The Essence of Three Hundred Years (7)
A deal with the devil. The idiom has long since hardened into a fixed expression, and its meaning is this:
Inviting a far greater ruin upon yourself merely to escape an immediate peril.
The reason it came to be used that way is simple. That is exactly what a bargain with a demon is. Without exception, every soul who struck a deal with a demon met destruction. The long history of humankind proves it; even in the unrecorded ages of antiquity, men bargained with demons and were ruined for it.
And still, humanity bargains with demons.
Outlaw it, let a thousand stars issue warnings, execute the dealers with exquisite cruelty, broadcast their hideous ends to the world—and somewhere, someone will still strike the bargain. Demon-dealers keep appearing without end.
The reason for that, too, is simple.
Because human beings live in the present, not the future. Because escaping the danger right before their eyes matters more than a doom that may or may not arrive someday. Because for the sake of now, they will gladly fling the future away.
Najin regarded the Helmeted Knight.
The expression beneath the helm was still unreadable. Even if it had been readable, he would not have bothered to read it. He asked in a light voice:
"If you dealt with the Demon King himself—the King of Demons—the price can't have been light."
"It wasn't."
"Have you already paid it?"
"Half. The remaining half I am still paying."
"And did you gain anything for it?"
"Not yet."
The exchange was almost koan-like. Najin did not press further.
"Disappointed?"
"No."
"A deal with a demon—doesn't that disqualify you as a knight? King Arthur herself said that a true knight must slay demons if he can, never compromise with them."
"She also said that the final sentence matters more than every line that comes before it."
Najin spoke that final sentence aloud.
"Are you a knight?"
"No. Shamefully not."
"At the least—do you wish to be one?"
"I am striving for it."
"That's enough."
With that, Najin smiled.
It was a smile that cleared the heart of anyone who saw it—casual, almost thoughtless at a glance. The Helmeted Knight knew better. The boy in front of him was not empty-headed. Quite the opposite. He had thought, fretted, and agonized until he arrived at that single answer.
That's enough. Nothing else matters.
Whether you once bargained with a demon, knelt before one, or ended by begging for your life in the dirt—none of it matters. Why?
Because you wish to be a knight.
Because the man I have watched is that kind of man.
At those words, the Helmeted Knight felt his armor grow strangely light. The plate that had always weighed him down, the helm that had crushed his skull—both felt light for the first time in ages. The laugh that slipped past his lips was light as well.
"Well, I'll be damned."
He scratched at his helmet.
"I thought it was your good fortune that a greenhorn like you met me first—that the first hunter you ran into in this godforsaken land happened to be a bastard like me... but no. That wasn't it at all."
He gave a hollow chuckle.
"It was the opposite."
Opposite, he muttered. Still standing in place, still smiling, the Helmeted Knight let out a long breath. The look of a man who had just made up his mind.
"Can't let a stroke of luck that comes once in a hundred and fifty years slip away. Yeah. A little late, but I've decided."
"Decided what, exactly?"
"To take you as my disciple. You said it yourself in front of Bernstein, didn't you? That I was your master. A knight must never speak a lie. I'll make that declaration true."
He flicked a glance. Understanding at once, Najin went down on one knee before him and bowed his head. The Helmeted Knight drew the sword at his hip. The blade still bound in chains would not come free, but that hardly mattered now.
The sword touched Najin's shoulder lightly.
"From this day forward you are my disciple. An apprentice knight, and my squire as well."
"Unfortunately, as a master you'll be my fourth, and as a lord my second. Is that all right?"
"Hey now. That's Continent talk, isn't it? This is the Outer Land. On the Continent they call the Outer Land the afterlife or the far shore, don't they? An entirely different world. Then shouldn't the count start over from the beginning?"
Najin laughed as if he couldn't believe it.
"That's fair enough, I suppose."
"Good. Then as your master, let me say this..."
He clenched his hand into a fist and opened it again, repeating the motion as though testing something. At last, satisfied, he spoke.
"Thirty days. Give me thirty days. Within thirty days I will pour all three hundred of my years into you."
Thirty days. The Helmeted Knight had promised Najin thirty days, declaring that inside that span he would teach him the whole of his three centuries.
Even the so-called geniuses who can compress another man's lifetime into a single instant only manage it when the material they study is ordinary. The Helmeted Knight was anything but ordinary; if anything, he stood closer to Najin's own level.
Hero of the Empire. Imperial First Sword.
A Sword Master who had once stepped into transcendence.
The swordsman who created the very style that became the foundation of Imperial swordsmanship.
Even the fragmentary scraps of information about him painted that picture, and that alone left no room to doubt how formidable a warrior he had been. The title of Imperial First Sword is not handed out lightly.
Among those called geniuses, only a vanishing few ever reach transcendence. The experience accumulated over three hundred years by a genius rare enough to belong to that vanishing few... even for Najin, it would not be easy to absorb.
"Ghk—!"
"Wrong. Harder! Don't waver. Setting your stance so you can always fall back and flow into the next attack is usually correct. Not this time. Think of ending it in a single blow."
After acknowledging Najin as his disciple, the Helmeted Knight's teaching changed. He took up a sword himself, sparred with Najin directly, and corrected his form with rough hands. Sometimes he simply struck Najin's body with the blade.
"Atanga's swordsmanship—the first strike of the style you've learned is excellent. But the second that follows is pitiful. What good is shattering an enemy's technique if the next attack is half-hearted? Stop leaning on aura. Watch the direction the sword is actually swinging."
He mended the flaws in Najin's stance, filled what was lacking, and pointed toward better paths—all with the sword in his own hand. No longer a rusty scrap scavenged from somewhere; he taught with the blade that had been bound at his waist.
"You've learned a lot of different styles. Not bad. Knowing many styles means you can answer more situations. But simply knowing them and knowing how to use them are two different things. I'll teach you how to use them."
The chain-bound sword still would not leave its scabbard.
Yet the Helmeted Knight began to swing it, little by little.
"Yes. That's it. That's the foundation of my swordsmanship. How is it? Pretty good, right?"
"Isn't this just a style that only works if the person using it is already monstrously strong? It feels a bit..."
"Hey! It isn't that you need to be a monster for it to mean something—you become a monster by mastering it. Me? With this style I once split a six-star demon clean in half, stormed into the palace of the Heavenly Wanderer Star, and stole his liquor!"
"Why would you steal liquor?"
"He made damn good liquor."
"..."
A day passed, then two, then a week.
With every day that went by, Najin's blade grew sharper. The Helmeted Knight's corrections became fewer. Watching the sword Najin swung, he sometimes marveled, sometimes burst out laughing.
"You're a proper lunatic. This isn't something you learn that easily. If you just gobble up my three hundred years, what does that leave me?"
Even as he said it, there was no resentment in him. If anything he was delighted. The closer Najin came, the more he taught, and the faster.
"Why is a transcendent's swordsmanship different from an ordinary man's? Why is a Sword Expert's different from a Sword Seeker's? Even swinging the same sword, the result changes. Aura is what makes that difference."
The Helmeted Knight cut the air.
"Depending on how you draw out your aura, even the same technique can take hundreds of shapes. And in my style... we compress the aura to its absolute limit. The way you did against Bernstein."
At some point the chains binding scabbard and blade began to tremble. The sword still would not come free, yet it rattled in its sheath as though it might leap free at any second.
"I'll show you. Watch and copy."
"I keep telling you—looking at it doesn't help."
"Then look harder."
"I'm going to lose my mind."
"You think learning a Sword Master's sword is supposed to be easy?"
Another week passed.
Around the fourteenth day of training under the Helmeted Knight, the changes in him began.
On the fourteenth day.
"..."
Mid-lesson, the Helmeted Knight simply stared into empty air. Even when Najin spoke to him he did not answer. Only after a stretch of silence did he mutter, "Where was I?" and pick up the thread again.
At first Najin paid it little mind.
But when the blank spells grew frequent—when he began freezing several times a day—Najin could no longer ignore them.
The Helmeted Knight himself noticed the change in his body, yet he said nothing about it. Najin did not ask.
Twenty days went by.
By then Najin spent more time applying what he had learned than learning new things. Against a powerful undead he demonstrated the Helmeted Knight's sword. It was a hard fight, but in the end he brought the creature down.
In life the undead had carried roughly four stars.
Standing over its corpse, Najin looked to the Helmeted Knight and asked how the technique had looked, whether anything needed correcting. Mid-answer the Helmeted Knight fell silent. Mouth closed, he walked toward Najin—
No. He walked past him.
He stopped before the fallen undead, reached a hand toward the crumbling corpse as though entranced. Even when Najin spoke, he did not reply. As if something had seized him completely.
"...Ah."
Belatedly he gave a short shudder. He seized his outstretched right hand with his left, sucked in a harsh breath, and turned to look at Najin—checking the boy's gaze. The helmet hid his face, yet Najin could tell the man was afraid.
Afraid of what? Of the action he had taken without knowing? Or of the possibility that his disciple might now despise him for it?
Both, it seemed.
Najin was startled as well, but he let none of it show. He looked at the Helmeted Knight the way he always did, then answered with a sly grin: "If my sword was so fine you stopped mid-critique, does that mean there's nothing left to nitpick?"
"...Hah."
The Helmeted Knight let out a dry laugh and stood.
"Fine. Excellent. So when exactly do you plan to learn my ultimate technique? That's the only one left."
"Like I keep saying—I can look all I want and still not get it."
It would have been better if that had been the only time. Similar incidents kept happening.
Before the undead Najin felled, or before beasts that still held starlight, the Helmeted Knight would freeze. Each time he clutched the military banner wrapped around his body until his knuckles whitened and forced himself back to his senses.
The stretches of silence lengthened. More and more often he stared blankly into space and only came to himself later.
Day twenty-six.
With four days left of the promised thirty, Najin had learned nearly all of the Helmeted Knight's swordsmanship. One technique alone still eluded him—the one the Helmeted Knight called his ultimate art.
The technique that held the essence of three hundred years.
How to copy it, how even to begin learning it—Najin could not grasp it.
"Najin."
On the twenty-seventh day the Helmeted Knight suddenly pointed at the spear Najin carried.
"That oddly shaped spear of yours."
"The Spear of the Cross Star?"
"Yes. Its former owner—what was his name?"
"...What?"
This time even Najin could not hide his shock. Until now, whenever the Helmeted Knight acted strangely, a little banter and a joke had smoothed things over. Not this time.
"Kruenbel. The Silent Knight."
"Ah. Right. That was it. That was it."
"..."
"Yes. I remember. The Golden Horn Knights. This horned helm is called Hornhelm. And I..."
The Helmeted Knight stopped speaking.
He stared into empty air and murmured blankly:
"I... who was I?"