Chapter 38: A Gambit of Ice and Fire

Another flare flew into the sky. It slowed down, reaching its apex, before lighting up into a bright green torch that illuminated the courtyard where Jon and Bowyer faced each other down. The flare’s light was unsteady, twinkling as a star did — and they watched each other’s unmoving faces flicker with that green light.

They were to one side of the courtyard, with the wall of a building right beside them, and the rest of the courtyard on the other hand.

Jon wasn’t planning on moving the fight to the center. He would be at too much of a disadvantage in an open field. On the other hand, with a wall to one side, he could hope for Bowyer to swing too wildly and get his weapon stuck in the wall. There were also opportunities for kicking off the wall, or maybe even escaping by running up the wall and catching the ledge of a window on the second floor.

Each option was fraught with more risk than the last. He just to play things by ear, then.

Bowyer planted his monster-hunting sword into the ground, opting to use a much lighter longsword he carried from his back. Against an assassin, speed was more crucial, and was something that a hundred-pound slab of steel didn’t have.

He just needed to nick Jon once, and he’d win.

Still, he refused to make the first move. His mind had gone into overanalytic overdrive like it had never done before, as the man before him had likely killed Wiz, definitely demonstrated insane control of magic, and unerringly abided by a systematic and structured way of tactical thinking, measuring his opponents’ capabilities and constantly charting the next best path to killing his enemy.

As far as Bowyer was concerned, he felt like a live test subject for Jon’s experiments.

It might not have been fear that he felt, but he felt no confidence, either. Without any deep understanding of Jon’s abilities, he could only rely his knowledge of himself to come out victorious.

Seeing that Bowyer wasn’t moving, Jon greedily took every second his opponent gave him to consider his next move. From what he knew so far, Bowyer seemed to be only using Skills, or else he wouldn’t have been able to sustain his rampage against the Order earlier. Those Skills included both defense and attack-oriented ones — or did they? Bowyer was wearing armor capable of sustaining intense hits, but was it because of magic, or was it because the armor itself was just physically that sturdy?

More closely examining the armor, it had some scratches and singes, but no dents, which was unthinkable given how the Order had fired spells at him with power equivalent to an anti-materiel rifle, at least.

Most likely, Bowyer was letting his armor take any hits that it could take, and against anything else, he was using magic to fend it off. This narrowed it down to two possibilities: either he was fueling the magic with his life, or his defensive Skills had some sort of constraint. Depending on the reason, he would behave differently — panic at differing timings, or attack more or less often.

None of this analysis would contribute anything if Jon didn’t have a way to even damage Bowyer … and he did.

Ice and Fire Manipulation were considered unrefined Skills among the mana manipulation category, as they indiscriminately blew out or sucked in mana, respectively, in a roughly spherical shape, sparing only the user.

They only had the names that they did because reducing or concentrating the local amount of natural mana — the easiest category of mana to manipulate — reduced or increased the local temperature; when pushed far enough, this created ice from the water in the air, and high-temperature plasma from the very air itself.

— Ice and Fire Manipulation didn’t only affect natural mana.

Jon charged forward right into Bowyer’s reach. It was a suspiciously straightforward attack, Bowyer thought, but he still met it with a killing slash.

With Perfect Motion and Hastened Sight, Jon stopped an inch from the sword’s tip which flew past him, letting him feel its wind.

Still, Bowyer was fast. With his insane strength, he instantly decelerated and re-accelerated his sword to thrust towards Jon, stepping forward at the same time to close the inch-wide gap.

Despite the fact that his sword was moving faster than Jon could see, his body language readily gave him away.

Jon stepped aside the path of the attack — then, putting a pen in his hand with Summon Scribetool, he tapped the sword with the pen’s nib, coursing a blade-breaking amount of magic through it, turning it into a shower of scrap, all the while confirming that Bowyer’s Skills weren’t extending to his weapons.

Meanwhile, Bowyer’s hands were suddenly lighter, and only after a long, split second did he realize his blade had scattered into pieces among the grass. How? Why? Though his body was fast, his eyes were not. He had gotten by so far by just practicing his movements and training on his own body’s feedback.

Never before had he fought an opponent who could see his own movements better than even he could.

Never mind the sword. He didn’t need it to fight. Readily letting go of the hilt, he curled his gauntlets into fists and threw a left jab.

Jon stepped back, avoiding the jab’s reach, and he stepped back some more, avoiding a kick from Bowyer’s steel foot. That attack qualified as a bludgeon.

Seeing Jon on the defensive, Bowyer pressed on the attack, throwing two jabs in quick succession.

Jon felt the cold stone of a wall press against his back. Bowyer cried like thunder as he committed his right hand to a cross, twisting his torso as his fist rocketed towards Jon.

He just stepped aside, however, the wall over his shoulder exploded in dust and debris — and Bowyer found his fist embedded into it.

He yanked it out with ease, but the additional delay introduced by having to register the surprise, and then the slight resistance of brick against steel, gave Jon enough time to move to Bowyer’s exposed side.

Bowyer turned his head to face Jon, and for a moment, time seemed to slow down as they locked eyes. There was this kind of philosophical moment in the lord’s mind: he felt the surprise in his eyes, widening without his permission, while the assassin before him had eyes that were as sharp as they had started.

Jon took this chance. A stiletto flew out of its sheathe, and Jon’s hand pointed it up, pumped in as much of Ice Manipulation as he could, and plunged it upwards through Bowyer’s armpit.

The armor there was thinner: just a flimsy web of chainmail. Its rings broke as the stiletto slid in — but it stopped shy of two inches before it broke as well.

Jon disengaged, though he threw away the dagger as soon as he realized it had broken. Ice Manipulation must have weakened it as much as it had weakened the chainmail and Bowyer’s Skills and defensive magic.

Bowyer, on the other hand, grunted. “So that was pain,” he said. As he turned to face Jon, he pulled out the sliver of the dagger that was in his armpit, much to Jon’s surprise. That area had a lot of arteries, and of all the things to do, pulling out a blade lodged in there should have done more damage than just leaving it in.

He expected Bowyer to drop dead any moment now, but it didn’t happen. It seemed that he didn’t just have a Skill that made him strong.

On the other hand, Bowyer reassessed how he thought about Jon. He had insane magic control, yes, but he didn’t have power. If he did, he should’ve blasted him away at the first opportunity.

Coming to the conclusion that Jon’s technique could only work in ultra-close physical contact, Bowyer took a more sensible approach — and pulled out a volley pistol, bristling with fifteen individually loaded barrels.

There wasn’t any reason why a modern knight shouldn’t be carrying at least a pistol. The Order was just too uptight and adamant about magic and Skills being all they needed. On the other hand, he wouldn’t have used it if he could just kill the opponent up-close; reloading took far longer than just dashing in and punching the guy, 99 times out of 100.

Bowyer fired two shots, but Jon dodged the first and deflected the other with a dagger. If Jon wasn’t trying to kill him, he’d be giving the man a standing ovation for such a feat; what a shame that they were trying to kill each other.

Jon was expecting a third shot, but Bowyer took a split second too long. Why? He spotted Bowyer’s thumb moving across the side of the pistol, and his first thought was it was a fire selector.

For something like a fifteen-barreled pistol, there was only going to be one other mode other than “shoot one barrel.”

He saw the glow of thirteen barrels firing, but not before bending his whole body backwards. Assisted by Perfect Motion, his back was practically levitating just two inches from the ground, and he watched as a scatterplot of fuzed bullets flew past his face like a meteor shower.

“How?!” Bowyer could only shout in bewilderment. Never before had he seen a man defy gravity like Jon did, and to dodge bullets, to boot!

Jon sprung back up and charged him. He delivered a single jab, expecting Jon to step aside, but his body went sideways-parallel to the ground instead, delivering an upwards kick into Bowyer’s armored chin, throwing off his balance and causing him to stumble back.

Somehow, his chin hurt, and he could feel some dizziness from the whiplash — both things which shouldn’t have happened with his Skill, Samuel’s Curse, leading him to only one conclusion: There was magic in that attack. It was one thing to be able to use magic with one’s hands, but practically no one on this side of the world could do it with their feet!

Although Jon had been doing well ... he was getting tired. Perfect Motion only assisted as far as the precision and agility of his movements, but this did nothing for his endurance.

His muscles were burning close to their limit. If he didn’t make a decisive blow now, he would be at a disadvantage in about five seconds.

Bowyer was imbalanced and open; this was the opportunity to strike. What he was about to do was a risky move, however, as he would need to freeze himself into a rigid stance to maximize force transfer, turning himself into a biomechanical pillar connecting the ground to the palm of his hand.

Sprinkle in some magic, too.

Bowyer found the assassin’s palm slamming against his chest. For a second, he thought Jon was stupid; just because he could nullify Bowyer’s Skill for a split second didn’t mean he was suddenly capable of destroying armor with his bare hands!

... Said the man who’d completely forgotten that his sword had gotten destroyed by the same guy just a few moments ago — using the nib of a pen, at that.

Bowyer’s mind went blank at the sight of his heirloom chestpiece shattering like a cheap vase, leaving a six-inch gaping hole in his armor, squarely on his chest like he were some kind of target dummy.

On the other hand, his armor had absorbed almost all the energy from the attack, and so perfectly that he, himself, wasn’t made to stumble yet again.

He found his footing, and he also found Jon in a rigid stance in front of him: knees bent in a lunge, palm extended forwards, and his eyes were as cold as ever.

It was in that moment that Jon understood his miscalculation.

If Bowyer had any opportunity to strike, it would be now.

The lord kicked forward as someone who would kick down a door, the heel of his foot meeting Jon in the chest. The assassin was surprisingly light, and he was too easy to punt away and send rolling ten feet across the ground. It was like his earlier threat was all ... a joke, really.

“That was somewhat disappointing,” Bowyer said. Assassins were just assassins, after all, mage or not, and they all lost rather quickly with just a single slip-up.

All the while, Jon heaved on the ground, half his ribs broken and pain shooting through his system. His body was telling him to give up, but he, himself, didn’t want to. He pulled a reserve pistol and shot at Bowyer, aiming for the gap in his chest. The bullet exploded there — a direct hit — but Bowyer just kept moving closer, his Skill making him unassailable at range.

Bowyer pulled out a stiletto dagger, a weapon reserved for dispatching enemy knights. He hadn’t used it in a long time.

He walked towards Jon in a tired way. “I’ll give you the honor of dying by this dagger,” he said. “You’re the first person to have ever given me such a hard fight, after all!”

In a way, he felt regretful that he had to kill Jon. He knelt down and stabbed at Jon’s chest, mouthing his last goodbye to such a good opponent — but the assassin caught his wrist as it came down, disabling Bowyer’s Skill. His eyed widened. “Why? You’ve already lost!” he said, grunting as what should have been a swift end for an unsung legend became a contest of purely human strength and purely human will.

The dagger hovered over Jon’s heart, and though he pushed against it, Jon was steadily losing the fight. The tip was coming closer — ten inches, eight inches, five inches.

He knew, better than most people, that he’d lose the moment it came closer than four inches. At that distance, all Bowyer had to do was raise a fist and hammer down at the dagger’s pommel. There would be nothing Jon could do against the suddenness of that force, and the dagger would be driven into his chest — Amani’s death card would then activate, but he’d just continue to bleed out, anyway, and it would accomplish nothing but take away a chunk of her life.

Against this kind of situation, Jon had prepared a little something: a last-ditch magic to blow away anyone who’d pinned him down. This wasn’t the first time, after all; Charles Staball had been a good lesson in using magic from the floor.

— Four inches.

As expected, Bowyer raised his fist into the night sky.

... A night sky that was strangely glowing brighter.

Bowyer’s fist hadn’t even started to come down yet when a vortex of black and red crashed down on both of them.

He watched as Bowyer’s body turned into a maze of light, and the ghost of Bowyer himself got ripped away, the ghost itself screaming as it scrambled to climb back into its body — how vain, how futile, the vortex sucked it up, and the body left behind began to crumble away into nothing.

Jon was next. Suffering assaulted him, mind (despair), body (pain), soul (hollowness), and existence (call of dread) — all at once, nothing spared.

He’s going to die.

But someone else will suffer if he did.

But someone’s existence will never come to be.

He will not die.

He fought with Ice above him, dampening the assaulting magic.

He lit Fire in his core, densifying his willpower, making it its own armor.

How long will it take?

When will it stop?

It didn’t matter when.

It didn’t matter if he died.

The goal is not to succeed.

The goal is just to try.

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