No Excuses in My Life (5)
Gyeong—the art his disciples more often called Muscle Arts—was a technique of his own making, modeled on the external styles he had once seen in murim tales.
Its virtue was simplicity. Wring every last function out of the flesh, and use it. The art stood on plain strength, plain speed, and a body that simply would not break, which was why even a man short on talent could learn it without much trouble.
Fighting Art was the opposite. That one was finicky.
The principle was simple enough. Force something like an explosion inside the body, and blast out explosive power and speed. Ability leapt fivefold, even tenfold, in an instant. To call it merely powerful was not enough. The thing was monstrous.
But the sense and the talent it demanded had to be exceptional. Detonate a blast within yourself and forcibly raise the body across the board—hear only that much, and you already knew how mad the art was. You needed genius in the handling of it: enough control to turn the explosion to use without destroying the flesh that held it. In familiar terms, you needed the judgment of an F1 driver.
That was why Lee Han never looked down on a knight who had mastered Fighting Art. Even in the murim stories, weren't the martial artists who learned the internal arts almost always the ones called strongest? There was a reason. He had only come to understand it after being reborn.
But now.
KWA-AANG!!
“!!?”
He had known it only in his head. He had clearly failed to grasp that Fighting Art was the greatest art even kingdoms and empires acknowledged. He himself had never known true Fighting Art, and still he had swaggered about as if he understood it well enough. Realizing how arrogant his past self had been, Lee Han clenched his teeth. Open his mouth, and he felt as if he might heave up everything he had eaten the day before.
A dump truck?!
Thirteen knights came at him with one-handed shields, ramming straight in.
Bucklers. Round shields of that sort, sometimes called boucliers, were shaped less for guarding than for attack. They had as many flaws as virtues, so ordinary knights rarely bothered with them. Most of the Crimson Eagles used them anyway, and every time those shields closed on him the impact hammered him like a dump truck.
KWAANG!!
They kicked off as if setting off explosions and drove in with their whole bodies. Perhaps because there were thirteen of them, their force resonated and threw up a heat haze. Lee Han thrust out a one-handed shield of his own to meet them.
By chance, he and the knights wore the same bucklers. He wrapped Gyeong over his entire body and invoked Diamond.
Hwoook—!
A technique he had named for what it meant to reach the realm of the Diamond Indestructible Body. As he was now, it was no different from wearing armor over every inch of himself, and so blind spots did not exist. His whole body was shield and armor at once, and a weapon besides.
Thanks to that—
KWAANG!!
He endured another impact like an explosion.
“Kuherk!”
“Khup!”
“Keuk….”
The knights who could not endure it went down.
He had not shaken them off in a single blow. Only after dozens of collisions had he barely thrown them clear.
“…These bastards are really coming at me like they mean to die.”
Throwing them off did not mean he had won without paying for it.
Kaff….
His insides felt scrambled. Shock that even his unusual hardness and recovery could not fully clear had piled up, and piled up again. A little more colliding in the middle of it, and his Diamond would have broken first. The thought left him dizzy. He had won only because it was a contest of grit and stamina.
Lee Han swallowed the urge to drink even a mouthful of water and turned his head at the presence already closing in.
“Eight of you this time?”
“Because we coordinate the best.”
“…Then why not all come at once?”
“Heh. Does that make our strength look wanting?”
“Mm. Not that.”
“Then this is proper. A hundred of us milling about together only scatters the force.”
“…Ha.”
At some point—no, precisely after the man who was good with a spear had been taken down—they had stopped charging him all at once. They came in tens, or in twos, and threw themselves at him.
Did that mean they were slighting him? That they were arrogant?
…It did not.
More annoying. Harder.
Facing a hundred had at least felt like a brawl, and that had been easier to handle. No matter how hard they trained, a hundred men could not truly move as one. Now it was different. The ones who came in tens, in sevens, in fives all fit together. More efficient than a hundred attacking at once, and more threatening.
Not a single pushover among them.
The most dangerous of all had been the thirteen shield knights just now, and the two swordsmen he had dropped before them. Knights whose teamwork locked—no, masters combining their strength—were, in baseball terms, a pitcher and catcher whose chemistry went past the fantastic and into a no-hitter, a perfect game. Being rushed by men already joined at that level wore harder on the mind, and on the body.
And so he understood. This was what it truly meant to duel a knight—no. To duel a knight order.
With the thought that the real trial was only beginning, Lee Han spat dust and blood-mixed spit. A question rose with it.
“Aren't you being a little too gentlemanly for an assailant? Why throw everything you have at this?”
“Heh. At this point, do you imagine any of us still takes you for a mere assailant?”
“—I am an assailant, aren't I?”
“We had that conversation with Sir Zeon. We are hardly going to slight you as some petty intruder.”
“…Why?”
Lee Han tilted his head, honestly baffled. And who the hell was Zeon? At that reaction—
“…You don't even know what you've done, and still you act. Ha! That only stirs a knight's fighting spirit all the more! Good. Let us stake our honor and clash as well!”
“…I'm going to lose my mind.”
Passion poured from the knight's eyes as if he were breathing flame, and Lee Han wondered whether the whole lot of them had eaten something together.
“—Fine. Knock them all down, and the conclusion will come on its own.”
Even so, what he had to do had not changed. He flung aside the broken axe and the armor, and quietly took up a sword, along with the cheerful thought that he only had sixty more to beat.
KWA-AAAA!!
Crack! Craaack—!
“……”
Tristan's elites did not dare join that contest.
An assailant had struck. Common sense said they ought to support the knight order and drive him off. They knew it in their heads. And still they could not step in.
The reason? Nothing else.
“G-get close, and you die…”
“…gulp.”
Because the moment you stepped in, you would be torn apart as if caught in a typhoon. The soldiers' faces went bloodless. Those figures no longer looked like humans of skin and flesh, the way they themselves were. How could a person move like that? Did gravity simply not apply to them?
“Su-Superhuman…”
One soldier's mutter.
Yes. It was not the first time they had watched knights duel. They had served Tristan a long while, and now and then they saw spars. This was different.
Kung!
Every time a foot met the ground, earth of marble shattered.
KRRRUMBLE!
Every time a sword swung and bodies collided, it sounded like lightning. What was that? Was that the sound humans made when they struck each other? A line came back to him from a hero tale some bard had once recited.
A knight's movement is as the wind,
and a knight's sword-stroke as lightning falling.
And so they are Superhumans
who stand one against a thousand.
He had taken it for a fairy tale, rattled off to coax the coins off snot-nosed children. He had thought so. Seeing this, he understood. So that was a knight. Knights truly were Superhumans who became the wind, and became the lightning.
Except—
“—No. If they were true Superhumans, it would not look like this. The marquis's estate would already have been scorched to nothing, and then some. Heh heh.”
“!!?”
An old knight was there to correct the misunderstanding. The soldiers' eyes went wide. The moment they recognized the master who had come up beside them, they moved to offer a military salute—
“Ah, enough. No need for courtesy, even in a situation like this. Watching alone was starting to feel pathetic, so I came this far. Let us simply keep watching what we were watching.”
“Y-Your Lordship?”
“Good. Good. Yes, of course…! This is a duel!”
“……”
“If only my turn would come. Damn it all! I am no child, and yet the impatience is going to drive me mad…!”
A chill.
The soldiers felt a cold fear. The lord they served—His Lordship Jenimia's eyes were bloodshot, like a starving beast giving voice to its hunger. But it was not only hunger. He looked as if he had swallowed sheer awe. Like an eagle that had forgotten how to fly free, remembered it still had wings, and finished preparing to soar the open sky.
And as if to prove the feeling no illusion—
Creeeak!
The bow in his grip was screaming, as if it wanted to loose an arrow this very instant.
Marquis Jenimia was in a fret, waiting for his turn, and even taking delight in the defeat of his own knights.
And so—
KWA-AAAA!
As if to answer the marquis's anticipation, his turn was drawing near.
Clang!
“……”
Lee Han looked at the sword broken in half. An ominous sound had started around the time he dropped the fiftieth, and sure enough its durability was spent. Since he had learned Diamond, it had been a truly long time since a sword split on him. He spared it no regret. He threw it away, reached into his coat, and drew a hand axe.
“Carl de Metz, of the Crimson Eagles. As for rank, call it a comfortable twentieth.”
“Lee Han.”
…He could no longer remember how many times they had had this conversation. At some point the knights had started giving their names, and he had answered with his out of habit. He could not remember all of them. A few had stuck. In the middle of the fight his mind had nearly winked out more than once, so he must have lost the rest. Names and talk would not stay. What techniques they used, and what weapons they carried, he remembered, because the body remembered, not the head.
It would be the same now.
Whoosh!
Sword and hand axe drove into each other's reach, became streaks of light, and collided. His opponent's body was shoved back. Lee Han did not miss the gap. He drove straight into the man's chest and threw a headbutt.
The footwork of Divine Bow, Elastic Shadow. A blow the other had no room to dodge. Even so—a headbutt against a man in a helmet. There was no more pigheaded piece of idiocy, and he half expected his own skull to crack.
“……Is your skull made of steel?”
“That helmet looks worn out. Get a new one.”
“Y-…you madman.”
Thump.
What broke was the helmet. What won was Lee Han's head.
“…That hurts.”
Learning that you do not headbutt a helmet, he snapped fully awake. Halfway through, his consciousness had nearly gone out.
“Hoo….”
“Blood is running from your forehead.”
“I know. More importantly, what number are you? Why'd you come alone?”
“I would like to coordinate with someone. Unfortunately, there is no comrade left to coordinate with.”
“Why?”
“Look around.”
“…Ah.”
Only after he followed the advice and turned his gaze did he see it. Everyone but one man was down.
The Crimson Eagles. A knight order of countless legends lay sprawled across the ground, and Lee Han alone still stood.
“Congratulations. In practical terms, you have brought down the entire Crimson Eagle order.”
Shing.
“Complete defeat, however, is the one thing I must prevent, no matter what.”
A duel mattered. Victory mattered just as much. Vale let his fighting spirit surge and showed a Sword Resonance that was anything but ordinary.
Wooong!
Sword Resonance. The moment he drew the blade, he raised it as naturally as breath. One look, and Lee Han understood. This man belonged among the very first of everyone he had faced.
“Vale de Tristan. By a grace I do not deserve, I hold the post of vice-captain of the Crimson Eagle Knight Order.”
“Tristan?”
“A branch line. If I may offer an excuse in advance, I would like to say I did not become vice-captain by the power of blood.”
“I know. Anyone can see you're the heaviest of the lot I've faced so far.”
“…Hah. It has been a truly long time since I felt glad I put in the work….”
In that moment Vale blew away every last shred of the inferiority he had carried simply for being branch blood. The knight before him did not see a branch member. He saw only a match he had to bring down. The time spent struggling to grow stronger was being repaid. It was nothing short of luck.
—And so it was a shame!
“I should have fought you while you were still whole.”
“I'm whole right now, though?”
“Looking like that?”
“…Ahem.”
As he said, Lee Han's state was wretched. The ninety-nine eagles had fallen, but never for nothing. One had cut him. Another had struck his jaw. Another had checked his movement for a comrade's sake, and in the end a blade had been driven into him as well. He looked no different from a man painted in blood. It would not have been strange if he collapsed at any moment.
And so Vale found it humiliating that his turn was the last. He should have stepped out first. The others had kept shoving him to the back. Damn them.
“You're the vice-captain, aren't you? Why didn't you just push through on rank?”
“Even as vice-captain, every one of them is my senior.”
“Ah. Then that tracks.”
He had served in an army where time in service outranked the post, so he understood Vale. Lee Han accepted it.
“Enough. Get your sword up.”
“You won't rest a little longer?”
Vale had struck up the talk on purpose, meaning to let him rest, and was just about to frown—
“I'm not slighting you. If I rest now, I don't think I'll be able to move again.”
“…Yes. Wounded or not, a lion is still a lion.”
Woooong.
Vale's sword shuddered. A resonance beyond any comparison with what had come before. Was this proof that Sword Resonance, too, had its realms? It was different even from the resonance Jord, a junior among knights, had shown, and from that regressor.
Shaaaaak!
Sword Qi? No. It was different from Sword Qi. It was as if the power Sword Resonance itself possessed had been drawn out like thread. Yes—like Lee Han's Sword Blossom, it wielded only the energy the sword held.
Sword Thread.
Shhk!
The strands the blade breathed out split rock.
“…That's beautiful.”
“The power will be more beautiful still.”
Shk!!
They needed no more talk. Vale's Sword Thread swept in, and Lee Han answered at once by casting his body into the air.
Air Walk. One of his moves, thrown to force a quick finish.
“I have already seen that!”
As if he would fail to read a technique already shown once. Just as Lee Han's Diamond had no blind spot, Vale's Sword Thread had none either. He was called Tristan's Owl because his attacks had no such thing as a limit of reach. Even a battle in the air was nothing but a stage he could range across at will. The blades of Sword Thread surged up and dogged the man who had leapt into the sky, snatching the prey in a single breath—an owl that hunted even hawks, and ate them.
Toward that Sword Thread, Lee Han—
Tak!!
Kicked off the empty air without hesitation, and charged.
“What!?”
To charge into Sword Thread was no different from suicide. Had he given up the match?
No!
Vale had already acknowledged him, and so he trusted this was not a man abandoning victory and rushing in out of despair. There had to be some means, or he would not be charging with everything he had. Because he knew that, Vale—
I cut!!
Whatever the scheme, he spread a net of swords that could not be escaped.
A net of blades with no way out, on the earth or in the sky.
“The Heaven-and-Earth Net…!”
Lee Han could hardly believe it. Of all things, for something like this to come out at the end. One wrong step, and his whole body really would be sliced to ribbons.
Even so.
And so what—!
As if he did not care whether he was carved apart or not, he spun his entire body. If what the man had spread was the Heaven-and-Earth Net, then what he would spread was—
“What!?”
A Daoist legend: Kunlun, homeland of the immortals. A martial art the heirs of that Kunlun were said to have made after watching a dragon sport among the clouds.
Where the murim called it a movement art, his was a fall through the air—spin and breaking force amplified without limit. The Piercing-One Spear, wrought with his entire body.
At last his Cloud-Dragon Eight Forms—
KRAK!
Tore Heaven's Net apart, whatever else it might have been.
“…I'll be damned. Where in the world does one even learn a thing like that?”
Watching his own technique break, Vale asked before he knew he was asking. Less from the hollowness of a shattered art than from wondering where on earth one learned something like it.
“There are books. Full of romance and knights-errant.”
“Kn-knights-errant? What even— …gah.”
Thud!
Vale was flipped backward. With no time to dodge, Lee Han's knee struck the dead center of his gut, and he went down as he was.
“……”
Hoo…! Hooo….
Lee Han's breath heaved. Relief, that he had brought down a strong man who left no room for carelessness even at the end—and the knowledge that he had been lucky.
It landed because the art was unfamiliar. If it hadn't been, I'd have been the one who got eaten.
This was the moment he felt repaid for all the time he had stubbornly practiced Cloud-Dragon Eight Forms. He thanked the Kunlun Sect, which he did not even know existed. Thanks to them, he had won.
……Of course.
“Hoo. Did I keep you waiting too long?”
“Not at all. It was time as rewarding as it was thrilling. You would not believe how long I waited, wondering when my turn would come. Heh heh!”
“…Not really my place to say this, but aren't they your men?”
“They will all be satisfied. Where else would one experience a duel like this? They lost, yes, but it must have been time whose worth cannot be set in coin.”
“Mm… Are great nobles all nothing but eccentrics?”
Grand dukes, dukes, and the princess—every last one of them thought strangely and valued strange things. Was it that the higher the power, the more certain one was to be a crank? He let out an empty laugh. The marquis paid it no mind. He only let his excitement show as he raised the bow.
Thud!
The enormous bow stamped the ground and split the air with the sound. There was no gauging how heavy it was. He doubted the thing could even be drawn.
And yet—
Shwaaak!
The marquis drew the string himself, as if offering a demonstration.
Goooo—!
There was clearly no arrow. The moment he drew, a vortex formed, and an arrow of wind—no, a shell—seemed to take aim at him. In that hair-trigger instant the marquis, still smiling, spoke.
“Ah. I only learned of it from the report a moment ago, so let me apologize in advance. If I may offer a small excuse, sending a matchmaker to your disciple was not my intent. My subordinates began the business on their own.”
“I know. It's not something I particularly blame you for. I also know that what I'm doing crosses a line.”
“…Then why go this far?”
“To make a demonstration.”
“A demonstration?”
“I won't stop you from taking our girl. I'm showing you not to look at her as easy. I wanted you to know there's a backer behind her who isn't easy either.”
“…You went this far for that?”
“What, disappointed the reason's too small for a great noble?”
“…No. How could I be disappointed? Rather…!”
The marquis was moved. The age of the late king he had respected was over, and life had been nothing but dull. To think someone would set a heart racing like this in the days of an old knight past fifty, his vigor fading, doing nothing but age! He was grateful enough to cry, and the man had done all this simply to show that his disciple was not a child without worth. To show that even Tristan dared not treat her lightly!
“For a lady's sake. Is that not the very bearing young knights these days ought to learn? I could fall for you.”
“…I'll pass, pretty uncle.”
“The young have no manners. Ahahaha!!”
PAANG!!
The marquis laughed in high spirits and let the string go, as if to declare that he—that Tristan—acknowledged him.
The method, however, was violent beyond all words.