Soujirou the Willow Sword - 2

"Hey. Lemme ask you something. That technique you used earlier…was that one o' them Word Arts I've been hearin' about? How'd you do it?"

"What…?"

"That thing you did, where you throw stones. You can teach me that, right?"

Yuno recalled the difference between Visitors and the people of this world. She had learned about it in class.

The Force Arts Yuno used must have looked unusual to the otherworldly swordsman. It might have been the only real reason he had saved her life in the first place.

"Um, I learned that Visitors…or anyone else not born of this world can't use them… The world of the Visitors communicates through a sound

language, so their cognitive abilities can't keep up."

"Sound language? Ah, yeah, I guess that makes sense. Not like you guys are speakin' Japanese here."

"…We're able to communicate like this through Word Arts. For Force Arts and Thermal Arts…you use those Word Arts and ask to move things, burn things… Ask the wind and other physical objects directly…"

The Japanese Soujirou referred to was not a language as Yuno and the people of her world would define it, but more of a technique that required different tones passed through the air to be used effectively.

It was true that sound was a necessary intermediary for conversation. It was possible to communicate with other races no matter what words were contained within those sounds, even when those sounds were the roars of beastfolk.

Any sentient creatures within this world were able to do this, but Yuno had heard this was different in the world from whence Visitors hailed.

"That so? Forget it, then. Looks fun but sounds like a pain. I'll stick to swords."

That was the extent of his reaction. He had asked about it only out of curiosity.

It was absurd. Neither big talk nor a bluff, this man…intended to take on the boundless Dungeon Golem with nothing more than a single practice sword.

"I-it'll kill you…!" "Doesn't matter."

"What…?! No amount of slicing and dicing is going to affect that thing! Even if you beat it, no one will thank you! You're just an outsider who blew in from parts unknown! Isn't it better to run away?!"

"Why?"

"I—I mean…if you die, that's it!"

"Is it now?" Soujirou plainly questioned. "..."

"If you're up against some unbeatable monster, you just give up?"

"But what could I do…?! That, that thing…it's a walking disaster… I can't fight something like that…"

"You ain't got anything to do with it. I'm gonna fight it because it's fun.

That guy's definitely gonna be a ton of fun to fight, don'cha think?"

The red flames tumbled and rolled in the sparkling reflection of his round eyes.

In those eyes shined a certain madness for battle, enough to bring Yuno's senses back from the abyss of despair.

"Time to go."

Soujirou's gait was as leisurely as if he was walking through the market to do some shopping. Yuno had no time to cry out and stop him before he proceeded into the sea of flame.

The warrior's small frame crossed over the hill. Immediately, golem- shaped figures swarmed together. All of them were cut down by his blade, flashing around like refracted shimmers of light.

His diminutive outline disappeared in the elaborate city streets, and Yuno quickly lost sight of him. Many golems gathered at the spot where she last saw him, but they would be unable to lay a hand on Soujirou. She knew that.

Cutting through enemies, the flames, even the air itself, Soujirou plunged toward the mountain-size behemoth.

The sparkling blaze was bisected, a dark, thin path advancing through it.

As far as Yuno knew, even the most fleet-footed explorers couldn't run through the city with the same speed as Soujirou. Even if she searched across all the horizons, she wasn't sure she could find anyone who could traverse that ruined terrain with thick black smoke clouding their vision and the explosive roar of the conflagration drowning out their hearing.

Soujirou pushed forward. The colossal figure swayed, and its outline shifted. The Dungeon Golem raised its arms.

"Hwoooo—ooo—"

The golem's rumbling roar caused the very hilltop to tremble. The ferocity of the golem's fist, violently slamming down on Soujirou's position, created enough of a tempestuous wake to send debris flying, radiating out from the point of impact.

It stood to reason the pint-size minia Soujirou must surely have become dust in the wind.

But no—at that moment, Soujirou was running up the golem's colossal left arm, still thrust into the earth.

It wasn't an impossible task—theoretically speaking.

However, the incline was, from the perspective of a minia, a sheer cliff, if not steeper. The small silhouette ran upward, using the golem's jagged body for footing, and the unwavering speed of its ascent was nothing short of extraordinary.

"Hwooooooooooo—"

The nightmarish bellow drowned out every other sound in the city, its vibrations making the flames quiver and tremble.

The black cloud that immediately enveloped Soujirou as he reached the golem's shoulder looked like a swarm of locusts from Yuno's distant vantage point. They weren't locusts, though. The black cloud was a combination of arrows fired from the mechanisms covering the Dungeon Golem's body and the golem horde, trying to swallow up Soujirou within their surging numbers, like a storm-tossed sea.

The Dungeon Golem was a monster that could summon only brute strength. It was a walking calamity, with masses of weapons combined together inside its gigantic form.

The true form of the impenetrable Great Labyrinth that had blocked any and all explorers from its depths for more than twenty years was a monolithic golem, adopting a bipedal form to wreak destruction. Ramparts to defend from attacks, turrets to send out counterattacks, and barracks to build mechanical soldiers were all included within its towering frame.

Soujirou's figure vanished into the dark cloud. The peerless swordsman challenged an incomprehensible monstrosity, and his efforts had ended in vain—or so it seemed.

But that was not so. The Dungeon Golem's countermeasures were still active.

The attention of the monstrosity's enormous single blue eye was focused on an irregularity in its arm. A long black slice had appeared there. A diagonal gash was carved in its left arm.

"Heh."

With the practice sword still stuck inside the tip of the wound, Soujirou gave a bestial sneer. The next moment, he jumped off from the golem's left shoulder, evading the horde, and used the force of his descent to slash the Dungeon Golem's massive leg.

His movements had gone beyond the realm of reason.

Arrows. Cannons. Ever more golems, on top of it all. In the blink of an

eye, Soujirou jumped from one point to the next, rushing through like a murderous cyclone, with his small shadow dashing about.

The Dungeon Golem's profile also shifted dramatically. With a speed that was terrifying to witness, it swung the left leg onto which Soujirou had grappled.

"Coooooooo "

"...!"

The fierce centrifugal force launched Soujirou and the whole golem horde up into the deadly open air. For just a single minia, the vast difference in the scale of the attack made it impossible for him to outdo it with unbelievable speed or technique.

"Llll Luuuaaaaaaa "

The Dungeon Golem's howl was clearly distinct from its previous bellowing roars, which had lacked a brass tone.

The complex mesh of stone and iron that formed its chest armor had opened wide, and the light from the molten steel boiling inside, supernaturally blue, brightly illuminated the remains of Nagan.

"Luulaaal lel leee. Luolaue eeolu." (From Nagan to the heart of Naganerla. Light the night as the day.)

Yuno, together with a kind of resignation, watched the ending before her.

…Oh. There it is.

It was the light that had burned Nagan to the ground.

The Dungeon Golem was a weapon the self-proclaimed Demon King Kiyazuna had devoted all their skill and magic to creating, built to defeat the True Demon King. It could think, deal with the incomprehensible martial mastery of Soujirou, and its intelligence even allowed it to use Thermal Arts.

The metallic brass tone was an incantation.

"Lea lelooro. Looau luuaao. Leeo luouu—laaa." (Passing high clouds.

Edge of heaven and earth. Overflowing great seas—burn.)

A flash of destruction, and flames pierced the heavens. The light's trajectory split the clouds like an open maw.

Wind and heat exploded in waves, with the fires on the ground nearly being snuffed out entirely.

Right below the ray that split open the sky, the river turned to vapor, and

even from her distant spot on the hill, Yuno could see the sky begin to burn like an evening sunset.

Now then.

Was the Visitor from another world Soujirou also transformed into a wisp of vapor?

Yuno looked at the golem's outline, thrusting up into the sky.

She looked at the wasteland, void of enemies, and the iron machinery capable only of ravaging everything in its path.

Penetrating the explosive flames, a pair of eyes shined like a star of extinction.

The light—

The light began to slowly subside.

The Dungeon Golem's head fell to the ground.

"…Heh. All right, I get it now. So that's Word Arts, huh?" He was behind the open cross section of the golem's neck.

The strange swordsman, who should have been utterly obliterated after being knocked into the air and taking the destructive thermal blast, somehow survived.

It would have been impossible to grasp unless one had been surveying the situation from Soujirou's vantage—the moment before the blue molten steel Thermal Arts released.

In truth, just how much of a contrast was there between the Thermal Arts and the incomprehensible sorcery he'd used to evade that fireball of death?

Most likely, no one but him would believe that, launched into the air with the golem horde, he had kicked them ahead of him like skipping stones or that he had been able to instantly ascertain that the apex of his jump trajectory would bring him to the golem's head.

With that superhuman feat, he had conquered the attributes of the Word Arts he had heard from Yuno.

Word Arts commanded phenomena. Even destructive Thermal Arts had a designated direction and range of effect.

Therefore, it was impossible for the golem to send attacks toward its own body. That included the back of its head.

Its stone neck, thicker than a temple pillar, had fallen. The cross section

was dyed orange. It reflected the light of the flames like a mirror. An absurdly clean and straight cut.

Such a phenomenon, transcending all physical laws of the world, could only be considered a deed of demonic swordcraft.

"Wwwwooooooohhhhhh "

It came the moment Soujirou again rested his sword on his shoulder. An earth tremor, like a scream from deep within one's chest, shook the air. It wasn't a final dying breath. Though a reality-bending titan, the Dungeon Golem was a golem nonetheless, animated by way of an engraved core. Such a lifeless giant weapon couldn't experience death.

"Yup. Guess yours ain't here…"

At that moment, the monster began swinging its right palm down on Soujirou as he stood on the level surface that had once been the golem's neck.

The swordsman again leaped into the air. If the giant weapon was like a person, then the swordsman was more akin to a mosquito. The nimble speed he used to avoid the massive strike only underscored the comparison.

Without its head, its vital operational organ, the giant weapon tried blindly to knock off the enemy perched on its right shoulder.

The vast difference in the scale of the attack made it impossible for Soujirou to outdo with unbelievable speed or technique—

"—There's that life of yours."

1565, the eighth year of Eiroku.

Kamiizumi Nobutsuna, purported to be the master swordsman of the era, visited the Yagyuu lands together with his disciple, Jingo Izunokami.

At the time, the founder of Yagyuu Shinkage-ryuu, Yagyuu Muneyoshi, took Jingo Izunokami on as an opponent, and after defeating him with the so- called muto-dori—disarming and stealing your opponent's sword with your bare hands—Kamiizumi bestowed the Shinkage-ryuu school to Muneyoshi.

Some theories suggest that when a master swordsman swung their sword, it could reach speeds of close to 130 kilometers per hour. Additionally, the average blade length of a sword at the time was 0.8 meters long.

Now, with that in mind, was it even possible for an unarmed person to dodge through a 0.8-meter radius, faster than a 130-kilometers-per-hour sword swing, restrain the opponent's sword hand, and instantly disarm them? In reality, the muto-dori doesn't refer specifically to this technique but instead collectively to unarmed defensive techniques utilized against an armed opponent…though it has also been explained as a simple mental attitude that a sword, brandished in opposition, can in fact still save one's

life.

There are even some who see the abovementioned muto-dori as an overexaggerated and made-up anecdote.

Was it really possible to dodge with such speed and disarm an opponent within so short a window?

"Found it. There's your weak spot."

Soujirou, who had been standing on the Dungeon Golem's shoulder just moments before, was now in the air. Reading the movement of the golem's left arm, coming down to knock him away, he evaded the attack and jumped forward.

With superhuman leaping power, he seemed to have turned himself into a human missile with his slashing attack.

"That's it."

There was a loud crack.

The sound of something rupturing. It rattled out from the straight chasm sliced into the Dungeon Golem's left upper arm. He had been aiming for the Dungeon Golem's weapon from the very start—its left arm itself.

Just the same as before, he lengthened the initial slash he had carved into the golem's left arm even further.

He had made only a notch on its surface.

It was impossible to sever the entire arm, thicker than a city spire, with the blade of a practice sword.

However, things were different right now, as it swung its left arm down.

The added stresses from the straight incision came with the tremendous centrifugal force of the golem's colossal body weight.

"Hoo—o!"

There was an explosion.

The giant weapon's left arm, aimed at Soujirou as he jumped off its right shoulder, split apart at the laceration under the enormous weight of its own body.

With this, the fractured end of its left arm sailed forward, piercing its own right shoulder like a bomb dropped from above and crashing deep into its body.

Soujirou's true target wasn't just the section of the left arm he had crippled. It was the Dungeon Golem's life core, hidden deep within its thick frame, far beyond the reach of a direct strike from his sword. The inner mechanism of its right shoulder, blown apart under the gigantic weight of the golem's own left arm.

He had disarmed his enemy.

Were all the legendary tales of swords and swordsmen truly nothing more than conjured-up fantasy?

It happened as the golem's arm, nearly a hundred times his size, rushed down to crush the swordsman.

Was it really possible to dodge with such speed and disarm an opponent within so short a window?

"Muto-dori." Yes, it was.

The eccentric swordsman didn't see the results for himself. He slid off the golem's unstable torso, down its core, and past its waist. He continued hopping down the titanic mechanical body, unharmed as if by some natural and foreseen divine providence.

Shortly after Soujirou's small figure moved, all the mechanisms in the bigger figure began failing, the golem collapsing and sinking into the earth. Even the Dungeon Golem, created by the self-proclaimed Demon King

Kiyazuna, reacted like any other golem robbed of its Word Arts core.

It had taken less than a day for the Dungeon Golem to bring ruin to the Nagan Labyrinth City and less than a day for it to be destroyed.

Dust and ash spouted up into the air, like an inverted waterfall.

Yuno the Distant Talon drank in the scene before her, dumbfounded. "…He really took it down."

Returning to the hill unfazed, Soujirou looked like a minia. Not a gigant or a dragon. Just a minia, the same as Yuno herself.

"Got 'em. That was even more fun than killing those M1 guys."

"How, Soujirou…? How did you do that…?! I thought… I didn't think anyone would be able to stop a monster like that…"

"Huh? Just gotta put yourself in the shoes of whoever made the thing. Its feet didn't reach straight down to the ground. Too much weight on its waist. A weapon that shoots fire in its chest. It used its left arm first to attack. Only thing left was the upper part of its right arm."

"..."

It was clear the man had read and made the same sort of judgments about every single enemy he had cut down that day. They weren't hunches or speculation. They simply came from the instincts of a savage killer.

There was one other thing Yuno had learned about Visitors.

The power of Word Arts didn't work in the distant land from whence they came. It was a very fragile world, completely held together not by words but by just the laws of physics.

"Soujirou, what's an M1…?"

"The M1 Abrams? Forget it, not like you guys out here will know anything about it anyway."

It was those individuals who possessed power that deviated too severely from the natural laws of the Beyond, unable to exist there any further, who then drifted to this world as Visitors.

It was possible the ancestors of the elves, dwarves, ogres, and dragons of this world also came from sudden mutations first born in the world of the Beyond.

"Okay, I'm outta here." "…Wait."

Yuno called out to the departing Visitor.

The swordsman, a deviant from another world, was quite far removed from the normal young girl Yuno.

He took the form of a minia, but he was a monster, far surpassing the Dungeon Golem that had laid waste to Nagan.

"Soujirou. Here. It's just a packed lunch, though."

"Ah, yeah, that's right—I was hungry. I was having so much fun, I totally forgot. Thanks."

Ominous. Dreadful. Terrifying.

"Nice, this is delicious… Heh. Way better than bugs and grass, that's for sure. This world ain't too bad."

Still, after seeing the battle and having had her life saved many times over, Yuno finally understood the emotion welling inside her.

I get it. I—

Far beyond her reach, an emotion rose up that destroyed everything she had thought before, trampling over even her misfortune and grief.

I can't stand this man.

It was anger.

The Dungeon Golem and this Visitor were exactly the same.

Their absurd power looked down on the life she had led as puny and inconsequential, and someone as powerless as the young girl Yuno didn't even have the right to deny it.

"Next time. Next time, I wanna fight someone even more fun. Now, where should I go…?"

"...Aureatia." "What now?"

"If you're looking for strong opponents…you should go to Aureatia.

Right now, they've become the biggest country there is." "That so? All the strong dudes are there, huh?"

"...Yeah. Aureatia's council is gathering champions from around the world to decide on something really big and important. So I think…there will definitely be some people there who'll put up a fight."

"Nice. Sounds great."

Yuno had a terrible and vague suspicion.

—Why had the Great Nagan Labyrinth come to life that day?

Perhaps the reason was because of a visit from an outsider swordsman, a guest from an inconceivable world beyond. Maybe its defense mechanisms had activated automatically after detecting a powerful threat, on par with a Demon King.

On the other hand…if this Soujirou man was a true monster of battle, willing to go to any reckless lengths in his relentless pursuit of powerful opponents, it was possible he'd actually activated the labyrinth himself, simply for his own enjoyment.

—Vengeance.

There was nothing else left inside her.

It didn't matter if her animosity was misplaced or if there was barely a ghost of a chance her speculation was true… After losing everything, Yuno needed something within reach to prop herself up.

She would kill this man.

That's right. In this world, there were those powerful enough to do it.

Even the Great Nagan Labyrinth had been artificially created… In this world that accepted all deviants brought over from the Beyond, there were still a limitless number of truths and threats, more than anyone could hope to fully uncover.

There was the Second General of the Golden City—known by one and all

—Rosclay the Absolute. She knew the name of Trois the Awful, lurking in the far-off Wyte Mountains. Krafnir the Hatch of Truth, said to have mastered the fifth system of Word Arts, unknown to others. Kazuki the Black Tone came to mind, a Visitor who ended the Great Ice Flow nine years prior. Perhaps Lucnoca the Winter, who no one had ever seen before, too.

She had to show that there were those who could stand up to this man.

She had to learn just who he was and what this world of the Beyond was really like.

Finally, she would search across all the horizons for someone powerful enough to kill this unrivaled guest from another world.

"Soujirou. I'll…I'll show you the way. I'm just a Nagan graduate, but… that's enough to avoid suspicions in Aureatia."

"Sure. That's a good look you got there." "…Excuse me?"

"Ah, nah, just thanking ya. Means that from here on out, you can do whatever ya like, too. Freedom."

"...Right. Thank you."

Yuno smiled weakly back at Soujirou's snakelike grin, the edges of his mouth curled upward.

Lucelles was no longer next to her. The town she had lived in was burned to the ground.

She was free. Now, having lost absolutely everything, she felt like she could manage to do the preposterous.

"What's yer name?" "Yuno...Yuno the Distant Talon."

With her hatred supporting her, she began to walk. This was the beginning of their journey.

Now.

Dear readers, surely you are already aware.

This is but one person's story.

A single Shura, among a vast land crawling with countless hundreds of fiends and monsters.

Only the first of those seeking strife and conflict following the defeat of the True Demon King.

He was not wrapped up in the story; he wrapped himself up in this story on his own.

He was able to vanquish the largest golem in recorded history with a single blade.

He wielded unparalleled sword skills, unmaking universal legends into plain everyday truths.

He had a butcher's instincts, able to detect the fatal weak points on every and any living being he faced.

The last master swordsman, unable to be contained within the real world. Blade. Minia.

Soujirou the Willow-Sword.