The Knight Who Removed His Helmet (3)
A Ramming delivered not with a lance, but with a sword.
Weaker than the Ramming the Horned Constellation had unleashed—yet that was only relative. The storm Alderan created with a thrust of his blade was still terrifyingly strong.
KRAAAAAAASH!
Rocks and earth that touched the storm were ground into the finest dust; its power needed no further proof. And this was no ultimate technique—merely a skill he could fire off in succession, almost as if testing the waters.
Najin had split the first Ramming, but the broken stance left him unable to break the second. He swung his sword, however clumsily—yet even a glancing touch from a Sword Master’s technique was never light.
CRACK!
Caught in the storm, Najin skidded backward in a long slide. When he forced the blocked air from his lungs, blood came with it in a thick rush. Watching the tip of his sword hand tremble, he let out a hollow laugh.
Strong. Filthily, impossibly strong. And he wasn’t even using sword aura? Najin had known the man was monstrous, but this surpassed every imagining.
So this is a Sword Master.
His star had fallen. He could no longer use mana. Even his consciousness was fraying.
So this is the Empire’s hero.
The man before him was still a Sword Master, still the Empire’s hero. Najin spat out the blood filling his mouth and snapped straight back into stance. There was no time to rest. He already knew: to Alderan, Ramming was only a way to open distance and create openings. The real attack always came after.
A flash.
His instinct proved right. Far across the wasteland, Alderan’s sword glittered—and in the same instant a blade-stroke came flying at Najin. One stream, two, three… eight cuts, staggered by the barest fractions of a second, crashed down upon him.
In this situation, Najin’s temporary future-sight was of little help. His eyes did not truly see the future. They only read preparatory motion and predicted what that motion would produce. Skipping the middle steps and leaping from cause straight to result—that was his foresight.
SLASH.
But a Sword Master’s motion contained only cause and result. If Najin skipped the middle to predict the future… Alderan simply omitted the middle and made that predicted future into the present.
Sword swings. Blade-stroke is launched. Blade-stroke arrives at its destination. The middle of those three stages was simply gone. The moment the sword moved, the cut leapt across the distance and was already there. The instant Alderan’s blade flashed, an opaque slash was already hanging an inch from Najin’s nose.
Najin threw himself aside.
One cut whistled past his shoulder. Rolling up from the dirt, he swung. He managed to split the second, only for the third to exploit the gap that swing created.
He took the third in a half-ruined stance, the fourth and fifth in a worse one…
At this rate there’s no end to it.
He was only being driven back, and even while he retreated Alderan would keep swinging. He would be forced back until exhaustion finished him. Catching the next cut, Najin remembered Alderan’s teaching.
Abandon the idea of perfectly receiving every technique. That is something you do only against someone weaker than you, or equal. Against a stronger foe? Be bold.
Alderan had truly taught him a great deal—how to survive in the Outer Land, the fundamentals of battle, the mindset a swordsman must carry, and more. Turning those lessons over in his mind, Najin put them into practice at once.
Accept the wounds and charge in.
Create variables without hesitation.
Give what must be given, and guard only what must be guarded. You cannot protect everything.
None of this is special. These are things you were already doing—unconsciously, perhaps. But acting on instinct and understanding with the head before you act are different matters entirely.
He steeled himself for injury. Using the rebound of his own aura, he disrupted Alderan’s cuts; he slammed his body straight through them, shattering the strokes as he drove forward. Wounds opened. Blood flew. Najin paid it no mind.
Yes. Like that.
He closed the distance. The odds were already thin; to raise them even a fraction he had to get close. He possessed no means of cutting an enemy dozens of meters away—his opponent did.
Drag the enemy onto the stage that favors you.
It would not favor him—but at least on that stage they could stand as equals. Recalling the lessons, Najin found himself smiling without meaning to. An old memory had surfaced.
The battle with Ivan just before he escaped the underground city had felt the same. Ivan had tried in earnest to kill him, and at the same time had tried in earnest to teach him the sword. Thanks to that, Najin had learned Ivan’s blade and aura.
This isn’t so different.
That harsh master was not deliberately trying to kill him—yet his mind was clouded. In going all-out he might still end Najin’s life. One moment of carelessness, one mistake, and Alderan’s edge would take his head.
That can’t be allowed.
Najin had no intention of forcing the dishonor of killing his own disciple onto his master. Quite the opposite. He meant to give him the highest honor a master could receive: to meet his end at the hands of the disciple who had surpassed him.
Thud.
Najin kicked off the ground. Blood sprayed behind him as he sprinted.
Watch. Learn. Surpass.
Find enlightenment on the boundary of life and death. Break past the limit and overcome. As always, in this moment he had to grow. Only then could he defeat the man before him.
KRAAAAAANG!
At last the distance vanished. Najin and Alderan clashed blades at point-blank range. Eyes wide, Najin watched every swing of Alderan’s sword—to learn it, and to surpass it.
Kang! KAAANG!
Steel met steel and sparks leapt. Alderan casually bled off the rebound of aura and drove his edge straight for Najin’s throat. Blades locked and tangled; the harsh music of the duel rang across the wasteland.
Shhk!
Again and again their swords grazed each other’s flesh. One heartbeat of carelessness and a head would fall—a tightrope duel that no spectator would ever mistake for a simple master-and-disciple spar.
And that impression would have been only half wrong.
This was a master-and-disciple spar—and at the same time an honorable duel.
Left… right… one stroke linking into the next… ah, I can’t stop that one. Sidestep. Next—
A rematch against an opponent who had already defeated him once, and the final act that would crown a knight’s path to death. Najin sank into the duel so completely he forgot even to breathe, searching for the way to win.
Of course there were many ways to win a fight.
Drag it out. Wait until Alderan lost all reason and ran wild. Wait until the man who had burned his life force simply grew too exhausted to swing—then rush in. That might have been easy.
But that would be victory in a fight, not victory in a duel.
A duel had to be honorable and just.
It only meant something if you broke the opponent from the front. And in Najin’s judgment, that was not entirely impossible.
There is a chance. Slim—but real.
Alderan had burst his own heart and sealed his sword aura, deliberately balancing the scales. He had done so because he believed that, under those conditions, Najin could defeat him.
Of course the present state was still not enough.
Alderan had set the balance on the premise that Najin would grow right here, on this ground. The scales were not yet level; they still tipped toward Alderan. To make them even, Najin himself had to rise.
Honestly…
Najin groaned, then laughed through the sigh.
What a merciless master.
Grow here. Surpass me. If you don’t, you die by my hand. You wouldn’t force that disgrace on your master, would you? Smiling at the man who seemed to say exactly that, Najin raised his sword.
To answer the master’s certainty that his disciple would grow, he swung.
Challenge and breakthrough.
As if answering its master’s will, Najin’s star blazed pure white.
2.
Alderan Basaglia felt his consciousness grow steadily fainter. For a long time he had already stood on the boundary between the dead and the living. Even though he had recalled who he was, the time left to him was short.
The time allotted to him had already ended.
Body and soul that had exceeded their limits began to crumble. What remained of him now was nothing more than a flame flaring high just before it snuffed out. Before long that flame would devour everything of him and leave only ash.
Knowing this, Alderan only stoked the fire higher—so that he might shine one last time, so that the light might be even a little more brilliant.
Ah…
Consciousness scattered. Judgment slipped away.
He began to lose track of whom he was fighting, even of who stood before him. Each time that happened, the figure opposite him blazed with fierce light.
A glittering star. Truly radiant.
That light held together the consciousness that kept trying to dissolve. Alderan remembered. Yes—the one before him was his disciple. Holding that fact, he swung his sword.
More, more, more…
Stay closer. Sharper. Faster.
As if answering that expectation, the arcs Najin’s blade drew grew cleaner and keener with every exchange. Alderan laughed aloud.
Exactly as he had anticipated.
Najin was growing.
What the boy had needed was a perfect example. A good master for him was not a polished theorist or eloquent lecturer. It was an outstanding swordsman who could simply show him the model. That was the teacher who suited this boy.
One demonstration would help him more than a hundred words. So Alderan did exactly that. Clinging to his fraying mind, he swung a perfect sword.
KRAAAAAANG!
Every time blade met blade.
Every time sparks leapt.
Najin began to mirror Alderan’s motions as though looking into a glass. Until now he had never fully mastered the Triumphant Sword. Not only the ultimate techniques—every individual form and motion had carried flaws.
It could not have been otherwise. When Alderan had been stripped of transcendence, his own motions had been imperfect; the disciple who learned from them inevitably inherited those imperfections.
But now?
Now Alderan had climbed back onto the plane of transcendence. The moment he displayed techniques restored to perfection, Najin began sealing the holes and flaws in his own forms and closing the gap at once. The scales that had tipped toward Alderan steadily leveled.
Bleeding, knocked flying, rolling across the dirt—he still surged back to his feet and charged again. Thrashing to close the difference by any means, carving away his own flesh and bone if that was what it took to keep pace. And in that process, Najin grew.
Watching him, Alderan felt joy. Truly a disciple worth teaching. Through the haze of fading consciousness he recalled the last lingering attachment left to him.
Attachment. My final wish.
He had been forgotten by everyone.
Not a single soul remembered him. That fact had tormented Alderan. The thought that his great deeds, the techniques he had built, the Golden Horn Knights themselves would vanish from memory filled him with bottomless dread.
Death itself did not frighten him.
Only a death that left nothing behind.
He had always wanted to leave something. He had longed for a successor who would remember him in this world and inherit everything he was. A dream he had abandoned because it was clearly impossible—yet Najin had made him dare to dream again.
The boy had intoxicated him like strong wine.
In the end he had made him dream.
Alderan had said he would wake from that dream and pay the price—yet now he found he could not. Better to drink the poison wine and die. Better to meet his end still dreaming.
Will you do that for me?
He did not speak the question. He only swung his sword.
Of course.
By matching the exact same posture, Najin answered. At that reply Alderan smiled without sound, and in silence he spoke to himself.
Then I will carve it into your memory.
The Empire’s eight hundred years.
The sword of the Imperial First Horn.
Everything that is mine.
With that final monologue, Alderan’s consciousness scattered completely.
What remained was simply a knight.
The knight assessed his own condition. He could not use sword aura. He could not draw up mana. And the opponent fighting him? A swordsman who looked to be around the level of a Sword Seeker. The arcs his blade drew were quite sharp.
And they resembled his own.
He felt as though he were looking into a mirror.
The boy had not yet fully caught up, yet every clash of steel made his growth palpable. Opening distance would guarantee victory on this side—but pulling free of an opponent who clung so fiercely was no easy task.
More importantly, would that not be discourteous?
He was a knight. Even with his consciousness gone, he had not forgotten himself.
Alderan Basaglia.
The knight called the Empire’s hero pressed the boy hard. Blood sprayed and the youth was knocked flying, yet he never once yielded ground. A proud opponent. The knight smiled with satisfaction and tightened his grip on the sword.
For reasons he could not name, he felt he ought to teach this opponent something. That he ought to show his very best. Respect for a worthy foe, perhaps—the desire to display a worthy sword. He did not know the reason.
And he felt no need to know.
It did not matter.
Right now he was in a duel. To decide the outcome of this supremely joyful contest, the knight raised his blade.
He could not remember it, but this was the place where he had once won glorious victory. Here he had cut out the Revelry Emperor’s heart and cast down half a star. Even if he himself no longer recalled the feat, the heavens remembered.
The fallen, shattered stars shone.
Those stars granted no special power. Stars that had already fallen simply shone. Their light fell upon the knight. Sword lifted high toward the sky, he displayed everything he possessed.
The stance that raised the blade as if to pierce the heavens was called the First Horn—or the First Sword. It looked almost like the raising of a battle standard. The banners he wore billowed in the rising wind.
Alderan Basaglia had always stood at the vanguard.
If the Empire was a single ship, he was the ramming horn fixed to the prow that struck the enemy first, the first sword to be swung. At the same time he was the Empire’s first name spoken whenever the Empire itself was invoked.
Imperial First Sword and Imperial First Horn.
The single stroke that flowed from the stance that symbolized him was the ultimate technique of the Triumphant Sword. Alderan had given that technique no ornate name. He had simply attached the word that stood for himself.
Triumph.
The Imperial First Horn brought his sword down.
First Horn—Triumph.