The Helmeted Knight did not draw his sword. The chain-wrapped greatsword remained bound at his waist, its blade concealed. Instead, he leveled the spear he held at Najin, who studied the spearhead pointed at him.

It was an unusual spear, shaped like a cross-shaped star stretched upward. Far from an ordinary design, it could both thrust and slash. Najin narrowed his eyes a little further.

CRACK, CRACKLE...

A rising ember died away. A fresh spark leaped from the campfire, and just as it, too, faded—

THUD.

Najin stamped down on the earth. His heart raced, accelerating his blood and mana. The constellation blooming like a flower above his sword became thorny vines that coiled around it. Sword aura compressed against the longsword’s blade.

Spreading sword aura wide was useful for cutting through magic, blocking it, or intercepting ranged weapons. In close combat like this, where weapon met weapon, compressing it was more efficient. All the more so against a stronger opponent.

‘I need to increase its density.’

His sword aura compressed to its limit. White and gold flashes flickered incessantly along the blade, far outshining the campfire. The moment the Helmeted Knight shifted slightly in that glare, Najin kicked off the ground and charged.

TICK.

Barely a second had passed. In the time it took an ember to rise and fade, Najin was already swinging his sword at the Helmeted Knight. He attacked with all his strength from the outset. This opponent warranted nothing less.

The blade sliced through the air toward him. To Najin, it felt like a perfect strike. But—

CLAAANG!

The Helmeted Knight thought otherwise. Compared with Najin’s forceful movement, his own was light. Light, yet unwavering. Gray aura blossomed over the spearhead and stopped Najin’s sword completely.

Then he spun the shaft. Najin’s sword, caught in the cross-shaped spearhead, turned with it, leaving his torso exposed. The Helmeted Knight extended his leg straight into that opening.

Najin switched from a two-handed grip to one hand and simultaneously reached out to catch the kick. His fingers screamed beneath the greave with an audible crunch, but the pain was bearable.

Using the recoil from the kick, Najin spun on the spot. His trapped sword scraped free of the spearhead.

SKRRAAAPE!

Drawing his sword free, retreating, and turning a full circle flowed together like water. With movements that natural, slipping in one more was hardly difficult: an attack flowing straight from evasion.

Driven by centrifugal force, his blade swept straight at the Helmeted Knight. Naturally, the knight countered as well.

CLANG!

Sword aura met aura. Najin was the one driven back by the recoil. He raised his head as he slid backward.

Their gazes met. An exchange completed in an instant, just a few clashes—yet enough to gauge each other’s skill. Both burst into laughter at once. Gripping his spear in both hands, the Helmeted Knight stepped forward.

“Here I come.”

“Anytime.”

The duel began.

2.

The moment the Helmeted Knight went on the offensive, Najin felt astonishment—and bewilderment. The monstrous strength produced by a frame twice his size was impressive enough, but there was far more to it than that.

THUD.

The Helmeted Knight planted his foot and thrust his spear.

Written down, the action took only a single sentence. But Najin’s eyes could read everything that happened in the spaces between those words: how deeply the foot sank into the earth with its resounding impact; how far the arms and shoulders moved; the spearhead’s tilt, the angle of the extended arm, and the exquisite distribution of force. Every movement meshed like gears. Nothing was lacking, nothing excessive. Each movement was perfect, so the strike they formed together was perfect as well.

WHOOOOSH!

Najin’s eyes widened at the approaching spearhead. The moment he blocked the strike, he was driven back. And his opponent did not stop at one blow. Movement followed movement. Strike after strike gathered into a flowing sequence.

CLANG, CLANG!

Sparks flew as sword aura and aura collided. Lightning flashed before Najin’s eyes as well—not a physical flash, but a warning of danger from his senses, stretched taut.

‘Fuck.’

Najin groaned, even as he marveled. His eyes darted rapidly, yet he struggled to follow the Helmeted Knight’s movements. Reading them was harder still. Considering his ability to track motion and his talent for “seeing,” that was astonishing.

He could decipher most movements after seeing them once. It was exceedingly rare for the same attack to catch him twice, and he understood at once how to perform it himself. That was his talent, the advantage he had relied on until now.

But it did not work against the man before him. He had to see the same movement two or three more times before he could barely understand it. Even then, he could not reproduce it. The exquisite distribution of force born of near-perfect bodily control still lay beyond his reach.

‘Transcendent beings. Superhumans.’

Those who had mastered a single weapon—the fighters known as Masters. Najin could not yet imitate their techniques. The man before him was no exception. Even if he was no longer a transcendent being, he had clearly been one in the past.

Their stars, aura, and sword aura might wear away, but the techniques they had built up did not.

The Helmeted Knight’s technique was perfect. He pressed Najin without respite. Eyes bloodshot, Najin fended off his attacks. Then he began breaking up that continuous flow and counterattacking. Simply taking a beating did not suit his temperament.

CLAAANG!

Sword aura and aura collided and repelled each other. When Najin began counterattacking, the Helmeted Knight burst into laughter. As though he had been waiting for it, he began displaying a different set of techniques—as if to say, Let’s see you handle these, too.

Najin lived up to that expectation.

WHOOOSH!

He angled his blade to meet the spear slicing through the air. The instant their weapons touched, the Helmeted Knight turned his thrust into a slash, swinging the shaft. Najin twisted his sword to match the movement, diverting the spearhead’s path.

WHOOSH!

The shaft swept over Najin’s head. Once a spear had been swung, its reach and power meant a missed strike left a large opening. Or it should have.

CRACK!

The Helmeted Knight stamped down and tightened his grip on the shaft. Tendons stood taut in the forearms exposed through his broken armor. Then he swung his arms downward. The spearhead’s semicircular path changed abruptly, bending into a downward blow like a hammer.

A missed attack left a greater opening than with other weapons. That was a spear’s weakness. There was no chance a warrior who had attained transcendence was unaware of it, nor that he had neglected to develop a technique to overcome it.

THUD!

Najin hurriedly raised his sword to block the spear, and his knees creaked under the impact. The crushing weight felt as though it would flatten him. But he endured it. Endured it, and counterattacked.

CLANG, CLANG!

Several exchanges passed in a single second. Each read the other’s movements and considered the next move. Sometimes those predictions were right; sometimes they missed. Each time, improvisation and split-second judgment filled the gaps.

SHHHH!

Najin blocked an attack and slid far backward. Yet he immediately regained his stance and charged the Helmeted Knight again. This was nothing like his usual favored tactics.

He did not hide. He did not exploit the terrain. He neither fled nor put distance between them. He did not seek out unpredictable factors. He faced his opponent head-on, fairly and squarely.

This was not how he had fought as Ivan’s hound. It was how he fought as Ivan’s squire, and as a knight.

Even at a disadvantage, even when he was clearly weaker than his opponent, Najin did not retreat. He faced the Helmeted Knight honestly, directly. The knight was well aware of that. Though his helmet concealed his face, he wore the same expression as Najin: anticipation of what his opponent would do, excitement, and a smile that escaped despite himself.

Their lives were at stake. Blood flew, bones broke, and flesh tore in a fight that verged on barbarity. But what of it?

This was a duel, undertaken after they had declared their names. They were obliged to face each other fairly, honorably, and proudly. Who, then, could call it barbaric? So long as both men approached it in earnest, this was a sacred duel.

CLAAANG!

No fight was free of unpredictable factors. Victory and defeat turned on the smallest details. A battle in which two opponents clashed with all their strength until one subdued the other was a rare thing. Yet countless warriors and knights longed for precisely such a fight.

That was why duels existed.

THUD, BOOM.

A pile of rocks collapsed, obscuring their sight. Until the dust cleared, neither Najin nor the Helmeted Knight attacked. They merely swung their weapons to sweep it away. Seeing what the other had done through the dispersing dust, both exhaled with a laugh.

Then spear and sword traded blows once more.

It was a foolish fight, childish even. No explicit rule required them to behave this way. These were unspoken rules, rules no one would reproach them for breaking right now. Yet even with their lives at stake, both men maintained courtesy toward each other. They kept to the rules.

An onlooker might have mocked their stupidity or pointed at their foolishness... but that was chivalry by its very nature. Honor, pride, and romance lay only a hair’s breadth from childishness.

This was a duel. What did anyone else’s opinion matter? Nothing mattered except the opponent before them, clashing spear against sword.

CLANG!

The two men watched each other’s sword aura.

CLANG, SKRRRAAAPE!

Najin’s sword aura was formed of brilliant white lines linked by glittering gold. It resembled a constellation. Untouched by the erosion of time, it shone radiantly.

BOOM!

By contrast, the Helmeted Knight’s aura was gray. Ashen. Steeped in time and faded by countless experiences, it resembled old, rusted armor. Yet when it clashed with Najin’s sword, it shone with a forlorn brilliance—as though crying out that it could still shine.

‘You can block this?’

‘I’m not done yet. Is that all?’

Each unleashed his techniques against the other. With every move Najin made, the Helmeted Knight revealed another technique, one by one, as though testing how far Najin could keep up.

That precarious tightrope walk continued. After it had gone on for some time, the Helmeted Knight drew a breath.

The air changed abruptly. He adopted a different stance from any he had used before. Najin knew instinctively: a powerful technique was coming. He opened his eyes wide and took in the Helmeted Knight’s movements.

The knight stamped down. Holding the spear in both hands, he tucked it against his side. He lowered his stance and twisted his grip on the shaft. His armor clattered loudly, and his muscles creaked. It looked as though he were compressing his strength to its limit.

Then that compressed power was released.

The Helmeted Knight thrust his spear. Najin could not see the movement. It was too fast. Twisting his whole body as though wringing water from it, the knight drove the spearhead forward. Compressed power erupted from its tip.

A thrust, the most fundamental technique. A technique of utter simplicity. Yet the fundamentals demonstrated by a Master-level warrior were anything but simple. The essence of all the martial skill he had accumulated rode upon that spear tip.

WHOOOOOSH!

Air coiled around the spearhead. The feather ornaments tied to the spear whirled around it. The spearhead itself did not rotate, but the air wrapped around it created a spinning motion. Najin could not react properly to that strike. The best he could do was raise his blade to block it.

“...!”

The moment the storm erupting from the spear tip struck Najin’s sword, his body lifted into the air. His view changed abruptly. The rocks all around him raced out of sight. The Helmeted Knight, who had stood right before him, receded into the distance.

The knight had not moved. Najin had been hurled backward.

CRAAASH!

After flying a considerable distance, Najin slammed into a huge boulder. As it collapsed under the impact, he choked out a gasp. His back ached. His shoulder, arm, and fingers screamed. Something was clearly broken.

GRIND.

Gritting his teeth, Najin pushed away the rubble and rose. The duel was not over. He had to respond. Sure enough, the Helmeted Knight had closed the distance in an instant and was thrusting his spear toward him.

Najin raised his sword. Held in his broken arm, it trembled. To steady it, he braced his other arm against the flat of the blade. Blocking like this would only break that arm too, but it was better than having a hole punched through his body.

What next? What was he supposed to do next? Najin’s mind raced.

But there was no point in worrying. The next attack never came. The Helmeted Knight’s spear had stopped before Najin’s sword. Najin blinked and looked at him, and the knight spoke with a laugh.

“I’ve won. We can agree on that, can’t we?”

He tipped his chin at Najin, signaling him to admit defeat. Realizing what the Helmeted Knight meant, Najin could not help bursting into laughter.

Not every duel decided life and death. Once both sides had given their all and one acknowledged defeat, the duel ended there. Victory and defeat had been determined without needing to separate the living from the dead.

Just as Najin had turned the Helmeted Knight’s hunt into a duel, the Helmeted Knight had turned a duel to the death into an honorable contest.

“Yes. I’ve lost.”

Najin nodded and lowered his sword. The Helmeted Knight lowered his spear in turn, then extended a hand. Najin took it and rose.

At the duel’s end, what remained was neither hunter and prey nor the living and the dead.

There was only a victor and a defeated opponent.