Somebody shouted something.
The entrance hall erupted into noise in an instant. Sensible guests began evacuating without a word, while the even more sensible ones kept their distance and settled in to watch. The only people trying to remove us were the security staff, which was only natural.
Nobody wanted to get hurt by being dragged into this terrorist bullshit.
“Stop, don’t shoot! You’ll hit the guests!”
Through the uproar came an angry shout, edged with panic.
“They’re using <E3>. They’re Heroes. Leave this to the mercenaries.”
Some rank amateur on the security staff must have drawn a handgun. I closed the distance to the man who had shouted in a single instant. Before he could turn around, I carved deep into his thigh and shoved him away. His shout turned into a scream, and he was not getting back up.
These people were not the ones I needed to watch.
The ones I needed to watch were in the corners of the entrance hall, swiftly bringing syringes to their necks. <E3> users. Washed-up Hero guards employed by a Demon King—or mercenaries, to borrow that guy’s word. With my perception compressed, I counted them. Four total in the hall. A nice, convenient number.
The first one came at me as soon as he slammed <E3> into himself, shoving inconvenient guests out of his way. He was a street-punk-looking bastard with dyed red hair and a savage air about him—not bad. He had identified the strongest piece on the board, meaning me, and gone for me first. I could use him as a model.
“This is a basic technique. Watch.”
I announced that to the three students—or more precisely, loud enough for Sera Pendragon to hear. I held my bastard sword with both hands, the tip angled toward the floor, and met him head-on.
The red-haired punk had his sword raised high overhead in a two-handed grip. His stance told me everything. He had never studied swordsmanship worth a damn. He was just amplifying his physical ability with <E3> and swinging.
Against someone who was not using <E3>, that approach might have worked just fine. After all, if you could attack faster than a bullet, even an armed opponent would have a hard time keeping up.
But a fight between two <E3> users was different.
The instant the redhead’s sword came down, a shriek of metal rang out. A faint spray of sparks. My bastard sword snapped upward and caught the blow on the flat of the blade.
At the same time, I slid my sword along his and dispersed the force as I received it.
“Never smash into it head-on. Let it flow.”
I gave a short but extremely useful piece of advice. A sword swung with our strength behind it would almost always break if it collided cleanly with another sword.
According to the swordsmiths who forged blades for Heroes like us, they were supposedly “built as strong as possible through the finest of modern and traditional techniques.”
But things that break still break.
That meant that when defending, you had to receive the opponent’s force in a way that let it slide away. The redhead’s strike was blocked by my blade and thrown off target. And once his momentum was driving downward, he could not abruptly stop it.
That instant was where skill showed.
The moment when the defender had the overwhelming advantage.
I slid my edge along his blade as though tracing it, twisted my point near the guard—there. He reflexively tried to pull his sword back, and that was his mistake.
The guards disengaged, and my point came free. I hooked it through his fingers and tore.
His face twisted in agony. His sword hit the floor with a high-pitched scream.
The fingers that had been gripping it a moment earlier scattered with the blood.
“Finger-cutting. Classical Japanese sword schools have it too.”
It barely worked on anyone above you, but against someone who had never properly learned swordsmanship, that was another story. I drove a soccer-kick into the redhead’s face as he collapsed. That finished him. He went down and stopped moving.
“The trick is to match the opponent’s weapon and give it a twist around the guard. Once you cut the fingers and they can’t hold a sword anymore, they’re not scary. Go ahead and try it.”
I jerked my chin at Shirogamine and Sera. Two more remained. They were slowly closing the distance between us. One from the front, the other circling clockwise from my right, probing my movements. There should have been one more, but Indo was probably dealing with that one.
“Straight into practice. Thrilling, isn’t it? Lucky you got a good master who doesn’t waste your time on pointless swings and basic drills.”
I wanted to conserve as much stamina as possible for what came after this. I already knew the real problem: Lord <Storm Coffin>’s personal guard, commonly called the Storm Guards. Five handpicked first-rate Heroes, hired for obscene amounts of money. These girls—the Academy trio—were here so I could save my strength for them. I intended to leave as much of the small fry to the girls as possible. You could call that a form of tuition.
But some people went and charged in while ignoring that truth as hard as they possibly could.
“Yes, Master!”
Shirogamine accelerated at full speed from the start.
“I understand!”
She held her sword low and rushed the enemy in front of her. In other words, she did not understand. Finger-cutting from a deflection was a technique where you diverted the momentum of the opponent’s attack and used the opening to strike.
Naturally, the honest thrust of Shirogamine’s one-handed sword was violently knocked aside by her opponent. She barely managed to block the immediate counterstrike with her shield, but her posture collapsed. She was forced completely onto the defensive.
The enemy was attacking with a two-handed sword. A one-handed sword and shield could not fully receive those blows. As she defended a second time, then a third, her balance gradually deteriorated. She no longer had the breathing room to attempt a counter from a deflection.
“Are you stupid?”
I sat down on the reception counter and decided to heckle while I watched.
“Attack. Even with your balance broken, you still have both hands. Attack! Make him think about dying!”
In reality, she had plenty of chances to do it. For example, she could have blocked with her shield while thrusting her sword toward his abdomen—or feinted at his carotid artery. But Shirogamine did not do that. Instead, despite receiving my precious advice, she tried to bash the guy in the head with her shield.
Stupid.
Her opponent barely seemed to care. The shield struck him cleanly. Blood ran from his temple, and he roared like a crazed beast as he whipped his two-handed sword in a horizontal sweep.
A one-handed sword could not fully block that. Even if she caught it, the sword might snap if she was unlucky.
Shirogamine chose a simple evasion method. She dropped and rolled on the spot, dodging the blade as it slashed sideways. That, too, was a bad move. It let the enemy follow up, and she could neither defend nor attack properly from there. The only option she had was cutting at his shin, but she would take a blow from overhead before that.
There was no doubt that Shirogamine was close to checkmate.
“Too stupid for words.”
I clicked my tongue without thinking.
Since I had no choice, I started to rise slightly to lend her a hand—and just before I did, Sera’s long, irritating blond hair whipped through the air. In words that did not match her refined appearance in the slightest, she viciously cursed the situation.
“You—fucking—asshole!”
Sera’s sword deflected the blade descending toward Shirogamine’s head. Or rather, its point moved as if to let the force slide away. Even allowing for the fact that she had struck from the side by surprise, it was an ideal reception.
Then her blade flowed straight toward the enemy’s hands and flashed once in the span of a breath.
She cut off his middle and index fingers together.
“Oh.”
I smiled.
“Not bad.”
While I was at it, I looked toward the mercenary Sera had been fighting until a moment ago. He was already down and motionless. His right arm had been slashed deeply enough to expose bone. I see. If she had been trying to follow my advice, that was an excellent result.
Shirogamine, on the other hand.
I peered down at her as she got up, breathing hard.
“And you? What the hell were you doing?”
Shirogamine wiped the sweat dripping from her chin with the back of her hand.
“Where? You never showed any intent to take his life.”
“Master. A Hero is—”
“I don’t give a shit. Whether you want to become a murdering piece of trash or not is your own business. What matters is showing that intent.”
I grabbed Shirogamine by the collar. Her face twisted in pain, but I did not have the luxury of caring.
“Are you looking down on us? Are you saying you’re different from us, that you’re not some shitty murderer? That you’re something more refined? You think you can always do this? Have your friends save you, keep your hands nice and clean, and somehow make it work?”
“No! I—”
“Read my mind.”
I tightened my grip around Shirogamine’s throat. She looked like she was about to cry. Not good, I thought. The <E3> was making me aggressive. I could tell. I knew I had to suppress it somehow, but I did not stop.
“I’m angry.”
“Master—”
“Instructor.”
Indo’s voice was cold. But I still did not stop. It was the drug’s fault. I wanted to think so.
“Shut up, Indo! I’m—no, that’s not it. It’s just—she—”
“Instructor.”
Indo grabbed my arm hard and pulled. I lightly shook my head against the irritation pounding through it and looked her way. Behind Indo lay the corpse of a man whose throat had been slit.
She really went and did it. A single drop of blood had splashed onto her too-pale cheek.
She was looking at me with something like dissatisfaction.
“Instructor. Who is that?”
“Ah.”
Sera made a startled sound.
From the corridor beyond reception, an exceptionally tall figure was approaching. White fabric fluttered. A party dress that was less luxurious than simply, overwhelmingly gaudy. Pale blue cheeks. Blue eyes cold enough to chill the marrow. Her hair looked as if it were glowing gold.
I recognized the woman.
“It’s been a while.”
The timing was bad.
I had not expected this woman to come out this quickly.
“Yashiro the <Reaper>. I am deeply honored that you came to my party.”
So said the woman, Lord <Storm Coffin>, with a smile. It was a cold smile, reptilian.
“It seems sending you a hundred invitations a month was worth the effort. Or perhaps wiring you ten million a month did the trick? In any case, welcome, Yashiro. And you unknown little girls. For now, I shall welcome you as well.”
That smile made me profoundly sick of her.
Indo stared at Lord <Storm Coffin> with the same unreadable face as always, while Sera Pendragon looked back and forth between me and Lord <Storm Coffin>, her eyes round. Shirogamine—for whatever she had misunderstood—raised her shield and sword and stepped in front of me.
This was why I had not wanted to come to this party alone.
Lord <Storm Coffin> was a little insane.