A Knight Finds Teaching Rewarding (2)
At a glance, the man looked ordinary.
Ah—a correction. His looks were anything but. They stood out, beautiful enough that a master sculptor of great renown might have carved them with his own hands. His manner was so cold that, had he never moved, others might easily have mistaken him for a statue. And so he was ordinary. It was a face that would have drawn gasps from men and women alike, and yet from that unchanging blank expression nothing could be felt at all—only a candle-flame stillness, which was to say he possessed merely the modest warmth any person might be expected to have. In another sense, his presence was faint. So faint that, had his family name not been Lionel, no one would have found him the least bit intimidating.
And yet.
A soft rasp.
The moment he drew his sword, his presence was no longer faint, and he was no longer a candle flame.
Cold.
The air around him locked rigid all at once, and a sharp, chilling momentum like a driving blizzard settled over everything nearby. He had merely taken up a sword, and already he was an entirely different man from the one who had stood there a moment before. To call it a change would have been too mild. It was a reversal.
Roen Dmitri de Lionel.
He was unlike anyone Lee Han had faced before. Everyone felt it, and Lee Han, standing before him, nearly snorted.
This bastard isn't even trying to hide that he's a regressor.
Wasn't this showing far too much?
A soft ring.
A longsword. Unlike the opponents before him, who had come armed with strange weapons, the blade in Roen's hand was nothing but a simple straight sword—a weapon without a single distinguishing mark. It seemed to be high-purity steel, and yet it was still only an ordinary iron sword. The moment Roen took it up, however, that sword seemed to transform into a famed blade. It was what happened when the momentum Lee Han so often emphasized settled into an ordinary weapon.
An ominous force. What was the word for a presence like that...?
Ghost fire?
As if ghost-fire were kindling along the edge?
He could not say whether the expression fit, but that was how it would have looked to anyone watching. This was no ordinary momentum. It was not something a mere twenty-year-old greenhorn ought to give off. It belonged to a veteran warrior who had rolled through battlefields for ten years. This was not a man to judge by appearances. One could fairly call him a fully realized swordsman.
To a warrior short on experience, he would look like nothing but a genius, and a remarkable one at that. But someone with senses as sharp as Lee Han's—or a soldier who had rolled through war—would know at a glance. This was not genius. It was simply a swordsman completed over a long span of time.
...And his killing intent was unusually thick.
Whoong. Whooong!
Even so, Lee Han swung his wooden sword lightly. The moment that unsettling momentum tried to wrap around him, he had swung on reflex. Each cut of the air sounded wrong, and the swings only grew faster. At some point the wooden sword moved so quickly it could no longer be seen.
Whuk—!
"Right. Let's start."
"......"
"Come in."
"...If I step in now, I believe I'll be cut."
"Quit the whining."
His opponent's momentum was torn apart before it could even pour forth.
Roen and the other students saw the marks Lee Han's wooden sword had left upon the ground. The blade had never touched the earth, and yet the dirt looked clawed open by wind pressure alone. Dry throats worked as they swallowed. Only then did they understand, all over again, that the man was strong. And that understanding made Roen smile.
"I'll come."
It was a magnificent smile. Wild laughter, bright to the point of madness.
Roen moved first.
Whuk—!
The sword came in with a rush and aimed straight for his eyes. A thrust without hesitation, dangerous in the extreme. Lee Han met it without so much as a blink.
"Trying to blind somebody?"
"It wasn't merely a threat, was it?"
Kang!
He slipped aside at his ease and brought the wooden sword down as if to drive it in. Roen blocked quickly, but he could not shed all of the impact. His arm rang with a sharp ache, and he gave a step as he asked.
"...You set the flow on the inside, not the outside."
"A technique I've been practicing lately. Think it's usable?"
"Extremely threatening."
"Still a bit short for a real fight, but it suits greenhorns just fine."
"How fortunate. I am not a greenhorn."
The blow had been laced with the Weighted Strike Method, but it did not work on Roen. By briefly reinforcing the flow within his body, he received it, and the current Lee Han had driven into him failed to take much hold.
Even so.
"Your strength truly is remarkable."
"That's my strong suit."
There was no dissolving the shock left behind by such overwhelming brute force.
Kwang!
Unwilling to miss the instant his opponent's body stiffened, Lee Han stepped in, and the ground caved beneath that overwhelming leg strength. A powerful step was pressure itself.
Kuuung!
Lee Han's wooden sword struck Roen's blade dead on. Roen meant to bat it aside and cut through it in the same motion.
Chaeng...!
"......"
The wooden sword was not cut.
No—on the contrary, it showed a hardness no less than iron and even withstood the sharp edge. Bewildered, Roen swung again. Three sword-shadows hissed into being. He unleashed three strikes in an instant, and yet again—
Chaeng! Chaeng!
—they were blocked. Emptily so. And what Roen felt instead was pain in his own palm.
What was this?
It feels like striking rock.
Like putting a blade to a boulder. No—not merely a feeling. It truly seemed to be rock. What kind of sorcery was this?
To the student full of questions, Lee Han opened his mouth as if fulfilling an instructor's duty in his own rough way.
"I don't know much about Fighting Art. Nobody to teach me, for one thing, and Fighting Art's a stingy bastard—people hoard the teaching and call it a secret art. But I do know how the 'power' inside my body works."
"...What?"
"Power isn't just the strength to lift something heavy. Bone, sinew, and muscle, taken all together—that's what I call power. And the method of using that power properly is what I call Gyeong. It means 'the way of making a thing hard.'"
"......"
"I gave it another name, too. Diamond Body. A way of sending the power inside you not only through the body, but into a tool. And once you can do that—"
Kwang!
"—you can pull off something like this."
Blade met blade again, and once more the wooden sword was not cut. As if it were an iron club, it flung Roen back. Had he not lessened the impact, he would have gone tumbling in an unsightly heap. But what astonished him more than his body hanging briefly in the air was the technique Lee Han was displaying—a Fighting Art all his own, unfolded through sense and instinct despite his having learned nothing systematic. Roen stared, aghast.
"...I have never thought myself lacking in intellect, but everything you show me, Instructor, is beyond my understanding."
"Heh. That's because I'm bad at explaining. When I learn a technique, most of it comes from real fights and feel, not theory."
"...Most people would call that genius."
"Nice thing to hear."
But Lee Han denied it. This belonged more to imagination than to talent. The endless store of information he had read in his previous life had given him creativity, and all he did was make real whatever that creativity let him draw out.
Even so.
It is nice to hear.
The students watched Lee Han and Roen's duel with the look of people whose breath had stopped.
Thirty exchanges so far. Neither sword had been the first to touch the other man. The blades only met, and met again—a sword duel without an inch of concession. Some of those watching burned with jealousy and envy, that a man of their own age could be so strong, and they came apart against a wall of talent so unreasonable it hardly seemed fair. Others measured that level against their own and calculated how they might surpass it.
"The instructor's wooden sword is at its limit."
"Young Master Roen is no different."
"...What a monster. He's trying to break an iron sword with a wooden one."
"...Whoa. So this is why people watch fights."
"Arin, is that really all you took from it?"
"Mmm. It's flashy?"
"...Arin, don't go around telling people you're a mage. I'm far too embarrassed."
"What's your problem."
There was also a spectator watching with nothing but pure, thoughtless eyes. But a duel cannot go on forever. Already both swords had reached their limit, and so Lee Han offered the last exchange.
"How about we take the last one seriously?"
"...What do you mean?"
"Show me your true heart. What you're doing now is impressive, sure, but there's more, isn't there? I'd like to see the real thing."
"......"
Bring out what you're hiding. At those words, Roen flinched for the first time.
"I didn't notice at the start, but the longer this goes, the more I feel it."
Roen was certainly strong. More seasoned than any student Lee Han had faced so far, and peerless in both calculation and Fighting Art. A thoroughly satisfying opponent. And yet something sat wrong. Was it his gnoll instinct speaking? Or the product of everything he had lived through on the battlefield? There was definitely more.
Seems like there's more to him.
What he had shown so far was only the average. There was something else. When Lee Han told him to spit out what he was holding back, Roen hesitated, and inwardly Lee Han was satisfied. He was glad his guess had been right, but more than that, he wanted to put a proper period on the duel. The sword would break anyway. Wasn't it more exciting to make the thing certain than to keep walking this precarious tightrope? The finishing touch. He hoped the end of this match would leave both of them feeling clear, and a small expectation stirred—that Surveillance Target No. 1 probably felt the same.
"—No. I'll forfeit."
"...Huh?"
"Things are heating up too badly. I don't think I should continue."
"......"
An expectation was only an expectation. Apparently he had been spinning nonsense on his own. Roen wore a handsome smile and gestured at their surroundings.
"The original purpose of this spar was to make those who refuse to acknowledge you as instructor acknowledge you. That purpose has now been fully achieved, so isn't further contest meaningless? I, too, think it is about time we stopped."
"...Would you look at this guy?"
Slick work, for a face like that. Lee Han wore an incredulous look, but unfortunately there was more.
"Not looking forward to the meeting event with old man Baltar?"
"I'm sorry, but I look forward to your instruction more than a meeting with Sir Baltar."
"...You don't look that diligent."
"One shouldn't judge a person by appearances, should one?"
"...You've left me nothing to say."
The big event he had been looking forward to for once had ended in utter emptiness, and he had no ground left to argue. In the end Lee Han lowered the wooden sword. He was not enough of a rotten bastard to force a fight on someone who no longer wanted one.
Even so.
Ah, shit. I'm sure there's more. There has to be.
A suspected regressor would still have no end of hidden methods. Considering that, this was nothing if not a regrettable ending.
"...Hmm."
Lee Han sulked.
...That was far too close.
Roen was startled at himself. To think a feeling like this still lived in him.
A hunger for the fight. The battle-lust of a young body is a frightening thing.
He had believed such things long since burned away, dust in a heap of ashes—and yet the feeling remained.
Heh. Perhaps because it has been so long since a fight this pure.
A pure struggle. No—the clean hunger for victory pouring off his opponent. Facing it, the recklessness of his younger days stirred. Not the youth he wore now. The memories of younger days that only Roen remembered. He was recalling that time.
......And.
This time, I must stop it.
If he was to prevent that tragedy, that catastrophe—
"This time, I will kill you."
"Isis Irene de Pendragon. I will drive a blade into your throat. Without fail."
He recalled the prey he had to kill. Only then would the day come when his vengeance was repaid. Roen set his resolve anew, as if youth itself were a luxury forbidden until his purpose was complete, and pressed his true nature down.
For the day of revenge that would one day arrive.