Rei stepped forward, Death Scythe in hand.
Awaiting him was Noise, gripping his magic sword.
Crimson and the Immovable. These two Alias Holders clashed on a field destined to be the stage for the final battle of the Bestia Empire’s civil strife.
They met in the dead center of the Subjugation Army's Rear Unit.
Both warriors were currently utilizing the Overlord's Armor skill, which compressed magic power to such a high density that it became visible as an aura around their bodies. At Noise's command, the surrounding soldiers had beat a hasty retreat, leaving the combatants a clearance of roughly a hundred meters.
Rei swung his weapon—the great scythe that bore the name of the Grim Reaper, the very symbol of Crimson.
Wrapped in Overlord's Armor and infused with Rei’s staggering magic power, each blow possessed enough force and keenness to easily rend not only ordinary plate but even armor forged from Mithril or Orichalcum.
And yet...
A high-pitched metallic clang shrieked through the air.
The soldiers watching the spectacle forgot to breathe. Their eyes—their very souls—were captivated by the scene.
Even with the training of the imperial army, their eyes could barely track the movement. The Death Scythe and the magic sword were being swung with such terrifying velocity that it defied logic.
To an outside observer, the exchange between Noise and Rei looked almost like a dance.
But it was a dance of death—one where a single misstep would lead to the end of one's life.
Despite a battle that ordinary infantry couldn't even perceive, neither man wore a desperate expression. For them, this exchange was merely a warm-up. It was a means of gauging the opponent’s condition while checking their own.
For Noise, it was an opportunity to see how much Rei had grown since the Fighting Tournament finals. For Rei, it was a test to see how far the gap in skill between them had narrowed.
To any witness—even a veteran knight—the exchange would have seemed impossible.
The two remained silent, confirming each other’s resolve through the violent clashing of scythe and sword.
Eventually, Rei reached a conclusion.
(I’m still no match for him in pure technique, huh.)
Trading blows from every conceivable angle, Rei maintained a cold, internal assessment. As he was now, his pure technical skill had not yet caught up to Noise's.
The feedback from every strike made it undeniably clear: Noise was responding effortlessly to every attack Rei launched.
Neither of them was going all out yet. It was obvious that both were holding back several trump cards, but Rei understood instinctively that a vast chasm still existed between their levels of technical mastery.
(Well, I knew that from the start. But for the Mercurio Army to win, I have to hold this guy here, no matter what...)
Rei crouched low to evade a horizontal slash aimed at his neck and thrust the butt end of the Death Scythe toward Noise's solar plexus. Noise parried the blow with a flick of his magic sword, and both fighters leaped back to reset the distance.
Finally taking a moment to scan the perimeter, Rei noticed that the rest of the Subjugation Army's Rear Unit—those not preoccupied with watching the duel—were preparing for a coordinated attack.
(I can't let myself be entirely consumed by Noise. I need to deal damage to the Subjugation Army as well. That means...)
Deciding his course of action in an instant, Rei focused his magic power into his weapon.
"Flame, burn my enemies according to my will."
The short incantation was finished in a heartbeat, manifesting a fireball at the butt end part of the Death Scythe.
"Fireball!"
As he shouted the command, Rei swung the butt end of the Death Scythe, launching the fireball directly at Noise.
For a split second, Noise didn't understand why Rei would fire such a straightforward projectile, but once he realized who was standing directly behind him, he gave a faint smile and swung his magic sword.
The fireball was shattered by a single strike, its flames dispersing into the air.
Rei gritted his teeth, frustrated that his intent had been seen through so easily. Nevertheless, he decided he had to broaden the scope of the damage while maintaining his pressure on Noise. He slipped his right hand into the folds of his Dragon Robe and activated the Eye of Nebula at his waist.
He snatched several arrowheads that materialized and threw them in a wide arc.
Naturally, the speed of these projectiles was far beyond what ordinary soldiers could defend against.
"Gwah!"
"Gyaa!"
"Pffft—!?"
"My hand! My hand is...!"
The screams of those hit by the arrowheads echoed across the Rear Unit.
Even though they were just arrowheads, they were being propelled by Rei while he was empowered by Overlord's Armor. A hit to the forehead pulverized the skull; they shattered limbs, pierced plate armor, snapped bone, and extinguished lives in an instant.
Noise parried the arrowheads flying his way with his magic sword, but even he didn't have a wide enough reach to block every single projectile. Noise was, at his core, a specialist in one-on-one combat.
While he was more than capable of charging through an entire army while clad in Overlord's Armor, his true essence lay in individual duels. Because of this, he was unable to intercept the arrowheads Rei had scattered across the wider area.
"Don't think you have the leisure to look elsewhere while facing me," Noise muttered.
He glanced at the panicked soldiers, then readied his magic sword again. Suddenly sensing something, he leaped to the flank.
In the next instant, a strike from Seto’s front leg plummeted from the sky, gouging a deep crater into the earth where Noise had been standing.
"Guruuuuuu!"
Giving a sharp cry, Seto used the momentum of its landing to spring forward, its body coiling and releasing like a massive spring.
It swung its front leg again. It was a blow that would have been a death sentence for any ordinary human, but Noise caught the strike on the edge of his magic sword.
A screech of grinding metal filled the air.
Noise’s expression shifted—just for a moment, but unmistakably—into one of genuine surprise. It was only natural. His magic sword was a top-tier relic; its power was incomparable to common enchanted blades. Normally, an exchange like that should have severed the monster’s limb entirely.
Instead, Seto's strike had held its own against the magic sword.
It proved that Seto’s physical power was on an entirely different level.
Noise quickly retreated again. Following immediately in Seto's wake was Rei, swinging the Death Scythe. The earth where Noise had been standing a heartbeat ago was cleanly sliced open by the scythe's preternatural sharpness.
"I see... coordination with a Gryphon is your true strength. And that Gryphon is indeed a far cry from an ordinary specimen."
"Who knows? If you really want to find out, why don't you try taking a direct hit? That should clear things up for you," Rei provoked him with a smirk.
Noise let out a short laugh.
"That might be interesting... but I have a mission to complete first. Now then, let's see how much you've truly mastered that Overlord's Armor. I'm going to put a bit of effort into this now. If you can't keep up... you'll die."
With those words, Noise vanished from Rei’s sight.
Rei swung the Death Scythe by reflex.
A heavy metallic clash rang out across the field.
"H-Hey... did Noise just disappear?"
"Yeah. And then he was just... right there, next to Crimson. What the hell is happening?"
"How should I know! Just get back! We're going to get caught in the crossfire!"
"Shouldn't we just abandon this position?"
"No! We’re the ones keeping this contained!" the commander of the unit barked. "If we let Crimson roam free, this duel will tear through the entire battlefield in minutes! Since this is the Subjugation Army's Rear Unit, we’d be the ones taking the brunt of it!"
The commander's shout was essentially a death sentence; he was ordering them to act as a meat wall to shield the rest of the army from the fallout of the fight between Rei and Noise. But this was a military, and a superior's order was absolute.
If they were on the verge of a chaotic rout, things might have been different, but the battle had only just begun. The soldiers in the rear couldn't see the front lines, and they couldn't conceive of their massive army losing so quickly.
Thus, the unlucky men in the vicinity had no choice but to stand their ground as a wall of flesh.
As the soldiers cursed their misfortune, the battle between Rei and Noise reached a new level of intensity.
"Guruuuuuu!"
Seto let out a roar and launched a paw strike, but Noise evaded it with predatory ease. He moved to drive his magic sword into Seto’s body, only to suddenly thrust the blade to his side.
In the next instant, Rei's horizontal slash collided with the magic sword, producing a deafening ring of steel.
A split second later, Rei and Noise were clashing dozens of meters away. A breath after that, they were locked in combat on the exact opposite side of the clearing.
To anyone watching, their refusal to stay in one spot for even a second made the fight completely incomprehensible. It was a series of blurs and impacts; they would vanish from one spot and reappear elsewhere, scythe and sword sparking as they met.
Because they were fighting across every corner of the hundred-meter square at such speeds, the soldiers found it impossible to follow the duel with their eyes.
In the midst of this chaotic movement, the Death Scythe and the magic sword collided once more in the center of the combat space, and both warriors finally came to a halt.
Locked in a close-range struggle, Noise stared Rei down before finally speaking.
"Your skill has certainly improved since our last meeting. I'll grant you that... but honestly, I expected you to be a bit stronger than this."
"Heh, is that so? For someone talking so big, you don't seem to be overwhelming me. Take this! Penetrate!"
Rei used their locked blades as a pivot, snapping the Death Scythe's Butt End toward Noise and activating the Penetrate skill.
The skill wrapped the butt end in a howling gale to maximize the force of the thrust, but by the time the blow was unleashed, Noise had already vanished from his sight.
"Magic Shield!"
Rei activated the Magic Shield skill, conjuring a shield of light as he heard a sound whistling toward him. He leaped away.
A heavy stone pierced the ground where Rei had been standing only a moment before.
"Isn't that a little petty for an S-Rank adventurer!?" Rei shouted, slicing the projectile out of the air with the Death Scythe.
He felt it was a waste to expend Magic Shield on a mere rock. Fuming, he kicked off the earth and charged in the direction the stone had been thrown.
Rei's movement speed was a blur to the surrounding soldiers, but even so, Noise clearly held the upper hand in the application of Overlord's Armor. Even if their linear speed was comparable, Rei was nowhere near Noise when it came to fine control.
The only reason Rei was currently holding his own was due to his own immense magic power. He was compensating for his lack of finesse by pumping a massive amount of mana into the Overlord's Armor to force a high output.
It was a style that could only be described as using raw power to overwhelm technique.
This was only possible because Rei's mana capacity was vastly superior to Noise's. For every ten units of mana Noise spent on an action, Rei was forced to spend a hundred... or perhaps even a thousand to achieve the same result.
Naturally, such a method resulted in a terrifying magic power consumption. Overlord's Armor was already a skill that disregarded efficiency by compressing mana until it was visible; by forcing it the way he was, Rei couldn't maintain it for long. This had been made painfully clear during the previous encampment defense line.
(Damn it... I can't even land a scratch on him to trigger the Bracelet of Magic Absorption. He’s too much trouble!)
Rei cursed Noise's strength internally as he parried a heavy strike from the magic sword.
He parried, repositioned, parried again, and launched an attack only to have it easily deflected.
In the middle of this high-speed exchange, Rei came to a realization. If things continued like this, he would lose. Not because he was outfought, but because he would suffer magic power depletion first. He would lose the war of attrition. No matter how he looked at it, overturning the situation through direct combat seemed impossible.
(Then, what's left? If I can't beat Noise by myself... if I don't have enough power, I’ll just have to bring it in from where it's kept!)
He knew that using this method would lead to complications later. But Rei understood that if he lost here, the entire Mercurio Army would fall with him. Shaking off his hesitation, he roared.
"Seto, use a skill!"