A Knight Teaches (2)

"All right. This is how it's done."

Lee Han took up the short sword and swung, easy as breathing. Shrrk. At the tip of the blade, petals opened in full bloom.

The students stared, struck dumb, eyes going round at the beauty of them. They had already made certain it was no magic weapon, only an ordinary dagger, and still the petals spread. It was a moment of magic straight out of a fairy tale.

The chicks' eyes grew dewy, like girls lost in a storybook. The bear and the young masters felt the heroic hearts of their childhood stir awake, remembering the lays of knightly deeds that minstrels used to tell whenever they passed through a domain or a village. To scatter petals from a sword was one thing. To use them as a means of attack...

Was that not precisely the art the knights of those lays would have shown?

The petals touched the dirt with a soft rustle and melted like snowflakes. What they left behind, though, was the ground itself, hollowed in the exact shape of every petal. Lovely, yes—and proof that the power in them was nothing to dismiss.

Boys and girls watched the Plum ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠Blossom Sword with longing bright in their eyes.

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

"It's beautiful...!"

"P-please, show us again!"

They cried for an encore.

"...Think you could stop?"

It was the tenth encore, and Lee Han was wearing thin. It might look effortless, but the stamina it burned was vicious. An audience, however, never much cares how hard the clown is working.

"J-just one more time, okay? Please..."

"...Hn."

He could not make himself into the sort of cold adult who refused chicks on the verge of tears.

"Aigoo. What a fate."

A clown against his will, Lee Han bloomed plum blossoms from the sword once more.

Take this to the street and I might actually make a killing.

Quite without meaning to, he was flowering a talent for a very tidy profit.

There was a reason Lee Han was playing the clown.

"I-Instructor, c-could you teach us that technique?"

His disciples longed for the Plum Blossom Sword. Even the elite brats who had sworn that Fighting Art alone would be enough were quietly letting their greed for it show. The sword art had to be that bewitching.

Well. Blooming plum blossoms off a blade is hard to resist.

Flowers from a sword, and an attack made of them besides? It was a sword art that had gathered up every kind of cool there was. No wonder, in his previous life, the disciples of Mount Hua so often ended up as the protagonists.

...But.

"Sorry. I still can't teach this."

It was not the thing he had joked about, a martial art with no roots. The real trouble was that the technique was still unfinished, and so it could not be taught. An incomplete art. The manner of its use was one matter. More than that, the Plum Blossom Sword was an original technique he had grasped through nothing but his own peculiar senses and instinct. He had not even had time to set it down as theory, and what little he had was still hopelessly crude.

And there was this.

"Use it, and it drinks my energy dry."

If the Sword Ki Roen had shown the day before was a work of art—techniques compounded until the genius in them shone—then Lee Han's was simply sword-power, spent without restraint and paid for with the vigor of his whole body and with the sword itself. Disposable, in a word. Disposable, and the risk was no small thing, for using that sword-power came with the premise that the sword would be lost, without fail.

How absurd it was to lose one's weapon on a battlefield hardly needed explaining; his mouth hurt at the thought of it. Nor did it end there. A crushing fatigue followed after.

If I'm in this shape, there's no way they could take it.

Even he, with stamina some ten times an ordinary knight's, found it this heavy. Let them use it, and there was no telling what harm their bodies would suffer. Fainting would be the lucky end. The danger to their lives would be great. He was not a stingy teacher as a rule, but this once he had no choice but to refuse. He gave them reasons that were ample and fair, and the students understood. Even so.

"Th-then! Couldn't we at least watch it, just once?"

"W-we want to see it!"

Did every world have some notion of living through another person? They could not learn the Plum Blossom Sword yet, but the wish to see it smoked in them, and Lee Han could not refuse kids he had grown fond of.

Maybe that old man was right. Maybe I really am too soft.

And so the demonstration of the Plum Blossom Sword unfolded. He did not unleash it at full strength, not as he had against the Ghost King, so the dagger did not shatter at once, and he did not burn through every last scrap of energy in his body. Unexpectedly, it served as practice. By about the eighth showing, he could bloom the flowers with nothing more than a light motion of the hand.

Maturity had its price.

"Aigoo, I'm dying..."

"I-Instructor, are you all right?! Here, please have some water and something to eat!"

"...Thanks."

Spent at last, Lee Han lay in the grass, recovering on the drinks and sandwiches Irene Windler pressed into his hands. Watching him, she rounded on the others.

"You—! What do you think you're doing! He already suffered so much yesterday, and now you're putting him through this!"

"Th-that's..."

"Don't make excuses!"

"...I haven't even made an excuse yet."

The girl was angry as fire, and the students could only duck their heads and read her mood. Strictly speaking, it had come to this because Lee Han himself had gotten carried away and treated the show as training. To a girl blinded by her feelings, the other students were villains and nothing else. She growled, and their spirits died where they stood.

On an ordinary day, Irene Windler's growling was no fiercer than a Pomeranian's, and just as cute. Today was different.

How do you talk back to someone who starts natural disasters with magic?

That spell was monstrous.

Do not touch her temper. Touch it, and our domain gets smashed flat.

Had they not seen it? The girl they had written off as a complete physical wreck had taken hold of an entire lake with magic, then twisted a gust besides and raised a waterspout—a spell that lifted the hair on their arms. Small as that waterspout was, it carried force enough to sweep away a modest domain. Talk back to her with that in mind, and you were doing something you must never do.

Familiarity had made them careless, that was all. Irene Windler, just like Roen, was a monster fit to be called a genius beyond every standard. They were realizing it all over again.

"Don't bite the kids too hard. Halfway through I got excited and started throwing sword force around myself."

"Hnn..."

He settled that monstrous girl the way a handler gentles a temper, and pushed himself up from the grass. His face was still worn. Even so, an instructor had work ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠to do.

"You've watched until you're sick of it, haven't you?"

"......"

"I'm not chewing you out. I'm asking. What you thought, seeing this sword art."

"Mmm."

Only then did the students understand that he had no mind to scold them, that the question was in earnest, and they fell into thought. Why ask such a thing? They could not say. They did know he never asked without a reason, and so they considered it seriously.

It was not long before the blue-haired girl, foremost of the honor students, raised her hand.

"...I-I thought it was a technique with a great many openings. Sword force spreading like petals is certainly threatening, but it isn't as if there's no way to dodge or to defend. Ah, of course I don't mean someone at my level could manage it. Only if it were Lord Arno, or Lord Kunta, or Lord Garand, or Young Master Roen..."

Her gaze moved across them, and the four answered with the itchy look of people unused to the honorifics being pinned to their names.

"Just Kunta is fine. And Bear-Girl is right. It can be blocked. But an arm or a leg, somewhere, has to be given up."

"Speak freely, my lady. ...If I may answer as well, I believe I could evade it. The openings were certainly many."

"Embarrassing as anything.... Ahem. Same as the others, I could stand against it. That's true enough. Against monsters, though, I'd say it's a properly fearsome means."

"Likewise."

The students blinked. They had thought it nothing but flash and power, but hearing it put this way, it felt somehow...

"That's what I told you. It has no foundation."

It did not feel like a particularly strong technique. Lee Han had not been talking the Plum Blossom Sword down for nothing, and he had not played the clown for nothing. He had wanted them to see it plain. It would work on monsters of bottomless stupidity. Against people, it was an awkward art at best—flashy, and for now a terrible bargain for the cost.

This was not a lesson meant only for the students. The battle had made him feel it: he needed to recognize just how lacking a man he was. If he had trained a sword art like Baltar's, one that could take a monster's head in a single stroke, how might the ending have changed? He probably would not have lost in a defeat that empty.

I trusted raw power too much. That's why.

The time had come, he thought, to stop believing only in what his body could do and to dig deeper into what he already held. The basics were the basics, but the mastery of his techniques had to rise.

All of them had to be trained deeply, until what rose was not raw power but completeness of technique. And once that was done—

Then, Ghost King or whatever else comes, I'll kill it with my own hands.

It was a resolve not to leave the deciding of his fate in someone else's hands. He hoped his disciples would not commit his folly of putting off what mattered, and in his own fashion he passed on the teaching he held most important.

Meanwhile Derek, who had somehow been reduced to a bundle left sitting in the corner, was sighing.

How did I end up here...

He was not the athletic-club type. So why was he standing at the final boss of this world's jock division?

Is this what a debtor's life looks like?

"If you're going to pay a debt, pay it with your body. Otherwise, pay it with information."

With those words, the man had forced him into the swordsmanship faculty. Derek was endlessly at a loss, but he had done the man a wrong, and so even ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠an unreasonable demand had to be borne. Still, it was not only the debt that kept him at Lee Han's side.

I have to move on my own, too.

Had this incident not taught him as much? He could not remain a bystander forever, and he must not wait to be saved the way he had this time. Better to stand where a man he could trust was standing, where the leads had gathered. If something happened, at least he would be able to answer it. Coming to the swordsmanship faculty was not merely repayment. It was no small resolve to move first.

And yet, looking properly...

N-now that I look, it's nothing but Named gathered here?

Derek realized that every person assembled in the swordsmanship faculty was Named-class. The barbarian, the blood of the Sword Duke, the disciple of the Mercenary King—figures who might become the finest of allies, or enemies. In the original, they were also the ones meant to distinguish themselves in a certain scenario.

...As things stood now.

The villainess doesn't even seem like a villainess anymore.

Where the route had snagged, he could not say. The villainess was as good as gone, and he no longer knew what sort of people the other important side roles would become.

The Grand Duke of the North, and the villainess too...

A reality already turned a full half-circle from everything he knew. Derek's head was beginning to ache, but he made himself set it aside. He did not know what butterfly's wing had turned the man who should have become Grand Duke of the North into an academy student, or the villainess into a girl this innocent. One thing, even so, was clear.

If you give it everything, fate can be overturned.

Just as that man had shown. ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠A revolt against destiny, carried out by a Hero Class he had never so much as heard of. Having seen it, Derek resolved that he would no longer treat this world as nothing but a game. What mattered now was the wise road: use the information he knew, but use it properly, and not be swept along by it.

For instance.

His gaze slid.

...Whether I ought to stop the misfortune of someone who will be a great power someday. Or whether I ought to leave it be. I'll have to decide.

Derek's eyes came to rest on a girl whose blue hair suited her well. The face was so unlike the one he remembered that he had not recognized her at first. Hearing the name, though, and confirming her family name, he understood. A girl who might, in truth, matter more than Roen or Irene Windler—a girl with the intriguing role they had considered, back in the planning stage, for protagonist of Part Two.

...What am I supposed to do about the Saint?

The girl who, after the Mercenary King's death, would rise as saintess of the mercenaries.

Fifteen years from now she would stand as vanguard of the Revolutionary War and be called the terror of the nobility. Derek looked at her with pity.

...For he knew that the girl's ending, as befitted the name she bore, held no happiness in it.