The Sword That Could Not Be Stolen
The Sword That Could Not Be Stolen
Huduk, hududuk.
The thick beads of sweat clinging to the tip of my chin soaked the worn wooden floor.
My breath was ragged to the point of choking, but I didn't stop bending my arms as I pressed them against the floor.
"Ninety-nine. One hundred."
The sensation of muscle fibers screaming and tearing.
It was a bare-core workout pushing the load limit to its extreme.
The wounds where bones had shattered and joints had twisted were completely healed thanks to the holy power Ines had poured into me.
But I didn't rest. With this underdeveloped teenage body, I couldn't control the countless variables, so every morning with a blood-spitting resolve, I abused my body.
"Haa...."
I lay spread-eagled on the floor, catching my rough breath.
I got up and indifferently scanned my body reflected in the mirror.
"......."
My brow furrowed.
It was strange.
I had been pushing through extreme training for months now. Tearing muscle fibers, driving myself to the limit.
Naturally, the torn muscles should have recovered and grown thicker and harder than before.
But my body had barely grown from that scrawny, frail boy's physique I had when I first entered the academy.
Even the calluses that should have been hard from gripping a sword had become soft and smooth like a newborn's hand.
'Why?'
It wasn't simple malnutrition.
A stagnation with no known cause.
Just then, a voice flickered through my mind.
Erden, whom I had grabbed by the collar and dragged here not long ago.
That bastard had casually blurted out a terrible fact while diagnosing Ines's condition.
'No matter how low-ranking a priest, the essence of holy power is perfect restoration. It merely returns the self completely to its state before the shock.'
"...!"
My thoughts froze coldly.
Restoration. Returning to the original state before the shock.
I slowly turned my head and looked at Ines, who was sleeping soundly on the bed, hugging my shirt.
Every night, she burrowed into my chest and constantly poured miracles into me, even in her empty unconsciousness.
To wash away my torn wounds and pain. With that blind and desperate devotion to keep me alive.
It was a chilling paradox.
For muscles to grow, the process of wounding and scarring is essential.
But Ines's blind healing (holy power) was perfectly returning not only my wounds but even the 'muscle fibers torn from training' back to their frail initial state before training.
Her blind love and miracles toward me.
Paradoxically, they had become the most perfect shackle hindering my physical growth.
"...Ha."
A hollow breath escaped.
But that didn't mean I had the slightest intention of pushing away Ines, who tried to hold me every night.
Because watching Ines tremble in anxiety and bite her own flesh from not hearing a heartbeat was a hell tens of thousands of times more terrible than my growth stopping.
If physical growth of the body was blocked, there was only one method.
Forming a dantian and mastering the essence of martial power through mana embodiment.
Handling 'aura'.
In the previous cycle, I had handled aura too, but it was a very crude and shallow training method I had begged from an old knight dying on the frontlines.
Back then, I had forced aura up with my fully grown body's raw specs and tenacity to cut through the Demon King's army, but with this underdeveloped body now, even forming a vessel to contain that crude training method was a struggle.
I desperately needed a perfect, high-level, imperial orthodox 'aura training method'.
'I'll have to steal it.'
I stared at the darkness with cold, sinking eyes.
I planned to pick one of the academy's knight instructors and rip out his sword path and breathing from the very bottom.
The next afternoon, at the academy's first drill ground.
Under a cloudless scorching sun, all first-year cadets were assembled on the drill ground.
Today was a practical training session evaluating real combat swordsmanship.
But the atmosphere of the drill ground was frozen on a different level from the usual lazy lessons.
Ttabak, ttabak.
The footsteps of a man walking up onto the platform.
Silver armor meticulously crafted. A roughly grown beard and a face full of scars from cutting through countless battlefields.
The suffocating aura he emanated silenced the chattering nobles' sons' mouths, and stillness settled.
"I am Valian, vice-captain of the Imperial Knights. From today, I myself will directly instruct practice."
A heavy metallic voice echoed across the drill ground.
'Valian.'
Among the cadets, I stood with my arms crossed, indifferently evaluating his aura.
In my memories of the previous cycle, that man was a big shot who had never appeared during my academy days.
He must have had no time to leave the front due to the endless war of attrition with the Demon King's army.
Such a top-tier power figure appearing as an instructor for mere cadets' basic practice?
It was clear as a butterfly effect.
Because as soon as I entered the academy, I had caved in the face of a high-ranking noble and beaten his escort knights half to death.
Rumors that an uncontrollable beast had crawled into the academy had clearly spread beyond the rotten noble society to the ears of the Imperial Knights.
"I won't drag this out. I'll evaluate your levels through real combat sparring."
Valian's gaze swept down the crowd of cadets like a hawk's eyes.
His heavy pupils passed over the nobles and precisely landed on me, standing in the corner of the very back row.
In his gaze was none of the shallow arrogance felt from corrupt noble knights.
It was a solid pressure unique to one wielding overwhelming force, looking down on a rule-breaking, uncontrollable beast.
To me, it was a very unpleasant stare.
"I hear there's a troublemaker who, right after entering, crushed all the escort knights of the House of Bordeaux."
Valian pulled out a wooden sword from the rack on the platform and muttered.
"I'd like to see that bold skill for myself. Cadet Kyle, step forward."
The cadets' gazes all turned to me.
The noble sons, as if glad to see it, wore nasty smiles hoping that ignorant commoner bastard would be crushed to bits by the Imperial Knights vice-captain.
Without a change in expression, I picked up a wooden sword and walked to the center of the drill ground.
In one corner of the drill ground.
On a shaded bench sat Ines alone, hugging my school shirt, crouched with unfocused eyes facing this way.
For her sake, who would get anxious if I disappeared from sight, I had forced myself to bring her along.
'I need to finish this quickly.'
I stood before Valian and lightly aimed my wooden sword.
I had no intention whatsoever of asking for instruction.
My goal was only one: to drive that noble Imperial knight into an extreme corner and induce him to 'pull out his aura with all his might'.
And at that instant, to perfectly steal with my own eyes the imperial orthodox mana breathing method and aura operation trajectory that burst forth.
"Begin."
The moment the assistant's shout fell.
I kicked off the ground and charged like a beast.
Taat-!
"...!"
Valian's eyes widened slightly.
It wasn't the standard swordsmanship of trading blows as a student.
I thrust the tip of the wooden sword straight toward his face, where his armor didn't cover—specifically, toward Valian's left eye.
A horrifying angle meant to gouge out his eyeball and pierce through to the brain without hesitation.
Kkang-!
Valian reflexively twisted his head and deflected the wooden sword.
The wooden tip grazed his cheek by a hair's breadth, leaving a red line.
But I used the rebound of the deflected sword to immediately spin my body and followed up with a low strike toward the thin tendon behind his knee.
Peok!
Valian stomped the ground with his boot and blocked my wooden sword.
A dull cracking sound of wood colliding echoed loudly across the drill ground.
"You bastard...!"
A shock beyond surprise.
I gave Valian no gap and pushed him like crazy.
Right after kicking up dust with my toes to block his vision, I immediately slammed the sword hilt down toward the blind spot under his chin.
A ruthless barrage of strikes to crush his carotid artery, stab his eyes, and shatter his joints.
A trajectory that cut off all paths of retreat and persistently bit only at his throat.
Dozens of exchanges passed like that, and finally, at the moment just before my sword pierced Valian's defense and reached his neck.
Uuung-!
The moment Valian's eyes turned fierce, a heavy and massive energy exploded from his torso.
It was aura.
A blue-tinged sword energy sharply wrapped around his wooden sword and burst forth.
I inwardly cheered, expanding my pupils to the extreme as I scanned his breathing, muscle expansion, and mana flow.
I had to steal it. The gap in that breathing, the imperial orthodox training method.
But.
Kwaaaang-!
"Kkeuk...!"
The moment my wooden sword clashed with Valian's aura.
A terrible shockwave that felt like my bones would shatter surged through my wrist.
The wooden sword shattered into pieces scattering through the air, and I was pushed back, scraping the ground for several meters under the heavy pressure.
"Haa...."
I shook my tingling wrist and clicked my tongue inwardly.
Failure.
Valian's aura was not at a shallow, crude level that I could steal with my eyes.
I couldn't even see the intervals of his inhales and exhales.
I tried to read the trajectory of mana gathering in his dantian, but it was a perfectly deep energy, like facing a huge, smooth steel wall.
'He's a much bigger shot than I thought.'
Stealing with the eyes is impossible.
Silence fell over the drill ground.
As my wooden sword was destroyed, the nearby noble cadets finally started letting out nasty giggles as if they could breathe.
A shallow relief that no matter how mad a dog, before a true knight it's just a stick-wielding.
I shook off my broken wrist and got up.
The difference in strength was clear. Further struggle was pointless.
I quietly put down the remnants of the wooden sword and bowed my head, wearing the mask of a docile student.
Valian, vice-captain of the Imperial Knights, who had experienced countless battlefields and cut down thousands of enemies.
But even his seasoned eyes could not fathom the true nature of the boy he had just crossed swords with, Kyle.
Valian heavily looked down at the wooden sword fragments scattered on the ground.
His turbid eyes held no anger or disappointment toward the defeated cadet.
Instead, they held a deep shock at facing the eerily blind 'desperation' lurking beyond the boy's chilling killing intent.
'Even a soldier on the frontlines facing death tomorrow does not swing a sword so desperately.'
Valian pressed his brow.
The boy politely bowing his head before him was not simply a rebellious troublemaker. He was like a blood-soaked beast, driven to the edge to protect something invisible, gnawing at his own flesh.
Valian's gaze went to the platinum-haired maid trembling in the corner of the drill ground, hugging a shirt, then returned to Kyle.
Ttabak, ttabak.
Valian lowered his wooden sword and quietly approached Kyle.
Then, in a voice low and heavy enough that the surrounding nobles couldn't hear, he muttered.
"Your sword screams as if there is no tomorrow."
"......."
"A sword swung only with desperation, burning yourself, will someday break you before it breaks your enemy."
It was advice genuinely worrying for the wounded boy, trying to pull him from the path of ruin.
But even at Valian's sincere advice, Kyle's eyes under his bowed head remained only coldly frozen like ice in midwinter.
"I will keep that in mind."
Kyle answered with an expressionless face, very obediently and politely.
Valian felt a strange chill running down his spine. In the boy's answer, there was no warmth, no realization.
It sounded like a mechanical response spat out to thoroughly evade the situation and calculate gains and losses.
Then Kyle turned and approached the maid trembling in the corner of the drill ground.
He tightly gripped the maid's small hand and left the spot without a trace of lingering.
In the middle of the sun-scorched drill ground.
Left alone, Valian let sweat drip onto his rough beard and chased the boy's retreating figure with a deep, heavy gaze.
'There is something behind this.'
In an invisible, massive despair, the boy was clearly bleeding and fighting alone to protect something.
As an adult, as a knight defending the empire, he couldn't stand by and let such a talented, wounded child walk the path of ruin.
But the boy had firmly locked the door of his heart, wary of all the world's goodwill, and harbored venom.
He had to save the broken boy. To do that, he first needed to grasp the true nature of the desperate grip choking that child.
"...I'll need to investigate."
Valian quietly muttered, vowing toward the direction where Kyle had disappeared.