The First Sword of the Dong Empire and His Last Disciple (2)
Time slipped steadily onward until night had settled in, and across the darkening sky, a pale white moon and a scatter of stars took the place of the afternoon's brilliant sunlight.
To most people, the meeting with the special envoys of the Dong Empire, who had arrived in the afternoon, would have looked like hope itself.
After all, while the Holy Empire had only a handful of Sword Masters remaining, the Dong Empire was practically overflowing with them.
Even I had assumed, back when this was all a game, that a nation would have exactly one Sword Master — a figure treated as a secret weapon on the level of a nuclear deterrent.
But anyone standing in that arena that day could have seen with a single glance that the assumption was wrong.
Ryu Shin, hailed as the First Sword of the Dong Empire, and his disciples were all Sword Masters — masters the Empire had only surrendered after much deliberation and with hard confirmation in hand.
Yet having now faced them directly, I knew that two of Ryu Shin's direct disciples were figures I could neutralize without even resorting to my Authority. And as for Ryu Shin himself, with a little more of my power I couldn't have killed him outright, but I could certainly have inflicted a grievous wound — severed an arm, at the very least.
The fundamental reason I had summoned them, however, was that I alone could not defend this vast Empire on my own. Their help was indispensable, which meant that lashing out recklessly at Ryu Shin would have been an extraordinarily dangerous move.
One wrong step... they could have flared up in anger and walked out right then and there — yet they did no such thing. Instead, they sent an apology to me over a private transmission.
Though they added, of course, that judging by my skill, they could at least offer a compliment or two.
Yeon, who had assumed that her master would treat her with at least some of the gentleness he showed his other disciples, was instead flatly denied her relationship with me — warned, on top of it, to end things altogether.
She had rebelled, brandishing her Sword Flame at the man who was as good as a parent to her, but the gap in their experience was simply too vast. There was never a contest to be won.
In the end, she had felt betrayed by her own master, and the tears she so rarely showed anyone came pouring out in full.
By now she had cried herself to sleep, curled up on my bed. She probably wouldn't open her eyes until tomorrow morning.
Some time later, once Ellie had finished her own meetings with the heads of the noble houses, she came to my room, and I told her everything that had happened to us.
"That got dangerously close, Hyeon. You know that, right? Those are people who had no obligation to care about this country in the first place — and they traveled all this way, out of the kindness of their hearts."
"They arrive, and the first thing that greets them is hostility? Sure, Yeon is one of ours now, but at her core she still belongs to the Dong Empire. She's still Ryu Shin's last direct disciple."
"....."
She wasn't wrong. Ellie took the situation apart with icy clarity and began to lecture me without mercy.
But there was a reason I'd reacted the way I did.
"Everything you're saying is right, Ellie. It's just... something about it felt off. Ryu Shin didn't bother me, but those two direct disciples of his... something was wrong with them. It felt like they were saying Yeon, of all people, had no right to act that way."
"What's that supposed to mean? Love was forbidden at Ryu Shin's dojo anyway."
My clumsy explanation had apparently confused her.
"Let me put it another way. It felt like they were saying they were allowed, but she wasn't. Something along those lines."
The impressions I pick up on are almost always sound judgments. My Intuition is such an absurdly overpowered passive skill that if I simply follow my gut, I'm nearly always right.
So I was certain: the way they had looked down on Yeon, dismissed her as something beneath them — the way one regards a slave, or a lowborn wretch — was exactly what it appeared to be.
It was nearly ten o'clock at night. Ryu Shin hadn't given me a precise hour through his transmission, but for someone who had felt his presence head-on that afternoon, there was no way I could fail to sense his approach.
"Anyway, Ryu Shin asked me tonight if I'd come speak with him. I'm going to hear what he has to say first."
"Just don't fight him. Honestly, whatever happened to that adorable little boy who got kidnapped by bandits the moment we arrived at our territory..."
"...Ellie. That little boy is your lover now. By your own logic, aren't you the weird one here? Raising a child that young just to make him your— Mmph! Mmph!!"
"Bread's good, right?! Here, have some more!"
Out of arguments, Ellie resorted to the most extreme remedy available: shoving bread directly into my mouth.
...I nearly choked to death.
I was still chatting idly with Ellie when a cutting, dangerous energy began to seep into the room.
Ellie felt it too.
"That energy... what is that? It's razor-sharp... I honestly thought for a second it might actually cut me if I wasn't careful."
Ellie had wielded a sword since childhood and reached the realm of Sword Master before Yeon had — and even she couldn't defy that presence. It made her skin crawl.
To be fair, he wasn't releasing it to harm her. It was a signal, a declaration of his arrival — nothing to be done about that.
I granted Ellie the Authority of Purification to free her from Ryu Shin's pressure, then did the same for Yeon, still asleep on my bed, so that the sinister aura wouldn't reach her dreams. I pressed a kiss to her forehead, pulled on my coat —
"Hyeon. What did I tell you? No playing favorites... Hyeon... you didn't...?"
— and then kissed Ellie's forehead as well, before stepping out of the room.
Otherwise I risked being cut down before I ever laid eyes on Ryu Shin.
Back at the sparring grounds where we'd met that afternoon, I found Ryu Shin standing in plain, unadorned dress, a single sword at his hip and nothing more.
He walked toward me and bowed his head, offering his thanks that I had granted his request.
I accepted his courtesy with a nod and moved straight to the point.
"So. Why did you ask to meet me somewhere so completely deserted?"
Ryu Shin listened, then tilted his face toward the night sky and spoke in a low voice.
"Hwa Yeon... that is to say, Yeon — my last disciple. Do you know what her past holds?"
I did. She had never spoken of it herself; I'd come to know it by falling into Bret's trap, more or less by accident. But I knew.
I nodded and told him so. "Yes, I know. She lived a very hard life."
Ryu Shin seemed already aware that his disciple's road had been anything but smooth. He nodded and began to answer in kind.
"That's so. The Dong Empire suffers from an extreme divide between the classes. It is, in truth, a nation that labels anyone without value a slave or a lowborn — and holds them in contempt, dismisses them outright."
"....."
"And my last disciple — the child who was no different from a daughter to me — was, in the eyes of that nation, no different from any of them."
"But just before I took Yeon in as my disciple... I saw her eyes, burning like embers. The eyes of someone who would never kneel to another soul. That person — that was her."
"That alone was reason enough to make her my disciple. I believed that if she studied under me and walked the path of the sword, she would wield it gladly in service of the Dong Empire."
"However."
"However...?"
"My expectations were met. Yeon was a child of exceptional talent for the sword. I would teach her one thing, and she would grasp ten — a true genius of the blade."
"Teaching her felt like the finest joy of my each and every day."
What Ryu Shin felt for Yeon was not the sentiment a mere master holds for a student. It was something closer to what a father holds for his daughter — and with that realization, I listened to him all the more intently.
"But those expectations did not last long. My direct disciples — the young ones who became Yeon's senior sisters — began to scorn her, shut her out, and cast her thoroughly from their circle."
"Thankfully, my First and Second Disciples insisted that no disciple of theirs should ever be treated unfairly, and for a time they looked after Yeon kindly... but the rest of the children were another matter."
Ryu Shin's story went on.
Ignored and ostracized again and again, Yeon answered every slight by beating them utterly senseless with pure skill. No matter how they squirmed and schemed, she hammered into their consciousness, from childhood on, that against her, there was no contest to be won with a sword.
But their bullying and contempt did not stop simply because she turned her back on it.
Yeon endured it all with her spine straight, overcame it, and even after growing into adulthood, she kept honing her blade. Her rate of growth, astonishingly, had surpassed even Ryu Shin's own.
He said that if he in his youth had crossed blades with the Yeon of today, it would have been impossible to say who would take the next exchange.
Then, because of a certain incident, she closed the doors of her heart, threw her sword aside entirely, and for a span of mere months, refused to touch it at all.
"The incident in question was when my direct disciples — all of them save my First — turned their blades against Yeon."
"You mean the Third through the Sixth?"
He shook his head slowly, and in the eyes he turned on me there was nothing but regret and fury at his own disciples.
"No. From the Second through the Sixth."
A fight of six against one.
Unlike the First, the Second Disciple had been worn down by her fellow disciples' vicious tongues. Knowing her hot temper, her junior disciples had coaxed and cajoled her with poisonous flattery, and hatched a plan to use her as a weapon against Yeon.
They even tried to draw the First Disciple into the scheme.
But the First had already spoken with Yeon herself, verified the truth, and warned the rest of them: touch her again, and I will deal with you personally. Then she left with her master to hunt demons.
By the time the First and Ryu Shin returned from their purge, Yeon's body was already a ruin.
Ryu Shin admitted that he, too, had raged at the sight of her — but the First Disciple's fury had burned hotter than any of theirs.
Gruff and taciturn as she was, she had been the one who doted on Yeon more than any of the others.
The disciple with the most experience, the one who had received the most of his teaching, was consumed by rage — and Ryu Shin had no intention of stopping her. How could he? What hand could hold back someone who had climbed to a realm nearly equal to his own?
That day, every one of Ryu Shin's disciples except Yeon lay severely wounded before the First Disciple. She had left them only what was needed to move: their mana circuits, their limbs, their organs.
The pain alone kept them from standing.
Both the First and Ryu Shin apologized afterward — but Yeon's heart had already sealed itself shut. She refused to leave her room and refused all food and drink.
And when she finally emerged, the swordsmanship she had once worn like a crown was simply gone.
The girl who should have claimed the title of youngest Sword Master in history before her twenty-second year had fallen from top-tier Expert to high-tier Expert. That alone told you how devastating the wound to her spirit had been.
In time, after receiving their apologies and rededicating herself, she clawed her way back to top-tier Expert. But by then, the ones who had broken her had already crossed the threshold into Sword Master.
Left with no other option, Ryu Shin used her training as a pretext to send her out into the world — to keep her away from them.
His heart had wanted to expel the ones who had done this to her. But he couldn't predict what they might do to Yeon if they were cast out, and so he could only watch them in silence.
"Then here is what I don't understand. Why did you order her to sever her relationship with me? If everything you did was for her sake, then that — more than anything — is what you should never have done."
Ryu Shin simply looked up at the sky and continued.
"I was afraid my disciples might reach out and touch Yeon where I could not see. Even though you possess power greater than mine, Successor — as you yourself cannot guard the whole of the Holy Empire at once."
In other words, he was admitting — in the roundabout way of a man protecting his own — that he could not control his disciples.
Did he even understand what he was saying right now?
Expulsion? Forget all that. Sever their mana circuits and throw them out, and no matter how they wriggled and crawled, they could never lay a single scratch on a woman with Yeon's mana.
"You are far, far too lenient. How did a man of your caliber ever reach the realm of top-tier Sword Master?"
Startled by the sudden venom in my tone, Ryu Shin faltered — but then he simply listened, taking every word as I meant it.
"The one who made Yeon into what she is... was none other than you, Ryu Shin. Wrap her in all the protection and pretty packaging you like — the deed is already done. Which means your duty was to handle the aftermath properly. And you didn't."
"What your disciples did to Yeon was more than grounds enough to tear out their mana circuits that very day and cast them into the street."
"And even at her best, how far could the First Disciple have gone? She isn't their master. She's nothing more than the one lucky enough to catch your eye first. How could she possibly punish them any further?"
"Every last one of them was brought in by your hand. You raised them; they are children of your own making. You know that as well as I do."
"And yet — what right does a man who watched his own children go astray and did nothing have to hope they grow up straight and true? You didn't even blink at the contempt they heaped on Yeon right in front of you."
"Instead, you ordered her to correct her behavior. Denied her relationship with me. Is it any wonder she turned her Sword Flame on her own master?"
"....."
"In short, Ryu Shin — you may know how to swing a sword, and how to teach one. But when it comes to raising people, you are a disaster."
"....."
Ryu Shin could not offer a single word of denial. Somewhere along the way, his gaze had fallen from the sky to the ground.
"You needn't worry yourself, at least. Yeon has already moved beyond the swordsmanship you passed down to her. She has re-forged a style that is entirely her own."
".....!!"
For a moment, his eyes lit up at the thought that she had escaped his teaching and reclaimed a sword of her own — but his head sank again almost immediately.
It seemed he was wondering whether he even had the face to look upon her anymore.
I already knew the answer. I'd heard it from Yeon herself.
To Yeon, Ryu Shin was nothing short of a savior.
Of course he was. She had been one bad day away from being sold off to a brothel to pour drinks for the rest of her life — and it was this man who took her in, who gave her a sword, who gave her the power to protect her own body.
But because of that one failure — his inability to control the others — Yeon had only just, only now, found it in herself to trust me and finally ascend to the realm of Sword Master, years later than she should have.
And yet she had never let go of her love for her master. Never discarded those feelings at all.
When I once offhandedly asked if I should curse Ryu Shin out on her behalf, her reaction had genuinely stunned me.
"Don't you dare badmouth my master! He's... he's the one who raised me with a smile when I was little. Without him, I never would have met you!"
Right to the end, she had trusted him.
When I relayed those words to Ryu Shin, his reaction was this:
"She... did. Even after I was the one who wounded her... she still believed in me."
"Haha... and with this, there isn't a single word of yours I can refute, Successor. How could I possibly keep parading around under a grand title like 'First Sword of the Dong Empire' with a heart this bitter..."
Tears of remorse spilled down his face — regret, and shame, for how poorly he had treated Yeon all these years.
Watching him, I spoke slowly.
"There is still a chance left for you. If you had defended and protected your other disciples to the very end, I would never have let you and Yeon meet again. Not once. Not ever."
"....."
"But if you can feel it now — this regret, this guilt toward her — then show them her sword. Show them what Yeon has become. And whatever condition my traps leave the Fourth and Fifth Disciples in..."
"I expect you to accept it with grace. Even if they can never use mana again. That will be their own karma coming due."
"One week from now, I will convince Yeon, and I will have her settle this — one against one, with the Fourth and Fifth Disciples."
"By then, the other Successors will have shaken off their own affairs and risen from their seats as well."
"They came within a hair's breadth of making Yeon unable to hold a sword ever again. So surely — surely — it's only fitting that they experience what it feels like to never hold one again."
"...I understand. If Yeon consents to this as well, I will accept. Though... whether she can stand against her senior sisters..."
Looking at him, I let a smile spread across my face.
"Yeon's swordsmanship — I say this without a shred of exaggeration. Assuming I don't use my Authority, even with my own eyes, I would struggle to keep up with her."
And with that, Ryu Shin looked upon my proud, easy confidence, lifted his head, and turned once more to the silver moon hanging in the sky.
"If the Successor himself says so... then I confess, I find myself curious..."
Beneath the black night, the bright moon blazed down upon the earth in dazzling radiance — as if it, too, were shining in honor of the most brilliant light among all of Ryu Shin's disciples.