I Stand in the Wilderness
To call the narrow-minded weak is, quite plainly, a prejudice. Nowhere is it written that a coward must be a weakling as well.
By any worldly measure, the man before me was no weakling. To be made an instructor in the first place meant that his overall worth—his skill, his connections, the whole sum of him—had been judged fitting. A man who earned a post at the Empire's most prestigious academy on raw ability alone would have to be a master counted among the finest on the continent.
But such masters don't simply lie strewn about like river stones and pebbles, do they? In the end, they need supporting hands—people to assist them, to stand in for them. Which is to say, the post of instructor is an easy perch from which to win social renown. A convenient position for laying down connections, too.
"I only hope you don't come to regret this."
He said it while giving the training sword a few practice swings. His eyes, leveled at my mid-guard and watching my every reaction with unblinking uprightness, were thick with tension. Perhaps it was the feel of the sword in his hand—or perhaps not—but my breathing began to sink into stillness on its own.
And I, even then, kept the blade extended and simply studied him for a long moment. His gaze sat a good two heads above Cariel's own. Standing side by side, his shadow would have swallowed the boy whole; the short-cropped brown hair only sharpened his fierce look. His reddish-brown eyes carried a temper that seemed ready to snap, the kind that could frighten you without your meaning to flinch, if you held them too long. Which is exactly why Cariel could not quite bring himself to meet them.
Come to think of it—I had always feared meeting people's eyes, for no reason I could name. And then, as if by some standing promise, quarrels found me. Accidents broke out on cue, just to be seen.
…Well. So what.
The training sword in his hand was built for both one-handed and two-handed use. A true one-handed blade, and a sword with a long hilt meant to be wrapped fully in both palms. Each carries its own clear strengths and weaknesses, so whichever a swordsman chooses is his own affair. Imperial Swordsmanship divides its forms with precisely this in mind.
Then what of me?
It may not matter either way.
The same training wooden sword. In shape, the difference was negligible—save that, thanks to the gap in our builds, mine was structurally the shorter of the two. Swordsmanship was my mainstay, and yet, honestly, whether I held a longspear, a halberd, or a lancer's lance—it had never particularly mattered.
And still.
Nothing about me had been proven. I could not even trust myself, not carelessly. Until something was tested and demonstrated, there was not one thing in this body I was entitled to believe.
"Hoo―"
I gripped the hilt as though folding both hands around it. The straight blade rose before my chest.
Para.
The starting point, exactly as the word implies. The foundational salutation stance. The ready posture.
…Anything would do, really.
Even here in the Berg Empire, where the knight is called a warrior of God—why do those who have sworn the Oath go out of their way to commit acts that violate the very words of it? They pray for the gods' blessing and mercy. So why do they refuse, so freely, to extend that same mercy to anyone else? For their own sake, of course.
A prayer made for gain is, by its nature, corruption.
Weren't we all taught exactly that, from the cradle? Pray only for others. Devote yourself only for others. Only—
so that you may be capable of sacrifice for others. Live it. Practice it.
"……"
Here, in an empire overflowing with knights. In this very hall that prizes chivalry above all, where they teach the Knight's Creed and the sword arts themselves—why did they persecute and cast out those of us who had been weak?
"……"
Or did they, perhaps, never see me as weak at all? Then treating me so carelessly makes even less sense, doesn't it?
No. That contradiction is, if anything, utterly human—so much so that it fits them perfectly. I had already worked all of that out in my head, long ago.
Are they truly that foolish? That simple?
"And where exactly did you pick up a stance like that?"
Cariel, who had been drawing calm breaths with his eyes still closed, slowly slid his left foot half a step back. The hands facing front, the arms they held, and the upright blade—all of it turned naturally toward the left with that single motion. A stance may be defined, but in the end every stance lives or dies by where the feet are planted. It is the lower body that governs the upper; the torso answers to what stands beneath it.
Which is why it resembles a rooted tree. Let the wind shake it, let a storm bend it near to breaking—if the roots hold true, the center will never collapse, never come undone. Even the swaying, even the shudder, is merely a process. Merely a motion.
Incline the sword forward here, and it is Portes. Let it slacken instead and sweep it back across the shoulder, and it is Grate. There is no need to obsess over the resting place. Do not mistake the means for the end. Do not let yourself be bound by the process.
Nothing more than turning the ball of the rear foot inward—and the upper body tips naturally back to the right, flowing into Portes as though about to lunge into a thrust. Drop the stance low, or widen the stride, and the same posture takes on an entirely different means and purpose. An identical thrust serves one way in a counterattack and another in a charge. Fading left or right while offering a probing point is something else again. From that same position, one could abandon the thrust entirely—chop down, or carve away. And yet there is no need for any of it.
With nothing but the transitions between stances, offense and defense link themselves, one into the next.
The point is the root. The lower body; the center. The mastery and use of all of it—not with the head, but with the body. Not leaning on sight alone, but on the senses spread evenly through every limb. Reflexively. Before thought ever arrives.
"Am I to understand that, as a courtesy, you're granting me the first move?"
"O-of course. That much goes without saying."
And he was right—it truly did. And yet, somehow, my pulse slipped a beat.
He closed the distance exactly as he was, the tip of his sword tipped slightly forward. By now the posture was neither Para nor Portes—and yet it could become either, the instant it needed to.
Step. Step.
He did not swing. And so, though I had already carved my way inside his measure, I kept my own blade upright and did not strike first. This was its own kind of difficult—like a man simply walking at you, sword in hand, body first. Only he wasn't running.
Step. Step. Slow, deliberate, closing the gap on foot—and his expression warped all at once.
"What in the world are you―"
If he kept talking like that, our bodies would soon touch, and my wooden sword could find his throat, his chest, his face—anywhere at all. But I neither thrust nor swung. I only walked.
"Tch!"
The trouble, of course, was that pressing in this way meant hurling myself of my own accord at the wooden sword he held in mid-guard. So when that moment came, I too shifted my motion, smooth and unhurried, even as I kept walking.
Vetita.
The blade stayed inclined—but now the hilt, wrapped in both hands, climbed skyward. And in that posture, the straight sword revealed the shape of a cross; even the guard set between hilt and blade ran long. Uniquely long. The Empire's sword is, at its heart, a cross-guarded sword—so much so that this very guard bears its own proper name: the Cross Guard.
"?!"
The moment his blade caught mine and he brought a crushing blow down toward my crown, I took the wooden sword on the guard itself. By then the distance between our bodies had shrunk to less than an outstretched arm. The narrowed measure had blunted some of the centrifugal force behind his swing—and so the shock that landed on the guard was, comparatively, mild.
"Not yet!"
One failure did not mean the end. He reclaimed the wooden sword that had struck my guard, dropped his stance in a flash, and glared down my middle line.
And from there, once more—Portes.
But this time I did not angle the blade toward his front. I simply turned my foot outward, and toward his swinging sword my own inclined itself as if by nature. Before long, his wooden sword—not my flank, but my guard—took the blow full on. Nothing more than sinking the lower body; adjusting the height had never been a difficult thing.
Crack!
The impact itself went without saying. I received it on a firm stance and let it flow away. The shock that hammered my wrist was absorbed, then ran along hand and wrist, through the joints of arm and shoulder, out into chest and back—
And there it stopped. There was no need for the force to reach down into the legs at all. The weight of his sword stroke scattered and dissolved, all of it, right at that point.
But—simply letting it drain away seemed a waste, didn't it?
To keep the recoil from harming my body, I gave my upper frame the faintest shake, rolling straight on into the next linked motion—taking that scattered force as fuel, the way one breathes life back into a dying ember—and let it drive the body onward. Narrowing the stride, lifting the sword. Though even the word lifting is an ill fit for what happened.
Grate.
I had merely taken the next stance. Merely connected one motion to the next, without pause.
"Kgh!"
And the linkage was neither clumsy nor slow. His wooden sword, having struck my guard, still hung wedged precariously between guard and blade—and my rapid change of posture had dragged it, and his wrist with it, into an unnatural bend.
"?!"
He reacted at last—but by then I had already flowed through three full transitions. Clatter! The sword left his hand entirely, and clutching his right wrist, he came at me with the eyes of a man possessed.
"That… where… what, what kind of swordsmanship is that? When, and from whom, did you learn something that—that bizarre?"
"……"
Even in that stunned reaction, did he not yet grasp that he had, in effect, confessed his own defeat?
"How would I know."
I had yet to deliver so much as a single proper cut—had not swung, had not even feinted a slash. And yet this result, precisely this…
…was the reason Rueld in his youth, Holy Sword in hand, had no choice but to lose.
Given one taste of it, after a few more encounters, he would at least respond better than he had today. But—
…that, too, was no true answer. This was the fundamental reason that even his father—the prodigy of the blade, the man born with genius in his blood—could only claim victory in his prime, and only by borrowing the power of the Holy Sword and the Sacred Relics. No matter how deftly an opponent wielded a blade—his father, so gifted he could learn a technique from a single glance and copy it—could neither imitate it, in craft or in artistry, nor even break through it.
Strange as it sounds, now that I had embodied it for myself, I understood at a glance. There had never been any special reason behind it. No profound secret. None at all.
"I learned it in a dream. That's all."
Because this was nothing normal, nothing ordinary—nothing that deserved the name of common swordsmanship. Had the guard not run long, as it does on this training sword—had the blade been shorter, stubbier—I would simply have pursued some other line of attack, rather than toying with my opponent in this fashion. Though in truth, the stances and motions I could bring to bear would have been much the same regardless.
"Get up."
"…What?"
Through that vacant face, a chill of bewilderment welled up.
"Dropping your sword once doesn't end the bout, does it?"
Cariel, who had retreated a few paces, said it while nodding his eyes toward the fallen wooden sword.
"Once more, if you please."
"……"
This was—
This was—
…eerily, terrifyingly cold, all the way down in the far depths of his chest. Heat should have risen in his cheeks; shame should have burned. That would have been normal. And yet, somehow, gooseflesh crawled over his whole body, every fine hair standing on end—
and he was cold.
Killing spirit—then or now, there was nothing to feel of it. Yes. That was precisely it. Why had it taken him until this moment to notice?
"Whenever you're ready."
Nothing could be felt.
As if—
as if he had been cast out into an empty wilderness, where nothing but desolate winds of sand went drifting past.
Why?
…Why should merely looking at one human being leave a man seized by such a strange sensation? He could not know. He was still there, thrown out into that hollow wilderness, and the wooden sword in his hand felt lighter today than it ever had.
Everything was being devoured.
The wilderness, saying nothing, pressed down upon his world with silence and stillness—
quietly. Steadily.
…He dropped his sword again and again, many times after that. And each time, with no room left for shame—
without even the chance to feel fear—
he crumbled.