EP.151 The Path Flows with the Traveler - 7
They remembered his presence a beat too late. This man had disappeared so naturally and left no trace of aura anywhere, fading from everyone's attention.
General Partlaxion sat astride the container, looking down at them with a bored expression.
"I was originally on vacation, so I didn't plan on working. I was just curious why anyone would mess with a container full of mail and Chimera Kong seeds, so I decided to just watch."
The General lightly hopped down. Stepping onto the ground without a sound, he walked forward with the leisurely pace of a man out for a stroll.
Though he held no weapon in his hands, Sir Waltzroi couldn't take his eyes off him, his entire body pulled taut with tension.
It was as if the one holding a weapon and the one unarmed had swapped places.
"Still, human. What's a duel to an old man, a duel? To someone who'll die soon enough if you just leave him be."
Toward the familiar face that had suddenly appeared, Sir Waltzroi gritted his teeth and shouted.
"...Why. Are you here? Now that they are coming down, no one should be heading this way!"
"Looks like information is leaking from somewhere. The Resistance knows the operational directives that just came out better than we do."
Scratching his head, the General replied.
"Did you see me follow anyone's orders? The moment I saw that directive, I took a vacation and ran over. If I came without taking a vacation, it'd be insubordination."
Truly, encountering him here was merely the result of caprice and coincidence overlapping. Realizing this, Sir Waltzroi muttered in despair.
"...Damn it. If this isn't the worst luck."
"Bad luck? Isn't it rather good?"
General Partlaxion showed his empty hands and grinned.
"Look. Here I am. I have no weapon, and no subordinates guarding me. If you duel me here and win, the Military State will stagger, and your fame will rise, right? How about it? Isn't that much more worthwhile than petty looting of a container?"
However, Sir Waltzroi knew better than anyone just how unrealistic that was.
Now called one of the Six Great Generals of the Military State, but once a promising knight of the Kingdom.
And the knight who defeated the strongest Guardian Knight of his generation, and brought the Kingdom down with his own hands.
The Rebel Knight, Absolute Spear Partlaxion.
He was looking down at Sir Waltzroi with eyes full of exhilaration.
"Show me your spirit. Show me your resolve. Challenge one you cannot defeat to a duel, and leave victory or defeat in the glorious embrace of the gods. Now. Your nemesis, the traitor who destroyed the Kingdom, is right here. Judge me honorably through a duel!"
Facing the blowing wind, Sir Waltzroi gripped his spear tightly, but apart from the strength in his grip, despair swelled in his heart.
He steadied his trembling hands and shouted to hide his fear.
"How dare the traitor who destroyed the Kingdom speak of a sacred duel...!"
"Treason? Ridiculous."
Bang!
At that moment, a Resistance fighter keeping watch from behind abruptly fired his gun. At the same time, the General lightly swiped his finger to the side.
The wind stopped.
In terms of strength, the pinky finger cannot beat the thumb. No matter how much it is trained to become stronger than someone else's thumb, it cannot overcome that person's leg strength.
One cannot reach their hand behind their own arm. Even if flexibility is cultivated, touching is the limit. The body is simply not designed that way.
It is a matter of course. Whether in strength or anything else, limits are inevitable, and a weakness cannot overwhelm a strength. A fundamental truth.
However, the moment Qigong reaches the realm of mastery. A moment arrives when ordinary strength is transcended by far. A certain moment where the nature of power changes from magnitude to intensity.
The General's fingers had caught the bullet. It was a special bullet designed solely for penetration, intending to somehow pierce through anti-bullet Qigong, but it was still far from enough.
Emitting Qigong from his entire body, the General had taken control of this very space. To the point where mere bullets dared not pierce through.
Spinning the bullet caught between his fingers, the General spoke.
"What I did was not treason."
An era when private duels ran rampant borrowing the name of the gods. An era when it was taken for granted that the strong preyed on the weak to line their bellies.
It was a time when corrupt merchants, colluding with knights possessing military might, realized the law of amassing wealth unjustly and spread its evil widely throughout the world.
Indiscriminate duels continued. The weak had to submit to survive. The strong, for wealth and honor, sought out those weaker than themselves who had amassed wealth.
The gods protected the victors, and the dying were denounced as evil.
"I formally requested a duel against the Kingdom. I just happened to win, that's all."
A story now recounted as legend.
The Absolute Spear stood with both feet planted on the outskirts of the capital, and shouted his declaration of a duel toward the royal castle far away.
The challenger was himself. The target was the Kingdom itself.
The most brilliant knight became the rebel knight.
The twilight of the knights, and the first rising morning star.
Having changed history, he drooped his shoulders as if a bit disappointed and spoke.
"I did it, but you can't even duel against me alone? A so-called knight lacking that much courage?"
"Are you provoking me!"
Sir Waltzroi's spear flashed without warning. Even in the situation where the General's Qigong grasped the wind, he shook it off with his own Qigong and thrust his spear. A fierce thrust solely to pierce a single point. Without even calculating any remaining strength.
The General lightly received that spear with the bullet caught between his fingers. The spear tip and the bullet tip collided precisely, then stopped in a delicate balance.
The General muttered.
"Your basics are decent, but ambiguous. Have you been slacking on your training lately? Well, with no duels, I suppose there's no need to practice."
"You bastard!"
Blocked, Sir Waltzroi gripped his spear and spun around. He intended to shake off the bullet with the rotation.
But his spear did not move. Sir Waltzroi groaned and twisted his arm. He tried to grapple and turn it, and also concentrated his force in an instant to push in.
However, the bullet did not budge. The General was receiving that force like a parlor trick with the short, blunt end.
What was allowed to the knight was only to step back.
"Try a little harder. You have to grip it tightly. Grab it with both hands."
The General moved the bullet playfully, following Sir Waltzroi's spear.
At some point during that bizarre standoff.
Very briefly, the General's body opened up. Sir Waltzroi's expression was dyed with exhilaration.
"You let your guard down, Absolute Spear!"
Click. Sir Waltzroi pulled something caught on the spear tip. Immediately after, along with acrid smoke, the entire spear turned red. The spear shaft sucked in the surrounding air to its limit.
Sensing something unusual, the General muttered.
"Huh? Did I let my guard down?"
Waltzroi's weapon was a spear, yet not a spear. It was also a disposable barrel with something built into the hollow spear shaft, allowing it to fire a single shot.
By the time he realized that, the explosion had already occurred.
"Wow."
With that word, a roar erupted. The spear shaft burst the sucked-in air and fired a shell from the inside.
The accuracy was terrible and the durability was awful, but just once. Just this one time, it delivered a more powerful strike than anything else. The spear tip glowed red and spewed out fierce flames.
A hidden trump card of a knight equipped with the martial prowess of a lifetime.
"What. You use guns too?"
Even that. Becomes powerless before strength that has reached the realm of mastery.
There is no spear in the General's hand. But that is not very important. Because he can use even the small bullet held in his fingers like a spear.
An ultimate technique unfolded from his hand.
Though it was a bullet the size of a finger, the General swung and threw it like a spear. The shortest spear in the world went up against the barrel.
Like that, the bullet shot from his finger pierced right through the center of the explosion. Bringing a torrent of tremendous force along with it.
Guns and cannons are nothing more than tightly sealing the surroundings with a steel barrel and pushing the force of the explosion in only one direction.
So simply put, if Qigong is stronger than steel, guns and cannons can be very easily overcome.
The General's Qigong was stronger than the barrel. Blocked by the storm brought by the bullet, the explosion inside the spear shaft scattered in all directions like a disorganized rabble.
Eventually, unable to withstand the force, the spear shaft exploded from the inside. Sir Waltzroi, whose trump card had been rendered useless, looked down at the broken middle of the spear shaft with a dumbfounded face.
"Did even the knight ultimately fail to overcome the tide of the times? Abandoning the spear to use a gun... But since my spear won, doesn't that mean the spear is ultimately better than the gun?"
He had no awareness that what he had just fired was not a spear but a bullet. Retreating hesitantly, Sir Waltzroi stood with his back against the container.
'...We're on a different level. I can't win. I won't even be able to escape. Damn it.'
Realizing the gap in their strength, Sir Waltzroi glared at General Partlaxion in desperation. His heart was filled not with the shame or anger of a loser, but only with a sense of unfairness.
He shouted.
"Damn it. Why! You, who could have lived no differently from a king if you stayed in the Kingdom. No, you could have reigned like a god! Why! Why did you abandon the Kingdom!"
At the scream of one driven from his vested interests, General Partlaxion casually picked his ear.
"If you want to play god, just go into a well and be the god of frogs. Why crawl all the way out here? If you're going to fight, do it with a strong opponent. Isn't that the true flavor of a duel?"
Words containing the unspoken meaning that he was nothing more than a frog in a well.
Insulted, Sir Waltzroi gritted his teeth and muttered low.
"...Everyone."
The Resistance fighters who had been crouching inside the container, sensing something unusual. Inside the container, they waited for Sir Waltzroi's command.
Sir Waltzroi, having called them, let out an ominous glint in his eyes and muttered.
"Scatter. Run away! Take hostages, bolt! Survive on your own!"
At that moment, like a swarm of rats jumping out of a rat hole, the Resistance fighters burst out in all directions. While the General briefly turned his gaze in that direction, Sir Waltzroi also kicked off the ground.
'A hostage! I need to take a hostage!'
Looking around for the only way to survive, Sir Waltzroi saw the figure of a mother holding her son tightly. Swinging his spear in all directions, he immediately moved toward them.
However, it didn't last long.
"I thought you'd do that."
General Partlaxion's disciple, Colonel Gand, blocked his path. A standard-issue spear with a rugged design lightly parried Sir Waltzroi's spear.
Blocked once again, Sir Waltzroi glared at the Colonel's spear.
"How dare a mere underling like you use a spear before me!"
If it were the Absolute Spear, that would be one thing, but he couldn't lose to a mere subordinate.
Half out of stubbornness and half out of cold calculation, Sir Waltzroi extended the broken spear shaft long. The shortened spear cut through the wind and successively targeted Colonel Gand's vital points.
However, Colonel Gand dodged and deflected by a paper-thin margin, receiving Sir Waltzroi's attacks.
"After knights went extinct, I was disappointed I couldn't cross spears with a knight."
Clang.
Swinging the standard-issue spear long to shake off Sir Waltzroi, Gand muttered indifferently.
"But now that I've actually fought you, I'm disappointed. Is this all?"
"To speak of the spear before a knight! You will pay for that arrogance with death...!"
Furious, Sir Waltzroi raised the Qigong throughout his entire body. Making his whole body like a single spear, he lowered his posture and thrust diagonally upward from below. Ghost fire bloomed from the spear tip infused with Qigong.
His full-power ultimate technique, the Dokkaebi Spear. A technique that bore the embarrassing epithet that every time the dokkaebi fire flashed, it reaped a life.
Looking at the spear rushing up to his chin in an instant, Gand thrust out to meet it. The spear shafts crossed, and the spearheads disregarded defense and aimed for each other's lives.
Screech. The spear shafts scraped against each other. Drops of blood dripped down the spearheads. Victory or defeat was decided by someone's death.
Colonel Gand muttered indifferently.
"You're the one. Knowing who my master is, how dare you challenge with a spear?"
"Kuh...!"
A voice comes from the throat. Therefore, if a spearhead is pierced through the throat, one cannot speak.
So Sir Waltzroi, unable to say anything, coughed up blood foam and collapsed powerlessly. Gand retrieved his spear and spun it around.
Toward Gand, General Partlaxion strode over with large steps.
"Hey. You've gotten a bit better? Now you deserve to get a star, right?"
"Do I run just because you tell me to get a star? I need to accumulate merit for that."
"You've already accumulated some experience, what merit do you need? If you want to accumulate merit, go around alone sometimes. Because you're always with me, your merit gets docked."
"I haven't even learned the ultimate technique from you yet, how can I go around alone?"
"What did you leave with me? Why are you looking for your ultimate technique from me?"
Colonel Gand looked around for other Resistance fighters, but soon realized it was meaningless.
Because the Resistance fighters who had scattered in all directions were already all corpses.
What remained were me, the Captain, and the old combat engineer. Ah, plus the mother and son who almost became hostages.
Amidst the scene of slaughter, the General shrugged his shoulders and spoke aloud.
"Now. Surprised, right? Actually, I'm General Partlaxion on vacation. I had personal business to attend to somewhere, so I hid my identity. Anyone have a complaint?"
Naturally, no one dared to step forward. The Captain and I shook our heads. That was somewhat the most moderate attitude; the old combat engineer was so thrilled at the thought of facing a legend of the Military State that he could hardly breathe.
The General turned to look at me and grinned.
"Hey, little brother. Let me ask you one more time. Which is better, the spear or the gun?"
I answered readily.
"Definitely, the spear."