Where Master and Disciple's Bonds Intersect
Originally, the Demon Sword should have fallen into the hands of a nearby noble. He had staged a summoning ritual for it, believing its power might grant him immortality. But the rite had been nothing more than a clumsy imitation of ancient texts, leaving the Demon Sword incomplete. Because of that, nothing went wrong while the mage who had summoned it on the noble's behalf delivered the blade. The moment the ignorant noble fed it his own blood, however, the incomplete Demon Sword became whole—and immediately ran wild.
Sera had known this would happen, and so she had kept the noble under surveillance. The problem was that, on an extremely rare chance, the noble sensed her watch. Most nobles never noticed and were caught in the end, but across a handful of regressions, through some absurd stroke of coincidence, one would occasionally realize he was being watched—and this cycle happened to be one of those. The noble ordered the mage to take a different route to his territory, and the clueless mage went straight down a path crawling with bandits, only to have the Demon Sword stolen by their chieftain.
Fortunately, Sera had read the Demon Sword's aura and moved quickly enough to avert the absolute worst.
"I've seen it more times than I can count, and it still makes me sick—a pure mass of demonic energy."
Even after the Sword Ghost had dealt it a heavy blow and left it greatly weakened, the thing still turned her stomach. No matter how many times she experienced it, she never got used to it. And that, she decided, was for the best. Better to never adapt to something like this than to grow accustomed to it—for her own sake.
"P-Please!!! Kill me!!!!!!!!"
The Sword Ghost's disciple screamed as if tearing his throat raw, thrashing to stop what was happening, but the Demon Sword ignored him. It simply lunged, intent on making the newcomer its host. Had its power been complete, it would have discarded the Sword Ghost's disciple the way it had the bandit chieftain—but most of its strength was already spent, so it could only charge in this incomplete state.
It had a will to survive, yet no real intelligence to match—and that made the choice a foolish one. What stood before it was no ordinary swordsman. It was a being that could offer the Demon Sword nothing but despair. A reaper, in every sense of the word—and the Demon Sword was charging at her without the faintest idea.
In that sense, the foolish Demon Sword had chosen the path of its own destruction.
Shaaaang!
Sera's Aura Blade, steeped in Anti-Aura, cut through the air and cleaved the Demon Sword clean through.
Sssssssss…!
The pitch-black demonic energy packed inside the Demon Sword sprayed out like blood from a gaping wound—and vanished into nothing.
Thud.
With the Demon Sword's annihilation, the Sword Ghost's disciple—still clutching the dagger that had once been the Demon Sword—collapsed where he stood.
Considering the Demon Sword's long history of catastrophe, it was a hollow, almost anticlimactic end. Anti-Aura had been devised from the start as a technique for facing the Demon King himself. Against a Demon Sword that couldn't begin to compare, this outcome was only natural.
"Demon Sword's taken care of."
Sera immediately checked the disciple's condition. The internal injuries were severe, but treatable—he would recover. Given that he had been possessed by a Demon Sword, calling it lucky would not have been an overstatement. No—the truer way to put it was that a master's desperate will to protect his disciple had saved him. Gathering both the disciple and the dagger that had once been the Demon Sword, Sera went to the Sword Ghost.
"…I don't know who you are, but you have my thanks."
He was dying.
The Great Mage William poured healing magic into him from the side, but it would only buy time. When Sera looked his way, William shook his head.
"I'm a much younger junior. Please speak freely."
"…Hard to believe someone so young has walked so unfathomably long a path of the sword."
"……."
"I won't dig deeper. No point, for a dying old man…. But answer me this one thing, will you?"
"If it's something I can answer."
"A mercenary with ash-gray hair…. Are you connected to him?"
Sera had finished the Demon Sword in a single stroke, so the swordsmanship the Sword Ghost had seen of hers lasted only an instant. But even in that instant, he had felt it clearly—the technique was the spitting image of the one that ash-gray-haired mercenary had once wielded, the man who had never broken before him.
"He is my master."
Sera marveled inwardly. As expected of the Sword Ghost. At her level, swordsmanship itself hardly mattered. The path of the sword she had walked was longer than any Transcendent could even conceive, so she could handle any style perfectly—swordsmanship was merely a matter of choice. And of course she would choose to pour as much of Jade's technique as possible into every swing. The Sword Ghost, who had once seen Jade's swordsmanship, had read it in a single glance.
"Is that so…. Indeed, as I thought…."
"You know my master?"
"In the days when I was mad for the sword…. roaming the battlefields. We met as enemies and crossed blades."
"……."
For a split second Sera nearly let killing intent spill at the thought that the Sword Ghost had been her master's enemy—then she realized something was off. She knew her master precisely. Against the Sword Ghost, he could buy time, and that was his limit. In the end he would have died on the Sword Ghost's blade. The gap had been that clear. And yet her master had lived, and become her master. Which meant—
"You spared him?"
"…No. The one who made me not want to kill him was that man himself. That was his ability."
The Sword Ghost closed his eyes. Even now the memory rose clear—the radiant light in that man's eyes as he swung his sword, ready to stake his life to protect another. Something a man who had lived only for the path of the sword could never possess…. Something vanishingly rare in this world, and therefore precious beyond measure…. He had not been able to bring himself to soil it with his own hands. Not wanting to defile something precious was only natural. And so that, too, was the man's ability—to make him feel that way. It had never been the Sword Ghost's own doing.
"I lived looking only at the sword, swinging only the sword. I reached the realm of a Transcendent…. but the only thing in these hands was a blade. And yet…."
With great effort, the Sword Ghost stretched out a hand and stroked his disciple's hair.
"At the very end…. I found something that wasn't a sword…."
And now he had to part with that precious thing he had finally gained….
"In the end, anything that isn't a sword…. is just too heavy…."
Which was why, in the end, he always let go of everything but the blade….
With those final words, the man who had lived under the title of Sword Ghost accepted his end and closed his eyes.
When the Sword Ghost opened his eyes again, he expected the fires of hell to be waiting for him.
He had piled up enough sins that eternal torment in a sea of flame would not have been strange. No matter how much he had wrapped it in the justification of war…. the fact remained that he had killed countless people in pursuit of the end of the sword's path.
And so he was astonished.
Because when he opened his eyes, no ocean of hellfire awaited him.
"…I'm alive."
As a Transcendent, there was no room for sensory error or illusion. He quickly realized he was alive—and that he was in the dwelling he had shared with his disciple.
"What a boring reaction."
He turned his head and found someone examining his condition. The first thing that caught his eye was the pointed ears.
"An elf?"
"Elf Riel. So—you thought you were dead, but you survived. How does that feel?"
"…I see. A feeling that's hard to put into words."
"Well, I suppose that's only natural."
"How am I not dead?"
"Ask the Hero who saved you."
"The Hero?"
"Only a Hero could erase a Demon Sword that easily."
"…I see."
His own disciple possessed remarkable talent, but that Hero had been an insurmountable wall itself—so the Sword Ghost could only agree.
Then the door opened, and the Hero in question—Sera—appeared.
"You recovered consciousness sooner than I expected. All I can think is, 'as expected of the Sword Ghost.' First, I should apologize for using your home without permission—it was simply close by."
"It's fine. For the one who saved my life, anything is fine. But answer my question first, will you? How am I still alive?"
He had damaged himself thoroughly—down to his very life essence—so that even if he became the Demon Sword's host, his disciple could finish him. In other words, restoring his body should have been impossible without a Saintess arriving to work a miracle of the gods. As a Transcendent, he had been certain of it. His future held nothing but death.
And yet he lived.
Without a divine miracle, it should have been utterly impossible.
But the Sword Ghost knew better than anyone: just as the gods would never spare him punishment, no miracle would ever come for him either.
"I wasn't simply badly wounded. My life force itself was depleted. And life force is something even a Saintess couldn't do anything about."
"Yes. There's not a single error in that knowledge. Not one thing wrong. You simply don't know."
"Don't know what?"
"A simple principle. If life force can be absorbed, then it can also be released, can't it?"
Sera showed him the answer.
The dagger that had once been the Demon Sword.
"…Even so, life force steeped in demonic energy should be deadly poison to a human…."
"You saw it, didn't you? How easily my Aura Blade erased the Demon Sword. Purifying it until the demonic energy is gone and it's clean enough to give to a human isn't difficult at all."
"……."
On the surface, one might have simply thought, Ah, I see—and moved on. But he was a Transcendent. And so he could not help but grasp just how absurd the things this girl was saying truly were. The mere fact that she had erased only the Demon Sword's existence without losing so much as a scrap of the life force it held was already outrageous. Was it even possible to burn a house clean without leaving a single smudge of soot on the furniture inside? And this girl had done it twice in succession. She had cleanly erased only the Demon Sword without depleting its life force, then cleanly erased only the demonic energy from the life force that remained, leaving pure life force behind. On top of that, handling that life force and perfectly settling it into another person's body was a special ability of a different order entirely—something even a Saintess would struggle to achieve.
It was a chain of acts so preposterous that even the Sword Ghost—who had reached the realm of a Transcendent long ago and lived as one longer than almost anyone—could not have mustered the will to attempt them. And she had succeeded at every single one in succession. A miracle of the gods? No—even if a god itself had appeared before him, he would have had no choice but to believe it.
Just who are you?
The question filled his mouth—but—
"I see."
The Sword Ghost did not speak it aloud.
He would not dare show anything that looked like suspicion toward the one who had saved his life.
Even if he could not repay the debt, he would never do something that made it feel as though he were repaying kindness with enmity.
There was only one thing he could offer her now.
"A life once dead. Thanks to my benefactor, I have been given a new one—so I will gladly spend this life in your service until it is used up. Give any command you wish. This old man's sword will cut down every enemy you have."
"I have a great many enemies. Are you sure you're all right with that?"
"On the contrary—that's good news for me. At least I won't run out of chances to repay the debt."
The Sword Ghost had always taken his disciple and vanished. He had long known that so-called Hero candidates were nothing more than meat shields with a fine-sounding title. And so he had chosen the path of disappearance to protect his disciple—no, his family. Could that really be laid at the Sword Ghost's feet? Wasn't it far more wrong that an Empire which had never done a single thing for him would, the moment crisis came, try to use a pitiful child as a shield simply because it wanted to live? And so Sera had never once thought his course of action was wrong.
And yet she had never imagined a day would come when that same Sword Ghost would become her sword.
On top of that, she now knew he had once had the chance to kill Jade and let him go….
The bonds between people truly were impossible to predict. This, too, was a connection she never would have gained if she had never met Jade—if she had never been changed by him. Everything she had gained was because of Jade.
…I miss him.
She wanted so badly to see her master's face.
She wanted to be praised.
But hold on…. I can't go see him in person.
That didn't mean there was no way to ease the ache.
"My Lord."
The Great Mage William approached.
"They say 'it' is finally complete."
At those words, Sera could smile from the heart.
At last she would be able to quench even a little of that thirst—and she could not help but be glad.
Truly, she thought, this had been a day of great gains.