Ishura - Volume 8 - Chapter 17.3

Just how much further could the swordsman fight with a left hand that had its elbow blasted off?

At the very least, for Rosclay, it would have been impossible. If the extensor carpi radialis longus muscle on the outer side of the elbow was lacerated, it would become extremely difficult to bend the wrist. His grip strength would weaken, and naturally, it would grow difficult to maintain his grasp on anything. The motions to throw a projectile were physically impossible.

Even with all of that, Soujirou the Willow-Sword was the Beyond’s strongest blade master.

If Rosclay waited for him to die, he would win. It was how Rosclay had fought to that point.

“Rosclay! Rosclay!”

“Rosclay! Soujirou’s serious here!”

“This guy’s got some real spunk, huh?!”

“Rosclay! Be careful!”

“Please…stop! Just put him out of his misery!”

…Looks like this is the limit.

Judging by the air of the citizenry, Rosclay couldn’t drag out the conclusion to the fight any longer.

Rosclay the Absolute’s matches couldn’t come to a cruel conclusion.

Soujirou likely understood that and was thus advancing forward, challenging him.

Rosclay looked one more time at the crowd. At each and every one of their faces.

He took a deep breath.

I’ve weakened him enough at this point. I’ll end it with a melee duel. After continuing this far, I need to carry it through to the end.

Soujirou advanced forward one step at a time.

Even as he was dying, each individual step was strong.

Rosclay too began to walk—and then murmured.

“…Krafnir.”

Something was swarming toward Soujirou’s feet, out of view from the spectators.

Rats, centipedes, spiders. Krafnir’s revenants.

“HRN, YAAH!”

A white afterimage remained chaotically behind.

As if Soujirou could perceive each individual revenant in the swarm, they were all cut down before they could touch him.

It was monstrous. Even now, after losing most of his limbs.

We only gathered enough of Nectegio’s poison to use in the attack a few moments ago. This is about the maximum number of rats and bugs we can have attack him while still ensuring they are out of the audience’s sights.

Nevertheless, there was no wavering in Rosclay’s eyes as he closed the distance. He was observing.

Soujirou the Willow-Sword has been weakened to the absolute limit. Just what sort of response can he make in that state? How fast will he be? How much strength does he have? Is he truly weak enough for me to win on my own?

Soujirou’s gait seemed not to have weakened at all.

Had it really been possible for Rosclay to watch and wait for Soujirou’s blood loss, and the poison, to kill him?

It seemed like Soujirou possessed the same deviant vitality as Lucnoca the Winter, that he could drive himself forward infinitely as long as it was to keep on battling.

Rosclay readied his sword as if in response.

He was an in extreme state of focus. Rosclay murmured all the information he was processing in his mind.

“All right. Using Force Arts to send longswords flying isn’t the right move. While it’d be possible to launch a heavier saturation attack than with the revenants, there’s still the slim chance of giving him a sword to use…”

“…?”

“No sniper attacks. I would need to drown out the gunshot with the Blasting Blade at almost the same moment as the shot, and swinging it at this range would look unnatural, too. Then, if I use the last bit of strength to close the distance—”

“Whoa!”

Soujirou instinctively swept the air with his knife. There was a loud metallic clang.

“—that was what you were thinking, wasn’t it?”

This latest sniper attack didn’t come with any gunshot. It was a silenced sniper shot using a subsonic bullet.

“If fair and honest is what you wish…”

“…!”

The exact moment Soujirou slashed away the bullet, Rosclay swooped in to close the distance like a bird of prey.

“Then I shall battle you with my proper and just technique.”

A sword stab. Soujirou swiped with the knife, diverting the blade. Even attacking his enemy in a completely unguarded moment, he still had aberrant reaction speed.

Rosclay didn’t fight the momentum from the knife parry, and rotated his sword blade in a half-spin. Soujirou’s knife, having stopped the blade, was wrapped up by the spin and thrown from Soujirou’s hand.

It also served to shift Rosclay to his next sword attack. A slash toward Soujirou’s amputated right-hand side.

I can kill him.

A kick of the prosthetic leg caught it.

The blade dug into the last remaining support in the prosthetic. An explosion.

Charijisuya the Blasting Blade.

I can kill him.

Soujirou held with this pivot foot through conditions that would have made a regular person crumble from the blast shockwave. However, Rosclay was stepping toward him with a kick to pin down his hip joint.

Soujirou couldn’t physically maintain his balance. Rosclay kicked him to the ground.

Each and every motion beautiful, the very exemplar of orthodox swordsmanship.

Ah… I can do it. Even I can properly—

He had defeated the Beyond’s strongest blade master with his orthodox and rightful blade.

Rosclay swung the Blasting Blade down at Soujirou and—

“…aw it. That life of yours.”

“…?”

His shoulder never lowered. Instead, a blood-drenched something had pierced him from inside his ribs.

“Kwaugh!”

There was a physical, coughing reaction.

He spat out blood.

Rosclay understood that right before he lowered the Blasting Blade, he had been stabbed by something.

Yet, Soujirou should have lost all of his weapons at that point.

His own thoughts were all that circulated at high speed.

Soujirou…lifted his body up. What stabbed me?! We’re too close. Even if he concealed a weapon, he certainly didn’t have enough time to take it out. The third match…did he throw something up in the air, like during the third match, and hit me with it? No. There’s no way I would overlook an attack he had already used before!

Rosclay was an ordinary man. Being wounded was enough for him to drop the Blasting Blade.

Letting out a viscous splurt, the blade piercing Rosclay was pulled back out.

A majority of the spectators couldn’t understand what happened, but a section of them let out a terrified scream.

With the same dying breaths, Soujirou savagely laughed.

That’s not it. He wasn’t hiding any weapons. This man…

“Ngah, ngah… I didn’t…cut off my arm, to stop the infection…”

The bloodstained blade was terrifyingly white.

It was growing straight out from Soujirou’s arm itself.

…made his own weapon.

For a blade master of Soujirou’s skill, such a feat was possible.

When he cut his right arm off as it was gnawed by disease, he had made a sharp cross section…as if the bones of the cross section themselves were blades.

He created for himself a sword that, far more than his steel prosthetic leg, or his left arm with the elbow smashed up, was directly connected to his physical body.

1582, the tenth year of Tenshou.

Takeda Katsuyori and his retainers, driven into a corner by the Oda following the betrayal of Oyamada Nobushige, were about to meet their final battle at Mount Tenmokuzan’s Seiunji Temple. However, the Oda army had already gone around their destination of Mt. Tenmokuzan, and Katsuyori was forced to double back.

Among the remaining retainers, numbering less than fifty at that point, was a general by the name of Tsuchiya Souzou Masatsune who was responsible for the rear guard during the retreat.

The rear guard laid in wait for the Oda army on a narrow cliff path along the Nikkawa River, barely wide enough for one person at a time.

Tsuchiya Souzou was said to have kept fighting with one hand. Grabbing the wisteria vines that covered the cliff in one hand, he mowed down the enemy army pressing in with the katana in his other and kicked them down to the Nikkawa River flowing below.

The legends said the enemy numbered over a thousand—he thus earned the name One-Handed Slayer of a Thousand.

Killing just one person with quite literally only one hand. How easy of a feat was it for a deviant visitor?

“What did…I tell you?! Crossing swords till the end is what it’s all about!”

Soujirou slashed him. It was unmistakably a sword attack.

Using the longsword Antel’s Force Arts wedged between them in midair, Rosclay barely defended himself.

“Why…why’re you fighting?! Soujirou the Willow-Sword!”

He could wield any and every sword better than anyone. He was fighting with the cross section of his own arm, which should have been agonizing and painful with each slash, and yet if anything, it was faster and stronger than a fully healthy arm.

Slash. Block. Slash. Sword clash.

The strongest swordsmen across two different worlds finally contended against each other in a battle of their utmost limits.

“Is fighting really so fun?!”

“Sure is! Nothing but fun!”

If he could just pick up the Blasting Blade.

If he could just hold out until Krafnir’s insects came to reinforce him.

If he could just demolish Soujirou with sniper fire and Word Arts.

Too fast, too close for Rosclay to think about anything extra—his absolute limits.

The bone blade ripped apart his silver armor, gouging his innards while his silver blade cut into flesh and severed Soujirou’s ribs.

Rosclay continued to fight, swallowing back blood and gritting his teeth as he did.

He didn’t want to die. He didn’t want to die. He didn’t want to die.

Rosclay the Absolute…

He continued to recite it to himself like a curse.

…needs to always remain a champion.

No matter how much pain he endured, he couldn’t fall to his knees.

No matter how wounded he was, he couldn’t die.

No matter how tough the battle, he needed to keep on winning.

With his powers of concentration facing down death, time seemed frozen.

…Why did something like this…

No matter how many sacrifices were necessary…even if it meant betraying the people and assassinating the Queen herself, all of the threats across the horizon needed to be defeated by a champion.

With that, a future where no one would see a need for champions was bound to come someday.

He had needed a gift for when that day came, that would leave something concrete behind.

With Iska, he—

“—Ah.”

Red.

“Don’t go dwelling on useless crap—”

The bone blades had pierced through Rosclay’s stomach.

His small intestine and some other internal organ were caught by the blade and spilled out from his back.

“—in the middle of a battle to the death!”

The longsword in his hand was still aimed straight ahead at his opponent’s face.

In the final move, he had been slow to react. He hadn’t been able to knock Soujirou down.

Rosclay wobbled and took three steps back.

He had lost. Even exhausting all of his strength couldn’t bring victory within reach, and he had lost.

A defeat there was no excuse for. He had done everything he could.

“…Hah-hah, ah-hah-hah-hah-hah…”

Even though he had lost, he found himself laughing as all his tension came undone.

He had kept it up for so long that he had even believed it was in fact an intractable part of himself, yet it took but an instant for all the nerves to unwind.

He could tell his life was trickling down.

Just as it did for any ordinary minia.

Just as it had been for Oslow the Indominable, Rosclay the Absolute, too, would die.

My internal organs and arteries have been torn apart. Still, for me, none of that is important…

His diaphragm, lungs, throat, and face.

Those were all he needed. Rosclay used his sword to hold up his body as it threatened to give out.

“People of Aureatia.”

It was a normal voice, with no technology assisting him, but it silenced the screams and cries in the venue.

With his ambition left unfulfilled, Rosclay the Absolute was going to die.

However, he had no intent on just simply dying there.

He would set up his final attack.

“There is nothing…to mourn. Since I…from the beginning… I was no hero. H-how…however, I have one final wish…! Please, I ask you to find them—do not let my fight here be in vain.”

Rosclay the Absolute had used absolutely everything he could in order to achieve his goal.

Surely he was able to use his own death as well.

“A hero. A real hero, the title I fell short of. Please, find them… Please continue with the Sixways Exhibition! Until the end! Until one, final person remains…!”

Even if the path would be accompanied by innumerable sacrifices.

When the champion died, all the monsters were going to be dragged along with him.

He was convinced that the winner, Soujirou, must have collapsed at that point.

However, Rosclay wouldn’t do the same. He was an absolute champion.

He smiled with his blood-covered face.

With his sword supporting him, he stood straight up.

His vision, and his pain, began to dissipate.

Grief, shouting, applause.

The only thing in his sense until the end was the all-too-familiar sound of applause.

Match ten. Winner, Soujirou the Willow-Sword.