Prologue
“Hyaaaah!”
With a rough battle cry, a pair of blades danced through the air.
Wielding twin swords at once usually twisted a swordsman’s lines, making the blade path collapse into a mess, but the boy’s two swords traced the most efficient course possible.
It was a feat no boy his age ought to have been capable of, yet his inborn talent made it possible.
The greatest swordsmen in the land would have marveled at his gift, and perhaps even burned with envy, but none of that mattered right now.
“Don’t mess with me! Don’t you dare mess with me...!”
The boy shouted himself hoarse and swung his swords again.
Harder.
Faster.
More precise!
He was unleashing a miracle that refined his swordsmanship in real time, and yet the man in the bamboo hat facing him only yawned.
“Yaaawn. How boring.”
In the man’s hand was a tree branch.
Tap! Tap! Tap!
The branch, some random stick he’d picked up from somewhere, knocked aside, blocked, and redirected the boy’s slashes.
He seemed to be waving it around without a care in the world, but every motion carried countless subtleties, making him an iron fortress.
The girls cheering the boy on fell silent at the sight, as if watching an adult toy with a child.
“I don’t know how much longer I’m supposed to wait for you.”
But the man was bored.
He had already realized, long ago, while exchanging blades with the boy, that the kid was improving at a frightening pace.
So he had held back and waited for him to catch up, but it still wasn’t enough.
“Do you have no desire to make me draw my sword? There’s no such thing as a sword smaller than this, you know.”
The man shook the branch in his hand.
“Then again, a tiger drawing its claws to take on a rabbit would be a stupid thing too.”
With a snort, he drew a glare from the boy, who gritted his teeth.
“Shut up! There’s no way the best in the world could be this far-”
“You can’t even reach the foot of the mountain, and you were already measuring the summit?”
“!?”
Perhaps the man had grown irritated by the boy’s cocky words.
Up until now, he had done nothing but defend, but now he swung the branch.
On pure instinct, the boy raised his guard at once.
Kwaaaang!
The sword gust bursting from the branch hurled him backward in a great skid.
If that had been sword energy instead of a mere gust, his body would have been split clean in two.
“That’s enough of the rabbit’s little tricks. This will be the last exchange, so show me a sword strike with no regrets.”
“!”
At the man’s declaration, the boy steadied his breathing and took his stance.
“Huuuuup!”
Pure inner energy, the kind unique to the Wudang Sect, wrapped around the blade.
No more words were needed.
With the strongest possible force, he would unleash the strongest possible strike!
The boy shot forward like a cannonball.
Yin in the sword of his left hand.
Yang in the sword of his right.
The two blades, carrying yin and yang, chased after each other and drew a taiji pattern between them.
But unlike the taiji that accepted all things and let them flow away, the one the boy drew was filled with a fierce, crushing momentum.
“Take this!!”
He swung with the force of a single stroke to split heaven and earth, and in that instant the man’s right arm vanished—no, it only looked as if it had vanished.
Celestial Advance Taiji Sword
Taiji Advance Slash
“Move.”
“Khaaaah...!”
Pinned through the middle of his right shoulder by the branch, the boy froze in the very posture of his strike.
“A taiji so unripe it’s laughable. No wonder a single branch can pierce it.”
With a single lightning-fast thrust too quick for the eye to follow, the sword form had been broken with absurd ease.
“Ghh...”
With the vital point at his shoulder pierced clean through, the strength drained from both arms, and the boy’s swords slipped from his grip.
Clang!
The blades hit the ground and shattered to pieces with a harsh metallic ring.
“That is the gap between you and the summit. Does it feel like not just your sword, but your heart is breaking too?”
“......”
As the man turned to leave, the boy thrust his trembling arms out to the sides.
His body was screaming that it would topple over any second, but his will refused to yield.
“What was that?”
The man asked, a glint of interest appearing in his eyes.
“As a swordsman... not even being cut by the sword of the greatest swordsman in the world... is a disgrace.”
The boy said it as he painfully forced the corners of his mouth upward.
For a moment, it had seemed as if he were broken, but that had been a misread.
The boy’s spirit had not broken at all—no, it was burning even more fiercely.
“How admirable!”
For the first time, the man smiled at that will.
“Then I, too, will show proper respect as a swordsman! Young swordsman!”
Acknowledging the boy as a swordsman, not a rabbit, the man reached for the sword at his waist.
A flash of cold light cut through the air and struck the boy down.
Fwoosh!
In the man’s hand was now a sword, its blade streaked with blood.
The boy’s body pitched backward.
Thud.
“Take today’s defeat and your wounds as stepping stones to grow stronger! Take the powerful enemies waiting for you in the future as stepping stones as well! Refine yourself and your sword through all of them, and then try making even me, Geom Mujin, your stepping stone!”
It was the encouragement—and the ambition—of the greatest swordsman at the pinnacle of the current martial world.
“Until that day comes, the summit will not change! Only by stepping over me can you stand at the top!”
With those words, the man sheathed his sword, turned his back, and walked away.
“Jihoo!”
“Yeon Jiho!”
“Eek! Blood, there’s blood...!”
“Hurry, stop the bleeding first...!”
Before long, the girls rushed over in a flurry and surrounded the boy.
“I’m going to... make you... tremble with fear...”
“I’ll never... lose again...”
“I’ll beat that bastard... and become the best swordsman under heaven for sure... any objections...?”
His voice was hard to hear now that the distance had grown, but the boy’s tear-choked words still reached him.
At that blazing shout of youth, the man...
“Ah, fuck that punk. So damn jealous.”
He clicked his tongue with the face of someone who’d bitten into a bug.
Then he casually turned his head and looked back.
The protagonist of this world, surrounded by the academy’s prettiest girls and being fussed over like a wounded prince, came into view.
“Damn it, why the hell did I have to be born as a black-haired barbarian?”
Comparing the black hair visible beneath his bamboo hat with the girls’ brightly colored hair, he let out a sigh.
It had been twenty years since I transmigrated into this fake martial world of black-haired barbarians.
And now I was the black-haired Great Swordmaster of the martial world—the Great Swordmaster, and also, in a very different sense, the Great Swordmaster.