I traveled a long distance to the City of Knights because there was someone I was looking for.
A person who wielded a rare swordsmanship.
A legendary figure who dominated the battlefield with a single sword.
I had business with such a person.
Meeting them was not easy.
They had no interest in worldly affairs and lived in seclusion in an inconspicuous place.
Of course, I knew where they were, but I couldn’t just show up unannounced.
If I did, I would likely be turned away at the door.
If they asked how I knew where they lived, it would be troublesome.
To win their trust, I had to go through a tedious process.
The method I chose was to put them in my debt.
Specifically, I decided to teach the rogue swordsman who had a connection to them some manners.
“What the hell is that sword!?”
“It’s a magic sword! Only a magic sword could emit an aura like that!”
“No way. That’s something you only hear about in legends!”
“Wasn’t that person a hero?”
The onlookers began to take notice.
Among them, there were even people who recognized me.
“Were you a hero?”
“Yeah. I’m Theo. I was the thief of the party. I’m not a hero anymore, though.”
The rogue swordsman laughed cheerfully.
“I’ve heard of you. You left the party on a whim and caused a lot of trouble, right? I wondered what you were thinking, but it turns out you became a swordsman.”
“There were circumstances.”
It wasn’t something worth explaining in detail.
I decided to cut the small talk short.
“Come at me. I’ll teach you a lesson.”
Even though I was still in the midst of my swordsmanship training, I wasn’t about to lose to some punk like this.
I gestured for him to come at me, and he got angry.
“If you’re a thief, you should stick to playing with daggers!”
The rogue swordsman drew his sword as if unsheathing it and swung it with the force to cleave me in half.
What’s this?
What if I couldn’t block it?
Even in a duel, the rule in this town was not to kill your opponent.
It was to emphasize the virtue of mercy, as befitting a knight.
Of course, fatal accidents did happen from time to time.
Even if it was done by mutual agreement, there were exceptions if there was intent.
But to make such a reckless attack?
I guess I’ll have to teach him a lesson.
***
The rogue swordsman hated old-fashioned training methods.
Things like honing the basics.
Swinging a sword ten thousand times a day.
Meditating under a waterfall.
He couldn’t understand people who did such things as if it were natural, even though they were of no use in actual combat.
If you want to get stronger, you have to fight!
He wanted to make that argument, but he had no reputation.
The world only believes the words of famous people.
Right and wrong don’t matter.
What matters is who said it, and no one cares about the opinions of nobodies.
So he decided to prove it.
He would show everyone who was right by defeating knights who were diligent in the basics, proving that his practical approach was superior.
The idea came from a gossip column called “Rankings of Strong Knights”.
He would seek out the top-ranked knights one by one and defeat them.
That was the method he came up with to prove his point.
He grew infamous, but he didn’t care.
He had smoothly risen from the bottom, and now only the top-tier fighters remained.
But then, a former hero suddenly appeared and disrupted his plans.
How can I be losing to this kind of swordsmanship!?
The rogue swordsman’s mind was thrown into chaos.
He was being overwhelmed by a swordsmanship that seemed utterly sloppy.
It was full of openings, yet he couldn’t find a way to exploit them.
Theo dodged every attack with astonishing reflexes.
Not only that, but he also predicted the next moves as if he could read minds.
The rogue swordsman had underestimated him because he was a former thief who had turned into a swordsman.
But Theo was more troublesome to deal with than most swordsmen. No, even more than the knights he had met in this city.
Where did he learn this? Was it from Louis, one of the strongest heroes among his former comrades?
The rogue swordsman blocked a sharp thrust and pondered the question.
But it didn’t seem like Theo had learned from Louis.
Most of the techniques Theo displayed had no clear foundation.
It was a rough, beast-like swordsmanship as if honed in real combat.
……Wasn’t I the one who was supposed to be the practical fighter?
In that moment, he realized something.
When had he become so bound by formality?
He had come to the City of Knights to prove that rigid swordsmanship was worthless.
“Damn it!”
He just had to defeat this guy.
If he could overcome this hurdle, he could become famous!
The rogue swordsman raised his momentum and swung his sword even more fiercely.
***
The guy started pressing even harder than before.
“You’re fast, but you’re too focused on speed.”
“Shut up! All you do is run away!”
I focused on a defensive strategy.
I concentrated on blocking or dodging to protect myself.
It had been a while since I faced off against someone like this.
He wasn’t exactly a top-tier fighter, but he was good enough for a rehabilitation exercise.
I held back on counterattacks to prolong the enjoyment of this moment.
Perhaps mistaking my restraint for hesitation, the rogue swordsman made a decisive move.
He knocked my sword aside and attempted a shoulder charge.
Some things never change.
He loved to show off and had an aggressive personality.
He was the type who couldn’t distinguish when to advance and when to retreat.
This might work against knights who only learned honest techniques, but to me, who had mastered all sorts of dirty tricks, it was transparent.
“Tch!”
I twisted my body like a bullfighter and let him slip past, causing the rogue swordsman to lose his balance and stumble forward.
He barely managed to turn around without falling, but my sword was already descending toward his head.
Clang!
A clear metallic sound echoed through the darkened plaza.
It was the sound of Shadow Fang meeting the rogue swordsman’s skull.
Clang! Clang! Clang! Clang!
I kicked the sword out of his hand and then began to mercilessly beat the rogue swordsman who was crouched on the ground.
I delivered the same one-sided violence to him that he had once inflicted on Logan.
He tried to block with his hands, but there was no way that would work.
Head, shoulders, back, waist.
I rained down blows evenly, and soon he couldn’t hold out any longer and surrendered.
“S-Stop…! I give up! I admit defeat!”
His cry was desperate.
Some of the gamblers sighed in disappointment, while Logan’s juniors cheered with joy.
The rest of the spectators raised their voices. They were delighted by the scene of proper discipline.
It was settled.
***
“Are you sure you never formally learned swordsmanship?”
The rogue swordsman asked as we left the city of knights and walked along a narrow path.
“I studied a little from manuals when I was young.”
“That kind of thing doesn’t make someone as skilled as you. What kind of training did you do to become so strong?”
“Desperation is what makes people strong.”
“You sound just like that knight earlier, spouting nonsense.”
“It’s the truth.”
Having tasted a bitter defeat, the rogue swordsman had become somewhat more respectful.
He said that being thoroughly beaten in the same way he had toyed with knights had opened his eyes.
“How did you know who my master was?”
I had come to the city of knights to meet someone known as the Sword Saint.
It was obvious that I’d be turned away if I went to them directly, so I had approached this guy first.
It must have been surprising.
He had never mentioned anything about a master-disciple relationship before.
“I could tell by watching you fight. Your swordsmanship has unique traits.”
“Like what?”
“Well… I just could, so don’t press me about it.”
I brushed it off.
This part was partly due to regression, but I could infer more because I already knew the original story.
“I guess it shows…”
The rogue swordsman looked bitter but also somewhat pleased.
“Why did you leave such a great master?”
“I wanted to be a pioneer. I also wanted to become the strongest swordsman in this country. And…”
He paused for a moment after saying that.
“My master never taught me swordsmanship. Everything I learned, I picked up by watching over their shoulder.”
It sounded like a strange story, but there was a complicated reason behind it.
I decided not to pry unless he brought it up himself.
“So that’s why you went to the city of knights.”
“Yeah. But when I got there, they just made me do weird training. I didn’t like it, so I decided to train my own way.”
“Picking fights everywhere doesn’t really count as training, though.”
“Haha, I can’t argue with that.”
Now that his winning streak was broken, he’d probably stop acting like a rogue.
There was a certain humanity in the way he admitted defeat so readily.
That’s why.
“Your master isn’t someone who’s indifferent to nurturing disciples.”
I decided to help improve their master-disciple relationship, even if only a little.
“Huh? Why are you talking like you know everything? They didn’t properly teach me even after we spent over ten years together.”
“Just wait and see. There’s no master who doesn’t care for their disciple.”
After traveling for quite some time, we finally arrived at the Sword Saint’s dwelling.
It was a peaceful place where the rustling leaves and the chirping of birds blended together to create a tranquil atmosphere.
In the heart of a dense forest, near a small flowing stream, stood a modest hut.
“We’re here.”
Passing a small garden, the rogue swordsman and I approached the door.
“Be prepared. My master is a bit… unique.”
The rogue swordsman hesitated for a while before knocking on the door.
“Who is it?”
A woman’s voice.
The sound of footsteps grew closer, and the door opened.
“Ah…”
The Sword Saintess who stepped out of the hut widened her eyes.
“Jade! Where have you been all this time?”
Her eyes instantly grew moist as she pulled the rogue swordsman into a tight embrace.
“How could you make your mother worry like this? Do you know how long I’ve been looking for you?”
She buried her face in his chest and sobbed.
It was like a scene between a mother and son.
“….…”
The rogue swordsman Jade looked awkwardly at me.
His face seemed to say, “See? I told you so.”
I felt sorry for interrupting their emotional reunion, but I decided to get straight to the point.
“You’re Rain, right?”
There was no way I could mistake who she was.
But in this timeline, we were meeting for the first time.
When I asked bluntly, Rain released Jade from her arms.
“You know me?”
For a brief moment, her gaze flickered to the magic sword at my waist.
She seemed to realize I wasn’t an ordinary adventurer and grew cautious.
“You’re famous. I’ve heard a lot of rumors. Like how you’re the strongest Sword Saint on the continent or how you once fought a thousand enemies alone.”
“Those are exaggerations. People just have strange fantasies because an old elf wields a sword.”
Her pointed ears and emerald-green eyes stood out.
Her soft golden hair shimmered under the sunlight, and her porcelain-like skin was smooth as silk.
Her beauty was captivating enough to draw anyone’s attention.
By appearance alone, she looked like a girl in her late teens.
However, the sharp gleam in her eyes revealed the traces of a long-lived existence.
An elf.
She was the Sword Saint I had been searching for, someone who had roamed countless battlefields for hundreds of years.
“I’ve come to learn swordsmanship. Be my master.”
Usually, it’s the master who chooses the disciple, but here, the disciple was trying to choose the master.
Rain raised an eyebrow as if finding it absurd.
But soon her expression turned serious.
“No.”
She refused outright.
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