Ishura - Volume 8 - Chapter 8

Chapter 8- Stone Stairway in front o the Joint Military Hospital

There were also those who didn’t get wrapped up in the ravages of war breaking out all over Aureatia.

Romog Joint Military Hospital was not included as one of the Iriolde camp’s targets, nor was it worked into Rosclay camp’s operation, either. It wasn’t for humane reasons. There was simply no benefit for either camp in getting the people admitted there involved in the struggle.

Within these walls was Soujirou the Willow-Sword.

“How many more times must I explain myself?” the nurse complained while jogging hot on Soujirou’s heels as he walked down the hallway.

“The match today has been canceled! We’ve received an official notice from Third Minister Jelky!”

“What if it does happen, huh? You gonna take responsibility if I ain’t there?!”

Soujirou had lost his left leg from the thigh down. He didn’t have a lower leg prosthetic, but a transfemoral prothesis instead. By the standards of this world’s technology, it was the same as supporting his entire right side with just a simple cane.

Nevertheless, the fact he could walk too fast for the average person to keep up could have been nothing less than the manifestation of his innate, supernatural physical ability and the natural sense to wield implements that extended from his own body.

“Gettin’ real insufferable in here. I’m leaving. “

The recovery of the amputation wound and his walking rehab both should have long been over. The doctor asserted he needed to remain admitted for postoperative observation, but maybe the truth was that all these therapeutic processes were done to casually keep Soujirou away from the Sixways Exhibition and whittle away at his desire to fight.

Soujirou had suspected this for some time, but the fact they wouldn’t allow him to be discharged on the very day of the tenth match had convinced him of it.

“I ain’t gonna let anyone…make me lose by default.”

It didn’t sit right with him.

If Soujirou was such a nuisance, they should have just mixed poison into his food or medicine. They could’ve made the doctors in charge attack him with Life Arts. They could’ve surrounded him in his hospital room with a huge mass of soldiers and come at him all at once to kill him.

If his enemy had just done that, he would’ve been able freely fight back without any restraint.

Without ever sensing malice or hostility, he hadn’t been able to bulldoze his way forward until the day of the match. A faceless somebody that he couldn’t see from his position had chosen to use that type of attack against him.

Shaking off both doctors and nurses, he arrived at a window facing the street outside.

While it was a fixed window, when Soujirou’s sword traced around it, lightly petting it almost, the inside fell down, window and all.

There wasn’t any substance that Soujirou, having cleaved the Dungeon Golem with just a training sword, couldn’t slice through with the indestructible sword he wielded, Alcuzari the enchanted hollow sword.

“That’s dangerous! Stop it!”

“Oh yeah… ’fore I go, I should thank you. So, thanks.”

Soujirou wondered where he was going to sleep later that night.

He had entrusted Yuno with almost all his daily necessities since coming to Aureatia, so he was being put in a bit of an inconvenient spot. It was better than camping out in the wilds, for the most part.

“Eh, I’m sure it’ll work out!”

He jumped down a full three stories.

The instant he was going to smash his head against the stone pavement, he used the palm of his hand to land. Passing the impact through his whole body like a single bow, with a spin, he landed on his back and twisted sideways.

It was a strange technique, as if reversing the parachute landing fall.

“…Guess this is all I can hope for with only one leg.”

He knew which direction to head in—toward the city. He could feel the presence of combat. This was a sensation he had felt numerous times in the Beyond, of numerous people, and numerous weapons clashing with each other.

In the past, Soujirou hadn’t ever felt the allure of such a sensation.

The fighting had always broken out between some other comrades besides Soujirou, and there had never been any possibility that someone with the volition and strength to kill Soujirou would show up.

This world, however, was different.

There were threats that surpassed the realm of mankind, and power technique and weapons had been cultivated to fight against them.

“Yo.”

Soujirou’s feet stopped. He recognized the figure of the man blocking his path forward.

A sensation of violence, far richer and denser than the battle in the city.

He had a massive body, as if he had honed it day in and day out without any break.

The man brandished a long-shafted iron hammer used for firefighting.

“Fwah-hah-hah-hah-hah-hah! You should get back to the hospital ward right away, Soujirou the Willow-Sword! It’s very dangerous for a patient to be walking around out here!”

With his face covered in a smooth steel mask, Soujirou had no way to tell what sort of expression this man wore.

“Heh… I should be the one tellin’ you that. Stand around in a place like that, see.”

This world tried to fight with the visitors whose own world rejected their existences.

They cultivated power, technique, and weapons to fight. That alone still wasn’t enough for Soujirou.

“You never know! You may end up hacked to shreds ’n’ all!”

“That’d make my day!”

Soujirou could fight because the people of this world still had the will to stand against him, even when they were fully cognizant of the threat.

The man was named Sabfom the White Weave, Aureatia’s Twelfth General.

Sabfom’s iron hammer smashed the street’s stone steps.

Soujirou had been standing right in that spot, however he sprightly fluttered through the air like a tree leaf and landed three steps higher on the stone stairs.

”Fwah-hah-hah-hah! Impressive! Makes me wonder if you’re really missing that leg of yours!”

“Pfft. Lemme ask you, then: Are you really trying here or what?”

Soujirou the Willow-Sword wore a savage smile.

Sabfom the White Weave was taken with Soujirou.

That day when Sabfom had went into action, this man had also escaped from the hospital to go kill Alus the Star Runner.

Even after losing one of his legs, Soujirou’s heart was unbroken. He wasn’t a weakling who was driven only by the physical strength he had been gifted with from birth.

With his mighty ego, he continued to spur himself into intense battle.

“If you’re not planning on taking me on, it’s no skin off my back.”

Furthermore, keeping Soujirou the Willow-Sword from going anywhere on the day of the tenth match was a role that Sabfom the White Weave had assigned himself to.

While he had no particular interest in Rosclay’s political struggle, similar to many of the other Twenty-Nine Officials, he did owe him a debt.

Above all, the fight with Soujirou itself was more than enough of a reward for Sabfom. He wanted to battle this visitor even more aberrant than Morio the Sentinel and see who had the stronger force of will.

“Though, ’course, that’s only if…you can shake me off and run away with just one leg.”

“Not another one like this, dammit…”

Right now, Sabfom was putting space between himself and the stone steps where Soujirou stood.

The range of Soujirou’s sword created a fatal zone. Against Soujirou, regardless of his limited mobility, Sabfom would take extra care to fight outside that range.

“Only ever coming at me with cheap tricks. You’re pulling this crap, too?”

“If you underestimated me in thinking that I wouldn’t use any tricks in a one-on-one duel, then you must’ve lost your eyes with that leg, Soujirou the Willow-Sword. If you’re not going to come down here…”

Sabfom swung his hammer. He pulverized the rock wall.

While it would be a different matter if the vicinity was merely residential homes, the area around Romog Joint Military Hospital was land owned by Aureatia. Given that he was just destroying it all as part of Aureatia’s operation, it didn’t prick Sabfom’s conscience whatsoever.

He smashed up the street even more. Cobblestones turned up into the air from the shock, flying higher than Sabfom was tall.

“…I’ll just do this instead and destroy the path in front of you, to make sure you can’t stand anywhere on it with that leg of yours.”

Could a swordsman on a prosthetic leg put up a fight on thoroughly destroyed terrain without any proper footing?

Normally, Sabfom would have been able to answer that it wasn’t possible. However, when his enemy was a visitor who had been driven out from his world due to his supernatural sword prowess, these conditions weren’t likely to close the gap in their strength.

Sabfom knew that perfectly well himself. While he had also crossed swords with the visitor Morio the Sentinel in the past, even if Sabfom was able to exert the same near-death strength he had back then, the distance between himself and Soujirou was farther than the edge of the horizon.

“Just that’d be boring, wouldn’t it, Soujirou?”

Sabfom the White Weave was fond of Soujirou the Willow-Sword.

That was precisely why he could sympathize with this man who could have continued winning throughout the tournament without a chance to taste a true fight to the death. He could sympathize with the strong ego and greed that made him cling to the Sixways Exhibition, his only opportunity to immerse himself in true combat, even if it was already impossible for him to participate.

Fight with your handicap, Soujirou the Willow-Sword. Under the worst possible conditions, unlike anything you’ve experienced in life before. Cheap tricks that manage to make someone like you fear death…are all that can truly grant your wish.

Soujirou the Willow-Sword claimed to have never tasted terror or death before.

This was why, even after defeating Ozonezma, he felt no relief, and continued to hear out the other patients’ stories, to kill the enemy inside he had become aware of for the first time in the third match.

Someone who could stand up to fight, even after learning to fear. Sabfom wished to be the same way himself.

The extreme excitement that existed in near-death moments, and the pleasure of immersing oneself in truly feeling alive. He wanted to keep his truest heart, one that many others had lost in the era of the True Demon King.

“I mean, no skin off my back, but…”

Soujirou rested his sword on his shoulder atop the stone steps.

He was too far out of reach.

Sabfom the White Weave had rules of thumb as a seasoned fighter.

It was a result he could predict physically—using his body weight, speed, and parabolic path.

Soujirou was going to land right in front of Sabfom. Thus, his hammer would crush Soujirou’s skull.

“You’re gonna end up dead!”

“Make my day! Same as my first answer!”

“Heh.”

The edges of Soujirou’s mouth warped into a hearty smile.

His tracksuit fluttered. He jumped from the stone step. Sabfom had taken up his stance to counterattack before he sensed Soujirou’s presence on his skin.

There was a loud rupturing wham.

Leaping with absurd speed, Soujirou had significantly lost his balance right beforehand. He was being thrown out into midair though the strength of his own legs.

“……!”

The prosthetic on Soujirou’s right leg was crushed from the inside.

The prosthetic had been made by Romog Joint Military Hospital.

“Can’t sense death through a fake leg, can you?””

It was an extremely simple artifice.

There would be a small explosion in response to a powerful impact, such as a leap made mid-combat.

It wasn’t enough to be fatal, and it wouldn’t activate through his daily life.

With the caution Soujirou paid to the meals and drugs he was given, the prosthetic leg he always wore on his body was then shifted beyond his consciousness. Such diminutive traps were the only method of attack that could slip past Soujirou’s supernatural ability—a web of gut intuition, capable of sensing even long-range sniper fire, whose underlying principles remained a mystery.

“And this is would be the real—”

Impending sense of death.

Sabfom swung his hammer down toward Soujirou’s skull as he free-fell, unable to move his body.

“Yup.”

Sabfom felt like he had hit a metal spring of some kind.

Repelled by the mass of the great hammer, Soujirou was blown away onto the road, and shattered some of the debris and rubble.

The sensation that Sabfom felt in his hands wasn’t that of bones being pulverized.

“……”

The blow that should have finished Soujirou off had been deflected. What had happened?

“Right before your head was crushed…you struck my hammer with your pommel, is that it?!”

In midair, where he should have been unable to make any moves, Souijrou had forcibly controlled his own trajectory.

Using the recoil of his strike against the hammer, Soujirou was blown away to open up space between himself and Sabfom.

Sabfom needed to compel his feet to stop heading toward Soujirou to press the attack. If he rushed in to pound Soujirou, stuck in the rubble, Sabfom was certain to be run through by the sword attack that followed.

If he got inside Soujirou’s sword range, he would lose.

Right before he came at me with his slash, from atop the stone steps…

By thinking over their exchange just now, Sabfom reined in his combat instincts.

Soujirou was shouldering his sword.

If he assumed that wasn’t a stance for slashing his sword, but instead to protect his head with its pommel…

I see now—that was my blunder. Even without knowing that I was aiming to destroy his prosthetic leg, he could tell that I was directing my killing instincts at his head. Whether it was by some hidden projectile, or sniper ambush, he predicted that his head would be targeted in some fashion and readied himself to defend. Merely the act of confronting Soujirou the Willow-Sword indirectly gives him information.

Soujirou wearily rose from amid the rubble.

They were squaring off against each other with the same amount of distance between them as before. However, now, they were both at the same elevation. Soujirou had lost his prosthetic leg, and was rendered physically unable to walk.

No matter how strong a visitor he may have been, he wouldn’t be able to utilize his mobility that surpassed Sabfom. Furthermore, the area around Soujirou was the terrain Sabfom pulverized moments prior.

“Can’t leap at me with that leg, can you?!”

“…Why would you say that? I’ll never know until I give it a try!”

“Say what you will, but you aren’t going to close this much distance.”

Not yet. This still wasn’t enough.

“Fwah-hah-hah-hah! As I just said, we can do this until nightfall, I don’t mind. Though you’ll probably get taken back to the hospital before then…”

“……”

“What will you do? Remain here, even if you it means killing the doctors that come for you?”

Sabfom’s duty was to buy time to ensure Soujirou didn’t leave Aureatia.

However, that of course didn’t mean that he was fighting because he wished to settle things by running out the clock.

Soujirou had to be of the same mind himself.

To break through this deadlock, Soujirou, in the disadvantaged position, would eventually have to make a do-or-die attack. When he did, Sabfom could give Soujirou a taste of death’s abyss for the first time.

All right then, do it. Any plan I could spend half a day scheming, I know you’d see through in a second. Now that you’ve lost your leg, what are you going to do about this distance? Try to use a steel beam from the rubble as a makeshift prosthetic? Or perhaps throw your sword, your only weapon, at me? Your only—

His thoughts had gotten then far when Sabfom’s body instinctively moved.

Crossing his great hammer and gauntlet, then raising them above his head, he took a defensive stance.

The scalpel, descending at high speeds, was deflected with high-pitched sound.

The third match—

It happened at the same time.

A flash of light raced through the air and pierced through Sabfom’s chest.

“Hrngh, gaugh…”

It was another thrown scalpel.

This man…stole Ozonezma’s scalpels during the third match and used them to make a delayed attack!

“What, is that it, old man?”

Though he could hear Soujirou’s voice, Sabfom merely flopped to the ground.

“Here I figured you’d have an answer to one more move at least. It’s a trick I’ve used already, y’know. Ain’t about my leg or my footing, I had you dead from the very start.”

Soujirou’s sword wasn’t his only weapon.

When he had escaped, he could have stolen some number of scalpels from the hospital.

After Soujirou was sent flying in midair, he had been able to estimate where Sabfom would stand, where he would lie in wait, and everything up to Sabfom blocking the delayed blade falling from the sky, had been a part of the supernatural visitor’s prediction of their fight.

But when did he throw those blades upwards?! I never took my eyes off him for a second! He showed a single sign of…

Sabfom’s blood pressure was rapidly falling. His sight had begun to darken.

He had to fight. Even if he couldn’t move a finger, even if it was only in his head, he had to fight.

…The explosion.

In the moment his prosthetic leg caused the small explosion, had Sabfom been looking at Soujirou directly?

Even assuming he managed to do so, in the moment directly preceding and following the explosion that threw Soujirou through the air, had Sabfom been able to perceive what the man’s empty hand, dropped to his side, had done, while keeping his guard up against the sword slung on Soujirou’s back?

In that second, Sabfom had concentrated his killer instincts on Soujirou’s head to ensure he smashed his target.

Soujirou had been conscious of Sabfom’s intentions.

“I get it… Fwah-hah-hah-hah-hah…”

So that was what it was after all.

Sabfom’s targeting of Soujirou’s head had been sensed by Soujirou. He was so absorbed in it that he didn’t focus on anything else.

The all-too-strong fighting spirit Sabfom had possessed since birth had invited his own defeat.

But that was fine. It was the exact end of the fight he had wished for.

Just as it had been when he previously fought Morio the Sentinel, the fool. Haade’s valor had allowed him to step beyond fear…

“This is…my truest…nature…”

His vanishing guffaw amounted to little more than a small groan.

“Tch, making me waste…my damn time.”

Using a bandage of torn-off cloth, he tied two iron bars together to his right thigh.

They were pieces of the hilt of Sabfom’s great hammer, which he had cut off. Regardless of how sturdy they may have been, as a prosthetic leg, they were simply there to easily support his body.

Given that he doubted they were even affixed to his thigh, he obviously couldn’t jump, as even walking took all his effort.

Even then, he was able to walk off.

“I’m here to fight.”

Dragging his leg along the ground, Soujirou began to walk away.

“Like hell I’m letting this end…without a fight…”

On this day, the tenth match was supposed to happen.

If he made for where the arena was, Soujirou was sure he’d be able to fight.

Even as he was obstructed and suppressed by the very Aureatia that surrounded him, Soujirou the Willow-Sword could only gamble on a sliver of hope.

On this day, the castle garden theater was closed with the announcement of the cancellation of the tenth match.

The match wasn’t scheduled.