First Horn, Alderan Basaglia (4)
First Horn. Triumph.
The Imperial First Horn, Alderan Basaglia, brought his sword down.
The blade he had lifted high enough to pierce the heavens fell toward the earth. It was a strike without sword aura, without mindscape, without a single trace of magic—a pure, unadorned blow.
Only one swing.
To break free of the world's principles and transcend the limits of the flesh, countless swordsmen and mages had long relied on magical means—sword aura, mana, spells. Yet here stood a swordsman who asked:
Why would you need any of that?
For a swordsman, one blade is enough.
A Sword Master was originally the name for those who had surpassed their limits with nothing more than the single sword given to them. If that was so, shouldn't they transcend the limits of the flesh even without leaning on sword aura? To that question, Alderan Basaglia answered:
Of course.
To make the obvious truly obvious, Alderan presented his answer to the world.
Triumph.
There was no complex principle to the technique. No profound secret that pierced the laws of the world. The path his blade tip traced was simple to the point of austerity—nothing more than an honest downward cut from high to low.
Honesty. Upright and true.
That was the value Alderan Basaglia held sacred. A knight must always be upright and true. An imperial hero must always win honestly. It was the principle he had kept throughout his life.
And he proved that value through his sword.
With every handspan his blade advanced, the air trembled. Space around the sword warped as if crushed beneath something of overwhelming mass. The compressed, distorted space passed its breaking point and shattered. It fractured into pieces with a glass-like crack.
The landscape split along the arc of his sword. The instant the blade, trailing fragments of broken space, touched the ground—
Crack.
The earth split. The scenery split.
Alderan stood planted on the ground and swung his sword toward it, yet that single strike cleaved the clouds high above and drove down into the earth itself.
Sword aura erupted from the tip of Alderan's blade.
Not sword aura formed of mana, but a storm born of the swing itself, a blade of force stitched together from the shattered space. It was less aura than phenomenon.
KWA-GA-GA-GA-GA-GAK!
Alderan's aura smashed everything in its path and drove forward. Like a ship's prow crushing through ice to open a channel, it stretched endlessly ahead, carving the road it would travel.
Najin saw it all with his own two eyes.
A strike with the middle steps cut away, leaving only cause and effect. Watching that sword force approach him, shattering space like a pane of glass, Najin thought unbidden: Beautiful. An incomparably beautiful strike.
He would have loved to stand and stare, but he could not. That blow was aimed at him. In that moment Najin did not swing his sword by conscious will; he moved by pure instinct. The screaming alarm of his intuition moved his body before thought could catch up.
He could not dodge it. He could not parry it. He could not take it cleanly. All he could do was minimize the damage. Instinctively, Najin chose what to sacrifice.
Ting.
The instant Najin's aura met Alderan's. In that endlessly stretched moment, Najin watched space crack open with a sharp report around the point of impact. The fracture raced along his own aura.
That strike shattered everything it touched. Whatever stood in its way, it would smash through and force a path open.
The sword of a transcendent carried a kind of law; before that law, an ordinary man could not resist. Countless futures flashed through Najin's mind—visions of his body shattered and split.
Ordinarily those futures would already have become reality. But the Alderan of this moment did not use true sword aura. He was incomplete, and no mindscape rode that technique.
Therefore Najin could resist that future.
And he already knew how to escape it.
Not because he had suddenly achieved enlightenment, not because his eyes had found the answer. Because he had been taught. While instructing Najin, Alderan had explained his own ultimate technique—and had also taught him how to break it.
As if preparing for the day his disciple might one day face him.
Recalling that memory, Najin moved.
"Don't try to block it. You can't. Don't try to dodge. You can't. Deflect it? If that worked, the Revelry Emperor's heart would already have been sliced open by my sword."
"Give it something. The most useless part of you."
"Use the rebound that strike creates—the impact force—against it. Take the damage and throw your body into that rebound to get outside the range."
"That clown Quixote broke it that way. Of course he still lost an eye and his warhorse, but the technique I'm using now is far weaker than it was then. Even you should be able to break it like that."
Alderan had said all that and then grinned, "Easy, right?" Having just tasted the Triumphant Sword's secret art, Najin could not smile at all. That damned master of his—what part of this was easy?
His sword shuddered. His aura fractured. The bones in the left arm holding the sword began to shatter. Najin chose what to abandon and what to protect. Into the gap bought with his left arm, he hurled his body.
Rebound. Storm. Shockwave.
The moment he threw himself into it, his body screamed. Bones broke, flesh tore, blood sprayed. Najin silently cursed the master who had taught him this as a counter. Caught in the aftermath, he was flung high into the sky.
Crack.
The last thing Najin saw was the landscape of the world splitting in two. The clouds above were sheared away; the earth was carved in a single deep line. He did not miss the trail of the aura that grazed past him and stretched into the far distance.
Holding all of it in his eyes, Najin fell.
With a heavy thud, thud that shook his body, Najin blacked out and came to again and again. The spinning of his vision told him he had been launched high into the air, then crashed without a proper break-fall, bouncing and rolling across the ground.
His vision flickered. Through the rapid cycle of unconsciousness and waking he barely managed to cling to his senses. In the chaos he drove the arm he could still lift into the earth.
There was a sword in that hand. Even through all that chaos he had not let go of the blade. Small mercies. The problem was that the hand and arm gripping the sword were twisted at grotesque angles.
Shhhhhhk!
With the sword planted in the ground, Najin skidded a long way before he finally stopped. He exhaled the breath he had been holding. Blood came up with it in a thick rush. Not only blood—something that should never have left his body seemed to come with it.
"Ghk—khuh..."
Breathing out was possible; breathing in again was not. Only after he had retched the blood clogging his throat could Najin draw air. Every inhalation brought pain from his lungs.
Excalibur's healing power worked to restore his body, but it mended the ruined nerves and senses first, forcing Najin to feel every shred of the agony.
Yet because of that, his mind cleared.
The numb sensations returned as well.
Najin raised his right hand and clamped it hard over his half-torn left shoulder. Lightning flashed behind his eyes. Through pain that threatened to steal his consciousness, he poured Excalibur's healing into the left arm and shoulder.
"Hahh..."
He let out a long breath and twisted the corner of his mouth upward. The smile trembled, but he did not hide it. There were two reasons for that smile.
One: he finally felt he could understand the secret of the Triumphant Sword.
And the other...
"..."
Najin looked ahead.
The rising dust slowly settled. As the aftermath of Alderan's technique died away, the figure of Alderan came into view—standing there, staring straight at him.
Alderan did not charge. He did not swing his sword. He was simply waiting.
Waiting for the dust to settle, waiting for his fallen opponent to rise again. As if a proper duel demanded it. As if the fight could not end until both had given their utmost.
Najin could only laugh.
Even after losing consciousness, a knight remained a knight. Feeling something close to awe at the sight, Najin slowly forced himself upright. Staggering, he planted both feet on the ground and raised his sword.
Only then did Alderan raise his own.
Najin let out a long breath. His breathing settled.
He's strong. Filthily strong.
He used no sword aura, and his flesh was eroded to the brink of crumbling to dust, yet Alderan Basaglia was stronger than any enemy Najin had ever faced.
Najin was pouring everything he had into the fight, and still he could barely reach the tips of Alderan's toes. Using Excalibur might have closed the gap a little, but even setting aside the aftermath, that was a means he must not employ in this duel.
Najin could not control Excalibur. He did not wield the sword—he was wielded by it.
"A swordsman is one who swings the sword."
"You must not be swung by the aura or by the blade. You must swing the sword with certainty."
That was what Alderan had taught him. Do not be controlled. If you are controlled, how can it be your power? Exactly so. This was also Najin's final pride.
A shame.
In this moment Najin felt regret.
He had wanted to face Alderan under the same conditions and claim a complete victory in this duel.
He had wanted to completely surpass his master Alderan and grant him a satisfying end in this spar.
But he was too weak to fulfill that wish. Far too weak. Only by raising his aura, drawing up his mana, and even borrowing the starlight of the sky itself could he trade blows with Alderan. That truth left him aching with regret.
But...
Regretful as it was, that was all the more reason.
I have to win. I must.
Najin desperately recalled it.
The secret technique of the Triumphant Sword that Alderan had just displayed. This was the first time he had seen the complete form, but it was not the first time he had witnessed the technique itself.
The Helmet Knight, stripped of transcendence after forgetting himself, had tried again and again to remember. He had struggled desperately to recreate the technique he had lost. Najin remembered those thrashing traces, those desperate movements, with perfect clarity.
And he had watched the Helmet Knight remember himself, reclaim transcendence, and become Alderan Basaglia once more... watched how his sword changed, how the missing pieces were filled in.
Najin tightened his grip on the sword, holding all of it in his mind.
He exhaled and raised the blade.
Najin could steal techniques after seeing them only a few times, yet Alderan's ultimate art alone could not be stolen. He understood it, but he could not reproduce it. He had not yet reached transcendence.
The gulf between a transcendent and himself.
That gulf was one Najin could never fill.
But giving up simply because he could not fill it was not in his nature. He filled the gap with what he had. As he always had, gazing up at the stars shining high above, Najin reached out his hand.
Tak.
He planted his feet as Alderan did, and like Alderan he raised his sword toward the sky. Of course he could not, like Alderan, shatter space and birth a storm of aura with the swing alone.
Instead, Najin had his own aura.
Constellations coiled around his blade. Following Alderan's teaching, he wrapped the aura tight around the sword. Aura compressed to its limit warped the surrounding landscape. Najin's star hanging in the night sky shone and strengthened the aura further.
Aura, mana, starlight.
Summoning every means he possessed, Najin recreated Alderan Basaglia's technique. As if answering that effort, Alderan settled into stance once more.
Blood poured with every movement of Najin's body. It ran from open wounds, yet his stance did not break. Here, in this place, he would surpass his own limits.
With every movement of Alderan's body, his flesh crumbled into drifting powder. The moment he had unleashed the Triumphant Sword's secret, his body had already reached its limit—yet his soul had not yet surrendered. He whipped the body that had met its end and moved toward what lay beyond the limit.
The two looked at each other.
Master and disciple's gazes crossed.
Knight and squire's swords shone.
The fallen star and the rising star glittered.
First Horn.
There was no question of who moved first.
Triumph.
Almost as one, the two brought their swords down.
Alderan Basaglia, as always, set the example. He had always been the model knight, the model hero. Those who followed him had run along the path he opened. This time, too, Alderan was simply setting the example.
Eight crumbled stars shone.
Najin, as always, learned by watching those who went ahead. He walked the trajectories of the heroes who had once crossed the world, glimpsed their lives, and learned their techniques—so that he might go farther than they had.
Three stars and a rising fourth shone.
Najin and Alderan Basaglia swung their swords.
The same stance, the same stride, the same breath, the exact same trajectory. The result that blow produced was not the same—but the form was perfect.
For the rising star, the Horn Star shone.
For the fallen star, the Dawn Star shone.
