Chapter Ninety-Eight: Death Itself Is a Weakness

The exchange of words ended there, and the clash of fists had only just begun.

Neither man, though neither was in his prime, yielded a single step. They did not evade, they did not retreat; like two steam locomotives of a long-vanished age hurtling toward one another along the same track, and, with their brake valves and emergency systems failed, they collided without hesitation.

Amid the ensuing thunderclap of compressed air, amid the crackling succession of joints slipping out of place, amid the occasional muffled groans, fist met fist, foot met foot, and even the head itself became a weapon of offense. This brief but ferocious battle was simple and brutal; the close-quarters exchanges at near zero distance left no room for hesitation or doubt. Every choice was made in an instant, and ended in an instant.

Without question, this instinctive style of fighting, in which thought was cast aside, favored Amy far more.

But favorable was only relative.

When the two men, both temporarily exhausted, finally separated, the Bearer of Glory became even more certain of it. As expected, his injuries were far worse than the old man’s, and by no small margin: the shoulder blade in his left arm had been knocked out of alignment, leaving one arm hanging uselessly like the limb of a mollusk, while his fist itself was a shocking sight, drenched in blood and even exposing stark white bone.

By contrast, the elderly traveler opposite him was in much better condition. Though the coarse, shabby sackcloth he had worn had been shredded to pieces in the earlier struggle, revealing a terrifying upper body covered in scars and muscular ridges, with blue-black bruises spread across much of his skin, the faintly visible scales beneath the surface protected him well enough that, bruised as he was, he remained fully capable of fighting.

"You truly have an acute instinct for battle," the old man said, brushing away the few scraps of cloth still hanging from his body. His voice was low and hoarse, yet there was an unmistakable ease in it, a sense of effortless composure. Had one not been able to see the restless rise and fall of his chest, the boy might have assumed that, as the old man had said before, this battle was nothing more than a trivial warm-up. "The young of today are getting more formidable by the day. It seems I can no longer deny age."

Amy pressed his lips together and said nothing.

Silently, he wiped away the scarlet blood that had risen to the corner of his mouth, then clutched the dislocated shoulder of his left arm and set it back into place with force.

"Mmngh—"

Only a low, pained groan escaped between his clenched teeth.

"Still want to continue?" The elderly traveler spread his hands, a smile spreading across his wrinkled face. "You should know that, as you are now, you are no match for me."

The Bearer of Glory still did not answer. He merely watched the man with wary eyes while slowly lowering his body and picking up the bloodied short sword from the ground.

"A minor surprise, perhaps," the old man said with a shrug, not particularly concerned. "But even with a fitting weapon in hand, what of it? In our earlier exchange, you should already have sensed the gulf between us. It cannot be crossed."

Indeed.

The gap was truly enormous. In strength, experience, speed, and reflexes, the old man who had carved a path through the Deepest Night was flawless. Setting aside any issue of compatibility of powers, to fight him in a life-or-death struggle was not merely unlikely to end in victory; even the chance of surviving was vanishingly small. Though his strength was not overwhelming in the most blatant sense, it was the kind of strength that left no flaw exposed.

"Knowing when to judge the situation is also a quality a Bearer of Glory must possess," Ignaty said. From beginning to end, he had made no move to attack first, as though facing not a mortal enemy but a junior who needed patient instruction. "Do not delude yourself into thinking you can defeat an enemy you cannot beat."

A faint curve appeared at the corner of the boy’s mouth, and he answered with action.

He surged forward.

The tattered trench coat behind him was whipped high by the gale. His dark pupils burned with a resolve that would not turn back. The young Bearer of Glory had clearly learned from the first exchange, when he had squandered his strength all at once. He did not charge blindly; instead, like a swift swallow roaming through a storm, he circled the towering mountain that was the Dark Traveler, launching wave after wave of assaults as though he would never tire.

And yet, in that struggle both brief and endless, the old man’s polished skill and razor-sharp judgment told him plainly:

Your effort is worthless.

No matter how cunning the angle of attack, no matter how cleverly the intent was hidden, before a traveler who had crossed the Deepest Night, these were nothing but laughable tricks. He scarcely bothered to parry; by relying on evasion alone, he sent the boy’s attacks failing time and again.

But Amy did not give up.

Because this was only a feint meant to numb the enemy’s senses.

The true killing blow would never be exposed so easily. For the boy, the moment his hidden card was turned over would be the moment victory and defeat were decided.

So this was a gamble that placed life and death upon a scale, a contest of all-or-nothing stakes in which only he was qualified to spend the wager and still remain undefeated.

Like the most seasoned hunter, the Bearer of Glory waited in silence, waiting for the prey to step naturally into the net. He had no intention of resorting to schemes and trickery; with his experience, he could not possibly weave a deception capable of fooling an old man who had traversed the Deepest Night and lived through nearly a hundred years.

All he could do was wait, and then defeat him honorably and head-on.

Yes, not empty boasts, and certainly no joke.

That was truly his plan. In the previous round of close combat, he had not come away with nothing but injuries. At the very least, he had discovered two of Ignaty’s weaknesses, and both were potentially fatal.

One of them was stamina.

Human endurance is finite. Even the descendants of glory, born burdened with radiance, are not all-powerful perpetual engines. There will always be a limit. From the close-quarters struggle just now, it was clear that the old man, whose body had already slipped from its peak, possessed far less stamina than a young man like him.

And that was where the opening lay.

But how exactly to seize that fleeting chance was another question altogether, one standing before him and demanding to be solved.

Because—

Perhaps it was because his stamina could no longer keep pace with the wear and tear, or perhaps it was simply a trap prepared especially for him, but Ignaty’s footwork had grown slightly sluggish, and the movement of his body was no longer as nimble as at the beginning.

Go in, or not?

There was no hesitation, no time for hesitation.

In the blink of an eye, the Bearer of Glory made his decision. Like a moth that sees the flame, he cast away the last vestige of uncertainty in his heart.

Break through!

The momentum he had built up for so long erupted all at once, like a tiger descending from the mountains to tear into prey, or like the dragon and serpent of myth returning to the sea, summoned by wind and rain. The boy’s spirit, energy, and will surged to their peak in an instant. He leaned forward with most of his body, offering no defense, no evasion, not even the room to change his strike. With one hand gripping the red-and-black short sword, he charged straight into the enemy’s embrace.

In ordinary circumstances, this would have been a blow from which there was no return. But now, it was his only chance at victory.

As for relying on superior stamina to drag the fight out?

What a joke. Amy wanted neither a draw nor an unresolved stalemate. He wanted victory, absolute victory: to smash the enemy to the ground and leave him unable to rise again. Certainly, the advantage in stamina was real, but would Ignaty himself truly be unaware of such a glaring weakness, even in the slightest? It was not that he meant to inflate the enemy’s strength deliberately, but a traveler who could cross the Deepest Night alone was not someone one could overestimate.

It was even possible that the weakness in stamina had been deliberately revealed to him by the old man.

But even a feigned weakness was still a weakness. What the Bearer of Glory needed was only a single opportunity, an opportunity for a single decisive strike.

And now, that opportunity was right before him.

Life or death, victory or defeat, would be revealed in this instant.

Then, he drew the sword—

At this moment, the distance between the two was surely no more than three meters. Taking arm’s length and blade length into account, it was only about a meter. For a descendant of glory whose physical prowess far exceeded that of ordinary men, this distance might as well not exist. For Ignaty, the traveler returned from darkness, the time left to react was minuscule. A few hundredths of a second? No, even a hundredth of a second would have been too extravagant. All that remained to him was a reflex stripped of thought.

He raised his left hand, preparing to slam it hard into the Bearer of Glory’s forehead.

But reason, in the end, ruled the body rather than instinct. The old man finally came to his senses, his body jolting stiffly as he missed the chance to kill the boy outright. Only when the sword was nearly upon him did he belatedly thrust out his right hand, intending as before to seize the short sword Darkblood and neutralize the crisis.

However, Amy, having already been burned by that once, was never going to give him the chance.

His left arm, still misaligned from the shoulder blade, whipped out violently and collided with the old man’s right hand, slowing Ignaty’s motion by half a beat. In the end, the red-and-black short sword drove in, unstoppable, and pierced the enemy’s heart.

It was over—

So the Bearer of Glory thought. Yet before he could even breathe out in relief, the feedback from the blade made him frown.

It… would not go in?

How was that possible?

Though the confusion in his heart was no less than the darkness above him, the boy felt no hesitation because of it. The instant the thought arose, he emptied his mind, focusing all his attention on the right hand gripping the sword. Then his pupils contracted violently.

His full strength had struck empty air.

Something… something had wrapped around his limbs, dragging him backward.

What was this?

Having lost the chance at victory, Amy turned sharply, and saw… red threads?

No, they were not threads!

After a brief pause, the Bearer of Glory rejected his first assumption and recognized its true nature from the thing writhing and spreading across the ground like something alive.

It was… blood.

The blood Ignaty had shed in the earlier battle.

This was a trap laid long in advance.

He had miscalculated.

The boy instinctively looked toward the victor not far away.

"I must say, you truly gave me a tremendous surprise," said the traveler who had crossed the Deepest Night, releasing the hand he had pressed to his left chest and revealing the cut pierced clean through by the sword. Yet strangely enough, not a single drop of blood flowed from the wound. "You nearly killed me."

He paused, and then a smile returned to his face—a ferocious, kindly smile that could stop a child’s tears.

"Amy Ulysses."