A Light One Should Not Have (5)
The final gate to escape the underground city.
Najin gritted his teeth as he looked at Ivan standing guard at the entrance to the tunnel that led to the waterfall. It was a reality he had been trying so hard to ignore.
…He had known Ivan was pursuing him.
Oppen had told him so. But at the same time, Najin had hoped. Maybe Ivan meant to let him go. Maybe he was deliberately holding back from the chase. That had been Najin's hope and his wish.
Because he did not want to face Ivan.
Because he did not want to raise a sword against Ivan.
Because he did not want to fight Ivan with the resolve to kill.
"You're here."
But reality thrust itself before the boy's eyes.
That the worst-case scenario he had imagined had arrived.
"I've been waiting."
If you want to leave this city, try climbing over that massive wall. You will only reach the outside if you get past the man who has drawn every line and limited you. Faced with the reality closing in, Najin's expression crumpled.
"Draw it. Your sword."
Ivan drew his blade.
He offered no sword salute. He simply leveled the tip at Najin—with eyes colder than ever before, and a voice low and heavy.
Pressure crushed down on Najin's shoulders.
What he felt was thick, sticky killing intent.
Najin knew there was no other way. He did not want to fight. He was afraid. Yet because there was no other path, he drew his sword. The blade scraped roughly free of the scabbard and pointed at Ivan.
And then—bang.
Ivan kicked off the ground and charged.
Unlike their sparring sessions, he did not wait for Najin to come to him. Trailing deep-blue aura, Ivan swung his sword at the boy.
Ivan forced it upon him.
Come at me with the resolve to die.
Otherwise, I will have no choice but to cut you down.
2.
Ivan, Knight of Atanga.
He had reached the realm of Sword Expert at the age of thirty-one and served eight years as a knight of Atanga. Even after he lost his honor and fell into the underground city, he had never neglected his training for the past decade.
Eighteen years since he first reached Sword Expert.
Once called a promising talent of the Atanga Knights, Ivan was a man who, with proper support and instruction, might well have become a Sword Seeker. Such a man had remained at a single realm for eighteen years.
What that meant was simple.
Ivan stood among the upper ranks of Sword Experts. He could claim victory against most of his peers; his swordsmanship and combat technique, refined over long years, had approached the realm of completion.
In other words—
"…Ugh!"
To Najin, who had only just approached the threshold of Sword Expert, Ivan was an overwhelmingly superior opponent. The instant he caught the sword Ivan swung, Najin's body lifted into the air.
Different. The weight riding the blade.
Different. The density of the aura.
Even with aura coating his own sword, Najin was driven back. He rolled across the ground and forced himself up. There was, of course, no time to catch his breath. Ivan was already on him; the sword he swung crashed down—KWAANG!—crushing the earth where Najin had just stood.
The ground split deep; dirt and dust exploded upward.
In the instant the cloud blinded him, Ivan's blade lanced through the haze. KAAAAANG! Najin barely managed to block, yet he was driven back again. The hand gripping his sword went numb.
Najin understood. In every sparring match until now, how carefully Ivan had held back, how much strength he had withheld.
They had crossed blades only two or three times, and already his fingers trembled. Cold sweat slid down his spine. Najin clenched his teeth and steadied his breathing. Eyes wide, he tracked every movement Ivan made.
Fast. Heavy. And unbroken.
Ivan's techniques seemed on the verge of severing, yet every motion flowed into a single continuous current. Najin was being swept away by that current.
"Ghk!"
He blocked the sword only to take a stamp to the knee.
He tried to deflect the blade, only for the technique to be dismantled; the pommel cracked against his temple. As his vision reeled, Ivan's greave drove into his gut.
His breathing shattered.
And because his breathing shattered, his stance collapsed as well.
He twisted his body just in time to evade the thrust that exploited that opening, yet the tip grazed him and blood sprayed. Through the flying droplets Najin groaned. He could not allow himself to be carried along by this flow any longer.
I have to counter.
But how?
Combat techniques, dirty tricks, feints, ways to lure an opponent into complacency… Everything Najin had built up until now failed against Ivan.
Because all of it had come from Ivan in the first place.
Ivan had taught him these things, and of course Ivan surpassed him in every one of them. Density of aura, perfection of technique, weight of the sword, stance, dirty tricks… In every field, Ivan held the advantage.
Never fight on the opponent's battlefield.
You can't always fight someone weaker than you. So how do you fight someone stronger?
Najin remembered.
Drag them onto your battlefield.
Find the place where you stand ahead of them.
The place where he could surpass Ivan.
…Even though he told me not to put too much faith in talent.
There was only one thing Najin could stake his faith on—the sole thing in which he could stand ahead of Ivan. His talent. His specialty. Najin's eyes flew wide.
Bloodshot pupils raced.
Even in the days when he could not keep up with Ivan's movements, even now while he was being driven back, those eyes tracked Ivan's every motion with perfect precision. Najin poured more force into them.
When he forced his eyes open wider, he saw it.
The gaps between Ivan's movements. The subtle temporal lag that appeared when one technique linked to the next. Najin still lacked a technique that could pierce that gap cleanly. He had never been taught one.
But.
Just because he had never been taught did not mean he had to keep taking the hits. When had he ever relied solely on what he had been taught? The techniques he learned only expanded his options. What had always carved out a path to survival was swift judgment and boldness.
Najin kicked off the ground and charged.
Ka, gagagagak!
Blade slid along blade. In the instant Ivan moved to dismantle Najin's attempt to deflect, Najin drove straight into his guard. He twisted his body with reckless commitment and slammed the pommel into Ivan's shoulder.
Jeoeok.
The opening Najin had confirmed with his own eyes—the joint that linked stance to stance—he struck it. For the first time the flow Ivan had been weaving broke, and Najin did not miss the gap. He kicked off the earth again.
Wheeling around to Ivan's flank, Najin swung. Kaang—and for the first time Ivan was forced a step back. Lost in the sword he himself was swinging, Najin never saw it, but in that moment a thin smile touched the corner of Ivan's mouth.
A technique I never even taught him…
Ivan hid the smile as he answered.
And he's already using it on his own.
Najin was still lacking compared to Ivan.
He was still immature; his understanding of the sword as a weapon remained shallow. Yet he was filling every gap by relying on his senses and those eyes of his.
He used techniques no one had taught him. Watching Najin invent techniques on the spot and put them to immediate use, Ivan clicked his tongue in amazement. But he still thought the same thing.
Not enough.
Even after I've given him this many hints, he still hasn't noticed. Ivan continued to drive the pursuing boy back with full force, opening distance.
"……"
Pushed away, Najin felt a strange dissonance.
The killing intent radiating from Ivan kept vanishing and reappearing. It felt as though he were trying to kill him—and at the same time as though he were trying to teach him.
Neither was false.
Ivan was genuinely trying to kill Najin, and at the same time he was genuinely trying to teach him. The human heart cannot be sorted into a single strand. While Najin, unable to find his bearings, wrestled with that dissonance…
"Huu……"
Ivan exhaled.
Then he repeated the meaningless motion he had already taken several times during the fight: raising his sword and steadying his breath.
Kiiing!
Ivan's aura sharpened into clarity.
The aura that had been on the verge of fraying settled into clean order; the blue flame that had been dying down blazed once more. That repeated motion—Najin watched it in silence.
Ivan closed in. He swung. Najin met the blade in his own way.
He blocked. He was cut. He was kicked.
He drove the man back, slipped into openings, and was forced to retreat again.
As the battle continued, Najin realized. Other gaps he could fill with improvisation, yet there remained one fundamental element in which he was being overwhelmed—the aura Ivan wrapped around his sword.
Ivan's aura was clear and pure.
Najin's was hazy and rough.
Perfectly gathered aura versus incomplete fragments of it. That was the gulf between them. How was he supposed to close it? While Najin searched for an answer, Ivan once more settled into that stance.
The stance he kept taking again and again.
Najin's eyes narrowed.
When you return, I'll teach you how to handle aura.
On the pride of Ivan, Knight of Atanga.
……No way.
Najin watched Ivan's movements.
From a moment ago Ivan had been repeating that meaningless motion—as if telling him to watch. At the sight of it, Najin could not help a short, incredulous laugh. Because now he understood.
The answer was right there.
…Just what tempo am I supposed to match this to?
That stance Ivan took, the flow that moved through his body and the flow that wound around the sword—Najin had seen them up close again and again. And because he had seen them, he understood.
Najin sprang far backward.
Ivan did not pursue.
As if to say, Go on. Try it.
"Huu……"
Najin let out a long breath.
Steadying his breathing, he settled into the stance most familiar to him: sword trailing low behind his hip, body lowered—the posture of a charge. Holding that form, he focused on the current flowing inside him.
He did not simply let the current pass. He seized it. Bent it. Forced it to flow in the direction he wanted, along the path he chose.
Of course it was not easy.
It was not a process simple enough to copy after seeing it only a few times. This was something one normally realized only after long hours of seated meditation.
Ivan had done it that way. Ivan's master had done it that way. Most of the Atanga Knights had awakened it that way. But Ivan already knew the boy before him was nothing like the merely talented.
Najin's eyes were good.
Ivan knew that better than anyone.
Showing him once, making him experience it with his own body, was a better lesson for this boy than a hundred explanations. Watching Najin, Ivan smiled.
"That's it."
Only then did he speak.
"That's how you use it."
The sword trailing behind Najin.
Over the white aura that already sheathed the blade, golden particles began to bloom. The rising motes filled the places the white had failed to cover and mingled with it.
Golden particles wove into the white aura.
Within the dense white, gold glittered.
What took shape was a platinum-colored aura. In a place where no stars could be seen, the sword of the boy who had always yearned for them was dyed in platinum—an aura the color of starlight itself.
The moment he confirmed the aura coloring the boy's blade, Ivan's eyes went wide. Then he burst out laughing. A platinum aura. As far as he remembered, it was a color no one else had ever possessed. An aura that resembled starlight had belonged to King Arthur alone.
And now, before him stood a boy who had drawn the sword King Arthur left behind—and who wore the same aura as the king.
Wearing a color that was his alone.
Aura that no longer remained mere fragments, but fully sheathed the blade.
It was proof that the boy had stepped fully into the realm of Sword Expert. Ivan adjusted his grip and charged. Two auras tore at each other.
Platinum aura and deep-blue aura crashed together.
3.
Every time the blades met, deep-blue flames and platinum starlight sprayed outward. After several exchanges, Ivan and Najin both sprang back at once. Looking at the boy who had nearly caught up to him, Ivan thought:
This is enough.
"Najin."
He had fulfilled his duty as a teacher.
"Come at me with the resolve to kill."
Ivan let his sword hang low.
It was a stance he had never once shown Najin—a posture for unleashing the technique that was his pride. The swordsmanship with which, as a Knight of Atanga, he had once executed the wicked who had lost honor and pride.
Before he unleashed that art, Ivan gave warning.
I will pour out everything I have to kill you, so you must do the same. Level the most brilliant thing you possess at me.
All hesitation was gone.
All that remained in Ivan was killing intent.
"……"
Najin silently lowered his own sword.
It was nothing like an admission of defeat. Quite the opposite. With the blade sheathed at his hip, Najin stretched a hand toward empty air.
Kwak.
He clenched his fist on nothing—so that he could show the most brilliant thing he possessed. The air rippled; starlight began to gather. And what appeared in the boy's hand was the Sword of the Stars—Excalibur.
Starlight flooded the underground city with light.
The moment he called Excalibur forth, Najin staggered. Merely summoning the sword exacted a heavy toll.
Yet he soon steadied his stance once more.
To break through the wall that blocked him and press forward.
The boy who held a star and the knight who pursued the stars faced each other.