Chapter 536 - What Is Varnas's Dream?

Varnas Hurrier never claimed to be the greatest or strongest on the continent. But that did not mean he expected to fall to a knight whose name he did not even know.

'How is this possible?'

He lay on the ground. His opponent stood looking at him, his sword planted in the earth. Only half the thick black greatsword's blade remained, along with one side of its guard. Varnas had sliced away the rest with his own vibrating blades.

Just as Jamal had learned and practiced the Righteous Sword Technique after seeing Corwin's abilities, his Wave Sword had an origin too. The Wave Sword was Varnas's specialty.

Unusually, he had never made a separate imprinted weapon. He had fought with his own nails, only acquiring claws after Cyprus broke them. He had come late to making an imprinted weapon. Even so, he believed himself stronger than before.

The principle behind the waves was vibration. Vibration multiplied force. Channeling Will into the claws was harder than channeling it into his own nails, but he could pour far more into them. Imbuing his own nails and flesh with waves had required him to use ironclad at the same time, wasting that much Will. With the claws, he needed no ironclad and could pour in more Will than his nails could take. In sheer power, they were stronger.

In short, he fought better now than he had before. Perhaps the weapon was merely an excuse for his improvement. Perhaps it was the relentless training, fangs grinding in frustration after his defeat by Cyprus. Whatever the reason, his technique had advanced another step.

'I thought I might stand a chance even if I faced Cyprus again.'

Varnas felt the strength ebbing from the muscles clenched around the stump of his left arm. He had lost a leg as well. A cut across his left eyelid had also robbed him of sight on that side.

'Was the eye itself damaged?'

He would not mind living with one eye, so long as he survived. If he survived. Unfortunately, his circumstances offered no assurance of that.

"You monster."

Varnas thought back over the battle that had just taken place.

["All troops, charge."]

At his adjutant's command, fifty armored spearmen closed in, applying pressure in formation. Varnas charged with them.

CRACK!

Naturally, he transformed as well. Unlike Dunbachel, whose unusual constitution let her look like an actual lion, his transformation sharpened his fangs and pricked his ears higher, while his beard and the fine hair covering his body grew stiff as wire. His Beastman blood boiled, awakening his hunting instincts.

Varnas used those instincts without letting them rule him. He did not rush in to strike first. Instead, one of the armored spearmen drove his spear deep into range. Varnas darted left and right as though about to attack, leaving afterimages and drawing the enemy's attention while yielding the first strike to his soldier.

It was an excellent stab. Neither fierce nor fast, but the spearhead was still a physical object. His opponent could simply dodge it, but doing so would leave an opening. Varnas was more than capable of exploiting that opening. He could do more than aim for it—he could stab into it and gouge.

Yet even with the spearhead coming at him, the man with the greatsword never took his eyes off Varnas. As Varnas advanced, darting from side to side and leaving afterimages in his wake, that gaze never lost him once.

'Good eyes.'

Thought took an instant. So did action. Within the gap between those instants, the man's greatsword moved. It was fast enough to swallow even the whoosh of parting air. A black line traced a short arc, as though he were swinging a dagger rather than a greatsword, and smashed the spearhead.

CLANG!

The greatsword had shattered the head, not the shaft. Fragments of metal sprayed off to one side.

["Guh!"]

The spearman's tough leather gloves burst. The palms they had protected tore open, spraying blood. Before those drops reached the ground, Varnas abandoned his lateral movement and lunged forward.

He stamped his left foot down to brake for an instant, then charged in a straight line. His body seemed to blur and spread sideways, an optical illusion born of that abrupt stop. No one without a Beastman's athletic ability could have imitated the movement.

His opponent drove his sword down without pausing after smashing the spearhead. The swing was utterly unhindered, as though the spearhead had merely happened to get in the way of the blow he had intended all along.

'A stroke of genius.'

Anyone could knock aside an incoming spear while watching for Varnas's charge. A knight ought to be capable of more—dodging while remaining aware of him and ready to meet him, for instance. But this opponent had gone further still.

'He's using the force of striking the spearhead?'

He had used even the recoil from that impact to accelerate his blade. Judging the speed of the incoming sword only confirmed it.

["Ha!"]

Finding the man's trick more enjoyable than expected, Varnas let out a shout.

ZIIING!

His claws vibrated as they struck the black greatsword.

BRRRR! TING-TING-TING!

The greatsword ground against his claws and bounced aside. The waves generated by the vibrations strained his opponent's grip and affected muscles throughout his body. This time was no exception.

Everyone struck this way retreated to recover their stance—to regain their shaken balance. But this crazed murderer simply brought his sword down again, unsteady or not, lacking strength or not.

["Hoo!"]

Varnas caught sight of the man's face as he pursed his lips and exhaled.

CLANG!

After another clash, Varnas drew back, and spearheads filled the space he left. This was the rotating assault he had arranged with the commander. Of course, Varnas dictated the timing of every move. How else could ordinary soldiers intervene in a battle against a knight fighting in earnest? But waves were Varnas's specialty, and a knight struck by them could not muster their usual speed or strength.

["Clashing with those would shake your insides."]

The Fairy had seen through it. Yet she made no attempt to protect the crazed murderer. Instead, she moved behind the spear-wielding armored cavalry.

'They know how to think.'

They were splitting up, though it would have been easier for Varnas if they stayed together. He lunged at the Fairy. He expected to cut her down in three or four exchanges at most.

["He's mine."]

The blond lunatic intervened. Ignoring the spearhead of one of Varnas's soldiers as it grazed his cheek and sent blood flying, he hurtled toward Varnas's back.

["Getting cocky."]

Varnas scowled. The man's body should still be trembling from the waves. How dare he attack?

CLANG!

Their third clash brought Varnas a strange sensation. Instead of spreading through the enemy to shake his organs and brain, his waves seemed to encounter similar vibrations and cancel out.

["I think I've got the knack."]

What was this bastard talking about? Varnas scowled. Even Jamal, whose specialty was stealing techniques, had needed four months to steal a portion of his waves.

From that point on, the fight diverged sharply from Varnas's expectations. The greatsword wielder faced him, while the female Fairy, who appeared to be a Fairy knight, began dancing among the armored spearmen.

CLANG-CLANG-CLANG!

The adjutant's command was brilliant. Having spread the formation wide to deal with the greatsword, he tightened it again. Even so, his men were inevitably cut down one by one. The Fairy was in no hurry to kill them all. She merely struck and parried as needed. Yet casualties continued to mount.

Varnas was supposed to engage both opponents while the armored cavalry kept up the pressure. At first, it had seemed to be going that way. But the situation changed when the greatsword wielder before him began holding off his claws.

'So they understand tactics?'

Varnas did not panic. His opponents were knights; they could be capable of this much. Countering his waves after only three clashes was still astonishing, but what could he do? It had already happened. Besides, no battle ever went entirely as expected. He was too experienced to be rattled by this, and he had the means to overcome the situation.

So the man was a genius who could learn how to withstand his waves? Then how would he like this?

They had clashed only three times, and the Fairy had just pierced the third armored spearman's skull. The battle had barely begun. Varnas brought out his secret technique a little early.

HUMMM.

The blades of his claws trembled like hummingbird wings, then abruptly went still. The noise vanished too. Holding his greatsword at an angle, Ragna watched their tips. To his eyes, the nail-shaped blades appeared to stop vibrating. This was the pinnacle of the Wave Sword: vibrations invisible even to a knight's eyes, and the cutting power they produced.

Varnas vanished in a blur, similar vibrations running through his entire body. The waves made his body tremble, allowing him to move faster and unleash fiercer force than before. A claw dropped straight toward Ragna's head.

Ragna half bent his left knee and caught it on his sword. Claw met greatsword. To an ordinary person, it would have been a fraction of a fraction of a second, but to them, it was an agreed meeting. Through Insight, one had chosen to cut and the other to block. Calling it an agreement was fair enough.

The two masses of metal met. Though it was steel striking steel, the sound was that of a leather sack tearing.

RRRIP!

Ragna watched his sword tear apart around its midpoint. The claw ripped through solid metal, its beastlike blades vibrating with unprecedented cutting power. A marvel born of a particular frequency.

Varnas was certain of victory. And in that instant, Ragna saw what he could do. Led by his sense of omnipotence, the talent that had carried him to knighthood responded more keenly than ever.

Varnas was not what had awakened that talent. Ragna knew he could eventually overcome a Beastman with trembling hands without taking any unnecessary risks. No, this was because of the shock the monster called Encrid had given him just before the war.

He had seen the mass of Will contained within a man who had built himself through effort despite his meager talent. It was so vast that chipping away at it would make no difference.

'How do I overcome that?'

For the first time in his life, Ragna had begun to puzzle over something. That enormous Will knew no exhaustion. What if Encrid combined it with skill and dragged the fight out?

'I'll lose.'

Ragna's talent had already judged the outcome. Ten years—no, even twenty years of honing his skills would yield the same result. If Encrid stayed on the defensive and held out, the advantage was his. Ragna could not keep doing things as he had.

["Is that your limit? Have you decided it is?"]

He had heard those words long ago, when he first learned the sword.

["You've decided in your head that your potential ends there. Then I suppose it does."]

As a child, Ragna had seen the road he would walk and where it ended. A fixed path, something predetermined.

And now, once more. Encrid had been a shock like cold water jolting his complacent mind awake. Because of him, Ragna now drew out his talent and put it to use. It was a step taken by someone who had forgotten such things as limits.

'Vibration. Tremors.'

The destructive power they produced. Claws that could cut through anything. Again, vibration was what made that possible. And what made the blade vibrate? Will. How did one move that Will? He only had to learn it by feel.

Ragna moved his Will, creating vibrations.

'Tremble.'

Movement imbued with determination—that was Will. The remaining half of his greatsword, filled with his determination, began to hum.

HUMMM.

["... What are you doing?"]

After that, Varnas felt the bitter unfairness of the difference between them and blamed his own arrogance.

'And I thought I stood at the center of what would lead this continent.'

Even if he could not end the wars, he had believed himself the spark that would set the continent ablaze. Varnas Hurrier, the knight who would lead the way to change. That was what he had thought. Had he been wrong?

He had wanted a knight order unlike any before it, built on the new concept of cultivating and raising knights. He had believed it would change the balance of power across the continent. Yet that hope had been broken before he even met Cyprus.

But would he let himself be broken without a fight? Varnas began pouring out everything he had. Against the man copying his techniques in real time, he concealed dirt to fling into his eyes, spat, and bit.

The blond lunatic's blade did not perfectly reproduce his waves. It was merely good enough to withstand them.

'He's doing this without an imprinted weapon?'

That imperfection had, of course, allowed Varnas to break one of his legs and smash his shoulder down. One of the man's eyes had turned red, just like his own, and three fingers on his left hand had been broken. The half-greatsword would be unusable now too. But his opponent had survived. Varnas would not.

"Sir Varnas!"

He heard the surviving commander call out to him where he lay. Varnas gazed up at the sky. Above the clearing, framed by the trees, it was so high and blue.

'An order with more than ten knights wasn't just a dream.'

It had been close to reality, not merely a dream. He could have shattered the notion that knights were necessarily few. A knight order born from a new framework, beyond anything known before. Ten knights fighting together in coordinated battle.

He had harbored such a dream. A dream that would now die and disappear within one Beastman's breast.

"I learned a lot."

The murderer spoke. Had the goddess of luck favored him? Or had Varnas been wrong to believe he stood at the very forefront of change?

"What's your name?"

"Ragna."

"Is that all?"

The blond lunatic looked at the Beastman for a moment before adding, "Ragna Zaun."

"House Zaun?"

"You know it?"

"Only by name."

With those final words, Varnas closed his eyes, his face still turned toward the sky. Perhaps it was not so bad to hear that his last opponent bore the name of a near-legendary house.

He could cling to his regrets. But on reflection, perhaps he had never truly meant it, for all he called it a dream.

'If I'd truly meant it, shouldn't I have passed something on to someone?'

But he had not. He had wanted to achieve it with his own hands. Otherwise, he had thought, it would mean nothing. So it had not been a dream, but greed.

The realization came just before death. In that case, there was no need to die with his eyes wide in defiance. Eyes closed, Varnas breathed his last.

"We die here."

After confirming Varnas's death, the commander struggled briefly with himself, then decided what to do. He ordered the fifty armored spearmen to charge. With luck, they could kill the knight who looked half dead.

If their side had lost Varnas, then the enemy ought to lose a knight too. That would balance the scales. Even if they all died here, they had to do it.

"It occurs to me sometimes that you all underestimate me far too much."

The Fairy stepped into their path as she spoke. The commander's gaze remained fixed behind her. One well-placed stab with a spear seemed enough to kill him. Unfortunately, the one standing guard in front of him was also a knight, just like Ragna.

Without a trace of a smile, Sinar finished speaking and raised her leaf-shaped sword. She had wanted to give them a chance to go home rather than kill them needlessly. If they did not want it, however, she had only one choice left.

The leaf sword swept through the air, striking the neck of an armored spearman three paces away.

SKRRRCH!

The mail around his neck ground apart, and a blood-red line appeared across it.

"Fuck. What the hell is that?"

One of the soldiers muttered in terror.

"A blade made of spiritual essence."

Sinar kindly supplied an explanation.