Episode 42 – The Name of the Strongest VII
The first to reach the knight was Nada.
What he did was the same as always.
He simply swung the weapon he held, with stubborn honesty, at the monster before him.
Once, that weapon had been a greatsword.
But now, it was the Green Dragon Crescent Blade.
He raised it high overhead and brought it straight down toward the knight.
The knight received the blow.
With yet another weapon—this time, a spear. A trident, perhaps. It held it in its right hand. A spear meant for piercing, not cutting, and with it the knight caught Nada’s attack.
Normally, at this point, Nada would start thinking about how to slip past the opponent’s guard and thrust the tip of his blade at their throat.
But this time was different.
Nada swung his crescent blade recklessly, with abandon.
As soon as the attack was blocked, he drew the blade back and sliced in from the right. Naturally, the knight blocked that too. He immediately rotated his body the other way, using the rebound from the block to twist into a leftward sweep. Again, the knight took it. Then he slid the blade downward and tried to flick it upward from below. Again, the knight answered it without difficulty.
Pulled slightly backward by the impact, the knight then used the recoil to launch a front kick.
There it is, Nada thought, grinning as he jumped back.
The leg thrust forward was the left. Naturally, there was an adventurer who aimed for the knight’s supporting leg.
Reaon.
Keeping his posture low so the knight wouldn’t notice him, he crept in and attempted a simple shin cut.
But the knight’s body lifted slightly.
With a single leg and without any run-up, it hopped straight upward.
Reaon’s blade sliced through empty air.
“Kiiiieeeeeaaaah!!”
But of course, Ouro was already there.
A ridiculous, ear-splitting cry that knew nothing of stealth. One could even call it a screech—no, it sounded like a bird being strangled.
—It was Screaming Ape Howl.
A unique vocal technique belonging to a martial art Ouro had mastered on his own.
Ouro swung his odachi at the airborne knight. A diagonal cut. Even if the target was in mid-air, Ouro’s long blade would not let a monster escape. And that blade was wet.
A blackish-purple sheen.
It was a poison.
This was Ouro’s Ability—Barbaro Veleno.
A trump card that had saved Ouro’s adventuring career more than once. He knew very well that many monsters were resistant to poison and that relying on this ability was usually nothing more than a comfort. That was exactly why he rarely used it.
He only used it when facing a truly hopeless opponent, or when he wanted to raise his chances—even a little—of defeating a monster he absolutely had to bring down.
Ouro could create various poisons through this ability, but the one he chose this time was paralysis poison. Simple yet powerful. If it took effect even for a single instant, that alone would be a victory in Ouro’s eyes.
Because he trusted that the adventurers gathered here could make full use of even the briefest opening.
Ouro’s sword reached the knight.
But only shallowly.
It merely grazed the armor.
If the poison did not permeate the inside, it meant nothing.
The knight landed silently nearby—but Nada was already waiting.
Nada had only one job to do.
Pin it down.
Using his exceptional physical strength, he swung his oversized weapon—one truly meant to be wielded from horseback—without reserve at the knight.
A simple horizontal slash.
One swing to the right.
Another to the left.
Then a rotating slash as he twisted his body.
He attacked in a rapid, small-circle rhythm, leaving the knight almost no chance to counterattack.
Each strike was lethal. Nada was physically outmatched by the knight, but even so, the knight did not carelessly absorb his blows.
That was how threatening Nada’s straightforward attacks were.
The knight blocked them with the curved blade it held in its left hand.
One could call it a great falchion, perhaps.
Nada’s kukri-like blade shared a similar shape, yet the sword in the knight’s hand was nearly twice as big and far thicker than Nada’s kukri knife.
When the knight looked ready to counter with the trident held in his right hand, Nada quietly withdrew. He didn’t pursue. There was no need to.
Because Reaon had already closed in on the knight first.
He approached from behind, erasing his footsteps.
Reaon thrust his sword toward the knight’s unguarded back.
But the blade was deflected by the armor. Even Reaon’s fine-quality sword couldn’t change that. He clicked his tongue softly.
—As expected, he had to aim for the gaps in the armor.
There weren’t many, but Reaon had already identified them using his ability.
The armpit, the neck—every one of them difficult spot to target under normal circumstances.
Just as Reaon reached that conclusion, the knight swung the massive curved blade downward at him. Realizing that taking even a single hit from that thing would not end well, Reaon had already begun retreating the moment the blade rose overhead.
The curved blade gouged deeply into the bare ground.
By the time he had moved beyond its reach, the knight had somehow already drawn a crossbow with its right hand and fired in pursuit.
But Reaon didn’t even try to dodge.
Because Nada struck the knight’s right arm with his crescent blade faster than that.
The blow was stopped by the knight’s gauntlet, causing no damage, but it threw the crossbow’s aim off.
Without pause, Nada snapped the crescent blade upward in another rising strike.
But it was crude.
It only managed to scratch the Hundred-Armed Knight’s armor.
Nada kept swinging the crescent blade recklessly.
“Jump right!”
Reaon’s voice cut through to him.
Nada immediately leapt to the right—just as the trident came crashing down on the spot where he had stood. It was the knight’s downward strike aimed at him.
Reaon instantly closed the distance, aiming for the gap in the armor around the knight’s right wrist—the hand that had held the trident.
But the knight discarded the weapon and, unbelievably, tried to punch Reaon with his metal-protected arm.
Nada struck that arm again, and Reaon slipped to the side, aiming this time for one of the openings around the knight’s waist.
But the knight leapt away.
It gained distance from both Nada and Reaon.
“Where’re you aiming—?”
Nada glared at the retreating knight while standing shoulder to shoulder with Reaon.
“The gaps! Between the armor plates! Hitting the armor itself is pointless!”
Reaon said this while narrowing his eyes, analyzing the knight’s movements.
“Kiiieeeeaaaaah!!”
Hearing something useful at last, Ouro lunged in mercilessly at the knight as soon as it landed, thrusting his odachi straight forward. His target was exactly where Reaon had said—the gap at the neck.
But the knight shifted its body slightly, avoiding it by mere inches.
Ouro had committed everything into the thrust, leaving himself overextended and exposed.
At some point, the knight’s right hand had grown massive.
Perhaps it had equipped something like an iron knuckle.
It aimed that fist at Ouro’s body.
A telegraphed punch.
He's full of openings.
And yet Ouro couldn’t dodge.
Nada threw a knife, but the knight didn’t even spare it a glance.
The fist slammed into Ouro’s stomach.
He was blown far back, yet he rose immediately, coughing up blood.
The knight moved to pursue Ouro, gliding forward as if cutting through the air—but Nada was already positioned in that very line of motion, waiting.
“Nada, above!”
Following Reaon’s warning, Nada lifted his crescent blade overhead—right as the knight passed through that space and dropped toward the ground, skimming along it. The knight’s target had shifted from Ouro to Nada.
Nada’s actions did not change.
They did not change, but he sharpened his gaze, searching for the gaps between the armor plates, marking where his weapon might be able to reach.
But before he could act, the Hundred-Armed Knight was already holding crossbows in both hands.
In its right hand, a large single-shot model.
On its left, a repeating crossbow that fired five bolts at once.
It unleashed both at Nada in a rapid volley.
Sliding across the ground with both feet, the knight’s crossbows automatically reloaded by countless tiny, shining stars. They poured down on Nada like rain, leaving no place to dodge as far as he could see.
“Go straight, then two steps right! Three steps left!”
But Nada had Reaon, an excellent navigator.
Using his Ability, Reaon searched for Nada’s only possible survival route and, with precise instructions, guided him through a death zone straight toward the knight.
Nada deflected some bolts with his crescent blade and twisted his body to slip past others.
Meanwhile, Reaon also used the moment—while the knight focused on Nada—to close in on the knight.
Not a shin cut this time, but a frontal diagonal slash.
The knight instantly made a short sideways leap to dodge, then turned the crossbows in its hands back into countless glittering stars, which then transformed into another weapon entirely.
This time, the weapon was a pair of slender longswords—one red, one blue. Each blade carried fire and cold, respectively.
Reaon was startled that the knight now wielded swords as if infused with a Gift, but he never showed it. Instead, he smirked and pulled away from the knight.
Because his goal was already achieved.
—He had brought Nada into striking distance.
“Hah!”
With a sharp exhalation, Nada swung the crescent blade.
Gripping it with both hands, he made a sweeping strike at the knight, advancing constantly with no room for escape.
The knight attempted to attack Nada with the twin-colored blades, but it was too busy fending off the incoming crescent blade.
The dual blades were certainly troublesome, and their reach was long, but each blade was thin and light. No matter how powerful the knight was as a monster, it lacked the strength to block Nada’s massive Green Dragon Crescent Blade—a heavy weapon swung with full-body force in both hands.
Because the knight held each thin sword in just one hand.
Thus, the knight desperately wanted to gain distance and change weapons, but Reaon sliced at it from behind as if mocking that intention.
His target: it's knee.
A gap between armor plates. Reaon never stayed pressed close like Nada—he used hit-and-run tactics, and if he judged his first attack wouldn’t deal damage, he immediately disengaged and moved somewhere that wouldn’t obstruct Nada.
Nada continued chasing the knight, swinging the crescent blade at the knight:
From right to left.
From left to right.
In that moment, Nada looked even more ferocious than the knight, and he constantly aimed for its shoulders or neck. A single mistake in defending against those strikes would result in the knight’s death.
The knight planted both swords into the ground in an overlapping fashion—and a massive explosion erupted from them.
“Behind you!”
Thanks to Reaon’s shout, Nada dodged just a moment early, and both avoided critical injuries—but the blast still sent them flying.
Up above, the Hundred-Armed Knight now drew a giant bow, aiming first at Nada, who had crashed to the ground.
Nada tried desperately to move, but the blow to his lungs had left him unable to breathe properly, and his body refused to obey him.
He glared at the arrowhead aimed in his direction.
He couldn’t dodge.
That was what he believed.
But then, far away, he heard a chant.
“—Infinite Karma!”
Wearing tattered clothes but with her body restored by about thirty percent thanks to the healing potion she received from Reaon, Ameisha unleashed one of her Gifts, Queada Shama.
The dragon of fire Ameisha released did almost no damage to the Hundred-Armed Knight’s armor, but it did incinerate the great bow, nullifying the attack aimed at Nada.
A faint wisp of smoke rose from inside the armor, causing the knight to drop to the ground—its feet, which had been floating until now, finally planting firmly on the floor.
“About damn time!!”
Right then, the healed Ouro charged in to strike.
The knight dodged. But this time, the knight unmistakably had to kick off the ground to evade Ouro’s attack.
The knight put distance between itself and the four. At some point, the four of them had regrouped, and Reaon scolded sharply:
“You’re late! The recovery potion I gave you should’ve been top-grade!”
“How should I know? More importantly, do you three need Gifts?”
Ameisha, already recovered enough to continue adventuring, asked with a nihilistic grin as she faced the three standing in front.
“Do it,” Ouro replied curtly.
At the same moment, Ameisha cast Gifts focused on boosting physical capabilities onto the three of them.
Of course, for Nada and Reaon, she also infused their blades with flame.
Given Ouro’s ability traits, Ameisha judged that he would actually move better without any Gift.
“So, what now?”
Nada laughed.
There was no answer.
Because all four of them were adventurers, skilled adventurers, and their objective was already aligned.
—To defeat the Hundred-Armed Knight.
Before anyone could speak, all four moved at once.
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