The Bleak Reality Tightens Its Grip
He had swallowed down a hasty lunch and come straight here, so there was time to spare.
"By the way, it seems my latching onto you bothers you less than I expected?"
Quiet in the library. But the building was spacious enough for the number of people using it, so as long as he didn't raise his voice, there was no problem.
"…And what would it change, even if I did mind? Nothing."
"No — accepting it that meekly is suspicious in its own right."
Learned helplessness. Self-esteem trampled into the floor. There were plenty of other reasons besides.
Has he given up on thinking for himself, more than he's simply passive?
Put another way, it meant he had been driven into a corner that deep. He was called a ghost, yes — but he was still a Demon King. If he glossed over that fact so placidly? That alone would be proof his mind wasn't in order.
"Well, I do understand you'd rather not have strange rumors spreading from poking your nose here and there."
"……."
His expression said it plainly: if you know, then don't ask. The Demon King stifled a soft laugh.
Watching the eyes around you and avoiding provocation bothers and irritates you more than my very existence does? Absurd.
"Besides — you don't think I'm tormenting you one-sidedly, do you?"
"……."
After a brief silence, Cariel furrowed his brow and answered. "If it had been purely, maliciously that… I would have done something about it, if only for the sake of survival."
"Oh really? And is it livable?"
"At the very least."
There, Cariel let out a short breath. "Come to think of it calmly, I found that it made sense."
"Huh? What did?"
"…That if I endured that situation and overcame it, I would at least be better off than I am now. Wouldn't I?"
"……."
He interprets it like THAT? What in the world is wrong with his heart?
Suppose he could understand the advantage of it with his head and accept it that way. Even so, accepting it with the heart was a wholly different matter.
Actually dying over and over isn't an experience a sane mind can simply process, you know?
His body was unharmed, so in the end this too was something to simply endure — was that the shape of this oddly tough-minded attitude?
It doesn't fit a strong sense of duty or a hunger for advancement, either.
Nor was it a strong need for approval. Some traces of an affection-starved craving for positive attention — born of indifference, contempt, and insult — were detectable, but…
Even so, this was nothing short of an exceptionally peculiar way of thinking.
The boy was no gold mine. And yet every time she dug into him, nuggets of gold kept springing up. Or had she grasped it instinctively? That no matter how he resisted, no matter how he thrashed and struggled — so long as he had not reached the level she aimed for — he would never, ever stop this reckless, headlong way of growing.
"Good. If you'll take it that positively, it motivates me as well."
"…If you get any more motivated, won't it truly become torture?"
"Training and discipline were always the same thing as torture. The difference is that one aims, as its final goal, to break and destroy body and mind — while the other breaks body and mind in order to reassemble them into their proper form."
"……."
That sounds very impressive, but the conclusion is that both are hell, isn't it?
"If."
"Hm?"
"If I… endure all of it… how far can I grow?"
"I told you already, didn't I? I only provide the opportunity. The rest is up to you. Still, I suppose I can tell you the one thing that matters most."
"And what would that be?"
"Wouldn't experiencing it firsthand be faster than hearing about it?"
Having said that, the Demon King turned her gaze to one side.
"You're not planning to lie around sprawled here, are you?"
Under a coercion that wasn't quite coercion, Cariel settled into the most secluded corner he could find.
Before long — insomnia be damned — his consciousness sank straight down to the bottom.
"There are three things you must master."
"Three things?"
More than that, though—
"Why do you look like that?"
"Hm? Like what?"
When she had drifted about as a wandering spirit, she had been a mature woman. But the figure standing before him now was a girl. Transformed from the golden woman into a girl — and yet she still radiated a peerless, breathtaking beauty.
"That's a suspicious look you're giving me."
"It's nothing of the sort."
"Well, I can't help it, you see? My human form was born from imitating your ideal type — your ideal woman."
"Pardon? That's utterly nonsens—"
"I am not human, little one."
The greatly rejuvenated woman smiled with a girl's face — yet with the Demon King's oppressive presence and that unmistakable force of hers — curling the corners of her mouth upward.
"Your perceiving me as human is entirely an expression of your imagination. Something conceived inside your head."
"It's… rather hard to wrap my mind around."
"Has being beaten down by the world until you were sick of it impoverished your thinking and imagination that badly?"
Blankly accepting whatever he was told — in other words, he was good at receiving.
…Well, that's how he'd been educated and brainwashed all his life.
"Enough idle chatter. The point is this: take my current appearance as your imagined ideal woman combined with my signature trait — gold. Simple, yes?"
"……."
"Now, the real subject. Those three things are very simple as well. First — accuracy. Second — efficiency. And third — sincerity."
"……?"
"What? Too ordinary for you?"
Cariel nodded before he could stop himself.
"Between your father and the founding principles of the Empire, you've held a sword long enough to know this: train with incorrect form, and your efficiency drops. Your effort will betray you, right then and there. You'll suffer all the more later correcting your stance, wasting nothing but time in the end. Am I wrong?"
"…No, you're not."
"It's the same with magic — memorize nothing but useless formulas and equations, and it's a waste of time all the same. In everything, the method matters, just as I said. That's why countless houses and schools research, develop, and refine their own optimal, optimized ways of doing things."
All of it was sound reasoning.
"Meanwhile, those who don't know that — no matter how they toil — end up merely brushing the surface of some shallow realm before giving up, despairing. And even if they refuse to give up, they inevitably collide with a limit."
Once in a great while,
"some manage to climb out of that valley — but that can't be explained by tremendous luck alone. Fortuitous fate, perhaps."
And so, short of being a genius, self-made greatness was impossible. Even a genius had to overcome every hardship and trial to stand on their own.
"And what if you'd received proper instruction? What if the realm you clawed your way to — dying and living again for ten desperate years — was in truth something you could have attained in barely a single year, let alone ten? What if, having trained in bad habits and built your body wrongly, you hit a wall without ever knowing why? And then you're told — now — to throw away everything you spent a lifetime honing? And what's more — what? Relearn from scratch, like a toddler taking first steps? You think that's possible at your age?"
"……."
A bleak story indeed.
"At that point, the only asset left to you is experience — nothing but years of grind. But can that truly make strength? Regrettably, no — that is merely being clever at shortcuts. Something closer to a survival art, a craft of getting by."
"So what you're saying is that one must build one's foundation with correct methods, and cultivate one's skill upon it."
"You've pinned down the point nicely. A fine learning attitude you've got there."
He was passive at present, his creativity dulled — but for now, that was precisely the right answer. Far better to remain a blank sheet than to scribble carelessly all over one.
For acquiring new things. And yet—
His physical condition is a sorry state indeed, though.
And the fact that this ruin was the fruit of all his effort — that was what made it sting all the more.
The Demon King clicked her tongue briefly. "And that is exactly why the swordsmanship you learned is a problem."
"…My swordsmanship?"
"The current Berke Empire maintains the Berke Imperial Swordsmanship Forms — 6, 9, and 13 — taught to everyone equally, doesn't it? The Emperor himself, and your father as well."
"That was over three hundred years ago."
Three hundred years past — the age when the very existence of the knight had only just begun to emerge. The strongest of that era. The sword art compiled and presented to the imperial throne by Iland, called the greatest knight of the Empire. Now enshrined in the Empire's official sword manuals, the most popular and universal sword art of them all.
"It is an excellent sword art, that much is true. With a foundation laid firmly, this one form alone is enough to reach the realm of a truly top-class knight. Of that I'm certain."
But—
"…With the Empire's current sword forms, that is impossible. Unlike three hundred years ago, they've been greatly… altered."
"Altered… you say?"
"Yes. Shall I show you, properly, just once?"
The Demon King conjured an iron sword out of empty air and gave a simple demonstration.
Exactly six movements. Immaculately clean — and yet utterly plain, stripped to the bone.
"Well? What did you see?"
"It's somewhat different from what I was taught. Is that the Imperial 6th Form?"
"No."
She shook her head.
"The original Imperial Swordsmanship 6th Form was everything you just witnessed. Nothing more."
"Huh? But it's completely different from what I learned?"
"I told you. It was altered."
The vermin had pulled their vermin tricks, that's all.
"Stylish vermin and arrogant vermin, tacking things on in the name of 'improvement' — that's what became of the sword arts you people learn today. They've been altered and bloated a great deal, haven't they?"
"……."
"That too was, in its own way, an improvement."
At a price.
"What you have now is swordsmanship suited only to those whose talent and innate disposition happen to fit — so-called swordsmanship for the rightly gifted."
If the original Imperial 6th Form was a masterpiece — a sword art that let anyone, regardless of physical condition or talent, raise their realm through sheer effort, carrying them from the barest fundamentals all the way to an advanced realm —
"the Imperial swordsmanship you all know today is thoroughly conditional. In other words — noble swordsmanship."
"…And what does 'conditional' mean, exactly?"
"First, an innate understanding of mana. Second, the physical flexibility to bear it. And last, extraordinary powers of concentration."
"……."
"Yes. Every single one — a talent you don't have. And so—"
Because he had buried his time and effort in the gilded hollow of Imperial swordsmanship without those talents—
"that is why your skill has stayed exactly the shape it is, all this while."
"……."
"'Work a little harder and you will grow. Your effort was insufficient. You simply need more time. Pour your life and your sincerity into every swing. Keep training through real combat, and you will surely reach the realm you aim for.'"
Well? Pretty familiar comforts and advice, aren't they?
"Truly the worst kind of deception — the kind that rots people from within. And yet, astonishingly, the ones who toss out such advice and comfort don't even recognize that they are committing that sin. Now isn't that a fine comedy?"
Why is it that they get to say such things?
"'I'm~ fine, so! We're~ fine, so! Therefore,~ if you can't do it! That's! Your fault! Your blame! I managed it! So it's YOU who can't, isn't it? Why didn't you simply work harder? With sincerity! With your life on the line! Devoutly!'"
But that—
that was exactly like commanding a man with no arms to grip a sword and swing it. Like urging a man with no legs to run with all his heart.
"How about it? Too petty for you?"
"Then…"
"It's YOUR story I'm telling! Yours! With no arms and no legs, all four limbs severed clean off — how in the world do you intend to grip a sword and swing it? Learn to stand? Swing with your core and your lower body instead of arm and shoulder strength? You still don't understand a single piece of this, do you? You've just been vaguely assuming, oh, I suppose that's how it works?"
"……."
"Shall I tell you one more amusing thing?"
Grinning mischievously, the Demon King spat out the very worst of confessions.
"Me? I don't even know the word 'sword.' Not the character, not the concept."
Well — that much made sense.
"I'm of the school that shreds things with its claws rather than gripping them! Why would I ever need such a thing? My hands weren't built to hold anything to begin with!"
Well? Truly hilarious, isn't it?
"And yet — guarded like precious relics for a hundred years, two hundred years, that treasure of an Imperial sword art of yours — why is it that you people don't know how rotten its truth is, while I do?"
He didn't know the reason, but his hair stood on end.
And yet, even so, Cariel reflexively pulled a particular word from his lips.
"Wis…dom?"
"Ah — that's gone a little astray, but you've struck the heart of it. Yes."
And that is why I am—
"the Demon King of Wisdom."
Merely possessing knowledge could never reach the realm of wisdom. The sheer volume of it — large or small, abundant or vast — could not carry one even to the hem of wisdom.
Therefore, wisdom was—
"the ultimate knowing — the right and just understanding and grasping of principle. In other words, insight into the essence. That is what wisdom truly is."
And upon surpassing even that—
"one arrives, at last, at the Realm of Truth. Ah — and beyond that lies the Realm of Order. Realms and domains, you see, are endless."
In that sense — aren't you curious?
"The me who suffered at your father's and mother's hands — was I truly a failed Demon King? Do you honestly believe I failed to foresee even my own defeat, my own death?"
Only then, belatedly, did Cariel realize he had forgotten even to breathe.
The sweat that had soaked through him was cooling, bitingly cold. His mouth had gone dry at some point, and even the inside of his throat had stiffened hard, like the bark of a withered tree.