This Is the Instructor's Flex (3)
The knight took up a wooden sword and a one-handed shield.
"Let me say this up front. I've never been properly taught swordsmanship, or taught much of anything. In other words, I have no foundation."
As he loosened his body in a loose, shambling sway, not a shred of presence came off him. The battered wooden sword and wooden shield were shabby enough on their own, but it also seemed he was deliberately crushing his own momentum flat, and that was the only reason it was possible.
"So I have no school. All I've got are methods I more or less finished in real fights. Which means..."
Hwoooong!
"The only swordsmanship I can teach you is this."
The slack wooden sword became a wasp's stinger and shot into the dummy. It happened in a single breath, a thrust the eye could not follow. Crack! The wood punched clean through the dummy's eye. One immaculate stroke—cruel, bold, and precise to a fault.
"What I can teach, at best, is this. How to stab a weakness. How to bait a man into dropping his guard, and how to stay alive even if the method is cowardly. Honestly, it isn't a knight's way."
He belittled the techniques he had learned. Even so, he did not look put out by them, or ashamed of what he was doing.
"When I picked this up, I wasn't a knight. If I wanted to live, I had to get good at even this. I didn't have a choice."
Whap!
This time it was a lash with the shield. The movement made it plain that a shield could be handled with that much freedom, and he used the wooden sword alongside it in a dozen ugly ways—striking with the grip, caving a skull with the flat. Nothing but vicious methods.
"Hoo."
At some point the dummy had become rags. It was ruined past all repair, and had it been a person rather than a dummy, the sight would have been truly horrific. Goosebumps, and nothing else.
"Of course, I'm not telling you to learn a coward's methods. I'm only showing you that some people fight like this, and training you so you can answer even a coward's way."
"...Answer it?"
"In the end, what I showed you is a trick. It only baits carelessness, and it works best on the weak. But there are plenty who can't even answer a method like this. Learning Fighting Art doesn't mean you take a blade and simply fail to die. So if you can, it's worth training in advance to break tricks like these. That's all I mean."
He set the point down with a dull thud.
"From this moment, you are the dummies. All you have to do is stop the tricks this instructor throws. That will be the required task you beat into your bodies in the second term. The exam will be replaced with this as well."
"......"
"I know. Too easy, right? Don't worry. Easy as it is, other special training is already on the schedule. No need to be disappointed. This instructor has already drawn up countless plans for how you'll grow. Haha!"
"...You might as well lock us in a pen with a wild beast. What even is—"
"Oh? How'd you know? That's on the plan too."
"......"
"Young brains, as expected. Predicting this instructor's exam ahead of time. Excellent!"
"......"
The students could not, in any sense, be glad of his praise. Predicted or not.
Wow. Is he doing this because he means to kill us all?
They looked again at the dummy, pulverized past recognition, and arrived at a conviction close to prophecy: in the near future, that dummy's shape would be theirs.
Truly...
"Th-the pace is too fast!"
They wanted to live.
He was not ignorant of the danger in this training. However hard he held his strength down, a bad hit would mean death, or at best a vegetative state. And the knight had not the slightest intention of turning his students into vegetables.
"Don't worry. There's a countermeasure."
As if he would truly have drawn up a training plan this brainless.
"Interns. Forward."
"......"
"Don't just move your bodies. Answer while you're at it. If you don't, I'll decide that mouth is useless and pull the tongue out."
"W-we're sorry."
"Then why do something worth being sorry for?"
"......"
"Aish. Forget it. Only my mouth hurts from talking. Come on—unfold what I told you yesterday."
"Th-that's..."
"Not doing it? Fine. Don't. In exchange, a one-week course of Tendon-Splitting Bone-Dislocation..."
"We'll do it right now!"
"...Should have been like that from the start."
However well the inquisitors had been trained against torture, the pain of Tendon-Splitting Bone-Dislocation was not a kind one grew used to. The knight had lowered the intensity, but for them it was still enough to leave a trauma. So the inquisitors—no, the interns—obeyed him meekly, and they activated Holy Law.
Sacrifice Barrier
Fallen or not, they were inquisitors, elites among elites, and the interns performed the feat of unfolding, on a small scale, a Holy Law that ordinarily required a hundred priests gathered together. The Holy Law wrapped the Sword Faculty Training Ground, and little by little the air began to change.
"Huh? Why did it suddenly get so cool?"
"It was so muggy just a moment ago..."
"Oh my? Did my skin just get smoother?"
"Heavens—!"
Their shock that the so-called interns Lee Han had newly brought were pouring out Holy Power lasted only a moment. Within the space that Holy Power enclosed, a cozy, sacred air began to coil, and the students were astonished in an entirely different sense. Trivial cuts, muscle aches, fatigue that had piled up without their noticing—all of it vanished in an instant.
"I-it can't be. The S-Sacrifice Barrier?!"
Arno and a few other scions of great houses realized what it was, and their mouths fell open. They had never expected to see, with their own eyes, a legendary Holy Law known only by rumor.
"Arno? What is this?"
"...It is the Sacrifice Barrier. Those inside are not wounded no matter what happens, and they are not injured. They can also keep the body at its peak at all times, and even without food or water there is said to be no particular problem."
"Kunta didn't catch all of it, but Kunta knows it's incredibly good!"
"It does not end at good. It is one of the three greatest barrier-type Holy Laws of the temple. Legend says that with this barrier, the Holy Knights once fought demons for a thousand days without rest."
"Whoa! If it's that good, why don't they use it more?"
"...Because the priests who raise the barrier bear every risk."
"...Huh?"
"The priests who unfold this barrier take on, in their stead, all the fatigue and wounds of those inside. That is why it bears the name Sacrifice. It is a Holy Law cast on the premise of sacrifice. Literally."
"...Kunta suddenly thinks we don't have to use this barrier..."
The kind barbarian boy took back his praise. He did not want to use it if it meant sacrificing someone else.
"Don't worry, big guy. What he described is a pretty extreme example. Holding it for about a day isn't much of a problem to begin with, and depending on the priest's ability, the pain they shoulder doesn't even reach five percent."
Lee Han said it as if to scatter the noisy worry.
"Then...?"
"Fortunately, our interns are a bit excellent. So they don't take on much pain or fatigue. And we'll only use this barrier during class, so nothing serious is going to happen."
"Ooh!"
"Well? Feel better now?"
"Kunta feels better, Instructor! This barrier is good again!"
"Good. Glad you've got the spirit. Train that hard. Understood?"
"Yeah, understood!"
"...'Yeah' is talking down to me, you brat!"
"Aaaah! I-Instructor, don't come! Instructor's flick cracks even Kunta's skull!"
Kunta fled, but the instructor's body, suddenly faster still, landed the flick anyway.
"Aak! It hurts— huh? ...I-it doesn't hurt?"
In his own flesh, Kunta proved that the Sacrifice Barrier was working as it should.
"Heh. So that's the effect."
"As expected of the instructor. He prepared something enormous."
"...Thank goodness. I don't have to write a will."
Relief spread among the students, but Arno was still doubtful.
Even at five percent, if the damage of some eighty people piles up, isn't it still painful enough to kill?
Mmm...
"Well. It's none of my business."
Arno forced the worry off. He was still curious what those priests were, but for now it was better to use the chance well. There would be nothing more foolish than missing a proper opportunity to practice techniques he had never even dared attempt, for fear of getting hurt. He did worry about what would come back on the priests afterward, but...
"Krgh!"
"Does it hurt? If it hurts, say so now. You can quit. Though if you quit this instant just because it hurts, I don't know whether the instructor will leave you alone."
"Uuugh!"
"Why are you glaring? Got a complaint with me?"
"N-no."
"'No,' he says. Kehehe. Go on, hit me. Not that I think you can."
"!!?!"
There was, after all, what might be called Damian Paulet's spirit of sacrifice: no fear of later consequences, a life lived only in the moment at hand, and every grudge drawn onto himself. So perhaps it would be all right.
...As the instructor said, even that might be a talent. The talent of enjoying the present without fearing the days ahead.
They say the one who enjoys the present is the most frightening. That man is going to grow strong.
"If you've got a complaint, I told you to hit me!"
...On the assumption, of course, that he lived long enough to see those later days.
For the first time, Arno felt something like admiration, and something like respect, for Damian Paulet, who lived on a mayfly's nerve.
"...The brats are completely fired up."
Was it because Holy Law was, without question, a kind of power even the upper class of this world rarely got to taste? Even the noble students could not contain their excitement, spellbound by it. Watching them, he felt oddly proud.
"This is what you call a flex."
"...In what sense?"
"I ground up bastards who deserved to die and made the training ground stupidly good, didn't I? They said even the royal house can't do this. So it's a flex, right?"
"I-is it?"
Strangely persuaded, Derek hesitated, and then he agreed.
It was then that Roen approached them—a regressor who knew the future in a sense unlike Derek's.
"Instructor. There is something I wish to discuss. Could you spare me a moment?"
"......"
"What's this? Acknowledging me inside the Academy."
"My mind is rather pressed at the moment. Instructor, I wish to make a request."
"A request?"
"Yes. A request."
"Hm. Something to do with that redhead?"
"...As expected, you noticed. Then I will speak without holding back. Instructor, I beg you. As for her..."
"........."
For a moment, silence settled. Even Lee Han wore a face that had lost its words and went blank for about five seconds, and the instant he came back to himself he shot the question back.
"...Geomdung. You don't feel like something's wrong with you right now?"
"What do you mean?"
"Look back at the line you just spat out."
"......What was strange about it."
"This one's a real piece of work too...?"
Looking now, the man's eyes had gone completely. Exactly the look of someone one breath from causing an incident. Perhaps because he had let go of reason, Roen did not know that what he had said was strange.
...Saying he wanted to kill her, and saying it sweetly. If that's a talent, then it's a talent...
But Lee Han, having read the resentment knotted into that line, was at a thorough loss. Hand her over like this, and it would have been a proper knife fight.
Hhh. The grown-ups always said you don't step into a married couple's quarrel...
Lee Han was at a loss.