"Haha!"
Seeing the Sword Emperor's fallen arm, Su-ho burst out laughing without meaning to.
It worked.
The sword he had been swinging while calculating in his head had finally succeeded, amid the intersection of countless calculations, in finding the optimal answer.
The result was cutting off the Sword Emperor's arm.
At last, the blocked sluice gate had opened.
Clank—
The Sword Emperor, making the sound of rusty joints, picked up the arm that had fallen to the ground.
More precisely, he picked up the sword attached to the hand of the fallen arm.
Unfortunately, the Sword Emperor had had the arm he was swinging the sword with cut off.
But the bastard did not let out a single scream or even a single groan. He immediately picked up the sword and resumed the vicious exchange.
However, the exchange that followed was not particularly impressive compared to the fight that had continued right up until then.
More precisely, the quality had dropped sharply compared to before.
To the point that you could believe he was a completely different swordsman.
The reason?
It was simple.
Su-ho was right-handed, and Su-ho Sword was a sword art made for himself as a right-handed swordsman.
Of course, the current Su-ho knew how to use both hands.
He had trained so that he could use both hands like his dominant hand, in preparation for extreme situations where no one could know what might happen, where, or how.
The same was true of Su-ho Sword.
The sword art itself had been made so that it didn't matter whether the user was left-handed or right-handed.
But the original Su-ho Sword had unmistakably been a sword art created by Su-ho when he was still right-handed and unable to use both hands.
That was why, now that the right arm forming its foundation had been cut off, the Sword Emperor before him could no longer reproduce the original Su-ho one hundred percent.
In contrast, Su-ho, looking at himself reflected in the Sword Emperor, was busy evolving in real time and finding weaknesses.
So from round two onward, it was only natural that it stopped being a fight.
Was that why?
Slash!
A heavy sound of cutting.
Su-ho's sword swung like light.
It drew a long, threadlike line through the air like a meteor, and wherever it swept past, everything split apart and left no trace behind.
The Sword Emperor's neck was no different.
Where Su-ho's sword had swept past, nothing remained.
Soon, it was right after the Sword Emperor's neck fell to the floor.
[ Nameless Swordsman's Battlefield has been deactivated. ]
A short system alert.
And then.
"......"
Silence.
Nothing happened at all.
What?
At the very least, I thought a kill notification would appear.
The Sword Emperor was still collapsed on the floor with his neck cut off.
Since no kill notification had appeared, then was he still alive?
It was then.
Kigigigigi—
The Sword Emperor's body, which he had assumed was dead, suddenly began moving with the sound of rusty joints.
Su-ho sprang back in a jump.
Then the fallen Sword Emperor's body rose, and the severed arm and head floated up and reattached themselves like some combining robot.
Light returned to the extinguished glow in his eyes as well.
The Sword Emperor, his restoration complete, spoke in a rough, easygoing voice.
- Whew, finally got connected.
"Connected?"
- Ah, good to meet you. This is our first time meeting face to face, right? I'm Sword Demon. The master who passed Vacuum Style on to you, that's what I'm saying.
[ The Constellation Sword Demon reveals his true name. ]
"......!"
Su-ho's eyes widened.
He had finally learned it.
The name of the being who had been like a true master, the one who had led him onto the genuine path of the sword.
After thinking about what he should do, Su-ho showed proper respect.
"It's an honor to meet you. My name is An Su-ho."
- Hahahaha! So you do know some manners if you're being this respectful to your master? Good. Nice to meet you. First, shall we walk a bit?
"Yes, understood."
The owner of Vacuum Style, Sword Demon.
He had never imagined that his true name would actually be Sword Demon.
Because there were much better titles like Sword God, Sword Sovereign, or Sword Saint.
Following Sword Demon, Su-ho began walking along the narrow path laid out like a walking trail.
As they began walking, Sword Demon said in a deeply moved voice,
- What should I call you?
"Whatever you're comfortable with is fine."
- Hm, then rather than by name, since you're carrying on the lineage of my sword art, I want to call you disciple. What do you think?
"I like that."
- Right? Then I'll call you disciple. Ah! Disciple, you don't know. You have no idea how long I've been waiting for this moment! It really took far too long. All that time, holed up gloomily by myself in some corner with a magnifying glass, watching sword-wielding bastards who had neither talent nor promise—there's no way you could ever know how miserable that was.
He was more cheerful and talkative than expected.
That made him surprising.
Because if he were ever to meet the owner of Vacuum Style someday, Su-ho had imagined he would be a man with the feel of a very lonely, quiet wolf.
"Were you very lonely?"
- Of course I was lonely! You know, people say that in the end life is something you live alone, and that you have to adapt to that solitude, but this loneliness is just something you really can't do anything about. Still, I wasn't completely lonely. Because I had you.
"Me?"
- Yeah, you. You're one of the very few who found my stigmata and carried on my will.
By stigmata, he was probably referring to the old sword the Nameless Swordsman had possessed, the Nameless Sword.
Through that, Su-ho had become the inheritor of Vacuum Style.
But very few?
Then did that mean there were others besides me?
"When you said very few, does that mean that among the others besides me, no one ever came here?"
- No one. They succeeded in finding my stigmata and mastering the technique, but no one made it this far.
"Why not?"
- Why else? Because every last one of them died before they had the qualifications.
"Ah."
A simpler reason than expected.
I thought there might be some special reason.
For example, that their swordsmanship wasn't good enough or something like that.
'That's such a realistic reason I don't even know what to say.'
When Su-ho chuckled, Sword Demon laughed too.
- I used to think that way once too. That in the world the sword was supreme, and swordsmanship was the strongest martial art. That as long as you had a sword and effort, magic and supernatural powers would all be useless in front of me.
"But after you actually experienced it, that wasn't the case?"
- Half and half.
"Half and half?"
- Because I achieved it, I thought that meant it was true. But no one besides me—no, not even a single person—could follow in my footsteps. That was when I realized it. In this world, the only existence that could do everything with nothing but the sword was me alone.
"......?"
How did the conclusion turn out like that?
But at that unexpected conclusion, Su-ho's eyes widened even more.
"Then are you saying you accomplished everything with a single blade?"
- Yeah. To be exact, later on I didn't even need a blade. Because I myself became the blade. You know that well from experiencing it once too, don't you?
How could he forget it?
The body itself is the sword.
And the sword itself is the body.
The state of Unity of Body and Sword, longed for by all who pursued the sword.
It had been born as the Formless Sword, his first and greatest realization in life, something he had used like a gamble before the regression in order to cut down those traitorous bastards.
Even now, Su-ho had not forgotten that sensation from back then.
Because it had been a feeling he had experienced for the first time in his life, the kind of feeling that words could never dare fully describe.
- To be honest, I still don't understand it even now. In the end, the essence of swordsmanship all gathered together is the Vacuum Style I created, so after I went to the trouble of passing on Vacuum Style, why is it that none of them train Vacuum Style, and instead they're all busy learning other things?
"What?"
- Why, does that sound unbelievable? You're the same, brat. I've been watching you the whole time, and after I went to the trouble of giving you Vacuum Style, instead of training the swordsmanship you were supposed to train, you've just been busy learning other sinister arts and miscellaneous tricks.
"That's......"
- Because swordsmanship alone isn't enough? Hey, you little punk, think about it carefully. Your overall growth rate might be faster now, but wasn't the version of you before the regression the one whose actual skill increased and whose very self grew stronger compared to now?
"......!"
Su-ho's eyes widened.
Su-ho was shocked twice by Sword Demon's words.
One was the fact that he knew Su-ho was a regressor, and the other was because, just as he said, it really had been his previous life in which the person himself had grown stronger.
'Certainly, all I've done now is grow quickly because I know all the information.'
This life, where by preempting and monopolizing the fortuitous encounters of others, only I had grown stronger rather than other people.
Of course, he did not regret that choice.
Because thanks to it, fewer people who should have died had died, fewer people who should have been injured had been injured, and the number of people who should have been unhappy had greatly decreased.
And that wasn't all. If it hadn't been for growth like this, he would probably have remained forever ignorant of the secrets of Transcendents and Player ranks as well.
But is that a bad thing?
After thinking for a moment, Su-ho said,
"So then, Master, did you win the indie game?"
- What?
"You said you reached the ultimate realm through swordsmanship and achieved everything there was to achieve, so then why are you here now? If you achieved everything, shouldn't you also have won the indie game?"
- I can't enter the indie game.
"Why not?"
- Why else? Because I'm not originally from a Player background. I'm originally a native god, a Demi-Constellation. I raised my successors well enough to climb all the way to the seat of a Constellation, but that was all. So it's not a lie when I say I achieved everything that can be done through swordsmanship.
"What, seriously? I thought you'd at least won the indie game."
- Hey, you little punk! I want to go there too! But what am I supposed to do if I don't qualify?! If I'd only been able to enter, I would've won it a hundred times over and then some.
"Come on, the indie game can't be that easy."
- Sure, just like you said, it probably isn't easy. That's why I want to challenge it even more.
Sword Demon's eyes shone.
Looking at that gaze made Su-ho think of Heracles after becoming a Constellation.
The one who had wanted to keep fighting endlessly and had even bet on Su-ho.
Sword Demon seemed to be that type too.
Sword Demon continued.
- Still, I don't think what I said was wrong. Right now, instead of choosing life as a swordsman, you've chosen to be a healer and stayed busy arming yourself with other fortuitous encounters, but before the regression, you had only one path you could take, so you grabbed that path and struggled like mad to break through your limits somehow, didn't you? So if we're talking about which version of you was able to make the human himself stronger, then yes, it was the you before the regression.
"That's true. But back then, just like you said, that was my only option, so that's why I did it. But now my options have broadened, so why would I deliberately act stubborn? My goal isn't to pursue the honor of being a swordsman. My goal is to save my world as a Player."
- You're right too. I'm just grumbling because I find it regrettable. In the world I lived in, I was the one and only god of swordsmanship.
What's wrong with a god of swordsmanship insisting on swordsmanship-first supremacy?
But a god of swordsmanship?
Su-ho tilted his head.
"But if you're the god of swordsmanship, shouldn't your name be Sword God?"
- Who says that? The name Sword Demon is my renown that continued from when I was still human.
"You were originally human?"
- Then what, did you think I was a god from birth? Well, there are bastards who were gods from birth, sure, but I was the strongest swordsman in the history of my world. That's why even after I died, I was praised for generations and generations and was able to become a divine existence.
Suddenly, Guan Yu of China came to mind.
Guan Yu had also been a human general in history, but in modern times he was revered almost like a god.
- But after a long time passed, the system encroached on my world and revived me again as the god of swordsmanship. That's how I became a Constellation of native-god origin without ever obtaining a Player rank.
So that's the story behind it.
At that moment, Sword Demon's eyes shone once again.
- For that reason, I have absolutely no intention of ever losing you. Because you're my greatest hope.
"My greatest hope?"
- Among all the successors I passed Vacuum Style on to, you're the only one who came to meet me. So keep getting stronger. And win the indie game! Then I'll be able to make a wish too. In that sense, from now on, I'll teach you personally.
"Personally?"
- Yeah, personally!
As Sword Demon continued speaking, a terrifying yearning blazed in his eyes.
