“Uwooooooooooooh!”
“Haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!”
The two screamed at each other as they charged again.
A single mistake, a single lapse in concentration meant instant death.
They were moving so fast that there was no time to even think. They simply moved on instinct, trusting in their abilities, experience, and reflexes to carry them through.
Streaks of silver and crimson light dotted the sky as Noint’s swords and Hajime’s guns clashed over and over.
The storm of blows unleashed pulses of energy like a solar flare. The two continued speeding up, each trying to gain an edge over the other.
Before long, they were both drenched in blood, covered in a dozen small wounds. Hajime had shallow cuts all over his body, while Noint had bullet holes everywhere.
The two of them were evenly matched. Well, at that very moment, anyway. Hajime knew that the longer this continued, the harder it would get for him.
He’d realized that since the start of the fight, Noint’s mana reserves hadn’t gone down at all.
Hajime’s Limit Break, on the other hand, had a time limit. Once he hit it, the spell would be forcibly canceled, and he’d be left in a weakened state. Though Hajime’s own mana reserves were vast, they weren’t infinite.
Noint, however, seemed to be receiving unlimited mana from some unknown source. She would be able to maintain this state indefinitely.
Hajime examined her with his Demon Eye, trying to find what was supplying her with so much mana. He noticed a brilliantly glowing mana crystal was where her heart should have been.
He knew a protracted fight would be the end for him, so he bet everything on an all or nothing attack.
“Take this!” Hajime brought forth all of his Cross Bits, and fired a full-powered barrage of explosive slugs. He knew at this range the shockwaves would hit him too, but he was prepared for that.
“Have you lost your mind?” Surprise colored Noint’s normally emotionless eyes. Hajime’s actions seemed suicidal to her.
Dozens of explosive slugs shot out of Hajime’s six Cross Bits, enveloping the both of them in a whirlwind of shockwaves.
Noint wrapped her wings around herself, while Hajime activated Diamond Skin.
A massive crimson flower blossomed in the sky.
Dozens of shockwaves mercilessly pummeled Hajime and Noint’s bodies. They punched through Hajime’s Diamond Skin, severely damaging his internal organs. He gasped in pain and coughed up blood. The attack had left him devastated.
Noint, too, had suffered greatly. Her wings hadn’t been able to protect her completely, so she coughed up blood, her bullet wounds bleeding more than before. Her innards had been hit just as hard.
“Were you planning on dying together with me?”
“Haaah... Haaah... Give me a break. Who’d want to do a double suicide with you? Try saying that again when you’re at least half the woman my girlfriend is.” Hajime was panting with exhaustion, but his tone was light, as if he wasn’t worried at all. He scoffed at Noint. Who the hell would waste their life trying to kill you?
He pulled another weapon out of his Treasure Trove. It was small enough to fit between his fingers, and he flung it at Noint as if he were throwing a playing card.
The object made no sound as it traveled through the air, and was barely visible in the night sky, yet Noint casually batted it aside with her sword.
The fifteen-centimeter wide donut-shaped object spun away into the darkness. It resembled the chakrams Hajime had seen back on earth.
“Did you honestly believe something like this would work? Have you finally run out of idea— Ah!?” Noint had thought this was simply the final, futile struggle of one who’d already lost, but then Hajime pulled out his revolvers and started firing them to his sides.
Though Noint was directly in front of him, the bullets he fired suddenly appeared to her left and right, with all of them aiming for her head.
She instantly raised her swords to either side, using them as shields. Twelve bullets slammed into Noint’s swords in a burst of sparks. Like before, they all slammed into the same point.
Somehow, Hajime’s bullets had gone right for Noint despite the fact that he’d fired them in a completely different direction.
The secret to their sudden change in direction was in the chakrams he had thrown earlier. They had been enchanted with Hide Presence and Gale Claw, making them very useful assassination tools, but that wasn’t all they were capable of. He’d also enchanted them with spatial magic. They functioned as the same kind of warp gate that he’d made to kill the sea angel in the Sunken Ruins of Melusine.
If he shot something through one of his chakrams, it would appear out of the one paired with it. Furthermore, he’d made his chakrams of spirit stone, so he could control them freely like his Cross Bits.
Hajime had calculated everything, from Noint’s reaction time, to her position, to the approximate direction she’d knock his chakrams away to. And now, his barrage of bullets hit her swords exactly where he’d expected them to. Crack! Crack! Both of Noint’s swords snapped in half.
“Wha!? How... It shouldn’t have been that powerful...” She sure gets surprised a lot for someone who said they don’t have emotions.
Noint hadn’t noticed, but Hajime had been focusing his attacks on a certain point of her swords. During their entire close-combat fight, he’d made sure to aim his attacks at her swords.
It was precisely because he’d known their abilities were around equal that he’d tried to tip the scales by going for her weapons.
Hajime took advantage of the opening he’d created and pulled more artifacts out of his Treasure Trove, all of which he sent hurtling toward Noint.
Noint wasn’t able to dodge the ten or so objects he’d thrown at her, so she tried to knock them down with her shattered blades.
However, that was the worst possible move she could have made. What Hajime had thrown at her were wire bolas that were weighed down by ore on each side.
Normally you had to wind them up a little before throwing them, but as these were made of spirit stone, Hajime could control their flight directly without needing the extra centrifugal force. And naturally, they weren’t any ordinary bolas.
“Ah! I can’t move!?” The bolas wrapped around Noint’s swords, her arms, and her legs, then stopped in place. The spheres attached to the ends of the wires began pulsing with energy. Like everything else, they’d been enhanced with creation magic. He’d enchanted them with spatial magic so that they would be fixed in place, which in turn meant anything they captured would be trapped as well.
Of course, since Noint could disintegrate objects, even something as overpowered as that wouldn’t be enough to hold her for long. Moreover, it was impossible to seal her wings. Even if Hajime had trapped them with his bolas, Noint could make them vanish and reappear at will. With her skills, she could buy enough time to do that as well.
Still, all Hajime needed was to hold her in place for a few seconds. That was enough time to hit her with his finishing move.
He wasn’t going to let this fight go on any longer. Hajime pulled a massive, two-meter long cannon out of his Treasure Trove.
It was his railgun-enhanced pile bunker. Sparks ran down the cannon’s length as it began charging. A high-pitched mechanical whirr prickled Hajime’s ears. He dashed forward, cannon in hand.
“Ngh...” Noint wrapped her wings around herself like a cocoon. The light emanating from them intensified, and she glowed like a second moon.
Hajime rammed his pile bunker into her beautiful barrier. The four arms attached themselves to her wings, fixing the cannon in place. They’d been enchanted with spatial magic, so Noint wouldn’t be able to dissolve them easily. The cannon’s length was coated in red sparks. It seemed the bunker was nearly charged.
“Let’s see you block this one.” Hajime’s lips twisted up into a feral grin, murder in his eyes.
He was wreathed in a blinding
crimson aura, the light of his Limit Break eclipsing Noint’s silver glow.
A tiny, invisible shockwave ran across the muzzle’s length as the pile bunker shot forward.
Hajime had added even more features to his ultimate weapon. He’d enchanted the stake with a compacted version of Void Fissure. The vibrations from the spell decimated the defenses of anything the stake touched.
On top of that, gravity magic increased the weight of the stake to over twenty tons as it shot out. There was a thunderous bang as the charged energy drove the stake down.
The atmosphere trembled as it slammed into Noint’s wings.
Powered by blastrock, Hajime’s Lightning Field, and the force of his mana, the spinning Azantium stake bore through her defenses.
It shredded her wings easily, and punched straight through her heart. The tip of the stake passed through her back where her wings sprouted, and kept going.
It flew off into the horizon like a meteorite, trailing red sparks behind it.
“Ah—”
“.....”
There was a gaping hole where her crystal heart, the source of her mana, had been. As Hajime’s Lightning Field had surrounded the stake, it had cauterized the wound, so no blood dripped from the hole. The last remnants of Noint’s wings dissipated, leaving her looking smaller than before. Even now, there wasn’t a trace of human emotion in her eyes.
Though Hajime couldn’t help but feel that there was a hint of reproach in her expression. The light slowly left her pupils, and she fell lifelessly to the mountainside below.
Her glowing silver figure was easy to spot on the dark ground underneath.
Hajime slowly lowered himself to where she had landed, and pointed Donner at her head. His Demon Eye and his Sense Presence skill both told him she was well and truly dead, but he wouldn’t rest easily until he’d blown her head off. It had become somewhat of a bad habit of his.
“Looks like this ‘Irregular’ was more than you could handle.” He wrapped his finger around the trigger. However, before he could pull it, he was interrupted...
Boooooooooooooooooom! By an explosion so powerful it shook the entire mountain.
Hajime turned around to see a giant mushroom cloud rising above where the Holy Church’s main cathedral had been.
“No way.” Hajime’s muttered words melted away into the night.
He stared, slack-jawed, as the Holy Church crumbled to nothing. He’d only ever seen something like this in old war documentaries back on earth. Just then, he received a telepathic message.
“M-Master...Are you alright?”
“Huh? Oh, Tio. Yeah, I managed to finish off my opponent...”
“I see. Wonderful. I expected no less from you. We’ve finished up here as well, can you meet up with us?”
“I don’t mind but uhh, I think I just witnessed something amazing...”
“We can explain that. Or rather, we were the cause of it...”
“What?”
“For now, let’s rendezvous.”
“Gotcha, works for me.”
Hajime hurried over to where Tio said she was. Apparently, she knew what had utterly obliterated the Holy Church’s main temple and its core followers.
As he flew into the air, he spotted Tio in her dragon form flying a short distance away from the mushroom cloud.
Riding on her back was Aiko, who seemed to be panicking over something. What’s Sensei doing here? Actually, knowing her I think I can guess. She must have asked Tio to let her help. She’d never run while others are fighting, after all.
What interested Hajime more was why Aiko was acting like she’d just done something she wasn’t supposed to.
“Sensei, Tio. Looks like you’re both alright.”
“Th-Thank goodness you’re alright, Nagumo-kun! I was really worried.”
“Master. For a moment back there I thought we might be done for, but we somehow made it out alive. I suppose I should have known your teacher would be just as dangerous as you. I did not expect my breath to become so powerful with her help. I must say, I’m impressed.”
Hajime blinked in confusion. Then, with an incredulous look, he turned to Aiko.
“Sensei, what on earth did you do?”
“Awawawawa! I-It’s not what you think! I didn’t mean for it to end up like this. It’s just, the pope’s barrier was really strong so... I thought maybe if I amplified the strength of Tio-san’s breath, she’d be able to break through it...”
Aiko began panicking once again, her relief from seeing Hajime safe forgotten. Though her explanation was a little haphazard, Hajime more or less got the gist of what had happened.
Aiko had decided to help Tio fight Ishtar and the other bishops in order to prevent them from weakening Hajime.
However, she’d had no magic circles handy. So even though she was an outstanding magician, she hadn’t been able to offer any offensive support. Moreover, the main cathedral had apparently been an artifact that deployed a barrier around itself. The barrier was quite powerful, and not even Tio’s breath could breach it.
Unless Aiko did something, Ishtar and the others would be able to cast their spell without interruption. While Tio had been dodging attacks from the Templar Knights, Aiko wracked her brains over how best to neutralize the barrier. Eventually, she realized that her job had just the skill for this situation.
These were her current stats at the time:
Aiko Hatayama Age: 25 Female Level: 56
Job: Farmer
Strength: 190
Vitality: 380
Defense: 190
Agility: 310 NPNI Magic: 820
Magic Defense: 280
Skills: Soil Management — Soil Restoration [+Automatic Restoration] — Large-scale Cultivation [+Improved Scale] [+Contamination Conversion] — Enhanced Fertilization — Selective Breeding — Plant Appraisal — Fertilizer Production — Mixed Breeding — Auto Harvesting — Fermentation Proficiency [+Fermentation Acceleration] [+Large-scale Fermentation] — Wide-area Temperature Control [+Temperature Optimization] [+Weather Barrier]— Farming Barrier — Fertile Rain — Language Comprehension.
The skill Aiko had used had been Fermentation.
Though the mountain itself was made of rock, it was inhabited by people. That meant there were plenty of things lying around for Aiko to ferment. Though this was Tortus and not earth, most organic materials still emitted a gas similar to methane when they fermented.
So she’d fermented everything she could reach, filling the church with a flammable gas. Since Fermentation wasn’t an offensive spell, the cathedral’s barrier hadn’t blocked it. It had to let things like gas and air through, or the people inside wouldn’t be able to survive after all. Tio had used wind magic to control the atmosphere around it too, making sure the gas didn’t disperse.
Once Aiko had created enough flammable gas, Tio had fired her breath at it, hoping the combination would be enough to destroy the church’s barrier. Except it had done a lot more than just destroy the barrier.
“So that’s what happened.”
“Indeed. We were blown away by the explosion as well. I truly thought I was about to die. Not only did it destroy the barrier, but it took the entirety of the church along with it... I have never seen such a strange way to fight in my life. Your mentor is someone to be feared, Master. I am in awe of her abilities.”
“It’s not like that! I didn’t think the explosion would really be that big! I just wanted to make sure there’d be enough to destroy the barrier! Really! Wait! What happened to all the bishops and knights!?”
Aiko turned her gaze back to the church in a panic, as if she’d only just remembered them. Hajime and Tio followed her gaze, examining the rubble of the cathedral.
“Well, they were probably blown away too.” The cathedral had been so utterly demolished no one could recognize what it had been originally. There’s no way any of them survived that.
“They put too much faith in their barrier. I am certain they had no cont
ingency measures in place in case it was ever destroyed. And I suspect they could not have survived an explosion like that head-on.”
“B-But then... I mean, I was prepared to fight, but...”
Aiko paled as she realized she was responsible for the death of the Holy Church’s leadership. She’d been prepared to fight, and perhaps even to kill, but not like this.
She doubled over and vomited. Hajime scratched his head, at a loss for what to say. He drew close and grabbed Aiko’s vomit-stained hands. If nothing else, maybe some human warmth would do her good.
The warmth of his hands was the only thing that kept her from sinking into the depths of despair. Completely forgetting that they were still student and teacher, Aiko flung herself into Hajime’s arms and started bawling her eyes out.
“My poor back... Well, I suppose it’s not such a big deal.” Tio grumbled about the vomit on her back as she started casting restoration magic.
Ideally, Tio would have liked to let Aiko stand back up on her own. Tio was the one who’d actually shot the breath, so there was no need for Aiko to blame herself. But they didn’t have time for a long discussion about this, so Tio settled for using restoration magic to stabilize Aiko’s sanity.
Her spirits somewhat restored, Aiko looked up at Hajime. Though her face was covered in tears and snot and vomit, Hajime didn’t seem to mind too much. He casually pulled a towel out of his Treasure Trove and wiped her face down. Embarrassed, Aiko meekly let him clean her up.
“Have you finally calmed down, Sensei?”
“Y-Yes. I-I’m fine now. Nagumo-kun...” Aiko flushed red. A slight hint of longing entered her voice when she said Hajime’s name. It was clear from the way she was looking at him that it wasn’t just embarrassment that had caused her to blush.
Until now, Hajime had only seen Aiko as his teacher and nothing more. But now that she was looking at him like that, he was forced to consider that she might be in love with him. You’re kidding, right? This isn’t really happening, is it? Hajime thought with a stiff expression.
Hajime quickly averted his gaze, just as Tio called out a warning.
“Master. There’s someone here. They don’t appear normal...”
Arifureta: From Commonplace to World's Strongest Vol. 6 Page 11
