ch21-ch40 · 035-ch34

Chapter 34

Kagurazaka Chizuru, an original member of the A-rank explorer clan "Anthem," was born as the third daughter of a branch family of the Kagurazaka house, a prestigious martial lineage.

The Kagurazaka family was an old house that had carried the blood of a warrior clan and its swordsmanship from the Kamakura period into the modern era, making its living through the protection of dignitaries and the lending of personal bodyguards. The "Warrior Arts" of Kagurazaka were not lent out for money alone—they were only permitted when the Kagurazaka house recognized the righteousness of the employer.

Chizuru hadn't been taught the deeper details, but even before the world merged with the other world, the Kagurazaka family had been a house of "Warrior Arts," and even now after the World Fusion, their status and pride remained unshaken.

That was because, after labyrinths appeared all over the world, one of the eccentrics who immediately threw themselves into labyrinth exploration was the Kagurazaka house.

They adapted quickly to the post-World Fusion world and gained an advantage over other houses—that was all well and good, but the labyrinths that appeared in this world weren't that forgiving.

No matter how highly skilled a swordsman one was, without sufficient magical affinity, one couldn't adapt to labyrinths. Still, apparently they managed to conquer even C-rank dungeons through technique alone, but inevitably they hit a limit, and culling occurred.

Currently, the head of the Kagurazaka house was—the child of a concubine from a branch line, once despised as having thin blood.

Through his extraordinary magical affinity and his own inhuman dedication, he had married into the head family as the daughter's husband, and later became the head of the house.

The man once called a lowly concubine's child had adapted to the post-World Fusion world better than anyone in Kagurazaka, and became the new head of the house—this still left a sediment of unease within the Kagurazaka family. A mixture of disgust toward someone of such birth, and fear of a strength they couldn't deny. Now, even in pure swordsmanship, no one could rival the current head.

Heart, technique, body.

The common "Way" was said to train these elements. Even Kagurazaka's swordsmanship, which wasn't a "Way," couldn't make one strong without them.

An unbreakable heart, refined technique, a body to execute them.

And now, magical affinity.

Heart, technique, body, magic.

Kagurazaka Chizuru was a child of the Kagurazaka house who was exceptional only in magic—an aberrant child.

◇◇◇

Leaping toward the left head of the three-headed hydra, she severed it with a single iai draw-cut.

The right head had been cut off by the leader, Saito Megumi, with a single blow from her greatsword. A girl who had once been just a middle school student could now unleash strikes that rivaled—no, surpassed—Chizuru's own power. How unreasonable the world was, she thought to herself with a wry laugh.

Yes, the techniques that most of the Kagurazaka house had spent their entire lives refining probably couldn't match Saito Megumi, who was still only twenty years old. She would likely scatter them in an instant. And the same would be true if Megumi were replaced with Chizuru.

Most of the people she had feared so much as a girl were now, from Chizuru's perspective, just a rabble of nobodies.

The reason Kagurazaka hadn't lost its standing as a warrior house was, first, because they still produced excellent explorers, even if they didn't match Chizuru. And second, because the world didn't revolve around explorers alone.

—Ah, I'm thinking unnecessary thoughts.

Thinking this, almost unconsciously, she diverted her magical power to defense to block the residual effects of the "Magic Arrow" that Ilseria was about to fire.

Without even a half-second's delay, exactly as expected, a shot from the "Wrath of the Forest God" was fired—the center of the three heads was blown through, and Chizuru was sent flying by the shockwave.

At a height of ten meters above ground, horizontally.

Who in the Kagurazaka house could survive something like this unscathed? Pure, refined technique alone would never be enough.

But Chizuru could handle it.

Thanks to the magical defense she had prepared in advance, even though she was sent flying, the impact itself wasn't that bad. She could even understand where her body was heading.

"—Haah!"

With a small exhale, she forcibly twisted her body in midair to control her trajectory, and using all the spring in her body and her magical power, she forcefully landed on the steel frame of the transmission tower she would have otherwise crashed into.

Three heads, severed.

The hydra-type monster that had apparently appeared due to the Noumi Dungeon's "Dungeon Rampage." Even with the S-rank explorer elf Ilseria's direction and archery, she had indeed severed its heads with her own hands.

However.

"...Tch, what is it? Something..."

Her instincts as a member of the Kagurazaka house refused to give her peace. A vague unease, a feeling that she'd overlooked something.

Megumi, who had been blown to the opposite side from Chizuru, hadn't landed like Chizuru had. She saw Megumi shouting something toward the Noumi Dungeon's labyrinth branch office—the ruins destroyed by the hydra.

Searching for and rescuing people in need.

Helping others first—choosing that as if it were the most natural thing in the world.

That was the quality of her leader, one year her senior.

She would gladly follow the direction Megumi pointed.

Just a few days ago at Kamioka Dungeon, when she couldn't abandon Mido Airi, Chizuru had no complaints about that decision either.

If Megumi had said they should do that, then even if they prioritized survival and lived, they probably wouldn't have lived a decent life. She had a strange conviction about that. She couldn't remember when it started, but Chizuru trusted Megumi that much.

But that trust was in her as a guide who showed the way—and she was still a step or two slow in situational judgment.

"Leader! Get back!"

She yelled without thinking, but she couldn't tell if her voice reached her.

Megumi wasn't looking toward Chizuru, but toward the hydra's corpse. From the corpse, a five-headed hydra was being born—and the blood spilling from its burst belly swept Megumi away like a flash flood.

"Why..."

She had definitely severed three of the hydra's heads.

No, that was wrong. She had been mistaken. Even against the dragon that had appeared on the mutated Kamioka Dungeon's fourteenth floor, they had struggled. The analysis should have been that the magical power from Kamioka Dungeon—which had produced that dragon and the Black Knight—had flowed into Sugai Dungeon and Noumi Dungeon, and since both exceeded their magical capacity, the "Dungeon Rampages" had occurred.

It was strange that she and Megumi had severed the heads so easily.

If that was the case, then that hydra... if it had three heads and became five, and if all five were severed at once, would it become eight?

A chill ran down her spine as she looked at the hydra.

The newborn five heads—perhaps because they had burst out of their three-headed parent's body—were slightly smaller in overall length... but the magical power was that much more concentrated. The total magical energy she could feel with her skin had increased, and it was not a foe she could contend with.

Using the steel frame of the transmission tower as her foothold, Chizuru kept her knees bent as she reached for the katana at her waist, pouring magical power into it so she could draw at any moment.

The iai stance.

A swordsmanship technique she herself was relatively good at—stream viewers often praised it as god-speed iai-draw and the like, but in reality, it was definitely faster to just take a normal stance and swing.

Iai and battōjutsu were originally techniques for suddenly drawing your sword and landing a single blow; the fiction that you could swing a sword faster than from a normal stance was nonsense.

And yet—Kagurazaka Chizuru, as an A-rank explorer, now possessed power befitting a fictional character and could handle absurd sword techniques.

Compressing magical power within the scabbard, releasing it at the moment of the draw to accelerate. Along with the acceleration of the blade, the released magical power itself became an edge, increasing the cutting power. Such absurdity didn't exist in Kagurazaka's swordsmanship.

But—could that absurdity even work against that thing...?

The five-headed hydra that had emerged from the burst body of the three-headed one shook itself like a dog getting out of water, scattering blood everywhere. It would probably start moving in no more than five seconds.

It would raise its heads, stand upright on its two legs and tail in some incomprehensible way, swing its serpent heads—each over twenty meters long—and pour magical power equivalent to the upper tier of S-rank for the sole purpose of destruction.

"...Tch!"

She couldn't cut it. No image of cutting it came to her.

Charge in the same way, leap up, and sever the heads with iai? Impossible. The moment she charged in, the heads would move like whips and swat her away. Like swatting a slow-moving insect with a fly swatter.

"Guh... ngh... ugh...!"

Gritting her teeth, maintaining her iai stance, Chizuru couldn't move. She couldn't make the decision to leap into certain death.

If Megumi—the leader—told her to go, she could leap in.

If Ilseria gave her instructions, she could retreat safely.

If Airi sent her "words of encouragement," she could do anything.

But here she was, just watching the gigantic monster that seemed ready to rampage at any moment.

That's why I'm...

In her consciousness, accelerated to feel as if each second was stretched dozens of times, a weak thought tumbled from somewhere deeper inside.

That's why you...

One drop, then another. Falling into some corner of her heart, seeping in.

In that instant—something, a light.

"—...Eh?"

Something shining flew from far away—and in the moment she thought that, it stopped at a diagonal angle above the five-headed hydra, scattering a flood of light.

There was no way an object could stop in midair, but in Chizuru's accelerated consciousness, that was how it appeared.

A moment later—shorter than an instant—an enormous sound reached her.

Because it had arrived at supersonic speed. The intense light, as if refusing the night itself, was probably because magical power was parting the air resistance. And at the same time, it released magical power like reverse thrust to decelerate, killing its inertia and speed.

Hence, the midair halt.

What had been scattering that flood of light was that holy sword used by the dragon-slaying swordswoman... true to its name, "That Which Beckons Light."

And standing on top of the holy sword, raising the crimson-black cursed blade, was—

"Ah... aah... aaaah!"

A shudder that felt like an injection of ecstasy straight into her spinal cord coursed through Chizuru's body. Her entire body trembled, and she couldn't help but cry out.

Because it was so beautiful.

What a beautiful—single horizontal slash.

"Ah... aah... aaaaah...!"

The magical power she'd built up in her scabbard dissipated into nothing. Yet somehow, the slash from a position that shouldn't have been able to reach swept through all five heads at once. As if there was no way those heads could escape being cut when a blade was swung like that.

It was a slash that clearly defied all reason, yet Chizuru felt not a shred of doubt. She thought that there was no way anything could avoid being severed by that slash.

Hayasaka Toru.

The single slash that had saved her in Kamioka Dungeon.

And now, the single slash delivered while riding the holy sword that had come flying at supersonic speed.

"—Toru-sama! Aaah! After all, you are—"

A single flash more refined than anyone in Kagurazaka.

A god.

He was, without a doubt, the Sword God.

◇◇◇

Honestly, Chizuru didn't clearly remember what happened after that.

At some point she was riding in the wagon driven by Hamamatsu Nanami. Megumi was alive. Somehow Ilseria got off partway through, and they returned to the hotel... after that, Chizuru checked Anthem's stream archive. Because from Ilseria's position—who had been holding the camera at the time—she thought Toru's flight might have been captured.

Her guess was right, but the yield was small.

From the pulled-back angle, you could tell Toru had flown in faster than sound, but it was too far away. No matter how much she zoomed in, she couldn't make out that single flash.

But she did learn that the time from "three heads becoming five, and Toru cutting them down"—which subjectively felt like a hundred seconds—had actually taken less than nineteen seconds. From when the five heads appeared and Megumi was swept away by the blood? Four seconds exactly.

She replayed these four seconds over and over again.

Until the lingering afterglow of the ecstasy injected into her spinal cord faded away.

...And because of that, it took her a while to notice the fact that Ilseria had ended up staying overnight at Toru's place.