The Fool's Sword
The Demon King explained things in painstaking detail, yet she insisted otherwise.
"I told you before, didn't I? I don't actually know much about the sword."
The moment those words left her mouth, a mountain of rebuttal piled up in Cariel's mind from every conceivable angle, though he couldn't bring himself to voice any of it.
If you don't know the sword, then is the majority of this world deaf, blind, and unqualified?
It wasn't that she was being uniquely humble. She had simply arrived at that conclusion on her own, because everything fell short of her personal standard.
"The reason luck has, more or less, stayed on your side is that I have memorized the textbook that boy wrote."
"A textbook?"
"You could call it a record of sorts, but at that level of refinement, it deserves to be called a sword-script—a Zettel."
Cariel asked, his tone laced with suspicion. "...Did you intend to guide me toward mastering this from the very beginning?"
"Not particularly. If you chose the sword, then your options were always going to narrow down to three."
One was the sword art created by a certain eccentric dragon. One was the swordsmanship of the man once called the Old Sword Saint.
"That pig-headed dragon bastard cares nothing for whether the continent lives or dies, so long as no one trespasses on his domain, so he and I never crossed paths—but had I faced him, it would have given me a serious headache. As for the Sword Saint's art... while it does have inheritors, none of them have yet risen to the Old Sword Saint's level, so it amounted to nothing by the time I invaded the Middle Realm."
"......"
"There may have been other strong ones I never knew of, but that is no concern of mine anymore."
And it was here that a problem arose.
"Of the remaining two sword arts, I know nothing. I have no interest in them, either."
"......"
"What's with that insolent look? I simply know what I know—I am hardly so extraordinary that I understand even the things I don't, as a matter of course. Do you truly believe this body is so exceptional that it would defy and violate reason itself?"
He had assumed that if anyone grasped every principle of all creation as though it were obvious, it would be her—and yet even that, it seemed, had been a prejudice of his own making.
"Enough digression. What will you do?"
"There's... hardly another choice, is there?"
"Then, since we're on the subject—how about learning the Imperial sword from scratch?"
...What an absurd suggestion.
She had said the sword art had no particular name, but if one had to be given to it—
"It would be the sword of the Fool, I suppose."
"......?"
The Fool's Sword?
"You will understand once you learn it."
Before mastering the stances, one must first internalize the state of mind.
"When you take your stance, be as rock and tree. When you carry your movement onward, be as water and wind. Pierce in like a flame devouring its kindling, and slice through like the chill that freezes lakes and rivers."
"......"
"These are words you must murmur over and over, commit to memory, and chew upon for as long as you live—so do not forget them."
Then, at last, she demonstrated the grip, the stances, and the movements.
By conjuring a phantasmal projection.
She went so far as to manifest an illusion of the pitch-black knight demonstrating the forms with his own body.
The blade held in both hands, raised before the chest.
"Exactly what it sounds like—a posture of readiness."
Grate.
"A stance for meeting the enemy."
The blade resting across the shoulder, or swept behind it.
Portes.
This one, by contrast, held the sword as though it might thrust out at any moment. The hand gripping the blade drawn taut back along the flank—it was the shape of a horned beast, of a surly bull that would slam its head forward the instant it began to charge.
Vetita.
Both hands gripping the sword are flung high into the heavens without limit. Yet the blade itself remains tilted, slanting along a diagonal, so that its very tip points toward the ground.
"A stance for receiving the enemy's onslaught."
And that was all.
"The four you have just witnessed will serve as your foundation."
"Isn't that far too few?"
"More is not better."
That said, she couldn't quite declare this to be the one and only correct answer.
"What can I say? The one who mastered this art reached that conclusion."
Whether to learn it or not was his choice, and his alone.
"If you're that dissatisfied, feel free to choose something else."
"More than that—isn't this a little strange?"
The stance she had named Para.
That was to say...
"Isn't that the posture one assumes when paying respects, or preparing to offer formal courtesy?"
Holding the sword upright, gathered precisely at the center of the chest... he simply couldn't... how to put it.
From this position, how was one meant to meet an enemy, to parry, to respond at all?
"Don't raise your grievances with me—take it up with that bastard giving the demonstration."
Naturally, the phantom said nothing.
And yet.
"......"
The figure laying Rueld flat on his back began from that exaggerated, rigid posture, and from it flowed into the next with utter, seamless ease.
In the end, he brought down the father of his younger days without the slightest effort.
"Whew."
It seemed, unmistakably, that the process of learning this would be anything but easy. A deeply uneasy premonition welled up in him.
The Demon King continued, pressing onward to the next stage.
"In mastering the stances, repeat them until—even with your eyes closed, even at the instant your body sinks from exhaustion and your consciousness fades—your standing, your stepping, and every transition remain without the slightest disorder."
Whatever one set out to learn, there would be no exception to this process.
Even granting that, however.
He never once has me swing.
Not even a thrust.
Ordinarily, the very first thing taught in any sword style is the swing—the downward cut. And yet, according to the textbook the Demon King had memorized, the downward strike was something one need not bother learning at all.
What mattered were the stances and the transitions.
One simply carried the posture onward—though even that felt less like enacting sword forms than...
Not quite dancing, but it feels like becoming some statue, some exhibit on display.
"Model yourself on rock and tree. You haven't forgotten, have you?"
He just might have—hence the Demon King's sudden jab.
"Even if you say that..."
"If you don't know it, do it until you do."
Wasn't that, in truth, a mercy?
"At least for you, time is meaningless. Even so, a hundred days spent mastering things here will not translate into adaptation in the real world—that is another matter entirely. So here, focus on grasping the feel of it, and on coming to understand the principle."
Time was not infinite.
And yet he had, unmistakably, been granted a span of opportunity that could not even be compared to anyone else's.
"These apply fully whether you wear plainclothes, armor, or fight from horseback—bear that in mind."
"Is that distinction really necessary?"
"Why? If you channel mana, you can hack, pierce, and cleave right through plainclothes or plate alike. Or what—were you counting on acquiring some divine sword that shears armor as easily as leather?"
"......"
"None of that applies to you, does it?"
And then—
"Such a weapon would be far more powerful in another's hand than in yours. Refute me, if you can."
At this point, it came down to whether one believed her, or didn't.
But even here, the choice was clear.
"Then I'll try it."
Reality was beyond his knowing, after all.
Time in the dream flowed on in a delirious, measureless drift.
A day stretched into a month.
By the time a month began to feel like a year—
"...Am I truly meant to keep staying here?"
The gap between the time of reality and the time of the dream was clear enough, but could it really be permissible to remain in this place for so long? He had held his tongue and held it, until at last it seemed wrong to, and he asked outright.
Was practicing and drilling the movements tedious? Not especially. His purpose was clear—if this path could carry him where he needed to go, what did a little boredom or hardship matter?
Only.
By now, it no longer felt like a matter of him swinging a sword at all.
It genuinely feels as though I myself am becoming rock, becoming tree.
"And yet rock is shattered by the hammer, and tree is hewn by the axe—struck down, cut apart, snapped clean through."
Around the time the movements had grown familiar to him, she spoke abruptly.
"Put another way: beyond that, you must not break or snap under any circumstances whatsoever."
"Is that also one of your teachings, or a maxim?"
"If you insist on fitting it into a category? Think of it as advice to aid understanding—a footnote, if it were a book. Depending on how you receive it, it may well become a maxim in its own right."
How many times had he repeated the holding of stances and the linking of transitions? How many times, and again how many?
Perhaps because there was nothing here to fill his belly, no sleep to take—
his sense of time had gone entirely numb.
A hollow world without even sun or moon.
Nothing but himself and a single sword.
And the Demon King, watching over him.
Even she did not always watch.
At some point, the hours of keeping his post alone had grown longer and longer, and as he threw himself into training, sometimes forgetting the Demon King's existence altogether—
"Hmm. Your foundation is beginning to set."
—whenever she spoke up out of nowhere, there were times it startled him enough to make him flinch.
"Now, the next stage."
Para. Grate. Portes. Vetita.
"Rock and tree do not attack. But what you must internalize from here on is water and wind. Do you remember?"
"'When you carry your movement onward, be as water and wind'... was it?"
"Yes."
Paviam.
"When you cut downward from any of the stances, that is Paviam."
Necata.
"This is the thrust."
And Punita.
"The rising cut."
From now on—
"Take the four stances as your base, and link these three together, flowing like water, swift as the wind."
"......"
"Stop thinking and do it with your body. A sword is not swung by grinding your head against itself. Have you still not grasped that... tch, tch!"
With a mere three additions, the interplay of stances and movements had become staggeringly rich and varied.
How one gripped the hilt. How one applied the height and depth of each stance—
Simple, and yet somehow it feels immensely, endlessly changeable.
"I'll return around the time you've grown reasonably used to it."
And with those words—
for a long while.
...the Demon King did not appear before Cariel again.
All that was left to him was the void, the hollow and empty world.
And yet—why was it?
There had been moments of tedium, moments of loneliness, yes.
But even those had come to feel like mere diversion.
There were times when moments of piercing hardship, of agony, of surging bitterness came upon him—
The more thoughts arise, the more you will suffer and struggle; and the fewer your thoughts, the more they will become your strength. Thinking, in the end, is itself labor, itself a burden. Do not let your heart be stolen by trivial things—give your attention only to what must be done.
Let him recall it.
Through all those endless days of men dying and collapsing on the battlefield—
Did you ever once have the leisure to indulge stray thoughts?
Reciting what he must not forget, turning it over and over, he gave himself wholly to refining his stances.
Even unprompted, even without her prodding—
he remembered all of it.
With everything he had.
With utter devotion.
...In truth—
with his whole heart poured in, staking his very life—
...he was learning the art of casting himself into each and every thing he did.
For that was the very first lesson he had grasped upon meeting her.
Why the Demon King had insisted that this, above all, was what mattered—
he no longer needed to ask to know.
To live a single day—
meant, in the end—
to kill the self of that day.
Whether he wished it or not.
Today's self would die regardless.
Thus the present became the past, and all the husks he had shed through the day would—
become the stepping-stone on which tomorrow's self could plant its feet and move forward.
There was nothing difficult about it at all.
Not now that he knew the way, and knew that worthy fruit would follow so long as he only dared to reach for it.
He would never stop.
The summit he was meant to reach stood before his eyes.
In truth, it was terribly, impossibly far away.
But now that he knew he could walk toward it on his own two feet, now that he had learned it—
he would go on.
He would climb.
And so, in the end—
...he would take that step.
It would be his own complete defiance, his own resistance—
the shattering of the false past they had all believed in.