[345] Divine Transcendence (2)
"Form a perimeter!"
Forty soldiers closed up, forming a circle. When you couldn't identify the enemy, the most important thing was not to be picked off one by one.
Kuan finally made out the foe.
Twenty meters away a pitch-black veil shimmered, and white masks flipped up one after another, revealing faces.
"What the—?"
Those in owl-like masks swirled like a vortex at a point, then snapped into triangular formation.
Srrr!
Thirty drew their swords at once, but the sound was a single note. Seeing them stand perfectly still in identical stances with blades leveled, Kuan remembered the briefings from his commander training.
"No way..."
The Pungjang — the continent's greatest sword unit.
'Why is the Pungjang here?'
The Pungjang served as the royal guard to Empress Teraje of the Kashan Empire. If they'd appeared, there was one likely reason: the leader of the Dark Cult, Kointla, was under Teraje's protection.
"What are you planning, Kashan?"
"You'll find out when you go to the afterlife..."
The Pungjang's trademark collective murderous intent surged outward.
"You'll see."
"AAARGH!"
A soldier from his platoon screamed. Even to Kuan it felt like an overwhelming aura of killing. No ordinary soldier—no matter how veteran—could stand against that.
"Damn it!"
Kuan pushed off the ground and charged. The Pungjang scattered like wind and reformed. Dozens of blades multiplied into thousands of afterimages; his body moved as if gravity no longer applied.
'Damn. How many external gravity points are there?'
Their skill was astonishing. They turned human bodies into fluid dynamics. Direction dissolved; it felt like dividing blades in the middle of weightlessness.
But the ones truly surprised were the Pungjang.
'This is taking long. How many swings has he made?'
'About twenty-three thousand.'
Very few could endure a thousand strikes from the Pungjang's swordplay. In other words, most beings would be shredded in a second.
'How mischievous the gods are.'
If the world were a perfect place, every creature would be content as a mere small beast. But nature always throws up a 0.1 percent mutation. That 0.1 percent reduces the remaining 99.9 percent to irrelevance.
'A being born by chance... specially chosen.'
That was the impression one of the Pungjang felt toward Kuan.
Technique, finesse, bodily balance, mastery of gravity, the imagination to open new routes.
'This man is a genius.'
No sooner had that thought formed than the Pungjang spread like wings and reformed into a gale, coiling around Kuan like a snake.
'I'll kill a genius.'
Their blades filled every inch of space. They were so fast they felt slow.
"Charge! Charge! Forward!"
At that moment the platoon lunged. The instant they entered the Pungjang's radius, their flesh was ground like meat caught in a machine. Kuan slipping out of the sword barrier was almost instinct.
'This is insane...!'
An old man named Kobi—the oldest in the company—passed by Kuan at the end. There was no time for farewells, but his smiling eyes said a thousand things.
'Live. Captain.'
Watching his unit slaughtered in an instant, Kuan understood why they had to die.
'I see. At least one of us must get out.'
He had to report Kashan's involvement to command. Otherwise more search parties would walk into the Pungjang's trap.
'This is the best choice. If someone has to live, I'm the most likely.'
Using external gravity to put distance between himself and the assault, Kuan looked impassively at the black storm sweeping through the darkness. Men he'd known less than a day—hadn't even exchanged looks—were gone.
'Why...?'
Something hot stirred inside him. From a place he'd thought held only cold ashes, a great blaze flared.
"Why the hell! Damn you!"
Kuan burst his external gravity and leapt forward; the Pungjang who had scattered like feathers reformed into triangular ranks twenty meters away.
"You—don't expect to all come back alive."
They didn't answer. Their minds were busy with an unforeseen complication.
'Mission failed.'
No—failure had nearly come to pass.
If Kuan had decided to run, the Pungjang couldn't have caught him. By refusing to flee, forty trivial lives forced the continent's greatest sword unit into an irreversible precedent.
The Pungjang leader at the front slowly raised a hand and removed her mask; Kuan's brow twitched. Beneath sparse brows and thick lids, a woman's narrow eyes were revealed.
"It's the first time anyone living has seen the Pungjang's face."
"So what? You expecting me to be impressed?"
"Join the Pungjang. We will guide you."
It was a stunning offer, even for Kuan, a man recognized across the world. They were direct retainers of Teraje, one of the Three Sovereigns. Accepting would catapult any swordsman to the very top.
Kuan finally sheathed his sword and slung it over his shoulder.
"I refuse."
The woman tilted her head slightly. What swordsman would turn down the Pungjang? He must have lost his sense of reality after seeing his comrades die.
"It's regrettable your men died. But a new future awaits you. Don't bury your talent in the past."
Kuan snorted. No matter how great the Pungjang were, there couldn't be two bests under the sky.
"Don't be mistaken. My men simply fulfilled their duty as soldiers. The fool is the commander who let his emotions take over."
"Then why refuse?"
Kuan's blade rose again, aimed at the woman's brow.
"I've wondered for a long time—don't you find it shameful? You cut people down in packs and then call yourselves the strongest."
"...So it's a split, then."
The woman donned her owl mask. At once thirty Pungjang dispersed like wind and surged at Kuan.
'Wait. At least I'll take one with me.'
If he betrayed his men's hope and failed even to make company for the road to the afterlife, how could he raise his head there?
Kuan sent his external gravity out in all directions and plunged into the Pungjang's storm. The movements masters of external gravity produced were more art than battle.
'I see. The answer was surprisingly simple.'
Kuan vaulted a wall. He reached a realm accessible only because he'd stopped caring to live. For once, even the Pungjang grew tense. The eerie shriek of dozens of blades made the ghost forest tremble.
'Are blades this beautiful?'
At the height of exhilaration Kuan's blade cut through the arc. A Pungjang's neck separated from the body; another heart halted, impaled by the blade.
'Two. That's worth the price.'
Wwoooooooo!
The Pungjang's flow exploded like turbulent air as they realized comrades had died. Two killed at once was an exceedingly rare thing in their history.
Kuan watched their fury tear forward as a scorching wind, detached and calm. They did not kill him. Instead, they sliced his Achilles tendon like filleting a fish.
"AAARGH!"
Kuan screamed. Not from the pain, but because the instant of realization swept away everything that made him who he was—his recent insight included—when thirty grams of flesh were cut away.
His epithet, "the battlefield magician," came from his uncanny ability to take throats anywhere, but that relied on genius-level mobility and activity.
No Achilles tendon, no genius. He was no longer the battlefield magician.
"Gruuuu...!"
Kuan couldn't stand. He couldn't rise. Still, he crawled, dragging himself up the mountainside. The Pungjang's lament circled him. Thirty voices, each uttering a single syllable, would be impossible to forget in a lifetime.
- You've become nothing but vermin.
Kuan kept crawling. He'd lost everything; death no longer frightened him. But he couldn't abandon his forty men and surrender his life.
- Struggle like an insect!
"AAARGH! Shut up!"
- Bark like a dog!
"Kill! Kill them!"
- Confess to your master. Say the Pungjang spared you. Wag your tail and snitch.
The Pungjang's wind grew, and the sound of burning rose. To Kuan the world felt like it was aflame.
Face pressed to the dirt, he clenched his fists. He couldn't hold on any longer. He couldn't stop his lifelong conviction from plunging into the abyss.
"AAAAAAAAAA!"
Kuan's howl echoed through the ghost forest where the Pungjang had vanished.
"..."
He opened his eyes. His face was still impassive, but cold sweat beaded on his brow.
"Damn it."
Pinned by the nightmare, he couldn't even twitch a finger. After dreaming of the Pungjang it was always like this—ten minutes of being stiff as a corpse. Just like the day ten years ago when his Achilles was severed.
Kuan crawled out of the ghost forest, lost consciousness upon returning, and was urgently evacuated to Tormia.
He reported that Teraje was sheltering the Dark Cult, but as expected it didn't change the political situation.
The search battalion lingered around the mountain range for about a month, skirmishing inconclusively, then disbanded.
There seemed to have been some agreement with the Kashan Empire, but that was politics—none of Kuan's business.
He could not be a hero. The incident faded into history without even the Pungjang's name being mentioned.
The military offered him command of a cavalry battalion. Effectively a two-rank promotion, but he knew it was a payoff to keep him quiet.
Kuan chose discharge. His mind had been shattered to the point he could no longer hold a sword.
For a while he lived like a wreck. Thinking of his men, he couldn't bring himself to commit suicide, and he had no proper support.
Then one day his only friend, Kiyora Elise, suggested he take a post at the Kaizen Swordsmanship School—and he did.
'Now things begin to move.'
Kuan swung his legs out of bed, limping, and walked to the window. He drew back the curtain; morning light fell on the battered desk.
Countless papers lay scattered.
"Psychoanalytic Perspectives on Psychic Transcendence Phenomena," "Iconoplasty," "Correlation Between Will and Phenomenon"—different titles, the same theme.
Notes he'd scribbled himself were stuck to the desk's corner.
He looked at them with dry eyes, swept them with his hand, and sent them fluttering away.
He'd gathered every document on psychic transcendence, and still he hadn't reached it. Saying that the will can move the body—that would do for now. But what, exactly, is "will"? He was still limping. No matter how he tried to walk properly, some things simply would not work.
'Ozent Rian.'
Who could have predicted it?
That the world-recognized genius Kuan couldn't do what a boy with no apparent talent could.
'He can't be a complete fool, can he?'
Kuan shook his head. He already knew the truth: his sword was broken. The moment his Achilles was cut, the god of the blade had turned away.
'Another year gone.'
Today was the last day of the latter term at the sword school. The test Kuan oversaw for his cadets was close combat—wrestling.
Even if Rian could use psychic transcendence, he couldn't hope to withstand the augmented strength of Schema users.
Today would probably be another miserable day for Kuan, but he was curious about the results of half a year's work.
* * *
Tess went into the locker room with the other female cadets in her group.
Wrestling required body-to-body contact, but the sword school didn't segregate by gender, so everyone had to strip their tops for evaluation.
Female cadets, however, were allowed to wear tank tops.
Tess was struggling to get hers on. She had a large frame and generous curves; she practically had to force her chest into it.