Barbarian's Adventure in a Fantasy World-Chapter 339: Total War (4)

Ketal ran his palm along the haft of the axe, testing the balance and finding the familiar give of the grain beneath his fingers. Caliste watched without hurry. His duty was to bar the way. There was no need to press. If Ketal wished to come to him, he would meet him and turn him aside.

“You really have only the sword,” Ketal asked him, curious despite the war beating around them. “No other authority, no hidden art?”

“None.” Caliste’s answer was even, almost gentle. “All I possess is this blade.”

It was not an ordinary sword. It held an authority that could cut all things and would not break so long as its wielder’s will did not fold. That made it a rarity among rarities.

Even so, it was still a sword. It did not flip the heavens, unmake continents, or pour earthquakes from a single gesture. In most hands, it would have been one more tool swallowed by brute force. Any middling demon who tried to live by it alone would have died without ever making a mark. Yet, Caliste had taken that single sword and climbed to the throne of a Demon Lord.

A nameless demon had polished one craft until it shone brighter than crowns. Ketal felt honest admiration rise.

“I’ll admit it,” Ketal said. “The path I have used until now will not break you. So, I will return to where I began.”

He shifted his grip. One hand slid up near the cheek of the axe, the other settled at midshaft.

“You intend to fight with technique rather than power,” Caliste said, amused.

Held short, an axe would lose the easy violence of long arcs, but gain a quick, precise hand. It was not a foolish choice, since Caliste’s art would not yield to raw strength. If Ketal wanted the gate, he would have to try a different door. However, there was one condition attached to such a decision.

“You mean to cut through me with technique?” Caliste said.

He had reached the rank of Demon Lord with nothing but a sword. No one could force him to yield on that ground.

“We will see,” Ketal replied, smiling. He stepped and covered the space in a blink, body tight to Caliste’s as the axe moved in short, exact lines.

Metal hissed against metal. Shortening the grip shortened the distance. Within that pocket, an axe could crowd a sword and dictate the language of the fight. Ketal pressed with small, smothering blows that left no breath between them.

Caliste’s eyes thinned with a sliver of respect in his gaze. Ketal handled his weapon with a sureness that was rare anywhere, even in Hell. Set aside the monstrous strength; the craft alone would let him overwhelm ordinary Heroes.

But that was the limit. It would not reach Caliste. With a minute turn of his wrist, he set the spine of his blade against the axe’s face, guiding and rolling each strike aside so lightly that the force drained out of the motion. Ketal’s forearms jolted, and the haft kicked upward in his grip.

Ketal turned the motion into a strike. He hammered down with the butt end, a brutal chop that would cave a skull even through steel. Caliste met the descending haft with the crossguard, wedging the wood in the notch to shave the angle off and send the blow by. At that instant, Ketal’s left hand snapped back as if stung. The haft whipped and the head spun in, seeking Caliste’s temple.

Caliste’s expression changed for the first time. He reversed his grip and snapped the pommel into the edge. The little blow did not stop the blade; it borrowed its hunger and stepped aside with it, drawing his body out of the path.

Ketal did not withdraw. He crowded in, arms tight, the head of the axe almost against his chest as he drove forward. Caliste recognized the intent as soon as he saw the posture.

You will smother my structure and push through my deflections with sheer mass, Caliste thought.

He lowered his stance and let the head slide up, bleeding the force into the air while his hips slid to the right to square himself for the counter. Ketal’s heel bit the ground. He stamped hard and checked his momentum at once. The turn came off the ball of his foot; his shoulders followed; his whole weight cut back into Caliste. The demon skimmed his blade across the earth to take a tiny rebound from stone and let that push help his body float clear.

Ketal’s left elbow was already driving toward his sternum. There was no warning, no tell—only motion, as if the ribs themselves had called it forth. Caliste reacted before thought could form. The impact landed with a dull thud; he deflected the strike and slid back three steps. He had taken no real harm, but his wrist throbbed with a sharp, singing ache. For an instant, surprise flickered through his eyes like the shadow of wings.

“You read me,” Caliste murmured.

The elbow had not answered a visible motion. It had arrived in the place Caliste would have moved. Ketal laughed with unfeigned delight.

“At last,” he said. “A clean touch.”

He did not let the beat stretch. The ground cracked under his feet, and he was on Caliste again. Steel fenced and unfenced in a string of instants, and the first clear advantage went to Ketal. He bullied with a lifted shoulder, catching Caliste on the turn. There was no real injury, but the Demon of the Sword had to give distance. He thrust for Ketal’s throat on the step back. Ketal rolled his neck by a fraction and walked deeper. Caliste curled his wrist and drew the blade as a sickle for the nape.

Ketal didn’t duck or parry. He drove forward, lowering his brow toward Caliste’s face. A headbutt from that weight at that speed would have shattered bone. Caliste broke off his swing and let the blade flow back as he retreated. The moment space opened, Ketal’s axe came down for his collarbone. Caliste slipped past and flicked his sword up beneath Ketal’s jaw, breaking his stance. Ketal pressed in close, the short haft tracing tight, relentless arcs that hammered against the sword like a storm of hail.

Far off, the Tower Master held demons at bay and watched the duel when he could steal a glance. He grimaced without quite knowing why.

“What’s going on?” he said.

The fight between Ketal and Caliste was strangely quiet. The earth did not crack, and the air did not scream, yet the Tower Master could not comprehend a single movement either of them made. Every motion was something any novice with a training blade had practiced a thousand times—draw, cut, step, turn—but in their hands, none of it behaved as it should have.

The Tower Master watched and tried to follow the rhythm. He noted the angle, the shift of the hand, the placement of a foot that lifted and settled again half a finger’s breadth to the left. The axe never followed the obvious line, and the sword met the wrong contact only to turn it right. He knew enough of weapons to speak to Hero swordsmen without shame, yet within that knowledge, the duel refused all logic. If it defied him, then there was likely no one alive who could read it as it unfolded.

Ketal’s axe changed texture. The blows no longer relied on the weight caught at the end of a long swing. The head and the butt traded roles without pause. The haft became a ruler laid against Caliste’s guard, measuring a response before the head corrected it. The sword blurred through small circles, shedding, shaping, slipping each new idea aside.

The axe alone could not break the blade. Ketal stepped deeper to seize the ground itself. Caliste saw the intent the moment it formed and moved to answer. Ketal let his whole body join the conversation. The knee said something short. The elbow interrupted. The shoulder announced a point. The brow underlined it. Caliste tried to answer with his own body, but the raw speed edge was Ketal’s. He lost a meter.

Caliste halted his slide and raised his sword once more. Though he had taken little damage, his expression had hardened into stillness. Through all their exchanges, one truth had cooled into clarity like metal quenched in water. As a wielder of weapons, he possessed the finer edge. It was not pride but fact. The gap between them was real. However, as a fighter, Ketal stood higher.

“How many battles have you fought?” Caliste asked him, more to weigh what stood across from him than for answer’s sake.

“I am strong. Even among those in the Inside, my strength is not something easily approached,” Ketal said with a grin that showed teeth.

In nearly every battle since leaving the White Snowfield, strength had been the answer to every problem that mattered. He swung the axe, and the knot came undone. That was who Ketal had become.

“But I did not begin with strength,” he continued.

Ketal had once been only a man. His muscles had been nothing special. The blood in his veins had frozen in that winter. The cold had cut him whenever he moved, leaving marks in skin and meat.

Yet, he had survived anyway. He had fought beasts and barbarians that wanted him dead and had won.

“I cannot tell you how many,” he said. “Five figures, and then I stopped caring to add.”

The monstrous power had come later; the craft had come first.

Ketal’s voice went relaxed again. “Strength did more work these days, so I let the old habits sleep. Against someone like you, they are worth waking.”

If Caliste was the opponent, technique would spend coin better than force.

“Good,” Ketal said, and laughter ran out of him like water over stone. “Very good.”

It had been a long time since he fought like this, with craft set forward and muscle placed behind it like a faithful servant. His chest lifted with excitement.

“Let’s go again!” he shouted.

Steel moved. Caliste caught the cut, turned it, and answered in the same breath. Axe, sword, and bodies met at the razor edge of awareness. Ketal was smiling openly now, without the pretense of restraint. Caliste’s lips carried that small tilt once more, a quiet satisfaction, as if he were glad to be asked for more.

Ketal’s body hit the ground. Caliste lifted his sword and drove for the back of his neck. In that instant, Ketal slammed the end of his axe haft into the earth. The rebound flung his body upward, and Caliste’s sword cut through empty air. Ketal followed through, driving the axe straight at him.

Caliste caught the blow, though not cleanly—not completely. The impact coursed down his arm, and he rode it out, his boots carving shallow lines through the dust until he came to a halt. His shoulder stayed still, but a thin scarlet thread struck the stone below. Blood traced a shallow line along his shoulder, no deeper than the skin. He exhaled without words. It was not a wound that deserved a line in any chronicle.

However, in a duel fought by technique that denied strength, a scratch mattered. Stings made thoughts half a heartbeat slow, and slow thoughts left holes.

Axe and sword locked. Ketal’s left hand slid and pinned the spine of Caliste’s blade for a fraction. The Demon of the Sword moved to free it and found that the human had already relinquished his hold. The grab had been the feint; the release was the true hand. Ketal took the beat he had opened and poured pressure into it.

His shin kissed the outside of Caliste’s thigh. The demon tried to step away and could not make his leg do what he wanted in time. The limb took the shock and gave it back as a dull ache that made speed clumsy.

After that, Ketal changed his approach. He exploited the weakness in his opponent’s mobility, darting around and striking from every direction. Caliste kept his focus and answered as best he could, but with one leg unable to move freely, openings were inevitable.

He retreated, though not by choice. There was no other path open to him. Step by step, he gave ground until the gate pressed against his back.

Very well, Caliste thought, his eyes darkening. If I must die, then we die together.

He let the thought settle and released the idea of holding his ground. Instead, he began to think in terms of trading lives. Ketal’s axe descended, and Caliste’s sword rose to meet it. To the eye, the motion defied reason—the blade surrendered a piece of its own guard and, in the same instant, found Ketal’s throat.

“Do you think I plan to leave without a mark?” Ketal said with bright approval. “You can take the flesh!”

The sword pushed through. Steel touched flesh and parted it cleanly. The thrust sheared through Ketal’s neck and missed the artery by a whisper.

“But I take the win!” Ketal said through a hoarse laugh.

His hand clamped around Caliste’s forearm, twisting the wrist until it cracked, and his heel slammed into Caliste’s knee. The sword jerked, trying to fly free, but Caliste denied it. He flicked his wrist, catching the blade’s tip against the throat of the axe. Steel struck steel, and both weapons leapt, spinning away together.

They were now unarmed, but Ketal did not seem to mind. His fist tightened. Strength and the glimmer of the Myst folded themselves into the knuckles. Caliste did not surrender the beat. He reached out a bare hand for Ketal’s shoulder to spoil the alignment.

The punch landed first. Sound rolled from the gate. Ketal’s fist shattered bone and drove Caliste into the black doors. The stones beneath the hinges shuddered. Wood and iron croaked in protest. Cracks raced outward from the point of impact like ice crawling across a pond at night.