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Volume 2 Chapter 10-2: (Physical) Negotiations

 

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Without pausing I ducked down. An arrow shot through the area where the back of my head had been only moments before. It was an arrow shot by an archer who had carefully hidden his presence and moved around to my rear.

If I hadn’t been able to see behind myself using 【Perception Expansion】, then it would have been unavoidable.

Then as I crouched I gripped my blade and extended my arm out before spinning around once.

At that moment my blade cut through the ankles of the other two knights who were trying to cut me down. Their legs let out a fountain of blood as they collapsed to the ground.

Upon seeing that the other four knights who were charging towards me couldn’t help but pause and hesitate.

In that momentary space I took the opportunity to switch my knife to my other hand, point my small bow towards the bowmen, and ready two more arrows to fire at them.

Unlike the hesitant knights the bowmen fired arrow after arrow at me like mad men.

For them the best method to avoid death was to fire without stopping and kill me.

However, their arrows were doomed to miss. I took one step, then a second. I used the least movements to avoid the arrows.

「It’d be fine if you’d just ran away.」

That was really the only way for them to survive.

If they planned to continue attacking me I would have to deal with them. I confirmed my targets as I fired and within a few seconds the bowmen collapsed with an arrow between the eyes.

Before long there was only a single archer left alive.

By then, the knights had finally resolved themselves and charged forward to cut me down.

The bowmen were elites, but so were the Knights.

Firstly they were very perceptive. They made sure to block all my lines of sight as they attacked.

Secondly, they were all using well-trained 【Body Enhancement】 magic. Not only that, their sense of balance and movements were splendid. Normally when you used 【Body Enhancement】 a slight misjudgment would cause your body to move awkwardly and stumble, however all of them moved smoothly without any mistakes.

Finally, they were unhesitating and skilled with their blades. That was something that couldn’t be achieved without stringent training.

However……

「It’s really no problem for me.」

This degree of skill would be unable to reach me.

Using 【Perception Expansion】 I could sense the movements of their muscles, how much they sweat, and where they were looking which told me exactly how they would move their blades. I was receiving information many times greater than what their normal five senses could observe.

Furthermore, you could say that swordsmanship was simply learning patterns that increased your efficiency and increased the speed of your movements to be close to instinctual.

Compared to that my 【Program】 would calculate and execute the most ideal movements for my body to make during combat. The speed and quality of my movements were incomparable. All of my movements would meet or excel the speed of reflex movement.

I bent my body slightly to dodge the oncoming swipe of the knight’s sword and simply stabbed my knife into his exposed back. The knife passed through the armor easily and stabbed his heart, killing him instantly.

At the same time I aimed my bow at the last bowman and shot him dead.

「The knife and short bow are doing well in the field.」

The knife had filled in my lacking close combat strength and the short bow allowed me to demonstrate my rapid fire skills.

Not only that the wrist mounted short bow had two advantages compared to a normal one.

Firstly, it remained available for use without forcing me to use one of my hands to hold it so I would not need to switch weapons in the middle of battle. Just like now I could simply switch to my knife and immediately enter close combat. The opposite is also true, if an enemy takes their distance I could immediately begin firing upon them with the short bow.

The second advantage is that this bow could be folded up and easily transported. Of course since it was foldable it cost more to produce, took more time, needed more maintenance, lost power, and was less durable.

Once I finished making it I clearly realized the demerits of it, but it would be foolish to remake it and lose the folding gimmick so I left it as is.

As expected once I had killed 10 people in a few moments the Imperial Soldiers couldn’t help but falter in their steps.

My chance was here.

I quickly folded up my short bow, placed my knife in its sheath, and spread out my arms in an appeal.

「Now then gentlemen now that the bowmen that you depended on are gone and there are only three knights left that can draw their blades…furthermore there are only around twenty over there in the back. I’m sure that you intended them as trump cards, but I also see those two archers hidden in the distance as well. Let me ask you…do you wish to continue?」

This was a clear threat. I was telling them that if we continued further I would massacre them.

「We understand…we’ll back off. I apologize. Almost like a demon…I never thought that the elite knights couldn’t even touch you. I’m glad we found this out before the true battle….well, it’s not like you’re invulnerable like our Hero-sama. At the very least you dodged our swords and arrows. If we had hit you then you surely would have died correct? Well, that doesn’t change that you’re a monster. You could kill all of us…why are you letting us go?」

Baron Lurvish said with a sharp glare.

Though he said he surrendered he was paying attention to his route of retreat and his remaining soldiers.

「This is to let the Empire know that we are a country that can be negotiated with. This time we have received the ransom and returned the hostages. This was a successfully concluded trade that set a precedent. This is also a warning not to look down on us elves too much.」

The best outcome would be to make them mull over this event. Even after all this I wanted to leave the door open for a possible negotiation of peace. If things break out into war then I still want to leave enough common ground to leave room for negotiating.

Whether it was elves or humans, neither wanted to wage a war of complete destruction.

「I see. Even so…I never expected things to go this far. I thought if we attacked from all distances we would cut you down and be done with it. Leaving aside the bow I didn’t hear anything about those kinds of knives.」
「Of course not. It’s a tool I finished making just a few days ago.」
「A tool!?」
「Yup, a tool for making decorations.」

The knife I had brought today was a high-oscillation carbon alloy knife. The carbon alloy was made to be very hard while still maintaining the minimum required flexibility.

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