EP.5 — I Am Instructor Lee Han
The one who had spat the insult was Damian, second son of House Paulet. He had only meant to mutter to himself, and he startled when his own voice rang out far too loud.
Perhaps the stillness around him had only made it louder.
Volume, though, was not the problem. He had aimed an insult at another man, and now everyone had heard it.
Well. There goes my life at the academy.
He felt his stomach sour, knowing his image had taken a hit on the very first day.
Insulting a knight? That, he hardly cared about. The man was a demoted knight anyway. It was not as if the fellow could rear up at him just because he had been cursed at. Not unless he truly meant to set himself against a count's house. Never—
"Was that you?"
"...Huh?"
The knight on the platform spoke to him with perfect certainty, and Damian, a beat too late, answered back.
"Don't huh me, you disrespectful little bastard."
In the next instant Damian's vision went black. He had seen the lectern flying straight for him.
KRAAANG!
For a moment the hall became a battlefield.
For an entirely different reason, the onlookers were struck dumb—and, at the same time, left utterly blank.
What had just gone flying? No, before that: could a lectern that size even be hurled like a ball?
They had plenty they wanted to say. They swallowed every feeling they dared not voice and looked up at the instructor standing on the platform.
"Ah. I meant to throw my glove, and the lectern went with it. A mistake."
No one made a sound.
"I mean it. I couldn't stomach being insulted and meant to fling the glove, and this came along for the ride. Hm. Is the lectern made of something light?"
He blamed the lectern as if begging them to take him at his word, and for a moment the crowd wore expressions no language could capture.
What is he? That lunatic.
While everyone arrived at the same thought, Damian still had not come to after taking the lectern to the face, and the people of House Paulet moved.
"Damian!"
"What is this? Have you ever seen such a lawless man!"
From the seats of honor, House Paulet glared as if they would tear the instructor apart on the spot, killing intent flaring toward Lee Han.
And Lee Han, faced with that—
"Bullshit."
He sneered, and of course that was oil poured on a rage already burning high.
"You bastard—!"
A knight of House Paulet ripped his sword free, and in an instant a tremendous presence rose off his body. The rolling heat-haze might have been the shimmer above a fierce fire. Killing intent given form. The art of a martial man who had grasped the ultimate of the Fighting Art. It was a realm a full step above the Sword Resonance Jord had shown the day before, and it announced, without a word, just how outstanding the knight's skill was.
That sword turned on the mad instructor. Before anyone could so much as move to stop him, the blade sought to run its target through.
Except—
A hand axe hissed through the air and punched straight through the knight's focus, and his movement faltered.
"Hup—?!"
He should have known better. He should never have faltered.
"You started it?"
When had he even moved? Like a bird stooping, gathering speed as it fell, Lee Han closed the distance in a blink, slipped inside the knight's guard, seized him by the nape, and heaved his body upward. For an instant the knight rose like a puppet with its strings cut, seized by a violent weightlessness, with no time at all to resist.
CRACK!
He dropped headfirst from that height and was driven into the floor.
"Guh—aaagh!"
A hideous scream. Had the neck not been trained, the impact would have been enough to snap it clean. Trained as it was, it did not break—but the man had been slammed down from on high, and the shock, as if it had paralyzed his whole body, left him on the verge of blacking out.
Even so.
He—Lee Han—did not stop. Still gripping the nape, he hauled the knight up and drove him down again.
"Krugh!"
Neck locked in that grip, the knight summoned the will to live and swung his sword in a reverse grip, as if in defiance. It was the will of a man who refused to die quietly.
A dull thud.
"...This can't be."
"I didn't train this body to be frail."
The knight had tried to stab him in the gut and could not break through. Of course he couldn't. He had no idea how tough the muscle was, or how hard the bone. The skin might split a little. The flesh beneath did not give. A body that had spent three years fighting an Aura User was hardly going to be ordinary flesh.
And so.
"Not bad."
Lee Han praised the man's will—and this time he truly drove him down.
KWAANG!
Once, twice, three times. Five times in all he held the knight by the nape and slammed him into wall and floor, as if testing whether the other would break first or he himself would tire. An ordinary man would have been exhausted. Lee Han was not tired in the slightest. If anything he thrashed as though working off every stress he had stored, and now—with a presence unlike everything that had come before, as if this time he meant to kill for certain—he launched himself into the air.
The flow was different. However hard a trained knight's body might be, this time it could not endure. Even a keen sword had failed to pierce him, and he was confident that iron-hard strength could still be bent.
And so—!
"Stop—!!!"
KRAAANG!!
"Kehuk..."
Blood pattered onto the floor.
By a mercy beyond measure, the knight did not die. Another knight had thrown his whole body in the way of Lee Han's final drop. Blocking it did not mean he was unhurt.
"...My thanks, for stopping me."
"You will explain yourself. You dared intrude on a knight's duel. You will answer for it."
"...You are correct."
The middle-aged man nodded. Mistake or otherwise, it was House Paulet that had first touched a knight's honor. And it was a knight of House Paulet who had drawn steel. In this moment a duel had been established all the same—a duel that ended only when someone's head came off. Such were the duels of knights. The victor held the loser's life as he pleased. It was an iron rule they had kept, unspoken, for a very long time.
Lee Han might be called a false knight, but in this moment he might as well have been possessed by a true one. He took honor as his pretext and rationalized everything. Brute logic, perhaps. The amusing part was that it worked. And all of it was possible only because of the overwhelming martial power he had just displayed. Had he not been strong, the scene would never have held.
"...I am Count Rodin, head of House Paulet."
"Lee Han. A knight who got demoted."
"...First, I will apologize. My worthless son insulted you—and, beyond that, the Silver Lion Knight Order."
"You should've said that before this bastard came at me. Don't you think?"
The knight still dangled from Lee Han's hand. His eyes had rolled back. It would not have been strange if his breath left him at any moment. Count Rodin watched him with pity.
"I know. I ought to have stopped him."
"No. Not ought to have. You should have stopped him from the start. If his sword had run me through, you wouldn't have stepped in. You stepped in because it looked like he was about to die."
An ugly creak.
It came from the knight's neck. Even if he lived, he would need a long convalescence. But so long as he lived, there was hope.
"He is our vice-captain. My disciple as well. His temper is rough, but he is too fine a talent to be crushed here. I will take every fault upon myself and offer my neck. I ask for your mercy."
With a heavy thud, Rodin set his sword down and dropped to his knees. A count, offering his own neck to save a young life. It was a noble sight. The students and honored guests, shocked and aghast at the sudden duel, were moved by the count's lofty virtue. Had they been knights and nobles who held honor and nobility as the highest of values, they might have praised him for it and forgiven every wrong.
"—No."
To Lee Han, honor and nobility were worth nothing at all.
This time, the crowd truly had nothing left to say.
"...That man is completely insane, isn't he."
"No, what in the world..."
"Is that a human or an ogre?"
"Ugh..."
For the most part, they looked thoroughly sick of it. But in that disgust there was also resentment—at the viciousness of refusing to spare a count even when he laid his nobility bare like that. Most of them felt that way.
And yet, that most of them did meant something else as well.
"...Impressive."
A few did not.
"My lord?"
"That knight is excellent. A man who would become trouble later ought to be crushed without remainder. That is the way of it."
"...?"
"And he is skilled in real combat. Did you see, Jack? The moment he threw that axe, he stole his opponent's rhythm completely. That is not something you can do just because you know how. It takes a fluency forged through countless real fights and training. That knight has a good head."
"Th-that much? He just looked like dumb muscle to me."
"You don't know what you're seeing. Those who can see, see. In a contest between swordsmen who have reached a certain realm, what matters all the more is the battle of minds—how you steal the opponent's timing. Excellent."
"...Hah."
Jack was surprised. Not by the account of the knight's skill, but because his young lord so rarely praised an opponent like this. And with reason. His lord was a man who surprised others, not a man who was surprised by them.
"We've already found a treasure, Jack."
His lord—Roen Dmitri de Lionel—let his eyes glitter, as if he had found a jewel.
And not only that.
"Irene?"
"Huh??"
"???"
The ghost of a woman—whose tastes ran a little apart from other people's, preferring a beast of a man to a pretty one—all but drooled.
Lee Han did not yet know that, against his will, he had drawn the eye of those he was meant to watch, on the very first day.