The throne room carried sound the way old stone always did — footsteps and voices bouncing faintly off marble pillars tall enough to make even the King look smaller than his title suggested.
Golden banners bearing the kingdom’s ring emblem hung still along the walls, and beyond the great window behind the throne, the academy grounds spread out in the afternoon light, small and orderly from this height.
The King leaned forward, both hands braced on the arms of his throne.
“The first-years have seen the top students,” he said.
“Demonstrations aren’t enough. The next exam needs to push them somewhere real — combat, pressure, limits they’ve never had a reason to find.” His eyes were sharp, unhurried.
“Gods and demon lords won’t wait politely for them to be ready.”
An advisor bowed low.
“Understood, Your Majesty. We’ll prepare a harsher practical exam.” A pause, careful.
“But to break them properly — to actually forge something out of them — we’ll need the best.”
The King’s gaze didn’t waver.
“Then send for the man they call the Sword Master. Send for Kirito.”
The advisors traded glances — something between awe and quiet dread passing between them.
“Kirito,” one of them said, like the name itself deserved a beat of silence first.
“Rank SS. Broke past what anyone thought was possible for a human, years ago. They say his signature attack can unleash a thousand sword strikes in a single instant.” He shook his head slightly.
“No one’s ever matched his blade flow. No one’s come close.”
A young guard was dispatched within the hour, cutting through the palace corridors at a dead run before vaulting onto a horse waiting in the courtyard.
“The King summons you for the students’ exam!”
The road out to the edge of the kingdom narrowed the farther it went, until it arrived at a squat, cluttered dojo that looked like it had lost a fight with its own contents — training dummies knocked sideways, practice swords jutting out of the walls and floor at angles no sane person would have planted them at, like something violent and joyful had swept through recently and simply never bothered cleaning up.
Inside, the legendary Sword Master of the Kingdom of Rings was standing on his head.
Kirito — tall even upside down, wild silver hair hanging the wrong direction, a black coat torn at the hem and dusted with something that might have been flour — had a bowl of noodles balanced precariously on the soles of his feet while he swung two wooden practice swords in loose, looping arcs with both hands.
Noodles arced through the air with every swing, landing in his hair, on the floor, occasionally in his own open mouth mid-laugh.
“Wahaha!
If I can eat *and* slash upside down,” he announced to no one in particular, mouth still half full, “I can definitely land a thousand strikes on a demon blade!
Take that, human limits!”
The guard skidded through the doorway, out of breath.
“Kirito-sama! The King needs you — the next student exam! He wants your help making the first-years stronger!”
Kirito flipped upright in one clean, absurd motion, noodles still dripping from his hair, and struck a pose that would have looked heroic if one of his wooden swords hadn’t stuck itself to his forehead via a stray splash of sauce.
“Eh?!” His grin split wide, delighted.
“The King wants *me* to train the new batch?! Now that’s what I’m talking about!” He yanked the sword off his forehead without seeming to notice the mess it left behind.
“I’ll turn those little flows into unstoppable legends. A thousand slashes? Please. I’ll teach them a thousand and one.”
“…Yes, sir,” the guard said, sweat beading despite the mild afternoon.
“His Majesty said your expertise was required specifically.”
Kirito snatched a real sword down off the wall — the guard flinched back half a step as the blade whistled past close enough to feel — and spun it once, laughing.
But for just a moment, in the space between one spin and the next, something in his face went still.
His eyes tracked the sword’s edge with a focus that had nothing goofy left in it at all — the same sharpness, briefly, that had earned him the rank in the first place, before he read the number of green cadets he’d soon be responsible for and let it settle into something quieter than his laughter suggested. This story is hosted at novelping.com.
It passed almost as fast as it came.
He was grinning again before the guard even registered the shift.
“Heh heh. The legend’s coming.” He slung the sword over one shoulder, already moving for the door.
“Let’s go break some limits together.”
Back in the throne room, the messenger returned and dropped to one knee, still catching his breath.
“Your Majesty. Kirito has accepted.” A beat.
“He seemed… very enthusiastic.”
“Excellent.” The King allowed himself something close to satisfaction.
“With the Sword Master’s guidance, even the speed boy, the thunder noble, the rest of them — they’ll grow past whatever they think their ceiling is.” His gaze drifted toward the window, toward the academy grounds catching the last gold light of afternoon.
“This next exam will be one they remember for the rest of their lives.”
Far below, on the road leading to the academy, Kirito ran at a dead sprint with swords strapped haphazardly across his back, tripped once spectacularly over nothing at all, and popped back up laughing before he’d even fully hit the ground, waving both arms at absolutely no one.
He didn’t know yet which first-year he’d end up watching more closely than any of the others.
Didn’t know that somewhere in that scattered crowd finishing lunch was a boy with a limit exactly sixty seconds long, and that Kirito — of all people in this kingdom — had spent enough of his life around impossible things to eventually notice when a number like that stopped adding up.
For now, he just ran, grinning like the whole world was a joke only he was in on.
*End of Chapter 9*