Severing the Azure Tide
"Waaaaaaaaah!"
"Raise the banner of Zieghart!"
"Show us the sword of Robert!"
"Frost-Flower Sword Hero!"
"Blue Sword! Blue Sword!"
The cheers of the spectators flooded the arena until there was no room left for silence. Most of them simply wanted a magnificent duel, a fight worth remembering — but there were those in the stands whose lives hung on the outcome.
"I'm shaking…"
"R-Raon's not actually going to win, right?"
"Cadis has to win. I even put down the money for the baby's soup…"
"They're in completely different leagues. Let's trust the Blue Sword."
"Right. Cadis is an Upper Master. There's no way he loses."
"And the odds on Raon are way higher! It's Cadis all the way!"
There is an old saying among those who wager on fights: if you want to know who will win, look at the gamblers' odds.
Raon's popularity had already surpassed Cadis Robert's — that much was fact. But in the betting pits, the favorite was still Cadis. Precious few had put their money on Raon.
"That kind of power at nineteen. Raon Zieghart really is a monster for the ages. But even monsters have limits. He's not Cadis's caliber yet."
"Yesterday it was Borini Kitten, today it was Garona. He's carrying a pile of injuries and he's burned through his stamina. He won't have anything left for a fight to the finish."
"Exactly. Cadis had a relatively easy climb. He's at full strength!"
"If you won't trust the fifth seat of the Continental Twelve Stars, who will you trust?"
"The favorite always wins!"
The gamblers clenched their betting slips in white-knuckled fists and roared Cadis's name.
"Cadis! Cadis! Cadis!"
"Blue Sword! Blue Sword! Blue Sword!"
"You people don't know a thing. The champion is Raon, no question."
A single discordant voice slipped into the gamblers' desperate chorus.
"Huh?"
"Who…"
"It's me."
The gamblers turned toward the place Raon's name had come from. An elf with a rough knot of crimson hair grinned at them, thoroughly pleased with himself.
"Z-Zieghart's Mad Blade!"
"That guy's been right about everything since yesterday! He even called the draw between Burren and Runaan! He's a gambling god! A gambling god!"
"I-I heard he's completely broke at the halls, though…"
"Don't tell me you put it all on Raon?"
"Obviously."
Rimer nodded and gave his betting slip a lazy wave. The numbers weren't entirely clear, but the stake looked to be well over five hundred gold coins.
"Haaah?!"
"Y-you put down that much?"
"He's insane…"
"You of all people should know Raon's realm is below Cadis's!"
The gamblers' jaws trembled as if they couldn't decide whether to laugh or weep.
"Of course I know. I know he's exhausted. I know he's hurt."
"Then why…"
"Because it's Raon."
Rimer looked down at the young man on the arena floor, whose entire being was already locked on Cadis, and a bright, almost festive smile touched his mouth.
"That kid has never lost once on the sparring ground. And besides…"
He's never lost me my money, either.
He clasped his hands tight and sent up a prayer.
I'm counting on you again today, my god of fortune!
The announcer looked from Raon to Cadis and back again, and swallowed a dry throat. The match had not even begun, and already the presence the two of them were putting out felt as if it would peel the skin from his body.
"A-are both of you ready?"
"Yes."
"I am ready."
Raon and Cadis held each other's gaze and nodded.
"Huu…"
The announcer clutched at a heart that was hammering like a war drum and climbed down from the arena floor.
"Then — the final match of the Six Kings Duel Assembly! The Master-class finals… begin!"
"Yaaaaaaaaaah!"
"Raon! Raon! Raon!"
"Cadis! Cadis! Cadis!"
The instant his hand pointed toward the arena, thunder broke from the stands. The arena itself, however, was silent.
Raon and Cadis did not move. They watched each other exactly as they had before the match was called, still as drawn blades.
The way a horse warms its legs before it reaches a full gallop, they drew their aura up by slow degrees and hunted for a gap in the other man.
Their concentration climbed toward its peak, and one by one the spectators closed their mouths. Before long the arena had sunk into a silence like a library's.
A tap.
In the instant before Raon's and Cadis's auras reached their height, the wooden staff of a young mage struck the earth.
A low hum rolled out across the floor.
It was a small sound, the kind no one would have noticed on an ordinary day — but the moment it rang through that hushed arena, flame kindled along Raon's blade as if it had drunk in the heat of the sun, and ganggi surged up Cadis's sword, heavy with the will of a great ocean.
Raon kicked off the ground and closed in, reading Cadis as he came. The Blue Sword had understood the sound for the signal it was; he glided forward on footwork so smooth it seemed to swim through the air.
The Azure Tide Steps, is it.
The Azure Tide Steps were a footwork art whose name meant riding the waves. It was a high-level martial study that let a fighter move through empty air as freely as if the sky itself were solid ground.
A thin, singing ring of steel.
Cadis's sword was already there, sharpness and softness wound together along the same edge. It was the Azure Cloud Manifestation Sword — House Robert's signature sword art, a style that seized space itself by never once breaking the current of its forms.
I missed this.
Missed it so damn much.
The sight of a swordsmanship that belonged to Robert blood alone — a sword he had wanted to learn and never could, wanted to master and was never allowed to — turned his stomach over.
"Huu."
Raon let out a cloudy breath.
This body is nowhere near peak condition.
The internal injuries from splitting Tatcheon's energy yesterday had not healed. Neither had the ones he had taken fighting Garona. His aura and his stamina were both badly spent.
But…
The moment he faced Robert blood, strength he did not have welled up from somewhere, and his mind sank into a cold, crystalline calm. He felt as if he could do anything.
Your sword.
I'll break it for you.
A chill smile touched Raon's mouth as he brought the Heavenly Sky Sword down. The principles of the Mad Fang Sword, steeped in the silver blade, bared their fangs.
Ganggi crashed into ganggi, and the shock of it shook the arena — but Cadis did not so much as sway. He let the Azure Cloud Manifestation Sword flow on like water and drove it in again.
This time…
Raon tipped his chin a fraction and stepped through with his left foot. Using the rotation of every joint and muscle from ankle through waist to wrist, he unfolded the Mad Fang Sword's Blood Fang Form.
A savage slash tore toward Cadis's chest, as if a beast wrapped in flame had raked down with its claws.
"Hmph."
Cadis turned his sword with the easy grace of a brush describing a circle and set the blade against the very heart of the Blood Fang Form.
The Mad Fang Sword, riding its own momentum, hit with brutal force — but Cadis's sword and his stance did not so much as tremble.
He carried the current of the Azure Cloud Manifestation Sword onward with the leisurely expression of a man enjoying afternoon tea rather than a duel.
"That's more like it."
Raon smiled faintly and nodded.
This is the Azure Cloud Manifestation Sword.
The Azure Cloud Manifestation Sword was a river. It flowed without end, joining itself to itself, until at last it reached the sea and raised a tidal wave.
Fail to cut that hard, living current, and you would be swept under and drown. Unbroken continuity — a flow that never once stopped — was the phrase that fit it best.
As I thought. The Mad Fang Sword isn't enough.
Cadis's Azure Cloud Manifestation Sword had already climbed to a high realm. Severing a sword art carried on an aura as vast as the ocean was no simple thing, even with a Mad Fang Sword that had grown.
But there is a sword art that can do it.
The Snow Wind Sword Art he had taken from Rokta held the principle of the Severing Sword, a mystery that cut the flow of martial arts themselves. With that sword, breaking the enormous current Cadis was building was not impossible.
"Huu…"
Raon let his breath out thin and shifted both his sword energy and his aura.
He bled the savagery from the blade and sent a frost wind down it instead, then stepped into the Supreme Harmony Footwork. Crossing space in a single stride, he arrived at Cadis's left.
"A predictable trick."
Cadis snorted and carried the Azure Cloud Manifestation Sword on. Already the fifth form. Surging ganggi filled Raon's vision to the brim.
"You will be swept away by the tide and fall."
"Then I suppose I'll have to leave the sea before the wave hits."
Raon tightened his grip and launched the first form of the Snow Wind Sword Art — Silver Wind Returning Current.
Rotation born in the hip flexors traveled through every joint and raised a tremendous Spiral Power. A silver wind, as if the blade itself had stretched, bent along a diagonal and drove down into Cadis's ganggi.
A sound of a different grain entirely. A tearing, like thick paper being ripped apart, burst from the clash — and the current Cadis had been weaving came apart.
"W-what is this!"
Through the split in the ganggi, Cadis's violently shaking eyes were visible.
"That was a fluke!"
True to his place among the Continental Twelve Stars, he absorbed the shock with startling speed. Cadis collected himself in an instant and tried to pick up the Azure Cloud Manifestation Sword again.
Like hell you will.
Raon stepped the Supreme Harmony Second Step. He crashed in like a thunderbolt and unfolded the Snow Wind Sword Art's second form — White Immortal's Point.
The White Immortal's Point was a single mark stamped by a celestial sage of the heavens. Ganggi that pressed down as if a rigid brush had been driven into the page punched through the very center of the Azure Cloud Manifestation Sword.
"Kh—!"
Cadis gave ground and raised another swell of ganggi, trying by any means to reconnect the severed Azure Cloud Manifestation Sword.
It's useless.
Raon detonated the cold of Glacia in a single burst and twisted his blade.
A ringing hiss of frost.
The secret art of the Black Beast Tribe, taken from Garona, delivered a second shock — and the current of the Azure Cloud Manifestation Sword, which Cadis had been desperately trying to join, stopped dead.
"Simple enough."
Raon rolled his wrist lightly. It was a situation to which the word overwhelming was almost too well suited.
"H-how…"
Cadis's mouth fell open as if he could not believe what he was seeing.
"You just have to be good at it."
If the Azure Cloud Manifestation Sword was a flowing river, the Snow Wind Sword Art was a dam built of wind. A sword art that lived by continuing its current could only ever become prey for the Severing Sword.
And it has grown.
Against Matis, against Borini Kitten, against Garona — the Snow Wind Sword Art had vaulted several flights of stairs in a single bound.
It was not only the principle of cutting a flow that had risen. Power and speed had climbed with it, and that was why even Cadis's Azure Cloud Manifestation Sword, standing in a higher realm, could be severed.
"You were going on about waves a moment ago. Surely that isn't all you've got?"
Raon cocked his head and crooked a finger.
"I'd appreciate it if you showed skill to match all that talk."
"Shut up!"
"His Severing Sword has climbed another level!"
Ogram peeled his back off the chair and grinned.
"To take the Severing Sword — something kids these days won't even glance at — to that level! As expected of Garona's brother! The more I watch him, the more I like him!"
The fight was not even over, and he was already applauding Raon.
"Kids these days don't learn the Severing Sword?"
Chamber, being a mage, tipped her head as if she genuinely did not understand.
"They do not. Knights and swordsmen who cultivate the Severing Sword are uncommon."
King Lecross stroked his chin and nodded.
"Why?"
"Because it is fiendishly difficult to learn. To cut an enemy's flow, a high martial realm is a given — but the eyes and the hands must be exceptional as well. It demands more time, more effort, and more talent than other sword arts, and the wait for any real achievement is so long that most martial artists simply never take it up."
He clicked his tongue, adding that the Severing Sword itself was a rare thing to begin with.
"Even among our own knights — said to have the finest eyes of the Six Kings — those who have mastered it are few. For a child that young to wield it as he does… it is a talent and a tenacity bordering on terrifying. I find myself envious of the Patriarch."
"Ahem. There's nothing special about it."
Glenn, arms folded, shook his head with perfect composure.
"That much is something anyone could do."
He waved the matter aside as if it were trivial. His fingers, however, were trembling, very faintly.
"I don't know what that old man has been looking at his whole life to have standards that high. A child like that is someone you'd be proud to show anywhere, isn't he?"
"Well, there was that one, remember?"
Chamber twirled a finger and smiled.
"Ah. Fair enough."
Ogram nodded slowly, as if that explained it.
"He wasn't on that child's level, but he had every right to be called a genius. Not that I ever liked him much."
He clicked his tongue shortly and turned his head.
"At this rate it'll be over without any fun."
Chamber wagged her finger back and forth like a pendulum. The look in her eyes was not sincere so much as it was watching everyone else's reaction.
"That remains to be seen."
King Lecross shook his head, arms still folded.
"The Azure Cloud Manifestation Sword is a sword art that grows stronger the longer it is wielded. Even if the current is cut, so long as it is joined again little by little, it will reach the sea in the end. We must keep watching."
Information on the Azure Cloud Manifestation Sword had long since spread across the continent, and the reason it had nevertheless remained House Robert's representative sword art was precisely this: even when dismantled, it possessed a formidable power that could carry its current onward.
"And that isn't all."
Ogram frowned at Derus.
"The Blue Sword won't have learned only that one sword art. Am I wrong?"
"Who can say."
Derus turned his head toward Ogram at an unhurried pace. The usual smile was already in place at the corner of his mouth.
"I merely wish to see a duel in which both give their all, regardless of who wins."
He smiled softly, as if it made no difference to him which of them came out on top.
"You're no fun at all, you know that?"
Chamber snapped her head around toward Glenn.
"Hey, old man. Who do you think is going to win?"
Glenn did not even appear to think. He spoke Raon's name at once.
"Oh. You're that sure?"
Glenn said nothing. The certainty in his eyes was answer enough.
"When did this old man get so damn cool while I wasn't looking?"
Chamber giggled and sidled up beside him.
Derus watched Glenn for a long moment, then turned his face away. A smile as cold as winter ice bloomed at the corner of his mouth.
A thunderous crash.
The current of the Azure Cloud Manifestation Sword shattered, and Cadis was driven all the way to the edge of the arena.
"What… what is this…"
The hand that held his lowered sword trembled. His expression was more stunned than it had been at the start — the face of a man who had just understood that the cutting of the Azure Cloud Manifestation Sword had not been an accident.
"What did you do. What the hell did you just do!"
For the first time, he shouted. His eyes said he could not make sense of the situation itself.
"So you've finally dropped those honorifics. They never suited you anyway."
"What?"
"Honorifics while your eyes drip with contempt. You've got quite the stomach for it."
The words were not meant for Cadis alone. They were a blade aimed at the vitals of Derus, who would be watching from above.
"You insolent…"
Cadis ground his teeth and raised his sword. The tip pointed at Raon's heart.
This one is easy, as expected.
Unlike Derus, who kept a cold reason no matter the circumstance, cracking Cadis's mask was almost too simple.
But I can't end it here.
I still have something left to take from you.
There was no chance Derus had taught Cadis only the Azure Cloud Manifestation Sword. For the sake of the days to come, Raon wanted to fight a sword art of a higher realm.
"You think blocking it a few times means you've dismantled the Azure Cloud Manifestation Sword?!"
A savage presence rose from Cadis's darkened eyes.
"But I did dismantle it, didn't I?"
Raon shrugged.
"The Azure Cloud Manifestation Sword is a late-blooming flower. This is where it truly begins!"
"I even offered advice, and you still won't listen. How disappointing."
"I told you to shut your mouth!"
"No. You told me to shut up."
"You bastard!"
Cadis's eyes flashed as he swung. Even in the grip of his fury, his sword art carried a still finer current and swallowed the space around them.
Whatever one said about his temperament, his skill demanded recognition.
A deep, rolling roar.
Before anyone quite saw it happen, the river had reached the sea and raised an enormous tide. A wave of ganggi that covered the earth — the secret technique of the Azure Cloud Manifestation Sword, the Azure Cloud White Tide.
The power is tremendous.
The wave of ganggi coming on, devouring space as it came, carried a current so vast that neither dodging nor blocking would be easy.
Of course, that doesn't mean it will work.
If you can't block it and you can't dodge it, you just smash it apart.
Raon slammed his foot down in a true step and unfolded the secret technique of the Snow Wind Sword Art — Silver Sea Subduing Wind. A silver storm that had once annihilated even Tatcheon's light and darkness crashed head-on into the wave of ganggi that had climbed all the way to the sky.
A roaring collision shook the arena.
In density and in volume, the Azure Cloud White Tide was the stronger of the two. The one seizing the advantage, however, was the Silver Sea Subduing Wind.
A storm steeped in the principle of the Severing Sword swallowed the wave of ganggi and swelled with what it ate.
"Th-this…"
"That's as far as you go."
"Bullshit!"
The instant Raon carried the Silver Sea Subduing Wind onward, still swollen with the Azure Cloud White Tide it had devoured, and moved to bury Cadis beneath it, a fierce radiance erupted from Cadis's sword.
A massive shockwave swept the arena, and the energy of the Silver Sea Subduing Wind melted away to nothing.
A deep, resonant hum.
From Cadis's blade, a grand blue light unlike anything that had come before was rising.
The Holy Radiance Sword Art!
The Holy Radiance Sword Art was a transcendent martial study learned only by the true blood of House Robert. A sword art that held the will of light and stars — and one of the weapons in Derus's own arsenal.
Thank you.
Raon clicked his tongue as if he were hungry and reset his grip on the Heavenly Sky Sword.
I'll gratefully devour that sword art.
"Can you not apply that kind of appetite to actual meals?"
Wrath, who had been quiet until now, suddenly cut in.
"Oh, just get lost!"