[652] The Air of Life (1)
"Uh, how—!"
Austin was a veteran.
Thirty years of contracts fulfilled and still active—that was proof enough.
He hadn't had spectacular adventures, but the ugly and grotesque things tended to hide behind the curtains of ordinary life.
If someone bound his life into a book, ordinary people would dismiss it as a madman's diary or a cheap porn novel, yet what he'd been through was real, and his heart rarely reacted to anything anymore.
For example, if a ten-year friend suddenly stabbed him for no reason, he wouldn't hesitate—he'd slit that friend's throat with a dagger hidden in his sleeve.
'A monster?'
When hundreds of pupils sprouted from Shirone's robe, Austin felt his heart race for the first time in ages.
His ribs ached, and an unfamiliar neural reaction muddled his brain to the point of vertigo.
"Ughh! Wha—what is this—!"
As the Spear-and-Death thieves who had been crawling on the ground rose trembling to their feet, Shirone realized their skill was far from ordinary.
'They're moving in an Antithesis state?'
He had split his power into hundreds of tiny rays and radiated them out, but in Austin's experience those thieves shouldn't have been able to lift a finger.
"Over there! Kill that one!"
Other spearmen leaped down from the slope across from them.
From the height of their jumps alone, they were clearly skima masters.
Austin kindled flame in his hands and shouted, "Watch out! They're the Spear-and-Death thieves!"
Composed solely of spearmen, they had once been covert infiltrators trained by the Tormia State Intelligence to use against Kazra. Diplomatic complications had turned them into a ghost unit, and enraged, they had reinvented themselves as a band of thieves—combat elites, every one of them.
"Block those eyes!"
True to a soldier's focus on results, they found a solution and desperately fought to overcome the Antithesis, forming a human bulwark.
As the follow-up troops brandished spears and shoved them between their comrades, twenty spears crossed like the slats of a carriage and pierced through Shirone.
'Damn, it's over.'
The moment Austin, already moving away, thought that, a blazing field of light detonated where the spearmen had gathered.
"Arghhhh!"
Bodies caught in the multi-rampage writhed uncontrollably, and when Shirone—nailed in place—lowered his center of gravity, enormous wings of light unfurled from both his shoulders.
"Fire! Pour everything on him!"
Shirone's gaze fixed on the Zija-ear thieves hovering in the sky.
They were fighters who used the Zija Mountains' terrain and features to develop varied combat methods, and their raining magical rounds were a distinct threat.
As the magical rounds fell like rain, tearing up the mountain path until explosions completely cloaked the scenery, Shirone flapped his radiant wings and took to the air.
"Shoot! Shoot! Shoot!"
The Zija-ear leader opened fire at the approaching Shirone, and dozens of round after round surged after him.
When Shirone flapped his wings forward and held position, the wind pressure hardened almost into a solid, forcing the rounds to detonate mid-flight.
"W-what the—!"
The gust destabilized even the hang gliders, and then dozens of photon cannons fired out like streaks of light.
Boom! Ba-ba-boom!
The impact was like iron balls smashing into them; the thieves died before they even hit the ground. It took less than a minute for all sixty of them to be wiped out.
"What kind of magic is that?"
Dazed by the flashing air battle, Austin suddenly felt his feet lift off the ground.
A predatory wildcat thief, leaping like an animal, slashed past his face.
He turned and flailed, realizing Rian had grabbed his waist and was dragging him along.
"Put me down! I need to fight—"
"Stay still. This isn't something you should be doing."
The wildcat thieves that nested in the Zija crags moved with animal ferocity and were lethal to mages.
Rian swung his greatsword with one hand, and every time the air split there came the sound of flesh and bone being cut.
"Kill them! Don't miss!"
The cat-like thieves arced and leapt, but Rian retreated in a motion that ignored inertia and dispatched them one by one.
When he had fallen back a hundred meters, the corpses of the wildcat thieves lay in a long line.
The overwhelming gap in ability made every fight look easy, and Austin felt a chill at how casually numbers had been nullified.
'This is just slaughter.'
"Uooooo!"
A roar that might burst eardrums made Austin jerk his head up, and Alpha, deputy leader of the Red-Knife thieves, charged at him swinging a huge axe.
'This one is different.'
Alpha fought in a pure, orthodox style—relying not on tricks but solely on skima ability.
Rian planted his greatsword to receive the blow, and Alpha bellowed again and charged like a rhinoceros.
"All of you, push!"
Ten men pressed onto Alpha's back and shoved; the arm holding the greatsword bent and dragged Rian's legs across the ground.
"Ughh!"
When the charge ended, they'd been driven back a full twenty meters.
'What kind of bastard is this?'
Alpha, who had never been outclassed in sheer strength, stared in wonder at Rian supporting the weight of eleven opponents without bracing himself.
'This isn't human strength.'
Austin, sensing Rian preparing to use magic, saw Alpha fix his gaze on him.
"Grrk!"
Eye Technique: Pressing.
Fitting for the deputy leader of one of the kingdom's three great thieves' bands, it hit with force, and a tense stalemate of strength held.
"Push! Keep pushing!"
Someone shouted, and the men activated a skima folding technique.
They folded their base skima in half, doubling their strength; a tremendous force surged forward.
"Grrrgh!"
Rian felt the pain, but Austin felt the fear.
'Damn it! How is he holding on?'
Austin finally realized it might not be raw muscle.
'He's pushing them back.'
The will of Divine Transcendence seized Rian's body, and his arm began to straighten inch by inch.
Watching Rian shove eleven folded bodies aside with a single arm sent a chill down Austin's spine.
"Break it!"
Clack—the great axe's tooth snapped.
Rian's blade finally bit the axe edge and slowly came down.
Alpha screamed inside his head.
'This can't be—!'
How could a blade cut another weapon while both were pressed together?
'Why is it only my axe that's being sliced?'
If the forces were equal, Rian's sword should have been nicked too.
As the greatsword sliced like paper and the axe split apart, Alpha's mind reeled.
Facing death, all his senses opened, and visions he could never see with his eyes reconstructed themselves through some other sense.
'He isn't splitting the axe.'
Rian disappeared and an endlessly unfolding world appeared.
The world split left and right and rushed in at incredible speed.
'The world is being split.'
Divine Transcendence — Severance.
"...Ma—."
As the greatsword cut more than halfway through, the world's segmentation closed in, and Alpha croaked in a hoarse voice.
"Don't push, you idiots!"
Mach.
When a colossal will cleaved the world in two, Alpha's body actually split in two.
Thud! The greatsword hit the ground and two more men were cleaved.
Rian, who had set Austin down, grabbed the greatsword with both hands and drew it diagonally; the remaining eight men were cut in half at the same instant.
"Huu—"
Rian's calm breathing made Austin go pale.
"So...who exactly are you?"
Had he answered "a ghost," Austin would have believed it, but Rian simply slung the greatsword over his shoulder and watched as the clash between Shirone and the Red-Knife thieves wound down.
'It's over.'
The mage Banker lay prostrate and faceless, and only leader Coldpark still swung his sword.
"What kind of mage—!"
How could anyone dodge skima sword strikes with such suppleness?
Coldpark's sword couldn't even brush Shirone's collar after his nervous system had been enhanced by Alpheas and his metabolism boosted by Kuzen.
The remnants rushed to surround him, but Shirone had already moved.
Spinning and backing away, Shirone compressed a photon cannon through mana amplification in his right hand; a globe of light the size of a human torso was born.
He swung his arm toward the bloodless thieves; a thick streak of light arced and slammed into the ground.
KRAAAANG!
The vibration ran through the earth, and no one remained standing among the scattered fragments.
"Now! Attack!"
From the cliff above, the Blood-Bead thieves who had been watching the battle pointed Shirone out and advanced, leading seven mages and forty-eight archers.
Arrows twice as heavy as average struck the ground first, and mages reached toward Shirone, who had taken to the sky.
"W-what is that?"
The fire and ice spells faltered before they could hit the enormous angel of light that rose from Shirone's body.
Incarnation Technique — Angel's Punishment.
"Shoot! I said shoot, you idiots!"
The Blood-Bead leader barked orders, but the angel's arm, holding a massive spear, swung faster than he could shout.
"Ah—."
Austin saw it clearly.
A beam of light, most vivid for an instant and then dispersing like dust.
Rooooooom!
The thunderous sound knocked him senseless; for a while he could think of nothing.
When his senses returned, he realized the cliff that had stood before him a moment ago had vanished entirely.
Some may have fled, but of the more than three hundred thieves, ninety percent lay dead here.
'Am I dreaming?'
Thirty years of living just to survive made it even harder for him to accept this as real.
The Red-Knife thieves were one of the kingdom's three great bands, and the Zija-ear, Wildcat, Spear-and-Death, and Blood-Bead thieves were all A-class criminal groups in the capital.
Was it even plausible that two people could annihilate five massive thief bands?
"—Mr. Austin. Have you ever seen an archmage?"
Estera's voice popped into his head at that moment—not by accident.
'No—you're wrong.'
The archmage he'd seen in person exceeded anything she could imagine.
'Estera, we made a mistake. There's no way to catch that boy.'
Not unless they handed over an entire guild.
While Austin thought that, Rian approached Shirone and clapped a hand on his shoulder.
"Shirone, you all right?"
"Yeah. I'm fine."
Shirone looked over the bodies strewn everywhere.
He should have been used to it by now, but each battle reopened the same question in him: why?
"It's an incredible destructive power. Different from the two-thousandth time."
Shirone checked the place where Angel's Punishment had struck.
Summoning an avatar and hurling a spear of light was far too easy for him.
"They clearly targeted me."
The spearmen had said sixty million gold.
"Word must have gotten out about Alpheas. If we'd known beforehand we could've avoided a fight."
He didn't think about the people they'd killed before or those they might kill later.
As always, Shirone believed humans had no right to judge other humans.
Being qualified and being necessary were two entirely different things.
"I need to talk for a moment."
As Shirone and Rian turned away, Austin pulled a note from his chest and said, "Looks like my job here is finished."