First Horn of the Empire (5)
Najin rembered a conversation he once had with rlin.
One day in the Outland, they had ranked the Transcendents they t, just to pass the ti. Back then, Najin had asked her:
"Then who was first?"
rlin answered at once.
"Helt Knight."
She said that if he could show that much might while incomplete, unable to use Sword Aura after his heart burst, and worn down by a hundred and fifty years, then at his peak, he must have been comparable to the Knights of the Round Table.
At the ti, Najin had simply thought, as expected, he was incredible, and let it go...
But now that he looked back, he should have paid attention to one thing: those words ca from rlin herself. Najin knew better than anyone how much weight the Round Table held for her.
Pride, love and hate, her brightest years, glory from the past.
To rlin, "Round Table" was never a term to use lightly. And yet she had said it outright. Aldaran Vasaglia was soone comparable to those knights.
"Ah."
Only now did Najin understand.
"So that was what she ant."
He threw himself to the side. Sothing brushed past his ear. A few strands of hair were cut away. A heartbeat later, the ground behind him split with a tearing crack. The blade had not even touched the earth. The wind pressure from the swing alone ripped it open.
Open distance. Hold until Gerd joins. Najin moved while drawing up every option in his head, but...
Slash.
The mont Aldaran swung once, every plan collapsed. Najin could not widen the gap. The instant he stepped back, he could already see hundreds of sword paths ready to swallow him.
Pierced. Cut. No matter how he struggled, he could not avoid the future where an arm or a leg was severed. He could see the future, but he could not change it.
The foot that had started to retreat stepped forward instead.
If he t it head-on, he could at least endure. Najin gritted his teeth, opened his eyes wide, and swung hard enough to feel like his arm would tear off.
"Seriously."
Of course he was pushed back. Blood flowed. The shoulder that had just been pierced throbbed. Excalibur's regeneration could not keep up with the pace of new wounds.
Blood sprayed. The ground ran red.
The mont Najin was knocked far back, Gerd arrived. Gerd filled the openings where Najin was losing ground, and when Gerd was driven off, Najin forced his way back in. Three swords tangled in chaos, clashing, breaking apart, and colliding again.
A battle between Transcendents who could split earth and sky if they wished was unfolding at the distance of 1.5-ter blades striking each other. From afar, it looked almost like a single sword dance.
"Were you always this monstrous?"
As he swung, Najin thought it. He had known this man was extraordinary in the past, but facing him directly made him feel it in full.
What it ant to be comparable to a Knight of the Round Table.
How brilliant this man once was, the one who had brought down half the Carnival King's stars.
Understanding that now, Najin clenched his teeth. A bitter feeling rose in him at the fall of a hero who had once shone so brightly. Watching Aldaran swing a paint-stained sword made his own grip tighten on instinct.
This was wrong.
This could not stand.
...Aldaran's sword slamd into the ground. A storm roared out. The instant Gerd was shoved by it, Aldaran had already charged at the wounded Najin, pressing him hard.
Craaack.
A rising slash from below. The mont Najin blocked it, a storm burst from the blade. His body was blasted upward. Hurled more than a hundred ters into the air, Najin narrowed his eyes.
Aldaran had shrunk to a dot. From high above, the whole area was packed with sword scars. Gouged here and there, the ground looked like a spiderweb.
Then, boom.
After shoving Gerd away, Aldaran moved. The web-cracked earth caved in. The tiny dot that was Aldaran grew larger. He had kicked off and leaped.
Gritting his teeth, Najin twisted midair. Almost at the sa mont, Aldaran, now airborne, swung at him. Their blades t. Najin's posture broke. In one blow, their positions reversed.
Aldaran up.
Najin down.
Aldaran brought his raised sword down from high above. Evasion was impossible. Counterattack was impossible. Even redirecting the trajectory was impossible. Pulling Excalibur close to his body, Najin took the blow head-on.
Craaack.
The instant he blocked it, his entire body shook violently. The fingers gripping his sword broke. His insides churned. Blood flooded his throat and choked his breath. Then his body shot diagonally toward the ground like a cannon shell.
The mont he hit the ground, his consciousness cut out for an instant.
A shrill ringing filled his ears. When he ca to, he was already bouncing and tumbling across the ground. Biting his tongue to stay conscious, Najin drove his sword into the earth and slid for a long stretch.
He reset his stance.
He forced his ragged breathing back under control.
Strong. Filthy strong. Compared to then, Najin had grown so much stronger that comparison itself was aningless, yet he still could not reach Aldaran. He whipped his creaking body onward.
"Strong. So strong he still feels out of reach..."
Najin coughed up blocked breath mixed with blood.
"Even so, he's still in sight."
This was different from the past, when Aldaran had been so far away that reaching him was beyond imagination. Right now, Aldaran was within sight.
Najin reached out.
To touch a little farther.
2.
At so point in that relentless duel of spraying blood and rising blades, Gerd felt it. Najin's movent was changing, little by little.
At first, Najin had been completely overwheld. Now he was slowly catching up to Gerd's rhythm. Earlier, Gerd had handled nearly seventy percent of the attacks. Now Najin was taking forty percent, then nearly half.
Najin drove in boldly. As if he already knew the opponent's movent, he moved a step ahead of Gerd.
But those were secondary changes.
The important one was the line Najin's sword drew. It was becoming precise. The waste in his movents disappeared, each blade flowing cleanly into the next, as if he had realized sothing through the sword in front of him.
Clang, clangclangclang!
His stance corrected itself. A large step beca half a step. He conserved strength. The power he saved went into the follow-up strike.
It looked like he was being pushed back, then in an instant he slid along the opponent's blade and closed distance.
It was like watching Master move.
At that sight, Gerd even forgot the current crisis and let out a disbelieving laugh. Co to think of it, the Sword Saint had said it before. That brat's eyes were strange. He did not just see. He did sothing beyond seeing.
"So this is what he ant."
Remarkable. Not just talent. The nerve to shove his body into the opponent's spacing, the obsession to cling on while coughing blood. Gerd could now understand why that boy had beco Excalibur's owner.
...Najin was a once-in-a-generation genius.
But the sa was true of his opponent. Aldaran Vasaglia, the hero who led an era, had talent no less than Najin's. As if sneering at the upstart catching up, Aldaran's movent began to accelerate.
Slowly, very slowly, but surely.
Leaving Gerd behind, those two tried to continue a fight of their own. As if anyone who could not keep up was unnecessary. As if anyone else had no right to stand in that fight. As if the two of them were about to run far beyond reach.
The eyes of the ordinary man watching those two geniuses stayed calm. A smile ford on the lips of the boy who had grown old.
Because this was familiar to him.
Gerd never considered himself a genius.
He beca a Sword Master after he was over a hundred years old. Unlike those who rose to Transcendence through blazing, dramatic lives, Gerd's life had been quiet. He simply swung his sword every day.
If you lived that way, those called geniuses would often pass by your side. A swordsman he once knew beca a Transcendent and left the continent. A boy born when Gerd was still a Sword Seeker was now called Sword Saint and stood as a Sword Master.
Caught up to. Passed. It did not matter. Let them go. He only had to hold his place.
The old man who had swung with stubborn persistence reached his realm that way. That stubbornness itself beca his strength. He might break, but he would not bend. That was how he had lived.
The Empire, and the sword.
A life imrsed in those two values.
Seeing the Empire's sword shining before him, a smile touched his lips. Toward those rushing ahead, he stepped forward steadily.
He did not rush. As always, he swung and advanced one step at a ti.
Slow, but certain.
Not fast, but without openings.
Cut. Swing. Thrust. Drive in. Deflect. Repeating those motions, Gerd closed the distance. As he drew near and watched Aldaran and Najin's duel from close range, he realized sothing.
...Those were shining swords.
Their swords shone with blinding brilliance. His Master burned everything he had and, at the end of his life, taught that young man the sword. And that young man, as if repaying that sacrifice, mastered the Triumph sword art perfectly.
The first disciple was Gerd himself.
But the one who perfectly inherited Master's sword was that young man.
Compared to the light those two blades created, Gerd's own sword felt rough, almost crude. He knew why that had to be.
"Because mine is a sword copied from mory."
Gerd did not have talent like Najin.
He had so gift for "seeing," yes, but not the ability to rember and recreate perfectly from a single glance as Najin could.
That was why Gerd's Triumph sword art was incomplete.
A sword art reconstructed from the mories of his youth. But even that reconstruction was not perfect. No matter how deeply he searched those mories, there were parts he could not understand and parts he could not imitate, so he stitched them together with his own intuition.
He had still been proud of that sword. Had he not recreated the Triumph sword art? Was it not close to Master's sword in his mory? Was that not enough?
He had believed so, but even now he could not.
He compared his own sword to the flawless Triumph sword art shining before him. His looked like patched rags. A sword art born of genius, altered at will by an ordinary man.
It resembled it, but was different.
It was similar, but not the sa.
The form and sword paths might match, but the mont Sword Aura was poured into it, the road diverged.
"......"
If another Transcendent stood in this sa place, most would despair. The instant they realized what they had built over a lifeti was false in the end, they would collapse.
But what about this old man?
He did not despair.
As always, he stepped forward and swung. He walked toward the geniuses ahead of him.
"So what if it's incomplete?"
He swung.
"So what if it's patched, false, unable to shine? So what? None of that matters."
Swing, swing, and swing again. At so point, Gerd's sword began to pull the flow itself. The two who had been racing ahead both turned back at once.
"This is my sword."
Gerd's blade was shining.
"Learned from Master, completed by ."
Its light was different from Aldaran's and Najin's, yet no lesser. The radiance born of an ordinary man filled their sight.
"The Empire's sword."
The First Horn of the Empire swung the Empire's sword.
And blood sprayed.
Not from Gerd, but from Aldaran.
3.
Aldaran looked at the blood running down his own forearm, then took a large step back. It was the first ti he had retreated. Najin tried to rush him at that mont, but accumulated fatigue caught his legs.
Gerd was the sa.
The old man also steadied his breathing and reset his stance.
As both of them recovered from their broken posture, Aldaran, now withdrawn, inhaled. It looked less like breathing and more like the air of the entire area being pulled into him.
The flow reversed.
After drawing in that breath, he moved. He brought his raised foot down. The instant it struck hard, a wave spread from him and the ground began to lift.
Space creaked. The air convulsed.
Najin's senses scread.
It's coming.
Gerd felt it too.
It's coming. The ultimate move of the Triumph sword.
Sensing danger, Najin's perception of ti stretched thin and long. In that slow-moving mont, he saw it.
The very space around Aldaran was creaking.
From the tip of his raised sword ca a sharp cracking sound, like shattering glass. The cracks spread. Centered on that tip, the scenery fractured like a spiderweb.
First Horn.
Rocks lifted into the air and hung there. They were not truly stopped. Najin's stretched perception only made them seem frozen.
One thing did not stop.
Aldaran's sword still moved in that world that felt still.
The blade that had lined up with the sky began to swing.
With each palm's breadth it advanced, the world shattered like glass. Scenery and space collapsed, unable to withstand that overwhelming force.
Triumph.
The sword swung.
The sa ultimate strike that once shattered the stage of the Star of Scorn Quixote in a single blow, brought down half the Carnival King's stars, and pierced his heart was coming. The very strike that had once driven Najin to the edge of death even without Sword Aura now fell imbued with a Transcendent's Sword Aura.
Najin and Gerd both knew what they had to do.
The instant Aldaran took the First Horn stance, both of them took their own stances without a mont of hesitation. Najin's posture matched Aldaran's exactly. Like a mirror reflecting him, Najin's sword moved.
Gerd moved differently.
At first, he had tried to force himself to imitate the Master in his mories. But now he did not. The one who had perfectly learned the Triumph sword art from Master was not him, but that young man. Master's life was etched into that young man's sword.
Then what was etched into Gerd's own sword?
"You do it."
", sir?"
"Yes. Your turn."
Master had entrusted Gerd with what ca next. He carried the responsibility for the Empire's next age, the next age Master had protected. So Gerd thought this:
He had to see victory, and what ca after.
Not stop at Triumph alone.
He had to think beyond returning in victory.
So Gerd stepped lightly. Just as Najin had monts earlier, he prepared for the next step. Najin noticed and smiled. With that smile, he stepped even harder, putting in the strength Gerd had held back.
"I'll open the way."
Please take care of what cos next.
...The old man had swung his sword for his entire life.
He had walked slowly, but surely. He refused eternal youth and accepted the flow of ti. Without discarding anything, he built his foundation until it was ready to make anything bloom.
The two hundred years he had lived bore fruit.
In the hand of the First Horn of the Empire, the Empire's sword shone.
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