EP.2 — I Am Knight Lee Han
Jord Decker had graduated at the head of the Academy's sword faculty.
Heir to a minor knight house, he held no title worth the name, yet he prided himself that in the sword he yielded to no noble's son. The proof was plain enough. In a faculty packed with talents who fancied themselves the finest, he had taken valedictorian all the same, and so he carried a pride in swordsmanship to match—and a belief that even in the kingdom's greatest order, the Silver Lion Knight Order, he could rise to the very top.
Plenty of seniors who aren't easy. None of them are beyond me, though. Five years—no. Two. I'll surpass every last one of them.
Bent hard toward advancement, Jord's immediate goal was to climb as far as vice-captain of the order he had joined. For the record, of the three orders that made up the Silver Lions, his was the 3rd.
An order whose captain was an Aura User.
He had wanted to aim for the captaincy itself, but he was not fool enough to chase that seat in a place where one of the kingdom's mere three Superhumans already held it. So the mark he set was vice-captain, and to become vice-captain he had to seize a chance to catch the captain's eye.
Senior Rihan...
What happened to fall into his sights was a senior knight whose name was either Rihan or Lee Han. Word had it he was a common soldier who had caught the captain's notice and been made a knight, and that even inside the order he was reckoned an oddity. Jord himself had found the talk strange, the first time he heard it. They said the man had not even learned the basic Fighting Art.
The wall between one who had mastered Fighting Art and one who had not was the difference between a cat and a lion.
Of course, if he's still in the order, he has skill. I won't drop my guard.
He bore the man no grudge. Jord was knight-born himself, and still minor—no proper title, no land. He was in no place to look down on anyone, and if anything he pitied Rihan. But pity was only pity. Jord meant to use him as the signal flare for his own rise.
Do not call me heartless, Senior.
He did not think the man easy. Even so, he was confident he would not lose.
—It took him less than five minutes to learn that the confidence was arrogance.
"Haaah! Haaah...!"
"Hang in there a little longer. I haven't even warmed up yet."
"Haaah—khak!"
"...Your stamina's garbage."
His opponent was toying with him.
Jake and the other knights were all fixed on the duel the newcomer had framed as a spar with Lee Han, and not one of them failed to click his tongue.
Ruthless bastard.
He's toying with the man completely.
...Same as ever.
Steel rang—tak, tat-tat-tat—and as at the start, it was Jord who charged. Built on swift-sword and laced with phantom-sword, his blade was fast and endlessly shifting. It was a dazzling art, the kind that could steal a man's eyes, and more than a few knights frowned, unable to see any road by which they would stop that sword. Skill worthy of the sword faculty's valedictorian, sure enough. Had he not come from a minor house, it would have been more than enough to hold its own not in the 3rd Order, but in the 1st or the 2nd.
...But today his opponent was the wrong one. Against anyone else he might have shown a fine result, or at least cut an impressive figure.
He's batting every last one of those aside.
Lee Han showed nothing but defense, blocking or slipping every dazzling stroke of Jord's sword. He never countered, only received, and a watcher could almost suspect he was being pushed back. Almost. Five minutes, and not one clean hit had landed. The attacker poured sweat; the man who stopped him showed not a drop, not a shade of fatigue, and did not yield a step even inside that desperate storm. This was already no different from toying with him.
"Hoh. That's some sword work. What's that style called?"
"Hah! Haaah!"
"Mm. Right, don't answer. You'll choke."
"Khh—!"
To an outsider the tone sounded like mockery, but the knights of the order knew better. The praise was sincere. That was what made it humiliating.
That's why he still sets my teeth on edge.
Anyone who had been on the receiving end of Lee Han knew. He was not some genius who simply read a sword art and dismantled it, nor a master who crushed opponents with experience and seasoned skill. He simply watched, closely, and blocked. Or he reacted, and blocked. Absurd as it was, Lee Han did nothing but follow his opponent's weapon all the way through and stop it. Wherever it came from, whatever change it made, he watched it to the end and blocked it well.
Any swordsman—any martial artist—would have found the claim ridiculous. Everyone knew that a sword, a spear, or an arrow could be stopped if you stopped it well. That much was obvious. What they also knew was how brutally hard it was to actually watch the thing, evade it, and block it. Anyone who asked what was so difficult about blocking without knowing was either a soft-handed scholar who had never once gripped a sword, or a moron who only knew how to run his mouth. What Lee Han was doing sat at that level: a circus act, or a strongman's show. Simple, and yet he was doing something that ought to have been impossible. To manage a thing like that, a man had to move his body exactly as his mind commanded, with perfect freedom.
Which was why—
"Honestly. Of all people to charge, why that one, and eat a humiliation like that."
Jake shook his head, pitying the rookie.
Breath tore out of Jord in maddening gasps, and his mind grew hazier by the moment. He wanted nothing more than to drop where he stood, dirt or no dirt, and with every passing second he felt closer to coming apart.
Wh-what is this man?!
Impressive? Seasoned? Skilled? He was none of those. Not a kind Jord had seen even once in the sword faculty. Just—
Strong. Just strong...!
Simply strong. His technique was nothing extraordinary, and there was no sense that he had learned some special sword art. And yet he was strong.
"Hiiyah!"
Jord hurled himself forward like a man lashing out, and the Phantom Eight-Sword Form opened.
A form of the phantom-sword school. Countless shifts of wrist and foot make a single blade seem like many, and at the form's end the illusion spreads past the sword, until even the body appears multiplied.
But now none of that dazzling, subtle change worked at all. Look at him even now. Movements no one should have been able to answer, and Lee Han was watching them all the way through!
His eyes—they stay on me!
He might have lost him once. He should have. And yet those eyes held Jord, contained him, to the very end. Not the sword alone. The whole body, followed through, the next motion read, the sword-path stopped.
The blades met with a heavy crack. And it was not as if Jord's sword lacked power. Having learned Fighting Art, his body was the equal of ten soldiers gathered as one. Even that strength was blocked outright, without a tremor, without a sign of strain. Lee Han simply received it in silence, and cast a look that said he found it interesting.
For an instant, Jord felt his spirit about to fold. A despair he had never felt even before his father came over him. The helplessness of twenty years of swordsmanship—no, of effort—being denied all at once. It crushed him.
Then—
"—Aren't you being way too sloppy?"
"...Pardon?"
"I said, aren't you half-assing this? Didn't you challenge me to a spar because you wanted to win?"
"Wh-what are you—?!"
A rebuke like a thorn, driven clean through him. Jord had no chance to school his face before the thorns kept coming.
"I'm right, aren't I? You heard the talk. There's a knight in the 3rd Order, soldier-born, who never even learned Fighting Art. You figured a man like that, you could take him somehow."
"...Th-that's..."
"Ah, I'm not chewing you out for it. So quit making that stabbed-in-the-gut face. Here's what I'm saying. About a minute into this, you felt it. 'Huh? This bastard isn't easy.' —Am I wrong?"
"......"
He was exactly right. Those who knew, knew. A minute into a spar—no, the instant fist or sword first met, probing the way a man tests an edge—the feeling came. Whether this opponent was strong, or whether he was easy. The moment Jord's sword first met his, he had felt the weight of a great rock, and understood that he had been wrong. This man was not easy at all. He was a fighter of real skill.
"Good. You know. That's something. But tell me. Does a man who knows act like that?"
"...I do not understand what you are saying, Senior."
"Kid, you're not hearing me."
"......"
"So why do you keep bunny-hopping around, feeling sorry for yourself all alone?"
It landed like a blow across the back of the head. Jord's face went numb, and the shock to his mind was that heavy. He could not muster even a scrap of argument. The words were that exact.
Yes. Just as the man had said, Jord had known his opponent was far stronger, and still he had not gone all out, had not steeled himself for a single killing blow. He had only kept running, even though the other man was not tired and did not find him threatening in the least. What washed over him then was a different kind of shame. He had known he faced a strong man, and still, out of arrogance—no, out of stupidity—he had played the fool. He was pathetic. Before despair, he should simply have crashed into him with everything he had. At least then he might have felt clean.
"...I have shown you a foolish sight."
"Still, worth the explanation. Good thing you're not a complete idiot."
"Yes, Senior."
Jord answered, and set the point of his sword dead ahead. He was grateful. An arrogant fool, a man drowning alone in despair, had been handed a great realization. And so—
A deep hum rose. Blade and body shivered as one.
"Ooh."
He let out a sound of admiration. No—every knight watching did, eyes going wide. Jord's body and his sword both trembled, as if the two had fallen into resonance. It was only a sparring blade, its edge unhoned, and yet in this moment it seemed keen as a whetted edge.
The resonance that rises when a swordsman's wavelength matches his blade. A sword-qi that only a bare handful, even among the gifted, can ever call forth.
A blade under Sword Cry climbs to the extreme of its own destructive power, and there are cases where it fells an opponent of greater skill. For a swordsman, a strike no different from a killing blow.
And now Jord, senses hauled up to their limit, brought Sword Cry forth and extended his sword. Stamina, spirit, whatever came after—he cast all of it aside. Only one thought remained. He would cut this man.
The blade tore the air. Of everything Jord had shown that day, this was the greatest speed, and in the blink of an eye it reached the tip of Lee Han's nose. Swift-sword at its extreme. Phantom-sword discarded, a change-up of a blow, meant to settle everything on speed alone.
And then—
"Yeah. Not bad."
Lee Han had still followed Jord's movement all the way to its end, and with a smile on his lips, he swung. Hard.
The impact detonated. In the next instant, a man went flying.
"...Cruel bastard."
They saw it. The astonishing newcomer who had even called forth Sword Cry, who had seemed, for once, about to finish in splendid form, and yet—
"...Cough."
—the sight of him broken without a shred of mercy. Jord skipped across the ground three times, a stone flung to skip on water, slammed into the wall, shuddered, and fainted.
And the man who had skipped a person across the yard—
"Hoo. That felt good."
wore a look of pure refreshment, and smiled wide.