If It Exists (6)
“Victory!”
“I’m next!”
“No, let me—!”
How exactly had things come to this?
I stood in the empty lot in front of Sir Walter’s house, idly fingering the hilt of my sword after claiming yet another win. Sir Walter, of course, was the knight who had invited me here.
“Valentin looks good.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Think you can keep going?”
“…I believe so.”
I had already put down three knight candidates, yet my HP had barely dipped. I never let an attack land cleanly; the only damage came from the recoil of clashing blades—somehow less punishing than a solid thrashing to the back—and my natural recovery had been enough to cover it.
I watched the numbers tick down by the second only to climb right back up, then shrugged.
“Good. Then we continue. Valentin, take your place.”
“Yes, sir!”
As for how we got here: nothing dramatic. I had accepted the invitation under half-forced circumstances—there was simply no decent excuse to refuse—and the house already sheltered seven knight candidates boarding there. (So that was the “support” the shopkeeper had mentioned.) Sir Walter had merely suggested I join the pre-meal sparring, clearly wanting a look at my skill.
“In the name of God, we shall cross blades.”
Of course, had I known the pre-meal sparring would drag on this long, I might have refused. Or would I really?
“Begin!”
I watched my opponent charge in high guard and locked onto his every motion.
What I had taken for a pure overhead strike transformed with a bend of the knees, a drop of the waist, and a simple turn of the wrist into a cut that could shear my thigh or midsection.
Clang!
I stopped it on pure physique alone. No technique, no clever footwork—just a bit more strength and a hair faster reflexes.
Still, people who had been properly taught were different.
The instant our swords met, he abandoned the contest of force. Instead he twisted his wrist the opposite way, spinning the blade so the edge came scything back from the other side.
Kaaang!
I had already seen that from the previous three, so I blocked it. Tak. As if he had expected even that, his free hand seized the tip of his own blade—the foible.
Half-swording. Using the locked blades as a fulcrum, he levered the sword so that the crossguard and grip, not the edge, came driving toward me.
If I did nothing, the end of that crossguard would punch straight into my throat.
Puhk!
No reason to stand there and take it.
I forced his arm upward. He was larger—Shagi, after all—but I was stronger. Exactly as they had taught me, I half-sworded in turn and brought the tip of my own blade toward his Adam’s apple.
He twisted waist and neck in a panic, arms whipping around.
The sword I had knocked skyward spun, and the forte smashed my blade sideways. Kang. The ring of steel tore the air.
My somewhat loose tunic flapped as my body gave ground. Whoosh! He cut straight down through the space I had just vacated, then raised the blade again into high guard.
High guard once more—utterly different from me, who had retreated with the sword held one-handed and lowered.
Kaaang!
The second clash ran a different course. Having already tasted that particular exchange, I saw no need to taste it again—or perhaps I simply wanted to see more of his answers—so I cut differently.
The moment our blades touched, before he could move, I circled mine in a tight figure-eight, beat his sword aside, and thrust straight for his torso.
Seogeok!
A strangely curved cut came for my head. My own thrust had twisted his body into a dodge, leaving him no other option.
I yanked the thrusting sword back in a hurry.
My right hand on the grip rose past my left shoulder beside my head; as it rose, my left hand slid forward along the lower blade and braced it.
My sword, now a barrier, knocked his clear.
If I simply stood there he would recover and come in again.
Why give him the chance? The instant his blade was deflected, mine shot forward. Muscle that simply ignored inertia drove the point.
Crude, simple—and all the more threatening for it.
“Enough!”
Sir Walter’s shout cracked across the yard. My blade, a paper’s thickness from the man’s throat, withdrew.
“A fine bout.”
“Likewise…”
Every match had been short like this, yet even in those brief exchanges lessons poured out. I replayed what my opponent had just shown me and offered a silent bow.
“You really are…”
Sir Walter had approached; his expression was impossible to name.
“If not for that constitution of yours, you would have been a knight whose name lasted through history.”
“…You flatter me.”
“No. That is not exaggeration. Not in the slightest.”
He tapped my stance with the cane he carried—straighten the back, too much tension here, don’t spread the feet so wide—and let out a long sigh.
“How much force did you put into that last thrust?”
“Um. Just…”
“Enough to punch clean through the neck if you hadn’t stopped, yes?”
“…I had no intention of harming him.”
“Of course not. You were completely confident you could stop it.”
“Mm…”
“Truly, that strength is brutish beyond measure.”
Yes, the final exchange had been pure brute force, but the wording felt a little harsh. I was mildly wounded.
“Think I’m joking?”
He must have noticed; he clapped my shoulder. Mindful, perhaps, of the blood I had coughed earlier, the touch was light—just a solid contact.
“Let me give you an example. Not one of the fellows you just faced has held a sword for fewer than ten years. They are not masters, but they can manage any ordinary technique that relies on force control. Do you believe any of them could have done what you just did? Assuming, of course, no mana reinforcement.”
“Uh…”
“Absolutely impossible. Loading a certain amount of power and then reclaiming it is a matter of practice. Expanding the total amount of that power, however, belongs more to talent than effort.”
“I… see.”
By then I understood what he was driving at. Dramatically increasing raw strength did require a certain measure of talent beyond mere training.
“Moreover, looking at the way you swing, the period of proper instruction was short and the rest self-taught… Factor that in and your innate talent is even greater. To achieve that level of force control on pure sense alone means that with real teaching and practice you could display far greater technique.”
……
So in purely physical terms I was simply a talent monster? Because mana had always been my mainstay against enemies, I had never realized the body itself was also broken. The feeling was strange.
“Of course I mean physical ability, not technique or skill. Without those insane reflexes and that strength you would have lost even to Hube. Understood?”
“Yes, sir.”
Hube must have been the first one I faced—the fellow with the uncommon green hair…
Not important.
I glanced back at the knight candidates standing behind us with shining eyes, hands neatly folded. Because they had lost to strength rather than technique, they seemed surprisingly free of hostility.
“Starting today we increase muscle-training hours.”
“Ugh. Why did I have to be born Slend…”
“Meat. Meat is the answer.”
Ah—so instead they were all determined to bulk up so the same thing would never happen again. Watching faces that ranged from the twenties to the thirties flush with sudden passion left me with an odd sensation.
“Anyway, sit. I’ll go over each of your mistakes.”
“Yes, sir!”
But right now I myself had a mountain of things to learn.
Only after every one of Sir Walter’s boarders had taken a seat did I settle at the very end of the line. By chance I found myself next to Valentin, my last opponent.
His red fur, which somehow reminded me of someone, kept drawing my gaze off-center. I hoped he would not notice the slight awkwardness.
“You really are strong. I’ve never lost a contest of pure strength before.”
“You were… the first person I found truly difficult, Sir Valentin.”
In return I gave him the honorific. It had not been a deliberate attempt to look away; after fretting over how one properly addressed a knight candidate, I had simply decided to attach it.
Apparently the title pleased him. The fur-covered lips twitched.
How to put it—like master, like disciple; both of them were weak to praise delivered sideways. From my perspective that was hardly a bad thing.
“Hube, you already know what you did wrong, don’t you?”
“Yes…”
“There is no guarantee that a larger opponent will always be Shagi. And Middles and Shagi put power into a sword in completely different ways. Keep that in mind next time.”
“Yes, sir!”
While we were building a little rapport, Sir Walter’s critique continued—what had been done well, what poorly, what could be improved. He clearly had a gift for teaching.
“Valentin, you already know without me saying it.”
“Yes.”
“And lastly, you…”
He glanced at me and paused.
“Just to be sure—are you left-handed?”
The follow-up question was unexpected.
“…I’m ambidextrous, closer to right-handed.”
“Is that so? Then why does the form of your swing look strangely awkward…”
Wow, he caught that? The moment I heard Sir Walter’s mutter, a chill ran down my spine. Separately from being ambidextrous with a right-hand preference, I had swung a sword exclusively with my left until now; of course the right side felt relatively clumsy.
“Ah, and one more thing. Do you have real combat experience?”
“Yes… more or less.”
“Mostly beasts or demons rather than people, I take it?”
Even the nature of my usual enemies had been exposed. Feeling thoroughly fleeced, I admitted the fact.
I had wanted to cultivate an image as far from fighting as possible, but once it was already out, hiding it would have been meaningless. That was the reasoning behind my nod.
It was… a little frightening, though.
“I thought as much.”
Sir Walter’s head bobbed up and down.
“I won’t ask how you hunted those things with a body like yours. Well—aside from being unable to use mana, watching you fight makes it seem entirely possible.”
The one mercy was that Sir Walter did not seem to harbor deep suspicions about me. Inwardly I offered him enormous thanks for that understanding.
“However, as I said earlier, you are somewhat lacking on the technical side.”
“Yes.”
“But that is not your fault. Lack of formal training is one thing… yet even when you taught yourself, the entire direction of that self-study went somewhere else.”
“…Direction?”
“Put simply, it is like this.”
While I was still processing, Sir Walter pointed at the knight candidates with one finger.
“Our swordsmanship is designed for humanoid enemies.”
Then the finger swung toward me as he continued.
“Yours is designed for enemies larger than yourself—and not humanoid at all.”
I understood at once.
“That is why every motion is large and technique is thin.”
True enough; humanoid foes had rarely been the main course in my fights. Even when one appeared, it usually ended in a one-shot kill long before any real contest of skill.
In that light, his assessment was only natural. I accepted the critique as it stood.
“Then what should I do now?”
Accepting a problem and finding a way to improve it were separate matters. At my question Sir Walter stroked his thick mustache.
“Honestly… I would like to have you study the sword under me for a few years.”
“…Is it that serious?”
“No, that is not what I mean. The reason I want to teach you is simply that your talent is too good to waste. I am not saying your current sword is flawed.”
“Is that so?”
“Of course. When the enemies you face are different to begin with, what is the point of arguing technique? Against something huge, finesse barely matters. The only question is whether you can cut the hide or not.”
“Then…”
“Of course learning these smaller techniques would do you no harm. In life one ends up fighting people more often than demons, after all. Well—with a physique like yours, unless you are fighting actual knights, most technique is meaningless anyway.”
He coveted my talent again, declaring that pure strength and reflexes could crush any ordinary human. If I had not already claimed the “cannot use mana” constitution—and it was not entirely a lie—he might have dragged me off to the academy on the spot.
“Still, since you are staying under my roof, learn a bit of anti-personnel technique while you are here.”
I was in no position to accept more than that, and he knew it; this was the compromise he offered. For me it was pure gain. The penalties from the Disguise Skill still worried me a little, but I could endure them somehow.
“Yes.”
I rose, gratefully accepting Sir Walter’s proposal. With the evaluations finished, I assumed we would head inside for dinner.
“Um, have you truly fought demons before?”
“Not skeletons or ghouls—real, enormous beasts or demons… is that true?”
“If it is not too much trouble, could you tell us about those times…?”
My prediction was a little off. Mealtime was still mealtime, but it was mealtime disguised as a discussion and exchange of stories.
“Have some of this. My wife’s apple pie is excellent.”
“How do you grow so tall? No matter how much I eat, I never get any taller…”
“What kind of training do you do? I feel I should start lifting more myself…”
Caught between the unasked-for kindness of a middle-aged man, the chattering of green hair, and the passionate red fur, I felt a faint, inexplicable homesickness.
There were so many people, yet somehow I still felt alone.