There was. For that reason, their equipment was by no means lacking either, and in the case of the Icarot guardsmen, they were armored almost to the level of heavy knights.
However, due to the nature of moving on foot, great care had been taken to ensure their movement was not slowed, with armor made considerably lighter—armor employing techniques such as hollow armor (中空裝甲), for instance.
But even so, covering every part of the body was, in a word, impossible. Thus, the ears that had to hear and the joints that had to move could not be completely covered by armor.
“Graaagh.”
Two guardsmen, struck squarely in the Yifeng point below the earlobe by Magic Missiles, crumpled helplessly. The attack had come from such close range that there was no way to respond. Damon continued to launch himself about, driving Magic Missiles into vital points. Two more guardsmen, hit in the Daying point at the edge of the lower jaw and the Renying point beside the Adam’s apple, lost consciousness and collapsed. Every one of them was a vital point not covered by their helmets.
“Th-this is…”
Only then did the guardsmen seem to realize how serious the situation was, and their faces changed completely. But Damon continued to move with the same expressionless face. His mind had already attained perfect calm.
Damon hurled himself about almost in a trance, firing Magic Missiles indiscriminately. It was just like striking the acupoints of a wooden dummy.
“Guh.”
“Kyaaak.”
In an instant, half the guardsmen collapsed in a heap. Like the wind, Damon weaved through them, locating their vital points and subduing them one by one. Horrified by the sight, the guardsmen at last began retreating, one after another. They had realized they were no match for him.
“This is impossible.”
The captain of the guard shook his head again and again, his face pale. He could not believe that the guardsmen, the finest elites of Icarot, were being knocked down like autumn leaves in a gale. Yet the clash had only just begun, and already some thirty guardsmen had been rendered combat incapable. And the one who had done it was now approaching him at a speed his eyes could not even follow.
The guard captain bit down hard on his lip. As commander of the guard, he could not show weakness at a time like this. Thinking he would simply ram into him if he had to, he covered his body with his shield and charged forward. A thunderous shout burst from his lips.
“Hyaaaah… Guh.”
Unfortunately, his shout did not reach its end. As he charged like a wild boar, Damon lightly stepped aside and tripped him. Then, as the guard captain tumbled in an ungainly posture, Damon lightly suppressed his Qihu point (氣戶穴). The Qihu point beneath the armpit was a somewhat difficult vital point to subdue, but since the man had been flailing his arms to keep his balance, the unfortunate guard captain could not avoid his ill luck.
“Kuh, puhahahahaha!”
Sprawled flat on the floor, the guard captain suddenly burst into laughter.
“C-captain.”
The guardsmen were all bewildered by their captain’s incomprehensible behavior, but they were in no position to worry about anything else. The terrifying intruder who had toppled more than half their comrades was bearing down on them. To make matters worse, agonized screams erupted from behind them as well.
“Aaagh! My face…”
The guardsmen who turned their heads went visibly pale. The four comrades who had been facing Dietrich had also collapsed to the floor without exception. The guardsmen assigned to face Dietrich had been selected from among those with especially outstanding skill, so disbelief rose on their faces.
The guardsmen lay facedown, their faces all bloodied, wailing again and again. Just as he had learned from Damon, Dietrich had mercilessly slashed their faces. However, Dietrich too seemed to have suffered the same tactic, for a diagonal sword wound marked his face and blood streamed down from it. Yet unlike the guardsmen, he showed no sign of caring about the injury to his face.
Since four had attacked him at once, even Dietrich had been forced into a difficult fight at first. If it had been the Dietrich of the past, their swordsmanship would have been excellent enough that he could not have guaranteed victory even one-on-one. But Dietrich had already mastered several lethal techniques from Damon. At the critical moment, he displayed what he had learned without reserve and seized victory by the thinnest margin.
“Hah!”
When the cold flash of a blade shot toward his face, the startled guardsman hurriedly covered his face with his shield and stepped back. He was afraid his face might be wounded. But stepping backward in the midst of a fight was a posture that exposed the greatest number of openings. The guardsman, cut deeply in the thigh, collapsed helplessly. With one man down, Dietrich gained a bit of breathing room.
He continued to use the method he had learned from Damon, bringing the guardsmen down one by one. When another comrade fell, the remaining guardsmen ground their teeth and began using the same method as Dietrich. Driven by fury, they started attacking while aiming only for Dietrich’s face. But Dietrich had already been trained by Damon to the limit. Ignoring the flashes of steel digging toward his face, Dietrich thrust into the guardsmen’s vital points instead.
“Graaagh.”
Dietrich received a fairly deep sword wound across his face. But in exchange, the remaining two guardsmen were completely rendered combat incapable. Because the opponent they had naturally assumed would dodge did not dodge, they had no choice but to allow fatal openings. The guardsmen, pierced through the connecting parts of their armor, were sent flying.
Dietrich touched his face because of the pain, and when sticky blood came away on his hand, he approached the fallen guardsmen with an expression full of anger. Then, without the slightest hesitation, he slashed their faces.
“Uaaaagh!”
As the guardsmen clutched their faces and writhed, Dietrich coldly spat out a single sentence.
“I should return as much as I received, shouldn’t I?”
In just a few days spent with Damon, Dietrich had already come to resemble him even in temperament. After taking care of his own share, Dietrich did not even pause to catch his breath before charging at the remaining guardsmen. The sight of him unhesitatingly driving his sword into the back of a guardsman whose back was turned was something that would never have been seen from him before.
“H-heavens…”
Of course, the nobles watching the duel were shocked, but the one most shocked among them was Marquis Bricks. Having taught him personally, he knew his son’s swordsmanship better than anyone. As far as he knew, Dietrich had never been that strong. Though even he acknowledged Dietrich’s skill in sparring, sparring and real combat were fundamentally different.
The mindset required in real combat was to seize an opportunity and attack without the slightest hesitation, even amid spraying blood and flying flesh. That had also been what the old Dietrich lacked the most.
Yet the Dietrich now visible to his eyes was by no means the same as before. The way he fought the guardsmen made him look almost like a wolf starved for blood. In other words, the fighting spirit he had lacked before was now overflowing in him without the slightest deficiency.
“That boy. The wound on his face must hurt terribly…”
Though Marquis Bricks muttered in concern, a pleased smile had already appeared on his lips.
“Uaaagh!”
With the last guardsman dropping his sword and collapsing while clutching his abdomen, the situation came to an end. Among the fifty or so guardsmen, not a single one remained standing. Every last one had been brought down by Damon and Dietrich.
Of course, none of the guardsmen had died. Damon naturally could not kill because of the Sevenfold Severance Prohibition Art, and Dietrich too had stopped at injuring them enough to neutralize them.
“Uuugh…”
“I-it hurts…”
Everywhere, there was only the sound of the guardsmen groaning in pain. Among them was the laughter of the guard captain, which had turned into a sound almost like a wail because he could no longer endure it.
Damon, who had been looking down at the guard captain with expressionless eyes, soon approached and released his acupoint. If the Qihu point remained suppressed and he were left that way any longer, there was a risk he might become crippled.
“Krrk.”
The moment his acupoint was released, the guard captain lost consciousness from the shock. Damon rose and looked at Sergei with a triumphant air.
“Now there’s no one left to block the way… Shall I take my time punishing you?”
“…”
“No more, no less. Just take exactly a hundred blows. This is to appease the vengeful spirits of the soldiers who died because of you, so endure it even if it hurts… I won’t kill you, so don’t worry too much.”
Watching Damon approach while cracking his knuckles, Sergei opened his tightly closed lips.
“Remarkable skill. You’ve grown strong beyond imagination.”
“What?”
“Now I understand. I once received a report that an Ogre Hunter had appeared in the Eighth Legion. That was you.”
After speaking, Sergei turned his head. There stood Benitez, wearing an expression of astonishment.
“What did you make of it?”
“Pardon? What do you mean?”
“I’m telling you to explain how he dealt with the guardsmen.”
At Sergei’s irritated rebuke, Benitez barely managed to gather his wits.
“Yes. I will explain. First, he cast magic against the guardsmen. It was Magic Missile, appearing to be about the third circle, but cast as single shots, which amplified its power. In addition, because he used Haste magic in parallel, he was able to show such dazzling movement.”
“Even so, can guardsmen really be knocked down like that by something like Magic Missile? I find it impossible to understand.”
“He seems to have targeted only the guardsmen’s vital points. And because he fired from close range, the guardsmen were unable to avoid it.”
“Amazing.”
After letting out a brief exclamation, Sergei turned his head toward Damon.
“Was it in order to use that technique that you wanted to learn magic?”
“That’s right. That’s why I begged you for magic while enduring your wretched humiliation.”
Damon’s tone was extremely defiant and insolent, but Sergei did not seem to care about that at all.
“Amazing. To think you could become this strong in such a short time…”
Damon shrugged.
“Though I lost my power, all the knowledge of the past remained in my head. You overlooked that. There are roughly three hundred sixty-five vital points in the human body. Some prevent the body from moving, some cause unconsciousness, and some even render a person unable to speak. You saw it earlier, didn’t you? The guard captain doing nothing but laughing while unable to move. On top of that, the experience from countless real battles and my reflexes were already ingrained in my body. I wanted to learn magic so I could make use of them. But you completely blocked that opportunity from the start. So thoroughly it makes my teeth chatter.”
“I see. Then did you learn magic from that man named Doil?”
In that instant, a fierce light surged from Damon’s eyes.
“Don’t wag your mouth so carelessly! That man died because of you. If…”
Damon’s burning gaze drove into Sergei’s face. Befitting the prime minister of a nation, Sergei firmly received Damon’s glare without flinching.
“If I did not have to collect my master’s life-debt from the Red Dragon Berkis, you would not leave this place alive.”
A bitter smile appeared on Sergei’s face.
“I wonder if that is truly possible.”
Damon turned his head. At some point, the guard knights had deployed and now stood in dense ranks behind Sergei. As Damon watched, they soon moved to block Sergei’s front without the slightest gap.
“Is that the man?”
A fully armed knight approached and stood at attention beside Sergei. The armor wrapped around his body so tightly that not even wind seemed able to pass through, and its surface was covered in geometric patterns. Nevertheless, the armor looked extremely thin, so it did not seem likely to hinder his movements in the slightest. Seeing the fierce gleam leaking from the eye slits of the helmet, Damon could tell that the man was an expert. A Sword Master, as they called them here.