(Attendance… plz…)
….
Rimuru kept his eyes on the Dwarven King and tried, for the second time since the man had walked in, to guess his strength.
It was not going well.
King Gazel stood in his armor like a warrior. The plate armors and swords was not for show it seems.
The weight of it did not seem to register on him, not to mention the intimidation he shows while even doing nothing but standing.
He was relaxed the way only people with a lot of fighting behind them could be relaxed in a room that had just turned tense.
If I push, I can probably go for a round or two with him, Rimuru thought. Maybe. If Great Sage kicks into battle mode and I get a couple of jumps in power, the gap closes a little more.
He turned the idea over again and did not like the other end of it.
Winning though. That's a different thing entirely and a little bit of stretch.
The man had been a Hero. Rimuru was not going to wave that word off just nilly willy. Veldora too had lost to a Hero after all, and Veldora was well Veldora, and the dragon's excuses afterward did not change the scoreboard no matter how many times he says that.
Add on the decades of experience Gazel had behind him, real decades of real fighting experience, and the math got worse.
Rimuru could hold, he could take shots and give some back. But putting the man down though, in a clean one on one, he was not counting on that.
So whatever the king had come for, it was going to come down to this.
Gazel told them what he had come for.
He was not looking at Rimuru when he said it. His eyes had already moved and fixed themselves on Reinhard, and they did not travel back.
"Rimuru's side can be handled later." Gazel's voice was level, the voice of a man sorting through a list he had already written. "What I want right now is an answer from you. An adventurer called Reinhard."
Reinhard returned the look without moving.
"What I have heard about you does not read like a report to me. It reads like someone exaggerated it a bit or more." Gazel's hand rested easy on his pommel. "I am not throwing the report out because of that or denying it entirely. But I am also not going to take it at face value. So I am going to challenge you to a duel, and I am going to see with my own eyes what you actually are. Of course, it will not be a death battle or anything."
The people waited. Reinhard did not need long with the question.
"If it is only a duel," he said, "I have no objection. I accept."
A small ripple ran through the knights at Gazel's back, armor resettling on shoulders. Rimuru caught it and catalogued it without comment.
Reinhard's strength, Rimuru still did not fully know where it actually stops or go to. He had never watched the man in like what he could do when not holding back. But Rimuru had learned what a Hero meant in this world by Veldora and Gazel was or is one.
That was when the air behind Benimaru changed. And three new presence… and those being none other three dryads were standing there.
Rimuru had sensed their presence as they just got here. And the nearest of the three was already mid-sentence, and her voice had an edge on it that Rimuru had not heard from her before even at the Orc Lord invasion.
"Dwarven King. You are being arrogant to a degree that I find difficult to tolerate." Treyni's tone was not loud. It was cold, which was worse. "You doubt the name of the alliance leader of the Great Jura Forest. You dismiss his deeds because you yourself do not believe them. You walk into this forest uninvited, with this army of knights behind you uninvited. Your arrogance is extraordinary."
The adviser standing near Gazel, the old woman, let out a breath she had been holding.
Treyni did not stop there.
"However… As Reinhard has accepted your duel already. Because of that, I, as a subject of the alliance of the Great Jura Forest, will close my eyes to your insult and your arrogance this one time." Her gaze did not move off the king. "If it happens again, mercy is not something you should expect from us."
"Dryads." The old woman's voice had cracked loose of her before she could catch it. She stared at Treyni and the two behind her with open shock. "Dryads. Here."
She was not alone. The knights at Gazel's back had gone still in that specific way soldiers go still when the area had just moved underneath them. Even the king's face, which had held so far, shifted.
Three pieces of information had landed on that side of the area at almost the same moment.
The first. Actual dryads of the Great Jura Forest, standing in the open and speaking.
The second. Reinhard, a human, had just been called the alliance leader of the Great Jura Forest. Which meant the leader of the monsters who lived in it.
The third. A human was leading monsters, and dryads were calling him that themselves.
So, there was no way for it to be heared wrong or take it as a misunderstanding.
The adviser beside the old woman bent toward his companions and spoke under his breath, though not quite under enough.
"The dryads are siding with a human. Calling him their leader."
The old woman swallowed before she answered. "There are three of them. And each of them is at the level of a high-ranked elemental spirit. My friends. I hope you are ready. If this turns south, it turns fast…"
The two next to her understood. So did the knights standing close enough to catch the words. Rimuru watched hands adjust on weapons very slightly.
Gazel took it in. He did not rush.
"Leader of the Great Jura Forest. And a human at that." He let the phrase breathe. "I think I understand something now that was unclear to me before. Pieces that did not fit are fitting."
His eyes came back to Reinhard and stayed there.
"All the more reason to proceed with the duel. Through that, I will see your true nature. Leader of the Great Jura Forest."
Inside his head, Gazel's thoughts moved at speed. He had come here to make a decision. Was a duel not, in fact, a better way to reach one than any amount of talk. If this human truly led the forest, then Rimuru stood under him, which changed the shape of the whole visit. And the dryads, the forest's own guardians, had confirmed the position out loud, in front of everyone. That was not the kind of claim a man could dismiss as misunderstanding. Dryads did not lie about who led them as they don't have any reasons to lie.
One small thing sat in the back of his mind like a stone in a boot. They were standing far. Far enough that, by rights, their voices should have reached him thinned out. Instead every word arrived clean, as though they were a pace from his ear. He did not know why they stood at such a distance and for what reason.
Reinhard had been watching the whole exchange and found himself faintly relieved. What had started feeling like the opening moves of a hostile encounter was turning into something that could be resolved with a single duel between two people, which was about the best outcome he could have hoped for.
All he asked was that Gazel accept the result with grace, because if the king's pride got in the way after losing, things could still go badly.
...
The area cleared into a ring without anyone drawing lines.
Rimuru stood with Benimaru and the three dryads far back on one side. The knights had moved to the opposite side at the same distance. Both sides had read the same invisible boundary and respected it.
Reinhard took position in the middle, a few paces from Gazel, and neither of them touched a hilt.
They stood there and looked at each other. Only one of them was truly measuring though. Gazel's eyes moved over Reinhard the way a blacksmith's eyes move over unfamiliar steel, checking seams, checking weight. Reinhard stood easy, hands loose, shoulders the way they always were.
Gazel broke it first.
"Why are you not using your own sword." His gaze dropped to the blade at Reinhard's hip. "Why did you switch it out for the ogre highborn's weapon."
Reinhard rested a hand on the hilt of the sword Benimaru had lent him. He considered the answer only briefly.
"It is not a sword I can draw whenever I wish to. Not against just anyone."
He did not say it with any malice or anything. He said it as it was.
Gazel took a breath through his nose.
"And you think I am not that someone."
Reinhard shook his head once, a small motion.
"It is not mine to decide when it draws. The sword itself decides. The sword draws itself against the one it judges needs to be used against." His expression stayed polite and quiet. "If it does not draw in your presence, that means one thing only."
Gazel already knew. He asked anyway.
"And that is."
"That you are not someone it is required against. That you are not worthy of it."
The area settled into a silence with weight in it.
Magicules rolled off Gazel. Not as a display or theatrically. Pressure venting out of a vessel that had been closed a second ago and was not closed now.
Dust lifted off the stone around his boots and spread outward in a slow ring. The air thickened. His own knights, at distance, felt it land and swallowed.
One or two of them took a half-step back before catching themselves. The old adviser's jaw set. She had seen her king angry before. This was not quite that but not far away from it.
The wave reached Reinhard and did nothing to him.
His hair moved a little. The hem of his clothes lifted once and then lay back down. That was the whole of the visible effect. He did not brace and nothing passed across his face. The magicule wave crossed him the way wind crosses a standing stone that has been standing longer than the wind has been blowing.
Gazel spoke again, and his voice had gone low and sharp.
"Is that so." His eyes did not leave Reinhard's. "Not worthy."
He said it the way a man lifts a strange object to test its weight.
The pride of a former Hero and the pride of a reigning king had both just taken a direct hit. They had taken it from a sentence the other man had spoken with no intention of harm at all.
And that too because King himself asked him.
He wasn't trying to insult him, he just answered plainly. But the way he said it, so casually and with a straight face, only made things worse without him realizing it.
….
A/N: sigh… cough!!!
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