Star-Slaying Swordsman - Chapter 35

Chapter 35

Despite my efforts to deliver a killing blow, I didn’t have the luxury to be pleased with the current situation.

The circumstances changed at a bewildering pace, as the color of blackish-red blood soon painted the empty sky.

And just as soon as I thought I had cut him, I felt a staggering pressure so heavy that I was under the illusion that I had been grabbed right in the heart. It shrouded my existence and caused me to shiver from the chills that crept up on me as if interlocking with my body.

—This is bad…!!!

It was a definite premonition.

A cold premonition of my own death.

Sensing it instinctively, I immediately retreated with a sharp grasp using my magic,『 Sword: Creation, 』as a foothold before my feet touched the ground.

And right after, a giant, steel-like tail appeared, roaring above the earth where I had just been seconds ago.

“Isn’t this a load of bullshit…?!”

There was no sign of any pre-motion nor a windup to the attack, but what occurred was indefinitely, just an abrupt blow.

If I hadn’t surrendered myself to the premonition I had just a moment ago, I would’ve already been skewered by now.

Visioning such a possibility, I screamed out in desperation.

Then, a surge of murderous intent was directed at me, justifying how I inflicted such damage to the Jabberwock.

And not long after, its steel tails were unleashed from all directions.

I unintentionally wanted to shout and ask him just how many tails he has, but unfortunately, I didn’t have time for that.

“What… should I…?!”

Do I avoid it? Cut it down?

I had to make the ultimate choice.

But before I did, two familiar voices suddenly roared out.

“—Get down!!!”

“—『 Gladiator!!! 』”

A torrent of scorching heat and countless jet-black blades comes rushing in.

I instantly understood that these were reinforcements from Fiole and Siva.

With gratitude in my heart, I stomped on the ground with a thud.

With just a fraction of a second, I bent my legs like a spring, and once again— I started to close in.

In front of me stood an oversized target.

A target that I could surely hit even with my eyes closed.

And so, I concentrated all my magic on my sword.

Don’t dedicate it to anything else.

It’s a waste. A big hindrance. So throw it away.

“This time for sure—!!!”

Siva and Fiole took care of the incoming attack, and the only thing I had to do was to unleash my technique, my ‘Shooting Star.’

I then took a deep breath, and surrendered myself to the rage that was boiling my blood—

“—”

 A blank thought came to me.

My vision suddenly shifted again, and this time… at an angle.

“COME ON…!!!”

My eyes grew furious as I lamented the reason why I couldn’t swing my sword down normally, and I vent my unspoken outrage at the absurdity in front of me.

A sense of intoxication gripped my entire body and my vision was left distorted.

“—Goddamnit!”

I jumped back involuntarily.

And right after I did, the sense of intoxication that had taken over my body disappeared, and my vision returned to normal.

However, thanks to the heavy fatigue that weighed down on me, my reaction was delayed for a moment.

“—!!!”

The Jabberwock let out an unspoken shriek, or as I liked to think— his roar.

Simultaneously, a frontal leg blow accompanied by a giant gust of wind immediately followed suit within a split-second gap in my consciousness.

Although I knew it was coming, my body did not respond as it should have.

“Agh!”

His claw and my sword soon collided.

But the difference in our strength was as clear as daylight.

The cruel reality of the situation hit me mercilessly.

I could only resist for a second or so.

Eventually, the Jabberwock’s blow will go through my sword, and my body will be blown away like a speck of dust.

“KGH—?!”

Heaven and earth flashed in and out of view as a cloud of dust rolled in.

After bouncing on the ground many times like a ball, the momentum began to dwindle after a dozen seconds, and it finally stopped as my body scraped against the ground.

“You have a very strange way of coming back.”

“Shut up, you…”

***

***

I wiped the fresh blood dripping from my nose with the back of my hand.

Apparently, I had been flung by sheer force right up to Siva’s side.

His nagging about how he was warning me then shook my eardrums.

Although the earlier exchange had caused abrasions here and there on my body, I was probably able to defend myself well, as I did not suffer any fatal wounds.

And I think that’s a good enough performance, coming from me myself.

“But you understood it firsthand now, didn’t you? It’s almost impossible to get close enough to that humongous thing hoping to even inflict a little bit of damage.”

“…What’s with that monster, anyway?”

“It’s probably his ‘magic’. Although it is very rare, I have heard somewhere that among the monsters called mutants, there appear those who are congenitally able to handle their own magic.”

Back then, I thought the people who also spouted the same thing were just talking a lot of crap, but apparently I was wrong.

Siva’s face was twisted with joy, despite the fact that it was as if he was asking for the current state of affairs to give him a break.

The contorting of the corners of his mouth was an undeniable expression of his delight.

—His heart was racing.

Just as it should be.

Somehow, I wondered if he was now having some insane personal reasoning in his mind, thinking that he wouldn’t be able to make a name for himself if he couldn’t beat a monster of this caliber.

“…It would be no use continuing to unleash attacks from afar. So I was hoping to find some weakness in that unique magic of his, somehow.”

He sighed to himself.

The reason why he helped me get near the Jabberwock earlier was probably to get some kind of lead.

“With such a large target, my magic would be normally an effective means of attack, but his outer shell is just too hard to penetrate.”

The Jabberwock’s outer shell had the defensive capability of an impregnable fortress, and no half-hearted attack could penetrate its shell.

“But for someone like me who hasn’t tried to master my own magic to the utmost limit, I really make a terrible match against him.”

Having shown how his magic controlled his sword the ‘Gladiator,’ one may fall under the wrong impression, but Siva was a proper swordsman.

Essentially, a swordsman was supposed to get near the enemy in order to cut and slay them with their sword.

But being unable to close in the distance and get through the enemy’s line of defense, we had no choice but to bide our time trying to find a way to bypass the Jabberwock’s mysterious ‘magic.’

“To top it all off, he has that regenerative ability and those hideous wings on its back… We’ll have to get him on the ground before he flies away or we’ll have a lot of trouble.”

…It was just as Siva said.

The tail that I had just slashed open was soon regenerated cleanly, with the seams and wounds quickly fusing with each other.

I wasn’t relentlessly pursued, as the Jabberwock’s focus was diverted to Fiole’s magic,『 Corpse Puppet: Parade 』that gathered around me.

It was as if it forgot I was even here.

“…I guess so. It would be very messy if he flew away.”

I replied while reminiscing about the battle I had with the monster Fiole had named Pii-chan.

In reality, however, there was no effective way to attack the Jabberwock in the hands of Siva and mine.

But I wanted to defeat it. No matter how I did it, I wanted to beat that giant thing.

—What should I do, then?

“We’ll just have to somehow slay it as fast as we can.”

A familiar metallic sound emerged with a clang.

That was the answer to the question I asked myself.

No matter how much I boiled it down, so long as I was a swordsman, the only way for me to defeat him was to slice him open.

“For someone who got flung around earlier, you don’t sound very convincing.”

Siva laughed at me in an amused way.

“Well, you do have a point.”

“So, what do you plan to do? Do you have something special in store for me?”

He must’ve concluded from my confident tone.

If I had a strategy, he was willing to back me up at least one more time, Siva said.

If I wanted to get close somehow, I would inevitably have to try to get close enough to find the weakness in his magic.

Knowing so, Siva must’ve decided that he’d still help me, despite his desire to defeat it by himself.

“Of course I have. I’m a Star Slayer after all. I’ve got more tricks up my sleeve than I can count on both hands.”

—It was just… I couldn’t handle doing more than half of them.

I couldn’t afford to be weak under the circumstances, so I decided to keep those words to myself.

“…You don’t say.”

Then, by all means, show me.

I read his emotion from his happy expression, and I smiled as if following his lead, hoping to meet his expectations.

A spur of the moment demonstration, in the most crucial time.

I had never thought this would happen, so I had never even unleashed it once.

I hadn’t even considered at least trying it out.

And to be frank, that still hadn’t changed.

But there was only one option available to me.

And that was not to attempt and do it, but to submit myself to doing it.

Therefore…

“Say, Siva—”

While looking up at the sky, which I could only describe as still bright, I decided to say a few irrelevant words unrelated to our current circumstances.

“—Have you ever seen a night filled with shooting stars?”

——

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