Watch, Practice, Learn

Azu's sword collided with the Black Knight Zombie's blade.

A shrill metallic clang rang out.

Overpowered, Azu retreated and braced for a follow-up attack, but it never came.

Just as she'd predicted, the enemy repeated the same movement through to the end.

It appeared to use the same swordsmanship as the Ash King.

It watched Azu with a puzzled air, then raised its sword again.

Alexia's magic cut in between them, but the Black Knight Zombie deflected it skillfully with its blade.

She heard a tongue click.

"Quite the skilled opponent."

"There's no opening at all."

Elza's purification could be easily dodged unless the target was pinned down, so Azu needed to create an opening somehow.

This was a good opportunity.

Back then, she had only just started out as an adventurer, and she'd had so little time to learn from the Ash King.

As a result, much of what she knew was filled in by guesswork, and her swordsmanship remained incomplete.

She had been honing it by sparring with Alexia, Elza, and occasionally Finn, but nothing beat experiencing the original techniques firsthand.

She couldn't afford to drag the party down, so she had to treat this as a secondary benefit, nothing more.

Azu deliberately moved before the Black Knight Zombie could.

It still had no openings, but she had the advantage in agility and mobility.

The instant she closed to striking distance, a slash came for her neck.

She ducked to avoid it.

If this were the Ash King, a follow-up would come the moment she dodged.

The thrust came at her a beat later than she'd expected.

Not as sharp as the Ash King.

Whether that was because it was a zombie, or because it lacked the Ash King's mastery, she couldn't tell.

She aimed at the flat of the incoming blade and swung her sword into it with all her strength.

She didn't have enough raw power to deflect its trajectory, so she channeled mana into the Sealed Sword Grungaus and activated its ability.

This was the unbridgeable gap in ability between humans and monsters.

She had to fill it through ingenuity and quick thinking, or she couldn't fight at all.

She parried the blade and closed the distance further.

Deflecting its sword cancelled out her momentum as well. She gripped the hilt tight.

She thrust at the face, the one part of its body left exposed and unprotected by armor.

Their gazes locked.

Its eyes were clouded from zombification, making its thoughts unreadable.

It must have been a knight of great renown when it was alive.

Azu's attack was seen through. The thrust was blocked by the gauntlet on its left arm.

But that was fine.

Azu released the power of the Creator King's Apostle just a fraction.

The color of her right eye shifted to a rainbow hue, and a tremendous force surged through her entire body.

She pressed in against the block.

Then she unleashed the Sealed Sword Grungaus's power and blew off the enemy's left arm.

She immediately suppressed the power.

Using it for too long would leave her unable to move properly.

The Black Knight Zombie was pushed backward by the force of Azu's blow.

But its fighting spirit hadn't wavered.

It brought the sword in its right hand swinging down at Azu.

She met it with her own blade.

Even with one of its arms gone and both of Azu's hands gripping her sword, she was still being overpowered, though not enough to break her stance.

From there, Azu and the Black Knight Zombie traded blows for a while.

At first, Azu was on the back foot.

She was outmatched in strength and outclassed in technique. That was only natural.

There is a concept called observational training: learning swordsmanship by watching someone more skilled.

That was exactly what Azu was doing as she fought.

The results showed immediately every time their blades met.

That part was just as she'd anticipated.

That part was different. She should have done it this way instead.

Each time, she corrected her own movements and stripped away the excess.

If the Black Knight Zombie had been at full strength, it would have overwhelmed her before any of this could happen.

With one arm gone, the balance of power between them sat on a razor's edge, turning the fight into something akin to a veteran teaching a student.

The one regret was that unlike the Ash King, the Black Knight Zombie didn't possess full consciousness. A dim remnant of its living will, wrapped in the hatred of a monster, drove its movements.

Its fine swordsmanship wasn't being put to proper use.

As a result, Azu gradually began gaining the upper hand.

She read the full-force diagonal slash, dodged backward, then stepped in hard and aimed for its torso.

Elza and Alexia were watching, waiting for the moment an opening appeared in the Black Knight's defense.

The Sealed Sword Grungaus's effect gouged through the armor and broke the Black Knight Zombie's stance.

"Clear the line of fire!"

The moment Alexia's voice rang out, Azu threw herself sideways.

A spiral of flame engulfed the Black Knight Zombie, coiling around it like chains and pinning it in place.

Along with the sound of burning, it strained against its bonds.

It tried to brute-force its way through the restraints, but then Elza's purification miracle rained down upon it.

"… …"

It murmured something at the end, and then the Black Knight Zombie's body crumbled to ash.

Purified. Annihilated.

Its hollowed armor clattered to the ground. Everything except the sword disintegrated into dust and vanished.

It seemed the sword was the drop.

Azu drove her blade into the ground and sat down right there.

She let out a long breath.

"Haah…"

That had been a formidable enemy, without a doubt.

Throughout the fight, she'd felt a constant prickling unease at the back of her neck.

She was grateful that, thanks to Alexia and Elza's teamwork, they'd been able to finish it off in one decisive push.

"Good work. You okay?"

Elza held out some water. Azu took it and drank it all in one go.

"Puha. Thank you."

Her breathing was settling down now.

After resting a little while longer, she finally stood and walked over to Kazusa, who was cautiously emerging from cover.

"You've gotten stronger, Azu. Compared to before."

"You think? Anyway, what happened?"

"Yeah, but before that, could you help me out? I want to at least give them a proper burial."

Kazusa set down the large bag she'd been carrying on her back.

Then they carried the bodies of the adventurers who'd been in her party.

They laid them face up, folded their hands together, and wiped the dirt from their faces.

They separated out anything that could identify them by name, along with locks of hair and personal effects that could serve as mementos, then cremated the bodies with Alexia's fire.

This prevented their flesh from being claimed by the labyrinth after death and reused as Undead.

It wouldn't reduce the number of enemies in the labyrinth, but it preserved their dignity.

Kazusa took charge of the separated belongings.

"Thank you. Honestly, I'd given up on being able to bury them. I was practically dead myself."

"I'm glad we made it in time."

"Yeah. I'm truly grateful."

Then Kazusa began to tell them what had happened.