EP.74 – The Knight Converses with the Butler (2)
It would have been the season when his will to fight Baltar was in full bloom.
Back then, Lee Han had been clawing for any way out of the knight order, throwing himself into training with a desperate heat, and he had picked fights on purpose with the bastards of the Silver Lion Knight Order, stacking strength with hardly a day between.
And just then — her elevation to crown princess confirmed, her days poured vigorously into the affairs of state — Isis had introduced him to someone.
Her butler, she said.
And so it happened.
“I am John Ray Albert, Sir Lee Han.”
That was their first meeting. Not long after, Lee Han heard the rest of it.
“An Aura User? That butler?”
The old man was a superhuman, the same as Baltar.
He had thought him an extraordinary old man. A superhuman, though — that he had never imagined.
“So that’s how it is...”
To say it again: the Lee Han of those days had been in the full flush of his blood.
No. Let that be corrected. He was a wretch who did not know his place.
A sorry greenhorn, unable even to tell how far he stood beneath the man in front of him. That was who he had been three years ago, and he had fooled himself into thinking the gap between a superhuman and himself was nothing so dramatic.
And so—
“Butler. Would you face me, just once?”
He challenged the butler, all provocation.
At first he had meant to nag without end, certain the man would refuse...
“Ho ho. Very well.”
Albert accepted with an ease he had not expected, and Lee Han must have smiled — smiling on the hope that a match against this man might teach him how a superhuman could be brought down.
“Then time is precious. Let us begin at once.”
“...Pardon?”
It had been a delusion.
That day, Lee Han came to understand the heart of a sewer rat. More precisely, the terror of a sewer rat that, the instant a human hand closes around it, cannot even struggle before it dies.
“Ha ha. Your potential is not bad. So do not grow lazy in your efforts.”
“......”
He had thrashed like that, and he had lived. But Albert had taken the flailing for a darling little performance, and he had stayed kind to the very end.
“Strong as shit...”
Nothing came down on him but despair and helplessness. He had to lie in bed for a fortnight just to recover, and yet he did shake the black mood off quickly enough to get back on his feet.
Even so, that day remained, for Lee Han, an unforgettable and wretched defeat — and it had, without question, become a precious turning point. There was something he had learned by chewing the loss over.
“Even a rat bites the finger to stay alive. Why shouldn’t I?”
The resolve to thrash to the very end, even when talent and strength fall short. It would have been from then. He stopped challenging Baltar once a week and began to challenge only when he had a definite result to show, seeking a new possibility that surpassed what he already possessed. It was not that he had come to want something novel, or clever.
What I’ve learned so far isn’t enough. I need something that can hold the center.
Everything he had learned until then. The stealth of an Assassin had no power in it. The roughness of a Mercenary was too raw, and it had no balance. The spirit and the courage of a Soldier were formidable, and yet before the genuine article they were helpless without end. He needed an axis that could weave the three together and fill what they lacked — and at the end of wanting something that could give shape to the idea he carried—
A possibility was born, carrying a vow — to stand firm, and never to break.
And now, three years later—
Thinking about it, he’s something like a benefactor...
A rematch was about to take place, and the feeling ran deep. Why so deep? Obvious, wasn’t it. For a start, this was the very man who had overturned that ridiculously pathetic, slack state of mind. Not that Lee Han was grateful for having groaned through more than a fortnight of it...
And as if the thought had reached him—
“Ho ho. Has it been three years? A mere three, and yet it feels like a very long time. Dear me. It is a memory now.”
Albert, too, brought that day to his mouth.
“...For me, it’s a nightmare.”
“Ho ho. You do exaggerate.”
“...Does it seem like exaggeration?”
Unlike Albert, who laughed lightly as if turning over an old memory, Lee Han could not smile at all at the words three years ago. It was nothing but a past that heated his face.
“Are you challenging me, as you did then? To defeat Baltar — or to land a blow upon me?”
“...It’s my dark history, so please don’t dig it up. And this isn’t some revenge match, either.”
Simply—
“I told you. A conversation.”
It might sound like an excuse, but a conversation is not something that must always be carried by language alone. Step off on a journey to a foreign land and, the moment words fail, don’t you make your meaning known with the body? Nor is that all. There are times when music, or a painting, or a dance, or a song can hold a conversation. Even a mathematical formula can. In that sense—
“There are cases like this, too.”
And with that, the long-winded excuse — that there is never only one way to converse — was finished.
Well. For the sake of a slightly special conversation...
I’m probably the only moron alive who’d pick a fight with an Aura User.
“Ha ha. Very well. We shall call it that.”
“...I said it’s real.”
“Ha ha.”
A soft thud. For the first time, the man took off his coat.
Three years ago he had toyed with Lee Han without so much as removing it. Not that removing the coat changed much.
He really did take off nothing but the coat.
He was still in a spotless white tie and white gloves, without a speck of dust on them, and the formal waistcoat beneath the coat seemed to exist for no purpose but to mock him. Perhaps he had confirmed where Lee Han’s eyes had gone. Albert spoke.
“That coat is a difficult fabric to launder. Should dust or blood stain it, the matter grows rather troublesome.”
“...For the record, whose blood are we talking about?”
“Let us say no comment.”
“...I feel as if I’ve already been given the answer.”
He made it plain that the urge to toy with him was running rampant. Hard to say which of them was worse at hiding an expression... The difference was this: Lee Han tried to hide his, and got caught anyway, while that gentleman had no intention of hiding anything at all. It was a large difference, and it was as good as a provocation.
See? We’re already talking.
The first step in proving that a conversation can be held through action alone. And as for the provocation he had been handed—
I ought to answer it.
An answer fierce enough to wipe that leisure clean away.
There was no signal they had agreed on. He simply kicked the earth, and he kicked it so hard the ground collapsed, a shockwave like a bomb bursting behind him pouring out in every direction.
A charge that held nothing in it but the will to slam straight into his opponent.
And the usual probing — what had become of that? Enough. He wanted a rebuttal, not to prance about putting on a show the way he had three years ago.
Be direct!
Nothing but force. Lee Han laid bare every ounce of power he could bring to bear, and his body swallowed Albert whole.
A shockwave even greater than the one from his kick shook the earth. A vast cloud of dirt drew a ring and scored the trees and the rock like a wind made of blades. It was not a force a human being ought to have been able to produce by charging, and this alone was overwhelming enough that something creaked under the strain.
“Hm. Have you been eating properly? You seem, somehow, lighter than you used to be.”
“...!”
“Ha ha. Even so, it is a relief. Three years ago, the mere collision was enough to break Sir Lee Han’s bones. The bones are sturdy now.”
“Th-that doesn’t sound like praise...”
“Ahaha! And yet I am quite sincere.”
Lee Han ground his teeth. He poured in enough strength for the veins at his forehead to stand, and still Albert’s body—
Not one... not a single millimeter!
A long, grinding creak. Even with both hands locked around the man’s waist, Albert did not so much as stir. Rather, only Lee Han’s own feet, as he forced the strength, gouged hollows in the ground. His opponent was at his leisure.
Lee Han gave up the contest of strength on the spot, and the moment he decided, he threw a single fist. The posture of a straight punch, from a gap of one centimeter.
A might fit to overturn a mountain.
It stopped dead.
“Your reaction is slow by about two-hundredths of a second. You pour far too much of yourself into setting the stance.”
“......”
“And so it is blocked, this fruitlessly. What does it matter how strong the technique is? Give you no chance to extend it, and that is the end of it.”
“Ha...”
Hundred-Pace Divine Fist had been blocked. He had been parried outright, as if even the chance to throw the punch had been stolen from him. What made it humiliating was that the man could have simply countered and been done.
A smooth slide.
“Try again. Make the motion smaller. Put in only the movement you need.”
“......”
He was even handing the chance back. Kindly.
“......”
There was a rush of air. He did not decline.
Just like that— a crack.
“Ho ho. I tell you to extend a fist, and suddenly you extend a leg.”
It looked like nothing more than a spinning kick, yet it was a technique he trusted to surpass Hundred-Pace Divine Fist in both power and speed. This, too, was blocked.
Even so, there was something a little gratifying in it. A flick.
“Oh dear. My hair has come undone.”
Three years ago, that hair had not so much as stirred. At last he had disturbed it. And so—
“Butler. What’s the secret to hair that thick, past a hundred?”
“The management of one’s meals, and the receiving of little stress.”
“That is... really—”
Difficult.
The impact landed like a falling stone. He had wanted to show something more.
He was changing in real time.
It was not the feeling of someone learning in a flash. A bang, and then a greater one. The knight simply threw a heavy blow. Even when it was blocked he did not give up. He only showed himself as he was — everything the knight of this moment had achieved.
Each time, Albert cut the flow exactly where it needed to be cut, and even as he cut it his eyes widened within. Had any ordinary man forced himself so far, it would have been no wonder if the tendons had snapped, or the bones been ground to powder, long ago...
“Tendons harder than chain, and more elastic than rubber. I can scarcely imagine what manner of training produced them... Ho ho. Remarkable. Truly.”
“Haaaaaaah!!!”
The blow roared out. To come this far in three years.
When I was that age, it would have been beyond imagining...
A dull thud. Contrary to the admiration, he cut the flow again with the edge of his hand — and with the right hand alone.
The knight knew it, and he was not indignant in the least. He only lit his eyes and drove out the whole of his strength, as if worry and helplessness would do nothing but get in the way, as if he meant to pour heart and power into this moment alone.
His Intent...
It was a blow that held a fierce willpower, with not a single thing left out. And that will—
A throb.
...It hurts?
For the first time, something had struck John Ray Albert.
“...Hm.”
How long had it been since he felt a sensation like this? His wrist tingled. He was plainly batting every attack aside before it arrived and halving all of its force, and still strength burrowed in, beginning at the tips of his fingers. It was a smarting like the bite of a venomous ant, or a spider, and he found that smarting marvelous.
How many years — no, how many decades — has it been since I felt pain? Dear me.
But the pain was not unpleasant to him. It was, rather, the sensation of meeting again a welcome and familiar friend.
Which was only natural. He was far too accustomed to pain. One might say he had lived his life in its company.
When I was young, I hurt a great deal. He had been tortured for the span of a month. He had endured half a year locked inside a coffin. He had endured within an iron maiden heated until the metal glowed. Of course he had borne all of it by the grace of the Light — but at the time...
I made far too much of it.
A shameful past, thinking of it now. What had that trifling pain even been, that he had wept and gone mad over it? The folly of youth, perhaps?
I hear the younger generation looks upon such things and calls them romance. Ho ho. And I, too, lived a rather romantic life...
Albert felt a longing. And he thought he understood why Baltar had accepted that knight’s challenges so gladly.
To keep a pleasure like this all to himself...
So it was fortunate. Fortunate that he could feel an enjoyment like this even now — that after decades, he had been given the chance to feel a stimulus like this. A truly precious, rare gift.
Now then. Shall I share this enjoyment?
What use was there in being the only one to enjoy it? That would not be proper.
A low hum rose. For the first time in a truly long while, Albert called upon his aura and drew out one of his old specialties.
The weapon he used best was an awl. And yet, strangely, the weapon others had feared most was something else entirely.
A whip of air — chains.
Chains wrought of aura wound, in the next instant, around the knight’s neck, his wrists, and his ankles.
The links hauled taut with a long, grinding rattle.
Originally an art of execution, one that required four horses and rope. Albert could perform the technique alone.
Crack. Crack. A deeper, splitting crack.
“I was also in the habit of taking the head as well.”
He did not prefer to divide a body in four. He preferred five.