Chapter 26: Raiga vs Lancelot

The Heretic attacked first, charging straight in with a flurry of punches aimed at Lancelot’s bare chest. His opponent answered with a frontal guard, using his forearms to absorb the strikes before imitating a boxer’s stance and throwing a hook toward Raiga’s liver to slow him down.

THUD.

But it missed.

His fist slammed directly into the adventurer’s elbow.

Raiga answered with a headbutt that broke Lancelot’s nose, knocking the septum to the right and causing a much heavier nosebleed than usual.

“Ugh.” Lancelot responded by spitting directly into Raiga’s eyes. It was hardly a knightly move, but it was effective. The bloodstained saliva temporarily blinded him, allowing Lancelot to grab his shoulders and pull him downward, just in time to drive a knee into his cheek and cause severe swelling across his face.

“AAH!” Raiga answered by grabbing him around the waist and, with a short leap, managed to bring him down to the ground. He quickly mounted him and immediately began driving his elbows into Lancelot’s face, focusing every strike on the broken nose to cause as much pain as possible. “AAAAAAAH!”

The Heretic roared.

His instincts took over.

This was not the fighting style of a warrior.

Nor that of an adventurer.

No…

This came from somewhere much farther back, long before he had been named the Heretic, even before he joined the guild.

The orphanage.

He had hated every single day in that place.

The nights were cold and bitter, and food was a luxury reserved for the older and more violent children. Raiga had not always been the large, relentless man he was now. In early childhood, he had been painfully thin, his bones visible beneath his skin, which became especially pale during winter. He learned from an early age that resources were precious and that no one would share anything with him.

Not even the so-called nuns who were supposedly there to offer them charity.

So the only way to survive had been through constant fighting with the other children.

He had buried those memories in the darkest corner of his mind. He hated remembering those hellish days when he had no power and no way to defend himself. He had tried to forget every time the other children beat him just to steal his lunch, and every time he himself had used rocks and sticks to ambush unsuspecting victims so he could steal theirs.

Those fights had no technique.

No beauty.

No magic, powers, or destiny.

They were filthy struggles in which raw, natural strength determined who got to eat and who ended up freezing to death in the middle of the common room. Raiga had watched many of his childhood friends die there, covered only by a ragged gray blanket that was inevitably stolen by the next group of new arrivals.

“OOOHH!” Lancelot grabbed one of Raiga’s elbows and bit down with all his strength. It was a desperate move, but it worked. Raiga recoiled from the pain and momentum, leaving his guard open for a single second.

That was all Lancelot needed.

He punched Raiga directly in the left eye, forcing him backward and stripping him of his advantage.

Both men returned to their feet.

Their injuries hurt far more now without magical reinforcement or anything else to help them endure the punishment.

Emi was no longer watching a battle between legendary heroes.

She was watching a tavern brawl.

This time, Lancelot took the offensive. He sprinted forward for four steps at full speed, then rotated his hips and launched a roundhouse kick toward Raiga’s face. Raiga avoided it by stepping backward, but he had not expected Lancelot to spin on his heel and continue the attack with a kick straight to the chest.

“AGH!” Raiga hit the ground, the air leaving his lungs as he instinctively tried to crawl backward.

The former Marshal did have experience in hand-to-hand combat. His mind, sharpened by conventional training, allowed him to execute such a complex attack. He walked toward the Heretic and, without hesitation or mercy, grabbed him by the hair and slammed his head violently against the ground.

Again and again, Raiga’s face struck the stone until a small pool of blood formed beneath him and brought tears to Emi’s eyes.

“No! Raiga!” The blonde gasped as her violet eyes filled with tears, but she did not attempt to help him. She had promised not to interfere in the fight, and despite the pain in her heart, she kept her word.

There was nothing stopping her from raising the crossbow and shooting Lancelot in the face.

She could do it.

At that distance, with the knight distracted, she could save the man she loved.

But she did not.

She chose to remain on the sidelines and respect the honor of the duel, because both men were fighting for ideals that, from their own perspectives, were right.

“Ugh!” Raiga stopped his head from striking the ground again by planting his hands beneath himself. Emi’s voice gave him enough strength to react, and he rolled toward the right to escape further punishment. Lancelot no longer had enough strength to chase him or throw himself back into the attack, so he allowed Raiga to get up again.

“Th-This still isn’t over,” Raiga panted.

“It’s to the death,” Lancelot replied, equally battered.

“AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!”

The battle reached its climax.

Raiga and Lancelot charged at the same time and crashed into close-quarters combat. Punches, headbutts, elbows, kicks, and grappling holds followed one after another. There was no order to any of it, and no trace of martial elegance.

The Heretic knocked out four of Lancelot’s teeth with an elbow. Lancelot spat them toward the right and, in retaliation, broke Raiga’s left index finger with a desperate twist.

The fight, however, did not last much longer.

In the middle of the struggle, Raiga drove all of his weight into Lancelot. The knight had no time to move or evade, taking the tackle head-on. It not only brought him down, but caused the back of his skull to strike the cold floor of Olympus at a terrible angle.

CRACK.

“Ah.” Lancelot could no longer move. A veteran like him knew immediately that the impact had been fatal.

A simple accident.

Nothing more.

Nothing less.

“I-It’s over.”

Raiga, still unable to believe the outcome, stood and walked toward the fallen Marshal.

It had been a lucky break, something so brutally realistic and painful that, for a moment, it felt almost out of place.

“It’s over, Lancelot,” the Heretic whispered sadly.

The light faded from the knight’s eyes.

Blood began pooling beneath the back of his head, and then he released one final breath.

“Damn it.”

Those were his last words.

No one said anything else.

Not Raiga, who was barely managing to stand again.

Not Emi, whose bitter expression could not look away.

Sir Lancelot, former Divine Champion, died from a bad blow to the head.

What an irony.