At the Chieftain's Word
At Chieftain Odzen's words, Yujun didn't so much as flinch. As if he had been waiting for them, he picked up the iron sword tied loosely at his waist.
"Will here do?"
A faint smile touched Odzen's mouth.
"Impatient as I am, aren't you. Outside."
A wide clearing waited just beyond the tent. Standing in it, Odzen studied Yujun with care.
"Your build isn't bad. Move your arms and legs a little, like a warm-up."
Yujun nodded and swung his limbs through the empty air in easy, measured strokes.
"Good spring in them, too. Long arms and legs for your height... You've got a body made for fighting. Shame about the weapon. A longer sword would suit you better."
"This is all I was given."
"Then I'll give you a decent one."
Chieftain Odzen sent Yaji to fetch a weapon. Yaji came back with a sullen face and flung it over.
"It's valuable. Handle it carefully."
From the way he begrudged parting with it, the blade must have ranked among the better arms in the tribe.
Level restriction around fifty. Rare grade, maybe.
It could never satisfy eyes that had wielded the Planet Destroyer's Sword. Under ordinary circumstances, it was a blade he wouldn't even have bothered storing in his inventory. But what choice did he have? He couldn't lay hands on anything better right now. He would take it, and be grateful.
"You come in first."
"We just fight?"
"Yeah. No mercy, no holding back. Come at me like you mean to kill me."
"And if you actually die?"
"What?"
Odzen burst into roaring laughter. Tears even pricked his eyes. He laughed for a long while before he finally settled enough to speak.
"Bringing down Tyragos may have made you stronger, but I am the barbarian who has reigned as the strongest in this tribe for twenty years. I'm not so frail that a child's blind swing can hurt me."
He looked at Yujun as if the boy were something adorable.
"Still, I like the confidence. A temperament that doesn't shrink before anyone is worth learning from. If your skill is the real thing, you'll grow strong very fast."
In time, he might even reach for the chieftain's seat. Odzen knew the boy's potential had measured at the highest grade—no, beyond even that.
But too much confidence is a double-edged sword. The recklessness and arrogance of youth can call down death if you're not careful. This time I'll knock that nose of his down properly. It'll be good for the kid, too.
Odzen always thought of the tribe's future. He did not want a young barbarian of brilliant talent, with a bright road ahead, dying a pointless death somewhere foolish.
"Then I'll use my full strength. For real."
"That's the only way I can grasp what you can do. Come."
Yujun nodded and kicked off the ground with a sharp crack.
He couldn't measure the chieftain's skill just yet, either. He no longer had his old senses. On stats and level alone, Odzen would stand far higher. But a fight between players was never decided by stats and level alone. What mattered more was technique—traits and skills. They didn't show on his status window right now, yet Yujun carried the theory of GX-tier Swordsmanship. It wasn't something he had merely memorized by rote. It was driven into his mind, and into his body. He couldn't reproduce it at a full hundred percent, but he could imitate GX-tier Swordsmanship convincingly enough.
To think a suitable opponent would show up right when I needed one.
He couldn't have been more grateful that the chieftain had called him out. He had needed someone to swing a sword at anyway.
Yujun drove in a light thrust, the way a boxer throws a jab. The motion was so spare and so fast that Odzen's eyes flew wide. He planted his right foot as a pivot, spun a half turn, and brought his thick, heavy sword around—a movement so natural it might have been rehearsed, possible only because his command of body and blade had reached its peak.
Yujun was faintly startled.
There's a barbarian like this?
He had only ever seen barbarians fight in a crude, brutal fashion, so the surprise was inevitable. But this was no time to be surprised. He dropped his torso the way a boxer weaves, and Odzen's sword hissed past close enough to graze his hair. A trade of turns—and for Yujun, a chance to drive in deeper. He hauled his sword arm all the way back, then shot it forward. The blade howled through the air. Odzen, as if he had expected even this, tried to spring backward, but Yujun took one more step.
"...What—!"
Steel sank into the thick of Odzen's right shoulder and punched clean through.
Yujun put his strength into the pull and tore the sword free. Bright red blood soaked the dirt. Drop by drop, it ran down the blade, and he swung twice more to flick it clean.
Odzen was not the only one shocked. Yaji, watching the bout from the side, was aghast. Had the chieftain really lost? Odzen stood clutching his shoulder, face blank with disbelief, as if the blow had struck deeper than flesh. Yaji looked from the chieftain to Yujun and back. What in the world had just happened? He could not make himself accept the result of a spar that had ended in an instant.
A young barbarian who had not even held his coming-of-age ceremony had beaten the chieftain in a duel? Odzen, of all people—the man judged the strongest in the tribe's history?
It was hard to believe Odzen had gone easy. Yaji hadn't been able to follow either of their movements properly. From the moment Yujun first thrust, Odzen must have meant to fight in earnest; even to Yaji's eye, that opening motion had been too clean, too perfect. Everything after that, his eyes simply could not track. It looked as if the match had been decided in a flash.
But the shock Yaji felt was nothing beside Odzen's.
"Ha... haha."
He had been so stunned he had even forgotten that a wound needed stanching at once. Still, his will was formidable. He shook his head hard and came back to himself almost immediately.
"...How did you do it?"
"I saw an opening, so I thrust. That's all."
"Why the shoulder? With the difference in our height, stabbing the shoulder from that stance must have been extremely difficult. Wouldn't the belly, or the solar plexus, have been better?"
"If I'd done that, you would have died."
"Me?"
"Yes."
Yujun said it with a blank face. Odzen's expression turned incredulous.
"Are you saying you held back because you were afraid I might die?"
"It may sound presumptuous, but yes."
Barbarians had little love for lies. Even a well-meant falsehood was better left unsaid; speaking plainly was the surer way to earn their goodwill. Though from the moment he had humiliated the chieftain, he was probably already in the wrong.
While Yaji came running with bandages and set to treating the wound, Odzen spoke.
"A contest between the tribes will be held on the grasslands soon. Shin Yujun. You will take part."
"A contest?"
"You can't possibly not know of it."
"...I lost my memory recently. Honestly, there isn't much I remember."
Yujun didn't pretend to know. If he were caught out, the barbarians—who hated lies—might shun him. Of course, they were unlikely to treat a barbarian of such outstanding potential carelessly.
"You lost your memory? How?"
"I fell out of bed in my sleep. Hit my head hard on the corner of the table..."
"..."
"Even I think it's ridiculous, but it's true."
"I'll believe you. You've no reason to lie. In any case, you must enter the contest."
"That's... an order, I take it?"
"No. The choice is yours. You're stronger than I am, so you've no need to obey my orders. And if you post a good result in the contest..."
"..."
Yaji was more flustered by those words than Yujun was.
"A-all of a sudden? Nothing's prepared..."
"Preparation can be done while the contest is underway. It is no exaggeration to say the rise and fall of our Ledordang Tribe—its very fortunes—rest on Shin Yujun. I have never seen a barbarian of such talent. Not even in the ages before I was born. Yaji. You don't agree?"
"...The chieftain is right. But isn't it too sudden? The tribespeople won't accept it easily."
"There is no change without a price. And once they learn how strong that one is, the backlash won't be so severe."
The Ledordang Tribe held to a tradition: the strongest barbarian became chieftain. To refuse Shin Yujun the seat would be to defy that tradition.
"Shin Yujun. What will you do?"
"...I'll do it."
"Good."
"But I'd like you to put off handing over the chieftaincy for as long as you can."
"Why?"
"I'm not ready yet."
"Hmm..."
Yujun was a man who would be leaving soon. He had no intention of staying here long. His goal was to find the key that would let him enter the Peace Contribution Shop, and inheriting the chieftain's seat would do him no good. More than that, a chieftain had to shoulder a grave responsibility. If he simply up and left, what would become of those left behind? He didn't want to take on something he couldn't answer for.
That was why he had said it. The chieftain, however, did not look inclined to listen. Of course not. In Odzen's eyes, Yujun would look like a genius without equal under heaven.
Barbarians shared tents by family, but those whose parents had died lived with others of the same age. Yujun, too, was apparently set down as parentless, so he had to sleep among the young barbarians.
"The chieftain gave you that sword?"
The barbarian in the next bed asked. Was his name Zairiton? Zairie? No—Xylitol? Yujun hadn't caught it properly, and didn't know the exact name. At Xylitol's question, he nodded without a word.
Word that he had been to the chieftain's tent spread quickly, and so did word that someone had seen him win the spar. They had fought in an open clearing; there was no way there were no other witnesses. Few had seen it with their own eyes, so the conclusion making the rounds was that the chieftain had gone easy on him. Even so, the mere fact that he had not been pushed back was more than enough to become a major topic of talk. No—it overflowed. Already, dozens of barbarians had walked into the tent without so much as asking.
Once his irritation reached its peak, Yujun started using his fists. Talking a barbarian down was close to impossible. The ones he beat, though, went off grinning, declaring it had been great.
"Must be nice. The chieftain even gave you a sword himself."
"Fight him once yourself. I got mine before we even fought, so you never know."
"Y-you think so?"
Xylitol seemed to possess a pure soul. Whatever you told him, he took it at face value.
"I'm sleeping first."
The tribal contest would begin in four days. Come morning, he would have to train with the young barbarians, and after that he would be given free time. Then, Yujun meant to drill his Swordsmanship. Fighting the chieftain had given him one thread of enlightenment—an enlightenment that had never once come to him when he was that strong. It had begun to visit only after he became a barbarian, and grew weak beyond measure.