too. This looks like it’s going to drag on.

People usually saw Ryo as a bit of a goofball, but when it came to battle, he was serious.

Because lives were on the line.

Which, really, should have gone without saying.

That was why he never slacked off in training, and why he approached it earnestly.

And because of that, he held Abel in especially high regard for continuing to strive and reaching the heights he had.

When all was said and done, Ryo might have been the one who valued Abel most highly of all.

Ryo liked physics.

And he believed the logic of the sword was the logic of matter—in other words, physics.

Take the case of a defender receiving an overhead strike from an opponent.

The defender had three choices.

The first was to receive it head-on.

The method was to hold the sword out parallel to the ground.

By doing that, you took the kinetic energy of the descending blade straight on and canceled it out directly.

The second was to redirect the opponent’s sword.

The method was to angle your own blade.

If the angle used for the first method—solidly receiving the strike—was considered zero degrees, parallel to the ground, then redirecting it meant tilting the sword tip more than forty-five degrees.

If you did that, the opponent’s blade would strike yours and then flow away to your right.

Likewise, if you tilted the tip more than negative forty-five degrees, the opponent’s blade would strike yours and then flow away to your left.

That would happen regardless of swordsmanship, strength, or speed.

Because it was physical.

And that was why the logic of the sword was the logic of matter.

Incidentally, the defender’s third option was to dodge so that neither sword nor body touched the opponent’s blade at all.

In the end, every defensive choice could be reduced to those three possibilities.

Such was the physics that appeared in swordplay.

And yet, Ryo knew something else.

He knew that many who had devoted themselves entirely to the sword, in their later years, began thinking about human beings themselves.

The logic of the sword, the logic of matter.

Did philosophy appear beyond that?

The swordsmen whose names survived history, in the end, often threw themselves into what, in Western terms, would be called philosophy.

Conflict between human beings... and the sword was the thing that gave that conflict form.

If men who had devoted their entire lives to that sword eventually began asking what a human being was, or what the relationship between one person and another truly meant, maybe that was only natural.

Since ancient Greece, the finest physicists had also been philosophers.

Physics and philosophy looked, at first glance, as though they stood at opposite ends of the world and could never meet.

But perhaps those two ends curved all the way around until they touched.

Ryo found himself thinking such aimless thoughts.

Then he gave a small shake of his head.

What he needed to focus on now was Abel’s fight unfolding before him.

Paying no mind at all to the spectators, Ryo included, the two men fighting had poured every nerve into the battle before them.

Impossible! This demonic-sword wielder—is he really human? This is insane.

Dainan was deeply shocked in the privacy of his own mind... and at the same time, exhilarated.

A battle that made his heart dance.

It had been a long time.

Yes, he must be human. His strength is within human limits—granted, near the very top of them. But that isn’t it. This demonic-sword wielder... Abel, was it? This Abel’s speed is outrageous. No, I understand. It’s the uppermost limit of speed a human can produce, and yet it feels to me as if he’s far beyond it. The reason is obvious. He’s shaved away every scrap of useless motion he possibly could. Not just in his sword movement. From the top of his head to the tips of his toes, in absolutely everything, he has eliminated every trace of waste... refinement carried to its ultimate limit.

This was the kind of battle Dainan had wanted.

What had unfolded before him was even more than he had hoped for... beyond all expectation.

That was why he rejoiced, understood, and tried to accept all of it.

You could say he reached that speed by mastering technique. Of course, all of it came from facing his own body and his own sword with utter sincerity, and that was the result of that pursuit. His skill sharpened, and his speed surpassed the human realm... no, no, Abel is still human. He must have talent too. But perhaps he proves that if a human being keeps thinking and keeps striving, he can arrive even here. Ah... to think I can fight someone like this. I’m glad I didn’t hand him over to Lady Raja.

Dainan was glad, from the bottom of his heart, that he had insisted on his own will.

Even across his long life as a servant, the number of opponents like this—opponents worthy of such a fight—could be counted on one hand.

For example, his master Raja was strong.

Dainan probably could not beat her.

But the strength in front of him now, the strength filling him with joy, was not that kind of strength.

A pure swordsman.

Strength acquired by devoting everything to the sword.

That was what thrilled Dainan.

I had a feeling. I sensed the signs. But I never imagined a battle against a human would make my heart race this much... ah, this is awe, from the bottom of my soul. If I start seeing this kind of potential in humans, then after this... will I even be able to kill people anymore?

At that, Dainan smiled bitterly—inside his head, of course.

No. No chance. Impossible. A swordsman like this isn’t one in millions, or tens of millions. He’s more like one in hundreds of millions. Yes—even the possibility alone is that rare. So then what is this, that I am actually crossing swords with such a man right now? A miracle?

And so that servant of the Demon Men kept swinging his sword in joy.

As expected of a servant of the Demon Men. He’s strong as hell.

On the other side, Abel too was inwardly impressed, though he showed nothing on his face.

Garwin’s servant... Orenju, was it? He was incredible, but this guy Dainan is incredible too. His strength and speed are on a completely different level from a human’s. If I misread a single reception, that’s it for me.

Even while he was startled by exactly the sort of strength he had expected, he was calmly analyzing it.

Abel himself was not especially conscious of it, but this situation was completely different from the one he had faced against Orenju.

The reason that different situation existed was simple.

Abel had grown stronger.

During his travels through the Eastern Countries, he had regained the strength he once possessed back in his days as an A-rank adventurer, and gone far beyond it.

If I fail to redirect even once, it’s over for me. And yet this bastard can just force things through with raw strength. Seriously, that’s unfair.

Abel kept fighting while grumbling inwardly.

And yet even while thinking such things, he continued battling a servant without any problem at all.

That, more than anything else, was proof of how utterly different this exchange of blades was from the swordfight he had once fought against Orenju during the war against the Demon Men.

Back then, Abel had no such room to spare.

Now, he did.

A difference creates composure.

Difference in strength, difference in experience, difference in viewpoint... it did not matter which.

Difference created composure, composure revealed further differences, and those differences created still more composure.

The difference between Abel and Dainan was not one of strength or experience.

It was a difference in vantage point.

What they were looking at, what they were aiming for, what they were comparing themselves against....

Their clash of blades shifted into a phase where attack and defense changed hands violently again and again.

There was a clear reason for that.

Abel.

Because Abel’s sword had become unstable.

And that made Dainan angry.

“Hey, Abel! What the hell are you trying out?”

“Hm?”

“You’ve been testing something this whole time, haven’t you? Focus on the fight!”

“What an unreasonable thing to say.”

Abel gave a wry smile.

That said, Dainan was correct.

He was testing something.

“The way you enter with your sword—I thought it was interesting.”

“Huh?”

“This.”

As he said it, Abel extended his sword farther forward than his usual receiving point, met Dainan’s blade there, and changed its course.

“See? The way it redirects force is more efficient—or maybe more effective—than the method I’ve been using. So I’ve been trying it out, but... even then, it doesn’t work smoothly every time.”

“You...”

Abel explained it politely.

Dainan got angry.

But the anger in Dainan was anger laced with exhilaration.

“Normally, nobody tries something new in a life-and-death fight! And besides, just because you think something’s interesting doesn’t mean you can do it right away!”

“Well, I did.”

“That’s exactly the problem! Normally, you can’t! Abel, you’re abnormal!”

“Again, that feels like a deeply unreasonable accusation.”

Abel frowned.

He’s a monster. Yeah, no mistake about it. This guy Abel is a monster wearing human skin!

Dainan shouted that inside his own mind.

He shouted it in delight.

He already has swordsmanship this incredible, and he’s still growing? He’s trying to make my technique his own? Sure, if he can do it, he’ll go even higher. But who the hell “tries” that in the middle of a battle where his own life is on the line? What kind of lunatic does that?

Dainan screamed inwardly and inwardly alone.

In contrast, Abel’s voice remained calm.

“It’s true this is a life-and-death fight, but that only applies to me, doesn’t it?”

“Hm?”

“You servants of the Demon Men don’t die even if your heads get cut off, right? I’m the only one with my life on the line. How unfair.”

Dainan’s eyes widened at Abel’s complaint.

“Don’t tell me... you know other servants?”

“Hm? Didn’t I say that already? That I’d fought one before?”

“I only heard you say you’d fought Demon Men before.”

“Then I’ll refrain from answering your question.”

“You bastard, Abel...”

Abel spoke with his mouth twisted sideways.

Dainan’s expression mixed anger and joy yet again.

Abel was testing Dainan’s technique.

Mentally, that meant he had that much room to spare.

But the truth was, there was almost no difference at all between the two in actual ability.

Maybe it would even be fair to say the difference was zero.

They were that evenly matched.

And yet there was still that difference in vantage point.

Vantage point... what one was looking at.

Abel was not looking at this fight.

He was looking at the future, at a future where he would become still stronger.

“Focus on the fight in front of you!”

“Ah, you’re absolutely right.”

Abel smiled crookedly at Dainan’s shout.

“But once I saw it, I couldn’t help wanting it.”

“Wanting what?”

“A version of myself stronger than I am now—one that’s made your technique its own.”

“You...”

Dainan’s answer to Abel’s words was a face that mixed anger with joy.

Anger that Abel was not concentrating solely on the battle between them in this very moment.

Joy at the sight of someone who, even in a battle where lives hung in the balance, was trying to make his opponent’s technique his own.

The human heart was complicated.

So too was the heart of a servant.

“There was a time when I thought every day that I wanted to become stronger. I remembered that feeling.”

The words spilling from Abel’s mouth were almost gentle.

After he became king—or maybe even before that, when he formed Red Sword—it felt to him as if the desire to fight for his companions had outweighed the desire to become stronger himself.

Even so, he had probably continued to grow day by day.

But the fierce hunger had not been there.

He knew that much.

And now, he had remembered that hunger for strength.

No—more accurately, he had been remembering it little by little for some time now.

Probably ever since he first met the water-attribute magician who was now watching the fight from atop the wall.

As the two of them had been thrown together into these Eastern Countries and continued traveling side by side, that hunger had gradually returned more clearly.

And now, confronted with a sword equal to his own strength, it had finally burst forth.

“I want to become stronger.”

Those words, spoken by Abel, were a declaration.

“Now that’s good! Fine, then. Beat me and get stronger!”

“I’ll do my best.”

With that answer, Abel exhaled sharply, but deep.

In a single instant, he focused on nothing but the battle before him.

The flashes of his sword grew sharper still.

Hey! He’s getting even faster? A human can move this fast? No, no, no, no, wait a second. Is this guy seriously not human after all?

Dainan’s shock had finally begun to show on his face.

There were only two people present who noticed that change, and why it had happened.

One was Raja, the Demon Man.

And the other was Ryo.

“A green tinge has mixed into the glow of Abel’s sword.”

Ronja, standing beside Ryo, heard that murmur.

But he had no idea what it meant.

Abel’s sword was a demonic sword.

That was why it glowed red.

As far as Ronja could tell, its light had not changed.

“I’ve never fought him. But I remember hearing about it. Knightley Kingdom’s Richard... his sword... ‘Ex.’ I’d heard no one else could wield it, but this swordsman called Abel is wielding it? No... even now, is it still not fully unleashed? Why can he use it? Is he a descendant or something?”

Watching the fight, Raja muttered to herself.

Then she added, smiling faintly,

“Dainan, I envy you.”

Demon Men desired battle with the strong.

That was their nature.

It was no different from a human craving delicious food.

That was why they could not escape it.

Just as there were people like hermits who felt no attachment to food, there were also Demon Men who felt no attachment to battle... but those were simply eccentrics.

No, eccentric Demon Men.

Probably off somewhere wearing red.

If a powerful opponent appeared and your servant was the one fighting them, of course you would envy that.

Naturally, you would want to fight that strong opponent yourself.

That was only natural.

But if asked whether you wanted to steal that fight from the side and take it for yourself, the answer was no.

To a Demon Man, a servant was, in a sense, like a child.

No—more than a child, perhaps it was closer to being one’s own other self.

It was a being created by dividing off one’s own power, and a target to which one continued supplying that power.

And if it was your own other self... then would you really want to snatch away the joy it was experiencing?

Of course, if that other self were defeated, then yes—you would want to face the opponent yourself.

Under Raja’s watchful eye, the battle continued.

“Abel, you really are a battle maniac after all.”

“Hah? Dainan, don’t go saying random nonsense. I’m a perfectly normal swordsman.”

“Then why are you smiling?”

“Smiling?”

Abel looked startled at Dainan’s point.

He had not been aware of it.

“You’ve got a faint smile on your face.”

“You’re imagining it. You must be seeing things.”

“As if that’s possible!”

He had pointed it out because the opponent standing right in front of him was smiling faintly.

There was no way he had imagined it.

But the swordsman in front of him refused to admit it.

“Listen, Dainan. A battle maniac is someone like you—or someone like that fellow named ‘Ryo’ up there on the wall who, despite being a magician, waves a sword around and jumps into close combat. It absolutely does not refer to a peace-loving swordsman like me.”

The way Abel said that was starting to resemble a certain battle-crazed magician, no doubt thanks to their rather long association.

“I’ll admit that I’m a battle maniac. I’m a servant of the Demon Men, after all. My master, Lady Raja, is far more of a battle maniac than I am, but that’s only natural. She’s a Demon Man. But Abel—you’re human, and yet you love battle far too much.”

“Hey. Watch how you phrase that.”

Abel pushed back at Dainan’s words.

To be described as someone who loved battle too much was one thing if you were speaking purely of a swordsman.

But if a king was called that, then yes, that was a problem.

A country ruled by such a king ought to be miserable.

“Me and Lady Raja have never fought him, but there was once a man who, while still human, defeated a Demon Man. His name was Richard.”

“Ah...”

At the all-too-familiar name of his ancestor, words slipped from Abel’s mouth before he could stop them.

“I hear he was the kind of man who ‘loved battle too much.’”

“I see... King Richard.”

The kingdom ruled by King Richard was said to have prospered.

That prosperity had carried on into the present, and now the kingdom stood as one of the three great powers of the Central Countries.

If that was the case, then Abel found himself thinking that maybe it was all right for a king to be called someone who loved battle too much.

If it meant being the same as the great King Richard, then maybe that was fine.

After that, Abel and Dainan continued fighting.

It was probably around thirty minutes later.

“It should be about time.”

Ryo murmured.

No one heard him.

The villagers on the wall were too absorbed in the duel, reacting to every shift in the battle.

Dainan, servant of the Demon Men, had been fighting with a grin on his face the entire time.

To an outside observer, it looked rather eerie, but that could not be helped.

He was filled with a happiness he had never known before.

Abel, on the other hand, was also fighting with a faint smile on his face.

To anyone with an eye for such things, that might have looked even more eerie... and that too could not be helped.

He could feel himself growing stronger even while he fought.

A clash of swords lasting thirty full minutes was, without question, a prolonged battle.

And when a battle dragged on, humans were usually at a disadvantage.

Their endurance was the problem.

Moreover, among creatures capable of wielding weapons, humans were frail and soft.

That went without saying next to Demon Men, servants, and vampires... but even compared to, say, centaurs.

And yet the demonic-sword swordsman fighting here was not bad at prolonged battles.

If anything, he excelled at them.

Why?

Because he excelled at thinking.

As he fought, he analyzed what his opponent was good at and bad at, and even uncovered weaknesses.

He grasped the line of his opponent’s sword and optimized his own defense against it.

Growing stronger while fighting... for Abel, that was actually normal.

“Yes. The swordsman called Abel is unfair.”

Ryo muttered that in a small voice, for some reason sounding almost accusatory.

The truth was that Ryo had the same tendency himself....

In both cases, the only ones unaware of it were the men themselves.

It happened in an instant.

“That should do it.”

“What?”

Abel’s murmur was audible even to Dainan, whose blade was crossing his.

Instead of meeting Dainan’s descending strike with his sword, Abel evaded it with footwork.

Dainan followed the downward strike with a horizontal sweep.

Normally, Abel would dodge that horizontal cut.

But—

Clang!

He stepped in all at once, bringing his body deep enough to reach near the base of Dainan’s blade, raised his sword, and received the sweeping strike with his whole body behind it.

The principle of the lever.

When you swung a sword, the tip became the fastest point and the point where the greatest force was concentrated.

Conversely, the closer you got to the hilt, the slower it became and the less force it carried.

At that close-to-the-hilt point, even the monstrous strength of a servant could be fully received by Abel.

With a series of tiny steps, he spun his body once to build momentum and cut off both of Dainan’s wrists.

Then, continuing the rotation, he severed Dainan’s neck and both legs, and finally drove his sword through the servant’s heart.

The clash between Abel and Dainan, servant of the Demon Men, came to an end with Abel’s victory.