「That sickly knight’s body is already shattered beyond repair. By my estimate, he has a week left at most. Even then, death will advance slowly with each passing hour. His limbs will seize, his muscles will stiffen, and eventually, his brain will fail until he’s reduced to the state of a small child.」
“……”
「Naturally, that knight who reached the realm of ‘Sword Runner’ must have known Petel’s condition. But what did he say?」
I gritted my teeth at Liam’s question.
“He said the Duel of Honor would take place in one week.”
「Indeed. That is the nature of the lot called knights. As stubborn and rule-bound as they are, once a fight begins, they do their utmost to corner and crush their opponent without leaving anything to chance.」
Liam spoke coldly.
「Knights only fight battles they know they can win. Even if he is a powerful knight who has touched the realm of ‘Sword Runner,’ he will never be careless. He will erase every variable, leaving not even the slightest possibility of defeat.」
“……Then, even if I step forward as the Proxy Warrior, is there really no way?”
「No. That is the only way.」
Listening to Liam, I looked down at the village from the ridge. There sat the encampment of the order of knights, and a short distance away was Petel, swinging his sword with a broken body.
Petel was gasping for air, his eyes bloodshot and his body drenched in sweat, yet he did not stop his training. It was as if the moment he stopped swinging his sword, he would drop dead on the spot.
I looked at Liam.
Then, I asked.
“How, exactly?”
Liam gave a short answer.
「You devour Petel’s sword.」
“……Excuse me?”
「And then, you win the Duel of Honor with Petel’s sword.」
*
Fortunately, Liam hadn’t just thrown out a random conclusion. He explained the outcome of ‘devouring Petel’s sword’ and the possibility of victory that would arise from it.
“If that’s the case, it does seem like there’s a chance.”
I was convinced easily enough, despite my suspicious nature.
“But aren’t the odds too low?”
Of course, I still had my doubts.
Liam answered my question succinctly.
「Difficult paths are always a gamble.」
“……”
「The odds are low. However, when you win, you gain much.」
Liam looked at me.
「Young descendant, you will never flip the board without gambling. Not just now, but your entire life ahead will be a series of low-probability gambles, and you will always be the underdog on the field.」
Right. I already knew that.
Either let Petel die, or choose this method.
I knew all too well that there were only two options.
That was why I chose the latter. After deciding to follow Liam’s words, I went to find Petel.
He was swinging his sword as if his body were about to shatter.
“Sir Petel, I have something to say.”
Petel’s back was hunched like an old man’s, and the black spots had long since begun greedily devouring his upper body.
“Something… to say? Please, speak… from there. Right now, I cannot… let go of my sword.”
I watched Petel swing his sword repeatedly as if possessed. Then, I slowly laid out what I had heard from Liam.
“Sir Petel, it may be hard to believe, but I was born with a special power that allows me to perfectly replicate the swords of others. My unusually sturdy heart is also a part of that power.”
Petel listened to my words in silence, swinging his sword as if he were in another world. Droplets of sweat flew and sparkled. Whether he responded or not, I said what I had to say.
“I will replicate your sword and achieve victory against that knight. Your realm may be lower than his, but the potential held within your sword is by no means inferior. Therefore, instead of a sick and broken body, I, with a body that is still strong and whole, will become the Proxy Warrior.”
I had refined and summarized what Liam told me.
Liam said that the sword Petel had built up was not inferior to that knight’s, and if combined with the 「Needle」 and 「Fang」 I had gathered so far, a chance for victory might emerge.
Furthermore, I had the Heart of Steel and the ‘Line,’ the Path of Steel.
They were trump cards capable of creating variables.
But Petel continued to swing his sword in silence.
Only after exhaling a hot breath did he finally answer.
“Young Master Arhan.”
“Yes.”
“Even if what you say is true, it is impossible to defeat a 「Sword Runner」.”
Petel groaned as he lifted his sword upward.
“Even if you possess an unprecedented power unrecorded in history books, the current you cannot win against that knight. To use a metaphor, it is like a pupa and a butterfly.”
“……”
“I have reached the limit of a 「Sword Walker」, and that knight has reached the threshold of a 「Sword Runner」. In terms of realm, it is but a single step, but the distance of that step is far too great.”
The sword reflected the light, sparkling as if it were shattering.
“I can only wriggle on the ground, while that knight flies magnificently with wings. A pupa can never chase a butterfly. Even if you imitate me, a pupa, nothing will change.”
“But even so—”
“Young Master.”
Petel spoke in a low, heavy voice.
Having said that, Petel stopped swinging his sword for the first time.
“I told you before, I am not fighting to win.”
“……”
“I want to challenge the question I have harbored all my life, the one I have always wondered about. Even if a dishonorable, dog’s death awaits me at the end, I cannot stop.”
Petel’s joints creaked, and his muscles twisted. Thick blood trickled from his lips. Yet, Petel began swinging his sword again. He forced himself.
“This is my proof.”
Ah.
The biggest problem wasn’t my doubt, nor was it that knight’s wings.
「That conviction cannot be broken.」
There was no way to break Petel’s belief.
「Perhaps that, too, is the fate of that sickly sword.」
Liam whispered softly.
*
Near the village entrance, horses snorted in a temporary barracks. Apprentice knights tended to the horses, while official knights took turns standing guard with torches. Those sitting inside the tents went about their respective tasks.
This was the camp established by the order of knights.
Deep inside the bustling camp was ‘Meken,’ a knight who had reached the realm of 「Sword Runner」 and held the position of Vice-Captain of the 「Yellow Elephant」.
Meken was proudly polishing the blade of his beloved sword when a knight suddenly asked him a question.
“Vice-Captain, was it really necessary to go that far?”
Meken stopped polishing at the blunt question.
“Go that far?”
“I know it is tradition not to hold back in a Duel of Honor, but I am asking if you really had to drive a mere ‘Sword Walker’—a sickly, washed-up knight—to such an extreme.”
Meken looked at the knight standing behind him.
The knight’s gaze was straight and honest. He looked like a greenhorn who had only recently become a knight. He was at the age where one is still drunk on chivalric novels, intoxicated by the pride and sense of justice that comes with being a knight.
Meken smirked at him.
“You think my treatment was excessive.”
“I do.”
“Why?”
“Because you, a 「Sword Runner」, will surely win. If you win a Duel of Honor in this manner, the other knights might not be able to accept the result.”
Meken asked once more.
“I said, why?”
“……Because in a week, that sickly knight’s condition will have worsened so much that he’ll be a living corpse, unable to walk, let alone fight a proper duel.”
Petel’s condition was visibly dire.
Even the ordinary 「Sword Walker」 knights knew it the moment they saw him. Petel didn’t have much time left, and by the time the duel was to be held in a week, he might not even be among the living.
However.
“That may be so.”
Meken spoke with a piercing gaze.
“But do you—no, do any of you—know of 「Loyal Petel」?”
Meken set down the sword he had been meticulously polishing.
“I know that knight very well.”
“……”
“An ignorant fool who knows nothing but honor. He was a man so dull that he was even mocked with the nickname ‘Loyal Dog’ behind his back.”
Meken’s eyes flashed like a blade.
“But listen. The conviction that man holds is excessively solid.”
“……”
“Everyone at the Academy said Petel would end as a Sword Beginner. Even after he became a knight, people said a talentless idiot who knew nothing but effort would soon die.”
Meken parted his lips.
“And yet, he survived. For a very long time.”
“……”
“He won no fewer than seventeen Duels of Honor. He protected his employer on battlefields where fire arrows and mages’ bombardments rained down. When five hundred starving refugees came pouring in, he held the castle gate alone.”
Meken continued.
“I believe his conviction is as dangerous as the wings I possess. That is why I want to break him completely. I will trample his loyalty and defile his honor by any means necessary.”
“……”
“I feel that if I break that man of steel, I might finally find the clue to the ‘second wing’ that has been blocked for so long.”
As he spoke, shimmering wings sprouted from Meken’s back. Watching Meken speak with such a chilling gaze, the knight felt goosebumps rise.
“I will kill Petel, hang his body and head from a carriage, and take them to the city where he lived to trample and defile his honor as much as possible. According to the traditions passed down for Duels of Honor.”
To the knight, those wings were indistinguishable—he couldn’t tell if they belonged to an angel or a demon.
“That is what will nourish my sword.”
Looking at the Vice-Captain before him, the knight imagined the terrible fate that would befall the knight named Petel. He silently prayed in his heart that the fate would not be too cruel.
Unaware of what would happen in a week’s time.
*
Seol-yoon mentioned that in the East, there is a term called Hoegwangbanjo .
“It refers to the phenomenon where life flares up intensely just before death. Like how the sky brightens as the sun casts its final rays right before it sets.”
Seol-yoon said that was Petel’s current state.
“No matter how you look at it, he’s not in a state to move. But the more he swings his sword, the sharper and stronger he becomes.”
Indeed, Petel’s condition was not normal.
“Seol-yoon, I wish to have a spar.”
“……Are you serious?”
On the third day, Petel, whose eyes were stained dark rather than red, requested a spar with Seol-yoon. Seol-yoon accepted with a reluctant face, but the result was shocking.
“What is this?”
In just five exchanges, Petel broke Seol-yoon’s sword and overwhelmed her. Seol-yoon, a genius who appeared once in a century and was in the same realm of 「Sword Walker」, was defeated by Petel in an instant.
“I feel as though I have opened a new eye.”
On the fourth day, Petel spoke with a refreshed expression.
“I should have done this sooner. I should have let go of honor, pride, and everything else, and just swung my sword. If I had, I might have become a 「Sword Walker」 long ago.”
Petel’s complexion looked remarkably good.
Looking at his face, I thought for a brief moment—perhaps, like the common tropes in chivalric novels, Petel would awaken just before death, defeat the villainous knight, and like a protagonist, overcome even his illness and stand tall with a bright smile.
“I feel most alive at this very moment.”
However.
“……Petel?”
Reality is not a chivalric novel.
“Petel, Petel!”
It was the evening of the fifth day.
“Ah, Young Master Arhan.”
That day, too, Petel was watching the sunset over our village, which he loved so much.
But I felt an abnormality in Petel’s back that was different from usual. The scent of death. The moment I caught that scent, I cried out Petel’s name and ran toward him with all my might.
“You’ve come.”
Petel’s hand gripped the sword tightly like a tree root. Because he had taken off his shirt, his sweat-drenched upper body was exposed. His bare torso was now completely black.
And it wasn’t just his torso.
His neck, cheeks, from his cheekbones to his features—everything was black.
Like a statue carved from obsidian.
“For some reason, I felt you would come, Young Master.”
“Petel, Petel. Are you alright? Your body—”
Petel spoke calmly. His voice was the clearest and most distinct I had heard recently. But hearing his languid voice, I could not smile.
I could tell just by looking.
Petel’s time had ended.
He stood there, dried up, staring at the sunset with hollow eyes. I wondered how he could even produce a voice, and how that voice could be so composed.
“I am glad, Young Master Arhan.”
“What… what exactly are you glad about? What?”
Petel spoke, moving only his lips with facial muscles that had completely stiffened. Even so, his pronunciation was precise, never faltering.
“When I first came here, I said it, didn’t I? That I wanted to die alone and lonely, without being a burden to anyone.”
“Yes……”
“But I suppose that was just the typical bravado of a knight. I wanted to appear brave and fine even in the face of death… so I said that. I also said I wasn’t afraid of death, that it was the moment I could go to the side of the God I serve.”
As his voice continued, it began to break.
“But… now that the moment is actually here, I am terrifyingly… afraid… and lonely. That is why… I think it is a relief. Because you… are by my side at the end… at least… I am not… lonely.”
“Petel, Petel. Stop talking now. Stop—”
Why?
Listening to Petel’s fading voice, I shed tears. The tears rolling down my cheeks were hot, and my breath began to hitch. Emotions were surging within me.
Why?
We weren’t even people who had shared many emotional exchanges.
I had known he would die from the moment we became neighbors. I knew he was terminally ill. I had even had the despicable thought that if Petel died, I could devour the sword of a mature 「Sword Walker」. So why?
“Do not… cry. Young Master… Arhan.”
“If you die like this… what happens? You said you would prove it, that you would prove everything.”
I bit my lip, suppressing the emotions trying to burst out. Then, I said what I had to say.
“Didn’t you say you would prove it even if you threw away your life? So you must live. If you die like this, isn’t that too vain a death? Far too vain.”
At my words, Petel stood still.
Then, he pulled up the corners of his stiff mouth and smiled.
“Young Master.”
Petel’s blackened face glowed with a subtle hue as it caught the orange light of the sunset.
“I like the twilight.”
“……”
“I thought it was beautiful how it dyes the entire continent in orange before the day ends and the dark night arrives. It felt like us humans, trying to leave our traces before our brilliant youth ends and dark death approaches.”
This time, Petel did not stutter.
“It seems my twilight is about to end.”
“……”
“But unlike me, you are not a setting sun, but a rising one. You resemble the twilight, but you still have so much time, a dawn where only bright days remain……”
Petel’s body creaked as it moved. An unpleasant sound, like stones grinding together, rang out. Petel moved his stiff arm toward me and held out the blade he had been holding.
“Young Master Arhan.”
“Yes.”
“What you said… back then. I believe it was… sincere, not just… to comfort me.”
Petel’s eyes were now looking toward a far-off place.
I understood what his words meant.
As I watched him in silence, he spoke.
“Please… take… my sword.”
“……”
“It is a crude… boring… and faded sword… but even so… I want… you to take it.”
“……”
“Will you… do that… for me?”
Standing before death, Petel held out his sword and spoke. The meaning behind his words was clear. I looked back and forth between Petel and his sword.
“Gladly.”
I took the sword from Petel’s withered hand. Petel’s sword was heavier and longer than the ones I had been using. It was a typical knight’s sword. Just like the stubborn Petel.
“Thank… you.”
Petel’s voice grew cold.
As it chilled, he murmured as if to himself. In a small voice.
“It is greed… but I wanted to leave… a bit more of my trace… in this world.”
The corners of Petel’s mouth rose very slightly, slowly.
“I told you before, but for some reason, you…… in the history of this continent…… your name…… will surely…… leave……”
And Petel completely stiffened, unable to finish his sentence. With his mouth slightly open and his eyes wide, he froze as if time itself had stopped.
I watched Petel, who had died standing, for a moment.
The sunset had almost completely faded, and darkness was creeping in from the edge of the sky as night arrived. The cold night air settled down.
“Thank you.”
Petel didn’t even last a week.
On the fifth day after receiving the challenge for the Duel of Honor, he died standing.
“I will remember you for a long time.”
My first kind neighbor passed away like that.
Without even achieving the proof he had cried out for, swallowed by disease in vain.
The world was cold.
The world was different from the chivalric novels that set boys’ hearts aflame.
This was the hollow conclusion presented by a harsh world.
「Young descendant.」
However.
「A situation has arisen where the Duel of Honor no longer needs to be fought. That knight will be satisfied and leave if given this man’s corpse.」
I could not accept the conclusion presented by this cold world.
「Are you satisfied with this?」
At this moment, my doubt was burning with incredible ferocity. Because I could not accept the outcome the world had provided, I questioned it, seized it, and shouted that another result must be right.
My neighbor’s end should not conclude like this.
“No.”
This result is not right.
I gripped Petel’s sword so hard it felt like it might break. The blade sparkled coldly, bathed in moonlight. Liam asked.
「Then what will you do?」
“I must prove that my neighbor’s life was right.”
「How?」
I took the sword and headed down the ridge toward the mansion. Upon arriving at the mansion’s yard, I immediately built a fire. A fire that blazed as if it would melt anything.
Watching the soaring flames, I thrust the blade inside without hesitation.
Relentlessly.
“I only know one way.”
Petel probably wouldn’t have wanted me to do this.
He likely just wanted his sword not to crumble away completely from the world. He believed I would one day make a name for myself and simply wanted what he left behind to melt into a part of me.
Because he was a kind neighbor, a noble knight, and a good human being.
But I am not like that.
That is why I will act stubbornly.
“I will fight.”
I watched the blade of the sword as its color changed while it heated up.
“In the way of the Caravan.”
Two days remained.
Within two days, I had to become a Proxy Warrior capable of slaughtering a knight who had reached the realm of 「Sword Runner」.
