The first time I regained my sanity was after I had tried to end my life several times.
I thought I couldn’t stay like this.
If there was any silver lining, it was that I was gradually becoming numb to the idea of dying while attempting to end my life.
It was quite helpful that I could maintain my composure even with a sword at my throat.
Even if I were to die wielding a sword, I thought I could immediately start planning for the next life.
It was a bit impulsive, but I packed a few swords and hid myself far away from the Empire.
The dense mountains commonly referred to as the East were a great help for my movements.
It was my first time leaving the Empire. I wanted to save even the time spent pondering what I should do.
I gripped the sword. It wasn’t merely a desire to handle the sword well. Even if it meant dying with a sword in hand, I had the ambition to touch the tip of the sword as much as I could.
Could I do it?
I didn’t even have a hint of that thought. If it’s impossible, I would make it possible.
I already knew I had no talent. From the moment I grasped the sword, my wobbling body couldn’t harness any real strength.
Even after swinging for a year, a little growth was all I achieved, so even if I swung for ten years, I wouldn’t change much.
I restricted my food consumption. It was to awaken my body’s senses to the fullest.
I had enough money to avoid a food shortage, but I tried to gather food from nature as much as possible.
If I couldn’t gather it myself, I starved.
At first, I consumed the food I gathered from outside, but later, I didn’t touch even a morsel until my body became emaciated.
“…Ha.”
I wondered if this was what it was like to die of starvation.
Later, I realized that this method was incorrect, but my body—having consumed nothing—could only grow sluggishly.
Even so, I swung the sword every day until I collapsed.
There was no master.
All my former masters had given up on me, and I thought that even if I saved someone else, they would eventually give up too.
I followed the footsteps of knights from the past.
I swung the sword and drew lines in the air on my own.
I knew that doing this wouldn’t yield even a little bit of progress.
I had no talent. No matter how hard I tried, my lack of talent kept me from reaching it. What others could easily emulate took me a month to complete.
What kept me from giving up was sheer stubbornness.
If simple movements took a month, I repeated them countless times to step onto the next level.
By moving while seeking the reasons knights acted as they did, there were times I’d understand the principles and learn even faster.
One day, while swinging the sword, I realized I had physically exhausted myself to death.
Looking at the overly familiar ceiling, a hollow laugh escaped me.
The proficiency I gained with the sword was intact, but my body had reset, returning to that frail state.
When I hid my body again and crossed the border, this time I wanted to assess the level of my accomplishments thus far.
I thought that if I were to protect someone, honest attacks wouldn’t be necessary.
Even if it was cowardly, wouldn’t it be fine if that was how I won?
When I faced a band of robbers with my sword, I realized just how far I still had to go, and I climbed back into the mountains.
“Insufficient.”
Facing the bandits and almost dying was far from what I had imagined of a knight.
No matter how many weapons the bandits had, most knights could handle them alone.
After about five years of training, I was struggling against just bandits. As I cut my long hair, I steeled myself again.
There was no way my spirit would break from dying just once.
What did I do after that? If you asked me, I wielded a sword.
Watching the sun rise while swinging my sword, I would stop when the sun set.
Even when my whole body was soaked in sweat and fatigue, or when it rained and chills seeped in.
I would never give up. It wasn’t with such a light heart that I wielded the sword.
The sight of Miragen dying always resurfaced in nightmares.
No matter how hard I tried to forget, I could barely suppress the urge to stab my own neck at times.
But dying on my own was a waste.
I hadn’t properly grasped anything about the sword yet, so why would I give up?
Perhaps it was an obsession bordering on madness. Living consumed by the sword means that.
Giving up eating and sleeping, aligning my whole life with the sword.
Coming to my senses, I realized all the dense trees around me had vanished, and now it was time to vacate the spot.
“Number 4.”
That was the count of times I had died here, which, if you counted it in time, meant I had spent at least 20 years here.
I knew I was still insufficient, but there was nothing left to grow by swinging the sword by myself.
Maybe I could realize something in the moment of clashing blades.
What I learned about myself so far was laughably that I had no talent for the sword, but instead, I found I had good eyesight.
I never easily forgot what I had seen once. I could mimic all the actions of knights I had observed from afar for that reason.
Occasionally, when I heard news from the center, my shoulders would flinch at the name Miragen.
I tried to forget, but it seemed I couldn’t.
Living on in the memory was truly a pathetic thing.
No matter how much I recalled it, wasn’t I the only one remembering in this world?
Even if I asked myself, it would merely seem like an illusion, yet I still didn’t understand why I couldn’t forget.
I briefly touched my forehead, then ran my hand down my face and sighed.
…It was a choice I made.
Carrying all memories and moving forward. I intended to never forget that.
If one day I became so absorbed in this act that I forgot the original memories, then at that time, I would wish to die by your hands.
And so, I grasped the sword again.
#
The title of Swordmaster had never appeared in the continent’s history before.
They wanted to bestow such titles upon those who reached a certain level, yet even those called the king of knights were reluctant to be called that.
Like a noble star floating in the sky, they were great, but no one knew what level was required to be called such a name.
Unless, of course, one day, a squad of the Imperial Army didn’t get completely slaughtered.
“…Three hundred knights fell.”
“It seems that one person was annihilated. According to the words of the surviving soldier, what they faced is called a madman.”
Kaitel, who became the Emperor of the Empire, chuckled. Who would have thought such a thing would happen now that the unification of the continent is close?
The subordinates flinched at Kaitel’s laughter, stemming from the madness that began during his Crown Prince years.
How would one know how many more people he would kill just because he does not like this?
When a brief red hue passed through his golden eyes, the symbol of the Imperial Family, and then disappeared, Kaitel’s lips twitched as he glanced at the kneeling knight.
“Did the Knight Commander die too?”
“Yes, he fell in battle. It was largely because he was killed in a single blow that all the knights were thrown into chaos. If we gather the knights again for a subjugation—!”
“Enough. How disgraceful.”
No one knows who the madman the knights faced was. Yet, there’s an odd feeling that he might know the name.
From some point on, a name swirling in his mind, Kaitel cautiously murmured the name Robert Taylor and let out a smirk.
Where had he vanished all this time? Was he training or something?
What kind of waves would it stir to have someone who disappeared ten years ago suddenly return?
As Kaitel pondered that, he slowly rose from his throne.
“Command the Grand General to lead the subjugation forces.”
The name that arose in his mind was Miragen.
Since he became Emperor, he was currently leading the Imperial Army as the Grand General, whose abilities were superior to the Knight Commander who just died.
If Miragen couldn’t handle the subjugation, it meant the entire Imperial Army would have to step in.
Seeing Miragen with her usual impassive expression bowing her head, Kaitel chuckled softly.
He couldn’t comprehend why he kept finding it amusing.
Wouldn’t it make more sense to be filled with anger at Robert Taylor, who had outrageously killed soldiers? So why did he find himself chuckling at the thought of those two meeting?
“Has the illness flared up again?”
Miragen, who was staring blankly at Kaitel’s face, sighed as she left the palace.
She knew he had always been odd, but he was displaying another strange reaction to this incident.
Not knowing what he usually thought about, she couldn’t understand why he assigned her the Grand General position in the first place.
“Isn’t it the first time His Majesty has directly commanded you, Grand General?”
“Indeed. Originally, it was someone else besides me, so why specifically me this time?”
“It seems like a good opportunity to achieve a great accomplishment. It’s been almost quiet since the southern subjugation.”
A great accomplishment. Miragen had no great ambitions for combat in the first place.
If she hadn’t unexpectedly lacked suitable candidates for the position, she would have left long ago.
By some coincidence, she ended up staying in the Grand General position for quite a while.
Before Kaitel became Emperor, she had merely trained for self-defense, so the question of what he saw in her to place her in the Grand General position still lingered in a corner of Miragen’s mind.
Receiving a report from her lieutenant, Miragen frowned as her eyes caught a name written in one corner.
It was said to be unidentified, yet why was the name now detailed?
Robert Taylor— There was something peculiar about that name as Miragen mused on it, and she soon furrowed her brow.
“That’s that person, isn’t it? I heard he fled with a few swords a while ago. Why did the knights kill him all of a sudden?”
“Well, who knows? They call him a madman, so there might be a story behind it.”
Without any information, gathering a hunting party was impossible; finding rumors about this madman was the top priority.
What’s the point of delaying when we don’t know what he’ll do?
Surprisingly, information about the madman quickly gathered from across the Empire.
The problem was that the stories were just ridiculous fairy tales you’d find in kids’ storybooks.
Looking at the gathered reports, Miragen sighed and pressed her forehead.
Is this a joke? Am I really expected to believe what’s written here?
Does a person really turn a mountain into a bald hill?
And if that wasn’t enough, there was a legend that said he erased a mountain in the East with a sword.
“I asked for information to be collected; I didn’t ask for the kids to bring me their silly lies.”
“I wish it were just that, but these are the only sources that seem credible.”
Miragen looked at Roken with a doubtful expression, but eventually picked up the report and began reading what was written inside.
It was just claims that he killed countless soldiers alone and accomplished things unimaginable for a human with just a sword.
I’ve never even seen this kind of stuff in old legends.
There was even a soldier who claimed to have seen a mountain cut cleanly, and staring at the report in a trance, Miragen rubbed her face and touched her sword.
The bizarre feeling that had been unsettling her was infuriating, and the fact that such a person might actually exist annoyed her even more.
No matter how elite her team was, was she expected to face such a being?
At this rate, it was like asking her to die.
Still, it was hard to gauge the power of someone named Robert Taylor, so she finally decided to confirm what the dispatched magician had brought back.
With magic, traces of that battle could be examined.
Leading an army to hunt down a lone individual was a joke in the history of the Empire, but it was still better to handle it with certainty.
However, what she saw when she faced the magician was almost unbelievable.
“Is this what I’m supposed to hunt down?”
She couldn’t believe it. No matter how skilled someone was with a sword, there had to be limits.
Killing a person was one thing, but beheading a castle was impossible, and it would be even harder to face a creature larger than herself.
What was shown in the projected scene was a mountain that had completely disappeared from the map.
To think a single strike could alter the terrain – does that even make sense?
Roken, who was watching the scene alongside her, couldn’t help but gasp.
It reminded him of a phrase he’d read in a book as a child.
If a sword could truly fell a mountain, then perhaps that state could bear the most glorious name.
“…Sword Master.”
Roken began to wonder who would actually be the one getting hunted.
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