The Knight Put On a Suit (5)

A swordsman once famous for his blade had said that the higher a swordsman's level, the lighter his steps.

To lighten the body was to command it freely, and that alone was enough to call a man a master of the sword. Meeting such a master was, of course, no easy thing. Masters were not so common that they failed to be treated as something tremendous, and even in a renowned knightly order, ten or so would have been a great matter.

In that sense—

A soft rush of air.

…he truly could not tell whether running into a hundred masters ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠was fortune or misfortune.

Countless knights moved as one, and still the floor made no noise at all. They were only endlessly light, and endlessly quick.

Then a heavy impact landed.

The force their swords poured out, however, was heavy beyond measure, and the momentum they released was every bit as savage.

Fighting energy.

A tough pulse of life, attainable only by warriors who had learned Fighting Art, crashed over him all at once, and the fighting energy of a good several thousand men was, by itself, a pressure like a mountain.

Masters.

More than ten percent of the Brass Knight Order were fully qualified for that name—a ferocity that proved them tremendous experts even before they were half-fiends—and the remaining ninety percent were of no small level either. At the least, they were men fit to rank as Senior Knights. Set their minds to it, and they had the strength to annihilate two or three ordinary domains in a single night, and such men already numbered comfortably past a thousand.

A gap in force that could ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠only be called despair.

…Which was why.

A sharp crack.

"He's moving under that pressure…?"

The sight of him advancing as if he lightly dismissed that pressure was something alien.

Thuk. Thuk.

Of course he was not wholly free inside it. His feet sank deep into the floor. Only natural. The fighting energy crushing that knight now was a pressure fierce enough to grind even a thick fortress down to sand.

"Raise your Sword Resonance."

A deep hum rose.

In the next instant, at Farhan's command, thirty of them raised Sword Resonance. He had noticed that Repulsion Qigong resembled the principle of Sword Resonance, and this was the first move meant to take that monster apart. However fearsome a Sword Resonance the man might wear upon his body—

"I wonder whether he can endure a collision with dozens of Sword Resonances."

Flame roared up.

Dozens of Sword Resonances cried as one, a fierce wave that burned even the air and melted the marble ground. However sturdy the body, a living thing should not have been able to stop an attack like this.

A boom.

…It ought to have been so.

"?"

"!!?"

"??"

The faces of those who had launched the Sword Resonance went hard.

"…Why?"

It should have pierced. It had not. He had not even used that bizarre technique.

A shriek of steel.

They tried to drive the Sword Resonance in, and still it would not bite into his body. Only their swords screamed.

That was the Brass knights' blunder: they did not know the nature of an Intent that could not be broken, and could not even be bent out of shape. The Brass Knight Order stared at him as if beholding something beyond comprehension. He, however—

"Out of the way."

A rush of air.

The instant he crossed both arms and drove them down, every sword aimed at him shattered. Blades that had held Sword Resonance broke like mirrors, and the backlash of Sword Resonance forcibly destroyed erupted into a huge repulsive force and exploded on the spot. The knights caught in it had no time even to scream before the blast took them, and they were forced to turn in an arm or a leg where they stood.

That alone was horrible enough. And yet—

A clean slash.

"Three beasts. For now."

His sword flashed, and in a breath it split the bodies of three Brass knights.

The pieces thudded down.

Comrades cleaved apart in an instant, and the others watching with eyes that could not believe it—but that was a mistake.

A bang.

His feet were still stamping heavy tracks into the ground.

Steel sang.

He—Lee Han—unfolded a murderous sword dance.

As a rule, Lee Han almost never used a sword, or any edged weapon at all.

There were several reasons. Fighting barehanded was simply convenient, and it was easier to regulate his strength. He did favor a hand axe, but the hand axe was something he liked as a throwing weapon; he rarely swung one in his own hand.

Even so, there were times he took up a blade, and those times were none other than this.

An awful lot of beasts today.

When he was hunting beasts in human skin.

Only then did Lee Han use a blade. Someone might say that if barehanded fighting was more comfortable, he ought simply to stay barehanded the whole way through, but that would be wrong. He had said a sword was a little inconvenient. He had not said it made him weak.

Rather—

A wet, heavy cut.

When he held a sword he might be more awkward than when he fought barehanded, yet he was dozens of times more dangerous than usual.

Why?

For the simple reason that—

Flesh parted.

"I—I definitely blocked it, so why…?"

"Shield's too thin. Should've brought a thicker one."

"……Ha."

A body dropped.

—every enemy that came before his eyes, whatever means they tried, was rendered useless.

The Brass knight who had set plate armor and a thick iron shield before him was split clean through, shield, armor, and all. Lee Han did not so much as glance at the cruel work he had made.

"Look at them. Charging in like moths."

A spray of blood.

Already, behind him, others in much the same state lay strewn everywhere. Lee Han did not keep a separate count of those he had cut. He only went forward because they had tried to kill him.

Well. If those had been people, it might have sat a little ill with him. Cutting down this many human beings was the sort of thing that landed as a heavy shock on the mind.

But.

A hiss, like meat on a fire.

The moment they vanish without even leaving remains, they were never things you could call people.

Like monsters, their remains were crumbling apart. All they left in dying were traces like lumps of charred coal. In truth it was a sign that those called half-fiends were, every last one of them, no different from monsters—a sight in which even guilt could not arise.

That they were no different from monsters meant, in short—

"—You ate people, didn't you."

"……."

"Knew it. Eat people, and you can get bodies far stronger than other half-fiends. Looks like you've kept the brain from demon-humanization by some means, but for all that, nine-tenths of the flesh is already a demon-human. No—no different from a monster."

"……."

"……Worse than gnolls."

What rose in place of guilt was a powerful disgust. He could not even imagine how many people they must have devoured to become half-fiends of that caliber. From the start, Senior Knights were difficult to raise even in a great noble house, and here there were more than a thousand of them—and those thousand Senior Knights had seemed, somehow, weak. Now he understood why.

They really are Blood Cross stock.

Men who grew strong by eating people. Men who had grown strong on human flesh and living blood. No wonder, the longer he looked—

"Kept feeling sick."

—there had been a reason.

The displeasure was displeasure, but anger welled up of its own accord. A fierce killing intent, the kind he might feel upon meeting a spell-slinger, seemed to invade his brain, and he felt as if he might lose his calm. But he must not. More than half of them were mostly just men with strength, yet among the remaining half—

"Oh dear. These were not people who ought to have gone so emptily, here. What a pity."

—there were experts of this sort, so he still must not lose his composure.

Not yet.

The narrow-eyed knight let an unpleasant smile spill and trailed his voice in a tone that was not sorry in the least.

"Hm. What manner of Intent is it, I wonder? It seems the kind that heightens the body's ability…. An unusual Intent, difficult to define as merely that."

Only one who had touched Intent could see through Intent. As if he understood that Lee Han stopping Sword Resonance with his bare body was the power of Intent, he tilted his head.

"Well. Grind a few more in, and we shall know."

A soft breath of wind.

As if he meant to find the answer by grinding people into it, he moved the knights once more—as if he would spend his subordinates' lives like coins to learn how to break him.

Truly.

"Why do the rotten ones all act the same?"

…Why did bastards all think and act so much alike?

A heavy hum.

Looking thoroughly sick of it, Lee Han made the sword cry.

Sword Resonance.

Unlike the endlessly light sword-cry the Brass knights had shown as they charged a moment before, this was a Sword Resonance a level heavier and tougher, and that resonance, for an instant—!

Light burst.

A bud opened.

A lotus beautiful beyond compare, enough to bewitch anyone who merely looked at it.

"Huh?"

…Where had the plum blossoms gone?

Lee Han was nothing but flustered, his Plum Blossom Sword nowhere to be seen and a lotus blooming out of nowhere before his eyes. But the lotus, little by little opening its bud into full bloom—

"…What strange thing did he take this time? Or did he receive the Fairy's Blessing again?"

The gray-haired boy, Derek, was struck dumb as he confirmed his master's figure ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠through the skill Heavenly-Mile Eye.

He was not startled at the sight of hundreds of bloomed lotuses swallowing the half-fiends.

"Nothing but things I don't know…."

He had lost anything to say at the sight of the man's stats.

A soft chime.

"……And what is Vajra Warrior supposed to be? Is he actually trying to reach nirvana?"

And here, on top of that, was a top-grade trait he had never so much as heard of: the Blessing of the Saintess. He had wondered whether Vajra Warrior and holy warrior were words that could even be mixed, and there had never been a mongrel quite this mongrel.

Derek….

"…I don't know anymore either."

He figured he might as well just watch. Curious, now, what else would come out.

A boy who had given up on understanding, and become someone who simply enjoyed the show.