Chapter 181 - The Blade's Trajectory
Ever since I was a child, I loved to swing a sword.
Of course, that's not to say I was handling a real blade. I was simply on the common path of the sword as a sport.
However, it seemed my talent for it was anything but common.
No amount of harsh practice felt like a burden. I mastered techniques faster than anyone around me, and when I competed, I had no rivals. It didn't take long from the first time I held a bamboo sword to be hailed as a genius.
Combined with my handsome features, the attention I received only grew as I got older... Then, one summer day, just before the national high school tournament in my second year.
The path of glory that had stretched from my past and was supposed to continue into my future suddenly crumbled.
On the stairs of a pedestrian bridge, an old man walking in front of me missed a step.
Without a thought, my body moved instinctively. The price for saving a life was a complex fracture in my left hand. It was a major injury, no doubt about it, leaving me with aftereffects so severe I lost most of the grip strength in that hand.
I reflected that I could have moved more skillfully, but I had no regrets. I was proud that I had been able to act without hesitation, and there were many people who supported me even after my path was closed.
But I did feel a little lonely, having lost the ability to swing the sword I loved. While working hard at rehabilitation, I spent some time in peace—
Until the day of my encounter—no, my meeting across a screen.
Even after transitioning from a competitor to a spectator, my love for the sword never faded. As I routinely searched for match videos and articles... I started noticing the word 'Sword Saint' popping up in the predictive text whenever I typed 'sword' into the search box.
It wasn't a particularly rare term in itself. Is it from some popular manga or something? I thought, and casually looked into it. As it turned out, it was a topic from a game that was taking the world by storm: [Arcadia].
The word Sword Saint referred to a player who was said to be incredibly strong in this so-called "world's only virtual world"... a wielder of the katana without peer, they said.
To be honest, back then I saw [Arcadia] as nothing more than a simple game, and I remember scoffing at the countless praises heaped upon this [Sword Saint].
"Her sword skills surpass even the 'Princess'."
"A literal one-woman army."
"The strongest katana user."
"The legal loli Sword Saint."
While the bit about the Princess and the last one made me tilt my head, the common feeling I had for all of it was nothing but disdain.
"It's just about some player in a game." Laughing dismissively, I followed a link online and played a video...
It didn't take more than a few minutes for my casual disdain to be replaced by regret, and then swallowed by the greatest wonder of my life.
In the center of the screen, a small figure faced a group of no fewer than fifty warriors. In the middle of this surreal scene, like something out of a manga or anime, the sword she wielded was the most real thing there.
A game? No, not at all. She was swinging her sword with true conviction.
A game? Wrong. She was living as a swordswoman in that world.
It was breathtakingly beautiful. And—it was breathtakingly frustrating.
Because regardless of whether it was reality or a virtual world, a physical body or an avatar, I recognized that, as a swordsman, her very existence represented my own clear defeat.
I wanted to swing a sword again.
As I stared at my own left hand, which wouldn't move as I wished, I knew exactly where I needed to go to do so.
A year later. I worked frantically alongside my studies, and combining the money I earned with the aid I received after begging my parents earnestly for the first time in my life, I managed to clear the biggest hurdle: the purchase price.
I passed the screening without issue, and after stepping into the virtual world, things moved quickly.
The sense for the sword I'd always possessed was, of course, useful in a virtual world where you played by moving your actual body. Sometimes solo, sometimes moving between parties, I broke through the tutorial area in a little over two months.
It didn't take long to reach her, who at the time had opened the gates of her dojo wide(.) to(.) all.
When I finally met her, I found she was a person to be looked up to not only for her skill with the sword, but for her character as well, despite her youth. The next few months, as I became her student and absorbed her teachings, were, without exaggeration, the best days of my life.
By nature, when I get absorbed in one thing, I tend to lose sight of everything else.
Simply to swing my sword. Paying no mind to anything but myself, my master, and my blade, the days flew by—
And then I suddenly came to my senses and realized.
That at some point, I had become the only student still attending her dojo.
And that even I had not inherited a single technique from her.
Her sword style—the core of Kesshiki Ittoryu, an extraordinary technique called 'Shukuchi.'
And to achieve it, one had to completely master the two difficult-to-grasp concepts of 'Inner' and 'Outer' control.
It was not something an ordinary person could easily accomplish... which is why most gave up and left early on. That was the norm. I, who remained, was the anomaly.
Pathetic fools, they have no grit. The thought had barely formed when I realized something else. Whether they left or stayed was their own choice, wasn't it?
Because, after all, this was a game.
Arcadia was only [Arcadia], and the virtual world itself would never be more than a form of entertainment called a game.
The only thing that could make it 'real' was the will of the player—just like the [Sword Saint] I had seen on the screen that day.
What welled up inside me was acceptance, and a fierce rebellious spirit.
No matter who else gave up, I alone would master her techniques.
I swore to master them, hone them further on my own, and one day stand by her side. It was a few days after making that vow that I acquired a certain skill.
The skill's name was 'Enbu'—a movement-type skill.
It warped the phenomenon of "taking a single step," drastically extending the distance traveled... Whatever the details of its effect, visually, it was indistinguishable from teleportation.
The same kind of high-speed movement as 'Shukuchi.'
In Arcadia, a 'skill' is fundamentally a supernatural power bestowed by the system to allow a player to do something they cannot achieve on their own.
Yes, something the player themselves cannot achieve.
In other words, I had been given by the system a movement that would have been possible with my own body had I mastered 'Shukuchi.' It was as if this world itself had told me that I would never be able to master that technique.
Things suddenly got a bit heavy, but it won't drag on, so please bear with me.