I Obtained Sword God Level Talent

55 – 055. The Precious One (3)

A secluded spot in the mansion, a guest room.

Ariel, seeing a stranger on the bed in that room, shivered.

“Wha-what is this…!”

Ariel, returned from the church, let out a sharp cry.

Leon and Mary, who had played their roles as decoys perfectly, had already fled, seeming to declare their innocence.

“Don’t be too surprised. It’s probably nothing.”

“How can it be nothing? A strange woman I’ve never seen came to the mansion and lost consciousness!”

“Hey, she’s not an old lady.”

“Huh? What do you mean?”

“Look at her hands. That wrinkled face is just a disguise.”

I answered curtly, pointing at the hand on the bed.

“Oh…? It, it is true?”

They were fair. Unlike her face, there wasn’t a single wrinkle, proof that she had lived a life free from hardship, aside from her training.

And also.

“Looking at the sword, I have a pretty good idea of where she’s from.”

*Ssshk.*

I muttered lowly, my eyes returning to the sword in my hand.

The Hwasan Lower Sect Plum Blossom Sword (華山下門梅花劍).

Elegant characters were engraved on the scabbard. The outer appearance of the scabbard itself had a refined beauty, it clearly wasn’t an ordinary object.

“Where is she from? If she’s a noble from another country, things could get even more complicated.”

“A noble, something like that. This person, she’s from the Hwasan Sect in the Eastern Continent.”

“Hwasan Sect…?”

Ariel’s eyes, which seemed to have regained some composure, widened.

The Hwasan Sect. A famous martial arts clan in the Eastern Continent known for its swordsmanship, the symbol of a prominent and illustrious sect that had produced the leader of the martial arts alliance of the era.

…It wasn’t intentional, but the person I had set my sights on was someone from the Hwasan Sect.

“Why on earth would someone from the Hwasan Sect be wandering around in the Western Continent?”

I sat on a chair in front of the bed, crossing my arms, and mumbled.

One thing was clear: we hadn’t yet entered the main stream of ＜Silver Ring＞.

That’s why the exchange between the Western and Eastern Continents is practically non-existent, naturally meaning that a Mount Hua Sect disciple like her could never be found in the Imperial Capital.

“Umm….”

“Oh, I think she’s coming to.”

I was lost in thought, when

a low groan escaped the person asleep on the bed.

Blink.

“Huh?”

“What do you mean, ‘Huh’?”

The woman, who had just barely lifted her eyes, let out a completely clueless response. Her face, still looking like she didn’t understand the situation she was in, was an added bonus.

“Ah…! Y-you! What are you planning to do to me?!”

Her hazy gaze landed on me. And then, a scream-like shout echoed through the room.

“You’re asking that now?”

It was an absurd reaction. If I were going to do something heinous, I would have done it ages ago.

“W-well, that’s true, but…”

Perhaps because my reaction was more subdued than expected, she answered in a barely audible voice.

“You seem pretty startled, for which I apologize.”

“I…see. I also showed you a pretty embarrassing sight.”

The woman said, her face flushed.

Really, it was astonishingly meticulous disguise, even when looking at it again. How was it possible for that flush to appear on a face so full of wrinkles? I wondered.

But.

There was something else I wanted to ask right now. The miscellaneous questions could wait.

“First, I want to hear your name.”

“W-why my name?”

Her posture was quite uncooperative. Well, given that I had just spouted nonsense about kidnapping, I understood her reaction.

“I don’t think you fully grasp the situation here.”

“……!”

“If you want to get out of here, you need to cooperate as much as possible.”

“Hmph! How funny. I am a martial artist who has learned martial arts. If you try to force me, I won’t just sit still…!”

*Thud.*

“won’t just sit still…”

* * *

*Shhh, shhsh.*

The woman’s face paled. It was obvious, without needing to ask, what it was she so desperately sought.

“Looking for this?”

*Swoosh,* I presented the sword before her, my voice utterly devoid of feeling.

“…Ugh, ugh!”

*Whoosh!*

Her frail hand darted out, desperately trying to snatch the blade from my grasp. But her movements were too slow. Unceremoniously pulling the sword back, I continued.

“A Plum Blossom Sword. Seems a bit young, so are the Mount Hua disciples better than I thought?”

“H-how did you…!”

The woman’s eyes widened, as if they’d split open.

How else would I know? What other martial artist from the Eastern Continent would be carrying around a Plum Blossom Sword if not someone from Mount Hua?

“Please, give it back.”

“No.”

“P-please, I beg you.”

“……”

Realizing the unfavorable nature of her situation, she began to plead, her hands clasped together. Naturally, such a 180-degree shift in her reaction caused a hollow laugh to escape me.

“The plum blossom scent made me think you were a good person, but…”

The woman, face distraught, muttered to herself.

By the way, plum blossom scent? What the hell was she talking about?

“What’s this about a plum blossom scent?”

“…It means that you, smell like plum blossoms. Literally.”

“Is that so?”

*Sniff sniff.*

Taken aback by her words, I smelled my own clothes.

However, contrary to her claim, I couldn’t detect any particular plum blossom scent.

“I felt it too. After Frey achieved enlightenment, there was this floral scent, or feeling.”

“…Really?”

Ariel, who had been watching the conversation quietly, interjected.

…Could this be a side effect of the enlightenment triggered by the Plum Blossom Elixir?

This wasn’t something that existed in *Silvering*. I never imagined that someone would develop a floral scent simply from consuming the Plum Blossom Elixir.

“Enlightenment…? Flower scent? By any chance, are you a lay disciple of the Hwasan Sect?”

*Lay disciple,* my ass.

I flicked my hand dismissively, casting her a cold gaze. It felt like the conversation hadn’t progressed at all since we started. Maybe it’d be better to get that face mask off her before we talked any further.

“How about you take that leather off your face first.”

“W-What are you saying? Take off my face leather? How can you suggest such a horrible…!”

“Enough. I know you’re wearing a face mask, so just take it off.”

*Whoom-!*

“Yessir!”

She responded instantly, unlike before, raising a fist brimming with mana. Then, with delicate hands, she began to feel around her face.

*Flick, flick!*

After a brief moment.

“Wow… This is so amazing.”

Her bare face was revealed to the world. Ariel gaped, dumbstruck, at the sudden transformation.

‘This is insane.’

Finally, with her face exposed, a slightly different thought crossed my mind.

To put it simply, she was beautiful.

The features of people from the Eastern Continent were familiar to me. But she was different from an average person—her beauty was breathtaking.

And.

“Is, is that okay now?”

“…Yeah.”

Feigning indifference, I waved my hand dismissively.

The situation was more serious than I expected. The reason was simple: the face revealed beneath the mask was, unexpectedly, someone I knew.

‘How did things go so sideways?’

The guest I had abducted… no, invited to the guild, was indeed from the Eastern Continent as I suspected.

But that’s where the problems started. She was definitely an Eastern Continent martial artist, but the real issue was her identity.

Hwasan Sect?

Well, that wasn’t really a problem. The Hwasan Sect had close to a thousand disciples. If you include lay disciples who operated outside the sect, that number would easily climb into the thousands.

However…

What if she was the daughter of the Hwasan Sect’s Supreme Elder, the absolute master known as ＜The Violet Sword＞, and also the daughter of the head of the Martial Alliance, which split the Eastern Continent?

‘Damn it.’

If things got serious, it could become a diplomatic issue, even a world war. Of course, it wouldn’t matter to me, but it’d be a different story for the empires and the Papal State tangled in countless interests.

“Let me reintroduce myself. My name is Chun Hwa-young. As you already know, I’m a disciple of the Hwasan Sect.”

“……Yeah.”

The one saving grace was that she hadn’t revealed she was the daughter of the ‘Martial Arts Alliance Leader’.

Thinking back to her personality from the original story, I figured she probably thought she was causing trouble for her father and family.

“Chun Hwa-young of the Hwasan Sect. I have a few questions.”

“……Go ahead. I don’t sense any hostility, so I can answer all simple questions.”

“What brings a late-stage disciple from the Eastern Continent to the Western Continent?”

This was the most crucial question yet.

I couldn’t figure out the reason, and it was hard to even predict. After all, she, nicknamed ＜Thousand Plum Blossoms＞, wasn’t the type to wander the Western Continent…she was a main character of the Eastern Continent.

“W-well, that’s…”

“……?”

Hwa-young’s face flushed a rosy red after the question.

“I… I really wanted to meet a cool person.”

“……A cool person?”

It was a very Hwa-young-like answer, full of a youthful naivety. Seriously though, she came all the way to the Western Continent, thousands of miles away, just because she wanted to meet someone?

“Who is it? If it’s someone a person from the Eastern Continent wants to meet… is it ＜Sword Saint＞? Or perhaps ＜Berserk Sword Demon＞?”

“Ah, no.”

Struggling to sit up in bed, Hwa-young shook her head vigorously.

She seemed genuinely embarrassed to answer honestly, scratching her cheek as she continued.

“That… well, I wanted to meet someone who recently achieved great fame.”

“A famous person?”

Who the heck is it?

Maybe she’s talking about a major character who hasn’t risen to prominence yet.

Like ＜Knight of Chivalry＞ Lancelot, or ＜Scholar＞ Tristan.

“You seem clueless? Someone who has recently made their name known all the way to the Eastern Continent.”

“Who is it?”

“Hehe! You’re more out of the loop than I thought? Even people in the Western Continent have heard about him.”

“Are we playing twenty questions? Just spit it out. Don’t keep me hanging.”

“Okay, okay. Jeez. You’re impossible to talk to.”

……Ugh.

Her whiny complaints almost made me want to flick her forehead.

＜Thousand Blossom Plum＞ Chun Hwayoung was known to be a character with outstanding eloquence.

I knew her as someone whose nature leaned more toward strategy than martial arts… but talking to her like this, she felt less like a strategist and more like a whiny brat.

“Knight of the Holy Grail.”

“……What?”

“I came here looking for him. The one who single-handedly defeated a master at the peak or beyond. A man who is, in essence, touched by ‘miracle.’ It’s a problem that the rumors about him are so few, but I believe I’ll find him someday, traveling across the Western Continent.”

Huh?