The Knight Is Still Powering Up (5)
Huh. This scales better than I thought.
It was a gathering of force, copied from watching that fellow—Maximus, or whatever the man's name was. The frame of it was Sword Resonance, but the ways of using such a thing would throw off endless variations, according to each person's ability. Draw lightning out of it, or thread. Or else—
—hold starlight in it.
Lee Han was mildly pleased that the technique he had mimicked off that man had turned out better than expected. If nothing else—
I could do a lot more with this, couldn't I?
From here on, it seemed, he would be free to invent as many amusing techniques as he liked.
…Well.
Hwooong…
Not right now, by the look of it.
"Hmm. Must be because I'm not used to it, but keeping the thing up is a pain. Geomdung, how the hell do you hold something this finicky in place? This a talent gap too?"
"…I would rather you simply cursed at me."
"Why?"
"The part where you act as though you genuinely do not understand is remarkably infuriating."
Roen was at a loss. Anyone could see that the man had improvised, on the spot, an art that was a strict upgrade over his own Sword Ki, and then had the nerve to call his talent lacking. What would that make Roen?
So this is why the others spit curses when they look at me…
He was beginning to understand why ally and enemy alike had glared at him every time they fought, and he turned the reflection on himself. His past self had been a wreck as a commander. Perhaps he had been disqualified as a person, too. It was nothing short of excellent mirror therapy.
One thing and another had happened, but the sparring went on for a full eighty minutes and more. It seemed long for a spar. They had not, however, spent the whole of it merely swinging sword and axe, and that, too, had stretched the time.
Was it commonly called a sword discourse?
Lee Han and Roen did not cross blades with their bodies alone. They crossed them through language, through the simple act of talking, each pointing out what the other lacked and where he was weak, and so searching out a new direction.
"If you come in with a swift sword, I'll block like this and bring the axe straight down on your skull."
"I will slip it, and stab your throat at once."
"…Mmm. Shall we just try it for real, then?"
"……Is this actually a sword discourse?"
"A practical sword discourse. What else."
"…Naming a thing a sword discourse does not make it one."
In that fashion they shared a ferocious sword discourse and kept meeting one another just short of killing, and the time went by in a blink.
And after the spar, of course—
"The stamina consumed by Sword Ki appears to be a problem of wasting power without discrimination. If Sword Ki could be handled with the same fine control you use when you employ Gyeong, Instructor, its duration would grow much longer. In truth, had you learned the Fighting Art, the knack would come easily, but you never learned it, did you. Hmm. If you wish, would you learn the fundamentals of the Fighting Art even now? An instructor such as yourself might grasp the knack in a short while…"
"Don't. Learn that now and I won't be able to do either thing."
"…That, too, is fair."
The review. They went back over the spar, and at the same time traded the advice each of them actually needed.
"You don't have anything like a weakness. It wouldn't be too much to call you a master already, where the sword is concerned, and your movement and your judgment are top class. If I had to name a problem, it's that your concentration is limited. Put kindly, you focus well on an opponent. It also means that once you sink in, you don't look around. Well—in a one-on-one, even that weakness turns into a strength."
"Are you telling me to fix it, or to leave it be?"
"I'm telling you to make the on and the off certain. Manage just that, and you don't really have a weakness. …Ah, but there is one, still. The problem of being too 'perfect.'"
"…Is that wordplay?"
"No. I mean it. Your problem is that you try too hard to be perfect."
"Trying to be perfect is a problem?"
"Perfect, said the other way around, means you're living by the orthodox path. Which is to say you're walking, exactly as it lies, a road other people already walked. Do that, and you come up short on ideas, and on the unexpected. And a man with no surprises in him is reasonably easy to crack."
"……"
"If you someday become the kind of monster who splits even the sea with a single sword, then maybe not. Short of that, there will come a day when the problem I just pointed out grabs you by the ankle."
"…I will remember it."
Someone else might have heard it as ill-wishing. The young man took the words seriously, as if something in them had caught, and the thing that caught was this.
"It is true that, should I fight people such as you, Instructor, there is a strong chance I would lose my composure and lose, rather."
"Me?"
"There is, after all, no one else whose surprises and ideas are as strange as yours."
"I'm pretty ordinary, though."
"…I would ask that you not say such things where anyone can hear."
Lee Han only blinked at him.
And so they were spending a rather meaningful stretch of time. Before they knew it the curtain of night was drawing around them, and they set their blades down.
"So? It's late. Want to sleep over?"
"No. I have no wish to become a man who cannot read a room."
"Look at you, showing tact that doesn't even suit you…"
"…What, exactly, do you take me for?"
"If I tell you, you confident you won't get hurt?"
"……I shall simply arrange not to hear it."
"Haha!"
He really was fun to needle, in his own way. A fellow who looked, on the surface, like a shard of ice, and yet oddly human, if that was the word.
Not a bad guy.
Human enough, in his fashion. He made mistakes. He had clumsy corners. And also a needlessly tender one.
"Next time, I'd like to see that thing too. The one growling inside you."
Roen's eyes flew perfectly round, as if to demand how he could possibly know.
"Just knew. Instinct."
"By instinct alone?"
"My instincts have gotten sharper lately."
Whether he had felt it while they fought, or whether his senses had grown keener than yesterday as his level rose, he could not have said. What he did know was that a truly enormous beast lay asleep inside Geomdung. A little smaller than the Grand Duke's beast he had seen at the Academy—and still a black beast whose power could not, by any means, be ignored.
"…Intuition on the level of a Mystery, I see."
"I think it's strange myself. Anyway, it reacts when your emotions run high, right? And if I'm not imagining things, it also seems to listen like absolute shit. You're raising a dangerous one."
"……If, at this very moment, you told me to go and buy medicine, I believe I would."
"Lucky for you I'm not a quack."
Lee Han laughed as if he were only teasing, and the young man's face only grew graver. Having a secret laid bare was, it seemed, an unpleasant business. But for his part—
"I'm not going to go around telling anyone, so relax."
Fortunately, he had no hobby of broadcasting secrets other people meant to keep.
"And what would I even get out of threatening you?"
"I am considerably wealthy, so there are also methods of settling a matter with money."
"You're going to call yourself rich out loud? …Forget it. What am I supposed to do with pocket change?"
"I am inclined to offer about this much."
"Will you look at this cocky little brat…!"
Lee Han glared at Geomdung, who had spread five fingers, and called him arrogant. Looking at a man like that, and trying to buy him with money—!
"For reference, it means fifty thousand gold coins."
"……"
"With fifty thousand gold coins, one could probably purchase a modest domain. One with a vineyard, and tax revenue that is not half bad."
"…You really were rich."
He could not deny that it was a sum to tempt a man.
To state only the conclusion, Lee Han refused the offer.
If he claimed that hearing a sum like that stirred no greed in him, it would be a lie. Take that money, though, and he had the distinct feeling he would be fitting himself with one more collar, the sort that gave a man a headache.
I'm already worn out with one person's collar on me. I don't particularly want another.
So, for Lee Han, it would count as a wise decision.
…Should I have just taken five hundred?
Even so, that some regret remained was a thing he could not deny.
Krrrng!
"…Vicious cat."
He was chewing on that regret when he heard the beast roar, as if to threaten him. According to Geomdung, not hearing it was supposed to be normal. Strangely, to his ears—
Was it called the Black King?
—the presence, and the sound, came through perfectly clear.
Lionel's Mystery. A Mystery sprung from the Lion King, and the very power said to stand equal with the Galahad Magic Sword, and with the kingdom's Aura Users. That was what this was.
There wouldn't be two beasts like that in the North, would there? If there were, they'd have declared independence and left ages ago…. Then is this thing a regression bonus?
Lee Han judged that the Black King had its origin in the North, but was not a thing of the present. Had there been several powers of that kind, it would have been stranger, rather, that the North still had not declared independence. So he put the odds high that this was not the present, but a fragment of the future.
Among the clichés of regression stories, one of the most common was to cross back through time bringing a single supreme power along like a bonus. It was probably that.
Hmm. Is the weakening some kind of penalty?
But the power he guessed had come from the future was not particularly great.
Weak. Next to what the Grand Duke has.
It was only a feeling caught in passing, but the Black King that had fallen into a natural unity with the Grand Duke had been overwhelmingly strong. Even Maximus had been unable to so much as move, and Lee Han, who had only felt its presence, had gone cold in the gut. That said all that needed saying. Set beside it, the beast inside Geomdung seemed fierce enough, and yet it was markedly weak. Against the Grand Duke, was the gap about that between a cat and a lion?
…Well. Even calling it weak—
"Fight that thing and I'd be betting my life. Mmm. I wondered why you ended the first match in that hollow way. Looking at it now, you were afraid that savage one would run wild, weren't you? Kid. More consideration than that face of yours."
"…I ask again. What, precisely, do you ordinarily take me for, Instructor?"
"A young master from some noble house you can find anywhere?"
"……"
What, to this man, did nobility even mean? Roen could only be dumbfounded by a hatred of nobles that followed as naturally as breathing.
Tssssss!
The spar ended, and a late dinner began.
Over good charcoal, gotten from an acquaintance, and a cast-iron grill, a generous quantity of pork went down. The meat prepared came to fifteen kilograms. For reference, ten of those were the share Lee Han meant to eat by himself.
Tsss…!
Pork fat met the hot coals and threw up a delicious smell. Just as his acquaintance had said, the quality was good: a fine pig, without the faintest stink of gaminess.
Unexpectedly enough, the things that were going to develop had all developed.
The kingdom's livestock trade was, unexpectedly, advanced, and the land was broad, so meat ran cheap. Cattle had a habit of turning into monsters if one raised them long, and so beef was treated as a luxury ingredient, a dish that climbed only onto the tables of nobles. Perhaps for that reason, commoners ate pork more often than the expensive beef. Of course, considering that most of it was made into bacon, jamón-style cured ham, or sausage, grilling it fresh the way Lee Han did was an unfamiliar method even in the kingdom.
"A barbarian-style roast, I see. I have heard, in passing, that barbarians grill raw meat in this fashion. As I recall, it was said to be for the sake of restoring stamina and nutrition. That you should take an interest in other cultures as well is unexpected."
"…It's not really like that."
Before he knew it, Lee Han had been made into an intellectual who even embraced mystery-race culture, and the feeling sat poorly with him. He had only been gifted quality meat by a butcher he knew—meat the man swore had been raised on acorns—and was eating it this way for once, to call up an old memory. It seemed he had earned a strange misunderstanding.
"R-right. I see. I thought there was someone besides me who'd come from another world. Guess it was a misunderstanding…"
"……"
The person from another world was sitting right in front of him. Why didn't she know? Sadly, even though he had all but handed over a hint for finding a countryman, the fledgling mage only convinced herself, and bobbed her head.
When is that girl actually going to notice?
At this point, he was curious. Just how long she meant to keep it up.
"Eat a lot. Here. Wrap it in the vegetables."
"Whoa, they have wrap culture here too?"
"Don't ask me."
"No way! Then this is a method you discovered, Instructor?! You were a genius…!"
"…Is that really worth praise on that scale?"
"Yes! Enormously!"
"……"
He was starting to suspect she was doing it on purpose. He was setting a hint this large right in front of her, and she still didn't know?
Is this some romance-fantasy curse?
The heroines of those stories did often go blank, as if a persimmon had dropped on them. He cautiously guessed it might be something similar.
"Whoa! It's delicious! The one made with this radish is amazing too!"
"…Yeah. Long as it tastes good."
Yes. So what if the kid was a little lacking. Kind, and a good eater—that was enough. Telling himself the sight would have been even more satisfying if only she were not a spell-slinger, Lee Han shook his head and grilled the meat in silence.
"……"
"What? Not to your taste?"
"…No. It is good."
"Your face is a little strange, though."
"…It is only unfamiliar. The act of sharing a meal this peacefully with someone…"
"……"
On that point it was hard to know how to answer, and Lee Han offered nothing else.
"Here. Eat more meat. Vegetables and pickles, too. They'll be good."
"Yes. They are good."
"You too, Normie."
"To think someone would look after me! Today seems overflowing with good fortune!"
"…Why are my disciples, every last one of them, nothing but miserable little shits?"
Every time he looked after them it felt like stepping on a landmine, and a groan rose out of him on its own. Still.
"Master, it's really delicious!"
"…Yeah. You eat plenty, too."
"M-Master, please don't only grill—eat some yourself. Sh-shall I feed you?"
"No. I'm eating as I go, so you just eat."
"……Yes."
Seeing the kids eat well did leave him feeling rewarded. Was this a parent's heart?
"Might it be a cook's heart?"
"Miss Maid, kindly quit the mind reading."
"Hehe, I can't do anything like that. More importantly—aah."
"……"
"Aah."
"…Ah."
Somehow it felt as if he was not allowed to refuse, so he took Layla's kindness into his mouth.
…It was good.
He was just arriving at the strange thought that it tasted a good twice better than what he himself had grilled, when—
"—Instructor."
"Yeah?"
Geomdung, who had been eating perfectly well, brought out something unexpected. As if he were paying for the meal.
"This may be sudden, but my purpose in visiting today was not merely to share information."
Lee Han's face asked the question for him.
"There is a considerable chance that, from here on, you will be dragged into a rather troublesome matter, Instructor."
"…I'm already being dragged into one, a bit."
"This is trouble of a different grain. As well it might be—"
Lee Han said nothing.
From the explanation that followed, he came to understand why the young man had gone out of his way to use the words troublesome matter. Certainly.
…Being recruited into a religion is an awkward business, yes.