Prologue
A technique that sets a sword loose from the hand and lets it move on its own to strike the enemy.
In anime and comics, sword manipulation was one of those finishing moves loved by children and adults alike. And honestly—of course it was. A sword is already cool. A flying sword? How could that possibly not be cool?
"Sword Manipulation has no place in a real fight."
"...Why not?"
"If you've reached a realm where you can control a sword with mana alone, wouldn't gripping it and swinging it yourself be several times stronger?"
"Ah."
The game I transmigrated into, though, was a little different. In this world Sword Manipulation was a dead art, discarded for its miserable efficiency, its lineage barely kept alive as a party trick for a handful of masters to show off. Put simply, the verdict was this: Sword Manipulation is garbage, so don't train it.
I heard all of that, and I decided to train it anyway.
"Idiot. Why are you practicing junk like Sword Manipulation?"
"You get them now and then. Morons who delude themselves into thinking they're special."
"Give it a month. He'll quit before then. That's my bet."
At first, everyone mocked me. They called me a fool with no sense of judgment—someone who hadn't even mastered ordinary swordsmanship, yet was out here training in Sword Manipulation. But as my grades at the academy climbed and my mastery rose with them, their mouths shut.
"That guy's a monster."
"What kind of potential did he see in Sword Manipulation, to push it that far?"
"No idea. Who can understand how a genius thinks?"
In place of the jeers, everyone started calling me a genius. A prodigy the age had never seen, who became a master through an art the whole world had written off as trash. A heretic walking a road no one else walked. That was the world's assessment of me, and every time I heard it, the same thought came to mind.
A genius—that part was true. Walking a different path from everyone else was not something I had chosen. I want to walk the road everyone else walks. I wanted to hold a sword like a normal person and swing it, to feel that electric thrill travel up through my hands.
But it was an impossible dream, and the reason was the blessing and the curse I received the moment I transmigrated.
He was a sword even before he ever gripped one.
He knew how to cut even before he learned the sword.
With a sword, he can cut anything—and accomplish all things.
Weapons reject you.
Grip a sword, and it will break. Draw a bow, and the string will snap.
I'd gotten an absurdly broken trait, as befits a transmigrator—and then, of all things, been hit with the perfect counter-curse and reduced to a cripple. Born with a swordsman's talent, and I can't even hold a sword. What sword art could someone like me possibly use, if not Sword Manipulation?
I wasn't training in it because I'd glimpsed some hidden potential, and I wasn't training in it because I loved it.
"Fucking curse. And fuck the developer, that piece of shit."
It was simply the only way I had to get stronger. So please—stop calling me a Sword Manipulation fetishist. A flying-sword pervert...