Sword Master, Caron (4)
Sword Master Caron felt a sense of dissonance.
He regarded the youth standing before him. Bloodshot veins laced the young man’s sunset-colored eyes, his pupils contracted to their absolute limit.
They resemble Sir Gerd’s eyes.
The Empire’s Sword Master, Gerd. The First Sword of the Empire—and in every field save swordsmanship, a man who surpassed even Caron himself. Truly the strongest among present-day humanity. In Najin’s gaze, Caron glimpsed something of Gerd’s own.
They looked nothing alike, yet the feeling was the same. Eyes that raised gooseflesh the instant they met yours.
“······.”
Caron stared wordlessly at his own scabbard.
Moments ago, Najin had seized that scabbard—as if he had already seen the near future. The motion he displayed in that fleeting instant was unmistakably strange.
…A movement that foresaw what was to come.
And more than that—
An uncanny power of reproduction that, after a single glance, could mimic even the years its subject had lived. When Najin had imitated Caron’s movements earlier, the parts he failed to capture were vanishingly few.
Only the techniques completed after Caron had stepped into the realm of a Sword Master—movements possible solely to a superhuman who had broken through the wall—escaped him. Everything else, Najin had reproduced with chilling precision.
Imitation stripped of one’s own will remained incomplete, yet the fidelity itself could not be denied.
Mimicry… and temporary future sight.
The pieces locked together in his mind.
Could it be…
The assembled facts. The conclusion they forced.
Caron let out a hollow laugh. If his suspicion was correct, then this youth’s true gift did not reside in the sword itself.
A smile touched the corners of Caron’s mouth.
Meeting Najin’s bloodshot eyes, he almost closed and reopened his own—then instead tightened his grip on the blade. Not yet. He needed to see a little more.
“Show me.”
Caron gave his scabbard a slight tilt.
Whatever it is, I don’t care.
Show it to me.
The specialness you carry. The value you hold.
The world looked different through these eyes.
The landscape viewed through bloodshot irises was no longer the same. Since arriving in Cambria, Najin had piled experience upon experience and grown with every clash. Naturally, the scenery those eyes now revealed had changed as well.
Contracted pupils. Blood-threaded whites.
The world reflected in them was a mass of raw information. Waves of data crashed through Najin’s mind. Yet, as always, he discarded everything unnecessary and fixed his attention solely on the opponent before him.
Sword Saint Caron.
The rhythm of his breath. The stance he held. The minute flex of muscle. The sway of his clothes, the flicker of his eyes. From those fragments Najin predicted the immediate future. Insight and vision that surpassed common sense made it possible.
In the underground city.
In the City of Opportunity.
In the battle against the demon knight.
Through combat, flight, and pursuit—through countless crises—Najin had trusted these eyes. This time would be no different. And yet, at the same time, he knew.
I can’t hold this for long.
Against the demon knight he had sustained it throughout the fight, but he sensed that the window available to him now was far shorter. Too much information poured in through his eyes.
The man standing opposite him was a Sword Master.
A superhuman who had transcended ordinary humanity. A being who reigned above common sense itself.
However sharp Najin’s sight might be, at his present level he could never fully predict Caron’s movements. The volume of data to process was simply too vast.
A fresh stream of blood ran from his nose. His skull pounded. Najin merely smiled once, shaking it all off, and stepped forward. Then—boom—he kicked off the ground and charged straight at Caron.
Caron moved only after watching Najin’s motion.
Deliberately, he answered a beat late.
The instant Caron stirred, the future Najin had read wavered. Unlike every foe he had faced before, Caron’s movements were not sharp but blurred. Proof that the man still lay beyond the reach of Najin’s eyes.
So what?
He could still see it. Faintly, the outline took shape. That was enough. Najin’s eyes darted. The moment he snapped his upper body down, Caron’s scabbard whistled past the crown of his head.
Lower still, one more step.
Closing in, Najin unleashed his swordsmanship—a fusion of the Church’s forms and the style he had forged alone in the underground city. Caron had called it incomplete and worthless.
Najin did not deny it.
He was still raw, after all.
When he mimicked a target he always adapted the motions somewhat to his own body, refining the stances—yet he understood that what Caron meant by “your own sword” far exceeded such half-measures.
I couldn’t truly copy the Sword Saint’s blade.
Absolute command of one’s own body. A sword only that person could ever swing. Not mere mastery of technique, but perfect internalization and optimization. Caron’s sword had been completed that way, and Najin had failed to steal it.
No matter how hard he tried to reshape it for himself, the picture never matched.
He was still too immature to interpret the Sword Saint’s sword in his own fashion and remake it for his frame. His understanding of the weapon itself was lacking, and he had never packed hundreds of styles into his mind the way Caron had.
Insufficient. Immature.
He had no intention of arguing those points.
But what Caron wanted was a variable—the uniqueness that belonged to Najin alone. And that, he knew, he could demonstrate even without a finished personal sword.
Whish.
In a fraction of a second Najin’s blade accelerated. Caron’s scabbard, which had been casually batting the sword aside, accelerated in the same instant. A shrieking grind of metal—kakakakakak!—as Caron guided Najin’s edge along the scabbard and away. His eyes narrowed.
Faster. Faster than a moment ago.
It was not mere speed. Every time Caron aimed for an opening, Najin twisted as though he already knew the exact spot, preventing his stance from collapsing.
I admit my incompleteness. But if I know the weakness is coming… I can still stop it. That was the cry his blade seemed to voice.
Caron liked that grit.
He liked that tenacity.
Hah.
A smile spread across Caron’s face.
He wanted to see more. A little more of whatever this youth carried. Matching the quickened tempo of Najin’s sword, Caron’s scabbard accelerated as well.
Blade and scabbard clashed. Aura-wrapped steel and wooden sheath slid past each other, caught, and drove in again.
Caron still moved with ease, yet Najin no longer tumbled across the dirt or was simply driven back. He clung on stubbornly, swinging without cease. No words passed between them, but through the colliding steel Caron read Najin’s intent.
Are you going to keep fishing only for openings forever?
At this rate, I won’t learn a thing either.
That was what the sword seemed to say. Caron laughed aloud and accepted the proposal. Fine—I’ll show you as much as you want. He shoved Najin’s blade aside with force and stepped in. For the first time, Caron left his original footing.
Even when sparring Sword Seekers he had never taken a step; now he advanced a single pace as though determined to overwhelm Najin.
Kuuung.
He stamped the earth and brought the sword down. A vertical cut like a guillotine falling. Perfect form married to perfect breath. Even knowing the timing, even matching Najin’s speed, Najin still had to widen his eyes and meet the blow head-on.
He had known where it would fall—
and still receiving it was no easy matter.
His knees nearly buckled on impact. Fingers around the hilt trembled. A sharp crack split the ground beneath his planted feet.
Ka… kakakakakak.
Yet the strike did not end there. The moment Najin caught the blade, Caron’s scabbard flowed like a river along Najin’s flat and shot straight for his throat. The transition from cut to thrust was seamless.
“···!”
Having read it in advance, Najin twisted his sword and broke the flow before the scabbard reached his neck. But the initiative had already passed. The Sword Church’s art created flow. Through linked stances it drove the opponent into a corner.
Some called the Church’s swordsmanship a great tree.
From a single trunk it branched into hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands of postures—ready answers for every situation that could arise in a sword fight. The Sword Church was a place that studied the blade, and across centuries they had refined their art.
Methods of linking techniques.
Responses when an opponent blocked.
Turning defense into offense.
Counters against an advancing foe, and reverse counters.
Dozens of solutions existed for any single circumstance. From the vantage of a Sword Saint who had memorized and mastered every one of those tens of thousands of stances, a sword fight was nothing more than the act of choosing the correct answer.
Like a wave.
Receiving the Sword Saint’s blade, Najin felt as though he stood in the open sea beneath a raging storm. Waves crashed over him. The vast current threatened to drag him under at any moment.
This was the swordsmanship of a Sword Master.
This was the pinnacle of the Church.
Even against Volkman he had sensed the flow an opponent created, yet the Sword Saint’s blade was incomparable. Caron was forging a current that simply could not be resisted.
Even while reading the future…
He could not swim against the tide.
Najin’s eyes screamed. The future they showed grew so blurred it began to look like pale fog. He was driven back, and back again.
Even so, he carved every motion into his mind.
Caron’s sword. The pinnacle technique the man displayed. Even if he could not yet imitate it, it was teaching that would become bone and flesh—rich fertilizer for growth.
I want it.
The sword the Sword Saint possessed.
That depth of understanding.
That beautiful swordsmanship.
More… I want to see more…
He yearned to witness still more. Yet he alone could never draw out the Sword Saint’s true blade. So Najin chose. Rather than be swept away, he would gamble. He forced his eyes wider.
Capillaries burst; his vision flooded red.
But for one single, razor-edged instant, Najin read Caron’s sword with perfect clarity. The future snapped into focus. He witnessed the trajectory the scabbard traced—the path that swordsmen of high rank called the sword-road.
Najin’s blade moved late. And yet he caught Caron’s strike with almost insulting ease.
Because he saw the trajectory. Because he knew exactly where to intercept. The moment steel met steel, Caron’s eyes flew open. Still staring wide, Najin took another step toward him.
Three more times.
With eyes that throbbed like fire, three times was the limit. Within those three exchanges he intended to land at least one decisive blow. All this while receiving Caron’s sword, Najin had witnessed the pinnacle and lived it. That was a precious experience for anyone.
When a spar ended, a swordsman would sit cross-legged, review every exchange, then stand alone before a wall and swing, refining form from what he had recollected.
That was the usual path by which those who had tasted something valuable arrived at insight.
Najin needed no such cumbersome process. Insight could arrive in the middle of combat; there was no reason to postpone it.
So—
Hundreds of images unfurled inside his mind.
The dozens, the hundreds of pictures Caron had shown cascaded open. Najin understood how the man swung, where he applied force, where he released it.
Like this.
Because he understood—
Whish!
Najin imitated Caron’s sword in his own way. It was still too unfinished to be called purely Najin’s blade. For now it remained imitation, not creation. And yet…
The single strike he unleashed
did not look worthless in the Sword Saint’s eyes.
Standing at the same height, there was simply no clean way to receive that blow. And so Caron smiled. The Sword Saint acknowledged the value the youth before him had just revealed.
Because he acknowledged it—
he closed his eyes, then opened them. In that blink the near future appeared within his gaze. It was the exclusive privilege of Sword Masters, a symbol of those who had stepped beyond the human category into superhumanity.
Future sight born of insight.
The same gift Najin already possessed. Yet Caron had obtained it only after reaching the realm of Sword Master. He used it now, offering a measure of respect to the youth in front of him.
Crack!
The future Najin was watching shattered. Prediction and present no longer matched. Future sight colliding with future sight—something Najin had never experienced. His eyes flew wide.
Thud.
Caron simply reached out and caught the swinging blade with his bare hand. Though he gripped aura-clad steel, not a single scratch marred his palm. Holding the sword captive, he lowered his scabbard like a referee ending the match.
“This is beyond absurd.”
Caron let out a dry laugh.
“A Sword Expert who can read the sword-road. I can say with certainty you are the first in the Empire’s entire history.”
When Najin had seized the scabbard earlier, Caron had still been half-doubtful. By now there was no room left for doubt. The youth before him possessed the same future sight that superhumans alone were meant to wield.
Just how monstrous is that insight of his?
Future sight was something even Sword Masters—those who had broken through the wall and transcended the limits of the flesh—only barely attained…
and this youth already held it.
If he continued to grow and one day reached the realm of Sword Master himself… Caron could not even begin to guess how far those eyes would then be able to see.
“I acknowledge it.”
He had no choice.
The value this youth carried. The fragment of possibility that might one day surpass even Caron. Smiling, he released Najin’s sword.
Talent was talent—but the tenacity that threw the body forward without hesitation for the sake of victory, the way he refined himself even in those brief instants, and the worth of the strike those things had produced: Caron acknowledged them all.
“That final blow was excellent.”
He had witnessed a splendid cut.
Therefore a proper answer was required. Simply watching would already help the youth grow. Releasing the blade, Caron walked a few paces. There, driven into the earth before the spar began, waited his true sword.
He sheathed the scabbard at his waist and reached for the hilt planted in the ground. The moment he drew the live blade—
the air itself changed. The flow of the world reversed. Even with considerable distance between them, Najin felt as though a naked edge rested against the back of his neck. He was not alone. Far off, watching the exchange, middle-rank priest Volkman felt exactly the same chill.
Caron adjusted his grip. Aura bloomed along the steel. Holding the sword, he looked at Najin.
“Do not move.”
A single warning.
Immediately after, Caron swung.