The Knight Wore a Suit (6)
You have seen petals scatter on the wind. When blossoms in full riot catch that wind and come pouring down, the sight can turn unreal, a quiet wonder with the power to color even a barren mood. Call it the spell flowers cast. It would be no exaggeration to say they have a particular gift for leading people astray.
And in that sense—
Shaaaa—
…this, surely, was a flower of uncommon allure.
This is a flower that blooms on rivers, isn't it?
A flower of the outer reaches, opening along the edges of the East and the West.
"Lotus…."
Hundreds of them opened at once, beautiful past all measure—more vivid, more alive, than any lotus that had ever spilled in profusion across a river. A certain knight, who had once thought there was nothing more captivating than the toughness and the life of blossoms that held their heads high even before the fierce sun of summer, reached out before he knew it and laid a hand upon a petal.
Sure enough.
Woom!
"Hardy. And beautiful."
Faced with the toughness pouring off the bud itself, the Brass knight was bewitched, and smiled before he meant to.
Truly….
"—A dreadful flower."
Farhan kept the smile on his mouth and frowned as he looked at his dead men. Blood ran. His own wounds were grave; he was bleeding from place to place, as if he had forced his bare body through a wall of thorns. The force should not have been beyond what he could shed, and yet, strangely, it had threatened him.
No. To put it exactly—
"An attack set as the natural counter to a Half-Fiend. No—to a Demon Person. Don't tell me this, too, is Intent? …I was given to understand that no one possesses more than one Intent."
He kept murmuring to himself. For a moment it seemed the wounds, and the loss of so many subordinates, might have unseated his reason. His eyes, however, were cold, and there was not a trace of bewilderment in them. The muttering, then, was nearer to analysis: a reading of the power his enemy held. From his men's sacrifice, and from what he himself had just endured, he was calculating how this troublesome foe was to be handled.
"Is anyone there?"
"Here, Sir Farhan."
"How many have we lost?"
"About three in ten are no longer fit to fight."
"Still within acceptable bounds."
"…Sir Farhan, I know I overstep, but given how things stand…."
"I know. I'm no fool, so don't trouble yourself."
The man said nothing.
"More to the point, the intelligence was completely wrong. They told us he was some nobody who had clutched his victories over Demon Kings and devils out of piled-up coincidence and luck—and that was pure rubbish, wasn't it? Honestly. I don't think I can trust a word of what those people at Torn Wing hand us anymore."
"…Agreed."
The Brass knights turned baleful eyes on the knight who had gone past merely threatening them and was overwhelming them outright. Three in ten, they said—but when one remembered that those three in ten had the strength to overturn a warlord's entire host, the feat became impossible to believe. And still he stood there, that unmoved.
Truly.
"I can't tell whether to call him bold or brave. Either way, he is no ordinary man in spirit."
Enemy or not, the whole of the Brass Knight Order judged him a remarkable man, and their will to fight climbed.
There was, however, one misunderstanding. Contrary to what the Brass Knight Order believed—
Wh-what?
The man himself was neither unmoved nor bold. If anything, he was more bewildered than he had been in a very long time.
How in the world did I just do that?
He had only meant to use the Plum Blossom Sword to cloud their sight a little. Then, out of nowhere, lotuses had bloomed and swept the whole area, and Lee Han could only stare. It was like throwing a stone to turn a wolf's head and watching the stone turn into a grenade. And if one asked whether he had forced the power to get there….
That's the thing. I didn't.
Lee Han's condition was good. After the Plum Blossom Sword there was hardly any drain at all; if anything, he felt refreshed. The dynamic pulse of life that knights called fighting-energy was running through him like a waterfall. A living current. He had no idea why the Plum Blossom Sword had abruptly become a Lotus Sword, but he guessed that the majestic flow moving through his body was the source of whatever had overwhelmed them.
"…Well. I can look into that later."
He set his point.
"What's it going to be? You seeing this through? If you are, I won't be holding back either."
The art of war said that once momentum had turned, crushing the enemy was only proper. Lee Han, rather than taking the sure win of the first blow, leveled his sword and asked the question almost kindly.
"…You aren't rushing in."
"The momentum's swung my way. That doesn't make you easy."
Farhan was silent.
"Doesn't feel like magic. Feels like Mystery…."
Just as with the pillars of fire a moment ago, the smell of a dangerous trap hung everywhere. If he had to break through, he could. They were only traps. Lee Han simply refused the stupid choice of stepping into one, and chose instead to store his strength.
Woom—.
A current left his body, quiet and yet ferocious, like a wave. The slit-eyed knight took it in—
"It's Farhan. Not Slit-Eyes."
"…Did I say that out loud?"
"Perfectly clearly. I'd be grateful if you used my name from now on."
"Not much point learning the name of a man who's dying today."
"How unkind. I was hoping to watch you for a long time."
The swordsman who had given his name came slowly toward Lee Han. The other Brass knights had stopped to watch the two of them, but he alone walked with perfect confidence up to the tip of the sword Lee Han had leveled, and Lee Han settled into a thrust he could loose at any instant.
And then—
"By any chance, would you consider joining the Brass Knight Order? If you decided now, I would yield my own place to you."
"…What the hell are you saying?"
Whoosh!
Lee Han swung at the man who had just spouted what sounded like pure madness, and Farhan drew at once, as if he had been waiting for it.
Kang!!
Sparks leapt where the swords met, more than ten times in a single breath, and neither of them so much as blinked.
"Hell of a regeneration."
"One of a half-fiend's advantages."
Kwa-aang!!
Farhan recovered as if the moment Lee Han had severed his tendons had never happened, and his keen swordwork only grew fiercer.
Kang! Kaaang!
Kang—!!
At some point their movements had become too fast for any ordinary knight to follow with the eye. It was not mere speed. It was a chain of shifts without end, and for swordsmen hungry to grow, the intensity would have been enough to open their eyes. It was skill worthy of a swordsman publicly rated a Sword Saint. And a man of that skill—
"There seems to be one misunderstanding. We half-fiends do not enjoy human flesh. Nor do we eat the guiltless. We take the flesh of only the most heinous criminals, and we take it as medicine. Just as nobles swallow bear gall, or a tiger's heart, to mind their health."
"Like hell."
"And if you look across the continent, cultures that eat human flesh are not so very hard to find. So you mustn't assume we are evil without condition. Well? Has the misunderstanding about us cleared, even a little?"
Lee Han said nothing.
KRA-KRAK!
"Oh dear. It hasn't cleared in the slightest."
And yet that skilled man's sword was being pushed back by Lee Han. It was not simply that he was losing in strength. It was the way strength was used. Set beside Farhan, the fineness of Lee Han's technique and the grace of his movement were wretched indeed, but the manner in which he handled power surpassed Farhan—surpassed anyone in the kingdom. Strength was not a matter of grip alone. It lived in the feet and the hands, in the legs and the back, in the flanks. Because he could wield the strength of all those parts at will, he did not lose even to an opponent employing high sword arts. If anything, he overwhelmed them.
"Couldn't you simply let yourself be hit? Your body seemed sturdy enough, in any case."
"How about you let that Sword Resonance out before you talk?"
"Oh dear. You've caught me."
Kwa-aaang!
Amid a clash that violent and that destructive, the sight of the two of them talking looked, at a glance, almost peaceful. But the killing intent on the blades was real, and the edges where that intent had packed itself tight—
Kang!
Thuk!
—were stabbing each other.
"…How does one train a body until it rings like struck iron?"
"Properly."
Farhan was silent.
"You just have to do it properly."
"…Hah. I'm starting to get a little annoyed. In the end, I'm the only one taking the blows."
Realizing that even a sword raised into Sword Resonance was doing him little good, Farhan shook his head as if disappointed.
Lee Han, however—
He flinched. He stopped the sword dance and took one clean step back.
"You… you're a dangerous one."
Farhan only stared.
Farhan was the one who had been cut, and the man without a scratch was the one on his guard. It was a sight that made no sense, and yet this time Farhan looked truly startled. His slit eyes flashed, and a vicious light showed in them for the first time.
"…You startled me. No one but our captain had ever read this move."
Lee Han said nothing.
"Where did you notice? There shouldn't have been a sound, a trace, or even a scent."
"…A hunch."
Farhan blinked.
"…Just a hunch. I've got a feeling I shouldn't step in on you right now."
"…Hah."
Farhan let out a laugh that sounded drained, but Lee Han meant it. He didn't know why. For an instant, instinct had told him this exchange of blows must not go on. He was still overwhelming the man, and yet it felt as if some other element were reaching to swallow him whole.
So to speak—
"Is it your Intent? Or if it isn't… a Mystery?"
Farhan was silent.
"…Sly little bastard. Playing at scouting me so you could crack me over the back of the head."
"…Haha."
It was a blunt accusation, and Farhan laughed again. Was this, too, an empty laugh? The meaning was different. No—Farhan had not been laughing from emptiness to begin with.
…A survival sense. An opponent who has a sense like that is truly frightening.
Strong as he was, he was not arrogant in the least. He was cautious, and he did not hesitate to withdraw. It was a sight one never saw in a prideful knight, and Farhan felt a kinship with him.
He doesn't care what means he uses. He means to take victory rather than honor.
Only then did Farhan understand the man called Lee Han. Dry lines read off a page could never have given him this: vivid, living intelligence, the kind that struck the body and stayed. And then—
"…A shame, but let us save it for next time."
Lee Han stared.
"And my proposal was by no means a joke. I—no, we—are sincere. It would be good if you were with us."
"Screw off."
"Ahaha. Words alone won't earn your trust, will they? Then I'll say only this. Our aim is not to overthrow Pendragon. No—you may be certain we will not be satisfied with a matter as small as that."
"…What?"
Lee Han faltered. He had been looking for an opening to land another blow, and the words struck him so cleanly that the opening went to waste; before he knew it, he was listening. In this moment, it felt as if something decisive were about to leave that detestable mouth.
And as if to prove the instinct true—
Lee Han said nothing.
"I hope that, in days to come, you will render a wise judgment. You are a 'good person,' after all."
Tok.
FWOOOOOSH!
…In the next instant the mines laid all through the place went off, and thousands of pillars of fire swallowed the street—and the Brass Knight Order with it. They had leapt straight into the fire as if taking their own lives. He might have thought them dead. Lee Han saw otherwise.
"…They ran. Those bastards."
The moment they entered the pillars, their bodies blurred and faded. It had happened in the space of a blink, and Lee Han scratched the back of his head, at a loss.
But only for a moment.
"Well. I remembered the scent."
The ending could wait.
He muttered it as if it were nothing and shrugged. Few things were more foolish than clinging to what had already passed.
And so, for now, what he had to do was—
"Why haven't those people run yet? What are they doing, just standing there?"
Rescue work.
…That day the fierce pillars spread, and the central avenue burned black. All of it. Nothing left behind. The damage could only be called astronomical, and the injured numbered more than a thousand, and yet—
No one had died.