Guildmaster Dieta (5)
Najin drove off the ground and charged.
His center of gravity was thrown so far forward it looked like he might topple—an unbalanced, almost grotesque posture, body lowered to its absolute limit as he closed in. Griffin had seen that strange form before.
Same as that day.
The day he first crossed paths with the youth. Even in that duel, the boy had closed the distance in exactly this stance. Faced with thorn-tree aura that would melt flesh and grind bone to powder on the slightest graze, he had not retreated; he had rushed in with ferocious momentum.
The memory flickered through Griffin’s mind.
Back then, he had been the one challenged, the one threatening a boy’s life, the stronger man standing above. And now? Griffin looked not at the past, but at the present.
It’s reversed.
Completely reversed. He was the challenger now, the weaker one. A bitter truth, but a truth he had to accept. Eyes bloodshot, Griffin tracked Najin’s every motion.
Yet no matter how hard he strained those eyes, following the youth was nearly impossible. Fast—so fast he could barely chase the afterimages.
Ka—kakakakak!
With every breath, thorn branches were severed.
Snapped, cut, broken and flung skyward. That day Najin had risked his life just to break one of dozens of spreading limbs. Not today.
Seogeok.
Every sweep of Najin’s blade sheared whole clusters of branches away. Griffin clenched his teeth as he watched his thorn tree fall limply, piece by piece.
There was another difference from that day.
Griffin could no longer stand rooted to the earth like some lofty great tree holding its ground. No tree could keep its center when a gale strong enough to rip it out by the roots was howling through.
Taat—Griffin leapt.
He bounded wildly across the arena, swinging his sword again and again. Knights who knew him well found the sight astonishing; a few even clicked their tongues and called it undignified.
“...Hah.”
“That fellow.”
“He really hates losing, doesn’t he?”
But the veteran knights saw something else.
Younger knights these days admitted defeat far too readily and prattled that keeping one’s dignity even in loss was the true chivalry. The veterans thought that pure self-justification.
There were duels where you had to thrash and struggle ugly even when you knew you could not win. Sometimes it was that thrashing that made a defeat beautiful.
Griffin’s thrashing looked exactly like that to them.
Undignified, almost frivolous—yet he was clawing for any variable he could create. What Najin had once done to him, Griffin was now doing to Najin. He felt no shame in it.
Or rather, he had no room left for shame.
One mistake and it’s over.
How long had it been since he last fought a battle this hard? Griffin held his tension and steadied his breathing. A question was even beginning to form.
Is that boy really only a Sword Seeker?
The spectators shared the same doubt. Where Griffin was sweating and flailing, Najin still looked composed. Was it even possible for someone who was no mere nobody to drive the knight commander of a ducal house this easily?
What Najin was doing was the sort of thing only Sword Seekers who had passed through Sprouting, Blooming, and Full Bloom—men standing on the threshold of Sword Master—were supposed to manage.
And that spear technique just now—what in the world was that?
Wasn’t he a swordsman?
The single strike Najin had shown earlier, the one that had shattered every branch of Griffin’s thorn tree, had been chilling. Not only had he raised his realm in so short a time—had he learned the spear as well?
By any common sense it was absurd. But then, common sense had never applied to Najin.
“......”
What was about to happen would be no different.
Najin let his sword hang low.
Aura compressed along the lowered blade. Constellation-shaped sword energy wrapped the longsword’s edge. Najin raised the blade that scattered pure white flashes, holding it at a slant.
“Ah......”
Someone who recognized the stance murmured.
“Imperial swordsmanship.”
The fundamental stance of Imperial swordsmanship.
Yet a few sharp-eyed knights noticed something more. Najin’s posture resembled Imperial form—but it was not quite the same.
A swordsman of that caliber did not simply get a stance wrong.
So... not Imperial swordsmanship?
Their guess was half right and half wrong. The sword Najin was about to unleash was Imperial swordsmanship—and at the same time it was not.
It was the original from which Imperial swordsmanship had been born.
The Triumphant Sword created by Alderan Basaglia.
Najin swung the Empire’s foundation itself.
Griffin, who had been widening the distance and running, felt his limit approaching. The output of his aura was fading. The thorn tree had always been costly in mana; it was never meant for a long fight.
Najin’s aura, by contrast, showed no sign of dwindling. Dragging this into a war of attrition would be meaningless.
So Griffin chose.
He would stake everything on a decisive blow.
While he still had strength left, he would settle it with one all-out strike. That was the plan. Accepting injury, Griffin charged straight at Najin. Mid-charge, his eyes narrowed.
Najin’s stance had changed.
As if honoring Griffin’s resolve, the youth took a grip and posture entirely different from before.
That is......
Griffin recognized it as well.
Any Imperial knight would know that stance. Wasn’t it the fundamental form of Imperial swordsmanship? Why now, of all times? The thought had barely formed when Griffin’s eyes flew wide.
No. Something was different.
He could not name exactly what, but something was off. His senses screamed; his instincts rang every alarm—yet it was already too late to reverse. Ignoring the warning, Griffin took one more step forward.
Chwaaaaaaaaaak!
Aura drawn without a thought for what came after flooded the arena. Crimson thorn trees dyed the entire floor scarlet. Griffin swung the sword that would be his last.
The secret technique of the Sacred Tree Guardian Blade.
He imitated the very strike with which Arta Trigardian had erased hundreds of monsters in a single blow. It was the finest blow he could call his own.
Najin met it with the fundamentals.
Where Griffin’s aura exploded outward in every direction, Najin’s remained compressed along the edge. Aura compressed to its absolute limit looked less like a Sword Seeker’s and more like an Expert’s.
It almost seemed as if he wore none at all—yet the pure white radiance proved the aura was there, sheathing the blade.
Scattering light, Najin swung.
A plain, concise motion.
To pour weight into that simplicity, Alderan Basaglia had tempered himself across long years, and every one of those years now lived inside Najin’s sword.
The thorn tree could not bear that weight.
A tree that had sunk roots deep into the earth, that possessed a thick trunk and had never swayed before any storm, began to break with a splintering crack. It is said hundreds of axe blows are needed to fell a great tree. Not this time.
Jjeoeok.
In a single stroke the thorn tree split.
One blow. One swing. That was all it took.
Najin’s blade snapped every thorn, then cut through the trunk itself. The aura Griffin had raised to its utmost could not overcome Najin’s; it evaporated completely. With another heavy crack, a long sword scar carved itself into the arena floor.
Griffin’s sword split cleanly in two as well.
A broken blade was proof of defeat.
“I have lost.”
The moment Griffin conceded, nobles and dilettantes alike burst into applause and cries of admiration. The knights who had watched the duel could not join them.
That final strike Najin had unleashed.
The knights who had glimpsed the extreme a swordsman ought to pursue were still trembling—as if they had just witnessed the blade of a Sword Master.
Was Imperial swordsmanship really nothing more than a foundation?
Most knights regarded Imperial form as either a stepping stone for learning other styles or mere cultural polish expected of an Imperial knight. The blow they had just seen was nothing so trivial.
A strike both concise and upright.
Knights who had glimpsed the realm that lay at the end of Imperial swordsmanship found their hands resting on their own hilts, as though they wanted to swing their blades at once so the image would not fade.
“......”
While everyone else cheered the result, marveled, or burned with excitement, two men could not.
One was the head of the Arvenia family, Osman Arvenia.
And beside him, face white as paper, the young lord Agesio Arvenia.
Knowing the weight of the responsibility that now fell on the loser, Osman clicked his tongue. He looked at the son sitting next to him as if the boy were a worm, then rose from his seat.
After Najin first began to make his name, he had rarely displayed his true strength on the Continent. The last time had been against the dragons of Stonehenge, and few knights had witnessed that battle.
Today was different.
Before countless nobles and knights, Najin had shown what he could do. He had not revealed his full power, yet even the fragments were enough to set the entire Continent buzzing.
In a single stroke he had blown away a Sword Seeker.
In a single stroke he had felled the thorn tree.
Even those skilled enough to have privately assumed the rumors around Najin contained a measure of exaggeration were forced to admit, once the duel ended, that if anything the rumors had understated him.
“Bravo! Bravo!”
And one noble had enjoyed the spectacle more than anyone. The moment he heard a duel would take place he had dropped every scrap of work and raced to the Imperial capital: Marquis Edelmar, lord of Trevache.
“Did I not say it would be entertaining!”
The moment the duel finished he was on his feet applauding, casting looks at the nobles seated around him.
What are you waiting for? Clap.
Prodded into reluctant applause, the other nobles wore sour faces while the marquis laughed with genuine delight. Three things had made him happy: first, the vicarious thrill of Najin’s performance; second, the sheer beauty of the duel itself; and third...
What a sight that face is, Duke.
The look of a man chewing bugs on Osman’s face.
Watching the ever-arrogant, self-important Osman twist his expression made the whole affair twice as enjoyable. Today the marquis would generously forgive his retainers for drinking themselves senseless.
And one more.
While some ended the day in pure pleasure, a certain young woman was smiling because she had turned the same event into opportunity. Piece by piece, the fragments that would bring the Arvenia house to ruin were gathering.
“Duke Osman.”
“It has been some time, Guildmaster Dieta.”
Dieta and Osman met alone. They sat across a single table. Unlike the past, Osman no longer took the higher seat. Neither looked down nor up; they faced each other at equal height.
“I received your letter. Rather vicious for a daughter writing to her father.”
“I never received a proper upbringing. My parents, you see, were worth less than trash rolling in the street.”
Osman’s brow twitched.
The light probe he had tossed returned as a blade, and he let out a sigh. The remark was not one anyone ought to dare before a duke; depending on the mood he could even have charged her with insult.
But he knew such petty measures no longer worked on the girl sitting opposite him.
She was the rare merchant who held the full support of the Empire’s pillar, Eternal Brilliance Horn Cypria Gachevska, and who had the Empire’s golden purse-strings in her grip. With Loctid already fallen, bringing that trading company to heel was impossible.
In the end he had no choice but to sit at the negotiating table.
“So. What is it you demand of me?”