The Boy in the City of the Dead

by Kanata Yanagino

  I’d sort of seen it coming, but all this I was wearing, all my pieces of armor, really were only there so I didn’t die on the spot! The strength and technique of the undead matched what they’d been in life, and Blood had both to spare. He was demonstrating monumental strength as well as the technique necessary to transfer it into his weapon’s blows.

  My previous world’s knowledge said that a Japanese sword wouldn’t let you cut through a samurai in full armor, and you couldn’t cut through a Western suit of armor with a Western sword, either. If something like that was possible, all those elaborate styles of Japanese armor would never have developed.

  But these attacks of Blood’s—I grunted as I narrowly avoided another—were different. He made sure to pack everything he had into the swings threatening to cut me down: his overwhelming physical size, the centrifugal force of his staggeringly long favorite weapon, and the power originating from the disciplined muscles he’d had in life. Even if he couldn’t cut right through me, the force alone would definitely knock me down.

  Get ripped, and you can solve pretty much everything by force. It was the perfect embodiment of what Blood had always told me.

  I made a desperate-sounding noise halfway between a sharp breath and a grunt as I quickly stepped back. My longsword had pretty good reach, but the reach of his broadsword was greater still.

  He had total control of this fight right now, swinging at me again and again from outside my range. And being undead, Blood never got tired, so outlasting him would be impossible. This sucked. It wasn’t as if I hadn’t prepared any strategies to deal with his way of fighting, but if things continued like this, I couldn’t see myself getting a chance to use any of them.

  I cursed at Blood in my mind. Do you really need the win this badly?! Act like an adult!

  I opened up a big distance between us and invited the attack. As he came at me, I pulled the dagger from my belt and threw it at him in one swift motion.

  “Aha,” Blood said. He held his broadsword flat, like a shield, to deflect the incoming dagger. The dagger clashed off the sword, but I was flying at Blood after it, almost on top of him—

  “Whoa!” I slammed on my emergency brakes and leaped backward. I had no other choice.

  Blood had held onto the end of the sword’s hilt with one hand, and with the other, he had grabbed the blunted part at the base of the blade, and swept the sword at my shins like it was a polearm.

  He chuckled. “Thought you just had to get close?” His will-o’-the-wisps swayed slowly in his sockets. I felt as if a grin had crept across his skull.

  Now that I thought about it, I had a faint memory of reading that two-handed broadswords and Japanese nodachi could be used in that kind of way. “It’s not gonna be that easy, I guess... ugh, this is a nightmare.”

  Now that I knew that he could hold it with his hands apart and use it like a polearm, that meant that not just shin-sweeps but also short, rapid thrusts were a possibility. If I got too carelessly close, I risked him using techniques one might use with a staff against me.

  It wasn’t simply power. Blood had absolutely mastered the handling of this long, massive weapon. Despite the immense weight of this destructive weapon, his incredible muscular strength was allowing him to keep his distance and chain together swing after swing at breathtaking pace. He was rapid, skillful, and precise. If I got close to him, he would change his grip and handle me at close range. In short, he was desperately strong, and equally so in all ways.

  Power, technique, and weaponry—he hadn’t become reliant on any one of these three at the expense of the other two. He had virtually perfected all three. He had no weakness I could take advantage of. No wonder he was called the War Ogre. I really felt like that was what I was facing.

  I’d just have to gamble. I steeled myself.

  “Oh?” As if he could tell what I was thinking, Blood held his broadsword above his head, ready for a downward strike. His stance was a clear and confident statement that he was going to crush me no matter what I tried.

  If I blocked it with my sword, my sword would break. If I blocked it with my shield, my shield would break. If I blocked it with my armor, my armor would break.

  I needed something better than half-hearted little tricks, or he’d just change grip and fend me off. How could I survive that strike, and get him within range of my sword? There was only one answer.

  Screaming a war cry to fire myself up, I charged in. His response: a switch from the overhead stance to one with the sword held vertically near his shoulder—and into a horizontal slash at my stomach! It was a strike like the full swing of a baseball bat.

  A downward swing risked the enemy using their shield to throw the blow off course. A horizontal slash to the neck allowed the enemy to duck, and a slash to the knees enabled them to possibly jump over it. All of these options would leave Blood open to being charged. But the horizontal slash to the stomach left me with only two options: jump back or block.

  Leaping backward would save me but put me back to square one. Blocking would mean I’d be crushed by Blood’s sheer physical strength. This move was a logical choice that fit Blood perfectly. Which was why I could see it coming.

  If I blocked it with my shield, my shield would break. If I blocked it with my armor, my armor would break. So, as Blood made a short sound of surprise, I slid my shield down the blade to slow the strike, and blocked the rest with my armor.

  The broadsword exploded into my shield with enough force to crush it entirely out of shape, and then made a second impact on my breastplate. I groaned as it connected. Whether or not I could endure this was a gamble.

  But it was a gamble I won. Roaring again, while Blood was shocked, I charged forward. Crouching low, I bashed him up and away from me with my shield’s remains. His feet left the ground.

  I knew that a mysterious force was at work in the undead. Their power and ability to stand firm were preserved the same as they were in life. That was why Blood could swing about his broadsword, and why he could stand firm without being swayed by the broadsword’s huge mass.

  But what about his weight? If you simply tried to lift Blood into the air, would he be as heavy as he was in life? No. I had proven that with the vraskus. Becoming a skeleton reduced your weight. That had to be a clue to how I could defeat Blood, who was exceptional as a warrior.

  The weight of all a human’s bones, including spinal fluid, is less than ten percent of their total body weight. Even if Blood had been a huge man weighing well over a hundred kilos before he died, now, he could only weigh around ten at the most. Even including the weight of his weapons, he couldn’t weigh more than fifty. I roared louder than ever before. As Blood lost his balance, I thrust my longsword into him with all my strength. I was aiming for his spine. All I needed was one hit—

  “Will.” A gently spoken word reached my ear.

  An instant later, my longsword was caught and trapped between his ribs.

  “Wh—”

  As soon as Blood, holding his massive broadsword, had fully caught my longsword’s blade between his ribs, he twisted his body and pulled it away from me. It was the rib-cage equivalent of catching an incoming blade with your hands, only possible because Blood was a skeleton.

  Taken by surprise, I didn’t manage to let go of my longsword’s hilt in time, and before I realized it, my arm was being twisted with the full mass of the broadsword, and I was pulled to the ground, slamming against it. The shock of the impact knocked the wind out of me.

  “You fought pretty good.” I tried to get up as fast as I could, but a blade was already resting right against my neck.

  It was Blood’s spare single-handed sword, the one that had been hanging from his belt. The blade was matte black, and a crimson design ran vividly along its length. Was this a magic sword? I almost felt like calling it a demon sword. Though it wasn’t really the time for it, I admired the sword’s beauty, in spite of its sinister look.

  “I yield,” I said quietly, declaring my
surrender.

  Gus obviously had a number of different thoughts going through his head, but I didn’t even get to the stage of deliberately losing or not. Even after putting together a plan, even after giving everything I had... it pained me to admit it, but in a plain and simple test of sword skills, I just couldn’t beat Blood.

  “Good job,” Blood said. “Damn, that was rough. Not having muscles is a real drawback.” The match settled, Blood sheathed his sword.

  As usual, I didn’t know how to start responding to that comment, but I got what he meant. Just as I was about to say something, a bone-chilling voice filled the air. “Blood?”

  “Ack! Mary...”

  “‘Ack?’ That’s not a very nice way to respond to me.”

  Mary had both her hands on her hips and was glaring at Blood, her expression clearly indicating how angry she was. Being a mummy, Mary didn’t have any eyeballs. It made her look extra scary.

  “I told you not to use that move anymore, didn’t I?”

  That move? Anymore?

  “U-Uh... what was this again?”

  “Don’t you play dumb with me! That move where you catch your opponent’s weapon in your rib cage!”

  “Yeah, but... it’s not like I have organs anymore.”

  “What?!” I shouted, incredulous. “Blood, you did that while you were alive?!”

  “Yes, he did!” Mary was inconsolably angry. “Can you believe this man?!”

  I shook my head. He was truly unbelievable.

  I’d been thinking that move was only something an undead being could perform, but I suddenly remembered that the undead never advanced. With very few exceptions, all the attacks and so on that they could use conformed to what they knew in their previous life. In other words, he wouldn’t have been able to pull off an insane stunt like that unless he had experience with it from before he died.

  “He was facing a demon who had a rapier with the Word Penetratus inscribed on it.”

  “Yeah, he was an agile little pest, and good with his weapon. He slipped right by me and looked like he was going for Mary, so naturally I—”

  “Naturally?!”

  Naturally, he allowed himself to get stabbed in the torso, caught the demon’s weapon in his ribs, twisted him to the floor and lopped his head off? No person in their right mind could call that a natural course of action. Only the War Ogre could do something like that.

  “H-He’s lucky he survived...”

  “He would have been dead without my benediction!”

  “Yeah, and I trusted you! That’s why I did it!”

  Wow, the strategies a team can use. And he did it in the first place to protect Mary.

  “Excuse me! I thought you had died on the spot! I was actually worried! Now did I or didn’t I ask you never to do it again?!” It was rare to see Mary snap at anyone like this. I understood where Blood was coming from, but I could understand Mary’s feelings, too.

  Come on, Blood. Of course she was going to be angry.

  I put on a smile and chuckled dryly. There was no better way to respond to this situation. From there, I watched Blood get chewed out for a while. I may not have had much experience with relationships, but I wasn’t stupid. There was a saying about grabbing a dog by the ears, after all.

  Blood loudly pretended to clear his throat. “Uhh, anyway. Will, even though you couldn’t beat me, you’ll have no troubles if you’re this good. Even though you couldn’t beat me. Even though you couldn’t beat me!”

  “Stop saying that! You’re so annoying!”

  Gods dammit! How the hell was I supposed to predict that twisted maneuver?! I put together a proper strategy in advance—how to deal with the huge power of his broadsword, how to exploit his low weight, all that stuff—and I nailed it all, just to have it turned around on me at the last second!

  Blood laughed loudly. “Wanna tell me how you’re feeling right now?”

  “Gaaahhhh! I’m gonna face you head-on and destroy you next time!”

  And then I’ll say, “Well? Well? How are you feeling right now?” Right to your stupid face!

  He was still laughing. “That’s the spirit, that’s the spirit, Willie, my boy...”

  “All right, that’s enough!” Mary said. She slapped him upside the head.

  “Ow!”

  Yeah, take that. Serves you right!

  “Both of you! Please, will you be more serious?!” She got angry at me, too. “Go on! On with it!”

  “All right, all right, I hear you...” Blood said grudgingly. “So, uh, yeah. If I had some killer move or secret tech to pass down, I coulda taught it to you right about now.”

  “You don’t?”

  “Nope,” he said plainly, and shrugged. “You and me have different ways of fighting. I’m not trying to turn you into a copy of me. So the moves that are useful to me ain’t gonna be the ones useful for you. And anyway, like I said before, moves are situational. You can’t bank on just one.” He spoke confidently and calmly. I could feel the air of a battle-forged warrior about him.

  “What matters is the basics. Remember all the stuff I’ve taught you, and be ready to use it any time.” He bumped his fist against my breastplate and held it there. Mary smiled as she watched us. “Me and Mary... We’ve taught you everything important you need to know.”

  His skeletal fist had no warmth. But I was sure I could feel something warm emanating from it, filling up my chest.

  So I gathered a little bit of courage and replied, with pride and a smile on my face. “Thanks, Dad. Thanks, Mom!”

  Blood laughed loudly. “‘Dad’? Never really thought about it. I guess I am.”

  “Yes, I believe you are,” Mary said. Her giggle was quiet and ladylike.

  I started to feel kind of embarrassed, and unconsciously scratched the side of my face with my finger. The three of us laughed together for a short while.

  I felt a sense of belonging. The thought that I’d have to leave them in spring was incredibly hard to come to terms with.

  “Okay, what about this,” Blood said, after our laughter had settled. “I can’t teach you any ultimate moves, but, uh, what about something to mark your independence?”

  I looked at him, perplexed.

  “I’m giving you this.”

  He undid his sword belt, and presented me with the magic sword he’d used to settle our match: that sinister, bewitching, matte black single-handed sword. “This is the strongest demonblade I have in my possession.”

  The strongest? Of all the ones he owned? But... I mean...

  “I didn’t even win...”

  “I said it’s to mark your independence. Go on, pull it out.” He pushed it into my hands, belt and all.

  I hesitantly wrapped the belt around me, and with some level of trepidation, drew the single-handed broadsword from its scabbard. It was a matte black and double-edged. The weight was distributed toward the end of the blade, which was a little thicker and wider than the rest of it. I thought it would probably cut well. The decorative elements of the sword gave it a kind of forbidding impression, and the crimson pattern running down the blade had a beguiling beauty to it.

  “Its name is Overeater. It’s one of the very best demonblades. It’ll cut down whatever you swing it at, even the Echoes of the gods, so long as you can strike true. The Words inscribed on it are very difficult to figure out, but I can sum up the effect in one sentence,” Blood spoke, matter-of-factly. “As you cut down living beings with this sword, it recovers your life force. The more you cut, the more you recover.”

  Huh? “Wait, what? Did I mishear that?”

  “I’ll say it again. As you cut down living beings with this sword, it recovers your life force. The more you cut, the more you recover. You didn’t mishear. If you’re in a melee, you can just let your mind wander and swing this thing around aimlessly. You’ll still be the last man standing.”

  Realizing the implications of this, I went pale.

  “You’re smart. I’m sure you already get
it, but... I don’t want you pulling out this thing unless you have to. Don’t lean on it,” Blood continued, in the same dispassionate tone.

  “It’ll make you feel strong, but this ain’t the type of sword that’s meant to fortify the wielder’s spirit. If you lean on it, sooner or later you’re gonna become dependent on it. You’ll get cavalier about your sword skills, and they’ll become a shadow of what they are right now. It’ll go right to your head, and sooner or later you’ll fight someone who’s just plain better, or someone will poison you, or you’ll get surrounded by archers at a distance, and back you’ll go for another spin ’round fate’s eternal wheel. That’s what makes this a true demonblade.

  “As for me, I’m undead. I’ve got no life force in the first place, so this thing does jack all for me. It’s just dead weight. So I’m giving it to you. Despite all the stuff I’ve said, I’m sure you’ll be fine with it. You can tell what it’s useful for.”

  Mary nodded in agreement. Both of them had faith in me and believed I could handle this terrifying thing. My old memories flashed through my mind, and my heart ached a little. Was I really as great a person as they believed I was?

  “Now, then. When a warrior hands down his demonblade, custom dictates he tells its story! And I’m not gonna be the guy who breaks an ancient tradition. So let’s talk about this sword!” Blood’s voice brightened, as if to erase the gloomy atmosphere that had briefly cast shadows over us. “And, of course, the history that surrounds it. Our history. Your history. The history you’ve been longing to hear.”

  I couldn’t believe I was finally going to find out. It had been on my mind for so long.

  “Blood...” I said, at a loss for words.

  Blood looked at Mary. She nodded, smiling. “You’re your own man now, Will,” she said.

  “I promised you I’d tell you when you got bigger,” Blood went on. “And you’re more than big enough now, in body and heart. It’s gonna take a while, but I’ll tell you everything. This is the story of the king among kings of the demons who tried to conquer this continent: the High King of the Eternals. It’s the story of the deaths of many heroes. It’s the story of our defeat. It’s the story of how we died—”