༺ A Road Flows Together With A Traveler – 7 ༻
His presence was realized a beat too late. Since he had disappeared so naturally and not even a hint of him remained, he had drifted away from everyone’s attention.
General Patraxion sat with his legs swinging from on top of the container, looking down at them with boredom.
“I was on leave, so I didn’t plan on working. I was just going to watch because I was curious why you were messing with a container full of mail and Chimera bean seeds.”
The General leaped down. Landing silently, he took leisurely steps as if he were out for a stroll.
In his hand, he held no weapon, yet Sir Baltzroy couldn’t take his eyes off him, his body tense with alertness and anxiety.
It was as if the roles of the armed and unarmed had been reversed.
“But even so, you punk. What the heck is the point of a duel with an old man? An old man, I tell you. Even if you just leave him be, he’ll die soon of old age anyway.”
Sir Baltzroy, recognizing the familiar face that had suddenly appeared, gritted his teeth and shouted.
“…How could this be? Why are you here? No one should be coming this way now that they are on the move!”
“It seems some information has leaked, huh. Looks like the Resistance knows more about our newly released operation primers than we do.”
The General scratched his head as he replied.
“Have you ever seen me obeying someone else’s orders? The moment I saw those directives, I took a vacation and rushed here. If I hadn’t taken a vacation, it would have been disobedience, after all.”
Their encounter was the very definition of mere whim and coincidence. Sir Baltzroy muttered in frustration.
“…Damn it. How could there be such bad luck?”
“Bad luck? What do you mean by bad luck? Isn’t it rather good for you?”
General Patraxion showed his empty hands and grinned.
“See? Look. Here I am, unarmed and without any subordinates to guard me. If you duel and defeat me here, the Military State would falter and your reputation would soar. How about it? It’s much more worthwhile than just plundering a container. right?”
However, Sir Baltzroy knew all too well how unrealistic of a result that was.
Though now called one of the Six Star Generals of the Military State, he was once a celebrated knight of the kingdom.
He was the knight who defeated the Guardian, the strongest of that era, and brought down the kingdom with his own two hands.
He was Sunderspear Patraxion, the Knight of Treason.
He looked down at Sir Baltzroy with eyes full of excitement.
“Show me your chivalry. Show me your resolve. Challenge someone you cannot defeat and leave the outcome in the hands of the glorious God. Here I am, your archenemy, the traitor who ruined the kingdom. Judge me fairly through a duel!”
Sir Baltzroy, facing the wind, gripped his spear firmly. However, despite the strength in his grip, despair swelled in his heart.
While calming his trembling hands, he shouted in an attempt to hide his fear.
“A traitor who destroyed the kingdom dares to speak of a sacred duel…!”
“Traitor? Treason? How ridiculous.”
Bang!
Just then, a Resistance member fired a gun from behind. At the same moment, the General lightly flicked his finger to the side.
The wind stopped.
When it came to strength, a pinky finger could not defeat a thumb. Even if trained to surpass someone else’s thumb, it could not overcome its own weakness.
A hand could not extend towards the back of the arm. Even if one’s flexibility was honed and improved on, there were limits. The body was just not designed that way.
It was something all too obvious. Strength? Power? All had their limits, thus weaknesses could not overcome strengths. A basic truth.
But when Qi Arts reached the zenith, a moment came when one transcended ordinary strength; a moment when power shifted from magnitude to intensity.
The General had caught the bullet with his finger. Even a bullet specifically designed for high penetration to counteract Qi Deflection was still insufficient.
The General, emitting Qi from his entire body, dominated space itself, to the extent that not even a bullet could dare to pierce through.
The General spun the bullet he caught on his finger and spoke.
“What I did was not treason.”
In a time when personal duels in the name of God were rampant. When it was commonplace for the strong to exploit the weak in order to enrich themselves.
It was during such times when corrupt merchants, in collusion with armed knights, realized how to amass wealth iniquitously and widely spread such evils throughout the world.
Indiscriminate duels ensued. The weak had to submit to survive. The strong sought out those weaker, yet richer than themselves for wealth and honor.
God blessed the victors and the dying were condemned as evil.
“I challenged the kingdom to a fair duel. It’s just that I happened to win.”
It was a story that was now recited as legend.
The Sunderspear stood outside the capital, shouting a declaration for a duel to the distant Royal Palace.
The challenger was himself; the challenged, the kingdom itself.
The brightest knight became the Knight of Treason.
He was the Twilight of the Knights, as well as the very first Rising Star.
He, who had changed history, drooped his shoulders as if slightly disappointed.
“I was able to do it against a kingdom, yet you won’t duel me even though I am all alone? Are you that cowardly as a knight?”
“Is that a provocation?!”
Sir Baltzroy’s spear flashed without warning. Even under a situation where the General’s Qi Arts controlled the wind, he thrusted his spear, infused with his own Qi. It was a fierce stab aiming for just a single point, without even taking into account the strength he could afford to spare.
The General deflected it effortlessly with the bullet between his fingers. The tip of the spear and the bullet met precisely, coming to a halt as it achieved an exquisite balance.
The General murmured.
“Your basics are decent, but something is a bit lacking. Have you been slacking off in your training lately? Well, I guess there’s no need to practice when there are no duels to fight.”
“This bastard!”
Sir Baltzroy, having been thwarted, gripped his spear and spun it around. He intended to shake off the bullet with the rotation.
However, his spear didn’t budge. Sir Baltzroy grunted, twisting his arm. As an attempt to rotate it, for a moment, he pushed with concentrated force.
Yet, the bullet didn’t even move an inch. The General was casually countering the force with only its short, blunt end, as if showing off some parlor trick.
For the knight, retreat was the only option allowed.
“Try a bit harder. Put more strength into it. Use both hands.”
As if playing around, the General moved the bullet, following Sir Baltzroy’s spear.
And at some point in the midst of this strange standoff…
For just a moment, the General’s body had an opening. Sir Baltzroy’s expression lit up with triumph.
“You have let your guard down, Sunderspear!”
Click. Sir Baltzroy pulled on something attached to the end of his spear. Immediately, the entire spear turned red with acrid smoke. The shaft absorbed all the air around it.
Sensing something unusual, the General muttered.
“Huh? Did I let my guard down?”
Baltzroy’s weapon was a spear, yet it wasn’t just a spear. Inside the hollow shaft, it was also a disposable gun barrel, built to fire just one round.
By the time the General realized it, the explosion had already occurred.
“Wow.”
Along with that word, a loud boom erupted. The shaft exploded the air it had sucked in, firing a shell from inside.
It had poor accuracy and terrible durability, but for that one time…Just for that one time, it delivered a blow more powerful than anything else. The spear’s tip glowed red, spewing fierce flames.
It was the hidden trump card of a knight who had his own power, yet chose to borrow a different force.
“What? You use a gun too?”
But even that became powerless in the face of a strength that had reached the zenith.
The General had no spear in his hand. But that wasn’t important. After all, he could use even the small bullet he held between his fingers like a spear.
Peerless Arts unfolded in his hand.
Though it was only as big as a finger, the General swung it like a spear and threw it. The world’s shortest spear climbed up the inside of the barrel.
Thus, the bullet fired from his finger penetrated right through the center of the explosion, bringing with it a torrent of immense power.
Ultimately, guns and cannons used steel barrels to tightly seal a projectile and push explosive force in one direction.
Simply put, if one’s Qi Arts was stronger than steel, then guns and cannons could be easily overcome.
Obviously, the General’s Qi Arts was stronger than the barrel. Blocked by the storm brought by the bullet, the explosion within the spear shaft scattered in all directions, like disorganized rabble.
Eventually, the spear, unable to withstand the force, exploded from within. Sir Baltzroy, his hidden card rendered futile, looked at the broken shaft, utterly dumbfounded.
“In the end, have knights also failed to overcome the flow of time, the change of an era? To forsake the spear for a gun… But since my spear won, doesn’t that mean the spear is superior to the gun?”
He seemed unaware that what he had just fired was not a spear but a bullet. Sir Baltzroy, staggering back, stood with his back to the container.
｢…He’s in a different league. I can’t win. I probably can’t even run away. Damn it.｣
Feeling the gap in their strengths, Sir Baltzroy glared at General Patraxion. His heart was filled, not with the shame or anger of a loser, but with sheer resentment.
He yelled.
“Damn it. Why? You, who could have practically lived like a king. No, you could have even ruled like a god in the kingdom! Why?! Why did you turn against the kingdom?!”
To the cry of a man ousted from privilege, General Patraxion casually picked his ears.
“If you want to play god, just go into a well and become the god of the frogs there. Why bother crawling out? If you want to fight, fight with a strong opponent. Isn’t that the true beauty of a duel?”
His words implied that the knight was nothing more than a frog in a well.
Insulted, Sir Baltzroy muttered under his breath with his teeth tightly clenched.
“…Everyone.”
Sensing the ominous mood, the Resistance members crouched inside the container, waiting for Sir Baltzroy’s command.
Sir Baltzroy, who had called for them, muttered with a sinister gleam in his eyes.
“Scatter. Flee! Whether you take hostages or run! Survive on your own!”
At that moment, the Resistance members burst out in all directions like rats fleeing a burrow. While the General momentarily diverted his gaze, Sir Baltzroy also made his move, kicking off the ground.
｢A hostage! I need to take a hostage!｣
In his desperate search for the only way to survive, Sir Baltzroy’s eyes fell upon the mother tightly embracing her son. He swung his spear in all directions and immediately moved towards them.
But he didn’t get far.
“I knew you would do this.”
Colonel Gand, the disciple of General Patraxion, blocked his path. The Colonel’s spear, of a plain design, easily deflected Sir Baltzroy’s.
Once again thwarted, Sir Baltzroy glared fiercely at the Colonel’s spear.
“How dare someone like you use a spear in front of me!”
It was fine if it was the Sunderspear, but a mere subordinate? Sir Baltzroy refused to lose to someone like that.
Half in obstinance and half in cold calculation, Sir Baltzroy extended his broken spear. The shortened spear sliced through the air, aiming for Colonel Gand’s vitals in rapid succession.
However, Colonel Gand evaded and parried Sir Baltzroy’s attacks by a hair’s breadth.
“After the extinction of knights, I regretted not being able to compete with a knight and his spear.”
Clang.
Colonel Gand swung his standard spear, knocking Sir Baltzroy back, and muttered indifferently.
“But now that I am facing one in actual combat, it turned out to be disappointing. Is this all you have?”
“How dare you discuss the spear in front of a knight?! Pay the price of that arrogance with your death…!”
Enraged, Sir Baltzroy gathered all his Qi. Transforming his entire body into a spear, he crouched and struck from below in an upward thrust. The spear tip, filled with his Qi, burst into a ghostly flame.
It was his ultimate move which consumed all his might, Goblin Spear; a technique with a shameful moniker that was said to steal a life every time the will o’ wisps flickered.
Gand gazed at the spear that thrusted up to his chin in the blink of an eye and stretched out his own. Their spear shafts crossed and each of their spear blades aimed for the other’s life, disregarding defense.
Screech. The shafts scraped against each other. Then, drops of blood dripped down the blade. The outcome of victory and defeat was decided by someone’s death.
Colonel Gand murmured apathetically.
“Look who’s talking. Do you not realize who my master is? How dare you challenge me with a spear?”
“Keuk…!”
A voice was sounded from the throat. Thus, with a spear blade lodged in it, one could not speak.
And so, Sir Baltzroy, unable to utter a word, frothed at the mouth and collapsed powerlessly. Gand retrieved his spear and spun it around.
General Patraxion strode towards Gand.
“Hey. Your skills improved a bit, huh? I think you can wear a star now, yeah?”
“Do you think it’s that easy? I need to accumulate merits and a distinguished service record to wear one.”
“Merit? Distinguished service record? What is a guy who already gained quite a bit of experience saying? If you want to gather merits, go out on your own. Your record is getting discredited because you’re always with me.”
“How can I go around in my lonesome when I haven’t even learned the Peerless Arts from Master?”
“Did you get some coupon that makes me obligated to teach you? Why are you looking for the Peerless Arts from me?”
Colonel Gand looked around for other Resistance members, but soon realized it was pointless.
After all, the scattered Resistance members had already turned into corpses.
All that was left were the Captain, the old military engineer, and me. Ah, also the mother and son who almost became hostages.
In the midst of the massacre, the General shrugged his shoulders and spoke loudly.
“Now then. Surprised, right? In fact, I am General Patraxion, currently on leave. I had some personal matters to attend to, so I hid my identity. Any complaints?”
Obviously, no one dared to respond. The Captain and I shook our heads. We were more moderate in our attitude, seeing as how the old engineer was overwhelmed with emotions, hardly able to breathe, since he had faced the legend of the Military State.
The General turned to me and grinned.
“Oy, Little Brother. Let me ask again. Which is a better weapon, a gun or a spear?”
I answered readily.
“Without a doubt, it’s the spear.”
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