The Infinite Bk. 04 Ch. 02

Aithorn wasted no time and engaged Noah once more. He switched seamlessly between stabs, slashes, and impacts, leaping and spinning to keep Noah from figuring out his pattern. His speed and agility were beyond human, and his techniques were at an expert's level. Though Noah's chainmail protected his chest, blood soon coated his arms and legs. Still, he could not be so easily defeated, and pressed Aithorn with his own barrage of attacks that chipped away at his defenses.

The other knights kept him fenced in, granting them the perfect view of Noah's techniques. His skill and speed wowed them, and the swings of his sword were like a deadly blur. They had no idea a human being could move like this without magic. They had heard Noah fought Valia to a draw on multiple occasions, but always dismissed it as a rumor or an exaggeration. A human matching the Sword Goddess? Preposterous. Now they were witnessing the legend up close, struggling to understand how it was possible.

Irked by a cut on his arm, Aithorn decided to increase the difficulty and aimed his spear at Noah. "Volley Strike!"

His spear shot toward Noah with deadly speed, almost beyond his ability to defend. As soon as it struck Noah's sword, it was retracted and launched one more, repeating several times each second. Aithorn wasn't moving his arms; the spear was sliding back and forth in his grip like a sewing machine needle. Noah was left on the defensive, unable to get close.

The sideways blades on the spear made it difficult to circumvent, and even when Noah succeeded in closing the distance, Aithorn could retract his spear in a fraction of a second and launch a new attack at close range to force Noah back. He received multiple cuts trying to get past the spear and was making no progress. Though he could block the attacks, he couldn't direct the force away from his body, meaning he couldn't throw Aithorn off balance and break his rhythm.

Noah used his spell card to hit Aithorn with a flashbang, turning the elf's heightened senses against him. His eyes seared and his hearing demolished, Aithorn staggered back, utterly helpless. Noah again grabbed Aithorn's spear and smacked him upside the head with the flat side of his blade, then knocked him out of commission with a kick to the balls.

Before he could deliver his next attack, Noah reluctantly let him go and dodged an arrow launched from the side, coming from one of the silver knights. With Aithorn temporarily unable to fight, the rest of the knights swallowed their fear and awe and closed in on Noah all at once.

The first knight entered his range, swinging his sword in a perfect arc toward Noah's head. Most warriors, lacking the strength to block or speed to dodge such a fine attack, would have their skulls split in half like a melon, but Noah stepped out of the way and slashed the man across the face, taking one of his eyes in the process. The nearby archer tried to kill Noah with another arrow, but he used the first knight as a human shield and then fired a flashbang, incapacitating the archer and leaving him unable to prevent a throwing knife from lodging itself in his trachea.

Three knights attacked Noah from behind, wielding a sword, an axe, and a mace, all three weapons glowing with warrior magic. Noah swung his blade towards the first knight, severing his hands and drawing a howl of agony. He then dodged the incoming axe and delivered a mighty slash across the owner's chest, carving through metal and flesh alike. He'd survive the wound, but his eyes rolled back into his head as though his soul had already left his body. He dodged two swings of the third knight's mace, then drove the tip of his blade into the man's femur. Before he could scream, Noah twisted his sword and split the bone like a piece of firewood.

With five knights down, Noah spared a moment to wave his sword and splatter off some of the blood. A barrage of fireballs was launched towards him, coming from a robed knight armed with a staff. Noah charged the attacking mage, and what blasts he couldn't dodge, he deflected with his sword. The blade was enchanted to repel elemental magic, receiving no damage as the fireballs bounced off its surface.

As Noah got in close, he shot the mage with a flashbang. Having seen it before, he knew to cover his eyes and braced himself for the loud crack. In that instant, Noah circled behind and slashed him across the back. The man's blood splashing against the ground produced a gruesomely satisfying sound.

An arrow struck Noah in the side, and though it did not pierce his armor, the force nearly knocked him off his feet. He looked over to Aithorn, seeing him standing once more with his bow in hand. Beside him, Lady Opal cast a spell and touched the ground. The soil around Noah erupted as hands made of living earth reached up and grabbed his ankles.

Aithorn began to charge a lightning-enchanted arrow, and Noah conjured a magic tool from within his ring and threw it at the ground. It was a steel spike, and the spell within activated upon embedding itself in the soil. A wall of clay, like the hands gripping him, burst up from the ground between him and Aithorn. Though he could create illusory versions of spells written on parchment, he had to use magic tools for anything real. They were much more expensive and difficult to craft since they weren't powered by the user's power. This tool could only be used a few times before breaking, but it served its purpose and caught the launched arrow.

The lightning enhancement created a thunderous explosion that destroyed the wall, but Noah was spared, hidden within a smokescreen. Aithorn pulled out another arrow, but his string suddenly snapped, cut by an invisible throwing knife. Noah then burst out of the dust cloud, charging towards him. Opal continued summoning clay hands to grab Noah, forcing him to change his path and leading him straight toward another silver knight. The man, armed with two large tower shields, blocked Noah's instinctive slash, then grabbed him in a bear hug.

"I'll hold him still! Launch your magic!" he yelled.

"Dune, that's insane! We're not going to attack our own comrade!" another knight countered.

"Just do it!"

Aithorn, grabbing another knight's bow, loaded four arrows and aimed at the sky. "Sir Dune, do not shame yourself by dying from something like this! Shock Baptism!"

He shot the arrows into the air, each wrapped in electricity and flying in a controlled pattern. They dropped out of the sky and formed a square around Noah and Dune with lightning arching between them, resembling the ropes of a boxing ring. The next moment, an explosion of white enveloped them both. Electricity surged through Noah's body, painful beyond words and scrambling his thoughts.

Dune howled in agony, perfectly articulating what Noah felt, but unlike Noah, his strength failed him. While burning inside and out, Noah opened a little space, just enough to turn around. He grabbed Dune and pulled him over his hip in a Judo throw, slamming him down onto the ground. He then rolled out of the square, at last escaping the electrocution.

Noah got to his feet, robbed of his senses by pain and trying to remain balanced. Aithorn had lowered the spell's power to protect his subordinate, but an average person would still have lost consciousness. However, Noah remained coherent and took off in an ungraceful run. He couldn't sense where the knights were, but he memorized their positions before the shock and moved in the opposite direction. It only bought him a few seconds, but that was long enough to conjure a healing potion from his ring and drink it.

The last bitter drop hit Noah's tongue when he was knocked through the air by a blast of water, hitting him in the back like a charging bull and sending him rolling across the ground. As soon as he stopped, Aithorn pounced, holding his spear overhead like he was planting a flag. Noah shifted his head to the side, having regained his sight in the nick of time.

He suffered a scratch on the cheek, but Aithorn's spear pierced only the ground. The elf gave him no time to rest, stabbing repeatedly and trying to skewer him, with Noah rolling to dodge. Before Noah could stand up, earth hands, summoned by Opal, once more grabbed him. His arms were pinned down crucifixion-style, and Aithorn raised his spear for a killing strike.

Noah conjured a glass sphere from his ring and flicked it with his thumb like a coin. It shattered against Aithorn's shredded chest plate, releasing its payload of acid. Though the steel was immune to corrosion, everything else was smoking and dissolving. He instinctively jumped back, realizing the danger was still on him. With Aithorn distracted, Noah managed to wrench himself free from his binds and got to his feet.

After Aithorn pulled off his armor, Noah kicked him in the middle of the chest and knocked him back. He then grabbed a sizeable stone from the upturned soil and threw it at Opal, striking her in the forehead and knocking her out. Noah turned around just in time to block an electrified spear thrust from Aithorn. Fortunately, Noah's enchanted sword kept the current from passing to him.

"Thunder Mantle!" Aithorn cast.

Bolts of electricity began firing off from his body, arcing with everything around him, including Noah. Each spark felt like the bite of a stun gun, decimating his strength and pushing him back. Noah pulled away from Aithorn to escape electrocution, but the elf didn't pursue him. Instead, he channeled even more mana into his spear, even cannibalizing the mana from his defense spell, causing the lightning around the blade to radiate sparks with a blinding light. He spun the spear in his grip, sculpting the fearsome charge into a conical shape.

"Dragon Impaler!" he called, causing the spell to solidify into a drill made of light.

Nothing in Noah's arsenal could block such an attack, leaving him with only one option. He held out his sword and began channeling mana into the blade. Under normal circumstances, his mana was invisible, but one of his sword's enchantments was to produce a visual effect that resembled warrior magic. The two knights faced each other, with all the silver knights either too wounded to continue fighting or caught up with Valia's fight with Gradius.

"Last chance, Aithorn. Let us go and tend to your subordinates. You don't want what's about to happen."

"As a warrior of Sylphtoria and a knight of Uther, I will never let a foe escape me. Relish the warmth of the sun, for it will be the last thing you feel before you close your eyes."

Noah gave a bitter chuckle. "If only. Now come at me!"

Aithorn roared with determination and charged toward Noah. Noah calmly raised his sword and then brought it down, and at that exact moment, pain erased every thought in Aithorn's mind, and his spraying blood reddened his vision like tinted glass. He didn't understand how it was possible, but he had just been slashed across the chest. He dropped to his knees, unable to move while blood drenched his clothes.

There is no way his sword could have hit me. Did he use some kind of warrior spell to attack me without getting close? I never even saw it coming....

Noah used the same trick to kill Klein during the Red Revelry. He left his clone standing at a distance and closed in while invisible. Then, with his clone mimicking his movements, he slashed his enemy without them even realizing he was there. To the victim and any onlookers, it appeared as though Noah could cut enemies from a distance. Noah took a deep breath and sheathed his sword. Aithorn and the silver knights were tough, and he struggled to remain on his feet. There were a few moments where he thought he was done for.

"You'd think I'd be used to people not listening to my warnings, but still, after all this time, it's very aggravating," he said.

"Hold your tongue and finish me off," Aithorn hissed, still on his knees and using all of his strength to keep himself upright.

"You aren't really in any position to be making demands." Noah then pushed him onto his back with his foot and conjured a healing potion from his ring.

"What are you doing?"

"Just keeping my promise to Valia," he replied as he poured some of the potion on Aithorn's wound. The cut was deep, running down his right side from shoulder to hip, but with the aid of the potion, he at least wouldn't die from it. Noah gave him just enough to stop any fatal bleeding. "Your medic is hanging back, waiting for us to leave. She'll hopefully be able to save you all from dying."

"I would not have shown you such mercy."

"At any other time, I wouldn't have either. In fact, since I am sparing you and your troops, I feel I am entitled to some kind of compensation."

He revealed a knife and started fiddling with Aithorn's pauldron, the piece of armor covering his shoulder, and his target was the knighthood medal attached. Unlike their rings, which were all gold, the emblems knights wore revealed their rank. They could be affixed to their armor or hung around their neck, making it easy to determine who had the highest authority. Noah had a bronze emblem but didn't bother displaying it. This gold emblem, on the other hand, could prove helpful.

"Bastard, give that back!"

"Considering the fact that I just defeated you and your subordinates, who here would you say is worthier to carry it? However, if this has sentimental value, I'll gladly trade it back to you for another one. Once you can move, ride back to Colbrand and tell the king that Valia and I are dead. Maybe you chased us into a river and we drowned. Maybe we were incinerated by Gradius, whatever. I don't want to have to cut down any more knights. Oh, and the next time I see that owl, I'm shooting him out of the sky."

Along with his emblem, Noah also stole Aithorn's health potions and used them on the most wounded knights, postponing death until the healer could get to them. Then, after taking care of a few other things, he walked away and met up with Valia, who was wearing nothing but a cloak and boots. Nearby, Gradius had fallen into a blast crater and was stuck on his back like a tortoise. He was roaring in fury and spraying fire into the sky, but nothing he did could get him up.

"Are you all right?" Valia asked with concern, seeing how Noah had been cut and burned by Aithorn's attacks.

"I'll live," he said as he drank another healing potion.

"What about them?"

"The same, for now. It's in the medic's hands. What happened to you?"

"All of my clothes ended up getting incinerated. Were it not for my defensive enchantment, I would be dead. Instead, I'm enjoying a refreshing summer breeze between my legs."

"And after all the work I did on the laundry. So, shall we move on?"

"I say we shall."

They returned to their horses and rode off, leaving the knights to lick their wounds.

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