Having finished my training as a nobleman, I, Liam Sera Banfield, had returned to my own domain at over one hundred years of age.

Ordinarily, I would have wanted to stay and enjoy myself on the capital planet.

As the head of the faction that uses Cleo as its figurehead, I still have a long-established luxury hotel rented out.

The reason I can't let go of my residence on the capital planet is that I plan to visit again in the future.

In that case, I should have just set up a mansion... wait a minute. Come to think of it, I feel like I already prepared one.

While I was lost in various thoughts, I was currently in a facility located in the courtyard of my overly spacious mansion.

Though they call it a courtyard, the mansion itself is so vast that it feels more like being outdoors.

That facility was my personal training room.

"—Come."

Wearing black, armor-like gear, I pointed the bokken-like tool in my right hand toward my junior female disciples.

Fuuka Shishigami, her orange hair tied back in a style resembling a blooming flower, licked her lips.

"Don't blame me if you die!"

Her words sounded like a warning, but her expression was one of joy.

Facing my junior disciple who gleefully brandished the swords in both her hands, I immediately took my stance and swung my own training sword.

This training tool, which I've named a bokken, has extremely high-performance functions.

The same goes for the armor.

But Fuuka, as well as Riho Satsuki, whose long, dark-blue hair swayed as she drew her sword, both smirked.

The swords in their hands were real.

"Aha! Just die!"

What do they think their senior brother is?

The two of them came at me with the genuine intent to cut me down—but that's what it means to be from the same school.

When I used my training sword to strike down their slashes, sparks flew everywhere.

In an instant, my armor sustained several cuts.

I must have failed to knock them all down, couldn't dodge them completely, or was hit by the aftershocks.

Fuuka leaped up, planting her feet on the ceiling.

Though it wasn't a zero-gravity space, she crouched upside down on the ceiling—then launched herself toward me with great force.

"I'll slice you to pieces."

Her eyes were bloodshot, and she was genuinely trying to kill me, but it seemed to be a feint.

When I shifted my gaze to the ground, Riho had already slipped into my guard, preparing to unleash a drawing-and-slashing technique.

Fuuka of the many strikes.

Riho of the single, fatal blow.

They would pin me down with a flurry of attacks, then finish me with a single, decisive strike.

"Kuh!"

—They aren't that naive.

I acknowledge Fuuka's high number of strikes, but each and every one of them is a fatal blow.

Fuuka was unleashing her slashes with the intent to kill me, along with Riho.

And Riho was about to deliver an excessively powerful, fatal strike to both me and Fuuka.

In a desperate move, I grabbed the hilt of Riho's sword with my left hand to stop her drawing technique and unleashed a slash with my training sword to knock Fuuka out of the air.

Riho immediately swept my legs out from under me, and as I fell, she thrust her blade down at me.

"I'll be the one to kill our senior brother!"

I rolled away to dodge the thrusting blade and got back to my feet, only to feel a chill down my spine.

Fuuka had circled around behind me and was closing in, ready to take my head with her dual swords.

As I turned, I swung my training sword upwards from below, deflecting Fuuka's blades.

I then delivered a kick to her now-exposed abdomen.

In my haste, I misjudged my strength, and Fuuka was sent flying into the wall.

"Gah! I-I'll be the one to kill him. Our senior brother is mine!"

I averted my gaze from Fuuka, who was embedded in the wall and coughing up blood, yet still trying to come at me.

Turning back, I immediately swung my training sword horizontally, deflecting an incoming slash with a shower of sparks.

A short distance away, Riho had taken her stance.

The slashes flying at me one after another were Issen, the secret art of the Issen-ryu style.

"Let's have a contest of endurance! It'll be fun to see how long you can last!"

The number of strikes, their power—everything surpassed my own.

Riho, laughing gleefully, showed no signs of holding back.

There was some distance between me and Riho. It was about ten meters, but the sparks were flying at a distance of three meters from me.

I was clearly being pushed back.

"You too?!"

As I was striking down the slashes, more came from the opposite side.

Riho and Fuuka stood on a straight line with me at the midpoint.

As they both launched a barrage of Issen strikes at me, sparks began to fly right beside me.

Fuuka took a step closer to me.

"This is the end for you, senior brother! Don't worry. I'll carry on the Issen-ryu! I'll even take care of Ellen for you."

It seemed she was already convinced of her victory.

On the opposite side, Riho also approached, step by step.

"This is your punishment for underestimating us. I didn't dislike you, senior brother, so I'll be sure to never forget you."

To an ordinary person, the two of them, who looked to be in their late teens—no older than high school girls—would just appear to be approaching with swords.

All they would see are the sparks flying between us.

Inside my helmet, I muttered.

"Just a little more. Just a little bit longer."

My body was already screaming.

But it was the equipment that gave out first.

The swords held by Riho and Fuuka shattered, and the training sword I held broke as well.

An electronic voice echoed from my armor.

"'Training armor has exceeded its limits. Initiating emergency purge.'"

"W-Wait!"

Right after that, ignoring my command to stop, the armor blew off, leaving me in just my inner suit.

I was drenched in sweat, my breathing was ragged, and my body was covered in scrapes.

"Damn it!"

I had been so close to grasping something, but now I just collapsed onto the floor.

Riho was looking at her shattered sword.

"Agh, how many is that now?"

Fuuka tossed aside her broken sword, and cleaning robots began to collect the pieces.

"Beats me."

As the two of them approached me, I stared at the shattered remains of my armor and training sword.

"No matter how much money I spend to make them, is it still no good?"

The armor and training sword I had prepared weren't items to enhance my abilities.

It was the opposite.

They were tools with superior performance in restricting my abilities.

They increased the load on my body, and the training sword was deliberately hard to swing.

In this state, with my true strength limited, I had told my two junior disciples to "come at me with the intent to kill."

Otherwise—it felt like I would never be able to surpass my own limits.

I opened my trembling right hand and stared at it.

"Why can't I reach it? Why—why can't I reach my master?"

I was starting to feel pathetic.

No matter how much I trained, no matter how much real combat experience I gained, there was no sign of me ever reaching my master's level.

The "slash that looked as if the sword was never truly drawn," which I had seen as a child, was something I still couldn't replicate.

Fuuka wiped the blood from her mouth and tried to console me.

"You're stronger than us, senior brother. You'll get there someday, won't you?"

Riho looked at Fuuka's attitude with exasperation, as if she didn't understand anything.

"You idiot. Our senior brother doesn't need your pity. In the first place, our words are meaningless. —You've seen Master Yasushi's skill, haven't you? How does it compare to our senior brother's?"

I didn't need pity.

For us, who knew the extent of our master's skill, such words were an insult.

Feeling awkward, Fuuka averted her face.

"Th-that's not what I meant!"

Fuuka looked away from me because she was aware of the vast gap between my master's abilities and my own.

"I-I know our senior brother is no match for Master Yasushi. I mean, we can't even measure Master Yasushi's skill, can we? You should know that too."

Riho puffed out her cheeks.

"You don't have to tell me. All we know is that Master Yasushi's skill is just that incredible."

That's right. Master is just that incredible.

The gap in our abilities is so vast that we can't even begin to measure his power.

Normally, he looks like he'd lose to a swordsmanship beginner, but once he draws his sword, he's unbeatable.

In fact, I've imagined fighting him many times—and not once have I ever thought I could win.

Even after defeating the man called the Sword Saint in the Empire, that hasn't changed.

"What am I lacking? What in the world am I missing? Am I—at my limit?"

Am I incapable of getting any stronger?

I was on the verge of being crushed by that anxiety.

As an evil lord, I had obtained the Issen-ryu, which could be called the ultimate form of violence, but because I lacked talent, I was about to end up as a half-baked failure.

For a mere villain, my current strength would be more than enough.

However, I want to become stronger.

As a villain, and as the inheritor of the Issen-ryu that my master bestowed upon me, I wanted to cherish and carry on the style.

Rushing over to my sweat-drenched self was Ellen, who had grown quite a bit.

She was small when we first met, but now she looked to be around ten years old.

"Master, let me wipe your sweat!"

"Yeah."

I accepted a drink from Ellen and allowed her to wipe my body.

As I replenished my nutrients with the drink, I thought about various things—.

"Ellen, how old are you?"

—I suddenly became curious about Ellen's age.

Riho and Fuuka, who were similarly drenched in sweat and out of breath, fell silent, sensing what I was getting at.

"I-I'll be thirty soon."

Thirty might be a respectable adult in my past life, but in this world, she's still a child.

Fuuka shrugged as she looked at me.

"Our senior brother is so overprotective."

Riho, having lost interest, took out her terminal and started updating her blog.

"Since our senior brother is looking after Ellen, I won't interfere, but... if you don't do something soon, Ellen will never become an Issen-ryu swordswoman."

Hearing their words, Ellen's face showed surprise, but she quickly composed herself and retorted.

"Don't underestimate me! I've been training under Master for over ten years. I can at least do the basics. Th-though I still can't do Issen..."

I had thoroughly drilled the fundamentals into her, but Ellen couldn't perform an Issen.

That was to be expected.

It took even me more than twenty years.

Riho looked up from her terminal, her gaze on Ellen incredibly cold.

Ellen flinched under the killing intent, but Riho spoke without a care.

"That's not what we're talking about. It's something more important."

Ellen trembled as she looked back and forth between Riho and me.

"Something important?"

Fuuka casually gave the answer.

"You've never cut a person before, have you? No, you've never killed anyone."

Seeing Ellen's eyes widen, I thought to myself.

—For her to become a swordswoman, she must kill someone.

In a world where an interstellar nation exists, isn't that a strange thing to say?

In a world with spaceships and humanoid weapons, we are still killing each other with swords.

It's a deplorable state of affairs, but it's unavoidable on the path we've chosen.

I stood up and placed a hand on Ellen's shoulder.

"I'll find an opponent for you soon."

Ellen looked down, as if in shock, but she couldn't defy me, her master, and replied in a small voice.

"—Yes."