"[......! Pielot! The reason I left you was—!]"
"I didn’t even «N.o.v.e.l.i.g.h.t» know you’d left."
"[Pielot!]"
Hypnos’s voice buzzed inside his head.
But Pielot already knew.
He possessed many talents, yet among them, the most powerful was the devotion Hypnos poured into him.
He had seen others who were granted divine power, but never once had he witnessed a god move so personally for the sake of one human being. Pielot alone had been blessed that way.
Hypnos had even moved in person to try stealing Frondier’s Heukcheon for him.
"Hypnos, I know full well how much you’ve acted for my sake."
"[If you know that, then why—!]"
"But even so."
Another arrow flew toward him—this time, three of them.
'I won’t be able to block all of these!'
The demon thought. Two arrows could perhaps be deflected by a well-timed swing within one trajectory, or maybe the sword truly moved with near-divine speed.
But three? No. One was bound to pierce the body.
Thud!
Yet again, all three arrows dropped weakly to the ground.
Ssst!
"......?!"
Instead, a thin line of blood appeared across the demon’s face.
Startled, the demon touched his cheek. His fingers came away stained with red.
'What—how, from this distance?'
He was standing at the perfect range to hit his target with a bow. For a sword to reach him was unthinkable.
'His aura reached me all the way here...!'
He already knew the man had skill in manipulating Aura—but for sword energy to reach an archer’s range?
"But even so,"
The human’s voice sounded again. He kept muttering strange things.
"Don’t think you can make me move."
Those words alone made even the demon shudder.
'This bastard!'
The next draw of the bowstring came instantly. Instinct screamed at him.
For now, that Aura only brushed his face. He just needed to step back a few paces.
But what about next time? The moment Pielot’s sword had touched him, perhaps Pielot himself had found some new sense or rhythm.
If that was the case, then firing arrows carelessly would be a blunder. He’d only become Pielot’s training dummy.
He pulled every arrow from the quiver, grabbing a handful in his fist and nocking them haphazardly all at once.
Even from this chaotic stance, those arrows would all fly true.
'Even if I use them all, I can still fight!'
The demon’s original weapon wasn’t a bow. It was a gift—his main arms were twin swords.
He’d used the bow only because its performance made the user’s skill irrelevant. His true weapons still hung at his waist.
'Don’t think you can beat a demon in the art of Aura.'
He cast aside all playfulness and aimed.
He didn’t care whether he hit. That was the bow’s job.
His focus was only on what came after the shot.
'I doubt he can block this many arrows anyway.'
It wasn’t three anymore, but an uncountable handful. No sword could slice through that many—unless it was a shield.
And yet—
His own senses felt strangely disturbed. That human’s arrogant expression stirred genuine fear.
'Then I’ll make sure you die for good.'
The demon finished his plan in his head and released the string.
Fwshhh!!
This time, the volley of arrows was countless. Fired in a mess, they nonetheless seemed drawn toward Pielot like iron to a magnet.
"[Pielot! Use my power! Quickly—]"
There was no time for him to respond.
He merely stood in his battōjutsu stance, exactly as before, not a hair’s breadth different, watching the arrows come.
'This will be the last one.'
With that thought, his eyes took in every arrow in the sky.
Livanche Swordsmanship —
Battō —
Four-Directional Slash
Shrrk!
With the cry of a beast, the blade was drawn, and both steel and Aura tore through the incoming arrows.
Tap!
And before Pielot’s eyes, the demon had already reached him.
Using his leap for a charge, feet barely brushing the ground, the body accelerated—and both hands drew the twin blades from his waist.
Pielot’s sword, unlike before, had been drawn. After cutting the arrows, it hadn’t returned to its sheath.
'So, he couldn’t afford to resheath after dealing with that many arrows, huh?'
Then that was the opening.
From what he’d observed, this human only showed his true skill from a drawn stance. Which meant that while resheathing, there was a gap.
Now that he’d closed the distance, Pielot wouldn’t have time to sheathe and reset.
'In that state, I win.'
The human who obsessed over keeping his sword in its sheath—once it was drawn, his power would be halved.
That was why the demon had forced this close-quarters fight.
'What—?'
But Pielot did something absurd.
Even with the demon right in front of him, he was sliding the sword back into its sheath.
'Idiot!'
Both of the demon’s swords thrust out at once. One blade aimed to intercept the drawing path before it could begin, cleverly blocking the trajectory, while the other targeted Pielot’s neck.
The path of a battō strike was fixed—it had to rise from below. Moreover, the demon had two blades.
His twin swords swung toward Pielot—
"──Finally,"
"You took the bait."
Livanche Swordsmanship —
Battō, Pielot Original —
Banshee
'Even if you draw, it’s over!'
The demon felt Pielot’s Aura and his eyes gleamed.
Pielot’s draw would surely be blocked by the first sword, while the other would slice off his head.
However—
However, Pielot’s sword never actually drew.
'What? When did—'
And then the demon saw it.
Above the motionless Pielot in battō stance, a descending sword—coming from above, aimed at him.
'Th-that’s...!'
Slash—
Thud.
Without moving an inch, Pielot’s stance remained frozen—while one of the demon’s arms dropped to the ground.
"......Aura,"
The demon muttered blankly, and in that moment, his remaining arm followed.
Staggering backward, he took several steps.
What he felt when his arms were severed wasn’t pain, but loss—and beyond that, terror.
He could see his own arms lying on the ground more clearly as he backed away. They still gripped the swords tightly, as if unaware they’d been cut off.
A demon didn’t die just from losing both arms—but the defeat was absolute.
He’d lost. Not even two seconds after drawing his main weapons.
'...It wasn’t high-speed battō. That wasn’t it at all.'
Thud.
Strength left his legs, and he dropped to his knees. Blood poured from both stumps, pooling beneath him.
"...He never drew his sword at all."
At last, the demon understood.
The so-called high-speed draw that eyes couldn’t follow—its true nature.
It was simple once known—and all the more absurd for it.
"To cut without drawing the blade, by separating the Aura’s trajectory from the sword’s itself..."
—I can separate Aura from the physical blade, attack two targets at once on different paths.
Just as Pielot had once told Frondier, he could separate his sword and Aura—but only through battōjutsu.
He’d begun learning it simply because he thought drawing a sword looked cool. But looking back, the technique he developed was something that could only exist with such restrictions.
Pielot’s draw style carried every weakness of battōjutsu, yet that was exactly why he could perform it in identical motion, identical breath, identical rhythm—perfectly reproducible. That routine allowed him to achieve Aura separation.
But he knew its fatal flaw well.
Because the blade remained sheathed, its speed and power were reduced; the sword and sheath were damaged; and, above all, the act of sheathing mid-battle was fatally dangerous.
He’d solved most of those issues—but not the last. To draw, one must first sheathe. That gap was the problem.
Then Frondier had said something utterly ridiculous the first time Pielot spoke to him about his draw technique.
—If it’s hard to sheathe mid-battle, then just don’t draw it in the first place.
Of course, Frondier wasn’t a swordsman. He had no idea what that truly meant.
But Pielot had taken his words literally—and did exactly that.
"You really do like pushing people around, don’t you."
Pielot muttered in a dying voice.
The demon spoke.
"...You lured me in."
When the demon had fired that massive volley, Pielot had drawn his sword just once.
Thinking about it now, he hadn’t needed to. He had clearly baited the demon.
"I couldn’t move, after all."
As the demon said, now Pielot couldn’t take even a single step. The mana of the Demon Realm was eating away at his body with every moment.
The demon asked,
"If you had that technique, you could’ve driven me out from the start. You wouldn’t have needed to risk such a dangerous close fight. Why didn’t you?"
"Because driving you out isn’t the problem, idiot."
"What?"
"If you run away from me, you’ll just grab that bow again and go after my comrades. You think I could watch that happen?"
"...So you lured me here, knowing you were dying, just to protect your companions from danger."
The demon chuckled faintly.
"...Before I take you as a companion on the road to hell, I saw something worth seeing. The ultimate mastery of Aura—something even a demon could never embody—"
Slash—
He never finished the sentence. His head flew from his shoulders by Pielot’s sword.
This time, he’d used the actual blade.
"Just die already, demon. What ‘ultimate mastery of Aura,’ huh?"
Pielot let out a sigh after speaking.
He had won. Yet his body was no different from defeat.
Surely, Frondier’s side was busy too. No one would be coming here.
'...So this is it for me, huh.'
He thought vacantly.
He slid the sword back into its sheath—it was too heavy to hold.
'But if this one demon was supposed to be the plan to kill Frondier, then it’s far too naïve—'
Then—
Pielot felt a chilling aura surging toward him and lifted his head.
'This presence...!'
Something hostile was coming from afar. No—many things, closing in from every direction.
A plan to kill Frondier—of course one demon wasn’t enough.
That was why—
—Before I take you as a companion.
"...Ha."
Pielot raised his head.
He saw the same sight Frondier had once seen.
Black clouds.
A swarm of demons converging like a mass of bats, forming a cloud that poured murderous intent down upon him.
"......."
Pielot closed his eyes.
Even pierced by arrows and devoured by demonic mana, he had managed to slay one demon.
For him, that was doing his best.
He knew he would die.
Even before the black cloud reached him—
—No comrade will come.
"...Pielot."
He spoke his own name as he opened his eyes.
A cold voice rebuked himself.
"Stop whining, Pielot."
