The One Who Walks on Water and the Stablekeeper

"As you well know, from the Eighth Form onward this sword art is meant for enemies far larger than yourself. If your opponent is bigger than you, where do you strike?"

"Why, the weak places, naturally. The eyes, for instance."

"That much is true. But what if the thing is the size of a house? How do you mean to poke its eye with a needle of a sword and arms no longer than yours?"

"......"

"That is why, against something that huge, you cripple the legs first. Only then can you go after the other weak points. Watch with that in mind."

I reset my stance and drew a steady breath. The Eighth Form was built low to the ground—footwork, posture, and the path of the blade all but clinging to the earth. Not a single motion sent the sword straight up, and the steps had to be quicker than in any other form.

The blade moved slowly, and then, in a flash, traced its path with startling speed. Fast, but never light. Each time my feet rolled, the ground shuddered; each time the sword cut across, the air tore with a ripping sound. Thrust and sweep, the completed Eighth Form of the Lighthouse Sword Art drew one vast line through the space before us, like a painting finished in a single stroke.

"Mercy me! Even the knight who showed us the form wasn't near this good!"

"Admire me in moderation. More to the point—did you understand what I said?"

"Had I understood it from one demonstration, would I be out here carrying on like this?"

"...You have a point."

"Hey, you rotten wench! What are you peeking at? You said you didn't want to join us!"

Barton bellowed it at Amber, who had been watching from a good distance off. She whipped her head aside and ignored him outright.

"Will you look at her! Sneaks a look at another body's sparring and then wipes her mouth clean as you please! Shameless, that wench!"

"You weren't even the one sparring. Why are you so fired up?"

"Born a human being, a soul ought to have manners and a scrap of shame, and that she-devil must be a beast, I tell you!"

Barton, my friend. Do you have no wish to live a long life?

I turned an incredulous look on him and took him to task.

"If you have the strength to rage over that, put it into the sword art. Now show me your Eighth Form."

My tone was light. His sword was not. It was heavy, and grave—which was not the same thing as talent. Barton's fundamentals were a wreck from the first, his dantian shriveled dry, and his head was nothing to boast of either. He was nowhere near fit to enter the Human Lighthouse Order.

"Ease off there. You can't link into the next motion like that."

"Nnngh..."

"Hey! Are you even awake? Skip an entire movement and then what? From the beginning!"

"Ghk—! All right, all right!"

His passion, though, was something else, and on the strength of that alone he had managed to follow this far. I corrected his movements one by one, and bit by bit Barton came to trace the Eighth Form. When the sun had sunk low, I stopped the lesson.

"We'll leave it here today."

"Whew. I've been helped a mighty lot again today."

"So long as you know it."

"You're not coming in along ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠with me?"

"No. I've got my own training to see to."

I sent Barton off and, left alone in the rear yard, folded my legs beneath me. The orb of flame that had been nowhere in sight was already spinning lazy circles over my head.

Finally—training time! I waited so long I nearly craned my neck off!

Jin's excited voice rang through my skull. He must have been bored out of his mind.

"Do you enjoy teaching me?"

If that idiot Barton copied your whole sword art after one look, do you think that wouldn't be fun?

"...That would actually be quite a sight."

Right. But talking threw your breathing off. Focus.

I grunted and settled my breath again.

Since I had reached Mid-rank, Jin's instruction had been, for the most part, the work of harmonizing dantian and Prime Flame. The results left nothing to complain about; they were superb. I had only just made Mid-rank, and already, drawing on the Prime Flame, I could cut down a High-rank Sword Expert on my own without running short of mana. Before long I would be High-rank myself.

The one thing I could not stand was how absurdly dull it was. A slaughter of kin was already booked four years out, but boring was still boring. If desperation alone made people apply themselves, there would not be a soul in the world who had bombed the college entrance exam.

I loosened body and mind on a deep breath and put a question to Jin.

"I'd like to learn a sword art of some kind, too."

I'm no swordsman. And it would be useless to you. You've already learned two proper sword arts.

"Mmm. But neither of them is fit for pouring the Prime Flame into."

There is a technique that drives the Prime Flame to its limit. It's what I use when I fight, so I never bothered to name it, but every strike literally explodes. A human body can't wield it. Learn it now and all you'll manage is a flailing dance.

Jin added that the technique could be used at perhaps a tenth of its strength only once a wielder grew far more accustomed to the Prime Flame than I was now—Sword Master class, at the least. The words struck me dumb.

Just how much power is in that thing? ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠Am I supposed to turn into a human cannon?

With no help for it, I did as he said and bent my focus to drawing mana out of the Prime Flame and shaping it.

CRASH!

How much time had passed? The sound of something shattering in the lodgings snapped me back to myself. I went in to see what it was, and the first thing to greet me was Barton Wigner, airborne. At the origin of that unscheduled flight stood Amber. I grasped the ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠before and after in an instant.

Barton, you brave, brave man. Couldn't hold it in, could you. Picked another fight.

"Ghk! Why... didn't you... tell me... she was a Sword User..."

"I kept my mouth shut because I knew it would come to this. You needed a thorough beating."

I looked Barton over where he lay sprawled on the floor. The entrance trials did not forbid fights between candidates, but if you left someone too injured to go on with the exam, both of you were expelled. Fortunately, he did not look badly hurt.

"You tend your flatterers so tenderly, young master."

Amber was glaring at me, contempt packed to the brim in her eyes.

Hmm. A look like that from a beauty might not be entirely unpleasant. A woman I couldn't have gotten so much as a glance from in my last life, turning heat like this on me. There's a tingle down below, I'll admit.

"I was looking after you, for what it's worth."

"And what is that supposed to be? A confession? I decline the confession of a brat who doesn't even know how to get it up."

"Ha. You've lost your mind."

A crazy bitch, sitting there cracking sex jokes at a boy of fourteen in the middle of puberty. Not that I had any right to talk, after the business about down below. Even so, in the Esteria Chronicles she had been far more solemn and cold, or so I remembered. I fired back at her, careful not to let my dismay at the gap between novel and reality show on my face.

"Injure a fellow candidate and you'll be thrown out. Do you want to pack your bags this instant?"

"Are you speaking as a fellow candidate? Or as the eldest son of House de Jevitz?"

Amber was far sharper than I had expected. Well—of course it had come to this. I had never hidden it, so learning my house would have been easy enough for her. This was nothing like the plot I had anticipated. Even so, I could still handle her. Whatever else she was, she was a girl of sixteen, and I had lived twenty-five years on Earth alone. Wrapping one little brat around my finger was simple.

"How much fun is it? A trial you have no chance of failing, the warm approval of knights, achievements heaped up in your parents' wealth—never having starved, never having been beaten—and with them you steal even the chances of commoners no better than vermin. How pleasant must that feel? How much of a game is this entrance trial to you?"

"Why should I have to understand a shortcoming that is yours, and why are you whining about it to me?"

"...What did you say?"

I laid Barton on the bed and stepped in on Amber. Flustered, she retreated one pace at a time.

"You are the one treating this entrance trial more like a game than anyone, and you dare spit that contemptible noise at me. For the sake of first place you will not mix with the candidates around you, and you will not lift a hand to help another soul if it means someone pulls ahead. What do you imagine the first entrance trial is for?"

As a wolf closes on a rabbit, I broke my stride into measured steps and closed a grip of mana around her windpipe. Sword User and Sword Expert. On the surface, a single step apart. In truth, a gulf no one could dare to cross.

"You and I. Are you displeased that we did not start from the same line? My apologies. What would you have me do? The world is like that. And yet, setting me aside, who among your fellow candidates stands above you now? You yourself stand ahead of everyone else, and still it galls you that I stand ahead of you."

I seized Amber by the collar. The twisted shirt cinched her throat, and she lifted clear of the ground.

"Khk..."

"A game? Is that something you dare say to me? Are you not sitting this trial to trample others underfoot yourself? You want to become a noble and stand over everyone else's head, the same as any of them. You chase first place so that you may aim still higher. Why should I have to hear such words from someone who has nothing in her but vanity and the hunger to prove herself? To you, the name of the Human Lighthouse Order is nothing but a handsome shell. And you turn your jealousy on me?"

No air could pass, and Amber's face reddened by degrees. When I released her collar she dragged in ragged breaths and glared at me, but she offered no reply. Whether she had nothing to say, or simply could not manage the words, I could not tell. I could guess well enough at what lay underneath.

Her hatred of nobles had taken root when she refused the lechery of a noble wastrel. Amber Cutter, eldest daughter of a stablekeeper in the southeast, had caught the eye of a viscount house's wastrel on account of her striking looks, and in tearing free of his grasp her whole family had been smashed to ruin. By then she had reached the level of a Sword User on what she had picked up watching over shoulders, and she had challenged the wastrel to a duel with her life in the balance—but there was never any chance he would accept a challenge from a commoner.

"Did you truly think a commoner could duel a noble?"

"Where, in the likes of you, is any such honor?"

With the violated corpses of her parents and younger sibling seared into her sight inside the burning stable, she had sworn it through tears of blood: that her family had come to this because their station was low, and that she would become a noble, become a knight, and cut that bastard to pieces in a duel. In the story itself Amber succeeded in taking the noble wastrel's head—not in a duel, but she took it all the same.

Then there is only one thing for me to say here.

"Why? Do my words feel unjust? Do you feel you have been insulted? If so, then challenge me to a duel."

"...!"

"I see. So you have no honor worth keeping, either."

It was a hand dug straight into an old wound, but that was precisely why it would draw a certain answer. From where she stood, it was also a line she could not possibly refuse. A moment later, a glove came flying at my face.

The words of her challenge were thoroughly classical. Of course. Denied the standing to issue a challenge at all, she had come out all the more orthodox. The inferiority soaked deep into those words, and the past behind them, were enough to wring a tear out of me.

Then I ought to answer in the same form.