The Curse No Sword Can Sever (9)

I, Shizuki, son of Kaeha and head of the Yosogi Style, hereby challenge Kreias-dono, the Sword Saint hailed as the finest swordsman in the Kingdom of Rudoria, to a match!

The next morning, our calm and peaceful breakfast was shattered by those words from Shizuki.

...Huh? Is Kreias's title really that grandiose?

I was startled, and apparently Win was too. A sausage nearly slipped from his mouth, so I asked a wind spirit to catch it and put it back on his plate.

But apparently, this was the reason Shizuki had wanted to come to Vistcoat.

Still, when I hear the title Sword Saint, I picture someone more like an old man who has devoted everything to the sword.

Kreias certainly is the most skilled swordsman I know, but he's a fairly worldly sort of person.

Rather than entrusting everything to the sword, he gives the stronger impression of an adventurer who struggles and survives by any means necessary.

Honestly, the title of Sword Saint doesn't suit Kreias very well.

I managed to hold back my laughter in the atmosphere of the moment, but if this had been any other time, I probably would have pointed at him and laughed.

Challenged to a match, Kreias looked troubled. He glanced at me first, then at Martena sitting beside him, and after realizing that no one was going to come to his aid, he finally met Shizuki's gaze head-on.

Only Kreias, who had faced him directly, could know what emotions were held in Shizuki's eyes.

"...All right. But from what I can see, your body hasn't fully developed yet, and you're too young to call yourself a swordsman. If you're willing to spar with wooden swords, I'll accept after breakfast."

After a brief silence, Kreias spoke as though he had finally given in.

Shizuki looked a little dissatisfied, but he must have understood that Kreias was right and that he had been granted a concession.

He nodded and obediently returned to his seat.

But judging by the way he looked, he probably couldn't taste much of the food.

A bit of a waste, I thought.

The sausages were delicious, and the soup, filled with the rich flavor of meat, was exquisite too.

After finishing their warm-up to work off breakfast, Kreias and Shizuki faced each other with wooden swords in hand.

My first thought on seeing them was... Kreias had really aged.

The fact that his opponent was a child probably had something to do with it, but the wooden sword Kreias had taken up was about the size of a hand-and-a-half sword.

He used to wield a much larger two-handed sword with ease.

When I first met him, he had been around twenty. Now he was in his mid-forties.

Judging by his build and movements, he should still have the strength to wield a two-handed sword, but a hand-and-a-half sword was probably just the right size for stopping at the last instant.

In other words, Kreias's prime had long since passed.

Of course, his skills had surely been refined over all those years, so I couldn't say whether he had actually grown weaker.

As for Shizuki, I wasn't particularly worried.

The result was obvious from the start, and victory wasn't what Shizuki wanted in the first place.

He didn't seem aware of it himself, but he probably just wanted to make contact through the sword with the man he took to be his father.

To put it more simply, he was awkwardly trying to seek affection.

Even I wasn't so tactless as to butt in or worry unnecessarily.

But one thing did occur to me: if this was how things were going to turn out, I should have brought Mizuha along too, even if we'd had to take a carriage.

Then again, bringing all three of Win, Shizuki, and Mizuha would have made it difficult for me to escort them alone without ever taking my eyes off them.

"Hiiiiyaaaah!!!"

From the very beginning, Shizuki gave it his all, swinging his sword with a sharpness that made it hard to believe he was a child.

It was unquestionably the swordsmanship of a genius.

His environment—being born in a dojo—and the effort he had put in certainly played a part, but without exceptional talent, no one could have reached such a level at his age.

Naturally, Kreias effortlessly received, deflected, and redirected Shizuki's extraordinary swordplay.

Even if Shizuki was a genius with a sword, Kreias was a genius swordsman with decades of training and countless real battles behind him.

The difference was so great that Kreias was, in every sense, treating Shizuki like a child.

Shizuki's wooden sword never even reached Kreias; instead, Kreias struck at each opening he revealed, as if gently correcting him.

Or, whenever Shizuki grew cautious, Kreias would forcefully close the distance, apply pressure, break his balance, and strike.

Yes, Kreias was teaching him swordsmanship as one would teach a child.

Well, at least they looked like they were having fun.

In my arms, Win stared at the two of them sparring with his mouth hanging open.

What in the world was this child thinking right now?

Someday, I wanted to spar with Win like that and play around with him.

Hmm, perhaps it was still a little too soon.

For now, I wanted him to remain my adorable little Win, content to nestle in my arms.

I suddenly remembered the old saying, "Giving birth is easier than worrying about it."

If I remembered correctly, it meant that although you might fret over something beforehand, once you actually began, things often worked out surprisingly well.

The sparring between Shizuki and Kreias struck me as exactly that.

I still didn't know what Kaeha, her mother, Kreias, or Martena were thinking when they acted as they did, or why things had become so complicated.

But none of them—including Shizuki and Mizuha—seemed like bad people.

In that case, rather than worrying over everything, all I needed to do was respond whenever they needed me.

Even tangled threads might come undone someday.

When I simply observed without thinking about unnecessary things, their sparring was a good source of inspiration for me too.

Although Shizuki couldn't land a single blow, I could see his fighting spirit and determination to grow stronger in his attempts to find some way to overcome Kreias.

That was probably what I lacked most.

I could also tell that every movement Kreias made skillfully drew out Shizuki's fighting spirit.

Was it because there was a bond between them, or because Kreias was so experienced as an instructor for adventurers?

I was a little curious, but even I wasn't so tactless as to step between the two of them.

The sparring between Shizuki and Kreias continued until Shizuki collapsed from exhaustion, and such exchanges took place from time to time throughout our stay in Vistcoat.

But such times couldn't last forever. We spent two weeks in Vistcoat, then left the town to return to the royal capital.

We revisited the familiar places, and, since we had the chance, I took Win and Shizuki to have a brief look at the Great Purha Forest as well. It made for a pleasant change of pace.

I also met Azvaldo and the other disciples of that damn dwarf master, and they made me promise to win the competition.

When we got back to the royal capital, yes... this time, I would devote myself to the smithing for the competition without letting anything else distract me.