The more stubby pencils or empty mechanical pencil cases a student has, the better you can gauge how hard they’ve been studying.
Similarly, a broken wooden sword in the Kaizen Empire symbolizes the knight’s effort.
“I’m innocent!”
The sword sheath looked like it was worth millions at first glance, so I intentionally didn’t touch it.
But a wooden sword should only cost about 100,000 won, right?
It’s something I could easily buy with the allowance that Professor Chun gives me.
Yet the main object was not the sword sheath but the wooden sword itself.
“Na-me, lower your hand. You need to hold it higher!”
What am I doing at my age?
“Y-yes…”
Principal Gu On-yu had no room for error in her supervision.
I’m just stuck kneeling with my hands up in a corner of the auditorium, lamenting my situation.
The remnants of the wooden sword were being swept into a plastic bag by my attendants.
“Katsuhata! Is that really the correct way to be punished? Don’t you know to stretch out your arms straight?”
“I’m… I’m sorry! Hic…”
“Oh my, how did this happen… Yes, hello. This is Koizumi Yoshihiro. Yes, I need to contact the Lord directly. Yes, yes, it is an urgent matter.”
Emika’s mentor, Koizumi, who exuded the smell of an old man, was making a call back to his homeland.
The shocking part was that he was younger than Principal Gu On-yu. He must only be in his mid-50s at most.
“Huh… Hiiing…”
And next to me, a girl who was taking the same punishment as me was Katsuhata Emika.
She was initially sobbing while cradling the shattered wooden sword, and when her mentor arrived, she burst into wails.
Having been severely scolded for not properly keeping the prized sword, she still seemed unable to compose herself.
“There are so many precious items in this world, how can a wooden sword be considered a treasure?”
When I slyly asked Emika, she glared at me with narrowed eyes.
“It’s thanks to our ancestors’ wisdom. The heir to the Katsuhata Sect must swing the sword more than anyone else; that’s why the unbreakable wooden sword was created.”
Surprisingly, Emika explained it kindly without being swayed by her emotions.
Or maybe she was just too young to get angry at me.
“Talk about saving costs, huh?”
“It’s not that simple! This wooden sword can only be used while you’re still the heir before reaching adulthood. Using this sword is a sort of oath and rite to inherit the spirits of the past lords.”
“So, ‘inherited victory’ (全勝) wasn’t about fighting but about receiving the legacy (傳承).”
I couldn’t shake off the feeling of a parent persuading their child to wear hand-me-downs from older siblings, but I didn’t mention that out loud.
Emika seemed excited to talk about a subject she knew well.
She talked about how the Inherited Sword was made from oak trees living in the Mana Field in the Akaishi Mountains of Japan, and how it was crafted in the early 19th century and has been handed down for nine generations.
“No wonder it was so hard.”
“Yah…!”
“I didn’t break it on purpose. If I’d known it was a family heirloom, I wouldn’t have done it.”
“But hey, you said it wouldn’t break at all. How did you manage, Na-me?”
“Um… Honestly, if it’s been around for 200 years, it’s about time it started to decay, right?”
“That… that can’t be!”
“The handle is pitch black and looks like it’s worn from use. Now that this is what happened, let’s get you a pretty new one. They say Swedish ones are really good these days.”
You aren’t seriously expecting me to pay for that, are you?
Right now, I was in the middle of saving up for the astronomical costs of the Adella Resonance project; I couldn’t afford to dish out money for something like this.
So I sweet-talked Emika as much as I could.
Koizumi, who had been eyeing us for a while while talking on the phone, finally approached.
“Katsuhata! It’s the Lord!”
“Neheheh…!”
I was so flustered that Emika’s voice crackled.
A whirlwind of anxiety must have fluttered through her in that brief moment.
Her expression didn’t look too great either.
Emika collected herself and carried on with the call.
“I’ll pass the phone. This is Katsuhata Emika—”
“Emika! You finally did it! I’ve always believed in you!”
“Eh?”
“The disaster turned into a blessing! The experience from outside the well has proven to be beneficial! I am so very sad that this wonderful event happened just as you left for Korea. But it’s okay. Emika, when you come back home, let’s throw a celebration party right away!”
“W-wait a sec, Lord! I have no idea what you mean!”
“Hahaha, how humble you are! You don’t know what I mean? Alright, I’ll let you know myself!”
What on earth is happening right now?
None of us gathered in the auditorium understood anything that person was saying.
Even if I wanted to ask Emika, she didn’t seem to comprehend it either.
The sure thing was that this uncle on the other side of the phone looked super hyped, as if he’d had a drink or two.
“Kamiizumi Nobutsuna.”
“Kamiizumi…? Are you talking about the world’s best swordsman?”
“That’s right. You, Katsuhata Emika, have now earned the right to be called the reincarnation of that person from all over the world. And that’s not all! Our Katsuhata Sect is the only one to inherit both the three major origins of Japanese swordsmanship, Shinto-ryu (神道流) and Kage-ryu (陰流).”
“Wait a moment, Lord…!”
“If it were up to me, I’d want to pass on the title to you right now. I can hardly wait for the next lord meeting; you don’t know how much I want to see the elder council members squirm!”
It seems like the situation is turning very wrong.
You could tell just by looking at Koizumi Yoshihiro’s expression.
He initially sighed in relief but then showed a variety of facial expressions.
Emika turned her head slightly towards me, her conversation on hold.
“What.”
My arms were getting tired, and I couldn’t hold them up anymore.
I naturally lowered my hands and averted Emika’s heavy gaze.
Emika rejoined the conversation and softly called for the Lord.
“Um… that is, Lord…?”
“Yes, Emika! What do you want to eat while you’re in Japan? I won’t nag you about eating on that day; just tell me. Burgers? Pizza?”
“It wasn’t me who broke it… I mean, I didn’t break it!”
“Your sword, yet you say you didn’t break it?”
“That was during the duel!”
“Hahaha! Even if it broke during a duel, that’s okay! The fact that the Inherited Sword broke means you took on that kind of power! That’s an extraordinary accomplishment; no need to be so humble, Emika.”
“Na-me broke it all by himself.”
Emika, sinking into the pit of misunderstanding, shouted while on the verge of tears again.
Finally, unable to stand it any longer, I snatched the phone from her and joined the conversation.
“Hello, I am NoName.”
“Huh? Who… um, who is this?”
The youthful voice tried using honorifics but switched to casual speech halfway through, from the Lord of the Katsuhata family.
“Regardless, it seems the Inherited Sword is a treasure that Katsuhata doesn’t need, so I won’t demand a replacement. Or are you in trouble without a sword?”
“Not really…”
“Then since you have the Lord’s personal assurance, we’ll consider the replacement issue off the table. I’ll buy a practice wooden sword for Emika and send it back to Japan.”
Thud-
I’m glad it turned out fine.
“Why did you hang up, Na-me!”
“Just in case you changed your mind and said something else, you know.”
Isn’t it considered rude to be the one to hang up first?
And it might seem a tad cheap, but considering my past lives, I’m older than your lord, so it’s all good.
*
16th century, during the Sengoku period, a time of war among numerous factions.
At that time, Kamiizumi Nobutsuna was known as the greatest samurai and his fame has endured to this day.
As old records often do, there were exaggerated and mythological accounts of him splitting mountains or realizing the ultimate swordsmanship in a day.
However, there was one fact passed down through the ages with concrete evidence: at the age of 16, he broke the greatest magic sword granted to him by his lord.
As time passed into the 19th century Edo period, in order to mediate the conflicts among hundreds of factions, the shogun gave twelve ‘Inherited Swords’ modeled after Kamiizumi’s magic sword to major clans.
He promised that when an heir under 16 reproduced Kamiizumi’s achievement, they would pass on the rights to rule them all.
While there had been a few cases of breaking a wooden sword, they were all found to be false confessions aided by others.
Ultimately, as the Edo period crumbled faster than the wooden swords, such promises became mere folklore.
“What to do…”
Katsuhata’s lord, Katsuhata Akitaro, was deep in thought.
The six remaining Inherited Swords were treasures essential to their respective clans.
Just moments ago, he was concocting a glorious plan to elevate Katsuhata’s fame by bringing history back into the spotlight.
[So I didn’t break it!]
Emika was just fourteen this year.
The Lord thought he could find no greater talent than her, no matter what mage from the Katsuhata Sect he brought.
“Even so, to think the greatest swordsman of the age did what she did two years earlier is truly a remarkable achievement…”
At 16, one is still expected to be growing their Aura Heart, making it inherently difficult to infuse significant magic.
While 16 years were treated as adulthood in the medieval period, humans genuinely mature between 18 and 20.
“But eight years old? Emika is not the type to act so childishly…?”
At eight, the Katsuhata family wouldn’t even let you handle a sword yet.
Thinking that simply being able to exhale Aura from the body would earn you praise for being a genius would make his eyes go dizzy.
After hours of pacing back and forth, he could find no peace.
Thud-
Thud-
Even the clear bamboo sounds emanating from the Shishiodoshi couldn’t calm the Lord’s heart.
Determined, he decided to call his superior, Koizumi Yoshihiro, who was Emika’s mentor.
“This is Katsuhata’s Lord, Katsuhata Akitaro.”
[Yes, Lord. I received your call.]
“That Na-me kid claims to have created the Unique Magic Adela, does that seem feasible to you?”
[I haven’t verified it personally, but I’m sure she possesses significant knowledge of Magic Studies.]
Wasn’t she just good at math?
Over his long tenure of fifty years, the Lord had witnessed many geniuses, and among them, he’d once shone in an era; this was something distinctively different.
It was akin to deep learning AI emerging and defeating humans in Go after just a few months of training—a fear of the unknown.
“What is Emika up to now? Is she still with that kid?”
[Ah, uh, right now, Katsuhata is… dead.]
“What?”
Thud-
The phone dropped onto the stone floor of the garden.
The Lord doubted his ears, a flood of thoughts raced through his mind.
After deliberating for a moment, he picked up the phone with trembling hands again.
“What did you just say? What happened to our Emika?”
[Ah, she just died again. That makes it the eleventh time now.]
“Eleventh time?”
[Oh, I forgot to mention. They were playing a game with the kids.]
“You scared me half to death, you fool!”
Crash-
In the end, Lord Katsuhata would have to buy a new phone.
