Chapter 168: ~Chapter 60~ Part 1

Okay, Leo, deep breaths. Things are chaotic at the moment, but not unsalvageable. No need to panic. Panic is for horror movie heroines with obnoxiously high-pitched voices, and I sure as hell wasn't one. Let's just observe the situation for a moment before jumping in. As they say, look twice, act once, live considerably longer.

So, let's start with observation number one: Rinne somehow found the secret base, and she was currently wreaking merry havoc in the middle of it. Observation number two: The Fauns were trying, and apparently failing, to restrain her, with Hrul and Pip bleeding on the side. Fortunately, their wounds didn't seem to be life-threatening, so how's that for a silver lining? As for observation three: some of the metal scaffolding by the sparring arena was cut into pieces, which meant that Mountain Girl was rampaging around without any care about collateral damage once again. I couldn't help but wonder just how long it took her to cause this much mayhem.

As if reading my mind, my slightly rattled girlfriend immediately supplied the answer.

"{The Faun didn't say anything until she was already inside. I called you the moment I heard them fighting.}"

So she did all of this damage well under a minute. How come I wasn't even surprised? For a split second I almost wondered if the shop warranty would cover this, but I quickly shook the idea out of my mind. This wasn't the time for idle thoughts.

"Tell the others I'll need some time to resolve this," I said so fast I almost bit my tongue and, after one last breath of determination, I dashed forward with all my might.

Rinne and Brang looked like they would be at each other's throats at any moment now, so before anything else, I had to defuse this situation. Once I was close enough, I took a deep breath, and then shouted, "What the hell are you doing?!" from the top of my lungs.

Both combatants froze up for a second, but contrary to my hopes and expectations, the unreasonable huntress took this as an opportunity to lunge forth with her sword raised instead of standing down, right towards the momentarily distracted Faun. It was a quick attack, but not unreasonably so, and I thought Brang would at least try to parry her strike, but instead he belatedly tried to dodge out of the way, and his bad leg nearly buckled under the stress of the sudden movement. Rinne seemed ready to capitalize on his loss of balance, so I had no choice but to directly involve myself in their duel, even at the risk of further escalating things. Since I was out of time and reach, I did it the only way I could; by Phasing over to the Faun's side and parrying her stab myself.

Or rather, that was the plan, but when I did so, I belatedly realized why Brang decided to back away instead of blocking her initial sword strike. The idea was to start the wind-up motion of my parry before Phasing over, thus allowing me to give my swing a longer arc to collect momentum for batting her weapon away, but when the two met, Onikiri's edge bit into the hardwood shaft and cleaved a solid twenty centimeters off the butt end of my spear with minimal resistance.

On the bright side, my sudden appearance and unexpected attempt at getting in her way also startled her into withdrawing and she took two hasty steps back before assuming a defensive posture, with her sword held diagonally in front of her. This momentary lull allowed my poor brain some breathing room, and so it immediately noted that goddammit, this was the second perfectly good spear that got broken in two days! Well, at least it got cut close to the butt end, so I could still use it as a short spear. That was also a silver lining, I supposed.

But putting my brain's odd priorities aside, I decided it was in my best interest to lead the conversation, so I raised my voice and repeated my previous question, this time even more forcefully and filled with as much righteous indignation as I could manage at the moment.

"As I was saying, what the hell do you think you are doing!?"

There was a long beat following my exclamation, but my words seemed to have fallen on deaf ears, as the currently guarded monster slayer's eyes only kept jumping between me and Brang without her saying a thing or even moving a muscle. After a while, I decided it was probably more productive to address the person behind me rather than the one in the front.

"[Regroup and tend to the wound-bearers. I shall attempt to quench the flammable cord of the circumstances,]" I grunted in Faunish while making sure I wouldn't take my eyes off Rinne even for a split second.

Brang didn't argue, but instead he warned me, "[Understood, my Lord. I wish you the best of luck, though I'm afraid thine fellow's grasp of her sanity has already slipped well out of reach.]"

I could tell that much without his input, but I let out an appreciative noise all the same. A moment later, I could already hear him backing away, his direction made evident by Mountain Girl's eyes following him for a while before suddenly snapping back to me, her expression constantly vacillating between a confused deer-in-the-headlight stare and her patented brand of slasher grin. To my dismay, she ultimately settled on the latter.

"Leonard-san saved the creature of the underworld… Was Onikiri right all along?"

Her ominous whisper made a cold shiver run down my back, and so I hurriedly raised my hand and told her, "Wait, don't jump to conclusions just yet. Put down your sword for a moment and we can talk."

"Rinne doesn't believe you," she responded with a sense of finality that was somewhere between a death knell and the second end-credits of a superhero movie. Be as it may, I had no choice but to press on anyway, as the clock was already ticking. I still needed to get Mike out of his cage, notify the others so that they could retreat in time, and on top of all that, now I also had to deal with this mess.

I had many questions, such as how she managed to find this place, or how she got inside, or why all of this had to happen now of all times, but I put all such quandaries aside for the moment and forced a harmless smile onto my face. Before I could worry about anything else, I first had to try and negotiate myself out of this situation.

"Come on, Mountain Girl; don't be like that! Just hear me out, okay?"

My attempt to cajole her fell on deaf ears once again as she slowly shifted her center of gravity into a more threatening stance. My instincts told me to raise my weapon in turn, but doing so would have escalated things right away, so I restrained myself.

"No. The time for honeyed words of deception is over," she declared, making me barely able to hold myself back from burying my face in my hand.

"No, it's not! I mean, not the deception part, but this is definitely the time for words!"

"Onikiri was right all along," she muttered as her slasher smile widened even further, with the corners of her mouth practically on the verge of creeping off her face. Also, was it just me, or was there an ominous purple aura coming off her? That couldn't be good. "You are a scion of a female dog indeed."

"No, I'm not, and… are you even listening to what I'm telling you?"

"Onikiri wonders what the color of your blood is?"

Well, that more or less answered my question, didn't it? Her threatening question was then followed by the odd purple aura surrounding her becoming even thicker to the point it resembled some kind of mist. Also, her eyes were now shining in a yellow-ish hue. I was about ninety-seven percent sure they weren't doing that second ago, but I tried not to let it bother me as I did my best to remain as non-threatening as possible.

"If you really want to know, it's red. Mystery solved. Now, could you please—?"

Suddenly, the purple mist dissipated, as if it was blown away by a sudden gust of wind, and it took the violent tension weighing on my shoulders with it… but then why was my back crawling with all kinds cold sweat?

"You have betrayed the trust Rinne invested in your personage," she stated out of the blue, and now I knew.

"Oh crap, did you just—" 'go soft-spoken on me?', I wanted to ask, but then I was rudely cut short by a blade aiming right at my neck. Thankfully I was only metaphorical this time, as my head remained perfectly attached to my everything else thanks to my ever-helpful danger-sense, and I managed to duck out of the way just in time, if not particularly gracefully.

Rinne didn't dally around in the meantime, and she drew back her sword into a stance as she whispered, "You must suffer the consequences of your betrayal," followed by a considerably louder, "Mumyō kansatsu ken!"

Normally I would've shouted something along the lines of 'Since when's that a capital offense?!', but this really wasn't the time to trade witty quips and banter, as her sword already began drawing a series of after-images in the air in preparation of some kind of fancy and no doubt quite lethal technique aimed at my squishy bits. Needless to say, I did the only reasonable thing in this situation and immediately got out of sword's reach by Phasing over to Brang's side.

The currently quite murderous huntress was startled by my disappearance, but even after her eyes found me, at least some parts of her brain had to be working properly, as she didn't blindly rush into our group. At least not yet. Speaking of which, Brang, and consequently I, was currently standing near the edge of the training grounds and surrounded by the other Faun, with the two injured members in the back row. I glanced over to the largest guy by my side, and then curtly stated, "[Negotiations have broken down.]"

He grunted with an implied 'I told you it would turn out like this' hidden somewhere in it, but by the time he let out a proper Faunish growl, his sentiment turned into, "[How shall we proceed? Do you wish to eliminate her?]"

"[Most certainly not. We must subdue her and then make her see reason.]"

"[Doing so would be an ordeal several magnitudes more perilous than simply overwhelming her,]" Brang responded in a skeptical tone without taking his eyes off the huntress eyeing us. "[Her weapon is dangerous, and our arms and armor offer little protection against her strikes. My experience tells me that if you desire us to fight her while attempting to preserve her life, one or more of our kin might lose theirs in her stead.]"

"[Cease your pessimism,]" I grumbled in his general direction before taking a deep breath and considering our options.

In short, the biggest problem when facing her right now was the fact that she was wielding a Japanese bootleg lightsaber that cut through everything like it was made of alpine butter. On top of that, she was fast, vicious, and didn't pull her punches, so trying to wrestle her sword away from her was guaranteed to end up with a couple of missing limbs.

In that case, let's re-phrase the question: what options did we have to subdue her? Getting her away from her sword was a perilous proposition, so how about disabling her movements? It could've been be a feasible idea if we had a pair of bolas or a net, but we didn't, not to mention they probably wouldn't have held her for long anyway.

How about knocking her out then? Well, I didn't have a tranquilizer rifle in my back pocket (not that it would've helped, as delivering the right dosage was a bit more complicated than what the movies would have you believe), so that was out. A hit to the head was also an option, but that was just as likely to give her a serious concussion or even brain hemorrhage, and while she wasn't exactly the apple of my eye, I still didn't want to cripple her. A more reasonable option was a choke-hold, but that was also harder to do than it appeared, not to mention, without taking her weapon away first, it was just asking for a blade to the head.

No matter how I looked at it, the first step had to be getting her unreasonably dangerous weapon away from her, but it was easier said than done when we had nothing that could even block her long enough to attempt a disarming maneuver. That was a bit of a pickle, but then as I considered the possible tools we had at hand in the secret base, I had a sudden and, if I do say so myself, somewhat brilliant idea.

"[General, follow my lead. We shall steal sand from the hourglass and treat her like a child's paper toy in the wind.]" I said so, but then I paused as I rewinded what I just said, and then silently cursed the obtuseness of the Faun language under my breath. Brang seemed to have understood my meaning well enough though, so I decided to roll with it and followed things up by addressing the rest of the group. "[Karukk, I strongly request that you retrieve the emphasized polearm from its storage. The rest, attend the wound-bearers, and then join us as distractors of the mind.]"

The younger Faun had considerably more trouble understanding what I meant, but once he did, he tentatively asked, "Do you mean that spear?"

"Of course I mean that one!" I barked back and then immediately followed after the already dashing Brang. By the looks of it, Mountain Girl got tired of waiting for us and decided to assault everyone at once, so the ex-general broke away from us to meet her halfway. She wasn't fazed by the huge body charging towards her and leveled her sword right at her opponent's neck. Going for the vitals right away meant she was aiming for a fatal wound, but such single-mindedness also made her easy enough to read so that Brang could change his trajectory and get out of the way of the incoming blade. There was a momentary standoff between the two, which I quickly joined by taking a position near her blind spot. Because of this, she had no choice but to break her engagement with Brang and share her attention between the two of us.

That was more or less my intention, as currently my main objective was to tie her down and slowly chip away at her endurance until we could safely capture her, if only so that we could have a proper discussion without the danger of getting my head separated from the rest of my body in the process. In some ways, our positions at the moment were reminiscent of how we two-teamed the Chimera, except this time Rinne was on the receiving end. She also wasn't mindless enough to completely ignore one of us, but at the same time she also wasn't reasonable enough for us to maintain the balance of the stalemate just by moving in and out of her zone of control.

As such, the momentary lull in the combat only lasted for a few seconds before she decided to break through by attacking Brang first. As for why, I imagined she either wanted to get rid of the bigger target first, or more likely, she might've considered him easier prey at the moment. The ex-general, most likely due to being afraid of losing his spear and symbol of office to a single unlucky swing of the infuriating katana, opted to use a short sword instead. It was actually a replica Roman gladius that I mail-ordered the same time I got the spears and the rest of the weaponry for the Fauns. It was standard-sized, but in his hands, the short thrusting sword looked more like a dagger, especially after he put it in a reverse grip and held it up in a defensive position as if wielding a combat knife. Furthermore, he was wielding it while still buckled into its scabbard, making it an improvised blunt weapon to comply with my plan to catch Mountain Girl alive.

"Sakurabana Ranbu!"

Rinne called out the name of her attack as she made a diagonal cut from the bottom right side. Brang managed to avoid the telegraphed first strike and it seemed like he would go in for a grapple. It was fortunate that this particular attack of the creepy huntress was one that I have seen her use multiple times against the Chimera, so I knew that even though the way she let go of her blade for a moment and she was spinning around might have looked like an opening the size of a skyscraper, she would be inexplicably able to stab forth in a split second anyway.

"[General, waterfowl to the sinister side!]" I called out in a hurry, and even though this time even I couldn't readily untangle just what the hell I meant by that (thanks, Faun language), he still pulled back from his planned grab and swerved to the side, just in time to avoid the straight trust of the o-katana whistling thought the air.

I wasn't sitting on my laurels though, as I swiftly closed in the distance and swung my spear. Stabbing with the pointy end was naturally out of the question, and while normally I would've poked her in the back with the butt end of my weapon, she cut it off at such a sharp angle that I was afraid that if I did so, I would still end up wounding her anyway. Despite my best efforts, I inflicted practically zero damage on her with my strike. I not only lacked the familiar leverage due to my shortened weapon, but she also seemed to instinctively roll with the incoming force, as I barely felt any resistance when the shaft of the spear met with her shoulder.

Rinne tumbled on the ground without making a single sound, only to almost immediately spring to her feet while shouting yet another string of Japanese syllables and raising her sword high as she leaped at me. My trusty danger sense caught her abrupt attack well ahead of time, and I Phased right out of the way, reappearing by Brang's side with a small gasp. While such short-range teleports normally weren't that taxing, this time each one of them was making my headache ever-so-slightly worse. It was still bearable at the moment, but I was afraid it wouldn't stay that way for long.

"[I shall be her opponent. General, use the art of illusions bestowed upon you by your liege and limit yourself to harassing the interloper while I narrow her view of the world only to my person.]"

"[Understood,]" he grunted back right away and he began to radiate magic, only to add, "[Are thine orders to spare her life still in effect?]"

"[Naturally.]" After saying so, I considered things one more time, and in the end I added, "[Restrain yourself for the time being, but once her inner reserves appear spent, use your natural bulk to subdue her when the opportunity presents itself.]"

He nodded in acknowledgment, and a split second later his whole body was enveloped in the orange-ish rippling shine I've long since associated with the cloaking Sigil activating. From Rinne's point of view, it probably looked like he just vanished into thin air, so she immediately went on guard. That gave me a second or five to catch my breath, so I did just that and awkwardly put the lopsided end of my shortened spear against the ground to lean on it.

"Come on, Mountain Girl. Do we really have to do this?"

Instead of answering right away, she warily glanced around the area, probably thinking that I was trying to distract her while Brang got into position to ambush her (on which point she wasn't entirely wrong per se, but I digress), but at last she looked me in the eye and stated, "You are a lackey of the powers of the underworld."

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"Well, no, not really." My response drew a curious look from her, so I explained, "Technically, they are the ones who work for me."

"{Chief, I can't believe you thought that was going to convince her of your innocence.}"

I ignored my assistant's biting comment and instead whispered a deadpan, "Status report?"

"{I told the others about the situation at the base. Joshua said they are going to buy you as much time as they could, but asked you to hurry up.}"

"As if it was that simple," I murmured under my breath before focusing on Rinne again. "So, are you one hundred percent certain we cannot stand down and talk this through?"

"Yes," she nodded without any hesitation.

"Are you really sure? We could do it while we eat? I'll throw in a full meal too; you can even pick the restaurant."

For a moment her eyes actually wavered, even though I was half-joking, but she ultimately overcame her weakness and firmly declared, "You are Rinne's enemy. Rinne must fight you."

"But wh—" was as far as I got before I was once again interrupted by my danger sense insistently telling me that moving was in my best interest, and so I graciously obliged by leaping backwards with all my might. While I was doing that, my opponent dashed forward as if she was shot from a bow and swung her blade horizontally while yelling something about 'Iaijutsu' or something. Her strike still wasn't anywhere close to hitting me, but it didn't deter her from trying again, and again, and again. The series of strikes she threw at me was as simple as a floorboard, but their speed (plus being unblockable, of course) still made them really threatening.

We exchanged several blows under these circumstances, though more realistically speaking, it was mainly just me dodging out of the way of her sword while occasionally throwing a few feints at her to break her rhythm. For the moment, I decided to devote all my mental faculties to uphold the status quo until Karukk would come back with the thing I requested, and so I continued eluding her strikes like it was going out of style. That said, even though my situation wasn't exactly peachy, I still had some breathing room to think, and so I used the opportunity to further analyze my opponent.

By my subjective judgment, facing Rinne gave me about as much pressure as when I was fighting Brang in a Dominance duel; each of their attacks felt really dangerous and potentially fatal, but as long as I kept my cool, I could sidestep them with relative ease. As far as actual physical combat prowess was concerned, she had a noticeably shorter reach than my usual Faunish sparring partner, as well as much more limited threat projection, mainly since she lacked the intimidating bulk and weight of a Faun.

Based on her performance against the Chimera, as well as her current attempts at cutting me into ribbons, she had a slightly worse control over her the spacing and rhythm of the battle than the big Faun. She wasn't an amateur by any stretch of the imagination, but when I sparred with Brang, I always had to be on the lookout for feints and be wary of being drawn into his pace, and I often had to rely on my inexplicable sixth sense of mortal danger to get me out of the way of an unexpected jab. Compared to that, Rinne's fighting style was much more straightforward, to the point where I felt that once I got used to her moves, I could probably run circles around her.

There were only two problems that made this fight into an enormous pain in the neck: the first was the fact that I couldn't block or parry her strikes. That was a big deal, as it left me with no other choice but to avoid all of her attacks, which forced me to move my whole body a lot more than usual, and that meant that I was most likely burning through my stamina faster than her. The second issue was...

"Kenzen Ichinyo!"

"Sonova..." I muttered as I immediately Phased a few steps back to avoid her strike. Whenever she called out one of her attacks, it played havoc with my danger senses, and triggering my fight-or-flight reflexes made me teleport out of the way before even considering any other options. That, naturally, wasn't good for my migraine, and I was starting to be afraid that my head would give out sooner than her fatigue.

Anyhow, while I was forced back, Brang immediately picked up the pace and tackled Rinne from her blind spot. She might have had some kind of sixth sense of her own, as she managed to roll out of the way, but by the time she jumped back to her feet he already re-triggered his cloak and allowed me to take his place again. This kind of strike-and-fade tactic wasn't the most honorable in the world, but he didn't complain, and it worked wonders for keeping Mountain Girl off-balance.

After that, things returned to the status quo by me rushing in and keeping her occupied right until she would use another one of her fancy named attacks, then Brang would pick up the pace while I retreated, rinse and repeat. Not exactly the most dynamic, pulse-pounding battle in the history of supernatural combat, but in my defense, I didn't really have much of a reason to change things up. Keeping Rinne localized like this prevented more collateral damage from her swinging her exasperating blade through our furniture, and on top of that, it also kept everyone relatively safe until Karukk would finally show up with his delivery.

"[My lo… I mean, boss! Over here!]"

Oh, speak of the devil. The friendly Faun called out to me just after he returned from one of the as-of-yet unfurnished side-chambers of the base, and he waved a long, thin object wrapped in a thick layer of protective canvas that helped to keep it from getting dirty, kept moisture away from the sensitive metal edges, and most importantly, blocked any eye-sore magical glows it might have radiated from giving me pink-eye.

But putting such things aside, I held back from letting out a frustrated 'Finally!', and instead I distanced myself from the berserk huntress and waved for Karukk to bring it over. I thought that was the obvious thing to do, but for some reason he remained in place and only gave me a dumb look while alternating between looking at me and the object in his hands. Then, after an objectively short yet subjectively torturously long moment later it seemed like something finally clicked with him as he raised it over his head and…

"Wait, don't throw it over to—!"

I was too late. He threw it. Maybe he thought I wanted to have it right away, but for god's sake, man! If I was in such a hurry, I would've Phased over to your side already! You could've at least taken off the covering! How was I supposed to use it like that?

But alas, there was no point crying over spilled milk, so I swiftly moved in to intercept it… except I nearly stumbled when my danger sense began to blare at me like a world war two bomber alarm. It wasn't hard to figure out why either; I was moving to catch a spear with a fixed trajectory. That meant that my own movement became predictable, which in turn led to Mountain Girl instantly moving in to intercept me.

So, there I was. On my right a crazed woman with her sword raised over her head, ready to swing it down upon me. On my left, a spear thrown towards me on a flat flight curve designed to be easy to catch. In-between the two, a choice; do I catch the weapon and risk getting cut, or do I avoid the incoming slash and then run around like a headless chicken trying to recover the weapon? After a short but intense internal debate, I decided on a third option, and with a low grunt, I threw the spear already in my hands into the face of the incoming huntress.

She was more startled than anything by my actions, and she brought down her blade in a swift, vertical cut, neatly bisecting the shaft in the middle and pushing the pieces aside in her continued rush towards me. Still, it gave her a pause, and that was all I needed.

Goodbye cheap, nameless spear. We hardly knew ye, but your heroic sacrifice shall not be forgotten. Anyhow, while Rinne was momentarily distracted, Brang also revealed himself for a moment and let out a threatening roar that made even me twitch, even though I was already used to the guy. For our home invader, the sudden appearance of the blaring Faun must've been even more surprising, as even though he didn't do anything afterward, his T-Rex impression still provided me with ample distraction time to display my trained weapon catching skill.

...

Ooooh, so that's why Karukk threw the spear at me! It had to be muscle memory from the times we trained my post-Phasing weapon catching technique together. With that mystery solved, I reached out and elegantly snatched the unusual projectile out of the air, and then I brandished it in a slightly less graceful manner. I blame the damn canvas for the last bit.

I still did a small flourish with it, unwieldiness be damned, and took up an offensive stance, with my legs spread wide to provide a solid foundation and the spear in my hands held at shoulder height with the point angled slightly down.

Once I was in position, I sent a provocative smirk in my opponent's way, and her reaction was quite predictable. She instantly resumed her rush towards me, her torso slightly bent to the side and away from Brang, and blade held in both hands and angled for a diagonal slice from bottom-right to top left. I, in turn, shifted into a more defensive posture, and eagerly awaited to see whether my gambit would pay off.

Blocking a sword strike with a spear was a tricky one. In the movies, you often see one actor hold their polearm horizontally to stop a vertical slash, only to get locked in a contest of strength as they both push against each other's weapons. This is all very dramatic, as it allows for a moment of pause in the combat where they can trade angry quips with each other while the camera zooms in on their faces. It makes for an intense scene, so long as nobody starts wondering why the swordsman doesn't just slide his blade down the shaft and cut off his opponent's fingers. But then again, this is the kind of thing where a little willing suspension of disbelief (and the general populace's lack of need for armed combat knowledge) always pays dividends.

Needless to say, I didn't even try to do any of that. Instead I opted to take half a step back with one leg to brace myself while simultaneously swinging my weapon around to gather momentum, meeting my opponent's strike on a deflective angle. And that, ladies and gentlemen, where the magic happened. As in, literally.

The moment our weapons met, there was a blindingly bright flash of light reminiscent of a welding arc followed by a numbing electric jolt running up from my palms all the way to my shoulders. All of these distractions nearly blotted out the sound and impact of enchanted wood meeting enchanted metal, but at the end of the day my hunch was proven correct, and the dragon-slaying spear successfully deflected the aggravating sword. That's a plot device for you, I supposed.

Well, to be fair, I would've been satisfied with either outcome; if it blocked Onikiri, neat. If not, at least this damn thing would be out of my hair. It would've been tricky to explain it to Sebastian but I was prepared to do so from the beginning.

As for why I even had this spear in the secret base at the moment, simply put, I set Elly up to be my anchor, and I sneakily spirited it away before it could inevitably serve as a rogue element during the upcoming attack by the Knights. But putting all that aside, the collision between the two enchanted weapons have caused something of a magical shock-wave that undid the knot fastening the cloth onto the spear, so after pushing Rinne back a step, I did another small flourish and used the opportunity to discard the canvas and reveal my weapon in all of its glowy glory.

Once she overcame the first shock, Mountain Girl swiftly reasserted herself by raising her sword up to the level of her face, signifying that she was about to go on the offensive again. This time however I had no reason to shrink back, and I met her assault with an aggressive posture of my own, and when she was about to rush forwards, I abruptly shifted my hands down the shaft and positioned the tip right in the way of her predicted lunge.

She was already moving by the time she realized what I did, so she had no choice but to awkwardly twist her body while simultaneously attempting to sweep the spearhead in the other direction. I didn't allow her to do so, as I quickly yanked the spear back, causing her to ineffectually wave at thin air instead. Doing so disturbed her stance even further, so I quickly struck at her sword in the back-draw, causing her to completely lose her balance and letting me strafe to the side to keep an optimum distance.

This small exchange was the textbook example of the very basics of armed combat. First, establish favorable spacing, then read your opponent, bait them into making a mistake, and then punish them for it. It wasn't as flashy as throwing sword-beams at each other or as visually stunning as repeatedly bashing our blades against each other until sparks started flying, but damn me if it wasn't effective.

By having a weapon with a longer reach, I naturally opted for a wider spacing, used my range advantage to disturb her attack, baited her into a miss to further unbalance her, then I used the opportunity to re-establish my preferred distance. As for punishing, if I really wanted to, I could've probably stabbed her upper arm or shoulder, but for now I opted for keeping the fight bloodless and aiming to disarm her instead.

Honestly, I didn't think that having a weapon capable of parrying her would make such a difference, but with this small change, the battle went from 'this is dangerous, and a single mistake could result in serious injury or worse' to 'this is not that hard, but the constant flashing magical lights are making my eyes hurt'. By the way, yes, that was still a thing; every time our weapons met, there was a bright light that gave the sun a run for its money, and by the looks of it, only I could see it. Also, if we're talking about nuisances, the spear itself felt a tad unwieldy in my hands, no small part thanks to it still giving me small electric shocks every once in a while.

The other big factor that turned the situation around was even more surprising. Rinne, the self-proclaimed hunter of supernatural nasties and highly visible ninja, was apparently entirely inexperienced when it came to fighting someone who had a weapon. Or rather, she seemed completely bewildered by the idea of her opponent being able to block and counter her, and once I broke her momentum with that and didn't let her slip close enough to get into her preferred spacing range, she became surprisingly easy to handle.

"Sakuraba--! Ouch!"

Just like that. Whenever she was about to try one of her unreasonable moves, I immediately punished her by extending my weapon and slapping her shoulder or thigh with the flat of the blade, or occasionally interrupting her by targeting her weapon before it could gather momentum. It still resulted in a few shallow cuts every here and there, but I kept telling myself that once she was tied up, Angie would take care of them, so it wasn't that big of a deal. That said, even I was astonished by how easy it became to suppress her. Was she really this bad? Or maybe Judy was right all along and I really did have a knack for armed combat?

"Stop it!" she suddenly burst out, and on a closer look, I could see tears of frustration in the corner of her eyes. "Fight properly!"

"I'm fighting properly," I answered while swatting away a surprise thrust and countering by whacking her on the wrist before retreating by two paces. "You're the one who is flailing around."

She yelled something at me that sounded like gibberish mixed with random Japanese swear words, so I shut her up by feinting a thrust towards her head, and then immediately pulling back and smacking her hastily raised sword again, eliciting a pained hiss in the process. Odd as the turnaround was, I definitely wasn't going to complain, as by the looks of it I was going to be able to either wear her down or disarm her before long. Now I only had to make sure to pace myself and to make sure she wouldn't run away before we could—

"{Chief, we have a situation.}"

My thoughts were abruptly interrupted by Judy's voice, and she somehow sounded even more worried than the last time she called me.

"I noticed, I'm dealing with it right now," I whispered curtly, much to Mountain Girl's confusion. "I have it more or less under control."

"{No, we have a new situation.}"

"What? Did something happen with the others?" I asked back while parrying another strike and feinting a thrust towards Rinne's abdomen to force her back before adding, "Please don't tell me it's another giant robot..."

"{No Chief, we have a brand new situation,}" she told me impatiently, and this time she didn't wait for me to react before throwing a bombshell. "{Mother-in-law is in trouble.}"

"Emese is in trou... Wait, come again?" Judy didn't say anything, so I presumed I've heard it right. "Dormouse... For the love of god, please, please tell me it's not the Knights..."

"{Sorry Chief, but it's the Knights,}" she responded in a voice that managed to be both apologetic and flat at the same time.

"… What the bloody hell on earth is going on with this godforsaken…" For the sake of brevity, let's just say that what followed after this point was a solid fifteen seconds long litany of curses, courtesy of yours truly, which put an unexpected and quite awkward end to the hostilities for while it lasted. "... goddamn son of a goat merchant!"

I finished in the company of a ginormous groan. Letting off some steam like that helped a bit, and one sharp breath later I glanced at the still cloaked Brang waiting for an opening on the side. I had to move fast, and considering how much trouble I went through to get it out of the mansion ahead of time, I wasn't going to take the dragon-slaying spear back there, so once I was sure I had Brang's attention, I unceremoniously tossed my weapon over to him.

The Faun general almost fumbled, but ultimately managed to catch the spear with a confused look on his face.

"[I request that you hold the line. My presence is required elsewhere.]"

Brang wasn't anything if not adaptable, and once he digested my words, he undid his cloaking and took a threatening stance to draw Rinne's attention away from me. With that, I felt confident that the situation should be under control here, so I closed my eyes and quickly Phased away with a looming sense of trepidation about what other kinds of fresh hells this day would still have in store for me...

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