Chapter 50
Chapter 50
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Translator: MadScientist
Chapter: 50
Chapter Title: Southern Kingdom (4)
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“So. Why did you come?”
The cat-eared woman, Sidor, knelt politely on the floor.
She wore a dazed expression, likely from passing out earlier and coming to.
I clapped twice right in front of her eyes, snapping Sidor back to her senses before she answered.
“To challenge the sword school.”
Here, a sword challenge was the same as storming a dojo.
Just a different word, but it meant the exact same thing as smashing their signboard.
The culture was that losing a sword challenge forced the training hall to shut its doors.
Contextually, it carried the implication that it made no sense for someone weak enough to lose to another to be teaching anyone.
It felt like a bunch of sophistry, though.
This was something I'd just learned.
“Why?”
“To put it bluntly, to force the training hall to close its doors.”
“Why?”
“Our trainees were all defecting, putting us on the brink of starvation.”
“...”
Sidor began reciting her long tale of woe in exhaustive detail.
To sum it up:
Because I'd opened a free training hall and drawn in all the trainees, they weren't making any money.
She hadn't joined any plots from the other training halls, but at this rate, they'd genuinely starve to death, so this was her reasoning.
Whether they sat tight or lost here, starvation awaited either way.
She'd judged it better to take action than sit around waiting to die.
“Having lost the sword challenge, closing the training hall is the proper southern custom. Now I must truly walk the path of the ronin...”
She meant she'd turn to banditry.
I turned to Irena.
She pondered for a moment, then nodded and made a proposal to Sidor.
“How about working for us instead? We're getting busier with all the extra people anyway.”
“Is that really okay for someone like me?”
Sidor hadn't been part of the group that attacked our trainees.
If anything, she was closer to an innocent bystander caught up in the mess.
Attempting a sword challenge was understandable enough.
We decided to take her on.
As Irena said, with just the two of us, we couldn't properly manage everyone due to the manpower shortage.
“If that's what Irena wants, then I'm fine with it.”
Sidor sprang to her feet and shook hands with Irena.
Her waist-mounted tail was wagging furiously back and forth.
Wonder where that's attached.
The coccyx?
After that, more people showed up at the training hall to attempt sword challenges.
All of them lost to me and poured out their sob stories.
So we hired them on without pay.
Before long, the training hall had grown so large it felt like its own sect.
We hadn't even settled on a name yet, but word on the street had naturally dubbed it this:
“Is that the Sword Lord over there?”
Sword Lord.
Literally, the master of the sword.
They said he taught swordsmanship for free without ever being sloppy about it—like the sword's true owner was lending it out—hence the name Sword Lord.
This had become another title of mine, as well as an alternate name for the training hall.
I couldn't wrap my head around it, but I let it slide.
“I've come to learn a technique or two.”
Lately, people like this were on the rise.
Not trainees, but folks directly challenging me to a bout.
These days, more people came to spar with me than actual trainees.
Sidor, who had been instructing the trainees from behind, glanced over at the challenger.
She smirked, then started a betting pool with the other instructors.
“How many exchanges do you predict? I'll bet three for fifty dong.”
“Two exchanges, one hundred twenty dong.”
“I predict five.”
Irena, who had been quietly watching the betting, chimed in.
“Then I'll put fifty gold on one exchange.”
Overhearing that, I quietly resolved to end it in one exchange.
The instructors, Sidor included, went pale in the face.
They'd realized I could rig the outcome.
And that I'd always rig it in Irena's favor.
They frantically called off the bets and refocused on teaching the trainees.
The duel ended after exactly one exchange.
“H-how is this possible... Am I truly... unable to even survive a single exchange...!”
Leaving the challenger to collapse in despair behind me, I stared at the line stretching out from the back of the training hall.
They were all challengers.
People who'd come to request a duel with me.
Regular trainees weren't made to line up—they used a separate entrance.
There were quite a few today.
Even trendy restaurant lines weren't this bad.
I roughly gauged the number of challengers with a glance.
About twenty, give or take.
A bunch of challengers didn't mean we couldn't teach the trainees.
The number of instructors had grown to match.
“Lots today too. Think it'll ramp up even more going forward?”
“High chance it will. Sword challenging's caught on like a fad. Now it's not just training halls—even knight hopefuls are flocking here.”
That was when it happened.
A tall man took his place at the very end of the line.
His clothes reeked of class—he was dressed in something pretty high-end.
And he seemed to be somebody important, because the people already waiting bowed their heads to him in a hurry.
Then they all started yielding their spots.
Thanks to that, the tall man reached me faster than anyone else.
“Pleased to meet you. You're the one they call the Sword Lord, right?”
“If it's a duel you're after, we have a spot prepared. That way...”
“Ah, I'm not here for a duel. How about a verbal spar instead?”
“?”
“Personal circumstances prevent me from crossing blades.”
I'd read about verbal spars in wuxia novels before.
Where you duel purely with words.
The situation already felt straight out of a wuxia tale, but actually hearing the term verbal spar was a first for me.
First time seeing someone actually propose one, too.
I had no clue how it worked, but I accepted anyway.
“Very well. This way, then.”
I led the man to an inner room in the training hall and sat him down at a low table.
Irena brought tea and withdrew, leaving an odd silence to settle over the room.
Did we need some icebreaker first?
I pondered it briefly, then decided to just dive right in.
The man agreed without a word.
“One. I draw my sword. Two. I thrust fiercely alongside a wave of force.”
“Hold on a moment.”
The man raised his right hand, cutting me off.
“That's just narrating a fight. Not a verbal spar.”
“...Isn't it the same thing?”
The man shook his head.
“A verbal spar is a battle of words, but one where you understand and empathize with your opponent's swordplay through imagination and sensation. You trade developments back and forth—like what they did, and how you counter it.”
“You can't just endlessly claim to be stronger than them.”
Had I been thinking too much like a kid?
I took it to mean I couldn't just declare victory with something dumb like I pierced the heavens with an almighty thrust!
Something I'd noticed for a while now: in the south, swordsmanship seemed to be at the center of everything.
The way bigger training halls got treated like sects was one sign.
No aura energy or waves, so they'd refined techniques and finesse instead.
“...So how do we begin?”
The man nodded with a smile.
“I'll start.”
The man raised his right hand and pointed into empty air.
“I advance half a step and draw my sword horizontally. The keen edge points straight at you as I put my weight on the heel of my right foot. Sword Lord, how do you respond?”
I got the gist.
I followed his words in my imagination, tracing the flow of swordplay.
“......I raise my sword at a diagonal to parry while twisting my body. I shift my center of gravity to my right leg and step forward half a pace, rotating to the side. I twist my wrist and thrust straight ahead.”
The man's eyes sharpened at my response.
After that, he led for roughly two exchanges.
From the third, I seized control of the flow.
I hurled words like slashing sword strikes, and he countered with razor-sharp ripostes.
The way I described moves and techniques differed from his.
Just a difference in perspective and experience, probably.
The win-loss was decided around the twenty-fourth exchange.
“...I yield.”
The man said quietly.
“You're stronger than I'd imagined. No—'strong' doesn't do you justice. I was curious who had the arrogance to claim the title of Sword Lord... but it seems you have the right.”
The man rose slowly to his feet as he spoke.
“Truth be told, I'm the sixth of the Southern Seven Powers—the one called Cold Sword. Nothing impressive.”
The Southern Seven Powers—the group where I was slated to be first and Irena second.
Why would one of their number trek all the way out here just for a verbal spar?
The others had come under the pretext of honing their skills.
“Why would someone of your stature come all this way?”
“I can't say just yet. However...”
Cold Sword paused, meeting my eyes.
“I've come seeking the Sword Lord's aid. This matter is one of life and death. But for now, I can't go into details.”
My gut told me something massive was at play.
Well, it had to be big.
A Southern Seven Power was a big name down south.
“What do you say? I can't reveal more at the moment, but will you take the job?”
Who in their right mind would say yes to that?
I didn't voice the thought.