WeTried Translations

Translator/Editor: Hydrogen B

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Chapter 91: 14. The King's Silence (9)

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When had it been? On one ordinary day of survival, when snow fell as it always did.

The conifer forest entangled with the front lines had still been stained with blood. As always. Before the hot blood of fallen warriors could cool beneath a winter storm, fresh blood would paint over it.

The dim forest had held only three colors.

The sky had been black, without a trace of light.

The earth had been white beneath the snow.

And everywhere the eye could reach, corpses and blood had been red.

If anything alone had radiated a color of its own amid all that, it had been that woman.

Her eyes, always lifted proudly, had been gold, full of hope and joy.

The blade in her hand had been blue, cutting through the darkness as its paths wove an ideal.

Once, Ivan had stood dazed as he watched that sight.

"Like this... was it like this?"

With hands still too small, he had tried desperately to follow those traces as he swung his sword.

Back then, the swordsmanship Ivan knew had never risen beyond military drills. Most of it had been rough, formless things learned while fighting to survive.

It had felt as if his eyes had opened to the discipline called swordsmanship for the first time.

Alone in the remaining camp, Ivan had struggled to imitate the swordsmanship he had seen that night.

But it was lacking. Once was not enough. The difference in skill was one thing, but he could never catch up to it in the first place.

His muscles and bones had not developed enough, and his swordsmanship had been so inadequate that it could not see beyond swinging a blade.

So Ivan could not help feeling dissatisfied every time he raised his sword.

He could not imitate even a handful of those splendid paths he had seen.

By all logic, swordsmanship was just holding a stick and swinging it. How could he fail to copy even that?

Ivan grumbled under his breath. Damn this premodern fantasy world.

If this was how things were going to be, it should have dropped him into a martial arts novel instead.

"Hm."

"Eek?!"

A low hum suddenly came from behind him, and Ivan jumped.

Not far away, Adel was watching him with a faint smile.

"Not bad."

"Y-you saw that?"

Did this world have the same tradition as martial arts novels, where someone who witnessed your training had to be murdered to silence them?

Ivan broke into a cold sweat. He really had been spying on Adel's training.

Yet that crazy, sword-obsessed elf with dementia only smiled as she approached.

"Can you imagine something for me?"

"Pardon?"

"Could something made of nothing but bones move?"

"Uh... no?"

"Think of swordsmanship as a single entity. If it had only bones, without muscles, ligaments, tendons, or blood vessels, could it move?"

Adel gently took the sword from Ivan's hand. Before he could react, it was in her grasp.

If that woman had held any hostile intentions just then, he would already have been dead. The thought chilled his chest.

"The path of the sword is the skeleton of the concept called swordsmanship. It must stand straight, but standing alone cannot accomplish anything."

-Swish.

The blade cut through the air.

"The image contained within it, the true meaning of that swordsmanship, is its muscle. You cut down your opponent. But how? The true meaning behind this stance, for example, is this."

-Slash!

From above to below, but diagonally. Snap the wrist halfway through, step back a beat later, and draw a clean arc.

"You slip in while breaking apart an opponent's high guard, then strike the throat. That is the meaning contained in this stance. Did you see it?"

"Yes?"

"Pay attention. This is an expensive lesson. Now, there is an opponent before me. A knight. One point eight meters tall. Broadly built, weighing easily a hundred kilograms with their armor. They carry a longsword, much like mine."

As Ivan listened to Adel, he looked toward the middle of the night camp.

He could see the opponent.

A knight in crude armor, exhaling white breath as they stood tense.

Adel walked lightly before the knight, gave a brief sword salute, and settled into her stance.

"If the path of the sword is its skeleton, and the true meaning behind that path is its muscle, then what are its tendons?"

Without waiting for an answer, Adel struck. It was the same stance as before, a blow that pierced a high guard.

At the final moment, though, she bent her wrist back and took a step away.

"Now, the opponent barely blocked the attack slipping in from the high guard. My sword has been knocked aside, so it is now the opponent's turn. An attack is coming. A straightforward thrust, putting their full weight behind it. Very powerful."

-Swish.

Adel stepped lightly back and shifted her shoulder. With a whisper, the blade swept along the ground behind her before rising.

She moved around the knight stabbing toward her, then brushed past twice, beneath the shoulder and along the waist.

"There is a flow to attack and defense. Reading that flow, making the right judgment, then attacking and defending accurately, that may be called the tendons of the sword."

-Slash!

Adel continued speaking as she raised her sword. She slashed. Cut. Swung and struck, stepped back, struck upward again, then cut.

The softly falling snow had become a storm only around her.

Though she had done nothing but stand and swing a sword, the world around her was becoming entirely different.

She established an Ideal at the limits of her senses.

After showing him directly, Adel finished in the same calm tone as always.

"If you can respond to every situation while learning swordsmanship, if you have disciplined yourself endlessly to reach that realm, then the uninterrupted flow of attack and defense itself may be called the blood vessels of the sword."

Adel stopped and offered him the sword. The hilt she had held was warm from her body heat.

"If swordsmanship is a single entity, that is how it is formed. Do not look only at the skeleton. Train by looking at the body and movement themselves. Do you understand?"

"If swordsmanship is not a tool, but an entity, Lady Coenwulf, what should we use it for?"

"...What?"

If it was not simply a tool developed to ward off an opponent's attacks and kill more efficiently.

If swordsmanship itself had to be seen as an entity, what was the purpose of that entity?

Ivan asked the question without thinking.

Adel laughed softly, looked up at the sky, then smoothly drew the sword at her waist and raised it.

"To reach the sky."

"Pardon?"

"No one can answer what lies at the end of a sword, but... that is what I think. The reason a sword takes this shape is..."

The sword held in both hands extended straight, narrowing sharply toward its tip. Like a person reaching a hand toward the high sky.

A snowflake landed on the sharp edge, split in two, and fluttered down.

"You look to the sky, hone your art, and pile up years as you draw nearer. There is probably something like that at the end of a sword. Not a powerful blow that splits the world, not miraculous curses displayed by those called gods, not some divine technique that defeats the demonfolk flooding over mountains and rivers in a single stroke."

Freedom.

Movement bound by nothing.

Sword aura that flowed as desired, like clouds drifting with the wind.

A blade that cut through the open sky, sliced the wind, and danced lightly through the air.

So the Ideal all of that had to contain was the sky itself.

"You have eyes that will grow great. What is your name?"

"Ivan Petrovich."

Ivan laughed in disbelief. He had told her several times already, yet she still did not know his name.

Adel silently looked at his face, then reached out and brushed the snow from his hair.

"John. That is a good name."

"The honor is mine, Lady Coenwulf."

"No. I called you my friend, so you should do the same. Adel. Call me that. Everyone whose name I remember has earned that right."

That had been his final meeting with Adel.

Afterward, Adel had marched to the northwestern front, lost one eye, and been defeated.

Despite her wounds, she returned to the front again and again. The name she earned was Adel the One-Eyed.

Even so, Ivan remembered that cheerful elf exactly as she had been, glaring at the sky with both eyes.

* * *

-Waaaaaah!

The cool snowflakes falling around him became a rain of flowers.

The sound of wind cutting past his ears became the cheers of the crowd.

The woman whose two eyes had burned brightly became a woman with one lonely eye.

The blurred memory passed. Ivan squeezed his unfocused eyes shut and inhaled.

"Adel."

He opened his eyes. The blue light in them was very different from that time.

His longing for hope, his belief that things would improve, his desperate struggle to survive, he had left all of it on the battlefield.

In an age after the war, two remnants who still lived as though they were on a battlefield stood facing each other with swords in hand, their eyes changed.

"You have good eyes now. They have become the eyes of a proper swordsman."

"Have they?"

"Yes. Have you aimed for the sky?"

"No."

He had never held such noble ideals. Ivan shook his head. To him, swordsmanship had never meant more than a means of survival.

Therefore, what he wanted, the Ideal in his heart, the purpose and true meaning of his swordsmanship, was only one thing.

Home.

Just as Adel had swung her sword while drawing the sky and wishing for freedom.

Ivan had swung his sword while looking toward home.

"Home."

"Good. You have established an Ideal wholly your own, so you are no longer beneath me. Then..."

Adel spun her sword and lowered herself. Her stance changed.

Whoosh. Blue mana surged and pulsed within her body.

"Come. Leave your Ideal with me. John. Impose your will upon me. Force our Ideals against one another, prove which is superior, and seize victory."

Ivan slowly inhaled and took the same stance, imitating Adel's ready position as if they were mirror images.

Yet even if two painters depicted the same scene, would they produce the same painting?

No. They would not.

One still life drew different images within each viewer. Even if they shared every muscle, bone, blood vessel, and tendon of swordsmanship as an entity.

The direction and destination of that entity were not the same.

A clash of swordsmanship filled with true meaning was no more than the process of forcing one's Ideal upon the other.

-Crack.

He slowly severed his senses. With the thump of his heart, mana surged forth and precisely shut down his neural pathways, honing only his combat senses.

His overloaded nerves divided each second and entered the spaces between.

The cheers faded. More accurately, time stretched.

Within that sliver of time beneath the realm of superhumans, the flower rain fell slowly, and even the heat exhaled by the excited crowd gradually cooled.

The nobles in the stands moving their mouths, the common people throwing flowers in excitement, the flower rain scattering on a clear summer breeze, all of it blurred and warped.

Between them, only the gazes of two people shone with clarity.

-Slash!!

Only the paths of their swords flowed proudly through their solitary time.

Their blades cut through, met, caught, and held one another as they began to dance.

* * *

"Beautiful, Vanka."

Elizaveta watched the arena with her fist clenched tightly.

Her anxiousness over who would win, her desire to cheer for him, none of that mattered anymore.

Victory and defeat held no meaning for those two knights at this moment. Their struggle itself was the result, the purpose, and the reward.

Everything a warrior with a sword could show, everything those who carried swords dreamed of, lay before her. She could say that with confidence.

Though it had been a skill created for war and survival, when mastered to its limit, it became an art.

Those who understood swordsmanship and those who did not, everyone cried out, wept, and shouted in exhilaration.

Amid them, the two knights thrust their swords only toward one another.

It was beautiful. No refined words could describe this battle. It was a dance, like the performance of a well-composed orchestra.

The years of mastery they had built with their lives on the line met in that clash, and their friction alone stirred a musical emotion beyond sound.

"I am proud of you."

Elizaveta smiled softly and nodded.

* * *

"We cannot let him live."

Duke Sheletif clenched his fist tightly, feeling even fear.

A warrior had to be a tool. A tool that was useful so long as it was used properly.

Hammers, chisels, and awls should not possess wills. Tools should not be respected by people.

Peace had no need for heroes.

The age when one hero could reign over an overwhelming majority with a single sword had to end. The age of blind fanaticism had to fade. It was the barbarism of wartime.

People should not follow another person.

That had been the Crown Prince's teaching. Though he had suddenly departed, his ideal was now firmly rooted among Pritchenkaya's great nobles as well.

Therefore, the man the Princess had brought was dangerous. He had the makings of a hero. If this had been wartime, he might have stood shoulder to shoulder with the Hero.

How had a man like that remained unknown? It was deeply strange, but that was not important now.

Regardless of this duel's outcome, the man had already left too great an impression on the people of Pritchenkaya.

He had to die. A tool that could not be controlled was no longer a tool.

"Make preparations."

"Yes, Your Excellency."

The great nobles of Pritchenkaya, those ancient houses that had grown over years equal to the nation's own, had countless legacies lying dormant within them.

The bravery of one person could never defeat the power of many. Had not even the Demon King fallen before the Hero Party?

Then he himself would become the nobles' hero, one who would stop a new Demon King.

Duke Sheletif shook his head with a bitter smile.

War was different from a duel. It was not like that empty ceremony of meeting one another's martial skill fairly.

How many knights skilled at duels had he seen perish meaninglessly on the battlefield?

That man would be the same.

He had to be.

Duke Sheletif quietly rose from his seat.

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Footnotes:

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