The Knights' Spring (2)
Rak de Duron's face hardened.
…This scoundrel. He's definitely grown since the old days.
Even half a year ago, the first time they clashed, the man's body had been absurdly tough. Rak had poured every ounce of his strength into answering him, failed to seize the upper hand, and in the end had been forced to use technique. It was his specialty, after all.
Now he couldn't even be sure that committing his technique the way he used to would let him fight the scoundrel to a draw.
No. At the very least…
Fighting him bare-handed would put me at a disadvantage now.
If the man had merely been sturdy before, now he was hard—like fine steel finished after hundreds of quenchings in fierce heat. Rak had never expected to feel such a thing about a person.
Which meant one thing.
This scoundrel isn't human.
He'd already taken the man for a strange one. Now the bastard had evolved into something even more grotesque, and Rak reminded himself that a bare-handed duel was something he ought to avoid.
…Of course, if it ever came to a point where he had to fight bare-handed, he had no intention of avoiding it at all.
"Punk, those eyes are seriously vicious."
"…You're hardly one to talk."
Rak frowned and drew his spear back.
Ordinarily he would never have withdrawn it so meekly. Unfortunately, today of all days, the one his spear needed to face was not the scoundrel. It was a pack of arrogant mages who didn't know their place—and if he meant to erase them, the scoundrel's cooperation was indispensable.
"You still think of me as dead weight."
The scoundrel shrugged.
"I never called you dead weight. What nonsense is that?"
"When you said, 'I'm going alone, so you'll just wait, right?'—that wasn't brushing me off?"
"…I just find it easier to go alone?"
"That is brushing me off, you scoundrel!"
Rak ground his teeth. His anger still refused to settle. What irritated him even more was the fact beneath it.
If this scoundrel won't cooperate, I can't climb the Magic Tower.
Just as the man had flicked a spear off his forehead a moment ago, the scoundrel possessed a great many uncanny tricks: a technique that bloomed flowers from a sword, a technique that launched the body like an arrow. And also—
A technique for walking the sky…
Rak could roughly grasp the principle, but a skill like that was far too delicate for anyone who had learned Fighting Art.
He must be jetting force with exquisite control, making footholds out of it.
Even so, it was a technique a knight trained in Fighting Art would find difficult to use. A knight's basic method of combat was to release power through the explosive force inside the body. Something that delicate was exceedingly hard to wield.
And so.
"Take me with you, scoundrel."
"…The way you're asking is pretty damn arrogant."
"……."
"Whatever. Don't just ask—show me more. Whether you're worth me hauling you along."
"……Don't regret it."
Whoosh!
Rak thrust his spear again.
The spear came in without hesitation. It looked like a simple straight thrust, and yet it was spinning out countless variations. No matter which way you fled, it seemed certain to follow. Was that the way to put it?
Sure enough.
Clang!
—Again?
Lee Han took the spear once more. He hadn't eaten the first hit because he wanted to. He had dodged, and it had found him anyway. Spear-work so difficult to slip that even Lee Han, with his extraordinary senses and swift body, struggled to evade it.
The precision feels more exact than a machine.
He thought he understood why he couldn't dodge that spear. It wasn't some special Mystery, and it wasn't Fighting Art. The spearman's precision and skill had simply risen to the extreme of a master whose art no one could dare imitate.
He's not just thrusting. There's high-level calculation in it.
It was no simple stab. A single stroke launched by using every joint at once—hand, elbow, shoulder, back—was a spear you could not dodge even if you tried. Where Lee Han prized the body's function over technique, that man seemed to have invested everything in artistry. He was the complete opposite of Lee Han, and the completeness was such that copying it was unthinkable.
But more formidable than the completeness of the technique was his reading.
The man was smart. People liked to call a knight like Lee Han an instinct-type—the sort who fought on superior physical ability, senses keener than anyone else's, and a heap of combat experience. That fellow was clearly a strategy-type. The kind who played a battle the way other men played go or chess. And for Lee Han, strategy-types were an incomparable headache next to instinct-types, all the more so because, in a duel between warriors of similar skill, one of the things that mattered most was the contest of moves.
And—
This guy is at least a grandmaster.
Measured in chess, the spearman's reading sat at the level of someone who had claimed the grandmaster title. To that degree, Lee Han failed to answer the attacks and took them helplessly.
Even so, what he couldn't understand was this.
Is it even possible to read my movements this completely?
He could grant that the spearman's reading was excellent. But watching the spearhead chase him the instant he tried to dodge, Lee Han lidded his eyes halfway. Predicting where he would move—that much he could allow.
But.
This doesn't feel like prediction. It feels like foresight.
Future sight. The spear stabbed for the direction he would take next, thoroughly enough to make him think so. Feeling it, Lee Han was certain. The spearman had something else.
Just as Maximus, Champion of the North, possessed a Heavenly Martial Body, this spearman brimming with killing intent had some similar function. Recalling the abilities he had watched over four and a half days of breaking through the Red Mountain Range, Lee Han thought he roughly knew what that function was.
"…You've got ridiculously good eyes."
"……."
"Doesn't seem like a Mystery. Some special secret art or technique passed down in Galahad?"
"…As expected. Sharper than your face would suggest."
"Hey, would you stop picking on how I look? Judging people by their appearance, of all things…"
"……Hmm. On that point, I was in the wrong."
"You actually know how to apologize?"
"My lord said that if I do not wish to look like a man who cannot learn, I must know how to admit when I am wrong."
Tak.
The fellow set his spear down.
"Have you ever heard of the Mystery of the Heavenly-Mile Eye?"
"Hm? Uh… I think I've heard of it."
An abrupt question from the spearman, but it carried no hostility. Lee Han thought for a moment, then nodded.
"Right. The one that can see a thousand li ahead…"
"An eye that can see 244 miles ahead."
"……."
"What is it?"
"…I'm asking you, so please, for the love of—use kilometers. Damn it."
"?"
Lee Han felt his blood pressure climbing.
The world held all manner of Mysteries. Few people possessed one, but the kinds were as numerous as the stars. Many Mysteries existed, and many were captivated by their power. One had only to look at Greg, whom Lee Han had dragged in after the man spent his whole life trying to plunder Mysteries, to see how high their value ran.
There were those who would stoop even to such base means for a Mystery. There were also upright people who studied Mysteries themselves and asked a different question: what if we put them to use as technique?
For instance.
"From ancient times, Galahad has been in deadly earnest about sublimating Mystery into technique. Of course the research itself was difficult, and even when there were results, only a tiny few could learn them."
"So even if they're few, somebody has learned them?"
"Yes. In particular, for the successive captains of Galahad's knight orders, it is a basic attainment they are required to master."
"Isn't that bar a little high?"
"Do you imagine anyone who cannot manage even that much could dare become captain of Galahad's knights? Of course it must be learned!"
"……."
…It was a speech that made the strength of Galahad's knights suddenly understandable.
Of course they're strong, if they only take kids who might actually learn something that insane.
Set beside that, the Silver Lion Knight Order was… well.
Good grief. That place is a lost cause.
The gap was too wide to compare, even if you tried. Honestly. Lee Han's chest went tight at the mere thought of his own post, and he was about to click his tongue when Rak went on.
"The number of Mysteries Galahad has succeeded in embodying as technique is thirty-one in all. Of course no one has mastered every one of those secret arts, and even those who have properly learned one or two are impressive enough."
"How many have you learned?"
"Seven."
"…So this was you bragging."
"You asked first, scoundrel!"
"Fine. I get that you've picked up some flashy tricks."
"…That hardly seems like something for you to say."
From where Rak stood, the more astonishing sight was a man who remained perfectly fine after taking his spear. Even without killing intent in the blow, leaving not a single wound was a humiliation. Forcing that vexation down, he continued.
"…And though I have learned seven, most of the Mysteries I have mastered are concentrated in the eyes. I have placed all five of those arts into them."
"Hmm. Figures."
There was a reason Lee Han had found those eyes special. It was why they had never once lost the way on the road to the Central Continent—why, even through fog and earthquakes, even when the terrain itself changed, they still found the proper path without the slightest confusion.
Roughly a Heavenly-Mile Eye with a bunch of other things mixed in.
Hmm…
"Your eyes don't go red? No little comma-shaped marks around the pupils?"
"…What nonsense is that?"
"……Those exist."
It was obviously that sort of lineage. Insight rising, an opponent's movements predicted, the surrounding ground observed, and kinetic vision improving to a ridiculous degree. Copy the enemy's techniques on top of that, start breathing fire, and wouldn't it be perfect?
…The northern guy was like that, and this bastard is like that too. Why are there so many cheat codes?
One of them was born a Hercules. The other had landed himself an ultimate-weapon eyeball through talent.
Really…
"Life, I swear. How's a guy with no talent supposed to live, when it's this unfair?"
"……."
"Why are you looking at me like that?"
"……."
Whoosh!
Crack!
"Why are you picking a fight again?"
"…You blocked it."
"Well, yeah, I blocked it."
"…Ha."
The spearman thrust again, and Lee Han could only frown, wondering why the man had suddenly started this.
…Rak was certain.
This scoundrel is a beast.
He had read every movement, every action. The special eyes His Highness Blake had gone so far as to name the Third Eye belonged to none other than Rak. He dared to be confident that nothing could escape them.
And yet.
A reaction speed that slips out of my eyes?
It was not a human reaction speed. After scuffling with him a few times, the man had already adapted to his pace. Keep fighting, and he would answer Rak's attacks faster and faster, until at some moment he could even counter them. And a man like that was going on about talent. Rak felt ready to burst.
Ridiculous!
He was certain of it.
That scoundrel—
I've seen instinct-type knights. A beast-type knight is a first…
—was a kind of knight he was seeing for the first time in his life. Rak had never thought the day would come when he felt admiration like this for another person, and he simply kept his brow furrowed.
……Because he didn't want to admit he had been impressed.
They'd had a few tussles, but time was running short. It wasn't that his leave had nearly run out.
Nothing good comes of staying here long.
The Empire was in the middle of collapsing, and no one knew when a Yellow Turban uprising might boil over, but an empire was still an empire. Maniacs who had kept that name alive for a thousand years on this vast continent. The greatest population on the land, some five hundred million strong. Population was its own kind of thug. If those bastards got serious, they would surely learn that people of Pendragon were here.
And that was not what Lee Han wanted.
So.
Smash the Magic Tower fast and get out.
Which meant—
"I'll have to carry you up there on my back, won't I…"
"……Dreadful."
"That's my line, you bastard."
He hated it, but there was no choice. He didn't want to admit the man's skill, but it was extraordinary. Taking him along would shorten the work.
"We wreck the Magic Tower before dawn."
Flinch!
"……."
"…Hey, kid. Playing dead is fine, but keep that up and your mouth's going to stick crooked."
"……."
"Well, we're leaving, so suit yourself. Sorry you had to see something ugly."
Lee Han hadn't been the one to attack them, exactly, but he was sorry to have ended up the cause of the fainting, so he apologized plainly and meant to go. Having them around would only get in the way. He was just about to turn his steps when—
"—I-if you're going to the Magic Tower, g-going by the sky isn't a good idea…"
"…?"
"Th-there's a powerful defensive spell laid over the front of the Magic Tower. U-unless you're a mage you absolutely can't break through, s-so if you want to get in…"
"……."
"…I-if you want to hear the rest, i-it'll cost you…"
"…Would you look at this kid?"
This youngster—
"You do discounts? I didn't bring much money…"
The kid knew how to do business.