Chapter 19

Mad Swordsman of the Shadow World (19)

Boom!

The instant the two swords crossed.

The world slowed down.

Theron could see everything.

Isaac’s mana condensed at the tip of his sword.

The trajectory carrying the elasticity of his entire body, his weight, and everything he possessed.

If he blocked it head-on, his wrist would give out, and if he dodged, there would be no next chance.

‘So.’

He would neither block nor dodge.

Theron’s wooden sword touched the side of that trajectory as if merely brushing against it.

Crack!

Isaac’s full power slid along the grain and lost its destination.

And at the end of that flow, Theron’s sword slipped in like a fish swimming upstream.

Slice.

The sound of wood being cut.

The two boys stopped with their backs turned to each other, still in the posture from passing by one another.

The small stones on the ground sprang up belatedly, and dust spread outward in a circle.

“...”

Silence.

The first thing to move was Isaac’s wooden sword.

Clatter.

More precisely, the front half of the wooden sword.

The upper portion of the wooden sword, cut cleanly at an angle, fell to the ground and rolled.

Thud.

Then Isaac dropped to one knee.

“Cough...!”

His body had been emptied after squeezing out every last bit of strength.

And against the back of his neck, he could feel the cool touch of wood.

It was Theron’s wooden sword.

“...I lost.”

Isaac said between ragged breaths.

Rather than frustration, an incredulous laugh came first.

“That last move... you redirected it?”

“If I had blocked it, my wrist would’ve given out.”

“Ha, you monster.”

Theron withdrew his wooden sword.

Only then did Isaac lie flat on the ground and begin breathing heavily.

The boy’s chest rose and fell like a bellows as he stared up at the night sky.

“In my life... this is the first time.”

“What is?”

“That I lost even after giving everything I had.”

At those words, Theron quietly looked down at his fingertips.

The weight of that final strike still lingered in the tingling sensation.

To think Isaac at fourteen was already this strong.

‘Well... I suppose that’s only natural.’

He had possessed this much talent, which was why he had eventually reached such a realm.

Within the Shadow Knight Order, Isaac had been the only one capable of fighting Theron on equal footing.

If he had not run into the limitations of the Darkfin mana cultivation method and had not been affected by the Death Sigil.

‘This guy too...’

He would have reached a much higher realm.

And in this life...

‘I’ll make sure you do, Isaac.’

There was more for Theron to do now, but he felt good.

Because he had witnessed the growth of a comrade who could accompany him toward his future goal.

But then.

Isaac, who had been lying flat on the ground, sat up and soon held something out from inside his clothes.

“Take it.”

What Isaac handed over was a token engraved with Section 3’s emblem.

Not one he had stolen, but his own token.

“It’s the rule. The loser has to hand it over.”

Then Isaac stood up and spoke to Theron.

“But fight me one more time later.”

“Later?”

“You didn’t show everything today.”

Isaac’s eyes gleamed sharply in the darkness.

They were not the eyes of a loser.

“Even when you redirected that last strike, your eyes weren’t rushed at all. I gave everything I had, but you... didn’t.”

“...”

“So this is a debt. Next time, I’ll make you bring out everything. I’ll repay you properly then.”

Theron looked down at Isaac in silence for a moment.

Eyes that had not broken even after defeat.

The tenacity to use defeat as nourishment for the next time.

‘...Right. You were always that kind of guy.’

A faint smile passed across Theron’s lips.

“Suit yourself.”

“You promised?”

“I didn’t promise anything.”

“You did. You just smiled.”

His stubbornness had not changed either.

When Theron turned away, Isaac’s voice flew after him from behind.

“Hey, Theron.”

“...”

“Tell Section 5 that this exam was fun. And tell them that in the next exam... we’ll come after you first.”

“Tell them yourself.”

“Haha! Fine, I will.”

Leaving Isaac’s hearty laughter behind, Theron quickly moved into the darkness.

The exam was not over yet.

_______________

“...”

The place where Theron and Isaac had disappeared.

There was someone watching from atop a high cliff overlooking the rocky area.

A man in a black uniform.

He was one of the enforcers assigned to supervise the exam.

“...I’ll have to report this.”

The enforcer’s voice was low.

He had thought supervising a trainee exam would be a boring assignment.

Even when he first saw the duel between the two trainees clearly from atop the cliff, he had assumed it was merely a common fight between children.

But...

‘Isaac of Section 3. The one even the instructors call the greatest talent of this class...’

Had been completely overwhelmed without being able to do anything.

And by a trainee from Section 5 whose name he had never even heard.

The enforcer engraved the image of the boy disappearing into the darkness into his memory.

The strange part was not merely who had won or lost.

‘That movement at the end...’

It had been far away, and it was night.

He had not been able to see it precisely, but thanks to more than ten years of experience, he had clearly seen one thing.

‘That swordsmanship he used earlier...’

It was not something taught here.

His gaze, which had been fixed on one spot, soon turned quickly elsewhere.

________________

Bwooooo!

The trumpet announcing the end of the exam echoed throughout the test grounds.

The forest that had been immersed in darkness all night revealed its bare face along with the morning mist.

Broken branches.

Footprints stamped everywhere and fragments of wooden swords scattered across the ground.

Leaving behind the battlefield of a single night, the trainees dragged their exhausted bodies toward the assembly point.

Some limped, while others were supported by companions as blood dripped from their bodies.

There were even those who had lost all their tokens and lowered their heads with half-dazed, despairing expressions.

In a single night, the test grounds had sharply divided the fortunes of the five sections.

“Look at Section 1... they’re practically half dead.”

“I heard they tore into Section 3 all night. And apparently no one even knows where all their tokens disappeared to in the middle of it.”

“Sections 2 and 4 got caught up in that mess too, so they supposedly have almost nothing left.”

The trainees’ whispers drifted low across the misty assembly point.

And those whispers turned into a strange silence the moment one group arrived.

Section 5.

The members who had been scattered throughout the forest gradually rejoined one another, forming a line nearly fifty strong.

Not a single one was seriously injured, and if anything, there was strength in their steps.

“...What the hell is with them? Why are they fine?”

“Did Section 5 spend the whole night hiding somewhere?”

The simple fact that the last-place section had returned in the best condition was an upset in itself.

“Theron!”

Near the assembly point.

Renil came running while waving his hand, followed by Perka, Tioren, and the other members of Section 5.

“You bastard, where the hell were you? Why are you only showing up now!”

“You guys made it back safely too.”

“Not just safely!”

Renil flipped open the front of his clothes and proudly shook a bundle of tokens.

“Twenty! We got twenty of them!”

Perka smiled and was about to add something when he suddenly examined Theron’s appearance.

His torn clothes.

The hair cut away beside his neck.

“...You fought someone.”

“Huh? Hey, don’t tell me.”

Renil’s eyes widened.

On the other side of the assembly point.

He could see Isaac approaching while being supported by the Section 3 trainees.

He was in a ragged state.

And yet, looking like that, Isaac grinned toward Theron and even waved his hand.

“...No way. It really happened.”

“You fought that monster and you’re still walking around just fine?”

The group members’ gazes turned toward Theron.

Meanwhile, the Section 3 trainees supporting Isaac had also frozen at that wave.

“Isaac... don’t tell me that guy beat you?”

“Yeah.”

“He’s from Section 5?”

“Yeah.”

At his far too casual admission, the faces of the Section 3 trainees turned pale.

Their king, Isaac, the one called the greatest talent in the training camp.

Had been defeated by an unknown trainee from Section 5, the perennial last-place section.

“I’d like to say... don’t spread it around.”

Isaac gave a faint laugh.

“Well, everyone will know soon enough anyway. That guy... isn’t the kind of person who can stay hidden.”

Theron answered with a shrug, then pulled a token from inside his clothes and tossed it to Perka.

Section 3’s emblem.

Perka let out a hollow laugh.

“...You actually brought this back.”

“Then we... really might.”

The end of his sentence trembled.

The tokens gathered throughout the night, the ones Theron had hunted down, and this three-point token.

The calculation in his head pointed to only one result.

And there was a man watching the scene from one side of the assembly point.

Bengle, the instructor in charge of Section 5.

“...Those bastards.”

Bengle’s eyes trembled faintly.

All the other sections were crawling back half-dead, while only his section’s trainees were perfectly fine.

Not merely fine, but with their clothes stuffed full of tokens.

‘No way... really?’

His wager with Theron.

The wager where he had said he would cut off both of Theron’s arms if they failed to place in the top three.

And that if they took first place, he would give him one weapon from the armory.

That ridiculous wager was becoming reality right before his eyes.

Bengle swallowed dryly and forced his expression to remain stiff.

‘No. We won’t know until the tally is finished. Don’t jump to conclusions.’

But he could not stop his heart from beating wildly.

The worst instructor.

That label that had clung relentlessly to his back was beginning to shake for the first time.

_______________

The observation tower overlooking the test grounds.

The instructors who had supervised through the night were compiling casualty reports from each section.

“Twelve injured in Section 1. Fourteen in Section 3... what the hell happened last night?”

“Apparently Section 1 and Section 3 clashed head-on. Both sides claim the other attacked first.”

But that did not matter.

Which side struck first was meaningless.

However...

“They say the Section 5 bastards stole a pile of tokens during the chaos and ran off.”

“Should tokens obtained by stealing really count toward the score...?”

“Can we really count tokens they cowardly stole?”

The atmosphere among the instructors grew heavier.

But...

“In an exam about collecting tokens, whether they fight or steal them, if you don’t count the tokens they gathered, what exactly are you planning to do?”

Amid the noisy commotion.

Berton spoke coldly to the instructors.

At those words.

“N-No, of course not. I was only wondering...”

“Naturally, they should count.”

The instructors hurriedly followed up.

But to Berton, the tokens were a trivial matter.

He looked at the enforcer beside him and spoke.

“What did you say?”

“Isaac of Section 3 was defeated. His opponent was a trainee from Section 5... a boy named Theron.”

“Theron.”

Berton repeated the name.

The boy who had endured a full week in the punishment room.

The one who, when everyone thought he had been broken, had emerged with eyes that were instead deeper than before... that boy.

The name he had been watching closely enough to even change the order of the exams had broken out far more noisily than expected.

Berton asked.

“Do you know how the fight went?”

“It was too far away to see the details... but.”

The enforcer hesitated briefly before continuing.

“Even after Isaac released his mana, he was overwhelmed one-sidedly. And that trainee’s swordsmanship... was not from the training camp. It is unlike any school I know.”

“...”

Berton turned his gaze out the window.

The trainees gathering at the assembly point.

Among them, one boy walking with unusual composure caught his eye.

‘He isn’t an unpolished gemstone...’

He is already a sharpened blade pretending to be raw stone.

Things that could not possibly come from a trainee who had not even been enrolled for half a year kept flowing out of that boy.

A cold smile appeared on Berton’s lips.

Suspicion had now become certainty.

Only one thing remained.

Who would be the one to wield that blade.

“Keep this matter quiet for now. Once the tally results come out... everyone will know anyway.”

“Yes.”

“And as soon as the tally is finished.”

Berton gave the order in a low voice.

“Bring Theron of Section 5... to me.”