chapter02 · 035-ep35
Episode 35: "Strained Coordination"
There are observations in my notebook that eight years haven't been enough to explain.
One of them is: "Put the strongest fighters side by side, and sometimes they become weaker."
It remained a hypothesis. I'd never had the chance to test it, because only five people in the world qualified as subjects.
Now that test was about to begin. Unfortunately, in the middle of a real operation.
◇
At the last landing before the bottom of the great staircase, we crouched and looked down into the hall.
A vast circular cavern, around a hundred meters across. The ceiling was lost in the dark. In the middle, a shape like a crouching mountain of rock breathed slowly.
It had two necks.
"Additional note. Observation report. The right and left heads do not blink in the same rhythm. Their breathing systems are separate, too. As hypothesized, there are two minds. We should treat that as 'two creatures working together,' not one. That is all."
"Yagarasu-kun, the retreat routes?"
"Three marked, counting the stairs. ...Though I'd rather not use them."
I closed my notebook and, as usual, began putting the likely events in the order they were likely to happen.
"Twelve points before we enter. —First, two fighters on the front line: Rei-kun and Maru-kun."
Rei-kun and Maru-kun nodded at the same time.
There were no recorded observations of the two serving on the front line together. The right neck would target fast prey, the left hard prey. Each would think through its target independently. So we needed two front-line fighters and two separate responses. The reasoning held.
It ought to hold. Yet I still couldn't put yesterday's "half-step of giving way" into words.
A habit needs to show itself in a person's body before your words will stick. That was why I'd kept quiet—or so I told myself. Honestly, that was only half true. I hadn't observed enough. I still didn't know what that half-step was.
"Roll call. Your next step?"
"Forward." "Forward." "Additional note. Forward." "Forward, then." "...Forward." "Forward!"
Six voices. Good.
"Let's go. —We'll finish the middle layers today."
◇
The opening was perfect.
Mio-san's spell ran across the floor and restricted the dragon's footing. Yagarasu-kun drew the right neck's attention from the shadows. Kokoro-chan stood at the center of the circle, and Hina-chan carried everyone's words to everyone else. Rei-kun's initial burst found the right neck's blind spot. Maru-kun's shield stopped the left neck's charge head-on and made the bedrock groan.
【It's started】
【A two-headed dragon. This looks like a final episode】
【Look, all six are moving just like they did in training】
Just when everyone must have thought it would be over in three minutes, something began to change.
For the first time, the right and left necks looked at the same spot at the same time.
The space between Rei-kun and Maru-kun.
"Additional note. Enemy attack coordinates have shifted. Seventy percent of recent attacks have concentrated between the two front-line fighters. ...It's learning. That is all."
The two necks alternated, biting relentlessly at a single point. An empty patch two steps wide, within reach of both Rei-kun's sword and Maru-kun's shield—and occupied by neither of them.
Their supposedly perfect coordination began to creak.
A strike of the tail slipped through that gap and grazed the edge of the circle. Kokoro-chan's incantation stopped for an instant, and Hina-chan's cry went out over the relay.
"Rei-san, your left shoulder—!"
"Just a graze. No problem."
There was a problem.
I watched only their feet.
Rei-kun's sword path always went outside the radius of Maru-kun's shield. Each time Rei-kun's sword passed, Maru-kun lifted his shield half a beat late.
They were avoiding each other's territory.
Not out of fear. The opposite: trust. They each knew the other would handle his own territory perfectly, so neither stepped into it. A team-combat trap that only two people fully developed as individuals could fall into. The deeper their trust, the deeper the blind spot between them.
【Aren't the two strongest moving kind of awkwardly?】
【Talk about a luxury problem】
【Sensei, are you seeing this? Can you fix it?】
I could.
Probably with one sentence.
I gripped the microphone. Eight years of notebooks rebound themselves into one volume inside my head. The shield was a clock. Where it was planted was noon on the battlefield. Which meant—the space straight above noon was open.
"Rei-kun."
"Yes!"
"Think of Maru-kun's shield not as a 'wall'—but as a 'stepping stone.'"
A beat of silence.
Then I could almost hear Rei-kun smiling over the comms.
"...Understood!"
"Yeah, come on! Pops says it's fine—don't hold back!"
Maru-kun changed the angle of his shield, from upright to catch an attack to slanted to launch something upward.
Rei-kun ran. With that initial burst faster than anyone's, he charged straight into his partner's territory, the place he'd kept avoiding.
The shield rang out.
A master of weight distribution launched him with perfect timing. The fastest swordsman alive kicked off the hardest shield in the world and leapt straight up.
Both necks looked up together.
For the first time, their two minds tried to handle the same spot and got in each other's way.
Above—belonged to neither neck.
"—After you."
His fall and his slash came together. The right neck dropped.
The left neck turned to find Maru-kun's shield already hurtling toward it at full force. As the neck reeled back, Rei-kun landed, returned in two steps, and sent his second cut straight through it.
The ground shook only once.
6:12 p.m. Middle-layer boss defeated. Zero dead. One minor injury: a graze.
【What?】
【A stepping stone lol】
【One sentence changed the physics of the fight】
【The space they'd both avoided became their strongest weapon...】
【First time I've seen a dragon die to a change in perspective】
◇
"Additional note," Mio-san said as she measured the fallen dragon. "Sensei gave twelve instructions before combat and one sentence during it today. Thirteen in total. The outcome per sentence is the highest ever observed. That is all."
"We wouldn't have had a place to jump without your spell restricting its footing, Mio-san."
Kokoro-chan examined Rei-kun's left shoulder. Hina-chan wrote something in the step-count log. Maru-kun stroked the rim of his shield and muttered "A stepping stone..." with a strangely pleased look.
Only Rei-kun stood still for a while, his sword sheathed.
Then he came over to me and spoke in a trembling voice.
"...May I say something I've been thinking for eight years?"
"Go ahead."
"I knew it. You belong on the battlefield. —It's on the battlefield that a coach is strongest."
I couldn't think of a reply. In the end, I wrote this in the corner of my notebook:
【Rei and Maru. 'Giving way to each other'—resolved. The space between them wasn't a blind spot. It was something they could create together.】
I'd failed to observe enough, too. That half-step hadn't been a flaw. It was room their trust had left open, waiting for someone to find a use for it.
◇
At the back of the hall, Yagarasu-kun raised his hand.
"Sensei. ...It's open."
Behind the rock wall at the dragon's back, a descending tunnel had quietly opened its mouth. The last road to the deepest level.
"Additional note. Continuing the operation today is not recommended. Given everyone's exhaustion, I propose we camp. That is all."
"Adopted. We stop here today. —Thank you, all of you, for staying alive."
A camping circle formed in a corner of the hall, and two fires went up. We assigned watches, checked gear, and listened to Hina-chan read out today's log. One by one, everyone wrapped themselves in blankets.
I kept watch by the fire and opened my notebook to a fresh page.
Before I could write, I heard footsteps.
"...Sensei. Do you have a moment?"
The first visitor was Rei-kun.