The Master's Obsession Wins
What exactly is an Aura Blade?
There are plenty of stories about it, yet no one has ever clearly defined what it actually is. The reason is simple: even the transcendent beings who wield it cannot explain precisely what it is. From the start, when asked about the realm of transcendents, those superhumans would only ever offer vague, floating, ambiguous answers.
It was strange.
They used it as their ultimate weapon, yet they could not clearly define what it was. And the fact that they could not properly explain their own level of attainment was equally absurd.
So I thought about it.
Ordinary people would simply brush past that contradiction with something like, I guess when you reach that high a level, weird things just happen. But I could not let it go. I thought there might be a hint hidden there.
I never particularly wanted to become a transcendent. I had no desire to climb to that realm and swing an Aura Blade. Being strong enough was plenty for me; I had already been satisfied just reaching the ranks of the masters. Since I was content, there was no reason for me to look any higher. And yet I kept thinking and thinking about that unknown territory veiled in contradiction.
The reason was simple.
I wanted at least one person to keep living.
I had settled all my ties, turned my back on the world, and chosen a life of seclusion.
But even so, I hoped that at least one person—Balik, whom I could call my little brother—would continue living under the same sky as me. That was why I helped him as much as I could to reach the transcendent realm… and even after Balik himself gave up, I ended up clinging to that lingering attachment.
So even after starting my secluded life, I kept thinking. Kept agonizing. Kept swinging my sword.
I had plenty of time, after all.
And as a hermit, there was no problem with pouring meaningless effort into something that would yield neither results nor rewards.
But surprisingly,
it did not turn out to be meaningless effort.
Strange.
Thud!
A shallow cut opened on his cheek, blood trickling down.
Balik tasted his own blood for the first time in a very long while.
Again. I got hit again.
Shallow yet vivid wounds kept multiplying across his body. He could not understand it. It was, quite literally, the unknown.
Magic? No.
For a mercenary charging in with sword in hand, the most terrifying thing was, without question, magic flying in from a distance. Of course the Mercenary King Balik had experienced such magical attacks until he was sick of them. If the attack that had just struck him were simple magic, there was no way he would have failed to sense it. He was the kind of man who could even detect the magic of a grand mage standing in the transcendent realm.
No matter how incredible his big brother Jade might be, it was absolutely impossible for him to cast magic more silently and without leaving a trace than a grand mage. Therefore this was not magic.
In other words, Jade was “producing magical results while merely swinging a sword, without using magic at all.”
It made no sense.
It was absurd.
But his own body was the proof.
Think faster. Faster! Faster!
Balik was whipping his inadequate brain as hard as he could.
Normally he would have already given up with a My head’s no good anyway, so I’ll just leave it to someone smarter than me, but right now he could not do that.
He absolutely must not.
Because right now he had been given “homework.”
He had to solve the homework for this spar to end.
“Huff. Huff. Huff.”
Jade’s breathing had broken. No matter how mystical a technique he was using, the clear truth that his body itself had grown weaker than in the past did not change. Prolonging a spar against Balik, who held an overwhelming gap in power, was forcing strain onto Jade’s body. Yet even knowing it was a strain, Jade would not give up. He would keep matching Balik until Balik found the answer himself—even if it meant coughing up blood.
That was the kind of man his big brother was.
The greatest reason Balik had come to hold the peculiar conviction that As long as you’re a man, you’ve got to be stubborn about something useless was, without question, the overwhelming influence of his idol Jade. So there was no way that man would break his own stubbornness. No way he would give up. Therefore Balik himself had to reach the answer quickly.
But the problem was—
My head’s no good!!!!!
No matter how hard he whipped it, Balik’s head was simply too poor for it to mean much. So he decided to look for another method. His head might be bad, but his memory was not completely at rock bottom. In a situation like this, there might be something even slightly useful buried in his memories. With that thought he dug through them.
—You’ve got an absurd amount of aura compared to ordinary people. I figured you might be able to use it this way too… but this is ridiculous.
In that moment a memory surfaced.
A memory related to Jade.
Mercenary King Balik.
The name he had been called before that.
Lion’s Roar Balik.
Balik timed the technique that had earned him that moniker on the battlefield to the exact instant Jade swung his sword.
“KRAAAAAAAAAAANG!!!!!!!!!!”
A roar like the cry of a beast that ruled the mountains crashed toward Jade.
Shrrrrrk!
It was not merely a shout. Enormous aura was packed inside it. As a result, even though he had only roared, the aura contained within forced Jade backward.
Jade looked at Balik with a smile.
“You used your head.”
“…You know my head’s no good, right? I just dug through my memories and recalled some old times with you, big bro.”
“I only gave you the hint. The Lion’s Roar itself is something you created.”
“I keep saying this every time—without you, big bro, could this empty-headed me ever have come up with something like that?”
“So did you get the answer?”
“…I can hardly believe it, big bro…. Did you reach it?”
“No. I never reached it.”
“But! Isn’t that an Aura Blade?!”
At Balik’s words Jade let out a short laugh.
That was right.
The sword with which Jade had cut Balik—its true identity was the Aura Blade, said to be usable only by transcendent beings. He had continued to agonize over and research the transcendent realm, and as a result he had arrived at the Aura Blade. But that did not mean Jade had reached the transcendent realm. In the truest sense it was only half-complete; he had merely become able to use the Aura Blade alone.
By watching and feeling the aura packed into the Lion’s Roar being severed by Jade’s sword, Balik was able to realize that Jade was wielding an Aura Blade.
“To be precise, it’s nothing more than a half-baked imitation of an Aura Blade. As proof, every wound I left on your body is shallow, isn’t it?”
“But! Even if it’s half-baked, the fact that you can swing an Aura Blade means that if you’d just gone a little further you could have reached the transcendent realm, doesn’t it?!”
“It might have been possible, or it might not. From the start I had a fair amount of talent for martial arts, but not much talent for actual fighting. It wasn’t as hard for me as it is for you, but I was still the type who would have found it quite difficult to become a transcendent. The accurate way to put it is that there was a possibility I could have, and a possibility I couldn’t.”
“Haaah….”
He had always known his big brother was an odd one, but now it was enough to make him wonder whether the man might actually have something wrong with his head. Even though the possibility of reaching the transcendent realm had been right there, he had discarded it himself. At that point, shouldn’t a normal person find it too precious to throw away? Even if he was his big brother, the man was truly unbelievable.
“That’s not what’s important right now. You still don’t get it?”
“…Get what?”
“I am not in the transcendent realm. I’m not even in the ranks of the masters anymore. And yet even someone like me used an Aura Blade—half-baked though it may be.”
“What’s so strange about that…?”
“Aura Blades are said to be usable only by transcendent beings. But I have never once entered the transcendent realm; at best I was a master, and now I’m not even that. And yet I used an Aura Blade, even if only as an imitation. So what do you think that means?”
“That is….”
“More than anything, have you never found it strange? Not every sword is the same sword. Every sword style pursues a different ideal, a different path, a different direction. And yet the Aura Blades swung by the Sword Masters who have reached the transcendent realm are all alike. Have you never thought that was odd?”
Honestly Balik wanted to say, No, I haven’t? But his instincts were good, so he could feel that he must not say anything like that right now. This was the moment to just nod along as if he agreed even if he didn’t. His excellent instincts caught that perfectly. Besides, since his big brother said so, it really did seem that way, so it wasn’t a complete lie either.
They really were all alike, weren’t they.
Just one exception.
Only the Aura Blade swung by Jade’s disciple Sera had been different.
But excluding that, every Aura Blade swung by every Sword Master had been the same. He had never found it strange. All that had filled his eyes was that overwhelming power that could cut through anything. But when he thought about it, wasn’t it odd? That the Aura Blade reached by someone who had swung a light, swift sword his entire life would be the same as the one reached by someone who had swung a heavy sword his entire life—that was clearly strange.
More than anything, he had experienced the exception.
He had the experience of being struck by Sera’s exceptional Aura Blade himself.
That was why even someone as thick-headed as him,
thanks to Jade pushing him from behind while straining himself to help,
was able to reach the answer.
“An Aura Blade…. No, the transcendent realm itself…. is still an unknown domain? In other words, both reaching the transcendent realm and the Aura Blade I create are things I can’t know anything about? Wait! Then that means….”
In that instant Balik’s aura completely changed.
Because he had gained enlightenment,
a transformation occurred within him.
No—it was the kind of thing that deserved to be called a revolution.
“You’ve finally taken that one step.”
Jade smiled and sat down as if collapsing.
“Haaah. Really. What a high-maintenance little brother.”
The aftereffects of pushing himself too hard left him unable even to stand, yet Jade smiled brightly, looking thoroughly satisfied.
His little brother had stepped into the transcendent realm.
As an older brother, he could not help but be happy.