Sparring in Katon Village
Luararda’s assault was, in every sense of the word, a beautiful strike—swift and lethal as a leopard’s pounce.
The only problem was that Hwanin had weathered the same kind of attack hundreds of times already in the forest-type labyrinths near Oljot.
He watched Luararda come flying at him without so much as a blink, reading the faint outline of the bird-kin’s two-armed guard.
A rush that would be troublesome for an ordinary man.
Given the range of those arms and the predicted speed of the strikes, most attacks would be slapped aside, blocked, or deflected. Because Luararda was diving straight at him, the cover of those arms extended over his entire body—like an infantryman crouched behind a tower shield. The only real counter was to concentrate force into a single point and drive straight through the arms themselves.
Luararda seemed to know it too. His eyes asked the question plainly: How will you stop this? Can you even do it?
Three points of attack bait. Six openings.
But that was only true against an ordinary opponent. Hwanin immediately spotted and analyzed every flaw.
Drive deep into the collarbone between the left arm and the head. Then, as the reaction opens him up, strike the solar plexus, the right chest, and the abdomen in sequence. That will finish it.
Luararda would spin once in midair, crash to the ground like a fallen bird, and thrash. Yet the elasticity of that body and the decent eye for reading openings suggested real skill. There was a fair chance he would simply eat the hits, ignore the flinch, and press in with no delay. In that case a thrust to the throat and brow, followed by a downward strike on the fully exposed neck as balance broke, would end the spar for certain.
But this match was not about winning. It was about tasting even a fraction of Join-kin combat.
I’ll take the first point, at least.
Thud—
=Kh?! =
The instant the rush began, Luararda tried to rake with his talons—only for a lightning-fast thrust to catch him before he could react, slamming hard into his left collarbone. Shock raced through the muscle and the arm went numb.
How?!
He had only just registered the staff rising; the next moment his shoulder was already pierced. What technique moved so cleanly that even the motion itself was unreadable?
Seeing the absolute calm in Hwanin’s eyes after the successful strike, Luararda felt a chill and snapped his wings open, leaping back in a hurry. In a blink he had opened ten meters of distance. Face twisted with chagrin, he glanced toward Kantwi and the other three guests and muttered,
=This… is my loss. And I had sworn not to use my wings.=
Hwanin planted the staff upright and answered the bird-kin, who was rubbing his left shoulder with a bitter look.
“Wings are part of the body. You did not take flight, so it is of no consequence. Hmm… then let us adjust the rules slightly. No movement of more than two meters by wing.”
=Haha…=
The utterly calm reply—breath and voice both unhurried—told Luararda everything. Had he not retreated the moment that first blow landed, he would have been thoroughly thrashed and forced to concede with his own body. Only now did he understand how the attack had landed: the staff had moved not as a line but as a point, too small and sudden for eye and brain to track. Hwanin had exploited that exact weakness.
=Lord Hwanin… you are a terrifying man…=
The murmur sent a ripple of surprise across the spectators’ faces. The lake-gull clan of Mount Puhed beside Lake Allyugel were famous for producing fighters who, even without a class, could casually crush second-class warriors and brawlers. Luararda was one of them—awakened, and proven by leaving the village to walk the warrior’s path. For such a man to yield a step to an ordinary unclassed fighter…?
=I will not lower my guard this time. Be careful!=
Driven by the need to repay that first debt, Luararda charged and unleashed a storm of blows: spinning kicks, axe kicks, rising kicks, downward stamps, sweeping slashes.
Tadadadak, tudeok, tak, ttak, ttadak.
Insane!
He twisted, spun, and whirled, pouring attacks from hand-talons and foot-talons in a seamless flow—yet not one so much as brushed Hwanin’s clothes. Luararda’s breath began to break from sheer disbelief. Two, three strikes every second, all of them parried or deflected by that impossibly slender staff. Any true martial artist would have gone mad at the sight. Even Luararda himself would not have bet on standing still and stopping every one of his own attacks—yet Hwanin was doing exactly that.
Hwanin calmly knocked aside the endless rain of high and low, left and right strikes while studying them with care.
A great deal like capoeira.
The rapid spins that turned momentum into crushing force were familiar, yet the savagery went far beyond. Enhanced durability and regeneration let Luararda attack without regard for his own body, and both hands and feet were as sharp and pointed as a raptor’s talons. To Hwanin, however, it was little more than an entertaining display of body arts.
Time to end it.
Reading the axis of Luararda’s spin, Hwanin slammed the staff down—thud!—exactly where the leg was sweeping, then vaulted over it like a pole-vaulter.
Puh-buk.
=Kh!=
The staff, weighted with Hwanin’s full mass, cracked across Luararda’s knee. The bird-kin let out a short groan—then his eyes flew wide as the staff came hurtling straight at his face. He ducked.
Baa-woong—
A hair-raising whistle of air, and the staff skimmed past the top of his head with less than a feather’s clearance. Luararda flinched, then spotted Hwanin still airborne.
Chance!
He twisted his entire body like a corkscrew and, using the rebound, launched a whirlwind rising kick. Steel-raking talons scythed toward Hwanin like a storm of blades. For a split second Luararda wondered if the attack was excessive—
Puh-buh-buh-buh-buk!
=Kheuh-heuh-geok!!=
The thought lasted less than a second. Hwanin, still floating with legs pointed skyward, casually shifted stance and unleashed a merciless barrage with the staff. Every blow landed precisely on joints, the adductor, the groin, the thighs, the hollows of the knees. The whirlwind kick collapsed into a limp tangle; Luararda crumpled to the ground like a crushed sheet of paper.
=Kk-geuk.=
He tried to rise, but the battered joints screamed and his legs refused to take weight. Feeling them tremble like a fledgling’s, Luararda finally sagged and sat hard on the dirt.
=Lord Hwanin’s victory.=
=Mm. An undisputed win.=
Asen and Mundoer’s declaration left Luararda’s head spinning. How long had the match lasted? Not even three minutes. When was the last time he had lost a spar so thoroughly?
A shadow fell across him; Hwanin’s calm face blocked the sky.
“Are you all right?”
=Kkeung. I’m fine.=
Innate regeneration had already eased the shock. Luararda gave a wry smile, took the offered hand, and stood. He gave his two white wings a vigorous flap to shake off the dust, then planted his hands on his hips and let out a long, heavy sigh at the shocking result. He had believed himself strong enough that no one would call him weak wherever he went—yet from start to finish he had been completely led around by Hwanin.
With a complicated look he asked,
=It seems my eye for people was worthless. Lord Hwanin’s martial skill far exceeds anything I imagined.=
“……”
=Every one of my attacks must have been crystal-clear to you… is that true?=
Hwanin only smiled faintly, offering no answer.
Damn it. Looking back, I was a puppy that didn’t know enough to fear the tiger.
If that staff had been a spear, he would already have been in pieces. Swallowing the humiliation, Luararda put on a sly grin and turned to the other guests in hopes of recruiting company.
=Ahem. Sir Mundoer, why not try a spar with Lord Hwanin yourself? Lady Asen as well—I guarantee you’ll gain a great deal.=
=I am an adventurer before I am a warrior.=
=I don’t have a hobby of picking fights I’m going to lose~.=
=……Kk-eung.=
=Besides, Lord Luararda, you’re being rather sly. You just don’t want to be the only one embarrassed, so you’re trying to drag us in too.=
=Well, I won’t claim that thought never crossed my mind… but it is true you’ll gain much. Truly!=
Luararda swore it with the solemn face of an eagle; Asen laughed like a fox.
=Then why don’t you spar with Lord Hwanin one more time? I’ll think about it after that.=
=Excellent! Lord Hwanin, I beg another lesson!=
Once sold, twice sold—what was the difference?
=Very well.=
The first match had been for information, so Hwanin had held back a little. The second was different.
Puh-buh-buk—ppa-bak, kwang!
=Kk-hek.=
For two full minutes Hwanin battered Luararda so thoroughly that the bird-kin could not manage a single proper attack or defense.
=Kya—euk.=
Asen, dragged out as promised, took a solar-plexus strike, a throat strike, and a forehead strike in the space of a single second and dropped unconscious.
Luararda sat slumped, pride as a warrior shattered, staring blankly; beside him Asen lay sprawled and out cold. Mundoer and Storey, terrified of ending up the same way, vanished the moment Asen hit the ground.
Kantwi, still gaping at the scene in pure incomprehension, jumped when Hwanin called his name.
“Kantwi-ssi. There is something I would like to ask about one of the shops in the village.”
=Ah, yes. What is it you wish to know? It is a little embarrassing to say myself, but I hold a seat on the village chamber of commerce, so I am aware of most of what goes on here.=
Even as he answered, Kantwi kept staring at Hwanin with disbelief. Three bouts against third- and fourth-class professionals, and not a single drop of sweat. How was that possible?
“It concerns Yurpa’s Magic Tool Shop. I visited on business, yet the clerk only told me she could not sell to me. I would like to know the reason so I can do something about it, but she would not explain, which left me rather at a loss.”
=Ah, the magic tool shop. Nothing dramatic—she simply grew tired of the trouble outsiders caused and now sells only to villagers.=
“So she was hit by a string of black consumers.”
=Hahaha. ‘Nasty complainers’—that expression fits perfectly.=
Yurpa, a native of Katon Village with a gift for crafting magic tools, had loved the work so much that she even studied in Parhist. Twenty years of study had given her standing there and membership in the merchant guild, yet like many eccentric masters who had achieved the perfect marriage of talent and passion, she simply wanted to grow old quietly making tools. Thirty years after leaving, she returned home, opened a shop, and—having no particular desire to make money—began selling decent-quality magic tools at near cost.
For a while she enjoyed a peaceful, healthy life. The trouble started a year after the shop opened. Katon sat on the only road between the small city of Wayford and the holy capital of Parhist, a natural buffer zone with a constant flow of travelers. A shop selling good tools cheaply quickly drew attention.
“That was when outsiders who had bought cheap tools came back and stirred up trouble—making absurd complaints.”
=Yes. They raised a fuss claiming she had used poor materials and cheated them with low prices.=
After several such incidents every year, Yurpa finally hired a clerk to stand at the front and began making tools only for the villagers.
=She figured fellow villagers at least would not pull that kind of low-down stunt—and she was exactly right.=
“That would make it hard to turn a profit, though.”
=She never stopped outsiders from buying through villagers, and the village peddlers still bought in bulk to sell in other towns and hamlets.=
After the change in sales method, complaints almost vanished; those that came were reasonable. The buffer of shared village identity worked perfectly. Of course Yurpa had not simply started her high-handed business without preparation. Every year she contributed a full tenth of the village prosperity fund—a large sum that bought her considerable voice in local affairs.
While they talked they reached the magic tool shop. Hwanin entered with Kantwi, and this time he was spared the cat-kin girl’s parrot-like refusal.
=Ah, Kantwi-ssi! Welcome!=
=Yes. Everything quiet at the shop? And is the big sister well?=
=Auntie’s as prickly as ever. I didn’t realize the customer was someone you knew, though.=
“I suspected there was a reason for the young lady’s parrot answers, so I went looking for a solution.”
=Hehe. Auntie set the rule, so I couldn’t help it. You’ll understand, right?=
Cute coquetry did not work on Hwanin, but there had been no malice and no reason to take offense over something so minor, so he simply smiled past it with a politely artificial expression. No one noticed the artifice.
=Come to think of it, I never heard what Lord Hwanin wished to purchase. What do you need?=
“Carrying hundreds of coins is a problem of both bulk and weight. I intend to buy a spatial pouch suitable for use as a coin purse.”
=Oh, for that we have just the thing. Sanri, do we have stock?=
=Yep. Auntie made some a few days ago.=
The cat-kin girl crouched behind the counter, rummaged, and set out several fist-sized pouches. The drawstring design was the same; only the colors differed—gray, navy, green, and brown. Hwanin picked up the unremarkable gray one and asked Sanri for details.
=Capacity’s about the size of this box. Weight reduction is around ninety-nine percent.=
“……Ninety-nine percent?”
The box was roughly the size of a shoe box. Higher efficiency was possible with smaller volumes, but ninety-nine percent felt excessive. Paying forty or fifty gold for a coin purse would be putting the cart before the horse.
Sensing his hesitation, Sanri added,
=It’s basically a hundred percent. But you have to swap the phase stone regularly. Without one it’s just an ordinary pouch. If the energy runs out while you’re using it, everything inside spills out, of course.=
“I see.”
With that drawback and limitation, the price would drop sharply.
“How long does a first-class phase stone last?”
=About two months? Second-class is half a year. Third-class is a year and three months. Putting in several first-class stones doesn’t help—the energy still drains the same way—so swapping one every two months is easiest. You know not to put in expensive processed phase stones, right?=
The cost-efficiency was exquisite. First-class phase stones from the Labyrinth of No Light usually sold for ten to thirteen silver. Second-class around thirty silver. Third-class one-point-eight gold. The real question was the price of the pouch itself.
“And the price?”
=Two gold. You might think it’s a bit high, but it has a weak durability-regeneration effect and waterproofing. Keep feeding it phase stones and treat the pouch carefully, and it’ll last decades no problem.=
=I’ve been using mine for ten years now. I personally guarantee the quality.=
At Kantwi’s endorsement Hwanin nodded and asked,
“No owner-recognition function?”
=Come on. Add that option and it wouldn’t be two gold—it’d be five.=
Fair enough. Judging the price reasonable, Hwanin paid two gold for the spatial coin purse and began browsing the rest of the shop.
“So Miss Yurpa is a recharge-type enchantment artisan.”
As befit a village magic-tool shop, most of the stock was everyday goods: kitchen knives with grip slots that maintained cutting edge and restored durability, iron lanterns, warming pads, heating plates, telescopes, raincoats that perfectly shed water while retaining body heat, bags with preservation functions, water pouches with purification options, and so on. Nearly everything activated by inserting a phase stone.
Hwanin selected a heating plate for boiling water or cooking, a telescope, an iron lantern, two purification water pouches, and a preservation bag. The bag was a thirty-liter pouch without internal expansion; the water pouches were two-liter models with fifty-percent weight reduction, priced at five gold and two gold respectively. Telescope, heating plate, and lantern cost twenty-five, seventeen, and eleven silver.
=Customer has a good eye. You picked only the popular items.=
“Useful things sell well, I imagine.”
The preservation bag served the same purpose as the one that had once held Susaga’s… package. A water pouch that turned stored water into drinking water needed no further praise, and the rest were essentials for travel and labyrinth exploration. All of them could be switched on and off by inserting or removing a phase stone, and all carried a weak durability-recovery function. A single first-class phase stone lasted anywhere from a few weeks (the preservation bag) to several months (the rest), making them effectively permanent—and cheap enough that Hwanin bought everything he needed.
As he packed the purchases into the preservation bag, Sanri smiled like a cat and asked,
=You’re an unusual customer. With goods this cheap, most people at least wonder about durability or something.=
“If the actual performance differs from the description, I can simply return later and exact the appropriate price.”
Hwanin’s voice was so calm it could have been a joke, but Kantwi—who had just watched him fight—knew it was pure sincerity, and managed only an awkward laugh. A complaint from a warrior who casually crushed fourth-class professionals… at the very least, Kantwi had no desire to be on the receiving end.
Just then a languid woman’s voice drifted from the corridor leading deeper into the shop.
=My, my~ Quite the bold customer we have here~?=
As the words ended, a young woman in a black tube-top dress—looking for all the world like a witch—stepped out through the beaded curtain. She was wrapped in the aura of a magic-user of at least sixth class.