Episode 45 – The Name of the Strongest X
The Hundred-Armed Knight stood there in a stately manner.
Right now, the weapons it held were a greatsword and a longsword.
It used the greatsword for offense, and the longsword to parry the opponent’s weapons.
Its proficiency was considerable, and Nada and the others were not taking it lightly.
From the start, the Hundred-Armed Knight wielded all weapons at a high level, choosing the most effective one for any situation.
Against Nada, who held the Green Dragon Crescent Blade, it used heavy weaponry; against Reaon, who fought with a longsword, it switched to a lighter weapon; and against Ouro, it prevented him from approaching altogether.
Ameisha was no longer engaging in close combat.
Originally not skilled with weapons, she had taken some distance from the three, constantly watching for an opening to fire a Gift at the knight.
Even if fire-based Gifts didn’t work well on the Hundred-Armed Knight, they still served as suppression.
“Sir Nada, Sir Reaon. Could you stop its movements for my sake?”
A brief pause amid the fierce exchange. Ouro spoke calmly to the breathless Nada and Reaon.
“You’ve got a plan to defeat it, huh?”
Reaon asked without taking his eyes off the knight.
“…I will use my Ability. You two know what my Ability is, yes?”
“We certainly do. But Ouro, your Ability—”
“I understand. I will wound that thing. Even if it kills me. So the two of you must finish it. Absolutely—”
Ouro raised his great blade into a high stance.
“Fine by me—”
Nada answered without hesitation.
“…All right. Nada and I will stop the knight seriously. But I think we’ll get maybe one chance at most.”
At Reaon’s reply, Ouro gave a silent nod.
By then, the Hundred-Armed Knight was already moving to re-engage them.
Seeing Nada and Reaon still standing still, Ameisha quickly fired a massive sphere of flame toward the knight.
An explosion. Smoke spread.
The knight vanished from the adventurers’ sight.
Nada entered the smoke without hesitation, his Green Dragon Crescent Blade already raised wide.
“Swing!”
Reaon’s voice cut through the air.
Without pause, Nada brought his crescent blade down.
Suddenly, a hard impact reverberated through his hands—he had hit the knight.
The knight had blocked the strike. Most likely with the greatsword. It must have judged that a flimsy longsword would snap.
Nada saw a pair of glowing eyes shining within the smoke.
He immediately slid his crescent blade off the greatsword, then swept sideways toward those glowing eyes. With full force. That too was blocked. This time, he reversed his strike, spinning his body. That was blocked as well.
By then Reaon had already slipped into the smoke. He silenced his footsteps, held his breath, and slipped through the gaps in Nada’s attacks toward the knight’s feet.
He swung—not to cut, but like he was trying to trip the knight.
The knight jumped back to evade. But since it was no longer airborne, it needed to plant its thick legs and build up force again.
Nada swung his crescent blade at the airborne knight. The knight, using gravity to its advantage, attempted to counter with all its weight behind the greatsword—But in that moment, Nada smiled faintly.
He relaxed his strength, letting the crescent blade miss the greatsword entirely, and stepped back from the spot. The knight, stuck midair, couldn’t adjust and ended up slicing the ground with its greatsword.
A deafening crash.
The ground tore apart, and the knight’s footing grew unstable.
By then, the smoke had cleared.
In that instant, Reaon rammed into the knight with all his might.
The knight staggered.
Nada gripped his crescent blade with both hands—not to cut, but like a club—and struck the knight with the handle, piling his weight forward as he tackled it together with Reaon.
A moment later, the knight’s thick leg kicked Nada off. Focused solely on knocking the knight down, Nada couldn’t dodge and was sent rolling across the ground.
But the knight had fallen to the floor—and was wide open.
The knight tried to get up immediately.
But Ouro had been waiting for that moment and had already thrust his odachi forward.
A thrust.
He wasn’t so arrogant as to think he could bring the knight down. Ouro never wished for anything like that.
He had only one aim:
To wound the knight.
He targeted the knee.
The gap between the armor plates.
It was the weak point Reaon had pointed out—if the blade caught there…
The edge of Ouro’s odachi sank slightly into the back of the knight’s knee. From there, the poison began to seep in. Ouro’s poison.
However, Ouro’s odachi was not pulled back.
The knight had grabbed it.
Clutching the blade itself tightly with one hand, using Ouro’s own strength, the knight rose up swiftly and yanked the odachi hard.
Ouro immediately released his weapon, but his body lurched forward.
The knight swung its greatsword.
Ouro couldn’t avoid it.
Ameisha hurled flames, but the knight didn’t even flinch.
The knight brought the greatsword down.
It struck Ouro’s head, slamming him into the ground. The two rabbit-like horns on his helmet snapped clean off, and his head was driven into the earth.
Ouro let out a soundless cry of pain.
His armor had saved his life, but his body no longer moved properly. His trembling hands touched the ground as he tried to rise.
The knight raised its greatsword again.
By then, Nada and Reaon had already rushed up to the knight.
The two swung their weapons—crescent blade and longsword—at the same time.
The knight abandoned finishing Ouro off and stepped away, crushing Ouro’s back beneath its foot as it moved.
Even the hands that Ouro had desperately been trying to move, collapsed against the ground under the shock, and from there, he stopped moving altogether.
Strength left his body, and he lay sprawled on the earth.
But Nada didn’t spare him even a glance, keeping his focus on the knight.
Reaon was the same.
The knight’s movements halted—for just an instant.
It was poison.
It was Ouro’s paralysis poison.
In that brief window, Nada closed the distance.
He caught up with it.
He swung the Green Dragon Crescent Blade with all his strength.
The knight blocked it with the greatsword held in one hand.
The knight staggered.
It took a step back.
It had lost to Nada’s pressure.
It’s the poison, Nada thought. Because of Ouro’s paralysis poison, the knight’s body wasn’t moving as it had before.
This is the only chance, Nada felt with everything he had.
Strength surged into his grip on the crescent blade.
Having been overwhelmed with one hand, the knight switched to holding the greatsword with both hands—to avoid losing to Nada’s crescent blade again.
Nada and the knight clashed—Green Dragon Crescent Blade against greatsword. Right, left, steel shaking the air. Neither moved their feet. In terms of weight alone, Nada probably had the disadvantage. But the knight’s movements were far slower than earlier.
That was why they were evenly matched.
Both desperately tried to force their blade into the other’s opening.
But neither gave even an inch.
There was no world where either would yield.
And into that narrow gap, Reaon slipped in.
The leg—that was his target, unchanged from before. Sliding forward, he aimed straight for the knight’s knee.
The knight immediately hurled its greatsword at Nada, then loaded both hands with throwing knives and unleashed them in a barrage to force distance between them. Every single blade targeted Nada’s head. If he failed to dodge even one, it would cost him his life.
Nada prioritized survival, weaving left and right, putting a bit of space between himself and the knight.
The knight stopped throwing knives.
What it produced next was a yellow longsword.
Its attribute was lightning.
The knight no longer tried to evade Reaon’s attacks. If anything, it accepted them.
Reaon slashed the very spot where Ouro had stabbed earlier—the knight’s knee. Reaon was sure he had cut it. And he had cut it with Ashfire. There was no way it dealt no damage.
But the knight’s movements didn’t change. It kicked Reaon with the leg that had just been cut.
Reaon tried to regain his stance and rise, but the knight hurled the yellow longsword at him.
Unable to dodge, Reaon deflected it with Ashfire—only for a surge of lightning to run through him via the blade.
His body felt like it was being scorched from the inside.
Face twisted in agony, Reaon endured it, but his legs wouldn’t move.
Pain rooted him to the floor.
The knight advanced. This time, it held a battle axe.
Its name was Bardiche—a polearm with a long shaft and a massive axe-blade at the end. As a weapon, it resembled Nada’s Green Dragon Crescent Blade.
A type of pole weapon relying on the weight of its axe-head to deliver powerful sweeping blows.
The knight swung it.
Drawing it wide to the side, the knight extended it toward Reaon.
He couldn’t dodge it.
He knew that the blade coming straight for him was meant for his life.
Reaon’s body was already in tatters.
With desperate resolve, he brought Ashfire into the Bardiche’s path.
As Nada rushed toward them, Reaon glared at him as if shouting, You must win, and took the full-force sideways blow of the Bardiche.
Ashfire and his armor prevented him from being cut in two, but the impact tore the sword from his hands and sent him tumbling across the ground as he was smashed again and again.
His head struck the floor, and his brain rattled violently.
Through a blurred field of vision, Reaon saw Nada extending his crescent blade toward the knight.
“Gh—!”
Nada’s fierce strike was blocked by the knight’s Bardiche.
But when Nada took the knight’s counter that used full centrifugal force, his hands went numb, and his feet slid back a few centimeters.
Even so, Nada didn’t yield.
The Green Dragon Crescent Blade, by nature, was almost the same type of weapon as the bardiche.
When the knight received Nada’s crescent blade near the haft with the bardiche’s shaft, even the monster was pushed back a step.
They clashed like two opponents locked in a tug-of-war, pushing and pulling against each other with raw force.
In the midst of this, when Nada swung with all his might and the knight blocked with the bardiche, the knight’s knee buckled for an instant. It had been overpowered by Nada—its knee lacked strength.
It was the same knee Ouro had poisoned, and Reaon had cut.
Seeing his crescent blade winning the struggle and his own body leaning forward, Nada instinctively let go of the weapon. He knew this was the only chance he would ever get to defeat the knight.
He reached out with his left hand toward the knight’s head. A beautiful silver-white blade shot out from his gauntlet—Solideum. It grazed the knight’s neck.
The knight, having already dropped the bardiche, didn’t even waste time summoning a new weapon. Instead, it struck Nada’s body from the side with its iron-clad fist. Nada’s torso bent sideways like a crushed hinge, but with his right hand, he drew the kukri knife at his waist.
He tried to cut the knight’s right elbow with the kukri—but it didn’t connect.
The knight dodged it.
Then it drove a straight right punch directly at Nada.
Nada avoided it by collapsing backward, and from that position slashed the knight’s wobbling knee with his kukri. Shallow—but the sensation reached Nada’s right hand clearly.
And in the same moment, the knight’s left knee drove hard into Nada’s abdomen.
But Nada refused to yield and drove Solideum into the same knee he had slashed earlier.
The knight raised both hands—clenched together like an axe—and brought them down on Nada’s back. The impact was dizzying, enough to make his vision blur, but he did not let go of consciousness. He twisted Solideum’s blade, carving it deeper as he forced it to turn.
Solideum’s blade snapped.
The beautiful silver-white fragment spun through the air, and the knight tried to follow it up by kicking Nada’s abdomen again—but there was no strength left in that knee. Nada caught its leg with his left hand and used the recoil to pull himself upright.
His only remaining weapon was the kukri knife.
With it, he slashed at the knight at point-blank range. The cut was shallow—but it cut, undeniably.
The knight swung at Nada with a hook, but it couldn’t put strength into its shattered knee. Nada took the blow, but it barely harmed him.
Nada swung the kukri at the knight’s neck. Shallow. It didn’t cut through.
The knight dropped an elbow onto Nada’s head. Another wave of dizziness hit him. But the knight’s strike was shallow too. Nada could endure it. With both hands, he swung his kukri—the momentum behind the strike sliced off the knight’s left shoulder entirely.
Even then, the knight didn’t back down.
The knight punched Nada with its right hand. Nada blocked at the last second with his left arm, which bent in a grotesque direction from the force. The knight struck him several more times to halt his movement, then seized Nada’s neck with its right hand. Its thick fingers wrapped around him, squeezing tight.
The knight meant to strangle Nada to death.
As breath disappeared from his lungs and consciousness began to dim, Nada let out a voiceless sound—an ugly, bestial rasp. But his eyes never wavered.
He didn’t try to pry the knight’s hand off.
Using the last of his oxygen and strength, he poured everything into his body. All of it led to the kukri in his right hand. He stepped forward even with his throat being crushed, clenched his muscles, and swung the blade with desperate force.
The kukri knife sank deep into the knight’s neck—then severed the head entirely.
The knight’s head flew into the air.
Its lifeless eyes, already devoid of light, looked down at Nada and the now headless knight.
But Nada didn’t see it. He didn’t even realize he had beheaded the knight. The knight’s hands, refusing to loosen even in death, choked him until his consciousness slipped away.
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