Chapter 52
My mind grows calm.
The turmoil that had shaken it ever since my body changed.
Now, it is as tranquil as a lake without a breath of wind.
“Let me introduce myself again.”
Everything I had agonized over until now.
That I wasn't some vulgar female who took joy in laying eggs.
What if, unable to return to my original body, I ended up submitting to this one?
And all the other wild speculations and delusions about the self that was changing.
“My name is Ren.”
Those worries
all scattered like the wind the moment I gripped the sword's hilt.
The moment I drew the sword, all that remained in the world was me and the sword.
And the things I had to cut down.
“I'm a swordsman.”
I spoke while aiming the tip of my raised sword at the enemy.
Because only through the sword could I prove that I was myself.
* *
Watching Ren raise her sword,
“Master.”
“…Yeah.”
At the sight of Luciela carefully clasping her own hand, which was steadily straying from human form,
Huey raised a trembling hand with an expression of resignation, took the familiar red talisman from inside his clothes, and swallowed it.
“Ghk.”
“Are you all right?”
As the scales covering his entire body slowly disappeared,
Huey's body, covered in lacerations unlike before, was revealed.
“I'm not all right….”
“Honestly, this is what happens when you go charging off without thinking just because the woman you like got hurt.”
“…Shut up.”
After Huey acted on his own despite their agreement to reassess the situation if the first strike failed,
Luciela puffed out her cheeks and protested.
“I'm not letting you off with just one or two puddings.”
“Yeah, I get it, so let's just put some distance between us for now.”
Watching Osmund, who had been rampaging as though he would kill them at any moment, turn completely away from them and focus only on Ren,
Huey and Luciela, overcome by an ominous feeling, forced their sluggish bodies to move and cautiously made their way toward the sphere of water in which Frederica had been trapped.
-Shiver.
As a chill ran over their entire bodies,
they unconsciously turned their heads to look toward Ren.
And.
At the end of that gaze,
-Tap.
Having drawn her sword completely,
Ren threw the scabbard she had held wrapped in a wing onto the ground,
and without hesitation, hurled herself toward the water's surface.
“Ren!”
Seeing Ren leap as though into the water,
Huey urgently called her name,
“…Huh?”
“What is that….”
Immediately afterward,
Huey and Luciela witnessed an unbelievable sight.
It was only natural.
-Splash! Splaash!
Ren, whom they had assumed would fall into the water,
was running across the surface, kicking off it at incredible speed.
While the two stood frozen at the incomprehensible sight of a person running atop the water,
“The Water-Stepping Technique: Lotus.”
Frederica, who had broken the sphere of water while Osmund was focused on Ren,
wrung out her thoroughly soaked hair as she approached and spoke.
“I hear it's a technique Ren learned while still studying under her master.”
“Ms. Frederica.”
“How…?”
Seeing how Huey and Luciela were wary of her to an extent not even comparable to when they had first met,
“Don't worry too much. As long as Ren is here, things won't go back to the way they were.”
Frederica, her expression bitter, stepped slightly away from them, seemingly to reassure them,
then spoke with a sigh of relief as she watched Ren race across the water.
“Fortunately, the gamble paid off.”
Even the person who had made the medicine had doubted its effectiveness,
but at this level, it was more than enough to count as a success in the current situation.
And so,
Frederica and the other two
decided to quietly watch Ren despite their exhaustion.
* *
With her sword drawn,
Ren ran across the water without taking her sharp gaze off Osmund.
Watching Ren like that,
Osmund reached out and began attacking Ren by manipulating streams of water, but
at the same time,
Ren disappeared.
“…!?”
Without even having time to blink,
Ren closed the distance in an instant and swung her sword, aiming for Osmund's neck.
-Kaaaang―!
However, perhaps Osmund had also prepared for a sudden attack in advance,
Ren's sword stopped before Osmund's neck after colliding with blackened, hardened space.
“Tch.”
At that, Ren clicked her tongue in disappointment,
then twisted her body to avoid the spikes of water surging up from beneath her feet before swinging her sword downward again.
-Shraaash!
At the same time, Osmund's figure vanished in a blink.
Having done nothing but split apart an innocent spike of water,
“This is why I hate cheap junk. The edge chipped after just two swings.”
Ren grumbled unhappily at the sword, whose edge had chipped in the collision moments earlier, and stared toward the distant space.
“What are you doing? Are you still planning to feel me out?”
With her sword pointed at Osmund, whose face was now completely covered by churning black energy,
Ren bared her teeth in a broad grin.
“Bring everything you've got. I'll smash you to pieces.”
Immediately afterward.
All the water filling Swinford began to ripple.
-Goooooo….
As a monstrous roar like a ship's horn echoed around them,
a small wave began to rise in the distance.
The small wave gradually grew,
before long becoming a massive tsunami with overwhelming mass,
seemingly capable of sweeping away the entire city.
And then.
-Kuwaaaang!
Even the buildings that had barely retained their shapes were shattered to pieces,
and Ren glanced toward Huey and the others behind her, who were frantically trying to find somewhere to flee after seeing the massive tsunami.
“Well… I suppose I'll play along.”
Ren gave a quiet chuckle and raised her sword.
And so,
toward the massive tsunami that had reached right before her eyes and covered the sky and earth, seemingly about to swallow her whole,
Ren instead swung her sword quietly from top to bottom, as though the wave were beneath contempt.
And then.
By the sword of a human who should have been powerless to resist,
-Shraaaash―!!
as if a miracle of the gods had occurred,
the tsunami split in two.
The broken wave became a feeble curtain of rain and drenched the surroundings,
and amid it, Ren alone glared at Osmund with red light flashing in her eyes.
Immediately afterward.
-Gloop.
At Osmund's gesture,
all the water filling Swinford began gathering in the air.
The water gathering
formed a cocoon of muddy water filled with blood, corpses, dirt, and rubble,
and what was born from that cocoon
-Kyaaaaaa―!!
was the form of a gigantic serpent with nine heads.
That gigantic serpent was precisely
the reason Osmund had once come to bear the epithet Storm Serpent.
Looking at the nine-headed serpent targeting her with unmistakable murderous intent,
“Good. That's more like it.”
Ren spoke with a gentle smile.
Her words were directed at Osmund, who was clearly watching her from beyond the muddy water.
“Watch closely.”
And likewise toward Huey, who was watching her from far away.
A moment later,
-Kwagwaaaang!!
attacks came rushing toward Ren from different directions.
And.
-Tap! Tap!
On the mud-slick ground left by the receding water, like a dancer,
sometimes fluidly, sometimes flamboyantly,
Ren moved her body
and dodged every attack.
“I won't have many chances to give you a demonstration.”
Though cold sweat broke out as pain gradually began to bloom deep within her body,
she began using her body to re-create everything she had once taught Huey without showing any sign of it outwardly.
After dodging the attacks for a while,
-Kwagagagak!
the storm's blades came rushing toward Ren, plowing up the ground.
And.
With the storm blades' onslaught as the turning point,
Ren's movements began to change.
Unlike the way she had smoothly avoided every attack surging up from the ground,
Ren kicked off the ruins of a building and sprang sharply into the air.
Immediately afterward, the serpent's nine heads charged at the airborne Ren with their jaws wide open.
“Look out―!”
It was at that moment that Huey, watching the scene, shouted urgently.
-Tap.
Ren, who had leaped up defenselessly and seemed to be offering herself as the serpent's prey,
stepped on empty air and sprang upward once more.
―The Air-Stepping Technique: Dandelion.
Once, twice, three times.
She stepped onto empty air,
and closed the distance to Osmund in an instant.
Just as Ren twisted her waist as if to swing her sword at Osmund after closing the distance,
“Keh, heh-heh.”
Osmund disappeared once more, leaving behind only a grotesque laugh.
Immediately afterward.
“You sure did a number on me earlier.”
Ren turned as if she had been waiting for it and looked at the nine heads of the serpent rushing toward her, with Osmund beyond them.
A red aura was already rising from her sword like a heat haze.
The aura spread as thin as thread and began wrapping around the sword,
before long, the red aura was woven tightly into the shape of a sharp blade.
Sensing something ominous in the sight, Osmund hardened the space before him,
but she ignored it, her red eyes flashing,
and swung her sword powerfully at the empty air.
And along that arc,
she cleaved apart the nine-headed serpent,
then shattered the blackened, hardened space as well,
-Shhk.
A red slash cleaved through Osmund along with the divine radiance protecting his body.
“Kuh… hngh.”
This red slash was, in fact,
one of the reasons the Ren of the past came to be called the Sword Saint.
The name of that technique was
“I told you, didn't I?”
Blade Wind―
“You'll regret not killing me when you had the chance.”“―Fang.”