A Knight Finds the Instructor's Work Rewarding (1)
The moment Baltar Grace's name left his mouth, composure went straight out the window. Excitement stood plain on every face.
A chance to be taught by the pinnacle of the kingdom's knights.
No—even if they received no teaching at all, merely setting eyes on his face would be worth a price no one could reckon. Baltar's existence was that vast.
"...You aren't lying, are you?"
One student's question, and it could hardly be called impertinent. The knight had staked the honor of the order he himself belonged to. By any common sense, he would not break that.
"Of course."
The instructor nodded without a tenth of a second's hesitation, for all the world as if he had not spoken a single lie. At that, half the students of the sword faculty woke their greed with a dry swallow.
Can I beat a serving knight?
Winning by the book is impossible. But if I wear his stamina down first and then close in—then maybe...!
It has to be strategic. Strategic.
The students turned their thoughts over and built their plans. Calling them strategies was generous, honestly. They were notions even a child might have produced, and greenhorns with no skill at reading an opponent were never going to invent some heaven-defying scheme that would topple a serving knight.
So they were not fools. They were only simple.
And the simplest of them all—
"Kunta steps forward."
A man with a clumsy tongue came out. A warrior of jungle, grassland, and desert, not yet at ease with the continent's common speech, showed himself—a fighter who called to mind a handsome black panther, and none other than a valiant warrior of the barbarians, a mystery-race of high renown.
"Son of Urba, the great warrior who serves the White-Feathered Serpent. This is Kunta."
A low hum rose off the steel.
"Kunta challenges... to a duel!"
An S-curved single-edged sword flashed cold in the sun. A kopesh—the sickle-sword, by that name and others. Troublesome to wield, but once mastered, a blade that was no small trouble to face. And that sword had set off a resonance.
It was not Sword Resonance. It was the tremor just before Sword Resonance begins: proof of how intimate he was with the blade, and proof that he was a fighter of considerable skill. Seeing it, the students understood the barbarian warrior was by no means beneath them. No—he stood endlessly above. They seethed at the realization, and still they grinned.
At that level, even the instructor will have a hard time of him.
This is it!
They envied the barbarian warrior, and still they hoped he would catch the instructor by the ankle for as long as he could. For the sake of their own ends...!
Whump!! Thud—!
In the next instant Kunta's body flipped and slammed into the ground.
"???"
He blinked, unable even to grasp that he had lost.
"What? What just happened!?"
"...I didn't see a thing...."
The whole sequence had passed in the space of an eyeblink, and no one had properly seen it. A commotion rose, and the instructor hauled Kunta up from where he still lay sprawled. Hup! Could a person be lifted that lightly—a frame that huge?
"Stance was good. Swordwork too. You just lost without time to lift a hand, because of that cocky posture. What are you doing, dropping your guard?"
"...Kunta does not drop his guard."
"Like hell you don't. One look, you saw I was smaller than you, and you let it down."
"......They said not to bully ones smaller and weaker than Kunta."
"That's what dropping your guard is. Idiot."
Thwack! The instructor's finger flicked and struck Kunta's forehead, and Kunta toppled backward with a thud. A simple flick had knocked a two-meter frame clean over.
"Urgh!"
"Don't drop your guard next time. Keep that up and you're guaranteed to die one of these days."
"......Kunta remembered, Instructor. But what is the name of the technique you used on Kunta? A striking art Kunta has never seen."
"Shoulder throw."
"Mm. Kunta remembered."
He accepted the defeat that meekly and trudged back to his place. It had been a humiliating loss, but he did not seem to store it in his chest.
And then—
"All right. Who's next?"
Silence.
"Get out here. Sun'll be down."
The students said nothing.
Honestly, what Lee Han had done was nothing much. He had simply stepped inside his opponent's guard and, from there, struck the wrist with the heel of his palm.
A so-called palm-snap. A light snap of the wrist to shock the joint, drain the strength from the hand, take the sword, and in the same motion hoist the man over a shoulder and hurl him—a principle so simple it hardly deserved the name. True, inside that snap he had copied something like the Weighted Strike Method Baltar had shown the day before. Even so, the finish was so crude it was embarrassing to call a technique: a simple method anyone could block, if they meant to block it.
And yet that simple method—
"Guh!?"
"What's the point of a swordsman's strength if it's this weak."
—landed without a single answer. That was the problem.
Sixteen wins in a row. That was the record Lee Han had stacked, and that many bodies were now sprawled across the ground like children at play. He had taken the wins not by striking, but purely through throws and joint locks. Practicing on living people like this, he could feel the skill climbing.
But aren't these bastards way too weak?
He looked at them with eyes that found them pathetic. Aside from Kunta, the first, not one of them stirred his interest—practice partners only a little better than ugly rag dolls. The students amounted to that, and Lee Han had nothing but complaints.
Just me, getting too picky.
Fighting that Lark, or whoever he was, the day before had freshly shown him that skilled knights existed even with Baltar set aside. The sight of these academy brats now left him cold. It was not that he was some mutant freak, and they only seemed weak beside him.
Rather—
Half these bastards have rotten foundations.
Somehow, hardly any of them had their basics set. Of the sixteen he had faced so far, would you believe exactly two had their foundations down?
Hmm. This is pretty bad.
He had heard they were all elites. Why, then, were they all like this? He was in the middle of that thought when his face finally eased.
"...Yeah. This is more like it."
Another pair had come to stand before him.
"I am Arno. Arno de Offen."
"Name's Garand, Instructor."
"...Two of you."
"Is there a problem?"
"No. Doesn't matter. Rather, I'm glad somebody who uses his head finally showed."
He had never said he wanted one-on-one. He had told them all to come at him. So these ones were sharp. They had read his intent.
Steel whispered from the sheath. A boy with paired swords, and a young man with a spear—both considerable fighters, on a level with Kunta, the first he had faced. Unlike Kunta, though, they showed no trace of a dropped guard. From the start they meant to fight at full strength, so there was no chance they would be dropped like fools for carelessness.
Clear out the weak ones, and only now do the names show up.
He knew who both of them were. Even he, indifferent to the students as he was, had heard the rumors. They were that famous: the eldest son of House Offen, that renowned sword house, famous for producing the army's generals generation after generation and countless sword-heroes besides; and the disciple of the great mercenary who led the legendary company, the Wild Wolves—head of the mercenary confederation, called by another name the Mercenary King.
Honestly, like Kunta, neither of them was at a level to enroll in the academy. If anything, they ought to be sitting a knight order's entrance trial this very day.
"Why'd you two enroll here? Come to play house?"
"I came because I wished to duel Young Lord Roen. That I should also, unexpectedly, gain a duel with an instructor such as yourself leaves me deeply satisfied."
"I came hopin' to make a knight of myself. Figured it'd beat mercenary work. But becomin' one right off didn't sound as good as enjoyin' my youth a spell, so I enrolled."
"...A pair of oddballs."
"We could hardly outdo you, Instructor."
"You're not one to talk."
Satisfying ones were finally starting to appear. Lee Han laughed, pleased, and for the first time took up a wooden sword instead of his bare hands. He was meeting live steel and a spear with wood—but until now he had slammed armed men into the dirt with empty hands, so they could tell he was showing a measure of sincerity. It meant he rated their skill highly.
"Thank you, Instructor."
"Won't you take a real sword?"
"I'd like to. Can't go killing students, though, can I?"
"......"
"...He's as frightenin' as our old man."
Whoosh! There was no more talk. Arno swung instead.
In his left hand, a short, broad military sword; in his right, a greatsword a little longer. As a rule, wielding two swords was little better than wasted effort. He handled the pair freely all the same, with a proficiency that let one imagine how much blood the practice had cost. Whoosh! Hum—! Even as one hand unfolded the swordwork, the other watched for an opening like a scorpion's stinger.
And the other man—Garand's spear, coming on without hesitation, was no ordinary spear. Crack! It looked heavy at a glance, an enormous weapon edged not only at the point but along the blade as well. A polearm. When that peculiar spear, kin to the crescent halberd of the East, came around, it poured out a force fit to cleave a man in two.
The exchange followed in a flash. Every time steel rang, sparks jumped, and a rupture savage beyond measure cracked the air. Trajectories bloomed each time the two blades flashed, and Garand's blow—swinging that huge spear as if it weighed nothing—carried a ferocity that could shatter rock. Bang!
In truth, even a serving knight would not have found it easy to take the attacks of these two. Which was why it was just as hard to believe that they were the ones tiring first.
"Huuuu...!"
Somewhere along the way they were soaked through with sweat, and they looked at Lee Han as if he were some creature other than a man. What was this weight? Had breathing always been this painful a thing?
"...Instructor. Forgive the impertinence, but are you human?"
"Ha. Unbelievable."
Arno and Garand were so dumbfounded they had blurted even a foolish question. And well they might. Look. Two men of fierce pride had bent even that pride and put their teamwork to work. A scion of a great house and a mercenary's disciple—two men who might as well have been born opposed—were thrashing this hard to beat him.
"I'm human. Just a bit stronger than you."
He had not given a single step. Every blow they offered was stopped, of course, and when they tried to shove him back by strength they were the ones driven rearward, nearly toppling. He was clearly fighting with a wooden sword, and yet that wooden sword showed no sign of breaking, while their weapons screamed as if they might shatter. The screams the weapons spat numbed wrist and arm, and they looked at their instructor through dizzy eyes.
"Your presence is a bit weak. You're not fully ripe, so there's a faint-hearted corner in you. Fix just that, and you'll be fine."
"...Are you saying we are faint of heart?"
"I'm saying your presence is weak."
"I would not call us lacking."
"No. If you're going to call presence strong—"
It has to be at least this.
As if a demonstration would serve better than an explanation, he drew a breath, with everything he had. As if testing the limit of his lungs, he gathered it at full power.
"Haaap—!"
A lion's roar. The will to bite, and to overwhelm.
And yet no one properly heard that kiai. A prickling ran through the air. It was only a shout—not even that loud a voice. He had merely hurled out, resounding, a kiai anyone knows how to make. Even so, those who heard it, the faint of heart especially, sat down where they stood.
"Krgh...!?"
"Guh!"
Their legs had given out before the presence he poured forth. Nor was that all. Some of them nearly wet themselves.
A beast's roar. Under a thunderous kiai for which the phrase was apt, Arno's body and Garand's locked. They tried to move. They could not.
"...Fear?"
Irene, a mage of some standing, put a name to the phenomenon. Great monsters sometimes dropped people with presence alone—the principle by which a rabbit is forced into panic before a bear. What Lee Han was showing now was the same.
"It's called Lion's Roar. Straight translation, something like a lion's roar."
"......"
"You get it? This is presence. You have to set a resolve that says you'll bite them and overwhelm them, no matter what. Weather presence like this without trouble, and you can force even me to give ground. You two are short on it. Probably because you grew up in a greenhouse. Get more real fights, pile up experience, and someday your presence will ripen too. In the end, time takes care of it."
"...Are you truly human?"
Even as they took in his teaching, they asked it again. This presence did not look like something effort and experience would produce. They sat as they were. Thump! They tried to hold. Holding was too hard.
Lee Han smiled at them where they had dropped, and his face was refreshed, as if his body were only now starting to warm. Then—
"Come out."
"......"
"The others don't look like they mean to step up anymore. You seem different, so I'm saying it. Well. You don't have to."
To whom was he speaking? The words were as good as a provocation, and fortunately the one they aimed at answered as if he had been waiting.
A heavy step.
"—That is not so. I may have been the one here who looked forward to this the most."
A young noble whom black hair suited drew his sword and stood before him, and Lee Han smiled, as if things might finally be interesting.
Roen. Presumed a regressor. Surveillance target number one. And, in Lee Han's heart—
Here comes a big one.
Without a doubt, the biggest event he had been waiting on all day.