“Hah.”
The knight, Petel, exhaled a breath of admiration as he withdrew The Path he had spread across the area. Beyond the rising cloud of dust lay the boy, collapsed pitifully. The boy’s slender blade, now shattered into pieces, lay scattered beside him.
The duel was Petel’s clear victory. However, the process leading to that victory had been anything but overwhelming. With a dazed expression, Petel touched his neck. A drop of bright red blood smeared onto his fingertip.
It was proof that the boy had managed to reach him.
“Hah, haha.”
The boy had failed to bring Petel down.
However, the boy’s sword had reached him.
That was supposed to be impossible. How could a mere Sword Beginner manage such a feat?
‘What if he were a fellow Sword Walker ? No, what if he were just slightly more proficient in handling mana? Or if the swordsmanship he mastered was just a bit more seasoned…?’
If that were the case, the boy’s sword might have pierced deeper, more exquisitely, and into a fatal spot. Petel felt a chill run down his spine as he looked at the fallen boy.
‘If I weren’t a mature Sword Walker capable of deploying The Path , I would have been done for.’
The implication was simple.
This frail boy was a swordsman capable of killing an ordinary Sword Walker with nothing but that pathetic scrap of metal.
Reaching that conclusion, Petel muttered to himself.
‘I feel like I’ve just seen a ghost.’
*
The first thing the uninvited guest did by the campfire was reveal his name. I learned for the first time that the gentlemanly knight crouching before me was named ‘Petel.’ As Petel introduced himself in a boisterous manner, I looked down at the blanket covering my body.
‘He’s been looking after me.’
As expected, he was a gentlemanly sort. Instead of binding me with ropes after our clash, he had covered me with a blanket and stayed by my side until I regained consciousness. But instead of gratitude, suspicion began to bloom within me. It was an old habit.
‘…Why did he do that?’
No matter what kindness he showed now, the fact that he had swung his sword at me remained unchanged. Even if I had lost the skirmish, I couldn’t completely lower my guard against Petel. I had to stay tense. In fact, wasn’t it because I hadn’t let go of my tension that I was able to parry his first attack…?
‘My senses have become sharper thanks to completely digesting Needle .’
I felt it instinctively.
The current me could move much more nimbly and exquisitely than before.
However, I still couldn’t envision a scenario where I defeated Petel. No matter what I tried.
The presence radiating from the knight before me was like a fortress wall. A sturdy wall that might suffer a small scratch from a blade, but was impossible to tear down.
“Don’t be so tense. I only swung my sword earlier to disarm you. The will in your eyes was so intense that I didn’t think words would get through to you.”
Petel seemed to sense my wariness and spoke with a lighthearted tone.
He pointed to his sword, which he had placed carefully in its scabbard by the fire. He then shrugged his shoulders as if to show he had no intention of fighting.
But naturally, I did not relax.
“Hmm. I don’t know what you’ve been through, but it seems you won’t let your guard down easily.”
“……”
“Well then, I suppose it’s best to start with this. I think your wariness might lessen a bit once you hear my story.”
Petel turned his gaze toward the campfire with a relaxed expression. An ember popped with a crackling sound, and I flinched involuntarily. As I had completely digested the memories of the swordswoman Mary, the sensation of her end—being burned alive—flickered through my mind.
“Regarding why I came all the way to this nameless village in the middle of nowhere.”
Regardless of my reaction, Petel continued speaking as he pulled a piece of smoked meat from his bundle.
His face was perfectly calm.
And then.
“I will be dying soon. They said I have a month at most.”
The words that followed were entirely unexpected.
“I am terminally ill.”
*
Petel shared his story at great length.
For all his clean swordsmanship, the man was a terrible storyteller. He repeated himself, rambled about things only he knew, and occasionally spoke with an emotional intensity that was hard to follow.
But that actually made him sound more sincere.
I understood clearly that the person before me was not a villain, but a good man—a knight with a pitiful story. To summarize the long-winded tale Petel laid out:
‘A knight who was loyal his entire life. But the moment he contracted an incurable disease, he was discarded and wandered until he ended up here.’
It was similar to the protagonists who often appear in chivalric novels.
The difference was that reality is not a novel. Unlike a dashing protagonist who eventually overcomes his illness, gains wealth, riches, and beautiful women, and achieves strength and fame, tragic figures in reality usually meet a tragic end.
Petel would likely be the same.
The realm of a Sword Walker is not a pathetic one, but it is insufficient to become a protagonist praised by all. It is not a special realm, but rather the highest point an ordinary swordsman with decent talent can reach through bone-shattering effort. That was exactly where Petel stood.
Petel, who had been pouring out his unsolicited life story, only explained at the very end how he had crawled all the way to this remote village.
“I wanted to die alone and quietly, without being a burden to anyone. This village is nice. It’s appropriately quiet, the sunset every evening is appropriately beautiful, and I can spend time by myself…”
“……”
“I’m not afraid of death. It’s the moment I can go to the side of the God I serve. I just wanted to spend my final moments on my own terms. In all my life, I’ve never had the luxury of enjoying time for myself. That’s why I went out of my way to find this deserted place.”
Perhaps he had become sentimental in the face of death.
Well, people who have been given a date for their demise tend to do strange things, so I understood.
However, even if his story was sincere, I couldn’t trust it completely.
How was I to know if Petel would suddenly change and do something?
“…I’ve explained this much, and yet you still haven’t lowered your guard.”
“Didn’t I tell you? Suspicion is a habit of mine.”
“That’s not a habit; it’s practically a disease.”
Petel spoke jokingly.
A disease, huh? Perhaps he was right.
I had heard people ask if I had a paranoia disorder countless times.
‘…I wasn’t always this bad.’
The reason my suspicion had become so tenacious was entirely because of Swordmaster Carlos. The tragedy of that day had turned me into a much more exhausted human being. I would likely never be able to go back to how I was before. Never.
“Well, if you must see it with your own eyes.”
Petel let out a long sigh and slowly took off his outer garment. The light of the campfire revealed Petel’s chest. I could see his well-defined pectoral muscles.
And near his left chest, specifically around his heart, there was something conspicuous. A pitch-black spot. A spot that felt ominous just by looking at it.
“High Priests and healers who have practiced medicine their whole lives said they don’t know what this is.”
“……”
“There is only one thing I know. This spot is slowly devouring the organs inside my body, and now, only my heart remains.”
Petel smiled bitterly.
“My second heart, the Mana Heart , has already been mostly consumed. And the moment my real heart is eaten, my life will end. Quietly and lonely.”
Petel recited his end calmly. It must have taken a long time for him to be able to speak of his situation so familiarly. I looked at Petel with a slightly pitying gaze before shifting my eyes toward the empty air. Liam was there.
「Young descendant, it seems you’ll never have to worry about being a pushover or getting scammed.」
Liam looked at me with an expression that suggested he was a bit fed up.
So what? I continued to stare blankly at Liam.
Eventually, he gave me the answer I wanted.
「Everything that knight said is true. The disease nestled inside his body is eating away at his organs and muscles. Ravenously.」
With this, my suspicion was cleared.
I turned my gaze back to Petel. He smiled awkwardly and asked.
“Is this enough for me to become your neighbor?”
I nodded with a bright face, as if I had never been suspicious in the first place.
“Yes, it’s more than enough.”
For some reason, both Petel and the floating Liam were looking at me with weary eyes.
At any rate, that was how this territory gained its first new neighbor.
Even if it would only be for a month at most.
“I look forward to getting to know you.”
“The pleasure is mine.”
My mood improved quite a bit after shaking hands with Petel.
Petel was a likable person, he wouldn’t cause me any harm, and if an uninvited guest I couldn’t handle appeared later, he was a righteous knight who would willingly fight alongside me.
「Lucky for you.」
“What’s lucky?”
「Stop pretending to be shameless. I can see exactly what you’re thinking, young descendant.」
Ah.
「You’ve realized that if you wait a month at most, you’ll be able to eat the sword of a mature Sword Walker . For free.」
Of course, I won’t deny that there were other reasons as well.
*
The new neighbor, Knight Petel, was indeed a good person.
“If you ever need my help for the advancement of your sword, feel free to come to me anytime.”
Petel said he would be happy to spar whenever I wanted. In addition, he said that if I sought advice regarding the sword, he would offer his humble opinion. That was an immense favor. Normally, this was something done only after receiving a proper fee from a friendly noble.
“What else does a man with a set death date have to do? To be honest, I was starting to get a bit bored of just watching the sunset.”
Petel laughed good-naturedly.
“Besides, Young Master Arhan’s sword is quite interesting. Or rather, should I say your heart is more interesting than your sword…? Anyway, I think it will be a meaningful time for me as well.”
His smile was bright, but there was a shadow on one side of it.
“As my time to die approaches, I find myself wanting to leave something behind in this world. And I thought that if I taught Young Master Arhan something, my trace would remain a bit more clearly in this world. For some reason, I feel like you will leave your name in the history of this continent.”
As dawn broke, Petel extinguished the campfire and stood up.
“I won’t ask about your strange talent for handling swords or that special heart of yours. Every human has their own circumstances. Besides, it goes against a knight’s honor to pry into matters the other party hasn’t spoken of. A knight always waits loftily for the other person to open their heart first.”
To Petel, honor took precedence over curiosity.
In that regard, Petel could be said to be a different kind of human than me.
A bit more of an adult, perhaps.
Regardless, thanks to that, Petel became an even more beneficial neighbor to me.
「Now that your Mana Heart has settled, you have become a Sword Beginner .」
Well, that didn’t mean I could just sit around smiling.
「Then, to move toward higher ground, you must take the next step.」
The road ahead was still long.
「The time has come to devour a new sword, young descendant.」
Once I had decided to climb, I couldn’t stop.
