Learning Has No End
In the church prayer room, Evan knelt before a statue of the goddess — a likeness of the merciful lady herself — and offered up a prayer that stretched on for a very long time.
"You seem to have something weighing on you."
"…Sister."
As his prayer was drawing to a close, one of the church nuns spoke first. Evan looked up at her with a faint sheen of tears in his eyes.
Evan did not believe in gods. He did, however, believe in the character of the clergy. And that went double for a nun who, alone as a woman, had taken on the care of so many orphans at this church.
Convinced that her experience and wisdom might untangle the knot of his worries, Evan carefully opened his mouth.
"I, uh — this is a little hard to say, but. Recently I experienced something…"
"Ah, yes. I see."
"Ever since that experience, I've been… weird. I can't think about anything else. I've even been forgetting the sword I always carry around…"
Having raised and then sent off countless boys in her time, the nun understood at once what kind of trouble this was. She nodded as if to say she knew exactly.
So this little kid had finally tasted what a woman was. Looking at it one way, he was almost late to the party. He was the Sword Saint, after all — a man with more power than most nobles.
Money and influence enough to spare, overflowing even. If he wanted, he could have beauties lining up for him…
"So — what is it you want to do about it?"
"…I want to go back to normal. The way I am now is just too strange. Is there any way to make it so the thoughts don't come up at all…?"
"Evan. From this moment, do exactly as I say. Now — stop thinking about anything at all."
"Huh…? O-okay."
Even as he wondered how on earth you were supposed to think about nothing, Evan realized he was currently thinking about not thinking.
After that he closed his eyes and tried several times to empty his mind, but his brain kept conjuring something up no matter what he did.
"Did it work?"
"No… No matter what I do, other thoughts keep popping up."
"Exactly. Human beings are not built to process negation. Believing in an invisible god is possible — but being told to think of nothing is not."
With a gentle, benevolent smile blooming on her face, the nun offered Evan a few methods that might resolve his particular problem.
"Therefore, the way to stop a thought from arising is not to push that thought away — it is to focus on something else. After women, what do you like most, Evan?"
"The sword… Wait, I never said this was about women!"
"Oh my, I misspoke. Anyway, the sword is what you love most, yes? Then we already have our answer."
Having accidentally read Evan's true feelings, the nun smoothly changed the subject and brought the counseling session to a close.
"Swing your sword. Concentrate on it so completely that no other thought can form. Do that, and the distractions you carry now will fall away on their own."
"—Thank you, Sister!"
"And if even that doesn't work — there is another method. Come find me then."
"Uh… Could you just tell me that method now?"
"No. It's the kind of cure where ignorance is bliss."
Evan found it odd that she wouldn't tell him right away, but the nun deliberately averted her eyes and avoided his gaze.
How could she possibly say it? That the way to cure an obsession with women was simply to embrace women like a madman until it resolved itself.
…And that if he wanted, she would cleanse that impurity with this very body of hers.
Look at me. Getting on in years and still thinking like this.
The nun watched with a pitying gaze as Evan bowed in thanks and slipped out of the church.
The guild's private training room.
Having rented a space where he could train without worrying about other people's eyes, Evan swung his sword inside it.
—!
A silent blade cut through the air. But Evan seemed dissatisfied with the swing; he frowned once and swept the sword again.
He kept at it until sweat poured from every pore, then finally stopped with a long, heavy exhale.
"Why isn't it working?"
Evan glared down at his sword with irritation. He had been attempting a triple stack of the Magic Blade.
The Magic Blade techniques he had realized numbered three in total.
The Essence of the Sword.
It severs everything it touches, without exception.
The Efficiency of the Sword.
It fires multiple strikes at once.
The Limits of the Sword.
It cuts the opponent regardless of distance.
Of those three, Evan had focused on the Efficiency of the Sword — the ability to swing multiple blades simultaneously. A human died the moment a blade tip entered a vital point by even a hair. That being the case, attacking many times at once was the strongest approach. With that logic, he had been practicing launching nine or more strikes in a single motion.
I can manage nine… but nothing beyond that.
Stacking Absolute Severance — the cut that cleaved everything it touched — and stacking Sky Cleave — the cut that struck regardless of distance — had both been finished quickly.
Sky Cleave barely changed whether you stacked it or not, and Absolute Severance was so dangerous he had tested it once and stopped.
Which left only one goal: the Triple Thrust. Stacking that three times over was what Evan was after.
I can mix Absolute Severance into a Ninefold Thrust just fine — so why can't I mix a Triple Thrust into a Ninefold Thrust?
On the surface it looked like a simple numbers problem, but given that neither Absolute Severance nor Sky Cleave could be triple-stacked either, it clearly wasn't just about quantity.
It was as if a vast wall stood before him, telling him he was not yet ready to stand in that place — that it was still far too early.
A wall so enormous he had never felt anything like it in all his years of swinging a sword.
"…It'll work someday. Yeah. Someday."
At first he hadn't even believed a double stack was possible. Now that it was — triple stacks, quadruple stacks, nothing was truly impossible.
The problem was simply this: training alone by swinging a sword would never get him to that realm, and training with no guaranteed result grew boring very fast.
"Ah — aaah — uwaaaaaah—!"
The sweet scent of a woman's body he'd breathed in at point-blank range, the fullness of her chest — images like those began to shimmer through his mind, and Evan let out a strangled cry as he clawed at his head.
Deciding he couldn't go on like this, he cleaned up the training room at once and stepped out into the street. Cool air and warm sunlight took turns heating and cooling his body.
Drawing a deep breath in that pleasantly balanced feeling, Evan watched the women moving along the street — warriors in bikini armor, mages in robes that clung to every curve — and felt his heart start hammering all over again.
Ah… why is this happening again…
It started to hurt enough that his pants felt tight. Adjusting his waistband out of other people's sight, Evan wondered whether he should run straight back to the nun and beg her for the second method.
But just then, a flyer on the ground caught his eye.
"…Mokcheon Sword Dojo?"
An Eastern-style name, the same as Seolhyang's. Looking at that flyer, Evan felt a pull he couldn't explain.
Right. If I can't do it alone…
Then he just needed someone to teach him.
He scooped up the flyer at once and set off toward the address written on the paper.
Mok Yeon-hwa, head of the Mokcheon Sword Dojo, let out a long, heavy sigh as she looked around the empty interior.
No students… At this rate we're going to starve.
When Mok Cheon — who had trained in swordsmanship at an Eastern martial school and then struck out on his own — first proposed opening a dojo here in the kingdom, there had been no problems at all.
Father and daughter had looked toward a future full of dreams and hope.
They had been driven all the way out to South Ely after realizing that land prices in the royal capital were so high their savings couldn't even buy a proper house… but somehow, the two of them had still managed to open the dojo.
…Damn adventurers.
At first they had drawn plenty of interest. Adventurers were always fighting real battles, and as a result they never skimped on spending when it came to improving their own skills.
The trouble started about a year after the dojo opened — when adventurers who had learned everything worth learning began spreading the school's sword techniques for pocket change.
Her father, furious at adventurers who would sell sacred techniques for a few coins — something unthinkable in Eastern culture — had charged at them. And of course, he had lost.
The adventurers had shamelessly used crossbows, nets, poison, and every underhanded trick they pleased — and Mok Cheon, a mere swordsman, had not been strong enough to escape those schemes.
In the end she had taken over as acting head of the dojo in place of her bedridden father… and naturally, the students had left.
What? Useless in real combat? As if that could be true…!
Once word got out that you could learn swordsmanship from some street adventurer for pocket change — and that even if you did, it was worthless in actual fights — new students stopped coming entirely.
Mok Yeon-hwa found this reality almost unbearable. She wanted to tell people the problem wasn't with the sword techniques — it was with the adventurers who used dirty tricks without a second thought.
If her father had died, Mok Yeon-hwa would have taken up a blade herself and become an adventurer. She would have proven it. Proven that their swordsmanship was not wrong.
But with her father still recovering and needing someone to care for him, that path was closed to her. The best she could do was quietly keep the dojo open and greet whoever happened to walk through the door…
"Excuse me…"
"—Welcome!"
Mok Yeon-hwa brightened at the unfamiliar voice and called out a greeting — then, seeing the other person's face, her expression dipped with a flicker of disappointment.
A boy stood there, roughly at her eye level. Far too young-looking to have come to learn swordsmanship.
But she smoothed her face at once, smiled brightly, and asked again.
"What brings you here?"
"I want to learn the sword."
"—Did you get your parents' permission?"
"Uh… Do I need that? They're not around."
"If your parents aren't around, then how will you handle the money…"
Mok Yeon-hwa started to speak, then clamped her mouth shut as the boy pulled out a wallet. Inside Evan's wallet was a thick stack of hundred-Elso bills.
"I have money."
"R-right."
The money in his wallet looked like it might exceed her entire fortune. Mok Yeon-hwa eyed the boy with a slightly complicated expression.
"What's your name?"
"Evan."
"I see."
It was a name she felt she had heard somewhere before, but Mok Yeon-hwa quickly shook her head and dismissed the thought.
The idea that the Sword Saint himself would come to her dojo to learn the sword — that was something she simply could not imagine.