System in Assassin's Creed

Chapter 158: Chapter 157: The Man on the Bridge

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---Previously---

”If you want to find me,” he announced to the silent room, ”I’ll be at the main bridge over the Nakashima River. Tell your friends. Tell your masters. Tell anyone who thinks they can fight. Bring them all.”

With that, he pushed the curtain aside and stepped out into the street, leaving behind a scene of chaos, confusion, and the beginning of a legend that would spread through the city like wildfire.

His plan was in motion. He had made himself the problem. Now, he just had to wait for the solution to come to him.

---Now, hours later---

The Nakashima River flowed silently through the heart of Nagasaki, its dark waters reflecting the paper lanterns that lined its banks.

In the center of the city, an elegant stone arch bridge, one of the city’s famed Meganebashi, or ”Spectacle Bridges,” spanned the river. It was here, in the dead center of the bridge, that Alaric waited.

He stood casually, his hands tucked into the pockets of his simple fisherman’s trousers, his back to the city’s main district.

The moonlight gave his disguised, average features a pale, calm quality. He looked like any other man enjoying a quiet moment, completely out of place with the storm that was about to break.

Word of the incident at the tavern had spread through Nagasaki’s warrior class like a contagion. A peasant, a nobody, had single-handedly dismantled six armed samurai with his bare hands, then had the audacity to issue an open challenge. It was an insult that could not be ignored.

The first to arrive were the comrades of the defeated samurai from the tavern. About twenty of them. They stormed onto the bridge from the northern end, their geta sandals clattering angrily on the stone, their hands already on the hilts of their katanas.

”There he is, kisama!” their leader roared, pointing a furious finger at the lone figure. ”The bastard who dishonored our brothers!”

Alaric didn’t turn around. He simply spoke, his voice carrying easily over the quiet rush of the river below. ”Took you long enough. I was getting bored.”

That was all it took.

With enraged shouts, they charged.

The leader was the fastest, his sword drawn, aiming a powerful downward slash meant to cleave Alaric in two from behind.

Alaric sighed with a sound of profound disappointment.

Just as the blade was about to connect, he pivoted on his heel, a movement so fluid and economical it seemed he barely moved at all. The katana sliced through empty air, its wielder stumbling forward from his own momentum.

Alaric’s hand shot out, not in a punch, but in a simple, open-palmed push against the samurai’s back. It wasn’t a hard push, but it was perfectly timed, adding to the man’s forward momentum and sending him careening into two of his charging comrades. They went down in a tangled heap of limbs and angry curses.

The rest of the group swarmed him.

It was a chaotic mess of flashing steel. Swords slashed from every angle. Alaric moved in the center of it all, a calm island in a sea of violence. He never took his hands out of his pockets.

He swayed left, letting a blade whistle past his ear. He ducked, a katana grazing the air where his head had been. He leaned back, matrix-style, as two horizontal slashes crossed in front of him, the samurai nearly cutting each other.

He used his feet, his shoulders, his elbows.

A quick kick to a knee joint sent one man down with a cry of pain. A sharp jab of his elbow into another’s ribs made the samurai double over, gasping for air. He spun, using his shoulder to bump a third attacker off balance, causing him to trip and fall into the river with a loud splash.

It was infuriating. It was humiliating. He wasn’t even fighting them; he was just... avoiding them, making them look like clumsy children.

Frustrated, two samurai tried to corner him against the bridge’s railing. Alaric simply hopped lightly onto the railing itself, balancing perfectly on the narrow stone ledge.

”Careful now,” he said, looking down at them with a smirk. ”Wouldn’t want you to fall in.”

They roared in fury and slashed at his legs. He simply leaped, flipping backwards over their heads, landing silently behind them. As they spun around, confused, he just pushed them. Both of them tumbled over the railing, joining their comrade in the cold river below.

Within minutes, the first wave was over. The bridge was littered with groaning, wet, or unconscious samurai. Alaric stood in the middle of it all, his hands still in his pockets, looking completely bored.

But the commotion had drawn more attention.

From both ends of the bridge, more samurai began to arrive. These were not drunken tavern brawlers. These were disciplined patrols, members of the city guard, their faces hard and their movements coordinated. There were fifty of them, then a hundred, their armor creaking as they formed ranks, effectively sealing off the bridge.

”That’s more like it,” Alaric muttered, finally taking his hands out of his pockets and cracking his knuckles.

An officer, distinguished by the fine lacquer on his armor, stepped forward. ”You are under arrest for assaulting samurai and disturbing the peace!” he bellowed. ”Surrender now!”

Alaric just laughed. ”Surrender? I’m just getting warmed up.”

”Then you will die,” the officer snarled, and gave the signal.

This time, the attack was different. It was organized. The samurai advanced in waves, a wall of steel. The front rank would strike, then fall back as the rank behind them moved up, giving no room for error, no space to breathe.

Alaric met them.

His style changed. The lazy evasion was gone, replaced by a brutally efficient and direct form of Taijutsu. He flowed through their coordinated attacks, his hands and feet a blur of motion.

He blocked a katana strike with the back of his forearm, the impact echoing with a dull thud that made the samurai’s arm go numb. He spun, his leg sweeping out to take down three men at once. He caught a spear thrust, wrenched the weapon from the owner’s grasp, and used the long wooden shaft to vault over the front line, landing in their midst.

Chaos erupted.

He moved through their ranks like a whirlwind. He didn’t need a blade. His hands were weapons. A knife-hand strike to a throat, a palm heel to a nose, a precise jab to a pressure point in the shoulder. He moved with a speed and precision that was simply inhuman.

Samurai, men who had trained their entire lives for battle, were dispatched with single, efficient movements. They were strong, they were skilled, but they were facing something that operated on a different plane of existence.

He sent a man flying off the bridge with a powerful side kick. He disarmed another by simply twisting his wrist until the sword clattered to the stone. He ducked under a slash and drove his knuckles into the attacker’s gut, making the man vomit and collapse.

The bridge became a scene of absolute carnage, yet Alaric hadn’t shed a single drop of blood. He was a master of non-lethal combat, his control so absolute that he could disable, disarm, and incapacitate dozens of trained warriors without killing a single one.

But they just kept coming.

News had spread. Samurai from all over Nagasaki, their honor slighted by this mysterious fisherman, were converging on the Nakashima River bridge. The hundred attackers swelled to two hundred, then three. They swarmed the bridge, a sea of angry, determined warriors.

Alaric fought on.

He was a blur of constant motion, a single, unstoppable force against a rising tide. He was tiring, a slight sheen of sweat on his brow, his breathing coming a little faster, but his movements never lost their precision.

He fought for what felt like hours. The moon climbed higher in the sky. The number of unconscious bodies piled on the bridge and floating in the river below grew steadily.

He had knocked out over three hundred samurai.

The remaining warriors, perhaps another hundred or so, finally hesitated. They stood at the edges of the bridge, their swords held ready, but no one dared to be the first to charge again. They had seen the impossible. They had charged into a storm and broken themselves against it.

Alaric stood in the center of the bridge, surrounded by the moaning, unconscious forms of their comrades. He stood perfectly still, his breathing evening out, his gaze sweeping over the hesitant warriors.

A path cleared through the crowd at the southern end of the bridge. A group of samurai in finer, more ornate armor marched forward, flanking a man who radiated an aura of absolute authority. He was older, his face lined with wisdom and a stern discipline, his hand resting on a beautifully crafted katana.

This was the bugyō of Nagasaki, the governor, the most powerful man in the city.

He walked to the edge of the carnage, his sharp eyes taking in the scene. He saw the hundreds of unconscious samurai, the sheer scale of the defeat. He saw the lone, disguised fisherman standing calmly in the middle of it all, looking completely unharmed.

The bugyō’s face was a mask of cold, controlled fury, but beneath it, Alaric’s Mind’s Eye could sense a flicker of something else.

Awe. And a deep, unsettling fear.

He had come to deal with a problem. He had found a catastrophe.

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