The Black Knight Swore to the Blind Saintess
The grip was comfortable, and the length of the blade was just right.
[Huh? So who's my master now?]
She seemed a bit of an airhead, but somehow that was cute too.
Come to think of it, even if a sword had intelligence, it couldn't move itself. It would just be a hassle.
Mika, standing before me, glared at me with those orange eyes.
I nodded to the referee, who waved his flag and stepped back.
"The match begins!"
Mika Bern and I pointed our swords at each other and began circling counterclockwise.
She studied my stance and spoke.
"You've studied swordsmanship before, but you've never actually used it in a real fight."
Straight to the heart of it. I curled the corner of my mouth up.
"Is it that obvious?"
Slide.
She moved her feet toward me. It felt like only a few steps had passed, but somehow she was already in front of me.
Oh.
That was footwork worth envying.
Ting!
Sword met sword.
"Good eyes you have."
She deflected my blade and retreated a few steps.
What the—? She was so fast I couldn't even react.
Not that it mattered. I'd been planning to block with my body anyway.
[Whew. That was close.]
The Ego Sword's voice rang in my ear.
You blocked that?
The sword moved on its own?
[Yeah. You dense human.]
Why?
[What?]
Why did you block for me?
[What do you mean, why? You're the one holding me, so obviously I have to protect myself. ...I'm not totally sure yet, but you're half my master, I guess.]
Good. Then keep blocking. Looks like she's going to attack again.
Ting. Ting. Ting. Ting.
The airhead sword swiftly parried four rapid strikes. The last attack seemed laced with a feint, but it blocked that too, as if it had predicted it in advance.
My body was just following the sword's lead, so my stance was sloppy, but Mika Bern tilted her head to the side.
"What is this?"
"What do you mean?"
"You've been hiding your skill."
"..."
[Monstrous strength AND swordsmanship. I might actually lose this. Even so... even so. I'll give it everything. Even if I die here!]
No, no, don't steel yourself that hard. You're scaring me...
Her figure vanished from before my eyes in an instant.
Ting-ting-ting-ting—
My head was spinning. Sparks flashed everywhere before me.
Ting!
Her spinning, desperate finishing blow was deflected by the airhead sword. My overwhelming strength was clearly supporting the blade's every movement.
[What the hell. Your strength is insane, you know that? Turns out you're actually useful for something.]
The airhead sword seemed to be taking a liking to me.
Mika's eyes trembled.
[Th-that's impossible. I was blocked all the way to my final secret technique.]
She stole a glance at my feet.
[Without moving. Not a single step.]
Oh. Right. It had been too fast and chaotic for me to even think about moving, so I'd just let the sword carry my body.
The crowd erupted in cheers.
"OOOOOHHHHAAAAAHHH!"
It felt like pure admiration for my swordsmanship.
The commentator shouted.
"What is this? Ian Castollini has parried the Phantom Sword Dance from a dead standstill, without moving a single step! And Lord Count Friesen himself said her swordsmanship was far from easy to block!"
"I've never seen swordplay like that! So THIS is the skill he's been hiding all along!"
"At this rate, Ian Castollini may be a match for Count Friesen—no, perhaps even his superior!"
These people have lost it. Fine, then.
Let's make use of the situation.
I twirled my sword with lazy ease and said:
"Finished already?"
Mika Bern, gripping her sword tight, swallowed hard.
[Father. If you're watching from heaven, please help me.]
Tears seemed on the verge of welling up in both her eyes. That was how desperate she was.
At this rate, Mika looked like the heroine and I looked like the villain.
"Kukuku. I take it you have no intention of surrendering?"
Oops. I'd accidentally laughed like a proper villain.
Well then, a villain I would be.
"Here I come."
I charged at Mika and hurled the airhead sword backward over my shoulder.
[Wha—? What? Hey! Why'd you throw me?!]
Whooshhh. Thud.
The sword, spinning through the air, landed with a soft thunk right beside its scabbard, which was still planted in the ground.
If I'd charged in carrying that sword and failed to control my strength, Mika could have been seriously hurt.
I liked Mika. I found myself wanting to know more about the kind of person she was.
Mika looked stunned.
[Why the sword...?]
Even so, her body moved on trained instinct, swinging at me before she could think.
Vajra Body
Clang—
The sword struck my head and bounced off. It felt like a light, rattling noogie. Her swordsmanship, I could tell, was anything but ordinary.
As her blade rebounded away and Mika was left wide open, I closed the distance and seized the gorget of her armor.
"Hngh!"
Then, like opening a book, I tore the armor wide apart. Beneath it, a gambeson came into view. Even through the baggy padding, the figure underneath was nothing to scoff at.
"Kghk!"
Even as her armor was shredded, Mika swung desperately at my neck. A fine knight, truly. She'd make a good escort knight for Evangeline.
Her desperate swing rang out with a ting and bounced off my throat.
[I-impossible. Even with protective magic, that shouldn't...]
Protective magic absorbs impact. When a sword strikes a barrier, it should land flat against the surface with a thud. For it to bounce off with a ting meant the body itself was repelling the blade.
[This man. He's a genuine monster.]
I ripped the front of Mika's cuirass clean off as she toppled backward. She stared up at me, her face a mixture of shame and fury, as if she'd been stripped naked in public.
A knight whose armor had just been torn apart—she had every right to be.
"Surrender?"
I straightened my back and looked down at her.
"Is... is this what you call courtesy?"
"If I had actually used my strength against you, Sir Knight, you would have been badly hurt. This was my way of taking your surrender without striking you. It was the least discourteous method I could think of."
"Ngh!"
Convinced she'd been utterly made a fool of, Mika ground her teeth, her face twisted with rage.
I extended a hand to help her up.
Smack!
Mika slapped it away.
This had been her chance to win before tens of thousands of people and restore her family's honor—and instead her armor had been forcibly torn apart in front of the whole crowd, as if she'd been assaulted. And on top of that, she'd been patronized. She was, quite understandably, furious.
The referee rushed over and asked her, "Do you surrender?"
Mika hauled herself to her feet, wheezing, and nodded. Her bloodshot eyes laid bare just how thoroughly humiliation had consumed her.
I apologized.
"I'm sorry, Sir Knight."
"Shut up."
With that, Mika picked up her sword and walked off the arena floor.
"Dildo King! Dildo King! Dildo King!"
The crowd chanted my name. No, no. That is not my name.
In any case, I watched Mika's retreating back until the very end as she wiped her tears on her forearm and departed, shoulders slumped in loneliness. Once she was gone, I walked to the center of the arena and picked up the scabbard and sword.
The airhead sword asked:
[Tearing armor apart with your bare hands. How strong ARE you?]
You can see that without eyes?
[I have eyes too, you know?!]
I gazed at my reflection in the blade.
So the succubus Karen Claudia used to be your master?
[That woman was less a master and more a temporary custodian. I've never actually served a master, not once.]
So now I'm your master?
[Nope.]
Can't you feel how strong I am? How about it? Me as your master—pretty good deal, right?
[Well... not bad, I guess... but that's not how you choose a master. There's a whole procedure.]
A procedure?
The sword hummed with a resonant vibration.
[There IS such a thing! Anyway! If I decide you're worthy, then I'll serve you as master.]
Then can you at least stop Karen Claudia from being your temporary custodian even now? You could refuse that much, couldn't you?
[Don't know why, but she's not my temporary custodian anymore.]
Is that because you called me master earlier?
[...No idea. Probably.]
And then it happened.
"Ian. Castollini."
A voice of immense dignity rolled across the entire arena. The chanting of the crowd died away in an instant. The Emperor had stepped onto the dais and was looking down at me.
I lowered my sword and hastily dropped to one knee.
The Emperor's voice cracked down at me like a whip.
"Do you mock Us?"
I raised my head.
"...That is..."
"Since the round of sixteen, We have said it again and again. Show Us a knightly bearing."
I bowed my head again.
"..."
"Yet you trusted only in your brutish strength and did not show a knightly bearing in even a single match. The Prince even lent you a sword, and despite possessing skill, you never once used it. Why is it that you show Us nothing but the vulgar brawling of a gutter rat, deceiving the eyes of Our imperial citizens?"
"..."
Silence swallowed the arena.
If I failed to answer properly, this was the perfect setup for them to drag me away on some pretext of insulting the imperial family.
I rose slowly to my feet and looked up at the Emperor. Gathering mana in my lower abdomen, I spoke—and my voice rolled across the entire stadium.
"Your Majesty. May I be so bold as to explain the reason?"
The Emperor's eyebrows twitched. A murmur rippled through the stands.
"You insolent—!"
The First Prince came rushing onto the dais, but the Emperor blocked him with his cane.
"Speak."
His stern voice made one thing plain: if this was nonsense, I would hang.
I spoke.
"The reason I reduced Dodoria Pigman to that state in my first match is that he made insulting remarks about Her Imperial Highness the Princess in the waiting room."
The murmur in the arena grew louder. I raised my voice, and the crowd fell silent in an instant, straining to hear.
"The reason I did the same to Cascal in my second match is that he was a criminal who had raped innocent women again and again."
"..."
The Emperor lifted his chin—gesturing, it seemed, at the question of and the match just now?
I drew the blade from its scabbard.
"The reason I refused to use the sword at the end of that match is that I realized this blade, offered by the First Prince—no, by a demon worshipper—is a demon blade of the Demon King's Army. My divine power can prove it this very moment."
The Emperor's eyes went wide.
"What say you?"
"The handmaiden at the First Prince's side is a succubus of the Demon King's Army, and she has been seducing him into the worship of demons."
Everyone in the VIP seats turned to look at the First Prince's handmaiden.
"I suspect the scheme was to have the Prince deliver this sword to me, so that in the finals I would kill Count Sieg Friesen—the hero of the Empire and the sworn enemy of the Demon King's Army."
Sieg's eyes flew open in shock. In the VIP seats, the handmaiden, who had been bowing low, snapped her head up.
Slowly, she straightened her back.
"Heh."
The handmaiden smiled a venomous smile and spoke.
"Dane. Kill the Emperor."
The First Prince beside the Emperor drew a dagger from within his coat.
That son of a bitch was truly about to murder his own father, all so he could deflower one virgin succubus.
I channeled power into the soles of my feet and leapt to the VIP seats in a single bound.
That was the signal.
At the signal, a hooded figure in the stands leapt onto the dais and draped a transparent barrier of ice over the Emperor. It was the crystallization of third-circle nature magic. The dagger the First Prince thrust forward glanced off the ice that had sprung up in an instant.
"No!"
Realizing something had gone terribly wrong, the handmaiden reached out toward me—or rather, toward the Ego Sword, trying to summon it into her own hand.
I gripped the sword all the tighter.
[Hrk—you idiot! I told you not to grip me that tight—]
The Ego Sword whined in my hand, but it showed no sign of going over to her side.
[Wh-why?]
The handmaiden's face collapsed into despair. Rose rose to her feet and extended her hand toward her.
Judgment
A golden radiance wrapped itself around the handmaiden.
Vvvvmmm—
Smoke coiled around her fleeing form, and there stood the succubus Karen Claudia in her true guise.
"Gyaaaaagh!"
Clutching her head, the succubus collapsed to the ground, unable to move. The escort knights and mages could only gape at the chaos that had erupted in the blink of an eye.
I, now atop the dais, laid my blade against the First Prince's throat. The startled Prince dropped his dagger from his hand.
The hooded figure stepped forward before the Emperor. When she drew back her hood, a head of blue hair tumbled free.