The Essence of Three Hundred Years (1)
Seated before the campfire, Najin inspected his wounds. He had taken quite a few serious injuries in the fight against Kruenbel, but at the time, with his head burning with fever, he had only halfheartedly administered first aid.
Grabbing the broken bones with his bare hands and forcing them back into place—it was the crudest, most idiotic excuse for emergency treatment imaginable. Calling it first aid was generous; it was pure madness. The surprising part was that the madness had worked remarkably well.
Najin clenched and unclenched his hand several times. There was no hitch in the movement of his fingers. The ones that had been left lumpy and uneven from being forcibly realigned were now smooth. The rest of his wounds were the same. Only his right arm, which had been completely shattered, still hung limp—everything else was fine. And even that right arm was recovering at a rapid pace.
Najin tilted his head. He had always known his regenerative ability was exceptional, but not to this degree.
Did my species change into a zombie or something without me noticing? Or maybe a homunculus with super regeneration…
The Outer Land is a place where starlight grows stronger.
It was neither.
According to Merlin, concepts related to the stars grew more potent in the Outer Land. That meant the functions of Excalibur—the Sword of Stars—were likewise enhanced here.
Impressive. At this rate, I might actually be able to fight while factoring in losing an arm or two…
If you want to watch me lose my mind, go ahead and try it.
Just a joke.
While Merlin glared at him with wide eyes, Najin considered the matter more carefully. At his current level, regenerating an entire body part that had been completely severed still seemed unlikely. Broken bones and severed sections healed quickly, but filling in flesh that had been torn completely away still took a long time.
Well, that aside—congratulations.
What? On defeating the Silent Knight?
That too, but I mean obtaining a new star.
Najin blinked.
A new star?
What, you didn’t notice?
Focusing on his starlight, Najin spread his palm wide. One, two, three. Three stars glittered above his hand. His eyes went wide.
Wait—this counts as a great achievement too?
Of course it does. That Silent Knight you fought was a constellation with six stars. Even fallen, he still possessed power close to a Transcendent. You’re still nothing more than a Sword Seeker, and you took a victory against someone like that. If that isn’t a great achievement, what is?
I had the Helmeted Knight’s help.
Merlin looked at him as if he were being absurd.
Even accounting for that, you carried the bulk of the fight. At the end you charged him head-on and even broke his technique.
Challenging a being of higher grade head-on and claiming victory—that was achievement enough to be called a great feat. On top of that, he had deciphered and dismantled a Transcendent’s technique… The heavens, it seemed, had recognized it as such.
“…”
Najin wordlessly regarded his third star.
What the third star symbolized came to him naturally. Breakthrough—a word that meant overcoming a crisis or surpassing a previous record. That was the concept engraved upon Najin’s third star.
The concept had not attached itself simply because he had broken through Kruenbel’s technique head-on. A star did not hold only a single achievement. It contained the life the bearer had walked.
Najin had always faced his enemies head-on, never retreating as he broke through every trial. He had even overturned records set long before him… Both meanings of the word “breakthrough” could be written across his life.
Challenge. Dragon Slaying. Breakthrough.
Gazing at the three stars, Najin smiled without thinking.
“Looks like you picked up another star after all.”
As Najin sat there, the Helmeted Knight let out a long breath. He pointed at the stars glittering on Najin’s palm.
“You said you were eighteen?”
“I should be about nineteen by now.”
“Nineteen years old, three stars—and you’ve even reached the realm of Sprouting?”
“What?”
Najin blinked again.
The realm of Sprouting? Come to think of it, his sword aura had changed during the battle. He lifted his blade and drew the aura forth… Sure enough, its density had risen considerably.
“Be honest. You’re not nineteen—you’re twenty-nine, right? No, even then it still wouldn’t make sense… Good grief.”
“I am a bit of an unreasonable case.”
“The fact that you can’t even deny it just makes me angrier.”
While the Helmeted Knight gripped the back of his own neck, Najin asked him,
“How old are you, then?”
“You don’t ask an old man his age.”
“You don’t even age, so what’s this about being an old man? If we’re going by that logic, someone I know…”
Najin shot a sidelong glance at Merlin.
Merlin blinked and tilted her head, then realized what his look meant and bristled with indignation.
She insisted, quite forcefully, that she was young and beautiful, that she had reached her realm at around nineteen and her physical age had been fixed then, and that she was therefore effectively still nineteen.
So for all practical purposes, you and I are the same age!
Najin let the words of the shameless thousand-year-old mage go in one ear and out the other.
“Anyway. It’s a little unfair if only I have to give my age. How old are you?”
“Who knows. After I passed a hundred and fifty I stopped keeping track. How many years ago did you say the Dawn War was?”
“About a hundred and fifty years.”
“Then I’ve lived somewhere between three hundred and three hundred thirty years.”
Three hundred years. Najin nodded.
“So I’ll be learning the essence of those three hundred years.”
As Najin said it, the Helmeted Knight’s expression was less than eager. He seemed to feel a certain reluctance at the idea of teaching his sword to someone else.
“I’m not sure I even have the right to teach a sword I can no longer use myself.”
“Why can’t you use it?”
“The sword I wielded was a symbol. I don’t know what value a sword that has lost that symbolism still holds. I have no certainty. And how meaningless a sword swung without certainty is—well, saying it out loud would only tire my mouth.”
Even so, he said,
and rose to his feet.
“A promise is a promise. It has to be kept.”
Leaving the sword bound at his waist alone, the Helmeted Knight returned with a different blade from somewhere. He tested its balance a few times, then settled into a stance.
“I can’t even remember the last time I taught the sword to someone. When was the last? Must have been a good hundred seventy years ago…”
“You had a disciple?”
“Disciple is a bit much. There was a kid whose form I looked over a few times. Imperial knights would come asking me to check their sword work too. I always told them I had no talent for teaching and drove them off, but one or two of them still managed to pick things up over my shoulder.”
The Helmeted Knight raised his sword.
The instant he lifted it, Najin felt every sense in his body snap taut. From the moment the blade was in his hand, the knight’s presence had become something entirely different.
“It’s been a long time since I held a sword, too.”
The Helmeted Knight moved the tip lightly.
The blade in his hand was an unimpressive thing—long abandoned, old and rusted. Looking at that dulled edge, one had to wonder what it could even cut.
Shrring…
Even a dull blade, the moment it rested in a Sword Master’s hand, became a peerless treasure. Though the tip merely parted empty air, something like the sound of cutting could still be heard.
The Helmeted Knight set his stance and swung. A downward cut from above—the foundational motion of Imperial swordsmanship. And of course… when a Sword Master performed the basics, they belonged to a different realm entirely.
Crack.
The ground split in a straight line. A boulder lying in the path was silently cleaved in half. Najin’s eyes flew wide. What had he just witnessed? Cleaving the earth and splitting rock with a sword stroke was something Najin could do as well.
He could do it—but only when using sword aura.
The strike the Helmeted Knight had just shown was achieved without any aura at all. Najin stared at him with eyes wide open. The knight himself only clicked his tongue and muttered that this wasn’t quite it.
“Ah. It felt like this.”
He raised the sword above his head.
Ash-gray sword aura rose along the blade. His aura was never flashy. It coated the dulled edge in a thin layer, as if replacing the lost sharpness. At a glance it almost looked as if he weren’t using aura at all.
An ash-gray blade.
The Helmeted Knight brought the raised sword down. Najin strained to understand the motion he was witnessing, eyes wide—but still he could not grasp it. Not because the movement was fast or complex, but because it was far too simple.
Nothing more than lifting a sword and swinging it down.
Anyone could copy the motion itself with ease. But matching the result that sword produced seemed impossible. The moment the Helmeted Knight’s aura-wrapped blade swung, the ground split again with another crack.
Deeper and longer than before.
Najin closed his eyes and pressed a finger hard against the corner of one. What in the world was that? He had never felt a sensation quite like it. This was not the first time he had seen a Sword Master’s blade. When he had watched Caron and Yuel, he had thought their swords too fast and intricate to even attempt to imitate.
This time was different.
It was the opposite.
Neither fast nor complex. If you dragged any random swordsman in front of him right now and told him to copy that stance, he could manage it without difficulty. And yet—how?
“You’ve got a ‘how did he do that’ look on your face.”
“Exactly.”
“The sword I use is a bit unique.”
Unique was one word for it. It was simple. In fact, it felt strangely familiar. Where had he seen that before? Najin pondered, then let out a short sound of realization.
“Imperial swordsmanship felt exactly like this.”
“Imperial swordsmanship?”
Najin stood and ran through the forms of Imperial swordsmanship in sequence. It was the foundational art every knight learned first, and having faced any number of knights, Najin of course knew how to use it.
“Doesn’t it look similar?”
“…”
At Najin’s question, the Helmeted Knight fell silent.
His face was hidden by the helmet, so there was no way to be sure, but Najin thought he seemed a little surprised.
“No… that’s Imperial swordsmanship? It’s different from the Imperial swordsmanship I know.”
“You’ve been in the Outer Land for over a hundred fifty years, haven’t you? A century and a half is enough time for things to change.”
“Imperial swordsmanship barely changed for nearly eight hundred years after the Empire was founded. It couldn’t shift that easily. Strange. Is that really Imperial swordsmanship?”
Najin nodded. The Helmeted Knight was silent for a long while. Then, at last, he began to laugh—as if he found it absurd, and as if he had just understood something.
“So that’s how it turned out…”
He touched the sword bound at his waist. On the scabbard chained there, the emblem of the Empire was engraved. Even aged and rusted by the long years, one could still tell that what was carved there was the Imperial crest.
“Seems some things weren’t forgotten after all.”
There was a hint of pleasure in the Helmeted Knight’s murmuring voice.
“What do you think is most important when learning the sword?”
“Proper form?”
“Wrong. That can be corrected later. What matters is real combat experience. As much of it as possible. Struggle to find the best choice in every kind of situation, and eventually you’ll naturally understand how a sword ought to be swung.”
The Helmeted Knight went on.
“My own sword was the same. Rolling across battlefields, hunting demons, beating the bastards who tried to sell out the country—it grew on its own. I assembled the insights I gained from experience, and before I knew it I’d forged a sword art of my own.”
So, he said,
“We start by building experience.”
He pointed down the cliff at the golems below.
Golems—monsters formed when mana-infused rocks clump together. On the Continent they were commonly found near ancient ruins. But in the Outer Land, everything defied common sense.
The golems writhing down there had been formed from fragments of fallen stars. Golems that moved not on mana, but on starlight.
“Cut them down.”
“Easy enough.”
“Without using sword aura.”
Najin blinked.
Just as he was about to ask how exactly he was supposed to do that, the Helmeted Knight kicked him in the back.
“Ah—”
“Have a nice trip.”
As he fell, Najin saw the Helmeted Knight waving down at him. You’ve got to be kidding me, Najin muttered, spinning his body around.
ROOOOOOAR!
The Outer Land golems, animated by starlight, howled as they charged toward him.