Chapter 25
—
Some time later. Dawn’s dim light crept up along the eastern sky.
The drill yard within the ducal manor where the House of Saxen’s retainer-knights trained.
Klang!
A spray of bright, ritual light scattered as it struck a bluish blade.
As the tips of a stiletto and a rapier crossed and tangled, they immediately sprang apart again.
Dale planted his foot to close the gap, and Charlotte — the daughter of the famed swordmaster — watched his movement narrowing the distance and struck back.
Klang!
The shadow of a blade swept with murderous intent.
Klang!
A flash of steel crossed once more.
Swish.
Before long the rapier’s blue point brushed the nape of Dale’s neck.
Yet the stiletto in Dale’s hand was likewise pressed to Charlotte’s chest in a mirrored counter.
A draw.
“You’ve gotten pretty good.”
After the bout, Dale smiled.
“Hmph — say it like you don’t have anything to do with it.”
Charlotte responded, pretending to be curt.
“You’re already in the 3rd Circle, and you cleared twenty floors in the Tower’s trial.”
Charlotte continued. “Ugh, people go on about ‘Young Master Dale’ all day long!”
On top of that, he led the retainer-knights to subdue monsters on the domain himself.
Though the duel had tilted toward an even contest between blade and blade, Dale was by no means a swordsman in the classical sense. And when facing Charlotte he deliberately did not use the ‘Shadow Mantle’ — a treasured piece suited for anti-cavalry fighting.
It was far too dangerous.
Dale’s way of handling a sword was a killing blade through and through. If he added the Shadow Mantle and went all out, even in a sparring match it would be hard to spare his opponent’s life.
So what Dale had shown in this match was probably no more than thirty percent — or slightly higher — of his true power.
Charlotte surely understood that as well.
A gap of talent impossible to bridge.
Yet, considering Charlotte’s mere ten years, her achievements were far from ordinary.
The daughter of the renowned sword — a genuinely fitting word for the talent and rate of growth in her swordsmanship.
Her latent strength allowed her to overwhelm ‘sergeant’ knights who had devoted a decade or more to sword training long before they were even emotionally mature.
And yet even this prodigy could feel small beside the boy standing in front of her.
Dale of Saxen — the empire’s foremost genius.
“Don’t worry too much.”
Even so, Dale spoke.
“You’ll get stronger too, Charlotte.”
He twirled the stiletto’s hilt and sheathed it.
“Strong enough to protect me.”
“W-what! Treating me like a child again…”
Charlotte puffed her cheeks in mock sulk at Dale’s words.
“You are a child.”
“You are a child too!”
“Me?”
Dale gave a mischievous smile and tilted his head.
After the tilt he answered triumphantly. “I’m already all grown up.”
It was the single most childish thing anyone could say.
—
—
“When cavalry are deployed on a unit’s wings — or on one wing — to play the role of the ‘hammer’ in battle….”
Small chess-piece models were lined up on the large wooden table.
Sir Helmut pushed forward the knight-shaped chess pieces placed at the far edges of the unit.
“The ideal is to break through the enemy’s wing and, by flanking, form an encirclement.”
A formation where the wings concentrated with cavalry strike through the enemy’s flanks and complete an enveloping maneuver.
In crude terms: eat them up.
“In short, highly mobile cavalry with superior firepower break through the opponent’s wing and succeed in the envelopment—”
“—and meanwhile a blocking force of infantry holds back the enemy’s cavalry (the hammer) from breaking through. That’s the key.”
“Exactly, Young Master Dale.”
Helmut smiled with satisfaction at Dale’s reply.
This tactic is only possible when cavalry superiority is assured. In that respect, the ‘Black Cavalry’ the House of Saxen boasted was undoubtedly one of their finest pieces.
“Based on this tactic, the ancient commander Varka annihilated the Roman Empire’s large force, nearly twice his size.”
In any world, the broad outlines of war don’t differ much: hammer-and-anvil tactics, and the Lanchester laws.
Helmut then moved the model pieces and added explanations about how decisions change according to terrain, numerical differences, soldier quality, and the composition of arms.
Decisions vary with time and circumstance.
“…Come to think of it.”
Near the end of Helmut’s lesson, Dale spoke up casually.
“How is Charlotte’s training going?”
He thought of this afternoon’s duel with Charlotte.
“She is far from being comparable to you, but truly astonishing.”
Helmut answered proudly, unable to hide his pride as a teacher.
“She already has the framework of a blade-form. It’s early, but we will soon formally teach her the Saxen house’s aura-breath method and sword style.”
Dale nodded as if he had expected as much. “If she learns to properly harness aura through the breathing method, she’ll be—probably within no time—dozens of times stronger than now.”
Not mere tens of times; dozens.
Charlotte’s growth pace exceeded what he had imagined. It was only obscured behind Dale’s shadow that people failed to notice it.
“…But there is one thing that worries me.”
At that moment, Helmut, uncharacteristically, trailed off. Dale guessed what he meant and asked.
“Is it about the compatibility between Charlotte and our swordsmanship?”
Helmut inhaled as if taken aback.
He’d hit the nail on the head.
Dale had that very thought in mind when he tested Charlotte and reported back to Helmut.
Just as a mage refines mana into magical power through the Heart Circle, a knight can process and accumulate mana into ‘aura’ using a breathing method.
And just as mages build their schools as Towers of Magic, knights pass on their swords and styles through orders and knightly houses.
Knights serving lesser nobles often haven’t even mastered proper breathing methods; at best they are lifted by being under great houses and their standards rise accordingly.
Major nobles — particularly those of the stature of the Duke of Saxen — preserve their own lines and traditions led by master swordsmen, even if the noble himself has taken a path unrelated to swordsmanship.
The Night Raven Knights of northern Saxen, the Order of Saint Magdalena of the House of Brandenburg, the Iron Cross Knights directly under the imperial house…
And as Sir Helmut’s epithet ‘the Mad Sword’ suggests, the northern knights’ doctrine is rooted in sheer force: a heavy-sword school.
The ‘Black Cavalry’ that charges like a war-chariot and shatters the battlefield.
By level, it is ranked among the continent’s top five houses.
The problem lay in Charlotte’s chosen swordsmanship: a quick-sword style that emphasizes speed, a flowing sword.
The breathing method and the core principle of a sword are inseparable; accepting the Saxen breathing method effectively means inheriting the northern knights’ school.
Of course, that doesn’t force Charlotte to swap her rapier for a hulking greatsword. At first glance it might not seem significant.
But that subtle difference would increasingly hold Charlotte back as her skill improved.
“Considering Charlotte’s talent, she might somehow reach the lower ranks of the Seven Swords.”
But only up to that point. She would never reach the pinnacle — the ‘First Sword.’
The summit of the Seven Blades: the very position Charlotte’s father once held.
What Dale hoped for Charlotte was something she could not even imagine in her present form.
“Sword of Blossom …….”
Dale murmured the name, and Helmut’s expression hardened.
Once, the greatest sword art practiced by Sir Badel, Charlotte’s father — the land’s most powerful swordsmanship. The aura refined through his breathing method bloomed with a plum-like purple, hence the name.
“…It has been entirely lost since the fall of the knightly state.”
Helmut said regretfully.
Dale nodded wordlessly. Then he looked at the chess pieces on the table.
At the knight piece — the man he had felled with his own hand; he thought of Charlotte’s father.
A mounted knight piece.
Knight.
Had Sir Badel truly not foreseen his homeland’s destruction and the complete disappearance of his sword art?
‘Did his sword truly vanish from this world?’
As a swordsman himself, could the noblest knight of that world really accept the total erasure of his art with such indifference?
—
—
The time to prove his learning came sooner than expected.
He learned swordsmanship, then magic, then magic again, then military strategy.
A grind so packed it felt as if ten bodies would not be enough.
While also taking part in the manor’s monster hunts, as Dale steadily raised his worth, a minor lord under the Saxen banner requested aid from the ducal house.
“—The neighbouring Baron of Perker has filed a claim in a domain dispute saying your copper mine belongs to him?”
At such an absurd claim, the Duke of Saxen could hardly conceal his disbelief.
“Y-yes.”
In this world, borders between states and domains were often fuzzier than one might think. That ambiguity was sometimes used as a weapon to assert unjust claims.
But to bully a lesser noble who was bound to a great house as a vassal was a different matter entirely.
That was tantamount to directly challenging the great lord himself.
And the opponent in question was none other than the greatest northern magnate, the House of Saxen.
‘Even if Baron Perker is a brigand-knight who lucked into his title…’
He wasn’t so foolish as to be unable to foresee consequences.
“Yes. Furthermore, if I refuse and contest the domain case—”
As expected, after a short silence the minor lord continued hesitantly.
“—a letter arrived from Grand Count of Brandenburg saying he will send the Order of Saint Magdalena in exchange for a share of the copper mine.”
He produced a parchment bearing the Holy Sword Knight’s signature from his robe.
The Order of Saint Magdalena — the empire’s war-heroes and the Holy Sword’s most formidable knights.
The name froze the air for a moment.
‘Of course they would do it this way.’
Dale gave a bitter smile as if he had expected it.
The Holy Sword could not forget the humiliation he had suffered at the hands of the Black duke that day.
Yet he could not openly wage war on House Saxen. So he sought petty revenge in such a petty way.
Moreover, the contested border lay where the northern and central regions of the empire met — on the very periphery of the north, where the Duke of Saxen’s influence was not absolute.
And crucially, a domain war is not a fight to the death of the opponent’s state; under the constraints that forbade reckless use of the Black Magic Tower’s power, it would be a straight fight fought fairly with spear and sword — a contest where the Holy Sword might be confident of victory.
“Father.”
After assessing the situation, Dale spoke.
“Let me lead this battle myself, together with the knights of House Saxen.”
“…Dale.”
“It seems, like Sir Helmut said, the time to carry out a domain war has finally come.”
A crisis is an opportunity; there was no need to belabor that point.
This was a perfect chance to make the Holy Sword feel a humiliation greater than the one his father had shown him that day.
It was a fight they could try, and a fight they could win.
