Arc-6 Ch-10

I felt a shock on my back, and a roaring blast shook the eardrums I thought had been sealed shut.

Even though I crouched behind the iron crate I was using as a shield, there was no way to completely block the impact in this narrow passageway.

Someone was lying on top of me, and the crushing suffocation made my breathing erratic.

My brain shook as if I had been punched hard in the head, and I felt sick, on the verge of vomiting.

It was hard to tell whether my body was shaking from the explosion’s shockwave or because my five senses were paralyzed.

Still, I forced myself to stand up with sheer willpower. I couldn’t accept that this was how it would end.

To lure the giant into a trap using ordinary explosives, I had laid down multiple stepping stones.

Handheld weapons wouldn’t easily take down a giant. My trump cards, magic bullets and magic bombs, were nullified by its magic barrier.

Regular bullets had some effect if fired from a large-caliber pistol, but small handguns and rifles were underwhelming. Explosives worked, but I had limited numbers and couldn’t finish it off with them alone.

That’s why I needed to land a sure hit by exploiting an opening.

And a single blow wouldn’t be enough. It had to be a devastating strike from an unexpected direction.

The repeated sniping and frontal attacks that barely scratched it were all to make it lower its guard.

Anyone harbors the cruelty of wanting to trample an enemy driven to despair when nothing they try works.

Seeing my panic, this thing tasted the pleasure of hunting prey. Its lack of experience in fighting humans also worked in my favor.

I used smoke grenades repeatedly to escape not just to confuse my position, but mainly to condition its expectations.

After a smoke screen, I either fled or attacked from hiding. Regular bullets barely worked, and magic bullets or bombs were blocked by the magic barrier.

So it would conclude that maintaining the barrier constantly while chasing me was the most efficient strategy.

That’s the opening I exploited to set the trap.

A narrow passage. Zero visibility at its feet due to smoke. The overconfidence that its magic barrier rendered all attacks useless.

Because I had repeated the same pattern so many times, it walked straight into the very first trap I had ever prepared for it.

Its learning ability was indeed terrifying. If I kept using half-hearted attacks, it would adapt immediately, and the longer the fight dragged on, the lower my chances of victory became.

Its arrogance was understandable given that learning ability, but on the battlefield, that very intelligence becomes fatal.

Because it was smart, it never noticed its own thinking was being guided. Because it was arrogant, openings appeared.

History is full of famous generals who carved their names into the annals only to die in unbelievable defeats for exactly that reason. The stronger they are, the more they overestimate their strength.

Even the venom of a trivial bee will swell your whole body and kill you if you’re stung enough times. A rat bite can bring fever and death.

Looking down on a weaker opponent is fatal.

I am weak. I’m slightly above average, but I’ve met mountains of people stronger and smarter than me.

And I’ve seen just as many of those superior people die.

The reason I’m still alive is because I’m a coward who survives by doing whatever the enemy hates most and bringing them down that way.

The ignominious title of “Villainous Knight” suits someone like me perfectly.

Smoke from the smoke grenades, dust from the ordinary explosives, and the concussive wave that rattled my brain.

Thanks to all the effects caused by the trap, visibility was atrocious.

I groped around near the iron crate, relying on half-useless eyesight.

My fingertips touched cloth and metal. Jackpot.

To avoid hindering my movement, I only carried equipment essential for fighting the giant.

Anything that might get in the way or too heavy to carry was hidden near the trap.

It was insurance in case I failed to finish it off, but when it comes to combat, over-preparing is just right.

“It cost extra money and time because I was too cautious” is something you can recover from, but “I lost because I didn’t prepare enough” isn’t even worthy of being a joke.

I stroked the metal lump my fingers found to confirm it, then fastened it to my waist.

A sword wouldn’t work against the giant—I knew that, I really did—but I had already used up most of my bullets and bombs.

If it came to close quarters, I needed some means to fight the giant bare-handed.

I hung the cloth bag that had been placed with the sword from my waist, shouldered the rifle, and turned around.

I had no idea how much time had passed since the trap went off.

A few seconds? Tens of seconds? Or hundreds?

Creak… Screeech…

Mixed with the echoing sound of rubble falling to the floor, an unpleasant metallic grinding noise reverberated through the passage.

Part of me trembled in fear, praying the giant was dead, while another part was certain I hadn’t finished it.

To begin with, I had deliberately reduced the number of ordinary bombs used in the trap and distributed them evenly across both walls instead of concentrating them in one spot.

If I had used every bomb, even I wouldn’t have escaped unscathed.

I had set the explosions on both walls to crush the giant between them, but I lacked enough data to judge how effective that would be.

As the smoke and dust began to settle, something blinking and glowing started moving.

I was scared—so scared—yet my body reflexively raised the rifle.

As the smoke thinned further, the source of the overwhelming pressure in front of me was revealed.

Still alive. The giant was still alive.

Despair and, at the same time, a strange sense of course-it-is-so washed over me.

There was no way the creature I had fought this long and failed to kill would die to a simple trap.

Feeling relief at that was something you only feel toward a truly formidable enemy.

I even felt a kind of divinity, a reverence.

But its movements had clearly slowed.

It was no longer floating as it had before; it was desperately pressing both hands against the floor to keep from collapsing.

So the strange noise had been the sound of the floor scraping under its hands.

There were scorch marks all over its body, and parts of its exterior were warped from the explosion damage.

The usually talkative giant wasn’t hurling abuse, which showed just how rattled it was.

I couldn’t tell if the sluggishness was permanent or temporary, but there was no mistake—this was the opening I had finally been granted.

Now or never.

The moment I thought that, I was already running.

I closed in so near that my body nearly touched the giant’s enormous frame blocking the narrow passage, then slipped past its side.

“…Hh? …!”

I didn’t know if it was a groan or a curse—just some breath-like sound the giant let out—but I ignored it. I had no time to care.

I passed its side, got behind it, and turned around.

The giant’s back, which I had sniped countless times, somehow looked smaller.

My instincts must have sensed that its strength had weakened. If I was going to attack, it had to be now.

I thrust my hand into the cloth bag and pulled it out.

A custom bomb bundle: several fire magic bombs and regular explosives taped together.

Making this had forced me to fight the giant with even fewer explosives than I had brought.

The power was on another level. Even if I released the safety and ran with everything I had, I would still be caught in the blast.

It would have been ideal to rig a timer, but I had neither the engineering knowledge nor the materials.

The only method I could think of was to stick it where the giant couldn’t reach and detonate it with a shot from afar.

Fortunately, the trap had slowed it down. This had to work.

I charged toward the giant’s exposed back.

It was almost prone now. Climbing onto its back should be doable.

I reached for the skirt-like lower section and started climbing.

I had always been good at climbing trees, and during my soldier days I often scaled buildings for reconnaissance and lookout duties.

The movements a soldier needs are running, jumping, and climbing. A soldier weak in any of those won’t survive the battlefield.

“…What… are… you… doing…”

The giant’s voice came out broken and hard to understand. I felt satisfaction that all my accumulated attacks had meant something.

Lower body, waist, back—I climbed in that order. My target was right there.

Once on its back, I pressed the bomb bundle against it and stuck it on.

It was ugly work, but it was going to explode anyway. Appearance didn’t matter.

All that was left was to climb down, put some distance, and shoot it to detonate.

Just as I started descending, the giant’s body swayed violently and I lost balance.

I somehow managed to get down to its waist, but then its body tilted again.

The next instant I tried to brace myself, a huge shadow loomed from the corner of my vision.

Thanks to my perception stretching out, I recognized that the approaching thing was the giant’s arm.

I had experienced the same thing many times before.

During the war with the Fanorth Principality when I almost died. When sky pirates pointed guns at me during a kidnapping. When I was cornered in my duel with His Highness.

When my life is in danger, my consciousness awakens and the whole world feels slow-motion.

I was feeling it again—which meant I was about to die!

The giant’s slowly approaching arm was bigger than my entire body.

If that metal mass hit me, I’d be ground into mincemeat without a trace.

I poured strength into my legs and leapt backward.

Its arm swept through the space I had occupied seconds ago.

I forcibly twisted my body to dodge.

I barely evaded the fingers extending from the palm that had been right in front of my face.

But it wasn’t perfect. The fingertips that grazed my head touched my left shoulder.

A child poking an insect with a finger—an innocent little motion.

The instant I was touched by that casual contact, my consciousness fell into darkness.

BOOM!

A shock to my back brought me back to consciousness.

I didn’t know what had happened, only that my back and left shoulder hurt.

I frantically looked around and pieced together my memory.

I was lying on the metal floor, and right in front of me a huge metal mass was desperately trying to push itself up, writhing with hands planted on the ground.

Only then did I finally remember what happened.

It was nothing complicated. The giant had simply swung its arm roughly to shake me off its back.

I, unable to dodge a blow from that awkward position, had been pathetically flung to the floor.

It was so straightforward it was almost funny.

After trapping the enemy, I got cocky about victory and took a counterattack instead—what an idiot.

I had lost consciousness for a few seconds from the moment I took the hit to my left shoulder until I rolled onto the floor.

It was nothing short of luck that I woke up immediately instead of staying knocked out.

Which of us—me sprawled pathetically on the floor or the giant—would stand up first?

That would decide the outcome of this fight.

I desperately moved my limbs and rolled, and intense pain assaulted me so fiercely I nearly stopped breathing.

Thanks to my backpack, the impact of hitting the floor had been softened, and I hadn’t cracked my head—that was good.

The problem was my left shoulder where the giant’s finger had struck.

The agony in my left shoulder made me break out in sweat and nearly stop my breath.

I bit my lower lip hard, used the rifle as a cane, and stood up.

It hurt. It just hurt.

It felt like the collarbone, maybe the sternum, or perhaps the upper arm bone was damaged.

From battlefield experience, it probably wasn’t a complete fracture, but there might be a crack.

Bruising was certain. I wanted to take off my clothes and check the injury, but time was too precious right now.

I forced myself up and ran desperately down the passage in my pathetic state, but I was much slower than I expected. Every step I took sent a wave of intense pain that nearly stopped my breathing, but if I didn’t run, I was the one who would die.

Even though it was just a “finger,” the giant’s finger was a metal rod as thick as my arm. A human body struck by such a weapon couldn’t possibly come out unscathed.

If it had hit my head, instant death. If it had hit my leg, I wouldn’t even be able to walk, let alone run.

Surviving with only this level of injury was a miracle. I absolutely could not let this opportunity slip away.

I could hear something dragging and crawling behind me, but I was too scared to look back.

※　※　※　※　※

Without even properly checking my wounds, I reached the open area near the airship from the passage and hid myself.

I didn’t know how long it would take the giant to catch up to me. I had to finish my final preparations before then.

I tried to load a fire magic bullet into the rifle, but I dropped it on the floor.

I hurriedly tried to pick it up, but it didn’t go well. My left shoulder hurt, and my fingertips were numb.

It took many times longer than usual to finish loading. The pain in my left shoulder only grew worse.

This was bad. Shooting while moving seemed impossible. To begin with, the pain made quick movements impossible.

I made up my mind, bent my right leg, raised my left leg, placed my left elbow on my left knee to stabilize it, and shifted into a sitting firing position.

My left shoulder still hurt, but if I didn’t move, it became a little better, so I would snipe like this.

Within rifle range, where the bomb’s blast wave would be minimal. I had to judge that exact line and shoot the bomb. That was the most certain method I could take right now.

Battles were always irrational and rarely went as planned.

In such situations, the only way for me to survive was to struggle and seize victory.

Heat built up in my left shoulder injury, making my whole body hot. My consciousness felt distant, like I had caught a fever.

Creeeeeeeeeak…

An unpleasant metallic sound came from the passage.

Just thinking that the giant would appear here any moment made my heartbeat quicken.

My body was reacting to fear in all sorts of ways.

Sweating, palpitations, dizziness, headache, and everything else.

It should have been impossible to concentrate, yet for some reason my mind was calm.

Intuition and experience were telling me that the end of the fight was near.

The giant slowly emerged from the passage.

Its unusually slow movements could have looked like it was trying to intimidate the surroundings, but that wasn’t it.

The accumulated damage had definitely weakened the giant. If it had been the same one I first encountered, it would have noticed me hiding in a position that could be found with just a little searching.

I narrowed my eyes and looked at the giant’s back. If the bomb had come off, my defeat would be decided at that moment.

When I stared carefully, a black lump was stuck to the giant’s back. The first stage had succeeded.

Even humans can’t reach their own backs if their joints are stiff. Though it was shaped like a person, I had thought that for a giant whose arms were as thick as its torso, joints and decorations would interfere, making it impossible to touch its back.

From there, I would add further attacks. This was the maximum firepower I could muster right now.

The giant floated up from the floor and moved forward. The farther it went, the lower the accuracy from my position became.

But if it was too close, I would be caught in the explosion and we would both go down together. Judging that distance was difficult.

My shooting skill was above average. Unlike the heroes, I couldn’t do something skillful like shooting an enemy in the head from far away.

With clumsy skill and injured to boot, even the usual me would think it impossible to hit that bomb.

The usual me would have already given up, thinking it was over.

Yet right now, for some reason, I was enjoying this situation.

The heat in my dizzy body, the sweat dripping from my forehead, the intense pain blocking my thoughts, the irritatingly loud heartbeat.

I felt all of them as if they were far away.

My senses sharpened, and it felt like my soul was separating from my body and drifting away.

Unnecessary things were steadily being stripped away from inside me, making me simpler.

Right now, I was no longer Leon Fou Bartfalt. I was a single rifle, a single bullet.

One more step and the giant would be outside the range where I could hit it with the rifle.

Normally I would panic and pull the trigger, but right now I was somehow calm, as if it were someone else’s affair.

The instant the giant reached that spot, I slowly and gently moved the finger on the trigger.

The hammer fell, striking the primer of the magic bullet loaded in the rifle, and the gunpowder ignited.

The sharpened senses conveyed to me how the force inside the barrel converged in one direction and the bullet was fired.

The bullet flying through the air carried engraved magic and tore through the atmosphere.

A hole opened in the bundled bombs. The moment it hit, the fire magic activated, and the bombs ignited in a chain reaction.

BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!!!!!

A few instants after the explosion’s flash burned my eyes, the biggest explosive sound and impact I had ever experienced in my life assaulted me, and I was thrown rolling across the floor.

The senses that had been dulled by the blast suddenly rushed back into my body, and I let out a groan.

Writhing from the heat and pain that once again gnawed at my body, I desperately stood up.

From the place where the giant had been, black smoke and crimson flames were shooting up in a terrifying spectacle.

I had expected this would happen if I shot a fire magic bullet into regular bombs on top of fire magic bombs.

The destructive power exceeded my predictions, sending a chill down my spine.

It was good that I hadn’t poured in all the bombs I had on hand. Yeah, really.

While vaguely thinking such things, I set the rifle down on the floor.

I took out the large pistol from my breast pocket and loaded bullets. Two of them were specially made.

As long as there was nothing to keep burning, magical flames would extinguish immediately once the embedded mana was exhausted.

While the flames burned, I kept the gun trained on it, maintaining zanshin.

When the smoke and flames died down, a charred black metal mass became visible.

Lying on its back like a child, that was the giant I had been fighting all this time.

I approached step by step, observing the situation.

If I couldn’t finish it off with this, I truly had no moves left.

I stepped into range with its humanoid arm. The humanoid didn’t move.

The moment I took one more step,

Clang! Roar!

The humanoid suddenly moved and raised its arm.

“As expected, that’s how it is.”

BANG!! Crackle!

When the bullet fired from the large pistol hit the humanoid, purple lightning fell around it.

The large pistol I had received from that muscle-headed Greg was originally a prototype from the Holfort Kingdom’s weapon development department.

Though it was called the weapon development department, it also included inventions related to magic.

This large pistol had originally been created as a prototype for miniaturizing magic bullets.

It was apparently made under the design philosophy of whether a smaller, more portable gun for magic bullets than a rifle could be produced.

The result was a large gun that ordinary soldiers couldn’t handle at all. It wasn’t funny.

“…?! …!!?”

“Ouch!”

The giant groaned from the damage of the magic bullet hitting it, and I groaned from the recoil of the large pistol.

Even someone somewhat famous like me had to fire it with both hands under normal circumstances, yet I had fired this dangerous object while injured.

The recoil transmitted to my left shoulder, and intense pain like my brain was being kneaded assaulted me.

Still, the giant’s movements stopped due to the damage, though not as much as from a magic bullet.

Even though the large pistol’s bullets were larger than regular pistol bullets, they were shorter and smaller than rifle bullets.

The power was modest, and due to the difficulties in processing from miniaturization, each bullet cost more than twice as much. The instruction manual that came with the large pistol had been full of such problems.

Could it be that muscle-headed Greg had conveniently disposed of a defective product by “giving” it to me?

Well, whatever. Settling things with the giant took priority now.

BANG!! Crackle!

I fired another magic bullet, and the giant’s movements dulled. It hurt me too, but I couldn’t afford to take my time.

I avoided the sluggish giant’s arm and approached its head.

The giant tried to protect its head with its arm, but it was too late.

BAM! BOOM!! BANG!! BAM!!

With every shot into the giant’s head, the light I assumed were its eyes flickered weakly.

The places hit by the bullets caved in, but it was still far from a fatal wound.

Since it had come to this, it was the final measure. I drew the sword fastened at my waist.

Thanks to repeated explosions and magic bullets, the giant’s armor was distorted in many places and cracks had formed.

There didn’t seem to be any important organs in the lower body. The arm armor was too thick for my blade to bite, and the torso was too large for the sword to reach deep enough.

Then the only place left to attack was the head.

Some monsters didn’t have heads or had heads and bodies separate, but I could only pray the giant wasn’t like that.

I thrust the sword into the caved-in armor at the neck and the cracks that seemed to be joints.

It felt more like using an axe or spear than a sword.

I put my weight from directly above and churned the inside of the neck with the blade tip.

The flickering of the light in the head grew more intense, and at the same time the giant shook its body violently.

Groooar

The giant’s palm hit my back. It wasn’t much of an impact, but it reverberated through my left shoulder injury and hurt.

Was it desperately trying to stop me? The giant’s arms trembled, but the movements were sluggish and weak.

Squelch! Rip! Clang!

I felt something being crushed at the blade tip and heard something tearing.

If compared to a human, was it like crushing and cutting the carotid artery, windpipe, and spine in the neck?

Of course that would be painful. I now fully understood why executioners were a specialized profession meant to reduce the suffering of condemned criminals.

“Sto… p… Leo… Ba… rtfort”

Whether it was desperate resistance or not, it muttered something like my name.

Why was I doing something like this?

There was no meaning in killing each other. I wasn’t even enjoying hurting someone I held no grudge against.

Unnecessary thoughts swirled in my head, but I stopped them.

To begin with, it was this thing’s fault for not listening. To make it listen, I first had to reduce its ability to resist.

Talks came after that.

The blade had advanced quite far. At this rate, it would pierce through.

Just when I thought that, the giant’s hand grabbed my body and desperately swung its arm to tear me off.

Final resistance? The force was greater than I expected, and I felt my life in danger.

No choice. The last resort.

I slammed hard on the mechanism hidden near the hilt and guard of the sword.

Whoosh!!

The small amount of gunpowder and spring mechanism hidden inside the hilt activated, and the blade was ejected.

Clang…!

The ejected blade stabbed deep into the giant’s neck and stopped when it hit the armor on the opposite side.

At the same time, the strength in the giant’s arm that had been grabbing me weakened, and I fell to the floor.

After watching that scene to the end, I thrust out my tightly clenched right fist.

“I won.”

What filled my chest was not the joy of victory, but only the emptiness of battle.

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Authors Note

┻━⁠━━━━⁠━━⁠━━━⁠┻

The battle with Luxion has been settled.

The difference in outcome from the original Leon is due to combat experience and better physique.

It’s a little short because the front-and-back battle episodes were extended.

Luxion has few lines because it was focused purely on combat + heavy damage.

With the next chapter, the story of Leon searching for Luxion ends, and the perspective will shift to another story.

Addendum: At the request of the client, DanZr-sama drew an illustration. Thank you very much.

DanZr-sama - Pixiv

I would be encouraged for the future if you could give me your opinions and impressions.