Ch.231Head of All Trading Companies, Dieta (5)

Najin charged forward, kicking off the ground.

An unbalanced posture with the center of gravity shifted extremely forward. Griffin had seen that strange stance before—crouched low to the ground, diving in.

‘It’s the same as back then.’

The day he first encountered Najin.

In that duel, the young man had closed the distance with exactly the same posture as now. Even facing the blade energy of thorns that could melt and pulverize with just a graze, he charged forward boldly instead of retreating.

The memory of that day flashed through Griffin’s mind.

Back then, Griffin had been the one being challenged, the one threatening the boy’s life, the stronger one in the superior position. But what about now? Griffin sees the present, not the past.

‘The roles are reversed.’

Reversed indeed. Now he was the challenger, the weaker one. A painful fact, but a truth he had to acknowledge. Griffin tracked Najin’s movements with bloodshot eyes.

But no matter how much he strained his eyes, following Najin’s movements was no easy task. Fast. So incredibly fast that he could barely track the afterimages.

Ka, kakakakak!

With each breath, the thorny branches were severed.

Broken, sliced, snapped and flung upward. Back then, Najin had to risk his life just to break one of dozens of extending branches, but not anymore.

Slash.

With each swing of Najin’s sword, clusters of branches were cut away. Griffin gritted his teeth as he watched the thorns being effortlessly severed.

There was another difference from that day.

Griffin could no longer be the majestic tree rooted firmly in the ground as he was then. One couldn’t maintain balance in the midst of a gale strong enough to uproot trees.

With a thud, Griffin leaped.

He swung his sword again and again, noisily jumping around the arena. It was a surprising sight for knights who knew Griffin well, and some even clicked their tongues, calling him undignified.

“…Hmph.”

“That fellow.”

“He really hates losing, doesn’t he?”

But the veteran knights saw it differently.

Recent knights too easily accepted defeat and prattled on about how maintaining dignity even in defeat was chivalry, but the veterans thought that was mere self-justification.

Sometimes there are duels where you must struggle ungracefully even knowing you cannot win. It’s that struggle that can make a defeat beautiful.

That’s how they viewed Griffin’s desperate efforts.

Without dignity, frivolously, yet struggling to create variables somehow. What Najin once did to Griffin, Griffin was now doing to Najin. Griffin felt no shame in this situation.

Or more precisely, he had no luxury to feel shame.

‘If I make even the slightest mistake…’

It would be over. How long had it been since he’d fought such a difficult battle? Griffin caught his breath without letting his guard down. He was beginning to wonder:

Is this person really just a Sword Seeker?

The audience shared Griffin’s doubts. Unlike Griffin who was sweating profusely and struggling desperately, Najin seemed composed. How could some nobody so easily corner the captain of a duke’s knights?

Najin was accomplishing what only Sword Seekers who had gone through budding, blooming, and full bloom stages and were on the verge of becoming Sword Masters could do.

‘And what about that spear technique earlier?’

Wasn’t he supposed to be a knight who wielded a sword?

The strike Najin had just demonstrated, breaking all of Griffin’s thorns in a single blow, was chilling. Had he not only raised his level in such a short time but also learned spear techniques?

It defied common sense. But then again, common sense never applied to Najin.

“……”

What was about to unfold would be no different.

Najin lowered his sword.

Blade energy compressed above the lowered sword. Star-shaped blade energy enveloped the longsword’s blade. Najin raised the sword, which was scattering pure white flashes, at an angle.

“Ah……”

Someone who recognized the stance murmured.

“Imperial swordsmanship.”

The basic stance of Imperial swordsmanship.

But knights with keen eyes noticed something. Najin’s current stance resembled Imperial swordsmanship, but there was a slight difference.

A swordsman of his caliber wouldn’t make a stance error.

Then, was it not Imperial swordsmanship?

Their guess was half right and half wrong. The sword Najin was now wielding was both Imperial swordsmanship and not Imperial swordsmanship.

The original swordsmanship that became the foundation of Imperial swordsmanship.

The Triumph Sword (凱旋劍) created by Alderan Basaglia.

Najin wielded the foundation of the Empire.

2.

Griffin, who had been keeping his distance and running away, began to feel his limits approaching. His blade energy was weakening. Originally, the thorny branches consumed a lot of mana and weren’t advantageous in prolonged battles.

In contrast, Najin’s blade energy showed no signs of diminishing. There was no point in dragging this into a war of attrition.

Finally, Griffin made his choice.

The path of throwing his trump card.

While he still had some strength left, he would decide the match with one all-out strike. That was Griffin’s plan. Prepared for injury, Griffin charged toward Najin. As he charged, Griffin’s eyes narrowed.

Najin’s stance had changed.

As if respecting Griffin’s resolve, Najin held his sword in a different stance than before.

‘That’s……’

Griffin recognized that stance too.

It was a stance no Imperial knight could fail to recognize. Wasn’t it the basic stance of Imperial swordsmanship? Why suddenly that stance? Just as he thought this, Griffin’s eyes widened.

No. Something was different.

He couldn’t pinpoint exactly ‘what,’ but something was different. Griffin’s senses screamed, his instincts rang alarm bells, but it was too late to turn back. Griffin ignored his instincts and took one more step forward.

Chwaaaaaaaaaak!

Blade energy unleashed without reservation filled the arena. Red thorny branches dyed the dueling ground crimson. Griffin swung his sword for what might be the last time.

The ultimate technique of the Sacred Tree Protection Sword.

Griffin imitated the very strike with which Arta Trigadian had erased hundreds of monsters in a single blow. It was the best strike he could muster.

Najin responded to that strike with fundamentals.

Unlike Griffin’s blade energy that spread in all directions, Najin’s was compressed into the blade. The blade energy compressed to its limit resembled that of an Expert rather than a Sword Seeker.

It seemed as if there was no blade energy surrounding it, but the white flash of light proved otherwise.

Scattering light, Najin swung his sword.

A simple and concise movement.

Alderan Basaglia had trained for many years to give weight to that simplicity, and all those years of training were perfectly embodied in Najin’s sword.

The thorny branches could not withstand that weight.

The thorny branches, deeply rooted in the ground with thick trunks that would not waver before any storm, began to break with a ‘crack.’ While it might take hundreds of axe strikes to fell a great tree, in this case, that wasn’t necessary.

Crack.

The thorny branches split in a single strike.

One strike, one swing. That was enough.

Najin’s sword broke all the thorns and cut through the trunk. The blade energy Griffin had raised to its limit couldn’t overcome Najin’s and completely evaporated. With a crack, a long sword mark was engraved on the arena floor.

Griffin’s sword was also split in half.

A broken sword was proof of defeat.

“I have lost.”

As Griffin acknowledged his defeat, nobles and connoisseurs applauded and exclaimed in admiration. But the knights who had watched the duel couldn’t do the same.

The final strike Najin had unleashed.

The knights who witnessed the ultimate that a swordsman should aspire to felt a shiver. As if they had seen the sword of a Sword Master.

‘Wasn’t Imperial swordsmanship just the basics?’

Most knights considered Imperial swordsmanship as either a foundation for learning other sword styles or a cultural education that Imperial knights should learn. But the strike Najin had just demonstrated was nothing so trivial.

A strike both simple and righteous.

Knights who had glimpsed the realm at the end of Imperial swordsmanship fingered their sword hilts. As if they wanted to swing their swords right away so that the strike they had just seen wouldn’t fade from memory.

“……”

While everyone was either cheering for the result of the duel, admiring it, or excited by it, there were two who couldn’t.

One was the head of the Albania family, Ottoman Albania.

And beside him, his son, Ageshio Albania, whose complexion had turned deathly pale.

Knowing the weight of responsibility they must bear now that the duel was over, Ottoman clicked his tongue. Looking at his son sitting next to him with eyes as if looking at a bug, he rose from his seat.

3.

Since Najin began to make a name for himself on the continent, he had rarely revealed his skills. At most, he had shown his abilities against the dragon of Stonehenge, but not many knights had witnessed that fight.

But today was different.

Najin revealed his skills in front of numerous nobles and knights. Although he didn’t show his full power, even that fragment was enough to cause a stir across the continent.

With a single strike, he sent a Sword Seeker flying.

With a single strike, he felled the thorny tree.

Even those skilled individuals who had privately thought there must be some exaggeration in the rumors surrounding Najin had to acknowledge after the duel. If anything, the rumors were understated rather than exaggerated.

“Bravo! Bravo!”

And there was one noble who enjoyed this duel more than anyone. A noble who had dropped all his work and rushed to the Imperial capital at the news of the duel. It was Marquis Eldelmar, the ruler of Trebache territory.

“Didn’t I say it would be enjoyable!”

As soon as the duel ended, the Marquis gave a standing ovation and looked at the nobles sitting beside him.

What are you doing? Why aren’t you applauding?

Under pressure, the nobles clapped with disgruntled expressions while the Marquis smiled with genuine pleasure. He was feeling joy for three reasons: one was the vicarious satisfaction from Najin’s performance, two was witnessing an excellent duel, and three was…

‘The Duke is making quite a face.’

Seeing Ottoman Duke’s expression as if he had bitten into a bug.

Watching Ottoman, who had always lived arrogantly as if he were better than everyone else, contort his face made the duel doubly enjoyable. Just for today, he would forgive his vassals for their boisterous behavior.

And one more thing.

While some ended this affair with joy, a girl who saw this as an opportunity also smiled. The pieces to bring down the Albania family were gathering one by one.

“Duke Ottoman.”

“It’s been a while, Chairwoman Dieta.”

Dieta and Ottoman met privately. They sat across from each other at a table. Unlike in the past, Ottoman no longer sat at the head seat. The two looked at each other at the same eye level, neither looking up nor down.

“I received your letter well. It was quite vicious for a letter from a daughter to her father.”

“That’s because I lacked proper family education. My parents were worse than trash rolling on the streets.”

Ottoman’s brow twitched as he frowned.

As the light jab came back as a knife thrust, Ottoman sighed. It wasn’t a statement one should dare make before a duke, and depending on the situation, he could have filed charges for insult.

But Ottoman knew that such petty methods would no longer work on the girl before him.

A great merchant who had the full support of Seal of Eternal Beauty, Safria Gachefsga, one of the Empire’s pillars, and who controlled the Empire’s gold flow. With even Locked fallen, it was impossible to do anything against that association.

In the end, he had to come to the negotiation table.

“So what is it you demand of me?”