62. A Surprise Gift for Two Ladies (2)
The old blacksmith took on every one of my commissions, gave my back a hearty thump, and swore I had only to leave it all in his hands.
And since, as he put it, no one should walk away with goods this precious empty-handed, he pressed his most cherished hammer into my arms as collateral.
"This here is the precious hammer that made it possible for me to meet my wife. If you asked me to name the single most precious thing I own, I'd pick this hammer without a moment's hesitation. So I'm entrusting it to you, lad."
"Excuse me?"
I startled and moved to hand the hammer straight back, but the old man only waved me off.
"Take it. When you hand something this valuable over to another soul, you take that person's most precious thing as your collateral. That's how it's done."
"People always carry a crafty streak in them, you see. However kind a heart they're born with, set a treasure like this before their eyes and dark thoughts are bound to stir sooner or later."
It sounded, somehow, like a story steeped in his own experience, and I leaned in and listened closely.
"Don't go giving your heart away too freely, now. You're a Successor of the Four Divine Beasts, so I doubt there's a soul alive who'd betray you — still, mind yourself."
"After all, ink was splashed square across the current Lord's face not so long ago, and right under her own roof at that. There's no law saying it couldn't happen to you."
Had anyone else overheard, they might have cursed him for a doddering old fossil lecturing about the world. But my instincts had been landing true more often than not these days, and to my ears his words carried a different weight.
It felt like a father passing lessons drawn from his own scars down to his son — which is to say, it meant he was worrying over me with everything he had.
"Then I'll come see you in a week."
"Good. My hands are quick, so it'll be done well before then. Just don't go losing that hammer — bring it back to me, you hear?"
"Yes, sir."
Because I understood the heart behind the gesture, I accepted his precious hammer without protest and carried it back to my room to wait out the week.
Naturally, I spent that week at Ellie's side, helping her shoulder her work.
After I wrote up a formal petition on the state of Cumul Territory and submitted it to the Emperor, the crown dispatched imperial inspectors to the estate — and between the thorough investigation and what followed, we found ourselves subjected to five straight days of surveillance under the investigators' watchful eyes.
For anyone in the staff's position, being watched was a burden: every step had to be measured, every movement second-guessed, and their work was bound to suffer for it. I'd braced myself for grievances to come pouring out of the Cumul estate...
Yet the servants of House Cumul simply carried on exactly as they always had, apparently convinced that so long as they did well the tasks I had shown them, there'd be nothing for anyone to call out.
If anything, it was the inspectors who ended up flustered. I, for one, counted it a blessing that nothing happened at all, and let out a long breath of relief.
They must have felt stifled with the inspectors' eyes on them. The complaints really should have come pouring out.
As it turned out, watching them labor on in silence without sparing their observers so much as a glance gave me a fresh understanding of just why Ellie had hired these people in the first place.
Beyond that, I moved troops in Ellie's stead while she was chained to her desk, cutting down the demons that kept launching their raids, and I tended to her heart as diligently as her workload, doing all I could to look after her.
"No... Hyun..! I still have so much left to do..!"
"Ah-ah! Come along. Or were you planning to cry yourself to sleep in my arms again?"
"Nnngh..!"
During her interrogation of Louis, Ellie had failed to master her emotions and let her fury fly — and unable to forgive herself afterward, she had wept and wept in my arms until she cried herself to sleep. She now counted the whole episode among her most mortifying memories, so the instant I so much as steered the conversation toward it, as I just had...
"Hyun!! Stop iit...! Fine, fine! I'll take the break, okay!!"
...her face would flame scarlet as she hastily raised the white flag.
Resting together like this, Ellie and I had settled into a little routine: drinking the fruit drinks I mixed for her.
I'd first made one for her before we set out for Haizi Territory, and she'd taken such a liking to it that she kept asking me to whip up more ever since.
Usually I prepared them in the kitchen, but today, as a special treat, I decided to make them out in the garden.
The reason being the red-haired young lady seated beside me.
"You'll make one for me too, won't you?"
I nodded at her question. Her homeland, after all, was the East Kingdom. After I rescued her, she had vowed to repay the debt of her salvation, and true to her word she stood with us and helped bring the rogue lord to justice. None of it had truly been her fight, yet she had stepped forward without hesitation — given our circumstances, we couldn't help but be deeply grateful to her. Naturally, she ranked as nothing short of an honored guest of our house, so I decided to mix up a Cinderella for her as well.
Even when I offered to make her something different, Ellie asked for Cinderella and nothing else. Her reason was simple: it was something I had made for her alone, so every memory attached to it was a good one — and she claimed she could feel my feelings for her in every glass...
Whew. My face is going to catch fire at this rate. Best to just get mixing.
I swiftly combined pineapple juice, orange juice, and lemon juice, and in the blink of an eye produced three glasses of Cinderella. I'd mixed it for Ellie so many times by now that the ratios lived in my hands — no measuring needed.
We had each just taken a glass and were sipping to wet our throats when—
"Haaah...."
Someone heaved a sigh deep enough to swallow the ground beneath us. It was neither Ellie nor I — it was a long, heavy sigh from Yeon.
"What's wrong?"
"Something on your mind?"
In answer to my question and Ellie's alike, Yeon told us why she'd sighed.
"I think I've hit a plateau... It feels like I've run headlong into a wall..."
Her reason came down to a single thing: the trial every wielder of the sword must pass — the moment the 'wall' rises up to bar the way. How quickly, and how decisively, one breaks through it can be said to decide a swordsman's fate.
Left to her own devices, Yeon would surely smash through this wall one day. But no one could say when. And with her destiny having been knocked so far off its written course, there was even a chance she might never break it at all.
If there was one variable, though, it was me.
I knew exactly what was keeping her from crossing it. Back when I'd become a hopeless game addict, I'd realized Yeon was one of the game's overpowered characters, and by raising her affection through every route the game allowed, I'd seen precisely how she came to break through.
"How about I help?"
At my words, both Yeon and Ellie turned to look at me. And in those gazes I could read, plain as day: You? and Hyun, really?
"Hmmm. So you don't trust me, is that it?"
"N-no, that's not it...!"
"Oh, it absolutely is. Your eyes just told me everything."
"Hey, why single me out! Ellie was giving you the exact same look!"
"Don't worry. Ellie's getting punished all the same."
"M... me too?"
"Of course, Ellie. Though the punishment I have in mind and the one you're imagining might differ just a little."
When I whispered the name of her punishment straight into her mind, her face burst into flame all over again. Watching her duck her head, Yeon fixed me with a look thick with suspicion — but she had only a hunch, no hard evidence, and couldn't pin a single thing on me.
When our sweet hour of midday rest drew to a close, we called the servants over for the cleanup and headed back inside to our own duties. And so the break ended — with Yeon asking for my help.
One day before I was due to collect the sword and rings from the blacksmith, I kept my promise to Yeon and agreed to look over her swordsmanship.
"Can you really do it?"
"Yeah. Don't worry. At the very least, I can point out where something's going wrong."
Though in truth, I already knew exactly what was wrong with her swordsmanship.
"Okay. Got it. Then I'm counting on you."
I nodded and accepted her request, and before my eyes she began to unveil her refined swordsmanship, showing me precisely what her art was made of. Her strikes against the training dummy were like a butterfly in swift flight that never once lost its grace.
But only for a moment — then something seemed to snag, her strikes failed to flow onward, and her form turned stilted and unnatural. Even with her face pinched in a frown, she refused to halt her assault on the dummy.
At last her sequence ended and the tension drained from her sword arm, and she spoke.
"You saw it, didn't you. How my attacks kept coming out awkward back there."
When I nodded, she went on.
"You don't even have to give me a solution — but could you at least tell me what the problem is...?"
Her expression was no different from any swordsman desperate to surmount the wall. No — she yearned for that realm more than any of them. Her dream, after all, had always been to stand among the ranks of the Sword Masters, as her master Ryu Shin had. But left as she was, it was painfully clear she would end up with a style that had lost even its own color, never mind reaching her master's.
I spoke to Yeon slowly and deliberately.
"Yeon, the greatest strength of your swordsmanship is its speed. Your style turns that speed to its advantage, letting you seize the upper hand in a fight, take the tempo for your own, and bring your enemy down."
Yeon nodded, hanging on my every word.
"But to say your attacks are fast is another way of saying every one of them is light."
"You know this as well as anyone. There are times when one heavy, sudden, head-on strike is far more threatening than a flurry of light jabs."
"That's true... but Master wields the same style I do, and his blows carry devastating power and killing force. Unlike Master, all I've done is match his speed..."
"And that's exactly the problem."
"Huh?"
According to what Yeon herself had revealed in-game, the obstacle that had blocked her way when she hit the wall was — ironically enough — Ryu Shin's sword style itself.
"My own master's sword style is the problem?"
I shook my head.
"To be precise — that style simply doesn't suit you."
The art wielded by Ryu Shin, Sword Master of the East Kingdom, was a collection of strikes he had forged from inspiration drawn from the demons themselves. Most of its attacks are destructive and swift, yet land with force enough to inflict a mortal wound — fitting for the man who answered the demons in their own coin, for the Sword Saint was the one who took their habit of sinking their teeth into a weakness and never letting go, and turned it back on them in the form of his sword.
Except for one thing.
"Your master is a man."
The Sword Saint is male. Yeon is not.
You might take me for someone who divides swordsmanship by sex, but I'm not — not in the least. A woman's frame is naturally smaller than a man's, her muscles weaker; even throwing the very same punch, her blow will land the lighter of the two. That much is decided at birth, and no amount of striving will change it. So if the weakness cannot be mended, shouldn't the strength be maximized instead?
"The male body may look free of such flaws, but men have weaknesses of their own."
They strike with muscle and mass — but what they can never possess is the innate flexibility women are born with. That is precisely why, more than men, female swordsmen wield styles so swift and supple. Men carry too much muscle to move with true limberness. And so a style built for women hits a ceiling in a man's hands, and a style built for men hits one in a woman's.
What I would teach her, then, was a style of swordsmanship that streamlined each motion while in turn manufacturing opportunities of its own — in effect, a way of imposing a weakness on whoever stood across from her.
Ryu Shin's style leans so heavily on destruction that even Yeon's rendering of it struck with power so immense you'd wonder whether a woman had really swung it. Take one of those blows flush, and it would hurt every bit as much as failing to block a blade swung at your face.
"For now, just keep swinging."
Yeon, who had hung on my every word to the last, took up her sword again at my instruction and began once more to unfold Ryu Shin's style. Before long, the moment her form began to crumble again, I gently caught her arm and started correcting her strikes in close detail.
"Eep!"
"Ah... sorry. Grabbed you a little suddenly there."
At my manner, Yeon answered in a quiet voice unlike her usual self.
"N-no, it's fine... It's just... being this close to you... felt ni—"
Whatever the rest of it was, not a word reached me, so I asked her to say it again.
"Hm? What was that?"
"Nothing! Keep correcting me. What exactly am I doing wrong?"
In answer, Yeon took my hand and set it back on her arm herself.
And so, for the next five hours, I corrected the swordsmanship she carried. With anyone else it would have been beyond hope — but this was the direct disciple of a Sword Master we were talking about. Had she lacked talent, Ryu Shin would never have taken her in to begin with. And only after that talent and effort had fully blossomed did Yeon's swordsmanship become something on an entirely different plane — so transformed you could rightly call it a different art altogether from what she had shown me that morning.
The blade she swung now boasted a speed that left the eye chasing ghosts, where her earlier blade had merely flickered. The attacks that once, hobbled by the limits of her body, could neither muster true force nor even cut the dummy — had become a piercing thrust so powerful it punched clean through the dummy's center.
Watching her, only one thought filled my head.
A genius... she really is a genius...
In raw talent, she far outstripped both me — wielding the power of the Four Divine Beasts — and her own master, Ryu Shin. Swordsmanship, by its nature, must be built patiently from the foundation up, and if that foundation is flawed, everything stacked upon it comes to nothing. And I hadn't even touched her form — all I'd given was feedback. The choice to shift her attacks from slashes to thrusts had been purely Yeon's own judgment. Give her a sidesword, I was certain, and she'd wield it with ease.
By then Yeon had come over to me, declaring she'd fallen into yet another debt and asking to stay close at my side until she'd worked it off. With a fighter of Yeon's caliber, whatever situation arose, my heart could rest easy.
The realm she had reached was now that of a mid-tier Sword Expert — today's insight had carried her over the wall from low tier into mid. Ellie was already a high-tier Sword Expert herself, but when I saw the flame clinging to her blade, it was obvious she'd seized some realization and stepped into a new realm. The proof was plain: in her fury at the inspectors of Cumul Territory, she had unmistakably raised a pure white flame in her right hand. If that was what it appeared to be, the Holy Empire would be reclaiming a Sword Master it had once lost.
Of course, I was the odd case — as a Successor of the Four Divine Beasts, my realm can't be measured on such scales. My specs were a wall no one could climb from the very start; I was launching Geomgi from the moment I first took up a sword. I mean, when I first grasped the Sword of the Azure Sky, didn't I loose lightning-wreathed Geomgi on the spot? And on top of that, whenever I held a weapon I knew well, my proficiency with it climbed alongside — which is how we, who by all rights should never have been a match for demons, came through dozens upon dozens of battles victorious. We only managed to fell those demons by holding the blessings the Four Divine Beasts had granted us at their fullest while our true skill caught up.
After giving Yeon a few more rounds of light feedback, I returned to my room. Ellie was already fast asleep on the bed.
And here I said I'd punish her... She's out so soundly I can't bring myself to disturb her...
I stroked Ellie's hair as gently, as tenderly as I could manage, then sank into sleep myself.
And at last came the seventh day the old man had promised. When I paid him another visit, he had already finished everything.
This blade, he told me, had magical effects woven into it — it would prove more fearsome than any weapon under heaven.
"Its name is 'Moglay.' Please, take this sword and bring peace about. My wife, who fell in the war against the demons — if it serves that end, even she would surely understand."
With that, I understood the sword meant for Yeon was a named blade of extraordinary caliber — which left only the rings. When I opened the exquisite box, the sight inside was so utterly unlike anything I'd imagined that my eyes went wide. Within lay not one ring, but two.
When I asked him about it, his answer was simple.
"They're for lovers, worn as a pair — what use would they be with one of them missing? Ah, and I set a little of the diamond aside. Should a new love ever come along, you come back and see me. I'll make you another ring."
Highly unlikely, of course... Lately, though, Yeon's behavior had been suspicious enough that I couldn't quite declare as much with a straight face. Even so, out of respect for the man who had taken on my commission, I offered him only my thanks and left every other answer unsaid.
The road back to the Cumul estate looked different from the road there: this time I carried a masterwork sword named Moglay, and rings set with beautiful gems. Picturing how delighted the two of them would be with their surprise gifts, I found my steps quickening all on their own.
And at last, there in the training yard, I found Yeon hard at work drilling the sword form she had forged with her own hands. Unable even to imagine what the future held in store, she threw herself into her practice, and I stood watching her — watching, all the way until her sword dance drew to its close.
The moment she noticed my arrival, she turned on her heel and came toward me.
"When did you get here?"
"Back when you were still swinging away so hard, just now. You've gotten good, you know? Really good, now."
My praise made her bashful; she scratched at the back of her head as she answered.
"Thanks.... hehe..."
And that grin of hers, silly as an idiot's? That came free. Watching her smile at me, I slowly drew out the sword I had been hiding and held it out to her.
In days to come, it is said, she would cut down hundreds of demons all on her own with another sword modeled on this one, stemming the enemy's vanguard single-handed — and the world would come to call her the Sword Princess. But we knew nothing of that yet.