What It Takes to Break a Hero (2)
Across a stretch of flat yellow earth, smooth as glass, a battlefield unfurled—one that seemed somehow familiar.
But the vantage point from which that battlefield was observed had changed beyond all recognition.
And no wonder: Cariel was now high above in the sky.
This was the domain of hawks and eagles wheeling through the open firmament. From such a dizzying height, everything spread out below looked no larger than an ant colony.
"Too high, was it?"
Before she had even finished speaking, the world expanded in the blink of an eye.
Now they were close enough that the masses below resolved distinctly into crowds of human beings.
"The situation has changed, so the method must change with it. What you need to observe closely, starting now, is—"
The course of battle itself.
"Take in as much of it as you can. And after that, what you'll see are the fighting arts scattered across every corner of the world."
Among them, pick out the ones that suit you.
"Do not come begging to me. Judge for yourself, and choose."
From then on, Cariel watched, a spectator to the countless battles the Demon King paraded before him.
Battles in which every manner of armament and means of combat was thrown into play.
Duels between individuals. Battles against overwhelming numbers. Army against army, faction against faction.
The clashes of those who had prepared themselves—and the wreckage left by those who charged in blind and unready, all reckless momentum and nothing else.
Some fought weapon against weapon, matched like for like; others faced off with entirely different arms and methods altogether.
One faction routed its enemy one-sidedly; another did the same in reverse. Some battles froze into stalemate, going nowhere, until a single small variable tipped the line—or flipped the entire field on its head.
Colossal monsters tore up the very crust of the earth in their rampages, and flying legions strode across the sky, raining down violence without answer. Some forces countered swiftly, devising measures on the fly; others, with no path of resistance left, simply endured the beating until the tide turned against them for good.
All through the eyes of the invading demons.
All through the eyes of the many mortal races of the Middle Realm, standing on defense.
Attacker and defender traded places mid-battle, the aggressor suddenly besieged.
Annihilation without terrain or advantage to fall back on—or mutual destruction embraced from the outset, recklessly hurling themselves into a final, decisive clash.
"You may boast of overwhelming victory in a one-on-one duel, but whether you can fight and survive in a place like that is another matter entirely."
Call yourself champion of a tournament, a lord of the arena.
Set loose on a true battlefield, there is no telling when or how you will die.
Yes, you would perform—skill would see to that.
But what if a stray arrow struck you down? What if you were caught in an arrow-storm with no armor at all?
What if sheer numbers ground you down, mistakes piling into accumulating wounds—or a blade, by cruel chance, found a vital point?
What if an unannounced magical bombardment rained from the sky, or you became an absurd sacrifice to a siege engine's barrage? Who could say?
Perhaps you would charge the wrong way, wasting precious time on ground that mattered nothing.
And perhaps, by sheer luck, that very mistake would become a perfectly timed reinforcement, turning the battle's fortune on a hair.
Out of nowhere, a hidden master would fight disguised as a common soldier. Not just one of them—five or six would spring up at once, surrounding an enemy commander and hammering him from all sides.
What if the ground upended without warning, or split apart beneath your feet?
What if the sky collapsed on you out of a clear blue heaven?
What if lightning fell and hammered you where you stood?
What if fog rolled in so thick you could not tell friend from foe a pace away? Wind and rain lashed down? Snow whirled in a blinding blizzard?
A brawl in sucking, knee-deep mud?
Crossing a river with the enemy raining attack after attack down upon you, utterly exposed?
Not solid ground, but the heaving deck of a ship on the open sea, or on some great river.
Fighting there, on planks that pitched and rolled beneath your feet?
And what if the ship were sinking even as everyone aboard, abandoning all sense, hurled themselves at one another—you die, I die, no thought but the kill?
What if you slipped climbing a hill, a slope, a cliff, or some towering castle wall—hindered, falling?
"How is anyone supposed to… account for all of that, one possibility at a time?"
"Which is exactly why the foundation matters. Drafting a countermeasure for every eventuality is, realistically, impossible. Not truly impossible, no—but the effort would be ruinous."
Then what foundation did she mean?
"Being a master of the sword does not mean you adapt gracefully to every such situation. That is a different problem altogether."
A grandmaster of the blade who cannot swim will drown all the same when he falls into deep water.
If variables arise, then perhaps the difference lies only in whether heavy armor or light makes drowning a little likelier. That much, and no more.
Having no wings means that even a supreme master of the sword, flung from the high sky to the earth below, will fall to his death. That is simple fact. And if he somehow lived, his body would never come away whole.
Of course, if one improvised some countermeasure in the moment—well, who could say.
To overcome the absurdity standing before you.
To surmount the trial in front of your eyes.
That is why strength is needed.
And if strength falls short, then there is always wit and cunning, schemed and woven to shore up what the body lacks.
Real skill, in the end, is proven in exactly that way.
"You cannot solve it here and now. So simply store it all away inside."
After a long while—
"The world holds countless sword arts. But the sword, at its root, is the weapon of the weak."
"Because it is a tool to be wielded?"
A tool bearing the name of sword.
It need not have been the sword—any tool would do—so why the sword, of all things?
The Demon King asked him.
"Do you know why the sword became the representative weapon of its age?"
"Because it is the symbol of the faith."
"Hm. You know more than I expected."
It was never because the sword possessed some overwhelming practical superiority.
Truthfully examined, the sword is a weapon that demands not a moderate degree of training but a very great deal of it.
If you knew nothing and simply grabbed something—blunt weapons would be more efficient, an axe far more useful still.
With even a modest amount of training, the spear is arguably the most practical weapon of all.
But not the sword.
And yet, why was the sword chosen?
A sword shaped in imitation of the cross.
The arming sword had, at some point, become the very emblem of knighthood.
When the knight's oath was administered in its abbreviated form, the blade did not even need to be a sword at all.
But as the culture of swearing one's oath upon a straight, upright blade took root, the clergy came to bless not only the knight himself but the sword he carried—and with that, the culture and symbolism of chivalry and the knight's vow finally settled into place.
A noble is a knight.
In the Empire, that equation had become simple common sense—but the affairs of the neighboring kingdoms were another matter entirely.
Why must a noble be a knight?
What connection was there, truly, between blue blood and the sword?
"Still, the sword is genuinely useful in many respects. Easy to carry. Pleasing to the eye."
A spear is cumbersome and awkward to bear at one's side.
An axe is grotesque, barbaric in appearance.
The bow belongs to the weak—to hunters and those who cannot even afford a close-combat weapon—and it carries too strong an air of the pauper's arm to serve as a symbol.
Blunt weapons are efficient but demand raw strength, and they are coarser and crueler-looking than any axe.
The warriors of God.
For them, all of these were, in symbolism if nothing else, sorely ill-suited.
It had not been so from the beginning.
But at some point, as the number of knights who bore a sword shaped in the image of the cross—or more precisely, swords deliberately manufactured to imitate it—continued to grow, a prejudice took hold and hardened: that these men, and these men alone, were the true warriors of God.
In the Empire, the sword became the king of all ills and the king's own symbol, the exclusive property of the knight—that warrior of the divine.
The Hero's Holy Sword was the same. And the reason every hero and champion of old tales and children's stories alike clasps a sword in hand is, in the end, a reflection of that very symbolism.
"The sword's prominence as a symbol stretches back in an unbroken line to before even the dawn of recorded history."
Then the Demon King brushed the matter aside with a flick of her voice—she had no intention of tutoring him in history, she said; remember it only that far.
"In any case, unlike the Middle Realm, examples of demons making use of armaments are not common."
And yet, when they do—
"It is either because they possess the constitution and aptitude to handle such weapons, or because the weapon grants overwhelming efficiency and power in return."
Understand this well.
"A sword is, in the end, a tool. There is no truth in it, no holy mystery. It is an instrument of convenience, a means to an end—that is all it has ever been."
So cast off your prejudices, and look at everything with open eyes.
Which sword arts suit you.
Or whether some art of the spear, the axe, some other armament or technique of war entirely beyond the sword, fits you better.
Or even whether none of them does.
"Do not imprison yourself within your own world."
Sooner or later, whether or not you ever wield such things yourself, you will stand against those who do.
"Unless you would rather be beaten one-sidedly later on, simply because you never learned how to answer them."
Even then—
if it could end in defeat, and defeat alone, with your life intact and your body uncrippled, then that would be the very height of good fortune.
"The masters of Imperial Swordsmanship share near-identical forms, yet the ways they wield them differ a thousand thousand ways."
Some commanded the blade through sheer strength.
Others bent it to their will through agility and nimbleness of foot and hand.
There were those who wove trickery and feint into their technique with cold intelligence, winning their battles in games of wits.
And there were those who, with nothing but stubborn honesty and bottomless patience, simply wore their opponents down into helplessness.
"Each man's strengths shape the character of his swordsmanship."
In that respect, Imperial Swordsmanship was, for all its faults, quite excellent as a popular art.
It was no accident that even the great houses within the Empire began by learning the Imperial style.
Lay your foundation with it; learn finer swordsmanship afterward, if you must.
"But as I told you before, this is the swordsmanship of the chosen few. Even so, that choice is not an entirely mistaken one. A nation prizes combat techniques that can be taught quickly and applied practically."
In that same vein, the original Imperial Swordsmanship could carry any student to mastery, no matter who they were.
"It simply takes far too long."
So said the Demon King.
"If you began learning it today, it would take five years at the very least—ten at the far end—of pouring out your body and soul before you could barely manage to use it in actual combat."
Building a body worthy of the sword.
Re-designing even one's senses so that the optimal motion and countermeasure sprang forth reflexively—that was the stage of adaptation, and one had to reach it.
"And along the way, the Sword Path imprints itself upon you, until at last—even techniques you were never taught—parts of the art optimize themselves to your own aptitude and constitution."
Were you to someday teach your own child a single sword art, this would be the finest choice you could make.
"If you could only overcome the one flaw: that it is profoundly, mind-numbingly dull. It is easy to teach, too—no need to pour your heart into the instruction."
But you, at least, hold no particular attachment to the Imperial sword, do you?
If anything, hatred would be closer to the truth.
"Then there is the Kingdom of Dabas, standing opposed to the Empire… Toushin-ryu, was it? The War God Style."
An absurdly grandiose name.
And yet it was said to live up to that name, more or less—a sword art with a real reputation.
"But learning it now would be pointless."
In the first place, this was no knight's swordsmanship.
It was the swordsmanship of warriors.
And the blades its practitioners used were not straight cruciform swords in imitation of the cross, but a comparatively wide variety of blades.
Before ever learning the art, one chose the sword best suited to oneself and began from there.
One could select a different weapon later—but that was a matter for later.
Seen this way, it was clear that in systemization and depth of instruction, the War God Style was overwhelmingly superior.
But in mass adoption and the raising of armies, it could not help falling behind the Imperial style.
That, too, was simply each nation's art, specialized to its own circumstances.
"Beyond those, there are many other sword arts practiced by the race of man, and even among the races beyond humanity, the ways of wielding the sword have spread and developed in truly diverse directions…"
One by one.
Not down to the finest detail, perhaps, but practitioners of a great many different sword arts.
Their battles poured forth like the current of a river, without pause or rest.
And the Demon King traced even the origins of each art—why it had developed or changed into such a form, or why it had degenerated.
She pressed every last corner of it into him.
Cariel took it all in with his eyes, lent it his ears, carved it into his mind—and in the end, he arrived at it.
"Which brings us to how your father, in the very prime of his youth, swung his sword."
Curious, aren't you?
"From this point on, your goal must be to bring that down."
Not only in swordsmanship—countless men fell before his father Rueld's blade.
Most escaped with grave wounds, yes, but wounds that stopped short of true fatality.
Subjugation.
Or neutralization.
It was an outcome possible only because his skill was so utterly overwhelming.
In the ferocity of pitched battle, some few had been driven to the most extreme of ends.
But Rueld was never among them.
"That was his skill immediately after taking up the Holy Sword."
He had grown strong to a startling degree.
Cariel could not have explained it—but he had simply become a different creature from before.
Even before the Holy Sword, Rueld had been a powerhouse far beyond anything the Cariel of today could hope to match.
"And yet, measured against your Emperor of those days, there was still much wanting in him."
The one hailed as the Hero Emperor.
And his own father.
By their apparent ages, they had looked his own age—or younger, even—yet for some reason, an experience and poise he could never hope to glimpse from them hung about the pair.
The young Emperor fought with sword and shield.
His father, both hands wrapped around the Holy Sword.
The two squared off against each other—and collided.
The young Emperor turned even his shield into a blunt instrument, deflecting the Holy Sword's edge, and in an instant drove his blade in like a serpent skimming the ground, stabbing at Rueld.
Rueld twisted his whole body in a sudden rotation and slipped clear.
Even as he gave ground, the blades crossed once more, and when his shield was half cleaved away, the Emperor hurled the ruined thing at him like a thrown weapon and came rushing in, body low to the ground, quick as a weasel.
Rueld evaded that too—by a hair's breadth, no more.
Somewhere in the exchange, the Emperor had drawn even the short dagger at his hip, arming himself with sword in one hand and knife in the other, and with that small blade alone he deflected, deftly and sometimes only just barely, a portion of the Holy Sword's strikes.
In terms of pure technique, Rueld was, frankly, lacking.
And yet the two appeared to fight on roughly equal footing.
Because Rueld held a body of absolutely overwhelming physical gifts.
"That would have been when he was about a year younger than you are now?"
"……"
This was no practice sparring.
It was nearer to a blood-feud than a match—battle as if for their very lives.
When skill reaches that height, is even a mere duel painted in colors like this?
"Set your sights first on breaking that level."
He could not even surpass that.
"Breaking a Rueld at full strength? Don't make me laugh."
And so, even as the Demon King hummed her mocking little tune, the duel between the two men raced on toward its final moments.
"Has my father ever lost—in real battle, or in a match?"
"He lost plenty. A great deal, in fact."
"Of those he lost to… I want to know whether there was anyone my father felt to be a wall beyond him."
"Hmmm."
So it comes to this after all.
"There were, let's say, three or so—people your father deemed answerless even with the Holy Sword in hand."
"…Yourself excluded."
"I said three, didn't I? The question is whether you can learn what they knew—so why name me?"
Cariel let out a doubtful, thoughtful hum.
"It's just…"
"As I said, you can neither learn my art nor would I have reason to teach it. Put the longing away."
"No, that's not it. I was just thinking… at this point, isn't it about time for you to stop showing off?"
"……"
The Demon King shot Cariel a sidelong, raking glare.
"You wretch. Shall I kill you a hundred times over for the crime of irreverence?"
"……"
Was it because even a casually tossed remark from her carried true weight behind it?
For no good reason at all, Cariel felt his knees go faintly weak.