The Scramble (3)
"I'll set a few conditions."
Gerd, Sword Master of the Empire.
What he wanted was to confirm what Najin was hiding. Excalibur, a Masterpiece — or if not those, then a blessing of the stars. Gerd was certain the boy before him was concealing something.
"As you proposed, I will use neither the exclusive techniques of a Sword Master, nor my Authority, nor my extrasensory perception."
If the boy refused to open his mouth to the end—
To confirm it, Gerd would have to drive him into a corner. Push him to the brink of death, and he would eventually bare everything simply to survive. But actually killing him would render the whole exercise meaningless.
He only meant to confirm.
And so Gerd laid down his terms.
"I will swing my sword with killing intent — but I will grant you three chances. If, before you have used all three, you force me back even a single step, the victory is yours."
"Aren't those conditions rather favorable to me?"
"Generosity is a virtue of the strong. With terms like these, I might actually enjoy the duel, as you put it."
Gerd slowly raised the sword he had drawn.
"If you lose to me, you will tell me everything you are hiding. And I will report it to His Majesty the Emperor. Furthermore, should the Empire have need of you, you will answer that summons without fail."
"Very well. And if I win?"
"I will pursue nothing further. Even if you draw out whatever you have been concealing and defeat me with it, I will not inform the Emperor. I alone will remember. However — in the unlikely event that you still win while holding back your full strength—"
Gerd's mouth curved into a smile.
As if to say: Go on, then. Try it if you can.
"I will grant you one wish. Whatever you desire. I swear it upon my seven stars."
The Imperial First Horn. A transcendent who held seven stars.
When a man of that caliber said he would grant a wish, the words were never light. He truly possessed the power to make almost anything happen.
"Does that mean you'll give me a chance to borrow Sir Gerd's sword?"
"Sword, rank, power, wealth — anything you like. So long as it does not take the form of raising a banner against the Empire."
They were good terms.
Najin smiled.
"I accept."
A vast grassland, wind sweeping across it.
Upon the landscape Gerd had painted, Najin settled into his stance. Before him stood the Empire's Sword Master, a single blade in hand.
The Empire's Sword Master had raised his sword.
Najin felt the full weight of that single sentence. His whole body trembled. Instinct screamed, and the tips of his fingers went numb around the hilt. But only for a moment. He exhaled a long breath and adjusted his grip.
The point of his blade no longer wavered.
"······."
Gerd, who had been watching him in silence, curved his lips. The old man settled into his own stance. There had been no need for him to entertain the boy's challenge, no need to bind himself with restrictions. And yet he willingly answered the spirit the boy had shown.
Before he was the Imperial First Horn, Gerd was a swordsman.
His blade had not dulled enough to refuse a duel requested by a junior of brilliant talent. How long had it been since his last proper duel? How long since he had faced a challenger this bold? A smile touched the old man's mouth.
Show me, then.
Show me your sword.
The Empire's Sword Master, Gerd.
What sword did he wield?
He had mastered the blade that stood as the origin of the Imperial Swordsmanship practiced by the Empire's knights. The sword transmitted to him by the national hero and previous Imperial First Horn — Alderan Basaglia.
The Triumphant Sword.
The sword of a hero who had won every battlefield and brought the glory of victory to the Empire alone. A swordsmanship known in this world only to two men, Gerd among them. For that reason its characteristics were not widely understood, but—
The Empire's histories often described it thus:
An impregnable rampart.
A sword that carried the weight of a thousand years of Empire.
So that's what they meant.
KAAAAAAAAANG!
The instant their blades met, Najin's body was driven far backward. He twisted and slid into a landing, clicking his tongue. In that single clash, he had understood the descriptions of the Triumphant Sword at once.
Heavy. Impossibly so.
The one swinging the sword was Gerd alone — and yet the blade felt as though hundreds of knights were swinging as one. Eyes narrowed, Najin dropped his stance lower. He fixed his gaze on Gerd, who leveled his sword toward him as if inviting him to come as often as he liked.
A single human standing alone upon a vast grassland.
This plain was unquestionably Gerd's Mindscape. And so, when Najin had first looked upon it, he had felt a question. Why would the Mindscape of an old man who knew nothing but Empire and sword be an open grassland?
Only now did he resolve that doubt.
In the distance, Gerd raised his sword. As if he had no need even to take a step. He lifted the blade high toward the sky and brought it down. In that instant Najin's eyes flew wide and he hurled himself aside on pure reflex.
Crack.
The earth split in a long, straight line. No sword aura had been used. He had simply swung his blade and cleaved ground far beyond his reach. A hollow laugh slipped from Najin's lips at the fact.
There was no need for Empire or sword to take shape upon the grassland.
The old man standing there was the Empire.
The sword he swung was the sword the Empire swung. That was why he was the Empire's First Blade. Watching Gerd cut through the air, Najin felt genuine awe.
No sword aura. No mystical footwork. He simply swung his sword. Straightforwardly. Stubbornly.
And that alone was enough for the old man's edge to split even distant scenery. Even with his strength restrained, the pressure could not be hidden. This was the height Gerd had reached. And before that height, Najin felt pure reverence.
Where Caron had let him feel technique ground to infinite precision, the old man before him radiated a fierce, unyielding obstinacy. A man who had clung to a single thing and thereby attained transcendence.
But.
Thud — Najin drove his foot into the ground.
I didn't come at you just to watch you split scenery from a distance. I didn't ask for this duel so I could stand here admiring you.
He dropped lower. His eyes snapped wide.
The Sword Saint gave me a sword. The Executioner gave me the right to own a Masterpiece. Then I ought to tear something from you as well.
With a heavy thud, Najin's heart began to pound violently. Had Klaus Aten been present, his eyes would have gone wide. The stance Najin had taken now matched, with perfect precision, the stance of Klaus Aten — vanguard commander of the Blue Wing Cavalry.
Stance matched. Heartbeat matched.
The instant Najin kicked off the earth, a thunderous boom rolled out. How to pour everything into a charge. How to become a single lance cutting across a battlefield. How to carry the force of that charge straight into a weapon. Klaus Aten had taught him all of it — whether he had intended to or not.
And so the Najin who tore across the ground was, even to Gerd's eyes, something startling. For the first time since the duel began, Gerd's brow furrowed as he locked onto the boy.
······According to the records, Najin had only reached Sword Seeker a few weeks ago. And yet — was this truly the movement of a man who had only just stepped into that realm? To the Empire's Sword Master, the answer was no.
He held his sword aura under complete control. He knew precisely where the limits of his body lay, and exactly when to concentrate his power. He understood with perfect clarity the altered structure of flesh and mana that came with ascending a realm. These were the movements of a martial artist who had already spent a decade at the level of Sword Seeker.
It was almost absurd. Here stood a boy flipping the middle finger at the world's common sense.
Interesting.
He wanted to know more. What lay at the bottom of this boy. That was what Gerd wished to see. He caught the blade of the youth charging straight at him. Even receiving a sword laden with that much force, Gerd did not so much as sway.
Show me more.
His blood was up for the first time in a long while. He only hoped the boy would not burn through his three chances in an instant.
Najin spent his first chance on the seventeenth clash of blades. Gerd's sword slipped into the gap left by a broken stance and carved a handspan into Najin's shoulder. Najin's tip never reached Gerd, never even pointed at him — it was knocked aside, skyward.
Without driving the blade any deeper into the shoulder, Gerd said, "That's one." His face was expressionless.
The second chance went on the forty-third. Gerd's edge rested against Najin's nape. Najin's own sword had stopped just short of Gerd's shoulder — but a full second separated the two blades. And a second was time enough to kill a man many times over.
"That's two," Gerd said. A faint smile touched his mouth.
Najin used his third chance—
—after their swords had met seventy-three times. And in this instance, Gerd did not say "three." The situation was far too ambiguous for such a declaration.
Gerd's Mindscape shattered. Before either of them quite realized it they were back in the reception chamber, and the shock of that final simultaneous strike hurled Najin into the chamber door. He smashed through it and went tumbling out into the corridor beyond.
Thud — screeeeeech!
Najin drove his sword into the floor and skidded, leaving a long scar. At the far end of the corridor he finally stopped, then slowly pushed himself upright. A smile was already forming at the corner of his mouth.
"Sir Gerd."
Najin looked at the man still standing inside the reception chamber.
"In a case like this — whose victory is it?"
Gerd, standing in the chamber.
He had stepped back exactly one pace from the spot where he had planted his feet. Because he had yielded that step, the Mindscape had broken — which meant that the final, simultaneous exchange had fulfilled both of their conditions at once.
Najin had exhausted all three of his chances.
And at the same time, he had met the condition Gerd himself had declared.
He had won and lost; lost and won. How was one to judge it? Najin put the question to Gerd, and Gerd laughed aloud. The sound rolled out from the reception chamber and filled the corridor. It was the laugh of a man thoroughly, unreservedly delighted.
"Obviously, my defeat."
"Isn't it a draw?"
"A draw, in this case, means my defeat."
Even as he spoke of his own loss, Gerd was smiling — clearly pleased with both the course of the duel and its result. He let out a long breath.
"That last strike. Whose swordsmanship was it?"
"My first master's."
"You had an excellent teacher. Straightforward and upright — and beautiful precisely because it was upright."
The old man stroked his beard.
"It was a fine duel. And a fine duel deserves a beautiful ending. I do not forget a promised price. Knock upon the door of the First Horn whenever you wish."
The First Horn — the name of the tower where Gerd resided.
So saying, the old man clapped Najin on the shoulder and walked on. Only then did Najin drag in the breath he had been holding. He had swung his sword so hard his shoulders ached.
Somehow… I made it through.
-Nice work. Though I don't think you'll be getting any rest.
Merlin grinned.
She flicked her fingers this way and that, as if telling him to look around. Following the tip of her hand, Najin finally registered the situation he was in.
"······."
"······."
"······."
The people who had gathered to recruit him.
Envoys dispatched by countless factions stood staring at Najin with eyes gone wide — eyes steeped in shock.
They had been knocked unconscious by the wave Gerd had released, and the scene that greeted them when they finally staggered back to their feet was Najin smashing through the reception chamber door and flying out into the corridor. That alone would have been shocking enough. And then?
Gerd had acknowledged defeat before Najin.
From the context of the conversation, some kind of duel had taken place inside — and the one who had won that duel was Najin. In other words: he had claimed victory against the Imperial First Horn.
Of course, it had almost certainly been a restricted duel.
That hardly mattered.
What mattered was that the boy had earned the goodwill of the Imperial First Horn, and that the great Sword Master of the Empire had, with a laugh, acknowledged the boy's victory.
Sir Gerd — renowned for his severity and his unreadable face — had laughed out loud. And that laugh had not been false.
The people gathered in the corridor were competent, and being competent, they understood exactly what this meant. The youngest Sword Seeker in history, who had reached that realm at eighteen. Another epithet had just been added to the boy's already absurd list of titles.
Acknowledged by the Imperial First Horn.
Or: the youngest Sword Seeker to enjoy his favor.
Najin's already soaring stock climbed at an even steeper angle. Everyone who had been waiting in the corridor threw out the negotiation packages they had prepared and scrambled, on the spot, to draft new ones.
And then they rushed him all at once.
To claim this impossible prize for themselves.