EP.2 — I Am Knight Lee Han

The foul mood that had been sitting on him melted clean away before he noticed.

It was not only that he had finally met a new opponent. Whatever that Sword Resonance at the end had been, it had left an impression of its own, and he had broken the man ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠who used it properly. Of course his chest felt clear.

Anyone watching might have called his character filthy and mean-spirited. Even so—

They're not wrong.

Lee Han admitted it with all due humility. His temper was more twisted than most, and mean-spirited was the right word for him. That did not mean he was the sort who took pleasure in looking down on other people. His meanness only went far enough to give him a small thrill when he smashed the detestable bastards who insisted, with their whole bodies, that they were strong.

A reasonably rewarding moment.

I wasn't always like this.

Lee Han had never been a man who enjoyed a fight. But he had been reborn into a medieval fantasy world and lived there thirty years—and not merely lived, but lived while seeing every filthy sight there was to see. A nature like that was bound to change. On top of it, for the past three years he had spent every single day getting beaten by that old man of a captain.

Honestly, how could he help but hunger for victory?

"Did I go a little too far?"

"Ah—no, sir. If anything, thank you for holding back."

"I did ease off. Put any more into it and we'd have been burying a corpse. Heh heh."

"…Haha."

Lee Han said it in the tone of a joke, patting the shoulder beside him. To the man listening, it was the sort of talk that turned the guts to ice.

Jord. His body had skipped across the dirt like a stone over water and slammed into the wall, and yet, by some mercy, he had taken only a few bruises. No grave wound showed. Part of that was because Jord was a swordsman who had learned Fighting Art. The rest, just as Lee Han had said, was that the blow had been held back. He was whole because of it.

That was a monstrous strike.

Even now Jord's body shook. When he had sent out the blade that awakened Sword Resonance, he had still held on to a hope: he might not win, but he could at least land one solid hit. Then, as if to prove that hope a delusion, the man had swung again into a guard, and in the instant their blades met—

I don't remember.

Yes. He remembered the edges meeting. Past that, nothing. He had simply flown, and his mind had gone with him, flickering out like a blown fuse. What the body remembered on instinct was only this: the blow had been terribly heavy, and terribly strong, and terribly fast.

He didn't have to throw me. He could have cut me clean in two.

Senior Rihan still showed no corner of fatigue. Ease poured off him. Jord admitted, deep in his chest, that his own sword had been broken past saving, and a bitter smile crossed his face. He had believed that, short of an Aura User, he could bring anyone to their knees.

The world is wide.

The young genius swordsman tasted the bitterness of the first defeat of his life, and his face drew tight with the sting of it.

After the spar between Lee Han and Jord, people did not hesitate to come up to Jord with admiration on their faces and goodwill freely offered. The sight of him raising Sword Resonance must have impressed them. Where was his house from? What school? What was his master's name? They had so much they wanted to ask that they looked exactly like senior soldiers in an army.

Not in a good way.

"The army's the army, no matter where you go."

"Don't look at it so darkly. House, school, whether a man has a master—those things matter to nobles."

"Right. So a commoner with no house and no school ought to step aside. Yes, sir."

"…I didn't put it like that."

"Just figure I'm a twisted bastard and leave it."

"You're sneering on purpose…."

Jake shook his head. He knew that self-deprecation pitched like that, sarcasm thrown so the whole room could hear, was bait meant to draw the first lunge. Of course everyone recognized the ploy and refused to touch it; more often they simply got out of the way. Among the newcomers there were still a few who might have bitten. After watching the spar with Jord, though, no one here had the guts to challenge him.

"You've loosened up well enough, haven't you? So ease off."

"Half-warmed up just makes me itch worse. Tch."

"…Don't look at me like that. I am absolutely not sparring you."

Jake edged back, slipping out from under the stare of a man who looked like a fighting dog. Catch him wrong and there would be no body left. Avoidance was the only wise course. Refusing a spar offered by a fellow knight was poor manners, but manners had to be measured against the man across from you. Fighting a mad beast was not something one did.

…If barbarian warriors really exist, is this what one looks like?

Barbarians: ancient tribes who lived in the deserts, and in the temples of the deep jungle. Born warriors, they were said to hone skill and strength inside real battle—a pigheaded method, not the ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠kindness of learning from a teacher's hand. And yet those barbarian warriors, tempered by that pigheaded way, were said to be stronger than any knight in the kingdom.

No matter how I turn it over, he's the same.

A strange man who had learned from no one, who carried nothing but the most basic swordsmanship and ground out strength and technique by fighting everyone else. The method was plainly crude, and still not one man in the knight order could overwhelm him. It could only be the way of a barbarian warrior.

"Lee Han, the barbarian warrior."

"Is that an insult or a compliment?"

"Both."

"…I can't tell whether I ought to be pleased or offended."

Even Lee Han himself could not quite bring himself to deny the words. He knew well enough what was packed inside them.

And he was sour about it.

"Remarkable talent, as expected."

"Yeah. How is something like that even possible?"

"I wouldn't even dare try to copy it."

"…Or maybe he's just stupidly strong."

"And isn't that impressive in its own right?"

The knights of the company weighed the spar and turned on Lee Han looks thick with admiration and envy. They were members of the same company, and rivals at the same time. Among them Lee Han did more than stand out. He jutted like a rock, a massive wall, and a convenient public enemy for the rest of them.

As for Lee Han, rival or otherwise, getting ahead did not interest him in the slightest.

Talent, though. Is that how it looks to these guys?

Lee Han found it absurd, and the smile he gave was bitter.

Talent.

How nice it would have been, if he had had any.

Would things be easier than they are now?

If he had to put a finger on it, Lee Han's talent sat a little above average. Take grades. Three hundred students sit a mathematics exam, and the average comes out at a neat ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠sixty. Lee Han would be that sixty with ten added on: a seventy. A little better than the mean—the sort of talent where careful notes in class get you a passable score. Heard that way, it sounded respectable enough. In truth, talent of that grade was not supposed to make a knight.

A knight's talent could not stop at a little above average. At the least it had to be the kind that drifted through class and still landed comfortably inside the top ten of the school: the ones who seemed to do nothing but play and sleep, who barely tried, and somehow still scored well. Prodigies, or gifted minds at minimum. That was why there was not a man in the knight order who had never been called a prodigy. Even the nobles over there, swaggering on the strength of their blood, might have had backing—but they had also received a proper prodigy's education, and they possessed talent fit for a knight.

Lee Han did not. As he had already admitted to himself, his talent was only a little better than average. What he had in its place was a peculiar constitution, a so-called special trait. He did not have their talent. He had a function.

He did not know Fighting Art. He had no gift for the likes of watching a technique once and becoming a master of it. What let him beat them was a function bolted onto the body.

The old man said as much.

As if the man truly thought of a person as a machine. And yet the advice had helped, and it was also the reason that, for the past three years, Lee Han had picked fights with knights nearly every day. He had followed the old man's counsel, fought every sort of human being there was, and succeeded in gauging by instinct how the creatures called knights ought to be handled. He still did not know in what shapes their swordsmanship unfolded. What he could judge on instinct was how his own body had to move. If the head could ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠not remember, he would make the body remember.

Funny, that.

…Am I not a person at all? Something closer to a machine?

Of course he was not truly a machine. The sweat he had poured out, and the effort, were no lie. Only it was clear that he sweated in a different direction from other men.

Get stronger, and that's enough.

He was not some seeker hungering after the martial way. If a name had to be put to it, Jake had already said it.

A barbarian warrior's mind. That fits.

Winning was enough. Growth, enlightenment—those were things he did not know, and things his hand would never reach. And this version of himself—

isn't bad.

He thought it perfectly fine. At the very least, he would not be going around getting beaten.