In the game, there should have been either Cassian or Professor Silves to keep Scaramuccia firmly pinned down.
But naturally, Cassian was absent, and Silves—who should have rushed over long ago since he was on duty today—had not shown so much as his nose.
He had probably either been taken out first or tied up somewhere, like the headmaster and Professor Luke.
So I was the only one who could hold the bastard down, which was why I was running myself ragged.
But I was still far too lacking to subjugate Scaramuccia in my current state.
That was not to say Kyle and Isabella were useless.
On the contrary, their arrival had been a nice development.
The prince could not face a Sword Master head-on, and because of the gimmick, he could not directly harm Scaramuccia. But the horse Scaramuccia rode was not subject to the gimmick, so while I held the bastard off from the front, he and Kafka targeted the horse and dealt damage.
And since Isabella was currently the only mage who could land an effective hit on Scaramuccia, she was perfectly filling the gap in damage that the prince and I could not provide.
The problem was that it still was not enough.
Even if I somehow kept Scaramuccia occupied, he was a Sword Master on horseback.
I was managing to restrain him with my enhanced stats, but I was losing in technique. At best, I could only keep him occupied.
That meant there was naturally a limit to how much I could focus on stopping the horse’s movements as well. A prince in the high thirties could not possibly keep up completely with the speed of Scaramuccia’s contracted spirit, a high-level irregular spirit in the seventies.
Even if Scaramuccia was vulnerable to magic in his current state, his vitality was overwhelming. Relying on Isabella’s magical damage alone felt insufficient.
And since my attacks could not get through his gimmick anyway, he was targeting Haede more often and attacking even more boldly.
Since he took no damage from my attacks, he was probably thinking, Fuck it, I’ll just stab Haede no matter what.
It was truly a cowardly move worthy of a villain.
I needed Dante, who could deal damage alongside Isabella; Angelica, who could help me restrain him; or Dolnesia.
Unfortunately, Haede would be of no help. The same went for Iris.
But if I evacuated Haede elsewhere, he ignored every other attack and charged straight after her, determined to kill her. I could not separate her from us either.
And even if I tried to evacuate Iris far away, he would still try to kill Haede, so that was not an option either.
Of course, if Iris awakened as a saint through Haede’s sacrifice, victory would be guaranteed. But that would defeat the entire reason I was suffering through this hell, so that option was rejected.
All I could do was hope Iris would awaken without Haede’s sacrifice.
Or pray for Angelica, Dolnesia, or Dante to join us.
Then, at that moment.
Scaramuccia’s golden spear headed for Haede again.
Once again, I stepped in front of her to block his attack.
But...
Had I stepped in too carelessly?
Or had Scaramuccia decided to finish this quickly?
[Insight Eye activates.]
[Scaramuccia’s Narrative, ‘Sail Swordsmanship,’ has been identified.]
[Learning ‘Sail Swordsmanship’...]
This time, Scaramuccia’s golden spear held something different from the attacks he had thrust out until now.
It was the skill Scaramuccia had used to finish me during the fourth battle.
Sail Swordsmanship.
The Sail Swordsmanship he used was not some incredible skill.
Though it was called a skill, its essence was simply thrusting faster and harder.
The thrusts that had been flying at me relentlessly since earlier simply became faster and heavier. That was all.
But the problem was that the one using it was a Sword Master who had been effortlessly dealing with us using nothing but basic attacks.
In Scaramuccia’s hands, that skill—which merely thrust faster and harder than an ordinary thrust—was transformed into a technique that stabbed fucking hard and fucking heavily.
If every attack Scaramuccia had made until now had merely been basic strikes roughly coated in sword aura...
Then the attack now shooting toward Haede was a genuine attack, one he had put some real effort into.
I gritted my teeth and used [Logres Strong Sword Form], striking the side of that violently vibrating golden spear to deflect its trajectory.
If I had been prepared, I might have managed to knock it away somehow. But his sudden skill activation combined with the horse’s momentum, and the golden spear that came stabbing toward me with such force did not allow it.
What he had just unleashed was an attack I could safely consider one containing some measure of earnestness. Against it, all I could do was alter its path.
Squelch—!!!
In the end, the deflected golden spear pierced through the area of my left shoulder blade.
"Ian—!!!"
I vaguely thought I heard Haede scream my name from behind me.
But I was in so much fucking pain that her voice could not reach me.
The spear had penetrated deeply, and as it vibrated while embedded in me, the wound began to tear open further.
Even in the instant the spear lodged in me, the horse did not stop. It drove deeper still, and its hooves were just about to slam into Haede and Iris.
I gritted my teeth and used [Logres Quick Sword Form] on the horse with the sword in my right hand. At the same time, I viciously kicked its chest, and the horse screamed as it forcibly opened the distance.
The golden spear came out of my body as well, but it was ripped free so violently that my left arm was practically about to come off.
My left arm hung loose, and I could not feel a thing in it. I had to consider it unusable now.
[You have learned ‘Sail Swordsmanship.’]
Learning Sail Swordsmanship was just a bonus.
"You blocked even that."
His tone was calm, but beneath it lingered a faint bewilderment.
Then Scaramuccia gave a bitter little laugh, as if mocking himself.
"This is ridiculous. A Sword Master being held back by nothing more than a Sword User."
Then he wrapped sword aura around his golden spear and swept it horizontally.
I countered with [Logres Strong Sword Form] as well.
Kwang—!!!
"But what can you do now that you have lost one arm?"
Scaramuccia pressed forward harder and harder.
Perhaps because I could no longer put any strength into my left side, I was ultimately driven back and thrown away.
Seizing that opening, Scaramuccia tried to drive his golden spear into my body as it hung in the air.
Then.
Isabella’s magic shoved him back.
Kafka, transformed into a wolf, bit my collar and dragged me out of his attack range.
Kafka carried me far away and gently laid me down. Then someone approached me.
"How is the battle going?"
Kyle came toward me, breathing heavily.
"Not well."
I let out a sigh and answered calmly.
How was the battle going? We were fucked.
My left arm was wrecked.
"Still, seeing him begin to use techniques, he must be rather desperate himself."
Still, if there was one gain, it was that Scaramuccia—who had not used any skills before—had started using them now.
If this were a game, would this count as phase two?
Though Scaramuccia’s second phase in the actual game had not been that.
Still, it seemed all right.
But.
He gave us no time to chat.
His golden spear targeted Haede once again.
Was he seriously not sick of this?
Again, I stepped in front of Haede, biting down on the collar of my dangling left sleeve as I raised my shield.
With my left arm wrecked, the shield could be considered useless now anyway. Since I could not use it, I figured I should at least use the shield’s ability before putting it away. I brought the shield strapped to my left arm against his skill.
"To think you would block this attack as well."
Like his gimmick, the invisible armor, an invisible barrier unfolded over my shield and blocked his attack.
"I don’t get why you keep aiming for Haede. Fight someone your own size, will you?"
I shoved the shield into my inventory and, ignoring my dangling left arm, tried to drive [Logres Quick Sword Form] into his horse.
He swung his golden spear and blocked the attack.
"I am the one who does not understand."
Scaramuccia spoke with his spear locked against my sword.
"Why are you so desperate to protect that woman?"
As he spoke, he gestured at Haede with his chin.
"If you had simply let that woman die, your arm would not have ended up like that."
"That’s what I want to ask you."
I gritted my teeth, releasing sword aura as I answered his question with one of my own.
"Why are you targeting Haede?"
Why was he only targeting Haede?
I had encountered him twenty-nine times over twenty-nine runs through Dawnstar Academia.
But he had never had a pattern of prioritizing any particular person.
Even when I had taken Haede into the party, he had not targeted her.
But the bastard before my eyes was prioritizing Haede.
He ignored Charles, Asdel, and Ars, all lying fallen on the ground, and focused on Haede alone.
Why?
In the game, one reason he came to the academy was to take something from inside it, but another was to cause chaos there.
Which made even less sense.
If he had finished off Charles, Asdel, and Ars after defeating them, it would have been fair to call his objective accomplished.
After all, killing people of such high standing from foreign countries would obviously throw the Empire into chaos.
But Haede was merely the daughter of the ordinary rural Baron Mercedes family.
Her death would not bring chaos to the Empire.
Which meant it would be easier to put a sword through one of that trio lying over there than to go through all the trouble of breaking past me to kill Haede.
Of course, if he really tried to kill them, I would stop him. Even so, I could not think of any reason why he was so determined to kill Haede.
And even granting that he would try to kill Haede immediately when she attempted to flee, it also made no sense that every time Iris tried to leave the battlefield, he desperately tried to kill Haede.
I could not understand his true objective at all.
If I tried to evacuate Iris, Haede died.
If I tried to evacuate Haede, Haede died.
No matter who tried to run, he killed Haede.
As though killing Haede in front of Iris was his true goal.
No way.
The thought reached that point, but I forced myself to deny it.
Because it made no sense.
If Haede died in front of Iris, Iris would awaken as a saint.
Which meant Scaramuccia knew perfectly well about Iris’s aptitude to become a saint and the trigger that could forcibly awaken it, and that he was doing all this to make it happen.
What the hell did he intend to do by awakening Iris as a saint?
But.
"The death of someone precious can be regret, and at the same time, a trigger for awakening."
His words drove the nail home.
Just as I thought, this bastard knew how to awaken Iris as a saint, and he was trying to kill Haede before Iris’s eyes to force that awakening.
"If Iris awakens, you’ll die. You can’t possibly not know that, can you?"
I asked the question quietly while using [Logres Quick Sword Form] again. Scaramuccia matched my strike with his golden spear, then returned the question in a low voice with a mad smile.
"Then why not let her die? That would benefit you as well, would it not?"
"As if I could."
It was true that sacrificing Haede was the easiest way.
But.
I had seen her lying there, growing cold.
And I had seen Iris weeping as she desperately poured divine power into her friend, already too late to save.
I could not do it.
Of course, dying hurt like fucking hell.
But that did not make me regret it.
‘What’s even crazier is knowing full well that someone will grieve if you die, yet the person telling others not to die is the one who dies in their place.’
For the simple reason that I could not let that bastard, who had lectured me so self-righteously and then died on his own damn terms, die.
Even if I lost my arm for that reason.
Even if I had to die dozens more times from now on.
"Because someone will be sad if she dies."
Because that simple reason was enough for a knight to draw his sword.
"Are you trying to play at being a knight?"
At that, Scaramuccia raised his spear straight up.
"You would do well to stop putting on such heroics in front of me."
"Why?"
"Because I hate knights most of all."
Contempt flashed through his eyes for an instant as he spoke calmly.
Then lightning struck him, and a wolf lunged at him in a streak of golden light, but he easily evaded them and raised his spear.
Once again, a heavy thrust unfolded from his golden spear—Sail Swordsmanship.
As he tried to drive it down upon me with Sail Swordsmanship, I answered with [Mad Orlando].
"The weakness of relying on weapons, then losing the will to fight the moment they are gone."
His golden spear steadily advanced through the frenzied storm, gradually being worn down but refusing to stop.
"The disgrace of going mad over a woman, stripping off even your clothes, and rampaging without reason."
The frenzy I swung with my right hand alone could not completely stop his golden spear.
"The incompetence of refusing to abandon that vaunted obsession with knighthood, only to send one’s comrades into certain death at the hands of their enemies."
Once more, the golden spear pierced my chest, and soon it shook my body without mercy.
"You who inherit Orlando’s will, tell me. Can such people truly be called knights?"
His sneering voice, as he drove the golden spear deeper and deeper, dug into my ears.
Blood burst from my mouth again.
I heard someone calling for me, but I could not make it out.
My eyes slowly began to close.
But.
I squeezed out every last ounce of strength and brought my sword down.
Slash—!!!
I succeeded, at last, in taking off the horse’s head.
With a brief dying scream, the horse broke apart into fire and wind before collapsing, and Scaramuccia looked startled.
Watching that expression, I gave a small laugh.
I knew blood was spilling from my mouth, but I laughed anyway.
Because I had finally managed to kill the horse too.
Every time I died, my sword was getting closer to him.
I raised my middle finger at the bastard who would forget it all soon enough when time turned back anyway.
"Then those bastards aren’t knights."
"What?"
"Because I’m the only one dying."
I had never sacrificed my comrades.
I had protected Haede from your hands to the very end.
And yet you talk about sending comrades to their deaths at the hands of enemies.
Keep that delusional masturbation to yourself.
"There isn’t much left, you bastard."
I spat blood at him and smiled again.
"Next time, it’ll be your head."
He gave a derisive laugh as though I were absurd, then mercilessly grasped the shaft of the golden spear embedded in my chest.
"Yes. I shall look forward to it."
Shhk—!!!
He pulled out the spear, and amid the darkness rushing over me, I heard the sound of a ticket tearing once more.
My vision violently overturned, and I returned to the beginning once again.
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