One Hundred and One Ways to Become a Swordmaster

"Aaah! Get away! Get away from me, I said!"

Flap-flap-flap!

Strangely enough, the bats kept swarming straight at Regita, and for over half an hour now she had been carrying on a one-woman battle against them. Thanks to that commotion, we were able to search for the book in relative peace.

"Waaah... it's scary. Big Brother, save me, please! I'm sorry, I was wrong... *sob sob*."

Listening to her exhausted whimpering, we continued our calm, methodical search.

Eusilif swept his gaze over the books on the suspect shelf, working his way down from the top row, while I started from the bottom and climbed. By the time only a handful of volumes remained on the middle shelf, I was beginning to worry that I'd guessed wrong in the first place.

"Oh."

Then, the moment my fingers brushed across the cover of one of the last three books, a jolt of thrilling excitement rushed through me.

Something about the title struck me as vaguely suspicious, but the moment I flipped it open and scanned the contents, I was certain. This was the one. Brimming with emotion, I thrust the book in front of Eusilif's face and whispered triumphantly.

"Look at this. It's the right one, isn't it? Authored by Angelton Sealy. See? It says so right here!"

Eusilif glanced briefly at me—dusted head to toe in grime, eyes sparkling—then took the book and began turning the pages slowly.

His fingertips trembled slightly as he turned to the third page. His expression looked impassive at a glance, but by now I could read him fairly well. He was struggling enormously to hide just how excited he was.

"This does seem... to be it."

Even his voice had gone hoarse, so he must have been quite pleased. Well, of course he was. Sealy's Swordsmanship Manual was a treasure that anyone on this continent who had ever held a sword dreamed of.

I puffed out my chest with a proud look and declared, "See? That's one promise I've already kept to you."

Heh heh. With this, I figured a fair portion of the debt the original Arabella owed the male lead had been settled.

But by some point, I had somehow been left all alone, rambling to no one.

At some moment I couldn't pin down, Eusilif had already moved beneath the window where moonlight spilled in, nose buried in the swordsmanship manual, reading it through. My voice probably hadn't even reached his ears.

I watched him with a fond smile for a while, then went over, crouched down beside him, and buried my face in my knees. Today's goal was accomplished, so surely a short rest wouldn't hurt. The moment the tension drained away, I felt the exhaustion I'd been forcing myself to ignore come flooding in all at once.

Dunk.

Eusilif lifted his head at a faint stirring he sensed beside him.

There was Arabella, dozing off in a daze, her face drained of color. Every time her head bobbed and drooped, her jet-black hair spilled over her round little ears, gradually swallowing up her small face.

She hasn't fainted again... has she?

He watched her with a disapproving look, then brushed the hair away from her face and pressed a finger beneath her nose.

He could feel a thread-fine breath curl against his fingertip, then scatter.

The healthy color that had been there only hours before had somehow vanished; her pale face was now flushed with a faint red heat.

She pushed herself a little and now she's sick again? What is wrong with this woman? She's frail even by noble standards.

Shaking his head in exasperation, Eusilif tore his attention away from her and returned to the swordsmanship manual.

With every sentence he read, a shiver ran down his spine. To think teachings like this actually existed in the world. If he could learn them and make them his own flesh and blood, then becoming a Swordmaster might truly be more than a dream.

As he pressed down his pounding heart and soaked in the elation, something suddenly dropped with a soft thud onto his shoulder.

Thwap.

The woman, whose cheeks had grown warmly flushed at some point, had slumped her head onto his shoulder, dead to the world.

"......"

Without hesitation, he moved to shove her head away with his fingers—then froze when he noticed how hot her forehead felt against his skin.

He clicked his tongue, then, still in that exact posture, began turning the pages again.

She was the one who had put a life-changing secret manual into his hands; lending her his shoulder for a little while was nothing.

Rustle.

As he turned one more page, a shriek from Regita tore through the space along with the beat of a hundred bats' wings. In that instant, the woman leaning on his shoulder squirmed and grimaced.

He tried to ignore it and keep reading, but somehow he couldn't concentrate.

In the end, biting his lip with a sour expression, he let out a silent whistle. An ultrasound no human ear could catch rippled through the air like a wave, and the racket of the bats' wings stopped all at once. Regita's screams soon dissolved into sniffles too, and the surroundings grew considerably quieter.

This whistle, which he had learned from his half-elf father Sheryen, was a kind of communication tool that could easily convey threat or camaraderie to animals who heard sounds differently from humans.

If he hadn't glimpsed the colony of bats clinging to a corner of the ceiling when they first slipped into the archive, he never would have thought of using them at that desperate, nearly-discovered moment with Sota.

My luck's been strangely good these past few days.

He thought this as he looked down at the swordsmanship manual in his hands. His life, saturated with misfortune at every turn—was it perhaps trying to turn onto a new current?

Talking nonsense like this. Did I eat too much?

Sneering at himself, he carefully turned the page. In the peace of the now-quiet archive, the woman's soft breathing tickling his ear was, thankfully, not too much of an annoyance.

Shwieeeng— CRACK. Crash.

The instant Eusilif swung his sword, the trunk of the tall fir tree standing before him was cleaved through in a heartbeat.

Sweat pouring down his face like rain, he glared at the fallen fir.

In his head, the contents of the manual he'd memorized in the imperial library a week ago replayed without pause.

Written in the tone of a master instructing a disciple, the manual's teachings had guided his breathing and movements ever since that day.

The result: one week later, he had reached the point where he could swing his sword wreathed in Sword Aura without shattering the blade.

It was a staggering achievement at a speed that would leave the world aghast. And yet he was nowhere near satisfied.

Burned into his mind was the image of Crown Prince Sota from that night, hurling overwhelming Sword Aura in the exact direction where he'd been hiding.

This isn't enough. I have to get stronger. I have to master the manual completely and make it mine.

That day, he had known just from looking at the Crown Prince what a formidable swordsman he was.

If he faced him at his current level, it would probably take less than a few dozen seconds before that man's blade cut his body in two.

Crown Prince Sota had been born with talent so great he was hailed as the second coming of Emperor Kalita, the empire's founder. On top of that, he had received the finest education on the continent and attained the rank of Swordmaster at the mere age of twenty-five.

A truly enormous gap, fixed from the moment of birth. Could he really ever close it?

Clack.

The moment Eusilif, seething with frustration, thrust his sword back into its scabbard, an exaggerated cheer erupted beside him.

"Waaah~ Amazing, Eusilif! Truly the best! So cool! Aren't you a genius? How can you handle Sword Aura like that after only a week? Wow, that's insane. Genuinely insane."

Clap clap clap clap.

The woman, perched cheekily atop the tree stump he'd felled just yesterday, clapped her hands enthusiastically, marveling over and over.

"I honestly can't believe it. Is development at this speed even possible? I think this needs to be reported as the continent's new eighth wonder. Is there any way to contact the sages? I'd really like to file a tip."

"...Enough, already. Are you mocking me?"

When Eusilif finally exploded, Arabella hunched her shoulders and pushed out her lips in a pout.

"Mocking you? I'm admiring you with complete sincerity."

"Don't make me laugh. Your father was a Swordmaster. You grew up watching a man like that, and this piddling display impresses you?"

"Well, it's true my father was a Swordmaster, but I saw his face maybe once or twice a year. Everything I know about his swordsmanship I heard through other people's mouths. This is the first time I've ever actually seen something like this right in front of me."

At her offhand reply, Eusilif found himself at a loss for words.

In truth, during the past few days spent at the Mayona Estate, he had seen and sensed for himself where she stood within her own family.

She was, quite literally, an outcast. The uncle regarded her with such displeasure that one might wonder whether he was truly family at all, and he seemed perpetually eager to devour her the moment an opening appeared.

The Countess was said to be in the countryside tending to the recuperation of the son who would inherit the family—yet it struck him as oddly twisted that Arabella, the one who actually looked as though she needed recuperating, had been left entirely to fend for herself.

It might have been easier if she'd been the haughty, insufferable highborn lady of his first impression. Confronted instead with an outcast of a woman so frail she collapsed at the drop of a hat, even wallowing in disdain and wariness proved strangely difficult.

"The finals of the tournament are finally tomorrow. You're feeling confident, aren't you, Eusilif?"

That's tomorrow already? Eusilif thought, his face blank.

Arabella's reasoning was that since the tournament was being held in honor of the Emperor's birthday, trouble could arise if a finalist like him failed to appear.

So he would participate, technically—but winning mattered little to him. His entire ambition amounted to a casual notion that it would be a fine opportunity to test the fruits of his training with the manual.

Whether she understood this or not, Arabella crept closer, watching his face carefully. The way she kept approaching him and trying to grow close, despite never once hearing a kind word from him, was almost baffling.

Why on earth did this woman act this way toward him? Why did she look at him with those eyes so full of trust, showering him with praise and encouragement as though he were raw material for the world's greatest hero? He was, at best, a mere slave.

...She must be trying to use my ability.

She had known from the start that his bodily fluids carried the power of regeneration. She must have known it when she bought him from the slave market in the first place. She was simply planning to use him as a cost-effective cure-all.

As if I'd ever bleed myself dry to heal you again. Not a chance.

Vowing never to use his ability for her sake again, he gave a dismissive snort.

"If I win the finals, what do I get out of it? I suppose you, like the Princess, want the reputation of owning a strong slave."

But Arabella, ever the same, answered with artless brightness.

"Oh, not really. But once the tournament's over, there is something I really want to do with you."

She said it with a faint smile. That face, beaming in the sunlight, was so deathly pale it seemed it might evaporate into the air at any moment.

He tore his eyes quickly from her figure—like heat haze, like a mirage. Something unfamiliar stirred in his body.

Deep in his gut, in that space called the danjeon that he focused on whenever he concentrated his mind to command Sword Aura.

Call it coincidence or not, ever since the day he had fed her his blood to save her life, a strange heat had flickered in his danjeon from time to time.