Ch.85Chapter 85: Oh My, It’s a Draw

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The training ground in the garrison district of Night Haven is typically filled with various noises emitted by knights who visit this place.

Most of these sounds come from the intense physical movements they perform during their training.

Among the most representative sounds are:

The harmony of rough breathing and near-screaming battle cries as they push their bodies to the limit.

And the sound of weapons cutting through the air as they swing them.

Today, too, this concert hall called the training ground was playing a symphony composed of these sounds.

However, unlike other days, today’s symphony contained a sound of a different nature:

Murmuring voices.

It was the buzzing of knights gathered in small groups, their gazes fixed in one direction as they engaged in conversation.

This was unusual indeed.

In this training ground, populated by single-minded individuals obsessed with martial arts and focused on their own training, casual conversation was not a common occurrence.

Perhaps in places designed for conversation, like taverns, but not here.

In this training ground, even exchanging simple greetings with someone could indirectly reveal how close you were—no further explanation needed.

Of course, there were occasional exceptions when two or three knights would gather for small talk.

But it was extremely rare for such a large number of knights to gather and converse as they were doing today.

What could have made these martial arts fanatics pause their training and engage in conversation?

The knights’ gazes, as they murmured and talked, were focused in one direction.

It was where a pair—a man and a woman—were engaged in a sparring match.

Though they weren’t knights affiliated with this place,

Who were these two engaging in a more intense sparring match than any of the knights here?

They were Proxian and Lanos.

They could be called the future of prestigious families known as the masters of the sword, families that had shared history with the birth of the Empire.

Indeed, they were demonstrating why they deserved to be called scions of sword nobility.

Their sparring match was captivating enough to draw the attention of these single-minded individuals who considered walking the path of martial arts and building appropriate martial prowess as their life’s goal.

At first, the knights had merely glanced at them before intending to return to their own training.

But as the crisp metallic sounds of swords clashing continued without pause,

And as these exceptional warriors displayed sword techniques too fast for even experienced eyes to follow, accompanied by the terrifying sounds of blades cutting through air,

The elite knights of the Imperial Knights, the Empire’s greatest military force stationed at the training ground, finally stopped what they were doing and gathered in small groups to carefully observe the ongoing match.

As they watched, most of the knights who maintained their rigid posture, though not openly showing it, were impressed by the sparring match between the two.

“Ah, sometimes watching others wield a sword can be educational too.”

That was the sentiment they held inside.

Every aspect of the unfolding sparring match was captivating enough to hold their attention.

What first captured their gaze was the heir of Proxian, with her golden hair flowing, consistently overwhelming her opponent.

The crisp metallic sound of weapons clashing,

And the splendid display of flawless sword techniques by the Proxian heir, who thrust her sword with the force of a tidal wave, as if determined not to give her opponent any chance.

The Proxian heir was remarkable, displaying sword techniques that were both dazzling and terrifying, which none of the knights present would confidently claim they could easily counter.

Because of this, the knights were certain:

Soon, that golden-haired girl would overwhelm her opponent and easily claim victory.

However, contrary to the knights’ expectations,

As the red-haired man of Lanos continued to perform well, steadfastly enduring despite being on the defensive against the Proxian heir’s sword techniques,

The knights’ thoughts began to change.

Initially, they had considered the man from Lanos as merely a foil to make Proxian look good, but his resilience, like that of a deeply rooted grass, moved the knights’ hearts.

At the same time, the outcome of the match, which most observers had easily predicted, was now flowing in a direction that even they couldn’t guess.

The Proxian heir’s dazzling sword techniques continued throughout the sparring, but they weren’t determining the outcome of the match.

This was because the man from Lanos was blocking every sword strike coming from unpredictable angles and methods that the observers couldn’t even guess.

Whether he blocked them narrowly or with such fluid movements that the watching knights couldn’t help but admire,

The red-haired man, whose sweat glistened as it flowed down his hair—which was uncharacteristic for a member of Lanos—was not yielding to her sword, even though he was on the defensive.

It wasn’t a long time, but as the one-sided offense and defense that felt like an eternity reached its peak,

*Screech-!!*

The Proxian heir’s thrust, executed with the momentum to pierce through anything in its path, was blocked by the sword that the Lanos man had raised with its blade facing upward.

Undeterred by yet another failed attack,

The Proxian heir, who was about to create distance and continue her next attack, was visibly flustered by the movement of the Lanos man who suddenly closed the gap between them even further.

It was enough to cause a small crack in her expression, which had shown no emotional display throughout the sparring.

This was the moment when balance was finally about to be restored to the scale of the sparring match, which had been divided into one-sided offense and defense.

The Lanos man deflected the sword with a rather rough movement, creating a gap and causing his rushed opponent to expose a vulnerability.

Simultaneously, he swung his sword downward from top to bottom.

For someone who had been on the defensive the entire time, this strike was too clean and fluid to be underestimated.

The trajectory was drawn so cleanly and elegantly that the knights who watched it let out momentary sighs of admiration.

This first offensive led by the man since the beginning of the sparring, aimed at knocking the sword out of her hand to claim victory, was truly impressive.

*Gulp*

Just as most of the watching knights swallowed dry saliva, about to focus on the outcome of the match,

“Ah-!!”

Along with an exclamation from one of the knights watching the sparring,

“Oh no…”

“What a shame, indeed.”

“It was a victory within grasp.”

Lamentations poured from the mouths of the knights who had been swallowing dry saliva while focusing on the match.

Due to the scene that unfolded just as this one-sided match was about to witness a dramatic reversal by an opponent who didn’t miss a momentary opportunity,

They couldn’t control the sighs that escaped their mouths involuntarily, bursting out all at once.

How could they not feel regret when a great match ended in such an inconclusive manner?

What they witnessed was the sword in the right hand of the man, who had been on the defensive throughout but had just seized a chance for reversal, breaking in two with a sound like shattering porcelain.

Following that, the sword held by the Proxian heir shattered even more spectacularly, turning to dust.

Although there was a time difference in the weapons’ damage,

In cases where both weapons were almost simultaneously destroyed to the point where the sparring couldn’t continue, it was a long-standing tradition of martial families to declare the match a draw.

Therefore, the result of the sparring that had just unfolded was a draw.

Most of the watching knights accepted the result as a draw, but

They were amazed at the series of scenes that had unfolded during the sparring.

“Huh…”

“Is that even possible?”

“It’s the first time I’ve seen weapons break during sparring, and not even deliberately.”

As can be heard from the conversations of the knights who continued to murmur while saying what they wanted to say,

They were freshly shocked by the scene of weapons in the hands of the man and woman being destroyed during a simple sparring match.

It’s common for weapons, including swords, to break.

Especially if they are practice weapons available for anyone to use, rather than beloved weapons cherished by their owners.

However, despite knowing these preconditions, there was a reason why the knights were surprised.

It was due to the special nature of the practice weapons equipped in this training ground.

The practice weapons were manufactured and supplied to Night Haven by a weapon workshop named Stardust.

A thousand years ago, during the era of the Great Holy War,

It was an imperial weapon workshop directly under the imperial household, established in the name of the legendary master craftsman, Stardust Rubio, who succeeded in refining the divine metal, Divine Calibus, imbued with the blessing of the great gods, with a living human body.

Not only was it ancient,

It was the world’s best weapon manufacturing group, renowned for quickly adopting and embodying the latest metallurgical technologies developed worldwide, beyond the Central Continent.

The weapons manufactured here, even if they were practice swords without sharpened edges,

Or rather, especially because they were practice weapons destined to be roughly used by many different hands,

Were famous for being designed with a focus on durability.

They were known for their sturdiness, not breaking unless one intentionally struck rocks or stabbed them into the ground with the intent to destroy the weapon itself.

Since these weapons were supplied to the training ground, the knights who used them unanimously agreed on their durability, to the extent that they wouldn’t raise objections about it.

Yet, seeing those weapons destroyed beyond usability by the sword strikes exchanged during the brief sparring between that pair, a thought flashed through the knights’ minds:

“Have we been training half-heartedly compared to those two?”

“Why can’t we do what they did, breaking swords into pieces after just a few clashes?”

“Or perhaps it’s not that we can’t, but that we haven’t used our practice weapons to their limits, merely repeating the formality of training without the desperation those two showed?”

Having reached this thought, most of the knights’ expressions couldn’t help but turn serious.

Even though it could have been considered just an ordinary sparring moment.

And there was one more element that moved the hearts of these martial arts fanatics:

“Regardless of the process, my weapon broke first. In a real battle, I would have lost my life many times over in that moment. Siz, you’re the winner.”

“No, I also swung my sword without considering durability. They broke almost simultaneously. Besides, the sword technique that Kal was about to use at the end, even thinking about it now, was something I couldn’t have blocked. I lost this time.”

The humility shown as the two, who had just been expressionlessly clashing swords in pursuit of victory, now tried to concede victory to each other after the match ended.

Despite having produced a great match that could be considered a draw,

In the end, the sight of the two trying to place the laurel wreath of victory on each other,

Was based on a deep respect for the opponent they had sparred with.

Seeing this, the knights felt a sense of chivalry being fulfilled through these two individuals who hadn’t even received their knighthood yet.

For the knights stationed at the fortress, who often repeated days that felt like running on a hamster wheel,

These academy students who had given them a fresh stimulus provided them with strong motivation.

Looking at the shattered practice weapons, they set a goal to push their weapons to the limit like those two,

And to regain the mindset displayed by those two, who showed a more upright attitude than most novice knights.

As this common thought simultaneously flashed through their minds,

“…”

“…Hmm.”

A pair of knights who had been silently watching each other nodded in unison and walked towards the training ground to spar together.

Like the sparring they had just witnessed from those two, pushing their bodies to the limit,

Their steps were imbued with a firm determination to push their weapons to the limit until they broke.

As one pair left, other knights followed suit, leaving their positions to test the limits of their weapons through sparring rather than ordinary self-training.

Before long, the crisp metallic sounds of the knights’ weapons clashing in sparring matches echoed throughout the training ground.

And it’s needless to say that,

By the end of the year, in the internal audit white paper on Stardust prepared by the Imperial Inspection Department and reported to the Imperial Household,

A recommendation was written stating that among the weapons manufactured by Stardust and supplied to Night Haven, the damage rate of practice weapons was particularly high, necessitating improvements from the manufacturing stage.

But that’s still a distant future for those in this fortress.

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Hmm.

Hmmmm…

I don’t feel like I won at all.

As I exchanged a few words with Siz, who stubbornly insisted that she had lost,

The two of us ended up engaged in a verbal battle (?) arguing about why each of us had lost, which lasted longer than our actual sword sparring.

While I call it a verbal battle,

There was no shadow in my expression, nor in Siz’s expression as she stood across from me.

There was only the refreshing feeling of having crossed swords while revealing each other’s limits.

But still, my weapon broke first, so I’m the one who lost.

“The sword technique Kal was about to use at the end was something I couldn’t have blocked no matter what, given my unbalanced posture. In a real battle, I would have been in danger even if I had several lives.”

The more I heard Siz’s voice, filled with a strange enthusiasm as she praised the sword technique I was about to use just before the practice sword broke in two and insisted on her own defeat,

The harder it became to suppress the strange urge to smile.

[Your mouth is going to split, you fool.]

If even Fafnir, who had remained silent throughout the sparring, was making such a comment, how obvious must my suppressed expression be?

As much as I wanted to agree with Siz’s opinion claiming my victory,

‘If this had been a real battle, I would have been dead the moment my weapon broke.’

After suppressing the arrogance that was trying to raise its head in my mind,

I was about to continue explaining why she had won to Siz, who was trying to concede victory to me with sparkling eyes filled with sincerity.

“It’s a draw.”

My words were cut off by a solemn and resolute voice declaring a draw, coming from someone who had approached the two of us.