Episode 38 - The Last Word

"Could you explain in more detail?"

At Whispermere's request, Kaftin gave a heavy nod.

She deserved to hear this. Conquere too. And Platt.
Having decided to work together, he couldn't leave out a story that concerned the very person they were about to go and meet.

"Haa..."

He abandoned his plan to leave, sat back down, and began to speak.

*

It was approximately one year ago.
The time when Kaftin had been living together with Vesren.

The martial artist he was going to meet now — Maengseol — had been settled on that mountain long before Vesren ever arrived.

The venom Vesren had carried in his younger years had long since burned away, leaving him quieter, more detached — and that gentleness had led Maengseol to see him as a good man. The two had grown close quickly.

They met roughly three times a month on the mountainside, trading goods and exchanging techniques, and got along well.

Kaftin, however — brought in by Maengseol himself after being subdued, and taken on as Vesren's apprentice — could never quite get close to him.
For reasons Kaftin had never fully understood, Maengseol kept his guard up around him.

And then, one winter day a year ago.
Vesren had been spending his days in a vague state of reflection, complaining of aching joints and skipping their sparring sessions more often than not — and then, on that particular day, he had suddenly shown up with uncharacteristic energy.

"Master, what's gotten into you today? Did Maengseol bring you mandrake root or something?"
"Nothing like that. I've just been cooped up inside too long with this cold weather — I can feel myself getting weaker by the day. Need to move every now and then..."

The Torture Martial Arts — which Vesren had originally had no intention of teaching him.
One day, out of nowhere, he had announced he would teach it after all, and it had been a year and a half since then.
Short as that time was, Kaftin had absorbed nearly every technique with staggering speed. Beyond that, he had recently begun to refine and complete elements that had originally been left unfinished — the footwork chief among them — bringing the Torture Martial Arts close to a completed form.
The last sparring session had ended in Kaftin's favor, and now, in the dead of winter, in the ruins of an ancient city, they were going at it again.

The rules were simple.
Any strike that could kill the opponent had to be stopped mid-execution, with the call of "One."
The first to call it three times won.

And because the injuries could be severe, the Torture Martial Arts 49 Set — the specialized instruments that were inseparable from the style — were not to be used.

They were not simple torture tools. They were dangerous instruments designed to slowly kill through sustained torment.

Forty-nine in total.
Precisely — two sets of twenty-four, each set made of different materials but serving nearly identical purposes, plus one extremely sharp all-purpose knife.
Tools designed to flay skin, pierce and gouge nerve clusters, and tear living flesh apart.

Using these in a spar would leave one of them half-crippled or dead from blood loss within minutes.
Hence, the prohibition.

"I'll go first this time."
"As you like."

It was Vesren who moved first.
One of his legs was nearly destroyed, and the footwork Kaftin had developed was beyond him — but he had barely reached the level of Aura Expert in his final years, so it was no obstacle.

"...Number Eleven Knife!"

The techniques of the Torture Martial Arts were named after the numbered instruments of the 49 Set, and their defining feature was reproducing the function of those instruments with the hands alone.

Number Eleven — a blade resembling a carving knife, used primarily to slice away flesh.
It was being reproduced now at the tips of Vesren's raised index and ring fingers.

Against it, Kaftin's movements were dynamic.
He shifted his footwork freely, destabilizing his center of gravity, and deflected his master's attack with almost contemptuous ease before sweeping his own arm through.

His reach alone was some twenty centimeters longer than Vesren's — he was opening his attacks from distances where his master's arms couldn't even reach him.

"Number Seven Needle! Number Nine Hook!"
"Ngh—!"

Vesren recognized every technique with ease, deflecting them — but the relentless pressure targeting his central axis made him stumble.

Maengseol had been right.
This apprentice was the gentlest of students to him personally — and the most savage of devils to anyone he opposed.

Even in sparring, the expressions that flickered across the boy's face had made Vesren regret teaching him this art hundreds of times over.

Against his own master, he used the cruelest techniques in the entire repertoire without any hesitation — and chained them together in combinations that flowed like water.

"Number Fourteen Knife—!"

Number Fourteen, inspired by a surgical scalpel, manifested as Aura on the tip of his index finger and swept in a slicing arc — but Kaftin didn't retreat. He let his footwork carry him into a spin, redirecting the attack and sliding past it.

Every sparring session made it clearer.
The boy was, without question, a genius.
In a year and a half, with a terrifying absorption rate that bordered on the uncanny, he had learned every technique in the Torture Martial Arts except the secret techniques — and had already begun adapting and refining them into his own style.

Rough as it was, there were moments where something showed through — traces of combat training that had come before this, learned somewhere else, some time that could no longer be remembered.

"Number Six Needle!"
"Not so fast — Number Eleven Knife!"

The sound of hands meeting rang out sharp and clear.
The Aura gathered at both their fingertips — shaped into the forms of torture instruments — clashed against each other.

"Ngh—!"

He had no intention of fighting a battle of raw strength against Kaftin's overwhelming physical power, so Vesren immediately slipped to the side and shot his other hand forward.

"Number One... Stick!"
"......!"

Again Kaftin twisted his center of gravity and evaded by the width of a sheet of paper.
But Vesren was ready — he immediately shifted the hand he had thrown into a different shape and followed with the next technique.

"Eleven! Thirteen! Fourteen!"
"Tch—!"

The preparatory movements for a secret technique. Unmistakably.
Kaftin set his jaw.
The reason he had never learned a secret technique was that Vesren had only ever shown one to him once.

Not yet, he had said. It'll be difficult. Let's save it for later.
And now, here, in the middle of their spar, Vesren was moving to use it against him — as if to teach him through being on the receiving end.

"Master! That's not exactly playing fair—!"
"Heh — then watch and learn, you little—!"

Kaftin ground his teeth.
Anything that interested him, he could generally reproduce after seeing it three times or more. But the secret technique — he had only seen it once.
There was a real chance this spar would end with him getting thoroughly beaten.

"A-Course—!"
"Whaaaaaat—?!"

Both hands split into what looked like twelve in an instant — a blur of motion so fast it created the illusion of multiplication.

And those apparent twenty-four hands came rushing at Kaftin in the forms of twenty-four torture instruments, at random, from every angle.

"Watch and learn now—! Or just... take the hit and learn that way!"
"Ngh—!"

He tried to use his footwork to escape the onslaught — but the more he tried to pull away, the more he found himself inexplicably unable to break free from the chain of strikes.

"Hahaha—! Still a long way to go!"
"Damn it—! I am absolutely going to learn this—!"

He opened his eyes wide and focused.
Jaw clenched, tracking the movement of those hands with obsessive intensity, Kaftin tried to commit the secret technique to memory.

Flesh tore at every glancing hit to his arms and legs. Blood flew freely.
He noticed none of it. Didn't care. Eyes fixed solely on Vesren's movements.

"Last one—!"
"......!"

His master's hand-blade came straight for his heart. Precisely on target.

Number Twenty-Five — the large all-purpose knife that completed the set of forty-nine.

He had always wondered, in a quiet corner of his mind, why none of the techniques he had been taught made use of it.
Now he understood in an instant.

Number Twenty-Five — the one that sounded, on the surface, like it would be the most commonly used.
But its true nature was something else entirely.
It was not a torture instrument. It was a plain knife — and it existed for one purpose alone: as the finishing blow of this secret technique.

And in the same instant — he noticed one more thing.
His master's eyes were full of killing intent.

"Master—!"
"Kaaaftiiiiin—!!"

The Number Twenty-Five Knife was not stopping.
It was driving straight for Kaftin's heart without slowing.
In a normal spar, Vesren should have stopped just short and called "One."
But Vesren's teeth were set and he was smiling.

In that fraction of a second, the memory surfaced — Maengseol had always argued that Kaftin should be killed.

"Ngh—!!"

The dim light in Kaftin's eyes went out completely.
He closed off the part of himself that saw the person in front of him as his master, Vesren — and forced it to register only: enemy.

Perhaps Vesren knew about the metal skeleton and was deliberately pushing him toward it.
Perhaps it was frustration from that particularly brutal winter taking a toll on his body.

But whichever it was — the unsettling gleam of the Aura knife forming in Vesren's hand was screaming that his killing intent was real.

"Diiiie—!!"
"GYAAAAAAH—!!!"

The instant the Aura knife drove into his chest, the pupils at the center of Kaftin's eyes flared red —
And his hands multiplied to twenty-four in a heartbeat, Aura blazing.

"......!!"
"NAAAAARGH—!!!"

In an instant, every ounce of pressure from his master's attack was negated completely.
And yet Vesren, expression stripped of every trace of humor, was pushing with everything he had — trying to drive through Kaftin's chest.

"Ma... ster—!!"
"......!!"

In the final moment, what Vesren saw —

Was his student, jaw locked, weeping blood.

"...My hand... my right hand... won't stop..."

With a sickening, muffled sound, Kaftin's right arm — up to the elbow — drove through Vesren's chest, directly through where his heart had been.

The final strike of the secret technique. Its true form. Number Twenty-Five Knife.

"Kgh—!!"
"M-Master—?!"

The red light faded — and the moment his reason returned, Kaftin's face crumpled.

What have I done.
Why — why couldn't I stop my right hand at the critical moment?
He had been certain of it. He was going to reproduce the secret technique — but stop just before the Number Twenty-Five.
That was the agreement. That was how the spar was supposed to go.
Call "One" and score another point off his master.

"Why — why—?!"
"Hfhf... you drove it in on reflex, responding to my killing intent... still a long way to go..."
"M-Master! Hold on! I'll treat you right now—!"

He moved to pull his arm out, grabbing Vesren's shoulder with his left hand to brace him.
But it was Vesren's own hand that pressed down on his, holding it in place.

"...It's enough. Kaftin... you know as well as I do... kugh...! If I receive treatment now... would it actually save me...?"
"Ngh... ngh—?!"
"Don't be alarmed... this is all something I brought on myself. Dirtying your hand like this... I'm sorry for that. Truly. I'm sorry, Kaftin..."
"M-Master—?!"

Even as he died, even as he coughed blood, Vesren fought to speak — to explain — right up until the very end.

"It's almost been twenty years now... that day, after I was driven out into the streets like this... I was angry. I thought about revenge..."
"......"
"But when all of that burned away, what was left... was only guilt..."
"Master... please, no more—!"

He tried again to push Vesren's shoulder back and pull free — and Vesren shook his head to stop him, forcing a smile.

"The resentment of all the people I tortured and killed throughout my life... I came to believe it was driving me toward this. Pursuing me."
"......"
"And then, as I waited for the day to die... you came."

He seemed to be looking somewhere far away — as if reliving the day they had first met — and smiled again.

"That Maengseol never did take a liking to you... but I was glad. Kgh—! In that lonely mountain, alone with nothing... to get a student like you... as company, at least... it was quite... enjoyable..."
"......"
"And then, teaching you the Torture Martial Arts... I realized. The resentment of the ones I tortured and killed... what they wanted... my... ending—!"
"What kind of nonsense are you—?!"
"Listen—! Kgh—! Someone like me—! Someone who knows nothing but how to torture and kill... a damned wretch like that...! Dies like this—! That must be what this world calls karma—!"

Vesren's teaching him the Torture Martial Arts had not been simply because he was his student.

He confessed it — that he had passed on the art to Kaftin so that he himself might meet his end through it, the cursed technique he had created. His own form of atonement.

"So... Kaftin... remember this—! Don't go using that art carelessly out in the world... or rather... you can forget it entirely. That would be better. Better for you... kgh—! Kgh kgh! Better for you, that would be..."
"M-Master—!!"
"...Again... I'm sorry... for being such a poor excuse for a master... Kaftin... I don't know what you did in your past... but even now, even with those memories broken... it's not too late... please... be good—..."

Before he could finish —
The hand Vesren had pressed down over Kaftin's, holding it in place — lost all its strength.
Kaftin felt it go.
He kept weeping blood — and let out a howl that sounded less like a human voice than something from a beast.

—To be continued—