Episode 50 — A Knight Chews on Defeat (5)

……It was a strange dream.

An old man with the look of a Taoist priest raged at him, and the priests were not merely one or two.

They treated him like a traitor of the highest order. Lee Han quietly scratched his cheek.

The priests' blood was up. To the lot of them, Lee Han said—

"Hey, you stray ghosts. I don't know who any of you are, but let's get one thing straight. For starters, I'm not with Mount Hua, you idiots."

He flung the curse out clean, then went on in a calm, nagging voice.

"I used to be an assassin for some freak experimental outfit, and after that I was a mercenary. So if we're talking origins, I'm closer to the Demonic Cult, or a masterless wanderer. At the very least I'm not orthodox. Even if you called me orthodox, my first art was Shaolin, so Shaolin fits a hell of a lot better than Mount Hua. And sure, I lifted the names of my techniques out of martial novels, but that doesn't make me an actual man ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠of the murim, does it? Work it out. I made all of it. Which means I'm the founder. I'm the founding patriarch, you morons."

"Expulsion, my ass. If anyone's doing the expelling, it's me."

"You holding the patent on the Plum-Blossom Sword?"

"Anyway, you little ghost bastards. No patent, and still you throw a fit."

"Quit your yapping and get over here. Disciples of some single sect, and you talk back to the founding patriarch?"

"Let's see that Plum-Blossom Sword of yours!"

…The stray ghosts of Mount Hua screamed.

He shot upright.

"…Hss. Stray ghosts, is that why? Their footwork was something else."

Lee Han opened his eyes, stared blankly for a moment, and looked down at his own palm. He had meant to land five hundred blows. He had only managed three hundred. Ghosts were ghosts—no feet, maybe, and they ran like hell.

…Or was that the Dark Fragrance Steps?

"Hm. Should I try making it?"

He nodded to himself, pleased to have picked up a hint for a new footwork. And then, at him—

"…Awake for a breath, and already talking nonsense?"

"It happens."

Baltar had spoken. Lee Han, who had already felt him there, answered offhand without so much as a glance.

"How long was I out?"

"Thirty minutes."

"…Figures. I did feel clear."

"Heh. That resilience of yours is still outrageous. You recovered off a nap that short?"

"Forty percent, at best? Anyone else would come back about that far from a rest like this…."

"Heh heh. Say that in front of other men and they'll thrash you for the bad luck of hearing it. Ah… no. The ones who come running will be the ones who get beaten."

"……."

Instead of answering the tease, Lee Han stole a look around. Stone cracked and crumbled. Something thudded down. Something else crunched apart.

"…Ahem."

An awkward look, and then a bitter smile. It was a wreck.

The training ground—some six thousand square meters, nearly an acre and a half—had collapsed into ruin. The earth had caved as if a sinkhole had opened, and the walls that ringed the yard had fallen completely, the world beyond laid bare. Nor was that the end of it. The ferocious heat left behind by Sword Star and Sword Orbs had kindled flame, and the place was burning merrily here and there. It might as well have been the aftermath of a nuclear blast.

…Was the mere absence of radiation supposed to count as comfort?

And yet.

"We really fucked this place…."

Cold sweat ran as he took in the destruction he had wrought. When his eyes had rolled all the way back he had simply fought without picking a target, but now that his mind had returned, he knew he had caused an incident.

I really lost it….

The property damage alone was monstrous, and he had dared to leave a piece of the royal palace like this. Knocking flat the First and Second Cat Knight Orders the day before had slid by, more or less, as self-defense—they had come at him first. This time he was the one who had started it.

Ugh. Being a debtor is already bad enough. Am I about to get dragged off as a criminal?

He might even be hauled to the guillotine.

"Even if I fix this, I'll still have to take the punishment, right?"

"Hm? You can fix it?"

"I've done a lot of sapper work. Half a month, probably? No—give me a week and I'll have it restored clean. Easy."

"…Now and then you turn up with a talent no one expects."

"Haha…."

In his past life he had been a work-crew chief in the army, with experience building training grounds besides. And now his whole body could stand in for heavy equipment. Even working alone, he was sure he could raise the place anew within a week. He was turning over whether that might shave the crime even a little when Baltar spoke again.

"I know what you're worrying about. A very you sort of worry, if one can call it a worry. Foolish boy."

"It's an obvious worry."

"Truly. Look at you like this and you're simple and upright. Why is it that the moment those eyes roll back, you turn into a madman…."

"…The mess I made is obviously mine to clean up. Give me a break."

"Heh heh. A madman, and a diligent one."

…?

While he was briefly unsure whether that had been an insult or a compliment, Baltar went on.

"Don't fret over nothing. Affairs like this are common."

"…Affairs like this?"

"It happened often in the days when the late king was still hale. Knights would duel and smash the Royal Castle to pieces as a matter of course. Heh. It was practically an annual festival…."

"……."

"Well. After His Late Majesty passed, the knights' standard fell, old comrades gradually went into seclusion or departed for Avalon, and the custom vanished… but it still stands in the royal law."

"So spare yourself the useless worry. Heh heh."

"…Oh."

Welcome news: he would not have to climb the guillotine. And as if to settle him further, rain chose that moment to fall. It tapped, then pattered, cooling the ground where flame still crawled. Lee Han took it on his skin and snorted.

"…It's been raining a lot lately."

Thankfully.

The autumn rain came down in a roar.

"……."

"……."

Lee Han and Baltar held their silence, watching it. Their duel had swept the training ground clean away, and they sat stranded beneath the rest hut—nothing left of it but the roof—using the thing for an umbrella. Lee Han was one matter. An Aura User, of all people, taking his rest in a shabby seat like this was a truly strange sight.

"Old man, someone your age could walk into any hall of the palace and they'd clear him a great room. Why sit like this? Drink tea somewhere warm."

"Dainty little habits like that are not to my taste. Cooling the heat after a fight in the rain is what feels natural to me."

"You're not some wild man…. Even our little barbarian brat doesn't rest like that."

"A fallen barbarian, then. Putting his ancestors to shame. Tsk."

"…Old man, that's racist."

Idle talk. An idle air. Hard to take it for a conversation between knights who had been trying to kill each other only moments before. And yet the two of them, sitting out in the rain beneath a roof that might give way at any time, fit together strangely well. They were men who would have looked more natural with a cigarette between their teeth in the middle of a battlefield just after the fighting than in any fine mansion. The amusing truth was that neither of them smoked, and neither of them drank much.

Different in every particular, and somehow alike. And so—

"If you have something you want to say, say it now. I'll listen."

Seeing through to what Lee Han was ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠holding inside was no difficult thing for Baltar.

"…What's this all of a sudden?"

"You've something shut up in there, haven't you. That's why you came."

"I just came to fight."

"Don't try a lie of that sort. It shows all over you. Tsk. Aigo. You take after me a great deal. Right down to staying silent even when you're full of things unsaid."

"……."

"Just get it off your chest. No one's around to hear. And I've no thought of going about repeating your story."

"……."

…Lee Han stayed silent, and Baltar did not particularly press him. He watched the rain. Ten minutes, perhaps, went by.

"…It's a little hard to pin down."

"……."

Lee Han finally opened his mouth. Quietly.

"It's just… yeah. Really strange."

He grumbled without order. At a glance it might have looked like a grandson whining to his grandfather, but there was no such tenderness between them, and it would not have suited them. If anything, they gave off the feeling of mischievous friends, or old comrades-in-arms. So the grumbling was like baring his insides to a friend, and being honest about it.

"But it's weird, right? I didn't even take a direct hit, and still I don't feel clean. It feels like I'm dancing on someone's palm, and there's something like defeat in it. …Yeah. I feel filthy. Stifled as hell."

"Heh heh. Talk in a jumble like that and how am I to follow? Lay it out, piece by piece."

"…Mm."

Aware, even by his own judgment, that the words had come out a mess, Lee Han nodded. He smiled bitterly, and slowly let out what had happened.

"So—."

The raid on the temple, and the Dream Fiend. The plot to manufacture a Saint, and the filthy work of the cult. Half-Fiends, and the monsters of Hell. The enemy's schemer, the one they called the Prophet, and the defeat he had felt without knowing why. Beyond that, the fight against the Magic Tower and its Tower Lord; how he had been forced into learning the Fighting Art; even the trivial fact that he was still only a beginner. Great things and small, talk he need not have given at all, spilled in a long stream from his mouth.

Anyone else, and he might never have spoken so honestly. He could say all of it because the man listening was Baltar. Because he was strong. Because he was not the sort to go around repeating a story like this. That trust sat in a corner of his heart, and so he could be true; and Baltar, as if to show ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠he was a good listener, nodded ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠along the way and put in sounds of his own. Is that so?Hmm….Hoh!

"…Honestly, it is strange. I didn't even lose. The temple just got beaten one way. So why do I feel defeated."

"Heh heh. Because you danced to the enemy's tune, no? Of course you'd taste defeat. I knew days like that myself, when I was young."

"You did?"

Baltar gave a light shrug.

"In my younger days—some sixty years ago—there was a man of Britannia, a famed general and a strategist, by the name of Hannibal. He was not confined to the art of war. In intrigue, in politics, in economy, and even in the arts, he was a genius of tremendous distinction. And in my youth I lost to him more than a hundred times. Battle, and it was battle. A scheme, and it was a scheme. By every method there was, he made me eat it."

"…One hell of a man."

"Men like that appear, from time to time. Poor with the body, excellent at all else, and able to bring to bear a power more terrible than the swing of a sword. The late king suffered no small headache on his account, in all sorts of ways."

"……."

"He was more frightening than every king and noble bastard in Britannia put together—the lot of them, whose heads were worth less than ornaments."

"So what became of that incredible gentleman?"

"He died by my hand."

"……."

"I was forty-five. It was around the time I had only just become an Aura User."

"……."

Lee Han swallowed, throat dry. The eyes with which Baltar recalled the killing of the man called Hannibal held a killing chill fierce enough to make even Lee Han flinch. Something one dared not oppose.

"General Hannibal was a great man to the very end. But once I became an Aura User, there was no one who could stop me. Whatever stratagem Hannibal devised, whatever plot he laid, whatever host of diplomatic maneuvers he unfolded—I shattered every one of them from the front, and in the end I set my blade in his neck. Thus I won. …Do you see what that means?"

"…What it means."

A crooked grin.

"It means you must not be strong by halves. Before an overwhelming power—one that renders every other means meaningless—nothing is of any use."

"……."

…On any other day it was the sort of line that would have earned a mutter of You screwing with me? Lee Han could not answer at all. He felt, instinctively, that Baltar was speaking nothing but the truth.

"Become strong. Become strong, and you will have no need to taste that defeat. I'm telling you not to remain in that half-hearted state. Do you understand—?"

"……."

"So I'll ask you one thing. Do you, perhaps, wish to step out of that half-hearted state?"

"…What are you saying?"

"What else."

Baltar had asked Lee Han whether he wanted to advance to the next stage.

Like a pebble tossed into a still lake…….