Chapter 320 |
First Horn of the Empire (6)
Aldaran Vasaglia swung his sword.
First Horn, Triumph.
In a world slowed until it felt frozen, Aldaran’s blade moved. Each time it advanced even a palm’s width, the scenery shattered. Najin realized it at once. Nothing could catch that sword, and nothing could stop it.
...Long ago, Sword Saint Karan had said this.
To a Sword Master, a sword was a brush. The highest form of the sword was to swing it and paint the world with your own image. That very example was right in front of him.
The First Horn of the Empire was the Empire’s vanguard.
The prow that split open the path from the very front.
What Aldaran Vasaglia was swinging now held nothing but himself. A being that moved forward by smashing through everything. The sword of a Transcendent, certain of himself as himself, was beyond Najin’s imagination.
He tried to predict the range. He could not. He tried to predict the shape of the Sword Aura that would burst from the tip. He could not predict that either. In this moment, Najin’s future sight became meaningless. The fighter who had always battled by looking ahead was pinned to the present.
Of course, that was only natural.
In the end, Najin’s future sight predicted the near future through information he saw with his own eyes. But this Triumph Sword before him was a strike falling from outside providence, unconstrained by common sense, rules, or anything else.
How could he predict something not bound by the world’s rules? Najin accepted that fact humbly.
So he looked at the present.
He drove strength into the foot he had stamped down. He gripped his sword so hard his fingers nearly crushed. Every star engraved in Excalibur blazed, and each one began to release the story it contained.
This was no time to pick and choose.
His heart pounded violently. He drove his mana to the limit. His Sword Aura shone brighter than ever, and his stance was more perfect than ever. Najin answered the descending Triumph Sword before him. There was no need to ask what technique he would use.
First Horn, Triumph.
It was a sword he had learned from Aldaran Vasaglia. Watching the knight before him move, Najin corrected his posture even while swinging. The blade he unleashed matched Aldaran’s arc exactly.
Two swords swung along the same path.
Dozens of meters lay between them. That was the distance separating the two. And yet, the blades that should have only split empty air were strangely caught in midair. Kaang, the clash rang out.
The swords collided across dozens of meters.
The Sword Aura tracing each blade’s arc crashed into each other. A platinum Sword Aura that fell from the sky while splitting clouds met a Sword Aura stained like paint. Cracks raced through space, centered on the point of impact.
It cracked. It broke. It twisted together as if trying to devour each other.
Najin resisted the Sword Aura trying to push his blade back. He held his shaking sword tighter. Crack, his fingers bent with a sharp sound. The surging wind pressure tore at his body and sprayed blood.
Krrrk, Najin ground his teeth.
He knew it too. He knew that, as he was now, he could not surpass the Triumph Sword Aldaran himself had unleashed. If this became a pure contest of force, he would be the one to collapse. Najin knew that very well.
Even so, he clenched his teeth and held on, because even if he was pushed back, he would not collapse completely. At minimum, he could carve a crack into that perfect Sword Aura.
Crack.
And the crack he made would become the foundation for the next attack. Believing that, Najin swung without thinking about what came after.
There was someone ready to answer that expectation.
Gerd’s strike, swung with a light step forward, layered onto Najin’s Sword Aura. Najin’s blade, which had been gradually pushed back, was supported by Gerd’s aura. The moment balance barely held, Gerd stepped forward one more time.
Thud.
This time, hard. He loaded into this second strike the power he had held back from the first. The ground split around the step he planted. The air shook. Gerd gathered all of that flow into one sword and swung.
The first strike had been made one step behind Najin.
The second strike was made one step ahead of Najin.
The arc of the sword that had been falling from sky to earth changed. Forcing a blade to change its path after it had already begun placed an immense burden on the body. The old man endured it. A body that had swung a sword every single day for over two hundred years absorbed the backlash of that technique in full.
Gerd’s sword blazed.
The blade ran in reverse along the path it had already passed.
The old man walked the same road his master had walked. Like his master, he became First Horn of the Empire. Like his master, he swung his sword for the Empire. Like his master, he shaved himself down for the Empire. So Gerd understood Aldaran’s life.
What if he had not inherited his master’s sword perfectly? What of it? By living the same life as his master, Gerd contemplated what the Empire’s sword truly was. He had worried, and worried again.
This was simply the answer he found at the end.
So this was not an accidental discovery, not lucky chance piled atop chance, and not an answer led here by some fateful encounter. It was only inevitability. Finding an answer after agonizing for long years was almost the natural end.
“My master taught me the Triumph Sword.”
The old man’s two hundred years bore fruit.
“I taught my master’s sword to the Empire’s knights, and beyond that, to the whole Empire. I wove my master’s sword together and made one sword.”
The old man who believed that where he stood was the Empire, and that he himself was the Empire, swung his blade. Then was the old man’s sword not also the Empire’s sword?
“So if I must name this sword...”
Imperial Sword.
“That is what it will be.”
Slash.
What followed after the Triumph Sword was the Empire’s sword. Gerd’s blade, running back up the road it had come from, surged into the sky.
2.
Aldaran’s strike, which had shattered Najin’s Sword Aura and tried to shatter even Gerd’s aura layered on top of it, could not endure Gerd’s follow-up second strike.
Aldaran’s Sword Aura twisted.
The crack Najin’s Sword Aura had created, Gerd’s aura drove straight into it. The crack spread. The aura that should have advanced by smashing all things was held in place, then began to break apart under its own force.
Crash.
The Sword Aura shattered. Compressed power burst free, and a storm roared out. The ground was carved to pieces, and the wind pressure threw up clouds of dirt. Through that dust, a single line of Sword Aura rushed forward.
Thud, whirl.
Aldaran planted his foot and spun, then swung. The moment he received Gerd’s aura, one of Aldaran’s wounds tore open. Blood sprayed. He could not fully absorb the aura that had come through after breaking Triumph Sword.
His body stiffened. His breathing fell out of rhythm. For the first time, his stance collapsed. The instant he blocked, he realized his arm had broken.
Shraaaak!
Sliding far back, Aldaran tried to steady his breath and fix his stance. When techniques of this scale collided, an opening of the same scale was bound to appear.
But there was one thing he had overlooked.
There was a certain boy. He was always used to driving his body to ruin and pushing himself to the edge, so he was familiar with extreme situations. Because he was familiar with them, he could make one choice.
At a decisive moment, with both sides pressed to the limit.
In that moment, instead of choosing to steady his breathing and reset his stance, he chose to lunge in while disordered, breathing rough, whipping his own body forward. The boy was a knight, but at the same time he was also a gambler.
Victory and defeat were always decided by a single instant of judgment.
Najin did not miss that instant.
Thud!
Najin shot through the rising dust. His eyes were bloodshot, his broken arm hanging loose. Blood spattered with every step, but he did not care and sprinted straight at Aldaran.
An attack launched at a moment Aldaran had not imagined.
Aldaran moved one step too late. The recoil from receiving Gerd’s sword made him slow. Najin, who had thrown his body in without hesitation, was one step faster.
Shraaaaaak!
With a platinum arc, Najin slid far past Aldaran’s back. Blood did not spray heavily, and it was not a fatal wound, but it was a meaningful strike.
“Didn’t I tell you?”
Najin flicked the helmet in his hand and threw it behind him.
“I said I’d cut that helmet off first.”
The Helmet Knight’s helmet came off. Aldaran’s grotesque face was exposed, and a single sword scar was carved across the face wavering like flame. Out of eight eyes, three were cut.
And the moment the helmet came off.
Aldaran’s body shook violently. Watching him, Najin thought, as expected, this helmet was the medium.
To begin with, the Helmet Knight was already dead.
He had finished his story and exited the stage. If a being like that was being forced to remain, there had to be a medium. Najin had believed that medium was this helmet and armor.
Because...
For Aldaran, that helmet was one lingering attachment. A brilliant past, glory he could not let go, regrets toward his comrades, agony over his choices... all of it was inside that helmet.
That was why he had taken it off in the final moment.
The Helmet Knight had removed his helmet and become a knight.
As if to erase that story and make it never happen, the Carnival King placed the helmet back onto the knight who had removed it and transformed him into a clown in a helmet. She made a dead man trapped in a brilliant past, moving as if it were still then.
He could not leave him in that state.
Watching Aldaran’s movements gradually change, Najin raised his sword. It seemed his guess had been right after all. Now, Najin sensed this fight was rushing toward its end.
“You are a knight.”
And.
“An end like that does not suit you.”
This was not where you were meant to go.
So I will send you.
To the place where you truly belong, to the destination you chose with your own hands.
With the Star of Requiem, Najin charged.
3.
After the helmet came off and his injuries began to pile up, Aldaran could no longer display the same martial might as before. Even so, Aldaran Vasaglia was strong. Terrifyingly strong.
His arm was broken, he was drenched in blood, his wounds were stacking up, yet he still rampaged like a storm.
Inside that storm, two people swung swords. Their bodies were wrecked too, but they rushed Aldaran without pause. At first Aldaran had been the one driving them back, but little by little the flow began to change.
Najin boldly shoved his body into the fight. With a more refined sword and precise prediction, he received Aldaran’s blade.
And that created an opening.
Gerd seized that opening without fail. His sword was no longer a fake that merely imitated Triumph Sword. A blade completed through the old man’s life shone in its own color.
Clang, kaang, kaaang!
Blood sprayed. Armor split. Flesh was cut and blood flew, but no one stopped.
Kagagagak!
Technique struck technique. Two of them swung while looking into the future, and one thrust his sword toward a present tempered from the past. The tangled, crossing sword paths seemed like they could continue forever.
Counter, deflect, knock away...
Between swords colliding without pause, Aldaran Vasaglia’s heart throbbed. His heart was no more than a lump of demonic power. It had no unnecessary function like beating.
Even so, Aldaran Vasaglia thought.
My heart is beating.
He was now a being pinned to the past. A being who had already met his end, forcibly held in place, preserved at his brightest hour.
Even so.
Through clashing swords, Aldaran felt something. Joy? Awe at his enemies? Or something else? Aldaran kept swinging.
Kneel, kneel and collapse.
He swung with that force. Under the consecutive battering strikes, Najin’s knees bent. The moment he was about to fall, Najin ground his teeth and rose again, as if he would never bow.
The Star of Indomitable shone.
It was a star he had received from Aldaran himself.
Aldaran’s blade, swung expecting Najin to fold, was crossed by Najin’s passing sword. Aldaran’s shoulder guard shattered. As Aldaran was pushed back, a smile formed at the corner of his mouth. The more armor came off, the more the Star of Requiem hammered his body, the clearer he felt his mind becoming.
Something surfaced, faintly.
He drove back Gerd’s encroaching sword. To Aldaran’s eyes, the sword path Gerd drew looked clumsy. As if to say it was the wrong road, he tried to break that path, but for some reason, it did not break.
The Star of Conviction shone.
It was Gerd’s eighth star, obtained the day Najin came to him and he realized his life was not meaningless, and his effort had not been in vain.
A sword path filled with conviction did not break. It struck straight into Aldaran’s body. Aldaran’s armor broke a little more.
“A little more.”
At some point, Aldaran had begun to smile.
“Show me a little more, brats.”
He did not understand this situation. He did not know why he was like this. He could not even clearly recognize who the two people before him were. Yet the soul bound to this world was speaking.
Should I not give them teaching?
The clown who should have danced for the Carnival King had, at some point, begun to move with another purpose. He was still trying to kill the two before him, but this was not a sword swung only to kill.
“Come! Come as much as you want!”
Show me yourselves. Show me that you can surpass me, show me that you can carry what comes after me. If not, I cannot leave this place.
He squeezed the failing body harder.
Again he unfolded the ultimate form of Triumph Sword. The moment he swung, blood burst from his whole body. A storm roared and overturned the entire area.
This time too, the two of them received that ultimate form.
As if he had expected exactly that, Aldaran rushed through the raging storm.
Sword Aura, blade, and at times fists and greaves.
He moved without rest. Aldaran kept up the sword duel, smashing apart every one of the dozens, hundreds of sword paths coming at him. Then, at one moment, the duel reached its end.
There are paths that cannot be smashed no matter how many paths are smashed.
Two paths extending in from two directions.
One was a sword that perfectly resembled his own. Looking at a sword as if his own life had been copied into it, Aldaran smiled without thinking. Right, I did not teach wrong. He smiled because his life had meaning.
And the other?
A sword that resembled his but was completed in a different form. Aldaran found it beautiful. I guess I cannot scold him anymore for wielding a sword that no longer suited him. The sudden thought made Aldaran laugh.
Thud.
Two swords pierced Aldaran’s heart at the same time.