Chapter 12
Chapter 12
The flower that had bloomed wide was beautiful, but it was not only beautiful.
A beautiful flower could be beautiful because it held sharp thorns within.
When I came to my senses, Augustus’s new form and mine had crossed.
An exchange completed in an instant. I examined my body, but there was not a single wound anywhere.
In contrast.
“…This makes no sense.”
Augustus barely turned his body and looked at me with trembling eyes.
The rain of swords he had poured out did nothing more than slightly moisten the petals.
Not a single drop of rain had reached me, and instead, it was Augustus who had been intoxicated by the fully bloomed petals.
Pshhk-!
“…Kh.”
His shoulder split open and blood gushed forth. Beneath his staggering feet, vivid crimson blood spurted out and soon formed a small puddle.
“Y-Your Highness!”
Those who had been watching the spar in a daze finally seemed to come to their senses and hurriedly called for priests and mages, and Augustus was carried out while being supported by the knights.
“Hoo…….”
Until the moment he was taken down from the stage by the knights’ hands, Augustus kept staring at me with an expression that said he could not believe it.
As if he simply could not accept his defeat, he alternated his vacant gaze between the wound on his shoulder and me, who was completely unscathed.
“…The victor, Third Prince Leios von Ribera!”
A knight of the Royal Knights who had been acting as the referee declared the victory of the spar. It was not a completely self-made victory, but my chest swelling with emotion could not be helped.
“…….”
Despite the call proclaiming my victory, there was not a single person in the hall who cheered for me.
They only looked at me with faces filled with shock and disbelief.
There had been no trickery or hidden schemes in the spar just now.
Strength against strength, swordsmanship against swordsmanship—we had decided the outcome by pure skill, and I had won.
At least, that was how it would look in their eyes.
[…Ah, this is my limit now. I wasn’t even fully recovered, and I pushed myself too hard. Can’t you really take that ring off? Then I could use my power a bit more freely.]
Tyrfing spoke to me in an utterly exhausted voice.
‘…Should I?’
There were still two more spars left.
Carius and Darius would surely be even tougher opponents than Augustus.
I did not think I could win by swinging my sword while relying solely on my body.
But if my full power, freed from the curse of the Veil, were added together with Tyrfing’s help…….
“…Your Highness?”
“Huh?”
At the voice suddenly reaching my ears, I lifted my head.
Looking ahead with a blank gaze, I saw Parsi looking at me with a worried expression.
“Are you all right? You fought so fiercely.”
“…Ah.”
I stopped moving and looked down at my hand.
The curse of the Veil that had been on my ring finger was halfway slipped off, as if I had been about to remove it.
‘You bastard…….’
Seeing that made me feel as though cold water had been poured over my head.
A demonic sword was a demonic sword.
To think it would try to bewitch its master by taking advantage of us growing closer.
[What a shame.]
Tyrfing expressed her regret in a playful voice.
If I had taken the ring off, I would probably have had my mind eroded by her, lost my reason, and gone on a rampage.
The Emperor was here. No matter that I was a prince, if I were to draw my sword and charge forward, I would have no grounds to complain even if my head were chopped off on the spot for treason.
‘Is your goal to kill me?’
[Kill you? Who would? Humans who can wield me are extremely few. Do you think one appears every few decades—no, every hundred years? Why would I kill you? I merely turn you into a swordsman. A lovely swordsman who forever wields me, and only me.]
“…….”
At her mad words echoing in my head, I was left speechless.
Yes, that was right. Because she was such a demonic sword, even Leios had not been able to perfectly control her. If nothing else, he had even gone as far as ‘killing’ her once.
‘At this rate, I might die without even getting to see the protagonist.’
It seemed that from now on, I would have to steel my resolve.
“…….”
The Emperor, Gilgamesh von Ribera, remained lost in thought for quite some time even after the spar between Leios and Augustus had ended.
“Is there something that troubles you, Your Majesty.”
Nepe, the commander of the Royal Knights, carefully asked as he looked at the Emperor. Gilgamesh removed the hand propping up his chin and turned his gaze to him.
“How did you view the spar just now.”
“Both Your Highnesses seem to have achieved remarkable accomplishments for their age.”
“That much is obvious.”
Nepe smiled faintly at the expression that seemed to say that if they carried his blood, they ought to manage at least that much.
It was a simple evaluation between the two of them, but there were many ears listening nearby. Because of that, Nepe chose his words carefully.
“I believe it was a spar in which the wisdom of the Third Prince stood out. Of course, the Fourth Prince’s storm-like swordsmanship was also excellent, but the mental acuity to switch between offense and defense at the decisive moment, fluster the opponent, and then strike at the opening was truly terrifying. Even if I were to stand there under the same conditions as the Third Prince, I wonder whether I could avoid embarrassment.”
Nepe’s words were nothing but praise. The knights who had been watching the spar around him shared the same thoughts, but they were greatly surprised, having never expected such open commendation.
The Third Prince, Leios von Ribera, was truly a being ostracized by the imperial family. Though they could not outright ignore the authority he held as a candidate for succession to the throne, he was completely at odds with the current Empress and the other princes.
Nepe’s words were merely an evaluation, but the fact that the commander of the Royal Knights, who served the imperial family, had made such remarks in itself could become a problem.
Nepe found that deeply regrettable. He had long known that Leios had been secretly training with the sword, and that his talent was no less than that of the other princes.
‘His Majesty likely knows as well.’
It made no sense for someone who encompassed the entire empire to be unaware of what he himself knew.
He had simply remained silent, thinking that there must be some reason for allowing the persecution Leios suffered.
But now was different.
With a single spar today, Leios had revealed his existence.
Though it would be impossible to overturn perceptions and images that had taken deep root over more than a decade in one fell swoop, Nepe thought it was meaningful that at least a crack had been made in that wall.
“Is that so.”
However, that was not what mattered to the Emperor.
Whether his child was called the son of a whore, or pointed at as incompetent—those were all matters outside his concern.
He pursued only strength.
Therefore, if something had no relation to him becoming stronger, it was not worth his attention.
But today, the Emperor felt interest in the swordsmanship Leios had displayed.
‘The swordsmanship of the Ribera family is the Liechtenauer school. But at the same time, there is another hidden sword art. Several generations ago, a man said to possess an innate genius for swordsmanship is said to have created the Fiore school.’
If the Liechtenauer school was called the Art of Combat (Kunst des Fechtem), then the Fiore school was called the Flower of Battle (Fiore di Battaglia).
A completely new sword art, entirely different from the existing system, created by independently refining the Liechtenauer school and mixing it with other sword techniques.
According to the oral transmission passed down only to the Emperor, it was written that this swordsmanship was of such an advanced level that no one had mastered it since its creator.
‘There was definitely a copy of it in the imperial palace archives as well.’
The Emperor himself had once attempted to learn the Fiore school during his days as Crown Prince, but in the end, he failed due to its excessively abstruse theories.
It was also at that time that he felt a wall for the first time while pursuing absolute strength.
Because he had clung to it for days on end under the belief that there was nothing he could not master, he knew its form well, too.
‘The swordsmanship Leios just displayed was clearly similar to Le-Pente (Le Punte), the thrusting technique of the Fiore school.’
At the fact that his own child had achieved what he had so desperately longed for and desired, some subtle, indescribable emotion bloomed within his heart.
Clang-!
The sound spreading as sword clashed with sword reverberated throughout the hall.
On the stage where Augustus and I had fiercely exchanged blades just moments ago, the First Prince Carius and the Second Prince Darius were now locked in an equally ferocious exchange.
Their fight was fierce beyond measure.
Carius wielded swordsmanship that was precise to the extreme, without a single hint of disorder.
And as if Augustus’s had been child’s play, Darius truly surged like a storm, attempting to break through Carius’s solid defense.
Each time their mana-laden swords collided, the banquet hall was engulfed in roars so loud that the clash itself was drowned out.
It was an atmosphere completely different from when Augustus and I had sparred.
More splendid, and more vivid.
The nobles cheered for the princes who led their respective factions.
Watching their faces rise and fall with each individual exchange of blades, I found myself smiling for some reason.
‘There’s no way I could beat that.’
As I watched their battle, I shook my head.
With Augustus, I had somehow managed to secure a victory with Tyrfing’s help, but the movements of those two, who had entered the realm of Sword Expert, were clearly on a different level.
It was difficult just to follow them with my eyes. If I were to face them, how many times could I even manage to block their swords?
On top of that, neither of them looked like they were even going all out.
[If you take off the ring, you could easily win even if you fought both of them at the same time.]
‘And then I’d get eaten by you.’
Snapping back at Tyrfing’s voice in my ear, I continued to watch the spar.
‘That swordsmanship at the very end, though…….’
Watching them brought back the final moment with Augustus.
When I entrusted my body to Tyrfing, the mana that had been gathered below my navel drained away in an instant, and the dazzling swordsmanship that had painted the air still lingered vividly in my eyes.
[SYSTEM: You have acquired swordsmanship. The Flower of Battle (Fiore di Battaglia)]
When the spar ended, a notification appeared saying I had acquired swordsmanship.
Opening my status window, I saw the Fiore school sitting conspicuously on one side of it.
[The Fiore school is a sword art founded by your predecessor, Fiore von Ribera. The swordsmanship of the Ribera family was clearly the Liechtenauer school, right? Fiore independently refined that and created this. Removing the flaws and adding the strengths. If there is such a thing as perfect swordsmanship, you could say the Fiore school has reached its very extreme.]
Though it was not something she herself had done, Tyrfing spoke proudly.
This was a name I had never even heard in the original work.
Leios, too, had clearly independently refined the Liechtenauer school and used it in a way that suited himself.
‘The world inside and outside the novel really is different.’
Just because something was not described in the novel did not mean time inside it stood still. What the novel showed was nothing more than fragmentary events.
Finding an element I had not known despite reading the novel all the way to completion gave me a slightly new feeling.
“Kh!”
At that moment, a sudden groan burst out from the stage.
Under Carius’s relentless attacks, Darius’s momentum was steadily pushed back, and in the end, he allowed a single strike.
As he clutched his side, where a shallow wound remained, and pulled his body back, the knight acting as referee declared the outcome.
“End of the spar! Victor, Carius von Ribera!”
“…….”
Darius looked as though he could still fight, but he did not dispute the ruling.
This spar was not a life-and-death duel. Its sole purpose was to display one’s martial prowess, and his expression suggested that this was sufficient.
Glance.
Suddenly, he turned his head and looked at me. Then, with narrowed eyes, he formed a chilling smile.
‘Just asking in case, but fighting like you did earlier would be impossible, right?’
[Unless you can raise your mana on your own, it’s impossible in your current state, with your abilities sealed by the curse.]
To my question, Tyrfing calmly gave a negative answer.
That did not mean I could simply take off the ring, either. If I did, I would end up being eaten by her.
Then did that mean I had to manage something on my own, somehow?
Of course, I still had a trump card.