Pitch-black aether swirled around the dagger’s blade, making the air tremble. It was sword energy, formed by manipulating aether in exactly the same way as the secret swordsmanship of Belkain’s royal family that the wraith had displayed.

“You! You!”

Shock crept into the wraith’s distorted voice. The royal family’s secret swordsmanship, as its name proclaimed, could be learned only by Belkain’s royalty, and the wraith was its last inheritor. Having never fathered a child in life, he had taught it to no one.

Yet this impudent grave robber was using it. How? Had he retained his sanity, he might have considered that question more deeply, but the wraith’s mind had shattered on the night of the catastrophe five years ago.

No, it had been crumbling long before then. A terribly foolish king, broken by loneliness and unfulfilled longing. The Shattered Star had pushed him into committing an unforgivable sin for which he deserved to be hated, but madness had already been eating away at him before the constellation gave that push.

That was why the wraith gave little thought to Yuto’s identity. He was a filthy rat who had trespassed in Belkain’s royal castle with his dirty feet. Somehow, he had picked up the royal family’s secret swordsmanship, which only royalty could learn. A rat had learned what was permitted only to royalty. That made him more than a mere rat now.

“You traitor!”

The wraith roared. Merely daring to learn the royal family’s secret swordsmanship was high treason, yet this scoundrel had dared—dared—to enter this place coveting even the Precious Sword of Belkain. As Belkain’s last king, the wraith could never forgive such a traitor.

“Graaaah!”

The wraith’s madness spiraled further out of control. He kicked off the floor and charged at Yuto. The purple arms around him lined up, thrusting forward to impale Yuto like a gigantic spear.

BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!

Yuto’s manipulation of aether affected Void Touch as well. Like his dagger, the two hands of Void Touch wrapped themselves in swirling aether and collided with the wraith’s arms.

Amid the thunder of the collision, Yuto swung his dagger.

WHOOSH!

The whirlwind around its blade stretched out, compensating for the dagger’s limited reach.

BOOM!

The wraith’s descending sword struck the dagger.

Yuto gritted his teeth amid the sparks of aether scattering in every direction. He was strong. The violence of that overwhelming mass was more than his fourteen-year-old body could bear, inflicting pain that made his bones feel as if they were being crushed.

The wrist gripping his dagger was already going numb. But he had no time to tend to his body. The wraith’s glowing eyes were right before him. That purple gaze, brimming with piercing regret, hatred, and murderous intent, was tearing Yuto’s heart to shreds.

“Die...!”

The wraith bellowed and swung his sword wide. The sixth form of the Belkain royal family’s secret swordsmanship: Lion’s Claws. It was only a single swing, yet five purple slashes flew out along its path.

SLASH!

Even with Void Step, Yuto failed to evade them completely. Flesh was sliced from his thigh and flank, and red blood spurted out. Gritting his teeth, he forced his buckling legs to hold him upright.

His lungs felt as if they were burning. His body was screaming. But his gaze did not waver. He ignored the anguish in his heart. What he had to do now was pass judgment on that foolish king, not console his maddened father.

‘Little by little...’

Yuto stepped back and clamped a hand over the wound in his side. Fortunately, the cut was not deep enough to expose his innards. The same was true of his thigh. As long as he ignored the pain, he could still manage to move.

‘I’m starting to see it.’

The wraith was strong. That was an undeniable fact. Of course he was. The wraith—Luke Belkain—had been known as the greatest swordsman in the Kingdom of Belkain.

In another world, not this one.

In the world where Yuto had existed as his son, and Luke Belkain as his father.

The son had admired his father’s swordsmanship. He had revered the man hailed as the greatest swordsman in the history of the kingdom—no, of the royal family itself.

As a young boy, the son had learned the sword from his father. Busy as he was with affairs of state, whenever his son came to him with a wooden sword and asked for a lesson, his father would always smile, take up a wooden sword of his own, and oblige him.

‘Your swordsmanship...’

Memories of swinging wooden swords together in his father’s office, with its piles of documents and lingering scent of ink. How to hold a sword, how to thrust, how to swing. How to move his feet as he wielded it.

‘I... know it well.’

His father had taught his young son the fundamentals of the sword. But Yuto had been too young then. His body had not yet grown enough to fully learn and wield the royal family’s secret swordsmanship, and his aether reserves had been woefully inadequate.

So, for his young son, his father had personally written and left behind a manual of the royal family’s secret swordsmanship. After his father died from the constellations’ curse, Yuto had learned the sword from the royal guard while practicing and mastering the royal family’s secret techniques on his own.

It was not only the manual his father had left behind that had made that possible.

Yuto held memories he never wanted to forget.

‘I know it very, very... well.’

Being unable to learn it physically did not mean he could not watch. When Yuto was little, his father had demonstrated the royal family’s secret swordsmanship for him time and again.

He had also watched his father practice at the training grounds over and over. How graceful and beautiful his father’s sword had been. Sometimes fast, sometimes slow, yet always precise, without the slightest faltering—he remembered it clearly.

[“You must remember all of it.”]

Whenever his father demonstrated his swordsmanship, he would always say those words with a faint smile. Thinking back now... his father must already have had some inkling of his fate. He must have suspected that he would one day die, unable to teach his grown son the sword himself.

“All of it...”

The memories he had treasured deep within his heart surged up like a storm. In his mind, Yuto recalled the swordsmanship of the father he had revered in the distant past, while his eyes watched the sword of the wraith before him, broken by madness.

“I remember all of it.”

The wraith’s sword. Its swirling aether burst outward, forming dozens of thrusts. The rushing light of aether was an utterly ominous color, but the sword of the father Yuto remembered had been as beautiful as the Milky Way, a stream of starlight glittering in the night sky.

The eighth form of the Belkain royal family’s secret swordsmanship: Flowing Milky Way. Even with that starlight rushing toward him, Yuto made no attempt to dodge. Instead, he quietly raised his dagger.

In the end, in that world before his regression, Yuto had never finished learning the royal family’s secret swordsmanship directly from his father. His memories of the swordsmanship his father had shown him, the manual his father had personally written and left behind, and the royal guard’s instruction had laid the foundations of his sword. Countless battles afterward had brought it to completion.

In this world, the wraith was indeed the greatest swordsman in the Kingdom of Belkain.

But not in Yuto’s world.

In that world, Yuto had been Belkain’s greatest swordsman. The son had surpassed the father.

The oncoming starlight was beautiful, yet carried the chill of death. An ordinary swordsman would have backed away, cowed by its force, only to be cut to pieces. But Yuto stepped forward instead.

‘Father’s Milky Way was dazzlingly beautiful.’

Pitch-black Void aether rippled in Yuto’s eyes.

‘But it was not flawless.’

As a child, he had sensed it only vaguely. Only after growing up, winning countless battles, and earning the name of hero had he understood.

CLANG!

The obsidian dagger traced the smallest possible arc, knocking aside the starlight.

CLANG! CLANG! CLANG!

The dagger moved without stopping. Yuto’s eyes read the starlight’s trajectories precisely. The angle of the wraith’s thrusts, the twisting of his wrist, the flow of aether forming the starlight. All of it was just like the swordsmanship of the father Yuto remembered.

No.

No, it was different. It was not the same. The wraith’s swordsmanship had even more openings than his father’s had in his memories.

“H... how?!”

The wraith shouted in bewilderment. Yuto let out a long breath and bit down hard on his lip. He grew colder still.

The power of the rancor the wraith wielded was tremendous. Consumed by madness, unable to pass on even in death, he lingered beneath the ruined royal castle, guarding the Precious Sword. That sight had shaken Yuto’s heart.

But no longer. Through their last exchange, Yuto had come to understand completely.

The wraith before him bore the name Luke Belkain, but he was by no means Yuto’s father. His swordsmanship was less complete than Yuto’s father’s had been.

Yuto had a vague idea why.

His father had honed his sword still further—for his son. He had possessed a father’s desire to one day pass on an even finer, more beautiful, more perfect sword to his child.

The wraith was different. He had already been the kingdom’s greatest swordsman, and he had never had a son he hoped would surpass him. He had possessed no fervent desire to teach his son the sword. Losing his beloved wife had broken his mind, leaving him unable to devote himself to his training.

That difference showed in his sword. Yuto was no longer overwhelmed or beguiled by the blade the wraith wielded. All he needed to watch for were the purple arms writhing around him, the symbols of his guilt. Their strength remained formidable, enough to overpower Yuto.

Yet now, even those arms no longer exerted much pressure on him. However powerful they might be, it was still the wraith who wielded them. Their every movement was based on the royal family’s secret swordsmanship he had learned. No matter how great their strength, they could never land a blow if Yuto saw through their trajectories completely.

Yuto erased the image of his father that clung to his eyes.

The tide of battle turned. The violence of overwhelming mass that had crushed Yuto moments before now flailed aimlessly through empty air. The purple arms rushed at him with grotesque sounds, but he ducked, reading their paths without the slightest error.

WHOOSH!

Even as the vicious rush of air brushed past his hair, Yuto’s eyes remained as still as a lake. Adjusting his grip on the obsidian dagger, he extended the hands of Void Touch behind him to intercept the path of the wraith’s sword.

“This... This cannot be! This cannot be!”

Screaming, the wraith unleashed Lion’s Claws, the sixth form of the royal family’s secret swordsmanship, once more. Five purple slashes tore through space, engulfing Yuto’s entire body.

This time, Yuto did not use Void Step. Instead, aether coiled around his obsidian dagger. Standing his ground, he tilted its tip at an angle.

The dagger plunged deep into the center of the oncoming claws.

BOOOOM!

An explosive shock wave erupted, but only the wraith was driven back.

“Hah...?!”

The second form of the royal family’s secret swordsmanship: Inverse Scale Thrust. It was a difficult technique that pierced the weakest point of an aether attack to break it apart. The wraith could only reel in shock at seeing his royal swordsmanship countered by a rat, a traitor who was not even a legitimate inheritor.

“You stopped honing your sword.”

Yuto murmured in a dry voice and strode forward.

“A king’s sword exists to protect his people. It must cut down the enemies who invade his kingdom. But your sword... has forgotten its purpose.”

“...!”

“Because your loneliness weighed more heavily than your duty to protect your people.”

The wraith trembled in silence. Those words were a judgment on the sin he had committed.

“You are no king,” Yuto declared.