A few days later.
After finishing my daily duties, I made my way to the location Professor Vilhelmine had sent me in a message.
I had no idea why she was willing to help me, but it was too valuable an opportunity to pass up.
I accepted without a second thought.
A wide, open hill.
A pleasant spot where a single tree stood alone, tall and solitary.
She was leaning on her sword with a candy in her mouth.
When I arrived, she drew the sword at her hip and tossed it to me.
I caught it without much trouble.
My stats had risen considerably — something like this was easy now.
"What is swordsmanship?"
"Uh… the art of wielding a sword?"
"That's the surface. I'm asking about the essence."
"…The technique of cutting down an opponent?"
"Close."
She raised her sword and sliced through the empty air.
"It is the technique of killing people."
Any knight who prized honor would have recoiled at those words.
"That is the essence of swordsmanship. Honor, artistry — none of that matters. What matters is that my blade severs my opponent's neck."
Swish.
While I stood there gaping, her sword had somehow come to rest at my throat.
"From this moment on, I will teach you the swordsmanship of killing. It is the only swordsmanship I know. Are you ready?"
*
Whenever people debated the greatest swordsmen alive, a handful of names always came up.
The Sword Saint, Sharlot.
An uncontested name. No one argued against Sharlot being the strongest.
But from second place onward, opinions diverged sharply.
The commander of Emperor Friedrich the Great's personal guard.
The "Hound," Chiten.
A fiend with a vicious hobby.
The "Cannibal Fiend," Tonika.
The solitary duke of the north.
The "Black Wolf," Vilhelmine.
Emperor Friedrich the Great had a daughter he cherished dearly.
He cherished her so much that he kept her confined to a remote white tower until she was eighteen.
But then something happened.
The princess had fallen for the commander of his personal guard. A secret love had blossomed within that tower.
The princess — his most precious treasure — had become pregnant.
Friedrich flew into a rage.
He had the commander's entire family annihilated, branded them with an indelible mark of disgrace, and drove them out.
Devastated by this, the princess pined for the commander and died in childbirth.
The girl born from that union had jet-black hair and blood-red eyes — the very image of her father.
The Emperor reportedly despised the girl for reminding him of the commander.
So he handed the child off to his own elder brother, whom he had exiled to the north, as though discarding her.
The frozen north, where all life was locked in cold.
A place crawling with monsters and bands of brigands — and that was where the girl grew up.
Her blade became as sharp as a wolf's fang.
Clang!
Professor Vilhelmine's sword shattered Matyos's stance. Her blade was relentless.
Not particularly fast, not particularly powerful — and yet Matyos couldn't find so much as a crack to counter through, let alone defend against her attacks.
Like a wolf that sinks its teeth in and refuses to let go.
Scrape.
"Ngh—!"
A blade flying straight for the opening she'd created.
Matyos scrambled to defend, but the sword slipped from his hand.
"You dropped your sword."
Professor Vilhelmine said, pulling the candy from her mouth.
"Weak grip strength."
"…Have you considered that you might simply be too strong, Professor?"
"I am matching your level of physical strength."
"And what level is that, exactly?"
"Much stronger than when I first saw you. Slightly above an average adult male."
"…How can you tell that so precisely?"
"Watch carefully, and one exchange of blades tells you everything."
Matyos flexed his aching hand and picked up the dropped sword.
His palm throbbed as though it might split open.
"Same strength, and yet — what exactly is different between us?"
"Too many things."
"…"
"That was a jest."
Her expression was far too serious for it to be a jest.
"Ahem. Broadly speaking, two things."
Professor Vilhelmine extended two fingers of her black-gloved hand.
"Footwork and sword path."
She planted her long legs wide apart.
"Footwork first. Its importance cannot be overstated even if you spent a whole night explaining it. Because all power originates from the ground beneath our feet."
Something similar had been written in Rosuka's secret manual, if I recalled correctly.
"Footwork is not merely the foundation of swordsmanship — it is the foundation of all martial arts. Master your feet, and you become formidable in every discipline."
"Is that true for you as well, Professor?"
"I am confident in most martial arts."
"Footwork…"
Even in boxing, footwork and stepping were the most fundamental elements. That's why they trained so much with jump rope. Apparently swordsmanship was no different.
"The second is sword path."
"What is that?"
"I'll show you."
Professor Vilhelmine gripped her sword with both hands and began to move.
Fluid lines embroidered themselves across the empty air. Her feet shifted lightly, her hips rotated smoothly, her shoulders turned with unhurried ease.
Her jet-black hair swayed.
'…Ah.'
Watching her swordsmanship with careful attention, Matyos caught a pattern.
'The sword is connected.'
Right to left, left to right, right to downward, downward to upward.
Each sharp strike flowed into the next without breaking, like a single unbroken line.
It looked like an infinite Möbius strip — endless, without beginning or end.
She ended with a downward slash and brought the endlessly flowing sword to a stop.
"This is the sword path."
"It never breaks — it just keeps connecting?"
"You saw it precisely. You have a good eye. That is exactly it."
"Is that so?"
"That is why the sword is called the perfect weapon. Unceasing combinations — from attack to defense, from defense to counter, from counter back to attack."
"How does one learn to do it?"
"That."
Shing.
Professor Vilhelmine raised her sword.
"I'll teach you by crossing blades."
* * *
"…Every bone in my body aches."
Matyos staggered as he walked.
Special training with Vilhelmine…
It had been extraordinary. There was no other word for it.
Nearly four hours of continuous sparring. By the time it ended, night had long since fallen.
An incredibly dense stretch of time.
Grueling as it was, it hadn't been wasted effort.
[Free Basic Swordsmanship Lv. 2 has increased to Free Basic Swordsmanship Lv. 4]
The swordsmanship skill, which had been silent for so long, had jumped two full levels at once.
'If I keep growing at this rate, saving Tiana won't be out of reach.'
All of this hardship was for her sake.
Not simply because of the story's script.
Personally — because I wanted her to have a happy ending.
I couldn't stand by and let her fall into Cardinal Teo's hands.
On the path from the hill where I'd trained with Professor Vilhelmine back to the dormitory, there was a chapel belonging to the theology faculty.
"…"
For no particular reason, I stopped in front of it.
The cross on the roof floated pale in the moonlight. A shape that grew sharper the deeper the darkness around it. It stood as though it had drawn every last scrap of light in the world to itself.
I felt vaguely unsettled.
As if that thing, without a single word, already knew everything about me.
I stared up at it for a long while, and then — unable to look away — I walked toward the door.
Creak.
It wasn't locked. The dry sound of old wood spread through the interior of the chapel.
The wide space breathed quietly. The few remaining candles flickered faintly, though there was no wind.
Darkness lay stretched long between the rows of pews. The places where human warmth had departed felt, strangely, larger for it.
Straight ahead.
A great cross.
I walked up to it and stopped. My feet felt fixed to the cold floor, unwilling to move.
"Just what are you, exactly."
My voice struck the empty space and came back to me. My own words sounded oddly foreign.
"If you hear my prayers — then this is what I would ask."
I clasped my hands together. An unfamiliar gesture.
I'd mimicked it as a child, the way children do, but I had never pressed my hands together with this kind of desperation.
I felt faintly ridiculous. Expecting something from a god I didn't even believe in.
Even so.
"Please. Let Tiana go."
I squeezed my eyes shut.
And sincerely — to a god I had never believed in — I prayed.
"…Mati."
The voice from behind me made my heart drop.
I turned. Tiana was standing there.
"Tiana."
Without a word, she walked over and stood beside me, closed her eyes, and clasped her hands in prayer.
"Please forgive this little lamb who does not believe in You. A foolish lamb who cannot see the path ahead — but a good and righteous one."
When that prayer ended, Matyos felt a tightness in his chest he couldn't explain.
The feeling of someone making excuses on your behalf — it was strangely, inexplicably sorrowful.
"…Tiana. What brings you here?"
"Just."
She smiled.
"I felt like coming. I didn't know you'd be here — but isn't this the place you hate most?"
A brief silence passed. One of the candles swayed long and slow.
"I don't hate it most."
"Is that what Mati told Taibeon?"
"…What?"
"I know everything. You asked Taibeon to stop me from practicing my faith."
I couldn't look away from her clear green gaze.
I hadn't thought something I'd tried to hide could be found out this easily.
"I'm sorry, Mati."
Tiana was still smiling, gently.
"I will never leave God."
The words were quiet, but solid. No persuasion, no justification. Spoken the way one states a simple fact.
He understood then, suddenly. Her faith was not a choice — it was already part of her life itself. Not the kind of thing that could be separated from her.
"Actually, this is good timing."
She added.
"There was something I wanted to tell you."
"…What?"
At that moment, the moonlight filtering through the stained glass fell a little more strongly. The shadow of the cross stretched long, draping over her shoulders and back.
As though the one standing within that shadow was not her, but the shadow itself.
"I'm going to withdraw from the academy."
"…What?"
"Cardinal Teo made a proposal. He said I should leave the secular world of the academy and become a nun."
"…"
"So. That's what I intend to do."
She smiled.
Brightly. Radiantly.
It was the most luminous smile I had ever seen from her.
And yet that brightness looked, somehow, distant. Like a light aimed in a direction different from my own.
"Like you're doing now. You'll pray for me, won't you? Mati."
Her eyes curved softly.