Chapter 39
Naturally, Roselyn was the first to react.
“What kind of rudeness is this, out of nowhere? Just because you're a noble, are you planning to bully a poor, pitiful weakling with force?”
Kim Yul, who had suddenly become the poor, pitiful weakling, let out a hacking cough, but Roselyn had no intention of taking it back.
Well.
Because it was true.
In Roselyn's eyes, Kim Yul was just a bizarrely sturdy hamster—good at writing, but the kind who sometimes went looking for a beating.
In raw strength, there was a huge gap in output.
Still, sometimes even hamsters show ferocity beyond cracking sunflower seeds.
“Stop, Roselyn.”
“Huh? Huh?”
As he picked up the glove that had ricocheted off his face, the table, and the floor in a three-cushion shot,
Kim Yul smiled faintly.
“The imperial family's household education really is excellent. You must be glad to have so many mothers.”
At that lofty compliment,
“Y-you lowborn...!”
Regios trembled all over with delight.
Still, the last shred of duty left in him as a noble and a member of the Capital Guard worked hard on his behalf.
He managed to dodge the choice of drawing his sword on the spot only to get punched by the saintess and have a hole blown through his stomach.
One could call it a manly evasive maneuver, worthy of a man who had won the duke's third-son position through a fair-and-square sperm race instead of a shell game.
Instead,
“You wouldn't dare do something as vulgar as refuse a duel after spouting that kind of abuse.”
he growled in a low voice.
Here.
Kim Yul had betrayed Roselyn's expectations once again.
“Fine, let's fight. You don't look like much anyway.”
“Author?”
Ignoring Roselyn's shock, Kim Yul stood up from his chair and met Regios's eyes.
A gaze that felt ominous, as if obsidian were giving off light, speared down from above Regios's eye level.
Momentarily overpowered, Regios checked the flow of mana to see whether his senses were wrong, but
he felt no trace of mana within Kim Yul's body.
Then.
That meant he was bluffing.
“Your courage is passable. Then report to the Southern Capital Guard tomorrow.”
.
.
.
As soon as the sneering back of Regios disappeared from their sight,
Smack!
“Agh!”
“Author! Are you out of your mind? What if you hurt your wrist like that!”
Roselyn's backhand smack slammed straight into Kim Yul's spine.
Ignoring Kim Yul, who had folded in half and was trembling,
“See? You can't even handle a little bit of this kind of cutesy act, and you're talking about a duel!”
“S-Saintess, if I take two more of those, I feel like I'll be torn into four pieces and die...”
“Anyway, you do know who your opponent is, right? You're not doing this knowing full well, are you?”
At Roselyn's question, Kim Yul straightened his bent back and answered.
“Of course I do. Aren't you the guard captain, Sir Regios, who takes after his father and is best at working his lower half, with his fifty mothers?”
“...You really do know him? You also know that man is one of the empire's top swordsmen, right?”
“Well, no matter how strong he is, there's no way he's stronger than a dragon.”
“A dragon...?”
Since Roselyn had yet to see with her own eyes the yellow mutt Estea wagging her tail, she tilted her head at the sudden remark,
Kim Yul had already laid out a sure-win plan.
“I'll use this chance to prove just how strong of a man I am.”
He added a line that didn't need to be said and earned another saintess-sized handprint on his back.
* * *
The next day.
The Southern Capital Guard's training yard was filled with cheerful energy from early morning.
“No way, seriously? He really accepted the duel?”
“Hahaha! Should we call that admirable courage or what?”
“It's not like he's going to drag that monster saintess into a man's duel, so does the guy have several lives or something?”
“He must have written so many novels that he started hallucinating and thinking he was a hero.”
Regios's unit was made up only of young nobles who had been close with him since the academy.
No one believed Regios would lose. During their academy days, none of them had ever beaten him in skill, and in terms of family power, he stood in a place so far above them they couldn't even look up at him.
So all they did was chatter merrily away.
“Captain? Can't you go easy on him? Honestly, a duel between two heroes is entertaining.”
At the subordinate's joking remark, Regios, whose anger had cooled a little after a day, also let out a grin.
“Want me to cut off your wrist too?”
“......”
Of course, the words that spilled from Regios's mouth were anything but pleasant, so the subordinate immediately shut his mouth.
.
.
.
A little while later.
“I thought you'd run away, but you actually came.”
“...What is with that bastard, dragging women around like that?”
“He can hear you.”
“Wow, would you look at that?”
“You trying to die? Haven't you heard that the saintess over there recently took out fifteen assassination squads by herself?”
“......”
Just like the subordinates' murmurs,
Kim Yul arrived with two women in tow.
The monstrous saintess Roselyn, who had recently been spotted often in the imperial capital.
And.
“Hehe, this'll be fun!”
Even a blonde girl laughing bright and carefree.
Soon after they took their dainty little pitter-patter steps toward the makeshift stands,
the two men.
Kim Yul and Regios stood facing each other in the training yard.
“Bringing women along in a crowd like that—did you think this was some kind of picnic?”
Regios sneered, but Kim Yul's expression remained calm.
Kim Yul slowly opened his mouth.
“Have you perhaps heard the saying that everything depends on how you make up your mind?”
“If you're going to wag that crafty, vulgar tongue around, stop. The conclusion that you'll be pitifully defeated here won't change.”
I don't know what pitiful excuse you're about to start spouting again, but Regios sneered without caring.
Apparently he'd heard something somewhere.
He was the sort of man who went to the trouble of fetching a blunt iron club to face a sword.
But his sword was not something so weakly honed that it would be broken by that piece of iron, so it would be useless.
Whether he knew it or not,
Kim Yul calmly rattled off what he wanted to say.
“Even on the battlefield, when two generals lock eyes, a duel to the death breaks out regardless of the soldiers around them. If you decide he's nothing more than a mere grunt, how could you possibly consider him your opponent?”
“That's all the provocation you prepared?”
Regios let out a snort.
And he adjusted his stance.
He didn't feel like humoring wordplay.
Regios was already full of thoughts about finishing this quickly, taking a light round of drinks with his unit, and then going after the respectable married woman he'd had his eye on.
“Come at me, lowborn thing.”
The moment he lowered the blade toward Kim Yul and the referee, who was from his unit, struck the drum loudly once,
“──!”
the immense pressure surging from behind almost made Regios drop his sword on the spot.
And only then did he realize something was off.
Since the moment he stepped into the training yard, up until now,
the man in front of him, Kim Yul, had never once looked at him.
He had only kept his gaze fixed on something behind his back.
Something.
What on earth could it be?
No, none of that mattered anymore.
I'll knock that lowborn thing down, cut off his wrist as an example, and then smile in victory.
So your opponent is me.
Look at me.
Look at me!
He wanted to shout that, but even Regios was barely managing to hold his legs steady against the overwhelming presence behind him and the killing intent that felt as if it might shred his entire body.
Unlike Regios, who clenched his teeth,
the man facing him.
Kim Yul's eyes were still fixed indifferently only beyond his shoulder, like a sunken abyss.
Was it because he was crushed by that calmness?
“Haaah!”
Originally he had meant to play with him lightly, but before he knew it, Regios had swung his sword with all his might.
Although his mind was a little intimidated,
the long years of training had not betrayed him.
His sword, renowned even in the empire and worthy of being called precision itself, drew one beautiful stroke.
Soon that stroke became a clear line of death, surging toward Kim Yul.
At that moment.
The bizarre club in Kim Yul's hand began to move slowly.
And.
“──!”
Regios's eyes twisted in shock.
A trajectory no less than the sword path he had honed over the years, perhaps even closer to perfection, unfolded from his hand.
Had he hidden his strength?
No. How could he produce a movement like that without any mana?
The shock didn't end there.
The club Kim Yul swung
Crack──!
literally swallowed the sword strike he had forged.
And even then, without losing any power, it went on to the treasured sword Framberg that he had long cared for──
Rrrip──!
“A──”
It literally folded it in half.
Not only that, it completely severed it so it could never be joined together again.
And the club, still with force left to spare,
gradually, slowly.
No, not slowly—fast, but to Regios's senses it was far too slow and far too clear.
“Ugh──!”
bent Regios's waist in half.
With the sensation of his body floating up into the air, his vision flashed for an instant and then went blurry.
“Regi───! ──!”
“──Captain──!”
“───, ───flew───!”
Fragmented scraps of sound faintly reached his eardrums.
But Regios didn't have time to chew over those sounds.
The man who had sent him flying.
He looked at the black-haired man, whose outward appearance still seemed fragile.
He was still not looking at him, but somewhere else.
Only once he was airborne could Regios faintly make out that shape.
It was definitely.
A tiny blonde girl──
By the time he got that far,
Regios's memory and consciousness went dark.
* * *
The man who had just launched Regios skyward with an upper swing and hit a home run with him.
Kim Yul gave the bat a satisfyingly sharp bat flip backward.
Along with the clatter of the Lee Dae-ho signature-edition aluminum bat rattling around with gusto,
he shouted.
“Enemy commander! I've defeated him!”
It was a line he'd really wanted to say at least once.