Chapter 18

Swords

The clambering of the bell finally dies down, and Ayre and I are surrounded by dozens of female pirates, all making a racket of their own as they try to figure out what's going on.

In the middle of them all, their captain, the boss of the Desert Cove dungeon, stands with us on the upper deck of her pirate ship. She raises a hand, and they all fall silent, awaiting her words.

"We have a challenger today," she announces, the only other noise the creaking of the ship as the waters gently rock it in the underground dock. "She will be facing me in single combat!" The captain gets a wide grin on her face. "And when she loses, her and her friend will be joining us as our new crewmates!"

Ayre can't understand the words of any of the pirates. All of their words just sound like generic, stereotypical pirate sounds to him. Even I, with my Essence translation, wouldn't be able to understand them were it not for my experience with Kyuuga. Nevertheless, he visibly represses a shudder as the pirates around us cheer, hooting and hollering to wake the dead.

"She sounds like she's running an arena," the elf mutters to me. "And I don't think I like the sound of the terms."

"She is," I confirm chipperly. "The captain and I are going to fight, and you're the trophy!"

"I'm the what?!"

"It'll be fiiiiiine," I wave off his protests. "And this way, we don't have to fight the entire crew!"

For some reason that I don't understand, my reassurances don't seem to put Ayre's mind at ease. If anything, he looks a little more worried. I put it out of my mind, though, and move to square off with the captain.

"Now, my little Hero," the captain crows as she draws a saber from her side, "we engage in the most ancient of pirate rituals ..." She snaps into an aggressive stance. "Crossing blades!"

I draw the swabbie's blade much more hesitantly. "Well, Captain, I think you should know that I'm much more of a ranged combatant. I can't promise to be very good with--"

I interrupt myself with a yelp as I duck under a swipe from the captain, and the fight begins. The crowd forms a natural barrier for the arena as she chases me about the clearing they leave us.

I duck and weave around three more strikes before finally working up the nerve to parry. The movement comes naturally enough, if a little stiff, and her strike slides away from me. It doesn't so much recoil off of it, like the movies always seem to show, as much as it keeps going at a slightly altered course.

The Captain recovers quickly, however, and continues her aggressive assault with another set of slashes that I'd much rather get out of the way of than engage with.

The crowd of pirates begins to boo and catcall at my performance, but I wheel at them, motioning with the short, curved blade I've got to work with.

"Oh, come on, cut me some slack, here!" I shout. "She's got a foot of steel on me!"

My stand is short-lived, and they just laugh and jeer as I try to bounce away at the same time as I turn back to face the Captain, who isn't going to just let me have a break.

"You really like playing to the crowd, don't you, little hero?" the captain asks as she pursues me back across the ring.

"So what if I do?"

"It's a good quality for a pirate," she explains while we continue to exchange blows.

My Agility is keeping up with her so far, but she doesn't fight like a level twenty-two. She doesn't even fight like the Silvers from my rank exam. Sure, she has the speed and power of a level twenty-two, as near as I understand such a thing, but in this moment, I genuinely believe her when she says she was higher. She fights with a control and form nearly that of a master.

I can't help but think that I'd never stand a chance against her if she had her full power.

Still, I can't let it show. "You haven't beaten me yet, Captain! You don't even have me on the back foot!"

She laughs as she thrusts in toward me and I spin to the side. "You'll go far as a pirate! Maybe even make First Mate! I've never had a Hero for a first officer before!"

It's while she's making a follow-up diagonal slice that my new Martial Arts skill shows me an opening. Not literally, of course. It doesn't show me how to move, I just recognize the incoming moment.

I shove my sword against hers to force it to the side, exposing her flank, and activate Empower. Then I rear back and, in a move that would make Kyuuga proud if he'd ever give me that much credit, I bury my foot in the captain's ribs.

The superhuman force of the empowered blow sends her across the deck to the far side of the human ring and she actually collides with the pirates there, resulting in a knot of arms and legs that takes a long moment to untangle.

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When she comes out of it, however, the captain is smiling, and I immediately get a bad feeling, because it's not some manic, bloodthirsty grin. It's a knowing smile.

"Empower," she identifies the spell immediately, and the bad feeling worsens. "It's been a while since I've seen that spell. Too many martials are meatheads without the sense or mana to use it properly."

Suddenly, the instinctive feeling of pressure I receive from her increases sharply. "I hope you don't mind if I test yours?"

I realize she's just cast Empower, as well, and my shoulders slouch as only one word can come to my mind. "Otso ..."

Immediately, Ayre's voice comes in a pleading half-scream from off to the side. "PLEASE stop trying to use that word!"

I don't have time to retort as the captain comes flying at me again, half again as fast and powerful as she'd been before. From experience, I know that doesn't include her health, but that doesn't matter so much when neither of us have been able to land any real hits. Even my kick moved her more than it damaged her, I'm sure.

Now I'm keeping Empower up all of the time just to keep up with her strikes and the force behind them, putting me on a hard clock. I can only keep it up for three minutes, assuming I don't need that mana for anything else in the meantime.

My best hope is that she doesn't anticipate just how long I can keep it up, and I can outlast this surge.

The captain notices me hunkering down and focusing my attention on defense and conserving my energy almost immediately.

"Oh my, you aren't thinking of waiting me out, are you, little Hero?" She actually laughs. "I'm the Core Guardian, the Dungeon Boss! I may not be at my full power, but I am powered directly by the core, itself! I can't run out of mana!"

My mind is full of swears at that revelation that don't make it to my mouth as I dive to the side to avoid another thrusting assault, only to find myself already having to parry her follow-ups by the time I wheel back toward her again.

My Agility is still higher than hers, and my multiplier is probably higher, too. Which means I'm still getting the greater gain from Empower, but that's not enough. I have the raw numbers, but she's got the skill.

It's the very match-up that Yorin always warned me about with her parables, the Hero who thought having a skill and better numbers always meant a win over a master with lower numbers. I'm not so arrogant as to have come into this with such a thought in my mind, but it's the situation I've landed in all the same.

The captain pursues me until my back is against the crowd. When I try to deflect her blade away again, she feints and I fall for it. Her blade locks hilts with mine, and being on the back foot, I'm already at a disadvantage.

But that's not her objective. A moment after I start concentrating on not letting her sword by, the point of her boot comes up and shoots into my gut.

I immediately second-guess how much damage a well-placed kick can do as I fold over the limb with little else in my head but the pain.

She lets me collapse to the ground as she removes her foot and steps away. The captain is patient enough to let me recover, examining the edge of her blade as she monologues.

"My, my, it's been too long since I've had a proper fight, my little Hero! My skill with a blade is too well-known. Even with me so weakened, the adventurers that come to face me retreat almost immediately, preferring to bombard me from afar than engage me directly. Why, I'm lucky if I even get to play with a front-liner or two while they do it!"

I push myself back to a standing position with a scowl on my face. "I'm having a hard time feeling bad for you when you're sitting behind an infinite mana cheat. Heck, you're about to force me to do the same! Blast you from afar and be done with it!"

But she just laughs, an all too lovely sound as she pirouettes on the spot. "Oh, little Remmi, you don't have the space to put enough distance between us now. And as for cheating, did you forget that I'm a pirate? What, exactly, were you expecting?"

I narrow my eyes at such a cliche response. "Really? That's what you're going with? Hello, pirate?"

She shrugs her shoulders, a pretty smile on her smug lips. "Do I need another excuse?"

"Fair point," I answer back as I pass the sword to my left hand. "Then thanks, you just made me feel a lot better about this."

I'm sure she has no idea what the thing on my hip is, or else she would have confiscated it long before this fight even started. But she recognizes it as a threat now. I can see it in her eyes as they narrow, the mind behind them trying to decipher what's happening.

She rushes at me with sword drawn back, her limbs empowered for as much speed as she can gain. But I'm empowered, too.

And I don't have as far to go.

I hit one knee in the same motion that I draw, so that I'm aiming up at an angle instead of shooting into the crowd.

The hollow of the cavern the ship docks in is massive, reducing what would be the sound of a cannon firing from the deck in tighter confines to a rolling thunder. In its wake, everything seems to stop. The crowd falls silent. The captain's face is just turning to shock, her forward momentum halted in all of its steam by the great blow impacting her chest.

For a moment, even the splatter from the bullet exiting her back seems to hang still in the air.

That moment is shattered as the Captain collapses to the deck. The crowd is silent for a bit longer before gasps and whispers of disbelief start spreading among them.

I step up to the captain, sword in one hand and pistol in the other, and for a moment, neither of us say anything as she gasps for breath, her hand clasped over the hole big enough to see through. I don't know if it's superhuman endurance or something about being a dungeon boss that's keeping her from just bleeding out.

"Well, it's your win ... little hero ..." she finally says. "Pity ... I really wanted a Hero for a first mate ..." The Captain looks up at me. "Hey, do me a favor ... put off leaving until after I recover ... yeah?"

"That depends," I venture. "Is killing you really the only way to open the way to the core?"

She narrows her eyes. "No ... that's only if you're seen ... as hostile. I can open it for an ally ... at will."

I drop the overpressure rounds with a press of the magazine release and slide in a magazine of green-tipped rounds, then pop the chambered round out with a rack of the slide to slip one of the new ones into its place. Auto-loot picks up what I dropped with a gesture.

"In that case, I've been wanting an excuse to give these rounds a try."

And then I shoot her in the chest again.

The impact sends her back into the deck, bent back at the knees, that shocked look spreading across her face again. I see the hole starting to close, but it's too slow for my liking, so I shoot her three more times, her body rebounding off of the deck with each impact.

The healing bullets don't leave wounds of their own, which is good, but they clearly aren't lacking kinetic energy. Presumably, some amount of the healing goes to mitigating that. The healing from each bullet also stacks, accelerating the healing process, and in moments, the only signs that a hole was ever punched through her chest are the two holes in the front and back of her tunic.

The crowd is dead silent. I can't blame them. They can't see the hole from where they are. To them, it looks like I just randomly shot their captain that had already lost, brutally and repeatedly.

It isn't until she inhales sharply and sits back up that life returns to them, confused murmurs returning to their ranks. The first intelligible words come from the captain, herself.

"Damn it, that stings!"