Part 10

Aoi laid out on the floor on her stomach and saw him as he stood there.

A teen.

Beaten and bloody, he stood there.

Haruko Matsumoto.

He had no abilities to speak of, but he stood there by himself to save her.

"Get away from her." Haruko's voice broke through the silence.

The man looked at Haruko.

"And if I don’t?"

"I had already decided that I was going to kick your ass; do you really want to make this even worse for yourself?"

The man stood there in silence, stunned by the boy's answer.

"Oh, is that so?" the man said as he gripped the handle of his sword tighter. The man had raised the large sword to point the tip at Haruko. "I have entertained you for far too long.”

The teen did not move his feet.

His feet and resolve stood there in front of the man, not wavering.

The man sprinted towards the teen.

Haruko could see the man approaching him, but with his body so exhausted, he could hardly move.

(I have to time this right; don’t dodge him; dodge the weapon.)

The man thrust his sword forward.

(Move.)

Haruko moved his head and body to the side.

He had dodged the attack.

The man had sped past him.

(He dodged it.)

The man had spun around to attack the teen again.

He raised the sword overhead.

(Now that I think about it, there was nothing special about the metal or magic he was using.)

The teen began to think harder.

(He is only able to manipulate the metal by giving commands; if I get past that weapon and attack him before he can react and switch to another, then…..)

The man swung the sword, and Haruko dodged as he jumped back.

(Then I can beat him.)

Haruko rushed the man.

The man swung his gray sword horizontally, which caused Haruko to sidestep and throw a punch.

A weak punch.

A punch that would never have hit the man, and that was his plan.

The man swung the blade down, and once again, Haruko dodged.

The blade slammed into the ground and buried itself in the dirt. Haruko then stepped on the buried part of the blade and attempted to uppercut the man.

He overshot the uppercut, missing the man's head.

(Now.) Haruko thought as he threw a couple of jabs, trying to hit the man as he dodged. The teen was trying to push him into a corner and keep him on his toes.

The man quickly pulled the weapon out of the ground as he backed up to dodge another weak jab.

Both men stood there.

The man rested the tip of the blade on the ground.

"It would seem even now that all that bravado was all for naught. You evade well, but your attacks lack speed, accuracy, and power. With all that working against you, it would be foolish to think that you could win, let alone hit me."

The teen stood there.

"Huff, huff," the teen calmed his breathing heavily and grinned. "That was the plan, dipshit," he said as the teen held out his injured arm and opened his closed fist to release crumbled-up pieces of paper.

"….What?" The man said it out loud as he watched the teen drop the papers to the ground.

The man looked around on the ground; there was paper spread out around him.

(These are talismans.)

The man slowly backed up.

(Magic, but how?)

It was almost as if the man's heart had stopped.

"What the hell are you doing now?" the man said as he turned his attention to the teen standing before him.

With his left hand, the teen grabbed his injured right arm.

"Bear with me a bit; I didn’t want to use this earlier. [Dusk to Twilight, Dawn to Sunset]

The man stood there, shocked.

(A magic incantation. He can use magic. I made a mistake. I should have been more on guard because of the barrier outside the house.)

[The heavens cries and the earth buries. That space in between rage and serenity—the point of no return to the edge of the abyss—

The boy continued to chant.

The man needed to escape and regroup. If he could get out of the rage of this teen spell, he should be good.

He attempted to run away.

"You can try, but you won’t get far."

The man stopped when he heard that.

"This spell range is the whole park."

The man paused.

"W…what how?"

"There was a reason I was late to this ordeal here. I've been to this park a couple times in the past, and I know all the nooks and crannies of it, so placing these around the park was no problem."

(He set this up during the time I was here.)

Haruko closed his eyes.

[From the moment we take our first breath, we must come to the realization that we will also take our last.

"What kind of spell is this?"

The teen turned his attention to the man.

"It is a spatial manipulation spell," Haruko replied. His voice was calm and without fear. The spell creates a barrier, and within that barrier, space will become violently distorted, ripping us apart and using the mana within the barrier to create an explosion blasting us away."

The man's eyes widen in shock.

(That impossible. There is no way.)

(Why is he doing this?)

"You would die to protect a girl you just met," the man yelled out with fear in his voice.

There was a calm.

"Of course, without hesitation. I already told you that, didn't I?"

There was fear creeping over the man.

[So please do not cry. So I offer the space to you.]

The man began to tense up.

[Rip].

Haruko spoke again.

Fear.

The man began to look around, trying to find a way to escape.

[Deny and distort. I offer this confined space to you, and in the swirling chaos of distortion, I pray you find calmness.]

The man was scared.

If the area of effect of this spell was as wide as the teen stated, then escape would be impossible.

In all of his thoughts, one came to him in his panic.

If escape was impossible, he could find a way to protect himself from the spell.

The teen was risking everything, even himself, to beat this man; both would be victims of his spell. A suicide pact.

He was so close to his goal.

(Nooooo!.) The man gripped the handle of the sword tightly.

He was shaking.

The man suddenly yelled out with a roar, which surprised the teen.

"I will not fall here to the likes of you." The man's facial expressions were almost mad. "If you want to die for such a worthless cause, then so be it, but do not drag me down with you."

The man held his sword forward.

"I just have to survive your attack, even if just a little bit, and then I am good to take the girl."

The teen looked at him.

"We will see." Haruko slammed his right palm on the ground.

"Disperse."

Suddenly, the tip of the gray sword began to peel away as if it were being melted by an invisible force.

Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

"Shield me entirely!"

(Now.)

The man was creating a shield.

The teen rushed forward towards the man.

Haruko slapped the man's left arm, holding the still-forming shield away.

(…What.)

Haruko then grabbed the man's robe by the collar with his left hand. Gathering himself, the man swung what was left of the melting sword at the teenager's head, hoping to hit him and allow him to regroup.

As the melting sword connected with the teen's head, it completely collapsed on itself and did no damage to the teen.

Haruko glared at the man with such ferocity that it shocked the man to the core. He crouched down.

With the man's face wide open, the teen thrust the right side of his body upward.

The man didn’t have time to react as the teen's right fist came into contact with his chin.

An uppercut.

Haruko hit him.

For the first time since this battle, he was able to hit him.

The man's head cocked upward as blood and saliva came out of his mouth. The uppercut knocked the man off his feet and back into the ground.

As the man lay on the ground, he grabbed his chin.

"I think I've finally gotten the hang of you and your magic figured out. Through your vocal commands, you're able to create a wide variety of weapons, but you're limited by which objects you want to create and the time you have to switch between objects, meaning you can’t switch effortlessly. You attack in rapid succession to throw people off that fact."

Haruko was speaking more assertively now.

"When I had closed the distance between us earlier, back at my house, you immediately created a shield to protect yourself. That wasn’t what surprised me; it was what happened next when you went back on offense. Since you couldn’t attack me with your shield, you created a weapon that could: a spear. When you attempted to stop me from attacking, you jammed the weapon into my shoulder. That weapon wasn’t done forming, so it did no damage."

Haruko started walking towards the man.

"Do not think that little stunt you pulled earlier that allowed you to hit me will work a second time," the man said as he kneeled on the floor.

Haruko grinned

"I don’t have to; it was enough that I managed to hit you."

"If you want to call that a hit," he said, standing up.

"It was enough, Haruko replied. Now that I fully know how your magic works, I’ll give you one more chance to come at me with everything you've got."

"What?" the man said as he was trying to process what the teen had said.

I’m giving you the chance to create one more weapon-"

"What do you mean?"

"Will you shut the fuck up and let me finish?" The teen said this, getting angry.

Haruko held up his index finger.

‘"Now one more chance, one more weapon. This weapon you create better be enough to finish me off, because if I survive even by a mere fraction, I will not give you a second chance again; no do-overs. You failed to end this fight on your terms; I’m ending it on mine.

"DISPERSE," the man said loudly.

The shield began to peel away.

The man was now in a conundrum. He needed a weapon.

As insignificant and minuscule as the man who found the teen was, he was putting up a much better fight than he expected. He managed to dodge most of the weapons he created. He was able to hit him.

Aoi watched as a liquid ball began to form.

(That ball is almost like...)

The man watched the teen.

"What's the matter? You’re taking your sweet time. Wasn’t it you who said you didn’t like long battles?"

The man gathered himself.

"Punish." His voice was calm.

The liquid ball began to stretch itself thin.

A long whip.

The man grabbed the handle of the whip, and without giving the teen a chance to respond, he swung the whip towards the ground, which had spilled open.

"Fancy weapon you got there."

"Thank you; this is the most versatile of my weapons I am allowed to create."

The man cracked the whip.

(Regardless of how great he thinks that weapon is, if I stay outside his range and find a way to close the distance, I should be good.)

Haruko dodged the incoming assault by sidestepping left.

The man swung again, and Haruko ducked, which caused the trash bin behind him to split in half horizontally.

Haruko looked back at the damage.

(What the hell kind of whip is that?)

Haruko's thoughts were interrupted as he heard footsteps approaching behind him.

"You must be thinking you have evaded my attacks. Well, I am afraid not. Allow me to try this. The man spun the whip overhead and brought it down towards the teen.

(Follow the weapon, not him.)

Haruko was assuming the whip was coming down overhead, so he sidestepped out of the way. As the thong of the whip hit the ground, it bounced up in an unnatural way and wrapped itself around Haruko's right arm.

(How?)

Shiink

Barbwire emerged from the whip and cut deep into Haruko's skin.

"What the hell!" Haruko shouted as he tried to remove the whip from his arm.

The man yanked the whip forward, causing Haruko to be dragged from his feet into the ground face first.

(How was he able to drag me like that?) Haruko thought as he began to pick himself up.

The man raised the handle of the whip, and Haruko was then lifted a few feet in the air by his arm as the barb wire cut into his skin.

(What the hell?) Haruko thought as his body rose into the air.

The man turned around and swung the handle down toward the ground. The teen's body flew across the sky, being dragged by his arm. There was a loud thud as Haruko was slammed on his back into the dirt.

Pain.

That's what Haruko was feeling at this moment. He was struggling to breathe, and it felt like his back was on fire. He could feel himself coughing up blood.

"Your reflexes allowed you to dodge my earlier weapon. But this whip is not like the other weapons"

The man began walking toward the teen on the floor as he watched him roll over.

"You may believe that the whip's striking power is the most dangerous part of this weapon, and you would be correct to think so. But that is not true; think of the throng and handle as two different weapons. Anything that is bound by the thong can be manipulated by the handle. Regardless of its mass or size, I swing, and the handle and the thong correct itself. Case and point...."

The man raised the handle to the sky, lifting both the thong and the teen into the air. Haruko grunted in pain as he was yanked into the air by his arm.

As soon as Haruko was in the air, the man began spinning the whip around as if it were a lasso.

He was being swung in the air like a rag doll.

The man swung the handle down, slamming the teen into a green park bench and table. There was a sickening noise as the teen's body impacted the table and bench that echoed through the empty park.

Aoi watched as the teen's body lay there on the ground. He wasn’t moving. She wasn’t even sure that he was alive. As she lay there, she felt all hope die within her. This was what she wanted to prevent.

The man slightly swung the handle, and the portion of the whip that was wrapped around the teen's right arm unwrapped itself, dropping his bloodied arm to the ground.

The teen's body still didn’t move.

The man watched the teen as he began wrapping the whip over his shoulder.

"You would give me one more chance; don’t make me laugh. As I stated, Pride and arrogance will always be the end of the foolish."

The man turned to the girl.

Aoi still had her eyes on Haruko's body as he laid there.

The man began walking towards the girl.

"Please do not worry about him; through his own actions, he chose this. I gave him every chance to walk away, yet he persisted on his own accord."

The man kept walking towards the girl.

"If anything, I spared him. Guys like him believe that there are righteous beliefs, but because everyone's beliefs and justifications are different, there are no correct beliefs. The only thing in this world that can’t be denied is absolution. That is what our leader believed. People can resist and deny all they want, but the one thing they can't deny is absolute power."

The man stopped walking.

"I will not give you any false hope and say that what our leader has in store for you will be pleasant, but-"

There was a slight rustle.

"……and you say my attacks lacked power."

A voice rang out.

To say that he paused was an understatement; to be frank, he froze.

(No.)

The man turned back, surprised.

The teen he was sure he had beat was starting to stand up.

Then he took a step.

The teen was slowly approaching the man.

"Was that your best shot, because if it was, then I am going to be upset?"

"……how?"

The man was at a loss for words.

"Why do you keep coming back?" The man yelled out.

The man did not understand why the teen kept coming back. Why did he keep going this far?

Haruko did not answer the man's question.

A single step forward.

The man unwrapped the whip from his shoulder and swung it towards the teen.

The teen dodged the whip thong and sprinted toward the man.

Grabbing the whip, Haruko yanked it. The pull pulled the man off balance.

Haruko ran towards the man.

He was close.

To close for the whip to be useful to him now.

He needed a new weapon.

A weapon that would end this long debacle.

A weapon that, if possible, would cut this teen in half.

A sword.

Without a second thought, the man held his hand out, holding the whip forward.

"Disperse."

The whip began to melt away, floating in the air.

"CLEAVE!!!" The man shouted out.

The man was attempting to create a sword.

The metallic liquid floating in the air began to merge at a single point.

The man grabbed the still-forming handle of the would-be sword.

Haruko was closing in on the man.

Slowly, the metallic liquid began forming the sword. Each piece is coming together. He just needs time to make it solid enough, and then he could cut right through him this time.

Just a little more time.

And then-

Nothing.

The metallic liquid detached itself from the handle.

"What the…."

The liquid was floating in the air.

Haruko stopped himself in his tracks.

(Is this another one of his tricks?)

"What's happening?" The man said this as he was getting visibly annoyed. "Form the weapon."

The man was arguing with the metal as if it were a misbehaving child.

Still holding the sword handle, the man began to yell out, "Do something." The metal did nothing but continue to float in the air.

"WHAT IS GOING ON? THE SPELL WASN’T NULLIFIED, SO WHY CAN’T I USE MY ELIXIR?"

The man could understand what was going on.

"It is perplexing, isn’t it?"

A weak voice spoke out.

The man turned his attention to the source of the weak voice.

The girl.

She had not moved from that one spot.

Still sitting on the ground, exhausted, she had her arm raised out in front of her.

"It is an amazing technique; that spell was it."

Her arm was struggling to stay in the air.

"I wasn’t able to see how exactly the core of your spell worked earlier.……"

She soon coughs as blood starts pouring out of her mouth.

"The ability to change one form of matter to another is truly remarkable, but…."

The girl was now glaring at the man.

"But amazing as it is, that spell has one huge weakness: before a change could happen, it reverts to a liquid state.

Her voice was clearer and more assertive now.

"To anyone else, that information wouldn’t matter, but I am a GOD, ruling over the element of water; all water is under my control, even yours. Liquid in its purest form is no different, regardless of what method you use to create it or how you use it."

The man’s eyes widen as the girl’s words finally sink into him.

"If it exists, I can control it."

With that statement and her arm reaching outward, Aoi pointed her index finger down, causing the floating metallic liquid surrounding the man to fall to the ground.

"My magic…..what is going on?"

Haruko clenched his fist.

A single step.

The teen dragged his foot along the floor.

The man turned his attention to the teen, who was slowly approaching him.

Another step.

Fear.

His magic was gone. He had no method of attack or defense to protect himself from the approaching teen.

One more step, followed by another.

The teen was now running towards the man.

"Perforate" The man had roared, hoping that the liquid on the floor would impale the approaching teen, but nothing happened.

"Skewer, impale, crush, reap,..."

Nothing.

The man could not use his magic.

All he could do was watch the teen approaching him.

"Hey dipshit, let's try this again, shall we?" Haruko yelled out as he leaped forward.

Rushing towards the man, the teen was going to end this battle the only way he knew how. It had hurt to move his right arm, but his next attack was going to hurt the man so much more.

He brought his arm and his fist as far back as they would allow him to.

A punch. A simple attack that was nothing special.

Shield!" the man yelled again, hoping to create a shield to protect him from the teen's oncoming assault.

And once again, nothing.

There was nothing to protect him now.

With everything he had and a yell, Haruko brought down his fist and slammed it into the man's face.

The force of the punch had sent the man back several meters, and he had rolled across the dirt.

Eduard Andrejs was unconscious.

This fight was his.

Haruko Matsumoto.

Aoi watched as he stood there, breathing heavily, beaten, and bloodied.

He looked so much like a hero who went to hell and back. A hero who survives the worst onslaught by a single hair.

Haruko began wobbling toward Aoi as she was on the ground.

As he was, he lost all strength in his legs and fell face first into the ground.

Exhausted.

He couldn’t fall here.

He picked himself up on his hands and knees.

"Are you okay?" Aoi said as she stood up.

It hurt to put pressure on his arms.

"Okay," Haruko chuckled. ‘If anything, I should be the one asking you that, don’t you………think?"

Haruko's words slowed down as he raised his head and looked at her face.

There were tears streaming down her face, and her lips were trembling.

She was crying.

"Hey, are you okay?"

"You……… .were the first person that was kind to me since I got here. It was the reason I didn’t want you to get caught up in this, but... but you-"

"Keep coming back; yeah, that is sort of my thing," Haruko grunted as he stood up.

"I’m not worth all this trouble, the carnage, and the death. I’m…I’m….."

"……you”

Haruko's answer had surprised her.

"I don’t know what exactly is going on with you—magic, wizards, bounty notices, or whatever—and I won’t pretend that I do. I told you I had a feeling that you needed help and that I gave my word I would help you."

"You’ll help me." Aoi looked up to him. ‘You heard him; there are multiple people after me, after my power. They will never stop coming after me."

"And is that supposed to stop me?" Haruko said, closing his eyes and folding his arms.

"They’ll come after you too."

"And I’ll fight them too," Haruko said, not caring about the repercussions.

"Why, you don’t have a stake in this nor any reason to get involved."

She didn’t understand him.

A vein appeared over Haruko's left eyebrow; he sighed and uncrossed his arms.

"…… No sane person would go this far for a person they just met. To go into the deep end of the abyss. To travel into hell and try to find hope just to save me..."

THWACK!!!!!

A loud thud broke out.

In an unprecedented move, Haruko brought his fist down on the top of the girl's head.

"Ouch, owowowowow." The girl whimpered out in pain as she placed her hands on the top of her head. "You hit me."

‘Yeah, I’m sorry about that, but it felt like that was the only way I was going to get through to you."

Haruko turned his back to her.

"I……" Haruko exhaled, "I don’t care how many people are after you, whether it's a few dozen or the whole entire world; I said I'd help you. I don’t give two shits if they come after me because I decided I was going to help a girl, and the world made its enemy. For me, that’s all the reason I need to help you."

Aoi stopped rubbing her head and looked at him.

"And if this girl or anybody else was in hell or the deep end of the abyss where the idea or hope that she can’t be saved exists, that is pointless to try."

Haruko turned to face her.

"Then tell the devil to make some room, because I’ll join you in the abyss at the end of it, and I’ll pull you out of it."

Aoi stared at Haruko.

"What is a devil?"

"Wait…..what?" Haruko said as he turned around to her.