Blade clashed against blade.

An archer whose deeply cut hand and shoulder could no longer draw a bowstring. A swordsman covered in wounds, unable to summon sword aura. Neither was anywhere near his normal condition, and their injuries and blood loss were far from trivial.

PATTER.

Violent movement tore wounds open, sending blood flying. The sight of battered men fighting amid sprays of blood was usually pathetic or pitiful. But not these two.

CLANG, CLANG. SKRRRANG!

The sound of blades colliding and scraping.

Ringing out several times a second, the noise was not merely far from pitiful—it was spectacular. Sparks flew as steel struck steel, mingling with blood.

Their footwork tangled in a dizzying exchange.

They darted in, then retreated; just when they seemed to be backing away, they slipped in from the side to attack a flank. The hunters' eyes were bloodshot red, desperate to tear into each other's openings.

THUD.

Najin stamped his foot down and swung his sword. Blood spurted from the hole in his thigh as his foot struck the ground, but his stance never wavered.

His longsword swept forward as he surged in at speed.

Kaufman angled his machete to catch it and let it slide along the blade. Before becoming a Ranger, he had been an imperial soldier, a swordsman proficient in imperial swordsmanship. He had simply refrained from using a sword because sniping from a distance was more effective.

But Kaufman was a Ranger.

Najin was a Sword Expert on the verge of becoming a Sword Seeker.

Even if he was outmatched in strength, Najin held the advantage in swordsmanship. He had witnessed, firsthand, the techniques of a Sword Saint who had reached the pinnacle of the sword. The flaws in Kaufman's techniques were plain to his eyes.

And if he could see an opening, there was no reason not to strike.

As Najin's sword slid along the machete, it suddenly circled around Kaufman's blade. The angle and direction of the force reversed in an instant, and Kaufman's eyes widened.

SLIT!

He twisted reflexively, but Najin's sword still grazed his face. Kaufman clicked his tongue as blood sprayed. He would have to avoid a sword fight.

Gliding backward to open the distance, Kaufman threw daggers. Najin knocked them aside with ringing clashes and stepped in. At that instant, Kaufman struck the dagger in his hand against his machete.

Inscription release: Magic Bullet.

The target was the blue dagger in Kaufman's hand.

The daggers deflected behind Najin shone vivid blue, then fired with a sharp report. Blue streaks of light battered his back.

RAT-A-TAT-TAT!

Magic bullets fired at high speed from his blind spot.

The spell was too weak to pierce Najin's body, but its impact was enough to break his stance.

His balance lost, Najin staggered.

No hunter would miss that opening.

Kaufman closed in and swung his machete. Just as the blade was about to bite into Najin's shoulder, Najin forced himself to move. A series of cracks rang out as he wrenched his impact-stiffened body into motion.

He barely caught the blade, but Kaufman had no intention of surrendering the momentum he had seized. He pressed Najin relentlessly.

Never fight an opponent on their strongest ground. That was a fundamental rule of combat, and Kaufman had no intention of giving Najin room to execute a proper technique. What followed was closer to a brawl than a sword fight.

A sword swing became a kick; an elbow drove toward the temple, followed by a knee strike. He wielded blade, hand, and foot freely, sometimes throwing a dagger to introduce another complication.

Najin was not simply taking it, either.

His accumulated injuries had slowed his reactions, but his eyes still tracked Kaufman's movements precisely. When he could not evade an attack, he took it while avoiding a fatal wound, then immediately seized on the next move.

THWACK.

He snatched away Kaufman's momentum and made it his own. If his opponent wanted a brawl, he had no intention of refusing.

'You're not the only one who's confident.'

Najin was confident in a dogfight, too.

Wasn't he a hound at his core?

The darkness and moisture-heavy air of the underground waterways brought the underground city of Atman to mind. His past flashed through his head.

Days spent earning just enough to eat that day. He remembered fighting adults two or three times his size with his bare hands, all to survive.

A dogfight, then. Fine. Come at him all you liked.

Would you cut off his head first, or would he tear out your throat?

They would have to fight to find out.

2.

As the dogfight continued, Kaufman sensed something strange. To a soldier who had spent more than fifty years killing on battlefields, this situation made no sense.

'How the hell is he still moving?'

Kaufman pulled away from Najin's frenzied charges, bewildered. To his eyes, Najin was a walking corpse.

Arrowheads embedded in his abdomen. Skin burned by explosions. A pierced side and calf. Blood poured from the holes, while the arrows embedded in his back and shoulder remained untouched.

His other, smaller injuries were too numerous to count. With wounds like that, it would have been no surprise if he dropped dead from blood loss.

Of course, Kaufman had seen dying soldiers drag a few more enemies down with them. But even they had never struggled for this long. A few dozen seconds at most.

Yet the opponent before him?

Those few dozen seconds had long since passed. It had been several minutes now, and he was still swinging his sword just fine. If anything, he seemed to be getting faster.

'What the hell is this...?'

Stabbed, caught in explosions, kicked away—he sprang up and charged again.

Did he feel no pain? No, that did not seem to be it. Kaufman saw Najin's taut jaw muscles and the blood seeping between teeth clenched hard enough to break.

He was quite literally gritting his teeth and enduring it. Watching him close the distance without hesitation despite those wounds was enough to raise goosebumps.

Kaufman could only marvel at that tenacity.

The excitement of battle. Extreme concentration. No, perhaps total immersion was the better term.

CLAAANG!

Catching a sword strike right in front of his face, Kaufman met Najin's gaze. Bloodshot eyes, pupils contracted to pinpoints.

Those chilling eyes alone could overwhelm anyone who looked into them. Kaufman let out an incredulous laugh.

SLASH!

Najin's sword finally raked across Kaufman's calf. Kaufman felt his own condition deteriorating. More wounds. More blood lost. He, too, now had to watch out for excessive bleeding.

He had to end this.

He had to risk his life to change the situation.

How long had it been since he was driven this far into a corner? The last time, he thought, was the operation to kill a Royal Guard who had been trying to defect to another country...

The scene from that day flashed through his mind.

Why remember it now? The reason was simple. The trump card he had used then seemed likely to work now, too. Recalling that operation from well over a decade ago, Kaufman moved.

CLACK.

Kaufman seized his daggers. Fitting all four remaining blades between his fingers, he struck them against the machete in his other hand.

WHIIINE!

The four daggers glowed.

Najin flinched.

He had been caught by spell-inscribed daggers time and again. He knew something was coming, but without knowing what, he could not respond. Kaufman carried daggers bearing a variety of inscriptions precisely to provoke this reaction.

By their nature, spell inscriptions did not reveal what spell they contained until it manifested. Accomplished mages could supposedly identify a spell merely by looking at the inscription on a blade, but...

'He's a swordsman.'

He could not possibly have a deep understanding of magic. He would assume it was one of the spells already shown and prepare accordingly. At that point, he was as good as caught.

Spell inscriptions were Kaufman's traps.

And Kaufman had no intention of releasing prey caught in his trap. As the daggers shone and the spells began to manifest, he hurled two of them.

Inscription release: Rupture.

Explosions erupted with a deafening roar right in front of Najin. Two blasts. Najin emerged through the rising smoke. He seemed to have reacted in that split second to minimize the damage; only his shoulder bore scorch marks.

But there were still two more.

Kaufman threw the remaining two daggers. As he released them, he closed his eyes.

Inscription release: Flash.

Inscription release: Resonance.

A blinding flash. Then a piercing noise that shook the eardrums. The more accomplished a warrior, the more likely they were to trust their senses too much and keep them honed to their utmost. Against such people, these spells were a natural counter.

Spells that stole sight and hearing in an instant.

A trump card hidden among daggers inscribed with spells that inflicted direct damage, meant to turn the situation on its head. Even the Royal Guard, a renowned warrior, had fallen into this trap and died.

'You'll be no different.'

Kaufman opened his eyes. He could hear nothing, but closing his eyes beforehand had preserved his vision. As he opened them and swung his machete, what he saw was...

Najin opening his own closed eyes.

At the same time, he saw the longsword thrusting straight toward him, as though Najin had already known how he would charge.

... How on earth?

The question flashed through his mind for only an instant.

SHUNK.

The longsword pierced Kaufman's body.

He struggled to evade the thrust, but could not avoid a critical wound. As the longsword pierced his shoulder, his stance collapsed.

The long battle was decided.

3.

His balance gone, Kaufman slipped in the blood on the floor and toppled over. One shoulder had been deeply slashed; the other had been pierced clean through.

He was no longer in any condition to hold and swing a weapon.

He might manage to throw a dagger if he tried, but unfortunately, he had run out of inscribed daggers. Kaufman gave a hollow laugh.

"You're one seriously crazy bastard."

Without even the strength to stand, he sat on the floor and looked up at Najin. Najin was approaching, holding a longsword dripping with blood.

He had lost.

The hunt had failed.

Kaufman had no intention of making a pathetic plea for his life. Had their positions been reversed, he would merely have scoffed at such a plea, with no intention of granting it. He closed his eyes and lowered his head.

As if to say: if you were going to cut it off, do it.

But however long he waited, the sword did not fall. He heard only a bottle being opened, then someone drinking. Raising his head, he saw Najin pouring a potion into his mouth.

"... What are you doing?"

"What do you mean?"

"Why aren't you killing me?"

"I can still kill you. I figured it wouldn't hurt to assess the situation first."

Najin exhaled at length.

Steam was rising from his body. Kaufman frowned. Apart from the puncture wounds, his smaller injuries were healing rapidly.

No potion, however expensive, should produce such a dramatic effect.

A homunculus came to mind.

A technology banned in the Empire. Kaufman recalled the living weapons the lunatics of the mage tower had created in the past, then shook his head. A homunculus could not converse as naturally as the young man before him.

Besides, hadn't the Empire's Sword Master personally hunted down and killed the homunculi? He doubted any could have survived that creepy old man's sword.

"Should I take it that you've put off killing me... because you have something to ask?"

"Glad you're quick on the uptake."

"You were thrusting for my throat, though."

"If you died, you died. If you lived, I was going to ask."

"Quite reasonable."

The longsword was leveled at his throat.

At the touch of cold steel, Kaufman smiled bitterly. Keeping the blade against his neck, Najin spoke. These were words Kaufman himself had told him earlier.

"Even if you're going to kill someone, shouldn't you hear how they've lived first?"

"What a nasty habit."

"You're one to talk."

Muttering that, Najin asked a brief question.

"Did the Order of Star Radiance send you?"