The Soaring Blade
Serian stood there blankly. Her entire body was encased in cold metal. The front row of the observation seats was packed with the empire’s highest-ranking military officials. Behind them, her colleagues from the Armaments Bureau held their breath and stared at her. Valentine, General Clausewitz, even Ella. Every single gaze was fixed solely on her.
…How did it come to this? I only tried to live diligently. One day my past-life memories returned, and I merely struggled to survive in a collapsing empire. So why…
“It’s complete, Development Officer.”
The technicians finished their final checks and withdrew. In Serian’s hand rested a heavy, hilt-shaped controller.
—I only committed the crime of trying to flee a doomed empire.
She raised her head. A towering artificial cliff filled her vision. A structure modeled after a real fortress. Tall, sturdy, and terrifyingly imposing. Its peak was nowhere in sight. If she fell from there, not even her bones would be recoverable.
‘Should I say I can’t do it even now?’
Right. This was suicide. It had been designed from the start as a plausible-looking failure with zero practical value.
“What’s wrong, Development Officer Elhardt?”
Just as Valentine began to speak with concern while Serian remained motionless, staring at the cliff—
General Clausewitz placed a hand on his shoulder. Shaking his head slowly, he spoke in a low voice.
“Don’t interfere.”
His eyes pierced through Serian’s back.
“A warrior reads the battlefield before fighting.”
Valentine asked cautiously, “You mean she’s reading the battlefield?”
“Yes.” The general narrowed his eyes. “Wind direction, enemy placement, breakthrough routes… That child is currently simulating hundreds, thousands of possibilities in her mind.”
But—
What filled Serian’s head was an entirely different kind of simulation.
‘What happens if I say I can’t do it now?’
The empire’s real power brokers sat in the front row. Their expressionless faces flashed through her mind one by one. The budget poured into this project alone equaled a full year of the empire’s defense spending. If she said, “Actually, this equipment is a failure, and I can’t operate it,” in this situation—
That too would be death. The moment they realized she had deliberately tried to sabotage the project, she would become a traitor to the empire. A spy for the enemy nation. She would be branded with countless stigmas and die after horrific torture in an underground prison.
No, it wouldn’t end with just her death. Her family, with whom she had lived for twenty years, and the entire Elhardt household would be wiped out.
Serian’s plan had always been to walk a delicate line: ‘I did my best, but I lacked the ability and failed. Hehe. I’m sorry!’ The moment she crossed that line, everything would be over.
‘No. Pull yourself together.’
Serian clenched her rapidly cooling hands and steadied her mind. She had already reached a point of no return. Only one choice remained.
She had to do this.
‘…I have no choice but to show them.’
Since the equipment was built to fail, it surely wouldn’t move properly. But she had to demonstrate her best effort at controlling it. And in the process, she had to fail by the narrowest of margins.
‘As expected, this technology is still difficult to put into practical use’—a failure convincing enough for everyone to accept.
To achieve that, she had to show her sincerity now, even at the risk of death.
In that instant, Serian’s eyes changed. The trembling girl vanished, replaced by the cold, sharp gaze of a hunter who ruled the battlefield.
Clausewitz did not miss the moment her eyes shifted.
“It seems she’s ready.”
He gave a quiet nod.
“Begin.”
At the same time, Serian lowered her body and shot forward as if propelled. Then she fired the wire anchor toward the cliff.
Shhhk—!
With a sharp burst of gas, Serian’s body was launched upward at tremendous speed.
The first leap was perfect. —or so Ella thought as she watched.
‘Good, first anchor success!’
Now she just had to fire the next anchor at the right timing—
“Huh…?”
Ella let out a short scream. It had been too fast. Serian’s hand slipped from the speed, and the second anchor flew off in the wrong direction. The anchor grazed the wall and disappeared into the air. In that moment, Serian’s body tilted and began to plummet.
Ella’s heart dropped.
“No…!”
Just as she thought, ‘It’s over!’ Serian’s innate physical senses reacted instinctively. She fired the opposite wire. The emergency anchor shot out and embedded itself precisely into a nearby pillar. Her body swung wildly, but—
She barely managed to stay suspended in the air.
“Phew… That was close.”
Ella wiped her chest in relief.
“As expected, it seems she’s not used to it yet since it’s her first time.”
But—
Volkan’s reaction was completely different.
“No!”
Volkan, the chief of the smelting team, his eyes flashed.
“Look at that! It was on purpose!”
“What?”
“She deliberately launched at maximum output first, then intentionally missed the anchor!”
“Why on earth…?”
“That’s… a kind of zeroing-in, directly confirming the equipment’s maximum acceleration and inertia limits with her own body!”
At those words, Valentine slowly rubbed his chin. Then he nodded and muttered,
“Ho… So it was a movement to check the equipment’s limits in advance before entering actual combat.”
Clausewitz stood with his arms crossed, silently watching only Serian.
“…Hmm.”
His gaze was gradually changing.
***
Somehow, Serian managed to hang in the air. She gripped the controller tightly to climb back up. Without realizing it, strength flooded into her fingertips.
In that moment—
Vrrr…
The controller began to tremble like an aspen leaf. The ‘defect’ she had deliberately planted during design had reacted. The output of this mana-gas conversion circuit was adjusted according to the pressure applied to the grip. If gripped too tightly—
the circuit would overload and send runaway signals.
‘Ah, that was the overload signal!’
‘I need to ease up before it explodes!’
Serian instinctively released the strength in her hand. Without realizing it— at the exact right timing.
Elias, the chief of the magic engraving team, who had been watching, adjusted her glasses and swallowed.
…She saw it. The true intent behind the vibration magic.
Honestly, she had wondered if Serian had just made up some plausible excuse to cut costs. After all, a trembling grip looked quite dangerous.
‘That wasn’t it…!’
A structure that allowed the user to directly feel the mana threshold right before overload. An extremely intuitive and precise feedback system.
Elias trembled. This design was close to art.
That wasn’t all.
The moonstones attached to Serian’s waist began to emit a faint blue glow according to her mana usage. Beautiful, but… far too conspicuous.
The soldiers and mages lying in ambush on the cliff raised their bows one by one, following the light.
‘Damn it, my position is completely exposed!’
Serian despaired.
But—
The officers in the observation seats had an entirely different reaction.
“That light… what is it?”
“Could it be… a visual mana indicator?”
Clausewitz murmured in a low voice.
“During unit maneuvers, the moonstone’s light could share position and status in real time.”
His eyes narrowed.
“A commander could grasp remaining maneuver time and troop positions at a glance, and unit members could move efficiently without colliding with each other.”
He paused to catch his breath.
“…A genius idea.”
***
The imperial soldiers and mages who had aimed using the light began to show signs of attacking.
Fine. If I’m going to fail anyway—
‘I might as well die with style!’
Now truly resigned, Serian recalled a scene from an anime she had seen in her past life. Then she began flying acrobatically between the artificial cliffs. Firing wires, winding them, ejecting gas— a series of spinning movements. At first clumsy, but as her genius brain and innate physical abilities meshed, they grew increasingly precise.
To the spectators, it looked as if a silver-winged bird was swimming through the cliffs.
Shhk! Shhk!
Arrows rained down, and magic bullets scorched the spots she had just passed. But Serian—
as if mocking all the attacks, dodged them by a hair’s breadth. Twisting her body to avoid arrows and diving sharply to escape the magic’s range.
And—
She brushed past the scarecrow targets, her blade slicing across their necks.
Shrrng—
Thud.
The heads of the targets fell to the ground one by one.
…Of course, Serian hadn’t aimed. She had only cut them by accident while staggering. But the onlookers had no way of knowing that.
“Is that… really human movement?”
“At that speed, at that angle, in midair…?”
The observation seats erupted in murmurs. Admiration spread, followed by gasps of held breath.
In that gap—
Valentine wiped the corners of his eyes. Tears glistened in his reddened eyes.
“…This is a revolution.”
*
General Clausewitz watched the scene with a stern expression. He said nothing. But inside, his heart was already in turmoil.
Truthfully, his initial intent had been a mischievous prank. He hadn’t liked this project from the beginning. Attaching wires to a sword and flying around? ‘Don’t make me laugh.’ It was ridiculous. Pathetic. To him, once called the Sword Saint, it looked like nothing more than children’s toys.
Yet—
Everyone had been enthusiastic about this toy. Even the Emperor had stepped in and poured in an enormous budget. With that kind of money, they could have fully armed an elite knight division.
That was why. He had wanted to make her demonstrate it and humiliate her. He wanted to see the twenty-year-old noble lady cry and give up. To show everyone that this thing was a heretical technique created by a theorist who didn’t even know the ‘sword’ in swordsmanship. Therefore—
it was something that couldn’t be entrusted with soldiers’ lives.
But—
That girl hadn’t hesitated. As if it were only natural, without changing her expression, she had accepted his proposal. And like a seasoned battlefield commander, she had begun quietly plotting her own route.
That attitude was impossible without strong trust and confidence in what she had created. The figure hidden behind that youthful face was no different from a full-fledged knight who had crossed countless battle lines.
And now—
Serian’s movements were destroying decades of his common sense.
‘That is…’
The general’s eyes narrowed.
What he saw in Serian’s movements was a lethally beautiful and deadly sword dance performed with the sky as its stage. He began to read purpose in every one of her movements. The first movement, where she missed the anchor, was an irregular maneuver to disrupt the enemy. The rotation that grazed the wall by a hair’s breadth was a preparatory motion for the next attack. The unpredictable dive was to disappear from the enemy’s sight.
Where in that small body had such a veteran ruler of the battlefield been hiding?
Clausewitz swallowed dryly without realizing it.
***
Finally, the highest and final target. Serian gathered all her remaining mana and attempted one last leap. She spun her body multiple times in the air to maximize propulsion. Her body shot upward like a bullet.
And—
She came to a perfect stop right in front of the target and landed on both feet.
Thud—!
With a light landing sound, a brief silence fell. Serian stood there, panting heavily. The blade in her hand brushed past the scarecrow’s neck.
Shrrrk—.
The scarecrow’s head fell to the ground.
‘…I survived. I… made it?’
At that moment—
A thunderous round of applause and cheers that shook the entire testing ground erupted.
A moment later, Valentine came running and grabbed Serian’s shoulders, shouting.
“You did it! You’ve rewritten the empire’s history!”
His eyes were already bloodshot.
And—
With heavy footsteps, General Clausewitz approached. There was no smile on his face, but his eyes held a heat of an entirely different kind than before.
“Development Officer Elhardt.”
“Y-Yes… General.”
“You have proven that this equipment is not merely a tool, but the very tactics of a new era, by standing on the battlefield yourself rather than remaining in the role of a development officer.”
Clausewitz raised his voice toward all the empire’s officers gathered in the observation seats.
“Effective today, the mass production plan for this equipment will be designated as the empire’s highest priority.”
His low, heavy voice echoed through the testing ground. Turning his gaze back to Serian, he continued.
“In your hands, a new sword of the empire will be born.”
In that moment—
A faint smile appeared on his usually ice-cold lips. A smile filled with satisfaction and anticipation, like a beast that had found its prey.
“Prepare to be recorded in history.”
Serian’s face turned deathly pale.
‘…No.’
‘This wasn’t my plan at all…’
The sound of her escape plan shattering into pieces rang in her ears. The surrounding cheers grew distant, and only the general’s declaration echoed in her ears like tinnitus.