Lv.? Swordmaster Hyungtun [3]
She looked genuinely delighted. The way she came running at him with such open joy, anyone watching might have taken her for a lover rushing in for an embrace. But Lee Mi-ri wasn't trying to hug him — she was swinging a sword. Gaon slipped past the blade with ease, though it still startled the hell out of him.
"What the hell!"
"Come at me!"
Lee Mi-ri planted herself in his path. This was no time for a scuffle. Irritation surged through Gaon as he snapped at her.
"Hey, you crazy woman. If I die right now, the property damage to those people is going to be enormous, you know that?"
"People?"
"The players who came here to fight!"
"Yeah, well, those idiots' problems aren't my concern..."
Meanwhile, Hyungtun would be closing the distance. He didn't have much mana left for another teleport, either. This had gone past annoying into genuinely infuriating. Should he just cut her down?
She was being such a nuisance he could deny her any lesson in swordsmanship whatsoever. He could kill her in a single stroke, so fast she wouldn't even know what had happened. But then he'd have ugly dreams for days. That was what Gaon was wrestling with.
The smirk faded from Lee Mi-ri's lips. Then, with the utmost gravity, she raised her sword and covered half her face — the sword salute before combat. Lee Mi-ri declared:
"What duel?!"
"You're from As. Don't you know the Duel Tradition?"
"I know it, but..."
There was a tradition surrounding duels. After a duel, the loser was required to leave the land they currently occupied — no exceptions. It was a tradition born from the existence of Swordmasters.
When a Swordmaster capable of overwhelming an army single-handedly came into being, those already in power found themselves in a precarious position. Power, after all, issued from strength — and a Swordmaster stood above every other kind of strength there was. So it was no difficult thing at all for a Swordmaster who had appeared overnight to seize the reins of government.
In the process of that seizure, any existing power-holders who refused to cede authority would be slaughtered. There would be no mercy. A Swordmaster upon the throne would want to pass that seat securely to his descendants — and those descendants would not be superhuman as he was. To eliminate any future attempt to reclaim power, any revenge, any lingering threat, it was entirely plausible that the old regime and their entire bloodline would be erased without exception.
It had happened twice in the history of humankind.
And so, when the third human Swordmaster was born, the emperor had already resigned himself to the extinction of his house. Then the Swordmaster set foot in the imperial palace.
Half in despair, the emperor challenged the Swordmaster who had come to him. If the emperor won, the Swordmaster would leave; if not, the emperor himself would go. What had possessed the emperor to offer those terms, no one could say — but the Swordmaster accepted the duel regardless.
Naturally, the defeated emperor left the empire together with his entire clan. As a result, imperial authority was transferred, and the Swordmaster was satisfied. The process of succession had been, in its own way, honorable. And so the Swordmaster who took the throne had no need to worry about revenge befalling his descendants. There was no one else to hunt down and kill, and no unnecessary blood was spilled.
In the end, that duel was praised throughout history. It became a model, and then a tradition, for the human Swordmasters who came after — a tradition for making the birth of a Swordmaster, and the regime change that followed, proceed more peacefully and with greater honor.
The tradition later spread even to ordinary swordsmen who were not Swordmasters, and it became well-known among Earthlings as well. In the present day, a certain Swordmaster had been exploiting it to maintain a dictatorship.
"So if you lose the duel, you'll leave?"
Lee Mi-ri answered Gaon's question with one of her own.
"I'm a pain in the ass and you can't stand me, right? You don't want to look at my face."
That was true enough. She seemed determined to keep coming at him, which was an infuriating prospect. If she was willing to leave, he'd be grateful. And yet actually driving her out felt awkward, too.
Lee Mi-ri was one of the most dedicated students at the swordsmanship school. In all the time Gaon had been watching, she hadn't skipped a single day of practice. So for Lee Mi-ri, being banished from that training ground wouldn't just mean getting kicked out of a city in a game — it would mean a fundamental change to an important part of her daily life.
He condensed Are you really okay with that? into a single question.
"You want to fight me that badly?"
Lee Mi-ri nodded.
"I make seven hundred a month. I blew over a thousand in cash just to get here."
"Why?"
"The guy who runs the mercenary office? I had to pay that bastard. It was infuriating. My bank account's completely empty thanks to him."
Gaon raised one eyebrow.
"You blew your entire paycheck just to jump me?"
"It was like coughing up blood. So let's fight. Please."
Gaon couldn't for the life of him figure out what this woman was thinking. He understood she was doing this to get stronger. But it wasn't as if fighting him once would suddenly make her powerful — and she was putting her livelihood at risk for that? Of course, he had no reason to take her circumstances into account. He was in a desperate situation himself, wasn't he?
Gaon considered forcing his way through after all, then decided against it. Before the duel, he announced his name.
"Gaon of Hugin."
Lee Mi-ri smiled.
"Lee Mi-ri of Incheon."
Gaon leveled his sword at her. As he'd decided earlier, he wouldn't cut her down in a single stroke. Accounting for the Ogre Potion he'd already drunk, he even drained the strength from his arm — so that she might learn something from watching his attacks. Whether she actually could learn anything, he had no idea, but he was giving her what she'd asked for. He hoped blowing her entire paycheck would have been worth it, even a little.
Even with that much restraint, a Swordmaster's strike was a terrifying thing. At the first clash, Lee Mi-ri's defense was broken through. On the second exchange she lost her sword, and on the third a blade was at her throat. A complete defeat, overwhelmed in every exchange.
Lee Mi-ri accepted the result without protest. She gasped for breath and lamented:
"Ah, shit. I lost."
Gaon didn't bother suggesting they take it back or pretend it hadn't happened. A duel was sacred law. The result had to be honored, for better or worse. That was how he'd been raised. So instead of offering any merciful words, Gaon tossed her his own sword and said:
"As the winner, let me add one more command. This is a custom-made blade that can even hold up against Sword Qi, you know? I'll give it to you — so how about stalling that Swordmaster for a bit?"
Lee Mi-ri's eyes went wide.
"A Swordmaster?"
"The one chasing me from behind. Getting some experience fighting a Swordmaster wouldn't be bad, right?"
"It wouldn't."
He saw the smile bloom at the corner of her mouth. She looked happy even in defeat. It was the overflowing passion of youth, through and through. Gaon thought:
She's a rude, broken, crazy woman — but damn, she works hard.
Leaving Lee Mi-ri behind, Gaon ran. A moment later, her voice reached him from behind.
"Whoa!"
It was a cry of awe, but in truth it was a death scream. With that shout, Lee Mi-ri died. She hadn't lasted even a single exchange — cut down in one stroke. He could tell from the sound.
Didn't even last a second.
In the end, she hadn't bought him any time at all.
Gaon was about to resent her, then stopped. Come to think of it — was there any reason he had to keep running?
There wasn't. Continuously fleeing and buying time would help the players, sure, but it wouldn't help Gaon himself. If improving his swordsmanship was the goal, then fighting until he died was obviously the better choice. He'd only kept running, trying to lure the enemy, because his desire to be praised by people had outweighed his desire to get stronger.
And now, the desire to improve his skill had grown just a little larger. Something had just occurred to him. Some crazy woman was throwing away her entire paycheck in a desperate bid to get stronger — and here he was, a Swordmaster, doing nothing but running away. That didn't sit right. Looking at that struggling weakling, he'd been reminded of himself as a boy: once more passionate than even she was.
Gaon turned around. He had a spare longsword at his hip.
He leveled the blade at the approaching Hyungtun and murmured:
Hyungtun didn't recite his own name. He just kept charging, burning with killing intent.
"Fuck."
He hurriedly switched on the recording function. It was one of those features that charged Earthlings an outrageous fee to use, but provided it free of charge to anyone from As.
Recording started.
The fight about to unfold would be something he'd watch again and again, to study. So he'd take it seriously.
Gaon was originally right-handed. He switched the hand holding the sword — from left to right.
The moment the blade touched his right hand, energy sheathed the steel.
Ashen Sword Qi
The only Sword Qi in this world unique to Gaon.
Ash-gray waves rippled along the blade like drifting cinders. The way dust reveals itself, quiet and still, in a shaft of sunlight through a window — so the ash faintly asserted its presence in the dark.
He had just revealed that he, too, was a Swordmaster. Hyungtun paid it no mind. He closed the distance and swung. Gaon met him with a thrust from the sword in his right hand.
The two Swordmasters entered the duel.