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Chairman, Dieta (5)
Najin kicked off the ground and charged.
An unbalanced stance, center of gravity pitched aggressively forward, body dropped as low as it could go. Griffin had seen that strange, low-diving posture before.
'Sa as back then.'
The day he first crossed paths with Najin.
In the duel they'd fought that day, the young man had closed the distance using that exact sa posture. Rather than retreating from the Thorn Tree's Sword Aura, which could dissolve flesh and grind bone to powder with a re graze, he had charged straight in.
The mory of that day flashed through Griffin's mind.
Back then, he was the one facing the Challenge, the one threatening the boy's life, the stronger party with the upper hand. But now? Griffin kept his eyes on the present, not the past.
'The roles have reversed.'
Reversed. He was the one issuing the Challenge now. The weaker one. A painful truth, but one he had to accept. With bloodshot eyes, Griffin tracked Najin's every movent.
Even straining his eyes to their limit, keeping pace with Najin was near impossible. Fast. So fast he could barely follow the afterimages.
Slash, clang-clang-clang!
With every breath, another piece of the Thorn Tree was cut away.
Bent, slashed, snapped and sent flying. Back then, Najin had risked his life just to break a single branch among dozens spreading outward. Not anymore.
Shear.
Each ti Najin swung, branches were carved away in thick chunks. Watching his Thorn Tree hacked apart with such effortless ease, Griffin clenched his jaw.
There was one more difference from that day.
He could no longer stand like a proud, rooted colossus the way he had back then. When a gale strong enough to uproot entire trees was bearing down on you, holding your ground was simply not an option.
Thud. Griffin leaped.
Darting noisily across the arena, he swung and swung again. To the knights who knew him well, it was a startling sight, and a few clicked their tongues and called it undignified.
"...Good grief."
"Look at him."
"He really can't stand losing, can he."
The veterans saw it differently.
The younger generation was too quick to concede, always going on about how maintaining dignity in defeat was the chivalrous way. Self-justification, the old ones thought. Nothing more.
Sotis there are duels where you have to fight on ssily, even knowing you can't win. It's precisely that struggle that makes certain defeats beautiful.
That was what they saw in Griffin's desperate effort.
No dignity, no grace, but scrapping by any ans to create an opening. What Najin had once done to Griffin, Griffin was now doing to Najin. In this mont, Griffin felt no sha.
More precisely, he had no room to feel it.
'One slip, and...'
It would be over. When had he last fought a battle this hard? He steadied his breathing without letting his guard down. By now he was starting to question himself.
Was this man really a Sword Seeker?
The audience shared the sa question. Unlike Griffin, drenched in sweat and scrambling to keep up, Najin looked composed. A knight commander from a ducal house was no ordinary opponent, so how was he being pushed around this easily?
What Najin was doing should have been beyond him. It was the kind of thing only a Sword Seeker who had already passed through Sprouting, Blossoming, and Full Bloom could manage, soone standing on the very verge of the Sword Master threshold.
'And what was that spear technique just now?'
Wasn't he supposed to be a swordsman?
That strike earlier, the one that shattered Griffin's Thorn Tree in one shot, had been chilling to watch. Not only had he advanced his level in such a short ti, he'd learned spearmanship on top of it?
It defied reason. But, as always, common sense did not apply to Najin.
"......"
What was about to happen would be no different.
Najin let his sword hang loose.
Sword Aura compressed along the lowered blade. Star-shaped Sword Aura wrapped around the longsword's edge. Scattering white Flash, Najin raised the blade at an angle.
"Ah..."
Soone who recognized the stance murmured.
"Imperial Swordsmanship."
The basic form of Imperial Swordsmanship.
The sharper-eyed knights noticed, though. Najin's stance resembled Imperial Swordsmanship, but sothing was off. A swordsman at that level wouldn't get the stance wrong.
So was it not Imperial Swordsmanship?
Their guess was half right, half wrong. The sword Najin was using was, at once, Imperial Swordsmanship and not Imperial Swordsmanship.
The original swordsmanship from which Imperial Swordsmanship was derived.
The Triumphant Sword, devised by Aldaran Vasaglia.
Najin swung the foundation of the Empire.
Griffin, who had been circling and keeping his distance, felt his limits closing in. His Sword Aura output was fading. The Thorn Tree had never been suited to long fights, burning through mana as it did.
Najin's Sword Aura showed no sign of dimming. Dragging this into a war of attrition would get him nowhere.
In the end, Griffin made his choice.
All in.
While he still had so reserves left, he'd settle it with one all-out strike. That was the plan. Bracing for injury, he charged straight at Najin. His eyes narrowed as he closed the gap.
Najin's stance had changed.
As if respecting Griffin's resolve, he gripped his sword in a form different from before.
'That's...'
Griffin recognized it too.
Any knight of the Empire would know that stance. The basic form of Imperial Swordsmanship, wasn't it? Why that, suddenly? The thought had barely ford when Griffin's eyes went wide.
No. Sothing was different.
He couldn't pinpoint exactly what, but sothing was off. His gut scread at him to stop, but it was too late to pull back. Griffin ignored it and stepped forward anyway.
Whoooosh!
His Sword Aura flooded the arena, heedless of whatever ca after. Red thorns painted the floor crimson. Griffin swung his final blow.
The supre technique of the Sacred Tree Guardian Sword.
Griffin replicated the very strike Arta Trigadian had used to wipe out hundreds of monsters in a single blow. The best he had.
Najin t it with fundantals.
Unlike Griffin's Sword Aura, which spread in all directions, Najin's was compressed entirely onto the blade. Pushed to its limits, it looked less like a Sword Seeker's Aura and more like an Expert's.
It looked like there was no Aura at all. But the white Flash blazing from the blade said otherwise.
Scattering light, Najin swung.
Clean. Simple.
Aldaran Vasaglia had spent years training to load weight into that simplicity, and every one of those years had lted into Najin's blade.
The Thorn Tree could not bear that weight.
Deeply rooted in the earth, with a trunk thick enough to stand firm against any storm, the Thorn Tree began to crack with a splintering groan. They say it takes hundreds of axe blows to fell a great tree, but not in this case.
Crack.
A single blow split the Thorn Tree.
One strike. One swing. That was all it took.
Najin's sword snapped every last thorn and cut through the base. Griffin's Sword Aura, drawn out to its absolute limit, failed to overco Najin's and evaporated. With a deep crack, a long sword mark was carved into the arena floor.
Griffin's sword split clean in two.
A broken sword is proof of defeat.
"I've lost."
The mont Griffin conceded, nobles and spectators burst into applause, crying out in admiration. But the knights who had watched the duel could not join them.
That final strike from Najin.
They had witnessed the furthest limit a swordsman could aspire to, and they were trembling where they stood. It was as if they had glimpsed a Sword Master's blade.
'Wasn't Imperial Swordsmanship always just the basics?'
Most knights had thought of Imperial Swordsmanship as a foundation for learning other styles, or at best a baseline any Imperial knight was expected to know. The strike Najin had just shown was nothing so trivial.
Simple. Upright. Pure.
Having glimpsed the height that lay at the far end of Imperial Swordsmanship, the knights reached for their own hilts. They were afraid of losing the feeling. They wanted to swing a sword right then and there.
"......"
While everyone cheered, marveled, or buzzed with excitent over the outco, there were two who could not share in it.
One was the head of the Arbenia family, Osman Arbenia.
And beside him, face drained completely white, the young lord, Agesio Arbenia.
Knowing full well the weight of responsibility that now had to be borne, Osman clicked his tongue. He looked at his son with the eyes one reserves for sothing repulsive, then rose from his seat.
Since Najin had truly begun to make his na, there had been few occasions on the continent where he openly displayed his strength. The last had been against the dragon at Stonehenge, and not many knights had witnessed that.
Today was different.
With countless nobles and knights watching, Najin had laid his abilities bare. Not his full strength, of course, but even a glimpse was more than enough to set the entire continent buzzing.
He had sent a Sword Seeker flying with a single blow.
He had felled the Thorn Tree with a single blow.
Even the skilled fighters who had privately assud the rumors surrounding Najin were exaggerated now had no choice but to admit otherwise. If anything, the rumors had undersold him.
"Bravo! Bravo!"
There was one noble who had enjoyed the duel more than anyone. The mont word got out that a duel was being held, he had dropped every last piece of business and rushed straight to the Imperial capital. Marquis Edelmar, lord of the Trebache domain.
"Didn't I say so! I told you it would be a delight!"
The mont the duel ended, the Marquis leaped to his feet applauding, shooting looks at the nobles seated around him.
Why aren't you clapping?
Nudged along by his gaze, the nobles clapped with less-than-enthusiastic expressions, while the Marquis laughed with genuine delight. He felt joy for three reasons: first, the vicarious satisfaction of watching Najin's performance; second, having witnessed a spectacular duel; and third...
'Now that's a face, Duke.'
The sight of Duke Osman's face, twisted as if he'd bitten down on sothing rotten.
Watching Osman, who had always carried himself with the arrogant bearing of a man above everyone else, contort his face like that made the duel twice as enjoyable. Today, at least, the Marquis decided he'd be charitable enough to forgive even his own retainers for drinking on duty.
There was one more.
While others were content to walk away with their entertainnt, the girl who had seen this as an opportunity smiled as well. The pieces needed to bring the Arbenia family to ruin were gathering, one by one.
"Duke Osman."
"It has been a while, Chairwoman Dieta."
Dieta and Osman t privately. The two sat across from each other at a single table. Unlike in the past, Osman no longer claid the seat of higher standing. No looking down, no looking up. They faced each other at exactly the sa eye level.
"I received your letter. For a letter from a daughter to her father, it was rather vicious."
"Poor upbringing, I'm afraid. My parents were worse than the trash rolling in the gutter."
Osman's brow twitched.
His casual provocation had co back as a blade. He exhaled. Words like that had no place being spoken in front of a duke, and depending on the circumstances, could well constitute grounds for defamation.
But he knew that kind of petty asure would no longer work on the girl sitting across from him.
A rchant of the age, backed entirely by Cipria Gachevskaya of the Eternal Radiance, one of the Empire's pillars, and with a stranglehold on the Empire's financial arteries. With Rocktide already brought to ruin, there was no getting to that trading house.
In the end, he had no choice but to co to the negotiating table.
"So. What exactly is it that you want from ?"
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