Sword Master, Caron (1)
Several days had passed since the day Najin cut down the Demon Knight, Bernhaigen. In those few days, Najin had been run ragged without a moment to breathe—something he himself had never anticipated.
I thought once the commission was done, that would be the end of it.
Collect the reward at the Central Guild as usual, fill his belly with good food, then settle into training. The insights he had gained from the battle with Bernhaigen would surely push his practice forward… With that lighthearted expectation, Najin headed for the Central Guild—only to find himself face-to-face with something else entirely.
Waiting to greet him were countless stares, and the knights of the nobility who had been waiting inside the guild hall.
What Najin had overlooked was that this commission had been tangled up with the nobles. True, the only request he had actually accepted had been issued by a knight of Atanga… but the one who had cut down the Demon Knight was still Najin.
“So you’re the man.”
“I am a knight of House Azbeli. Viscount Triam wishes to express his gratitude…”
The bounty the nobles had placed on the Demon Knight’s head was now Najin’s to claim, and in the process he inevitably drew the eyes of countless aristocrats and adventurers alike.
He was summoned here and there. He was made to promise future meetings with nobles. He was handed invitations to balls, and so on.
After days of being dragged into tedious, bothersome affairs that demanded formality and ceremony, Najin felt as if all the strength had been sucked out of him. Only today, with the uproar finally settled, could he enjoy a quiet morning.
“Haaah…”
On the bench outside the lodging, Najin leaned back and gazed up at the blue sky. The weather was growing chill; he let out a long breath.
“It’s been a while since we’ve had a leisurely morning, hasn’t it?”
You’re telling me. I never expected it to be this much of a pain.
“Well, it still turned out better than it could have, right?”
Merlin smirked.
“Thanks to that knight of Atanga—Argo. Because he read your intentions, things didn’t get any more annoying.”
Najin gave a bitter smile. Merlin was right. He had subtly made it clear to Argo that he wanted his achievements kept quiet and his true strength still concealed. A man of that high a realm would have roughly gauged Najin’s skill, of course…
But Argo had looked the other way. As if it were none of his business. He had simply announced the incident exactly as Najin had suggested early on: that Bernhaigen had already been weakened by wounds from the knights pursuing him, and that Adventurer Ivan had merely finished the job.
Thanks to that, it ended at this level.
Muttering the thought to himself, Najin drew a single letter from his coat. The names of the other nobles had left him unmoved—but this letter was different.
House Trevache.
A letter from Marquis Edelmar.
It was the house to which Gilbert had belonged—the dying knight Najin had encountered while pursuing the Demon Knight Bernhaigen. A few days earlier, when a knight from that house had come calling, Najin had delivered Gilbert’s last words and added this:
That Sir Gilbert had remained a knight to the very end, and that thanks to his aid, the hunt for Bernhaigen had been possible.
The Trevache knight had thanked him and promised to convey Gilbert’s final words—and Najin’s own—to his master. A few days later, this letter had arrived.
“Hmm…”
The stationery was extremely fine. When Najin unfolded the letter stamped with the crest of House Trevache, he found Marquis Edelmar’s personal hand. The contents were lengthy, yet their essence was simple.
I am indebted to you. I offer my gratitude to the one who delivered my knight’s final words. Whenever you visit House Trevache, I shall receive you as an honored guest.
— Edelmar, Marquis of Trevache
Marquis Edelmar had not used his authority to force an audience. He had simply sent an invitation asking Najin to call whenever he pleased. With a faint smile, Najin carefully tucked the letter away against his chest.
He had never met the man, yet the thought came unbidden: like knight, like master.
I should definitely pay a visit.
So muttering, Najin rose from the bench. A leisurely morning was pleasant enough, but his body was starting to itch for movement. After days of being dragged around, he had not managed a proper session of training.
Crack. Pop.
Najin roughly loosened his joints and drew a deep breath. He meant to begin with light mana circulation. The first time Merlin had taught him this method he had screamed, but no longer.
The wild mana thrashing through his body now felt almost ticklish.
“Well, after tasting the pain of every meridian twisting itself inside out, something like this would feel like nothing.”
Merlin muttered as if she could scarcely believe it.
The mana technique Najin had employed against the Demon Knight—the method of accepting mana beyond his limits—came with the agony of meridians writhing and the body tearing itself apart from within. Najin had endured that pain in full consciousness and continued fighting. Even Merlin could only click her tongue at that terrifying willpower.
“So. You’ve gotten a feel for it, have you?”
The presence rising from Najin as he circulated his mana was anything but ordinary. Sensing it, Merlin asked; Najin smiled.
Until now I never truly understood what it meant to pour a mindscape into aura—what it meant to reach the realm of a Sword Seeker…
Najin spoke aloud.
“I think I understand a little now.”
He poured mana into the sword he had drawn. What he pictured was a knight’s blade. Pure white aura, completely free of any platinum-gold particles, wrapped his sword—not fragments of aura, but a finished blade of it.
Ordinarily, fully formed aura revealed itself as platinum-gold; that was why Najin had always restricted and controlled it. No longer. He could now distinguish and wield two kinds of aura: the platinum-gold and the pure white. He could pour it out freely. Satisfied, he flicked the aura this way and that.
The platinum-gold aura was drawn by recalling the stars.
The pure white aura was drawn by recalling a knight.
Is this what it feels like to pour a mindscape into aura?
A little further, and he felt he could even change the aura’s form. Watching him, Merlin let out a sigh for the umpteenth time.
“It’s not even surprising anymore… I’m past being shocked.”
Separating and using different auras. Changing the color of aura according to mindscape. As a matter of course, that was not a trick any Sword Expert-class fighter could pull off. It was something only a Sword Seeker might attempt—and even for them it was difficult.
Projecting even a single mindscape was hard; simply settling that image required enormous effort. Handling two such mindscapes, and distinguishing between them, could never be easy.
Yet he made the difficult look easy. Watching Najin, a hollow laugh simply escaped. Merlin gave that dry chuckle as she watched the pure white aura he was swinging about.
Whoosh. Whoosh…
While Najin was training, cutting the empty air, someone vaulted the wall with a soft rush of wind and landed in the training yard in front of the lodging.
“Who—?”
The figure who had set foot in the yard. The moment Najin turned his head and saw who it was, he tilted it in puzzlement. A completely unexpected visitor.
“Lady Roselyn?”
“Y-yeah. Brat. Long time no see…”
The captain of the Red-Eye Mercenary Band. The apex of the city, Roselyn Ascalo. Her voice trembled as she answered. It was not only her voice. Her pupils were shaking madly, as if she were terrified.
Tap-tap-tap-tap.
She hurried up to him and clamped both of Najin’s shoulders in a crushing grip. Even Najin could not help being startled.
“Wh-what is it?”
“There’s a guest looking for you. You have to go right now. He’s sitting in my mercenary band’s quarters right this second…”
Shaking eyes. Trembling voice. Roselyn kept her grip on his shoulders and poured the words out as if begging him to save her.
“The guest is looking for you… Hurry, hurry, come with me…”
It was almost a plea. Najin nodded for the moment. Only then did Roselyn let out a long breath, as if she could finally breathe again.
Clamp.
She seized Najin’s hand and dragged him out of the lodging. Being hauled along, Najin could only tilt his head. Who stood before him right now? Roselyn Ascalo, the Red-Eye, called the apex of this city.
A powerhouse who had reached Sword Seeker.
A holder of honorary noble rank.
And the head of the armed company known as the Red-Eye Mercenary Band.
Who in the world could frighten even Roselyn—whom even nobles dared not touch—to this degree? And who was this person that he was looking for Najin? Unable to contain his curiosity, Najin finally spoke.
“Just who is this guest that’s got you like this?”
“……”
Roselyn did not stop walking. She whipped her head around, met Najin’s eyes, and answered with a face that looked ready to cry.
“…Sir Caron.”
“Pardon? What did you say?”
“Sword Master Caron…!”
The Sword Saint of the Sword Church, Caron.
A Sword Master who bore six stars.
The man who stood at the pinnacle of the sword as a weapon was looking for him, Roselyn was saying.
A few hours earlier.
Hearing that the trade route used by the Garchea Merchant Company had been seized by monsters, Roselyn immediately moved her mercenary band to the site. They received patronage from the Garchea Company; this much was the least she could do.
What she found upon arrival was a road buried under rubble as if a landslide had struck… and the monsters occupying the area around that choke point.
“Tsk. Clearing the path is going to take a while…”
Dealing with the monsters would not be hard, but restoring the collapsed road would take time. Having roughly estimated the work, she looked back.
There stood the merchants of the Garchea Company, sighing beside the carriages they had halted in front of the blocked road. They looked as if they had been on a trading journey and were now returning. Meaning to give them a brief status report, Roselyn started toward the carriages.
“…Huh?”
She suddenly noticed figures in unusual dress. Two men in priestly robes mixed among the merchants. From the cut of their clothes, they appeared to be priests of the Sword Church.
“And those two?”
“We were returning after selling daily supplies to the Sword Church. The two priests said they had business in Cambria, so they accompanied us.”
The merchants answered. I see, Roselyn thought, and was about to pass them by when a bone-chilling gaze prickled her skin. A gaze that seemed to pierce straight through her. She whipped her head around.
The two Sword Church priests stood there. One middle-aged man, and another of indeterminate age whose face was deeply hidden by a pressed-down hood.
The gaze had come from the hooded priest. His eyes were fixed on the Masterpiece hanging at Roselyn’s waist—Echo. The stare was not entirely welcome; she spoke with a snap.
“…You seem quite interested in the Masterpiece.”
The man under the hood gave a short, soft “Ah.”
“My apologies. It’s a fascinating shape of sword; I found myself curious.”
He smiled sheepishly.
“Are you the mercenary hired by the company? I heard the road is blocked and the carriages cannot pass.”
“For the moment, yes. It will take a while, so the priests should rest at their ease—”
“It will take time, you say. How long?”
“…Excuse me?”
Roselyn narrowed her eyes. She did not care for the priest’s manner, but she decided to answer.
“Roughly half a day, I expect.”
“That will not do. Mm. Unacceptable.”
The priest smiled bitterly.
“I’m rather pressed for time. Forgive the discourtesy.”
He brushed past her. She was about to demand what he meant when the priest drew the sword at his hip with a clean kang. The draw was flawlessly smooth and perfect.
He really is a priest of the Sword Church, then. His form is quite well—
That was as far as Roselyn’s thought got.
Her eyes flew wide. A presence that had been completely imperceptible until a moment ago slammed down over the entire area the instant the priest drew his blade. Every mercenary froze mid-step. The chattering merchants fell silent.
A bizarre sensation, as if time and space themselves had been seized. Within that sensation the priest walked alone. He passed through the halted mercenaries and took the lead. The rubble-choked road and the monsters standing atop the debris—though he had come well within range, the monsters could not even blink.
They had not been permitted to blink.
To breathe.
To move.
Among the frozen things, the priest swung his sword. The motion of the cut and the return of the blade to its sheath could not be distinguished. By the time one thought he had swung, the sword was already home. Immediately afterward the crushing presence and pressure vanished in an instant.
Seok.
What reached the ear was a single, quiet sound of severance. Only that one cutting note. No sound of monsters splitting, no thunder of earth shaking, no crash of dirt mounds shattering… none of it.
After that single note of severance, only the result remained.
The mounds of earth and rubble blocking the road, the monsters that had occupied them—everything had vanished without a trace, as if by magic. The merchants’ eyes went wide in shock; the mercenaries expelled the breath they had been holding and stared, stunned.
Not one of them understood what had just occurred. They only registered the outcome: the priest had swung his sword once, and the debris and monsters barring the road were gone without a trace.
“Ah… ahh… ahhhh…”
Only Roselyn.
Only Roselyn, who had reached the realm of a Sword Seeker, grasped even a fragment of what had happened.
In the instant the priest swung, she had seen it.
A flash that blazed for the briefest of moments.
It was less an aura and more a vast mass of light. An absurd output of aura no human body should be able to contain. The moment the sword moved, that aura fell like a guillotine upon everything in its path.
That was all.
Whatever the aura touched vanished without a trace. Only the finest drifting motes remained as proof that monsters and earth had ever existed here.
I couldn’t even see it properly.
Even Roselyn, with her sharp eyes, had registered only the brief flash sweeping past. A chill ran through her. Belatedly she looked at the hooded priest.
He was looking at her as well.
The face visible between the folds of the robe—
Roselyn Ascalo knew that face. Her complexion drained white in an instant. She had recognized the identity of the man standing before her.
The Sword Saint of the Sword Church.
The existence that stood at the absolute pinnacle of the sword as a weapon.
Sword Master, Caron.