Seven Days
Halting a full-power slash mid-swing demanded strength no ordinary person possessed. Originally, it was a technique meant to borrow the force riding along an opponent's weapon.
And Johan copied it perfectly. Kaegal understood why immediately.
Monstrous strength!
Kaegal fixed his attention on Johan's hand and the longsword hilt it gripped. Even though the boy held it lightly, the hilt creaked as though he were squeezing out the very strength he'd been nursed on.
It wasn't that the sword was old or damaged. It was Johan's strength.
"Open your hand."
"?"
"You were gripping with everything you had just now?"
"No. I was holding it lightly."
"Holding it lightly? Why would you grip like that?"
Even a beginner would grip a sword hilt tightly if anything — never lightly.
"I've gripped hard a few times and snapped them."
On this land, weapons like longswords were precious things. The Eitz family may have been knightly stock, but they weren't wealthy enough to carelessly destroy well-forged longswords.
As a child, Johan had smashed three training swords to pieces, and after that he'd been threatened that one more break and he'd get no weapon at all.
It was an old, battered longsword, but out here in the countryside, it beat having nothing. In his own way, Johan had cherished it.
"Take hold of this."
Kaegal drew out an iron plate and held it out. Johan grabbed it.
"Pull with everything you've got."
With a dull crunch, the iron plate tore clean in half. Kaegal's eyes grew even wider.
"Truly a monster's strength..."
"I wouldn't go so far as to call it monstrous."
Johan said, sounding rather put out. He had a good build and a natural gift for strength, sure — but that didn't make him a monster, did it?
"From the look of you, you've never had occasion to actually use what you were born with. If you'd been born a thousand years ago, you'd have ended up a hero out of myth."
The old myths of the Ancient Empire were full of unbelievable heroes. One who dipped his body in the river of the underworld so that spears and blades could not pierce him; another born with such prodigious strength that he toppled a colossal temple by brute force alone.
Of course, no one took such tales seriously anymore. They were nothing but epic poetry left over from a dead age. But Kaegal knew better. The fact that such epics were written at all meant there had once been men with abilities worthy of them.
Perhaps no spear could pierce them, but at the very least their muscle and skin would have been as tough and dense as a beast's hide. Maybe they couldn't bring down a temple, but snapping a bull's neck with bare hands would have been well within reach.
And in Kaegal's eyes, Johan's strength belonged squarely in that category. This wasn't the kind of power that came from merely having a good frame and strong muscles.
Strength beyond all common sense!
Kaegal had lived long and wandered far — not just the Empire, but lands beyond. He had crossed paths, a handful of times, with men who displayed power that surpassed the bounds of ordinary humanity, men like Johan.
And even among them, Johan stood at the very top. Sir Ferpeng of the Kingdom of Erance, rumored to carry the strength of a giant, and Kaimud, the Janissary of the Asman Empire famed for his monstrous might — even they hadn't been quite this much.
When Kaegal fell silent, Johan grew uneasy. Had something gone wrong?
"Is it a problem?"
"A problem? No. Nothing to worry about. Only if your overflowing power made your body impossible to control would it be a problem — and you're not even that."
Strength beyond common sense. A gifted body. An eye that grasped the essence of any technique after seeing it once. And binding it all together, a beast-like instinct sharp as a blade's edge. Johan had already been a finished warrior before Kaegal taught him a single thing. Rising to his feet, Kaegal spread out his fingers. Seven of them.
"That's how long I'd need to teach you."
"Seven years. Hm. I'm not certain I could survive that long in this fief."
Could Gesen Eitz stay alive for seven years?
Live a moderately restrained life, and maybe, just maybe.
"Not seven years."
"?"
"Seven days. A week is plenty."
"What...?"
"That's for teaching you the hidden arithmetic of an assassin — the kind of thing you have to experience firsthand to truly understand. If you just want the techniques themselves, seven minutes would do."
"Isn't that a bit of a crash course?"
Johan's eyes had shifted to open distrust. He seemed to doubt a man who claimed he could teach so quickly. Kaegal shook his head.
"Treating a full-grown lion like a cub does nothing but dull its claws. Stop pretending to be weak, you lion."
With those words, Kaegal drew his sword. Its blade was a touch thinner than an ordinary longsword's, tapering to a wickedly sharp point. The moment steel left sheath, the dying old man vanished — and in his place stood an assassin who had spent a lifetime killing men.
"Now that I know you're a lion, it's time you learned. Those stiff-necked knights babble about forms and stances — I've never cared for any of that. A fellow like you, who understands at a single glance, will make it part of his body completely after experiencing it just once."
"Wait—!"
Johan realized what Kaegal intended. The moonlit blade spat out a chill, sinister gleam. Kaegal, who had been standing a good seven paces away, was suddenly in front of him, sword already in motion. Johan clenched his teeth and twisted his body aside. The blade grazed past him by the slimmest of margins.
Kaegal smiled with satisfaction. He had struck in earnest, and the boy had still dodged.
Truly lion-like.
"That is the footwork of the guild called Nessos' Step."
It was a footwork specialized for ambush — the kind that could pierce even an exceptional knight's throat in a single strike, so long as he never saw it coming. Its feet stayed loose and relaxed, then snapped forward in an instant, and it demanded both cunning and power.
"I understand you're an assassin, Master. Quite thoroughly, in fact."
Johan grumbled, visibly displeased. Kaegal's smile deepened.
"Only now did you realize I was an assassin? Slower than I thought. Move! A man who stands still has forfeited his right to live."
A swordsman had to move without cease, to struggle without pause. And Johan was already absorbing that teaching.
Instead of retreating in fear of the blade, he pressed forward, denying Kaegal the distance to swing his sword. The instinct he'd been born with as a warrior was telling him what to do.
Johan had been a warrior long before Kaegal began teaching him. He simply hadn't known it, living as he had among sheep and pigs.
In the depths of the dark forest, a young warrior and an old assassin bared their teeth and closed the distance.
Kaegal had not lied. One day was enough for Johan to master every technique Kaegal knew. By the second day, Johan was beginning to press him. By the third, Kaegal found himself reduced to holding on and praying for a stroke of luck.
With a soft thunk, something came flying in from the side, and Johan caught it in his fist without even turning his body. A razor-sharp spike was hurtling toward his temple.
"When did you even set up something like this...?"
"Have you ever seen an assassin fight fair?"
"There was clearly nothing here earlier!"
Johan and Kaegal had arrived here together at daybreak just this morning — and Johan had been the one to choose the training ground. Kaegal could not possibly have come ahead of time to rig the place.
So how, exactly, were there traps?
"I taught you how traps are laid. It's you who fails to think like an assassin. Johan. I passed on all of my techniques to you — but I did not teach you to be an assassin. Do you understand what I mean by that?"
"I think so."
Spending these days at Kaegal's side, Johan had come to understand something.
An assassin's mindset was different down to the marrow.
Kaegal had taught him everything — the guild's sword art and his own, and beyond that an assortment of tricks and minor techniques — but he had never taught Johan the mindset of an assassin.
That wasn't something that could be taught.
The assassin's mindset was something you grasped only after joining the guild, feeding on the blood of countless people.
Fail to grasp it, and you would die. Survive, and you would come to understand it.
"You are a lion. A lion has no need to force himself to graze on grass. That is to say — you have no need to live as an assassin. Simply learn how to deal with them. That is, unless you'd rather die somewhere ugly someday."
Before the words had even finished leaving Kaegal's mouth, Johan kicked a tree. The thick trunk split clean apart with a resounding crack. Kaegal retreated, looking taken aback.
"Who told you to deal with them like that?"
"Is that not allowed?"
"It's an excellent method, actually."
Delicate traps were built to break when some brute came stomping around blasting the surroundings to pieces. With his plan wrecked, Kaegal moved on to his next trap, and Johan followed warily behind.
Another day's sparring came to an end.
It should have finished with Johan drenched in sweat; instead it ended with a few drops on his brow, and Kaegal understood — the boy had completed his adaptation. There was nothing left to teach.
Bittersweet, isn't it.
Kaegal was a man who never stayed in one place by nature, and yet now he felt a twinge of regret.
"There's nothing more I can teach you."
"......"
Johan answered only with a long, steady look. His eyes said stay a while longer, but Kaegal refused.
"I've never stayed long in one place."
"Because you're an assassin?"
"No, you little fool. I was like this long before I became an assassin. Why does everything have to come back to assassins with you?"
Johan averted his gaze, embarrassed.
"I've taught you everything I can. There are a few things you couldn't learn, but that can't be helped. Give me Fang Extraction — one attempt."
Kaegal tossed him a tree branch as he spoke.
Done properly, Fang Extraction was the art of drawing a dagger or throwing blade hidden in one's clothing into the hand in a single fluid motion. A man skilled in it could kill a target in a crowded marketplace and slip away unnoticed.
But Johan was bad at this technique.
Because...
Crack!
The branch snapped clean in two. Kaegal shook his head.
"I said ease off the strength!"
"I did ease off!"
"Honestly... fine. If the gods hand you one gift, best you take that one and be done with it."
It wasn't that the branch was too frail. Johan broke sturdy daggers and hardened steel needles with perfect impartiality.
Such was the burden of his prodigious strength — the delicate hand-tricks that relied on a light touch were forever beyond him.
Not that it matters. He's already a match for anyone with sword and bare hands alone.
Kaegal saw no need to say it aloud. Hubris was the enemy of every warrior. A sheep that went about fearful was better than a wolf drunk on its own pride.
"All I ask is that my techniques not die out — that they carry on through you. I have no particular expectations of you, and no debts I need repaid. Live as you please. Eat well, live well."
"Thank you, Master."
"One thing, though, before I go. If the day ever comes that you pass on my techniques, tell them it came from Kaegal of Nessos' Deadly Poison."
"I swear it."
"And the secret techniques among the arts I taught you — avoid using them unless you have no other choice. And when you do use them, remember this."
"Kill the opponent?"
"That's right. Anyone who sees one of those techniques dies, without exception. Let the wrong person recognize it, and your life gets complicated. Of course... there's hardly a soul alive who would."