Horizon:Volume 9B Chapter 41

Chapter 41: Noisy One on the Stage of Divine Music

Is this age falling behind?

Or is it this generation?

Or what?

Point Allocation (It’s You)

●

“Oh.”

Kiyomasa noticed a sound.

A solid tone reverberated through the sky. It had too solid a core for a woodwind instrument and it repeatedly pounded on the air with a jaunty tempo.

It came from the south, where Kiyomasa’s group had come from.

She was currently leading everyone toward the center of the Shibata formation. She was worried about Sakon and the others she had left behind, but…

“Yes.”

They will be fine, she thought.

She more or less understood why they had asked to take over there.

…I couldn’t make use of death in that way.

She smiled bitterly and gave her people new commands. They were attacking the main path through the southern end of the Shibata formation. They were clearing out the enemies on the reverse side of that path, but once this was done…

“We can work with Kasuya’s team up north to catch the Shibata team’s main force with a pincer attack! Let’s do this!”

“Testament!” replied her people while the solid rhythm continued to sound.

…Incredible.

That tall underclassman had been so nervous around her before summer break, but how much strength and how many reliable friends had she gained since?

●

Sakon worked her mobile shell.

She ran swiftly, stabbing her feet into the ground and using the rebound to keep up with Niwa’s dance.

She was armed with a pair of swords. One was the one that had fallen from her back. The other she had collected to increase her options.

However, her twin attacks were deflected by Niwa’s cloth swords.

Her opponent also used a pair of swords. And sometimes flames or lightning blew from those swords.

But Sakon didn’t let that stop her.

When she lost a limb, she wouldn’t fight it so she could instantly recover. When she was burned, she would cut away that body part herself.

It hurt but there was no helping that.

She had felt all this pain before. The pain wasn’t a lie. The feeling that she couldn’t go on was the lie.

And I don’t like lies.

So instead of falling back, she pressed forward, never letting Niwa get away. And even if Niwa did get away, she told herself she could still catch up.

She knew there was more to a battle than moving and striking the enemy.

…That’s right.

During the summer training camp, she had learned that cooperation was an option even when fighting alone.

She had to read her opponent’s movements.

Back then, she had been fighting Terrestrial Dragons over 100m long. As big, tough, and strong as she was, that was too much to stand up against. She was easily overpowered.

So at first, she had tried to dodge and then attack.

But even then, the dragon had caught up, her options had dwindled, and she had found herself in a dead end. Kasuya or Hirano had helped her out then, but…

…That isn’t what I need here.

Watching your opponent and dodging their attacks before making your own was not what it meant to read them.

While watching Kasuya, she had noticed that Kasuya would watch her opponent’s movements and then attack.

Sakon was always dodging. Kasuya would dodge too, but she would attack at the same time. Sakon had thought these were like dodging attacks or combo moves or something, but they weren’t.

According to Kasuya, “I’m not sure how to describe it. I just eliminate everything my opponent tries to do.”

She wasn’t slipping past her opponent’s attacks.

She was launching her own attacks against her opponent’s attacks.

Which meant she didn’t need to dodge all that much.

“This isn’t a game with turn-based combat.”

Sakon had realized that was true. You didn’t split attack and defense, but you didn’t include defense in your attacks either.

You only needed to make precisely the right attack for the situation.

While she was thinking about this, Onitakemaru had told her to stop fighting her deaths. She hadn’t understood what he meant by that at first, but she had figured it out after some thought.

She couldn’t think of death as a single action.

She considered attacking to be the best way to win. She was too inexperienced to turn things around after defending against her opponent’s attacks. That was where she had failed against Musashi’s 5th Special Duty Officer.

In that sense, Kiyomasa-sama is truly amazing.

Kiyomasa could use her defenses to endure the enemy’s onslaught and ultimately emerge victorious.

Sakon couldn’t do that yet, so she had to focus on attack.

She had to hit the enemy.

Dodging and defense weren’t enough. She didn’t actually need to ensure her own safety. So she simply had to create a situation where she could attack and then make sure her attacks hit.

She just had to hit them, no matter what attacks or counterattacks they sent her way.

…What kind of attack is she going to use now?

That was where her “reading” of the enemy began.

And even when fighting alone, cooperation was still possible.

She could still cooperate with her opponent.

If she was the right fist in a combo move, then her opponent was the left fist.

She was never alone.

Just like she could cooperate with her allies, she could cooperate with her enemy, but this cooperation was so she could hit them.

“Yes!”

She moved. She pursued and sent out her blades, receiving the same in response.

The cooperation was working. Niwa was definitely cooperating with her movements.

There was no gap. They simply kept up with each other at high speed, while…

…O-

“Onitakemaru-san!” shouted Sakon, as both report and command. “I think I have Niwa-sama!”

●

Something suddenly felt off to Niwa.

Sakon’s movements had changed.

Before, she had been swiftly keeping up with Niwa. But she had been using her great strength and reach while shortening her regenerations to gain that speed. It had been a matter of brute force.

Not anymore.

Her actions now were crude but efficient.

They seemed somehow familiar, but Niwa dismissed the idea that she had seen them somewhere before. This was her first time meeting the girl.

Which left only one option.

…Is she responding to my actions!?

Niwa didn’t know how it worked, but with each step and strike, Sakon’s pursuit and counterattacks became more accurate and efficient.

Could her skill really improve so quickly? It wasn’t impossible, but Niwa didn’t think that was the explanation here. Because skill growth like that required first running into a “wall”.

While caught on that wall, their skill would be stuck in place, so finally clearing that wall would allow their skill to increase all at once.

The rapid increase of skill was only the skill growth that had been suppressed by the wall, so their skill growth wasn’t any greater than normal over the long term. That said, learning the trick to clearing such walls and the other strengths gained in the process would give them what they needed to grow faster than average afterwards.

Did that explain Sakon here?

“––––––”

No. Niwa again rejected that idea.

Because she didn’t create a “wall” that Sakon had needed to clear. For one, they had never met before. Also, had Sakon shown any sign of trying to surpass her or viewing this battle as a crucial task to be completed?

No.

Plus, Sakon had used a technique she hadn’t been using at first: regeneration efficiency. Her accuracy with that was also increasing as her pursuit of Niwa continued.

That meant Sakon had already cleared her “wall” and that was why she was here in the first place.

So the change to her movements did not come from skill growth.

There was a trick to it. While Niwa tried to work out what that was, she heard a voice.

“Tah.”

Sakon was humming a single noise with her head lowered.

“Tah-tah, tan.”

She was creating a rhythm.

●

Tah, tah-tah-tan, tan-tah-tah, tah-tah-tan.

Tah, tah-tah-tan, tah-tah-tan, tan, tah-tah-tan.

Tah, tah-tah, tah-tah-tah, tah-tah-tah.

Tah, tah, tah, tah-tah-tah, tah-tah-tah-tah-tah, tah-tah, tan.

●

Niwa recognized the rhythm Sakon hummed as she stepped, pursued, and attacked.

Now she understood Sakon’s trick.

And how Sakon was able to keep up with her.

And how her accuracy continued to improve.

And…

…Why I recognized these movements!

It was a simple trick.

“She’s playing the same song I’m listening to!”

●

“Kiyomasa-san did a really good job,” said Katagiri with Hundred Crest Land Survey open in the Azuchi’s dining hall while artillery fire boomed all around.

Several waves had formed before him.

They represented the timing of Niwa’s attacks and movements against Kiyomasa during their battle. The mobile shell had gathered these combat records so it could respond to Kiyomasa’s opponent and Kiyomasa had sent it here.

She had asked Katagiri to analyze it: “Replaying this should tell us what song Niwa-sama is listening to.”

It had.

Songs had several defining traits. One of those was the rhythm oftentimes played by a percussion instrument. With drums in particular, people had a tendency to time their steps with the rhythm.

However, your average person could never identify the song from the rhythm alone.

Which was why this was a job for Katagiri.

He had first converted the sound into a visible wave and then created a diagram out of it.

Next, he had the automata run a search. But gathering all the music sources had been Takenaka’s job. The only music data available on the P.A. Oda divine network was songs praising god. So all this music had to come from god. The only member of the Ten Spears with the right to access Mlasi music was Takenaka, so she had acquired all the music available on the divine network’s music site.

Kuro-Dake: “Whew, that’s the most money I’ve ever spent at once. And when I told the site, ‘excuse me, but can I get one of everything?’, the purchasing program could only get a ‘huh?’ out as a confirmation message.”

What a sloppily coded site.

But once Katagiri had the songs, the rest was easy.

The automata scanned and analyzed the songs. They did need some time to listen through each song, but their analysis and the comparison against Katagiri’s data was perfect. Even now, they were discussing it via divine transmission.

“Katagiri-sama’s data is so sloppy I keep getting false matches.”

“Oh, I just got my 300th false match.”

“Human inaccuracy can be such a pain at times…”

…Perfect! I said it’s perfect!

AnG: “Sigh. Giri’s causing trouble again.”

Kimee: “Nothing’s more trouble than someone who thinks he’s perfect.”

The Boy: “Wh-what about Technohexen that insist on hitting people where it hurts!?”

But they did find a match in the end.

“Found it!”

He joined Sakon’s divine transmission from up on the Azuchi. After sending the song data over, he even received a notice of receipt from Onitakemaru.

“The song is Kouta by Emira Emira, a girls band started to boost troop morale. The song became a hit 20 years ago before a battle against the Far East!”

●

Onitakemaru listened to the song.

… What kind of superficial fluff is this!?

Back in his day, the nobility had used music as a way of decorating themselves. As someone who had inherited the warrior culture of the Taira clan and made it his own, that music had honestly been too slow for his liking.

But without acceptance by the court, the imperial palace would not recognize your position as a samurai.

So they had learned to sing and he was used to that sort of music.

They had emphasized proper form. That was how the samurai families did things. If the court or the nobility got out of line, it was up to the samurai to stop them in accordance with the emperor’s wishes. He was not an uncultured boor.

But what as this? Songs were meant to take the form of 5-7-5-7-7. That was what gave them divine protection.

“Clouds to the west mean rain. Clouds to the north mean the end of my love.”

Love songs were more a thing for the puny nobility he so loathed, but this song didn’t follow the proper form or any other rules as far as he could tell.

“The tears of my bedhead are the color of cherry blossoms falling in the spring rain.”

This isn’t a song at all, he thought, but the automata provided an explanation:

“This is a type of kouta known as ryutatsubushi which was popular at the end of the Warring States period, Onitakemaru-sama. Shaja.”

“It was a type of song sung by the common people, not the nobility or the samurai. It is a form of free expression in which people expose their present thoughts and feelings. But at the time, they did not know what to call the concept of ‘free expression’ and, since this took the form of a song, they left the idea in the realm of song. I believe it would technically count as a form of prose poetry. Shaja.”

“You mean…?”

So this song he was listening to and having Kohime sing was…?

…A filthy love song or entertainment song!? This will sabotage her proper education!

But this revealed a rule that would be a challenge for them. Namely…

“This uses the reverse rule of a song not bound by any existing rules!”

“Shaja! That is what allows for the quick tempo and varying line lengths, which makes it so difficult to predict the timing of her movements! The full version of Kouta modifies and strings together more than 500 poems for a length of 42 minutes! Shaja.”

I see. A song that long would make good combat music.

As Onitakemaru read through the lyrics, it made his skin crawl, but it would probably feel meaningful to the young.

He couldn’t understand it himself, but it would work for Kohime’s generation.

He had failed in the past by approaching it without that understanding.

But not anymore.

“Kohime! This is the song Niwa is playing!”

Kohime would understand, so he sent the fast music to her with his own acoustic spell.

And eventually…

“Um?” she said.

“What is it, Kohime!?”

“Well,” she began. “This was a huge hit from 20 years ago. I mean, it’s Emira Emira, so I’m pretty sure it’s been covered at least three times. I know you’re trying your best, but you have really old-fashioned tastes.”

“This is not about my tastes!! Just listen to it!”

I feel like something got turned around there, he thought as he increased the volume.

●

Niwa realized why Sakon had her head lowered while making her pursuit.

…She’s watching my footwork!

The feet were the starting point of all motion, no matter the type. Watching that had to make it easier to determine her speed.

Niwa hadn’t expected the song played by the 3000 behind her to be identified.

No, it was a major song. And in Mlasi areas, it had been used to boost combat morale. Maybe this wasn’t all that surprising.

In that case, she decided. I need to increase my speed.

She raised her right hand to indicate an increase in tempo. Once the 3000 behind her increased the pressure of their music…

“Here goes!”

She instantly accelerated enough to shift away from her previous movements.

“Niwa-sama! Take care of this!”

Everyone was cheering her on. So as she increased her own pressure…

“You can’t lose with all of us on your side!”

●

Pushed on by her people’s voices, Niwa moved.

She swung her cloth blades. At this point, she was the one responding to Sakon’s attacks.

They were both unkillable. Ordinary attacks were meaningless here.

So she adjusted her dance and rapidly increased her speed.

“You’re on!”

She moved out ahead in order to deal with Sakon’s actions.

As the upperclassman here, simply matching her opponent would be shameful. But she didn’t hesitate to choose the plan that would let her win. She circled behind Sakon while also swinging her cloths around.

“How about this!?”

She lopped off Sakon’s head.

●

Niwa felt the blow land.

“This will work!” she shouted just before seeing light scattering in the moonlight.

But this was not blood scattering from Sakon’s flying head.

It was metal shards. From armor. Specifically…

…A vambrace!?

Sakon had blocked with her right arm.

But that didn’t make sense. Niwa’s cloth swords had never managed to break Sakon’s armor before.

There was only one explanation.

…The mobile shell purged its armor!?

Purging armor without increasing the armor density would only lower its defensive capabilities. As evidence, the armor on the inner side of Sakon’s raised right forearm was almost completely destroyed. But why do that?

“This couldn’t be easier with enough speed! Purging the armor was enough to catch it!”

The lightened mobile shell’s power assistance had allowed Sakon’s hand to grab Niwa’s cloth sword.

Sakon herself could never have kept up with Niwa’s speed. At this speed, the slightest mistake would mean losing your balance and falling. But if the mobile shell had guided her with its power assistance…

…How deeply do they trust each other!?

Niwa pulled back, but Sakon’s reach was greater.

Sakon’s right hand seemed to follow the cloth to reach Niwa’s right arm.

She was going to catch up.

Niwa immediately pulled her hand back, but her right middle finger and index finger were caught between Sakon’s thumb and palm.

Niwa sensed danger. She knew she was following the course laid out by her opponent.

She made a split-second decision.

…Withdraw!

She cut herself to leave that course.

She severed her caught right hand.

But she did not use a cloth blade. That sword was imbued with a djinn’s power. A wound made by its divine protection would count as self-harm, which would cause real damage. So instead…

“Lucky me!”

She used the wooden sword Sakon had dropped. She used a dance step to stomp on one end, sending the other springing up into her left hand.

“Unlucky you!”

And she severed her hand.

●

Niwa felt no pain.

She hurriedly made another turn and step, bringing her behind Sakon.

Sakon still hadn’t turned around.

This was Niwa’s chance.

But she couldn’t sew Sakon down with the wooden sword in her left hand.

And her right wrist wasn’t fully mended yet.

And then it was.

The rest was easy. She only had to pierce a cloth blade into Sakon’s back.

There was no need to hesitate. She only had to deliver the finishing blow. But that was when she noticed a large silhouette visible past Sakon’s back.

…Wait, is that…?

It was the towering shape of the fortress wall of ships.

In the clearing, Sakon stood facing north between Niwa and that wall.

●

At the center of the clearing, they were 500m away from the fortress wall of ships.

Niwa realized Sakon had moved between her and that wall.

…No!

That had happened before, during all their turns and position swapping.

But it felt different this time.

Niwa realized she hadn’t circled behind Sakon just now.

She had been led behind Sakon.

“…!”

She had a bad feeling about this.

So she hurried in and made an attack. To sew that girl in place.

But before she could, the tall warrior launched an attack with her back turned.

Sakon spread her arms and opened a lernen figurs into the empty clearing on either side of her.

Those were acoustic spells.

A moment later, Sakon roared. The mouth that had been spraying blood earlier now released a roar into the northern sky.

“Attack!”

●

Onitakemaru noticed something just as Kohime made her explosive roar.

Two things in fact.

First, his rear sight devices saw ether light fragments crash into Niwa.

Second, he heard something from the 3000 atop the fortress wall of ships.

“…!”

He heard the sound suddenly return to the music they were playing.

“Yes!”

He now knew Kohime had succeeded.

“Your deafening voice overpowered their 3000-man pressure!”

●

Niwa resisted even as sudden deceleration hit her entire body.

…My stage was destroyed!?

Sakon had performed a sort of explosive roar. And since it was produced by human vocal organs instead of a dragon’s, it spread out a lot more. It wasn’t enough to reach the 3000 behind Niwa as an attack. Its effective range in that sense was maybe 30m.

But it was enough to eliminate the link between Niwa and her people.

Their music.

The 3000-strong song had been an offering to their god. It had been playing throughout the battle even when it couldn’t be heard, but now it had been broken.

●

As all her strength faded away, Niwa thought, The enemy is attempting to fully neutralize my power.

Sakon’s voice had created a wall of explosive pressure between Niwa and her people.

This wasn’t possible with explosion spells that focused on a single point before spreading out, but a voice supported by an acoustic spell could make for a wide-range spell attack.

Niwa’s divine protection was provided by offering her god the song played by her subordinates.

The song couldn’t be heard since it had been offered up, but that didn’t mean it was gone.

But now it had been cut off.

That was only for a short time, but while the djinns had been playing in the massive song pressure before…

“…!?”

They suddenly tumbled through the air like they had lost their footing.

The lingering sound of the music taken from her scattered through the air. The lightning beast and phoenix must have mistaken that for the music itself because they hopped onto the scattering light and resumed playing.

“––––”

And they vanished. Just like the earth dragon, they did not return.

They had played enough. And Niwa slowed.

…I can’t exactly complain.

Niwa had fought Kiyomasa by taking her subordinates from her and now the same had been done to Niwa.

So what was the right thing to do now? Uncertain, she stopped her dancing feet and…

“––––”

She found herself at a loss for words. At the same time…

“Oh.”

She saw Sakon’s tall figure collapse backwards.

Niwa looked over curiously while Sakon looked up into the full moons and spoke.

“I’m starrrving. I died way too much tonight!”

●

“Kohime! Are you abandoning the fight!?”

Not at all, thought Sakon.

“It’s not like Niwa-sama can fight much anymore. I mean, look – her pets are gone. Maybe she can still use some music stuff, but not on a god level, right? Someone else can deal with her now.”

Onitakemaru didn’t like that answer and she more or less understood why.

He wanted her to get the credit for victory here.

But she was out of fuel, so there was nothing she could do. He was monitoring her physical status, so he had to understand that.

“Hey, Ootani! Get to work!”

He shouted that as a light came into view.

At the bottom of her vision, she saw several lernen figurs open atop the fortress wall of ships.

“I request your silence, everyone! I am Ootani Yoshitsugu! I have just hacked Niwa-sama’s acoustic spell and forced it to shut down!”

As soon as the link between Niwa and the 3000 was cut, the plan was for the virus to hack into the spell. And he had done so.

Niwa had to fight on her own now.

And the djinns had already left her. Which meant…

“We all did this together,” insisted Sakon.

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