Episode 18 — Ghoul versus Ghoul? (3)

Everyone knew it, of course. On the last day of the term evaluation, the ones the crowd came to see had never been the first-years.

They came for the second- and third-years—warriors who had honed their Fighting Art in earnest and pushed what they could do to its limit. It was only natural that people would pack the stands to watch them.

Which was why, year after year, the first-year evaluation drew a rather thin audience. The feeling in the air was simple enough. Why waste the time watching a pack of them put on a miserable fight?

Today, though, a considerable crowd had gathered, and far from thinning, it kept on growing. Ordinary citizens made up much of the number, but the share of nobles was nothing one could dismiss. What purpose could have drawn so many?

"...He's coming."

"That boy? Well now—he's a finer-looking man than the rumors."

"Young Master Roen!!"

"Glory to the valiant lion—!"

Yes. All these people had gathered for no reason but to see one man's face, and to howl one name.

Guardian of the North. The glorious Black Lion. Eternal comrade-in-arms and ally of the kingdom. Upon the lion this age awaited most, they cried out with a single voice, praying he would fight a duel holy enough to be worthy of that great blood.

Expectation, cheers, yearning. Intangible things like these came pouring down as momentum, enough to dizzy anyone else made to stand in the middle of them.

The black-haired man at the center of the Academy Colosseum did not sway. Roen looked only at the enemy he was meant to face, his gaze so steady it stung.

"Seems I've turned into a clown."

He let the words out to no one, and a low scoff with them. He wasn't particularly pleased. Putting one's skill on display before a crowd like this was hardly a wise thing to do.

And yet.

...The day before yesterday, his master had appeared looking haggard and worn, gathered every student, and spoken as if to encourage them. If they were going to do it, they ought to do it properly; and if they could manage it, they ought not to get hurt, and to spare their bodies.

A strange thing to say. Give it your all, but don't get hurt? Did that mean he cared for them so much?

Roen, though, could not shake the feeling that the warning about injury had been meant for the other students, and that the earlier word—best—had been aimed at him. As if the man had seen straight through what he meant to do.

I wasn't going to take part at all.

He had been full of the will to forfeit. What was the point of playing along with a game like this? And yet here he stood. Well. How was a debtor supposed to refuse an order?

I don't know if this will be enough to settle the debt from that day. But I will make sure ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠you can see it.

My best.

"Grrrr—!"

Roen let the well-honed longsword sink, slowly. He did not take a stance. His body only seemed to go slack, loose as a man who had ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠given up on form. To some it might have looked like a joke. Those with an eye for it stared, wide-eyed—because even in that sway, there was no opening.

"Know that this end is far too good for the likes of you, loathsome monster."

"Grr?"

The Rock Troll had no reason in it, and it did not understand a word of what Roen meant. It possessed only the instinct to hit, and to smash. So it charged the man who had not even set himself to dodge—a blind rush, the same as when it had fought Barry a moment before.

Even so.

"Why isn't he moving?"

"H-hey—!?"

The crowd panicked. The monster had come nearly to his nose, and still he took no posture of defense, nor of attack. Just before they could cry out—

"Sword Ki. That's what I named it."

"Grr—...r...."

A crunch, and then a deeper one, as if something thick were being split. The Rock Troll never managed a true death-cry. It simply stopped, and the body came down with a heavy boom—a sight as empty as it was dreamlike.

"What—?!"

To the people watching, there was only the sense that something had passed them by. Five seconds of silence had to break before they found it: the Rock Troll, head and heart and belly pierced with exactness. Three wounds, and not one of them could have said when the blade went in.

Silence nearly settled over them again. What followed was more astonishing still.

"Wh-what is that?"

"...My God."

"......"

"Wh-what was that just now? Was that Aura?!"

"An Aura User at that age, genius or not!?"

"N-no. It isn't Aura. It isn't Aura, but then what in the world is it...?"

The crowd's reaction fell into three kinds.

There were those who never understood how he had won, and simply marveled. Those with some eye for the sword seemed thrown into outright confusion, unable to grasp what that power—so like the Aura they thought they had just witnessed—could possibly have been.

And then there was the last kind.

"He folded manifested momentum into Sword Resonance."

"It isn't only that he mixed two arts. The Swift Sword, the Shifting Sword, and even the Phantom Sword all seem folded in. And he plugged the gaps with Gyeong. ...That he handles a technique like that so freely leaves a bitter taste. I couldn't do it."

"Geomdung is strong. Seriously strong!"

A truly tiny few—swordsmen of real talent—recognized what he had done. Those who could call themselves skilled came, little by little, to understand the Sword Ki Roen had unleashed.

Sword Resonance: the resonance of sword and swordsman, by which the destructive force of a cut is driven to its limit. And the Materialization of Momentum, an art that only a master of the Fighting Art can perform. Manifest both at once, then in a single instant load the blade with three forms—Swift Sword, Shifting Sword, and Phantom Sword—and let them fly.

Put that way, it almost sounded simple. It was an absurd technique.

Sword Resonance and the Materialization of Momentum each demanded a fearsome concentration on their own. And then, on top of that, to take Gyeong as an aid and unfold three sword-forms in a single breath—!

It was no different from writing two different texts at once, one with each hand, while playing the harmonica.

And what does that mean? It means he did the impossible. This was a field that effort and passion could not touch: a domain of pure talent, a realm seen from a perspective wholly new, and wholly apart from Sword Resonance.

"Th-that's the genius who opened a new horizon in the Fighting Art...."

"And he's younger than we are, even like that?"

"Damn it! God damn it!"

Watching what he could do, the second- and third-year students fell into despair.

They had heard the rumors well enough. Honestly, they had taken them for lies cooked up in the North, and thought a serious duel would be more than enough to hang a thorough humiliation on him. It wasn't, was it?

They could not yet even bring forth Sword Resonance. They weren't qualified. The gap was the gap between a three-year-old and a grown man—and their opponent had already stepped past Sword Resonance and the Materialization of Momentum, and mastered an art in which the two could exist together.

A distance that a lifetime of devotion could never close. It felt like a life given over to the sword and the Fighting Art was being denied outright, and once their drive snapped, despair came down on them.

"...Kh."

Sometimes, those who look upon a talent too great simply have their hearts broken.

...And yet.

"I-it is amazing, I suppose."

"But it's kind of hard to say?"

"Right...?"

Unlike the seniors sunk in despair with their hearts snapped, this year's new students—the first-years who had been ground down, and ground down again, under Lee Han—only turned a look that was hard to read.

"It's just Fighting Art doing what Fighting Art does."

This was not the verdict of people ignorant of the sword, nor of a realm too low to see. How to put it. Sword Ki that seemed to pour out light was, without question, a tremendous technique—and yet somehow it looked normal.

And no wonder.

"The Hundred-Pace Divine Fist is more amazing than that, honestly."

Striking a thing dozens of paces off.

"I'd rather rate Diamond Body higher. If it were the Instructor, don't you think he'd be fine even taking that Sword Ki straight on?"

"No, senior brother. The way I see it, wouldn't he dodge it with Divine Bow, Elastic Shadow?"

Blades and arrows that refused to lodge in the skin. A body moving faster than an arrow.

"No, Lion's Roar would end it, wouldn't it? If it were the Grand Master, one shout might even wipe Sword Ki away."

"...I want to deny it. Why does it feel like that man actually could?"

They had simply been shown too many arts that stood outside humankind.

The first-years. Even the young nobles appraised Roen's ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠technique as nothing more than a flashy art, and met it with a lukewarm eye.

"The Instructor is more amazing."

To be startled by that, the things their instructor had shown them were more shocking, more inventive, and more grotesque by far. They had been under his teaching for less than three months, and already the whole of the first-year sword faculty had let its standards climb far too high.

"...Cold, you lot. His lordship went to the trouble of showing it, and tch."

That art was the very reason his lord, Roen, had come to be called a prime heir of the North, and yet so many of them looked oddly unmoved. Even Sir Maximus had stared wide-eyed at the Sword Ki. It was unbelievable.

And yet.

I was certainly shocked the first time I saw it. Now it's just... that.

Finding himself in agreement with their verdict, Jack was dumbfounded in a different sense. Perhaps it was because he had seen so many unbelievable sights while being ground down under that man. The judgment that occurred to him then was this.

If our lord is a genius, then that man is, well. That.

......As if a beast—an elephant, say, or a tiger—had by some accident come into human wisdom, read books, published a thesis, and walked off with a doctorate?

You would call it madness. And yet his classmates in the first year would likely all nod as one: yes, that's exactly it.

And so.

My lord, I'm sorry to say it, but set beside an elephant with a doctorate, you appear to be an ordinary mortal.

Jack could only look with pity on his lord, who had had the misfortune of being born into the wrong age.

And the genius ordinary mortal (?), meeting that pitying gaze—

"...What?"

Why are they reacting like this?

A sulk he couldn't account for came over him.

Meanwhile, there was a girl secretly cheering as she watched him—or, more precisely, as she watched her classmates in the first year.

"They're all incredible. If I were standing somewhere with this many people, I don't think I could even move."

"You really can't handle people looking at you, Arin."

Irene Windler. She had cast a spell that hindered perception, and under its cover she was secretly watching the evaluation from the Colosseum. She had come in part to cheer, since she had no shortage of close acquaintances—but more than that.

"The Instructor isn't here...."

"He looked awfully tired when we saw him the day before yesterday. Do you think he's all right?"

She had hoped she might see him. Unfortunately, he was nowhere to be seen today either. Today made it the tenth day.

The girl and the ghost worried over the knight. After he had gone about with her the other day, his expression had been somehow set and hard. Then he had vanished outright, calling it a period of intensive training, so that even she—his neighbor, a house away—could not meet him. And yesterday, hearing that he was home, she had gone, only to be told:

"The knight? I'm sorry. Tired as he is, he's done nothing but sleep all day. Even when he gets up, he just eats and goes back to sleep. I want to wake him, but I can't...."

...So the maid had said.

She could only wonder whether he was avoiding her because she was an inconvenience. In her heart of hearts, she wanted to live with him, the way the maid did....

Don't you dare say something weird!

"Why? I only said what was true."

You—!

The ghost girl had whispered it at her ear and let something strange slip, and Irene flared. Living with him—surely that was still a little soon....

"Th-that was you again, wasn't it?!"

"What was?"

The ghost only shrugged, as if to say she hadn't spoken a word this time.

"Nngh—!"

Irene Windler's face cooked itself a bright red for no good reason at all, and she was on the point of shouting again when—

A tap.

"...Rain?"

"Whoa. When did the sky fill in with clouds like that?"

Thunder rolled.

The sky, clear only a moment before, had at some point been painted black, storm clouds packing across it as if brushed on. The air promised a downpour, and Irene blinked.

"What's wrong, Arin?"

"...Those clouds are strange."

"Huh?"

Irene did not answer.

Irene Windler was a scatterbrained girl who made no shortage of mistakes and was lazy besides, but in magical gift she was an outstanding mage, and among those her age there was no one to set beside her. She was a mage attuned to wind and to water, and her mana felt, at once, something alien in those storm clouds made of vapor.

They weren't formed naturally. What are they...?

She studied the clouds, wanting to know what they were, and at a certain moment—

"Hhk—!?"

"Arin?"

She could not hide her shock.

N-no. I saw it wrong, didn't I?

She was a girl denying what stood in front of her. But how is one to deny a ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠fact already understood? Before long she had to admit it, her face gone pale.

Those storm clouds....