Schrödinger’s Swordsmanship

It was nothing new, but Guild City was, in the end, nothing more than a just a city.

In this world, there were islands and continents, countries, territories, and cities. There were rulers and the ruled.

The Kingdom of Camelot. That was the name of the ‘country’ that Guild City belonged to.

The Five Great Houses were the noble families that ruled that country.

And a mage of those very houses was now standing before Solomon.

House Arrowhead, the Spectral Spear Mages.

True to that name, the magical power wavering at his fingertips began to dance as it split into countless wavelengths, as if passing through a spectroscope. Splitting and sorting an strange spectrum you wouldn’t normally see.

Solomon wasn’t ignorant of the weight of that act. If anything, he knew it too well. That was the problem.

When he created his character, he had agonized and compared options over which of the “Five Great Houses,” counted among one of the most broken picks, to choose. There was no way he wouldn’t know House Arrowhead’s capabilities.

Paradoxically, Solomon knew the Five Great Houses’ abilities” better than any organization or faction in Downtown.

The Five Great Houses ruled the kingdom and city while guarding magical traditions passed down since antiquity. Among them, House Bale specialized in espionage, infiltration, and covert operations. That was why they were Shadow Binders.

House Arrowhead, the Spectral Spear Mages, stood at the exact opposite end.

Destroyers who displayed the kingdom’s power and struck down enemies to force them into submission.

Their magic was far from secretive. Rather, it was a form anyone could recognize, so clear that even an idiot could feel its power.

If you saw it, it was already too late. You had to move before that.

And right now, the magic unfolding before Solomon’s eyes was exactly that.

‘Shadow Mimic, Shadow Swap!’

So, with a combo spell that consumed two Level 1 spells, he minized the bleeding loss of precious magical power and got out of there. Right after, narrowly, a half-beat off, the beam pierced Solomon’s shadow.

‘Fuck, I lived…!’

<Death Ray>.

A streaking flash. It looked purple and it looked white. It was a beam of slaughter you couldn’t pin to any single color. A magic of absolute annihilation with no way to stop it once it made contact.

Nothing in this world could be faster than light.

And if you dodged in advance, and the opponent had predicted it and was waiting? Either way, a single evasive action was a gamble with your life on the line.

Luckily, in this case, Solomon won the bet. And what did he gain in return? That he didn’t die right then. That was all.

His heart pounded like it might burst.

“Ah, shadow magic.”

The Spectral Spear Mage sneered as he watched.

“Truly a magic that suits bottom-dwelling trash, vile and ugly beyond measure.”

“……”

Solomon didn’t answer. He didn’t even have the time to answer. He barely managed to take position beside Violet and silently checked his gear.

‘Exactly one Level 1 spell left.’

Despair did not even begin to cover it. Solomon said nothing. He simply regripped the modified Nightfall automatic crossbow.

Taang!

He pulled the trigger. Ten bolts fired with auto-guidance, and not a single bolt hit.

Kaaang!

A transparently shining shield. Its surface was covered in a fractal pattern, geometric shapes repeating endlessly.

‘Fuck.’

Solomon bit his lip and pulled the trigger again. Ten shots, ten more, then another ten. After firing, he swapped out the cartridge with a snap of his wrist. After the swap, he didn’t pull the trigger again.

He knew it was useless no matter how much he pulled it. It was meaningless. Solomon stopped firing, and that was when it happened.

Violet, who had silently drawn one of her three swords, moved in that instant. Like a flash.

Chwaaak!

In the blink of an eye, she surged toward the mage like light itself streaking forward. At the same time, her sword swung.

“!”

Before the swing could even register… another sword was in her hand.

And the sword she drew first had already returned to its scabbard.

She hadn’t put the sword back into the scabbard. The instant she swung the first blade, at that very moment, the second sword was in her hand. As if she had drawn that sword from the start.

And it wasn’t a matter of chaining movements. It wasn’t because she was fast. It ignored every intermediate step, flowing straight from one action to the next, like cutting and pasting pieces of footage.

Even ‘fast’ wasn’t enough to describe it. No, it didn’t physically add up.

Chwaaak!

When she swung the next sword, the last blade that had been in the scabbard was now “in her hand.”

Three swords. Without simultaneously drawing and sheathing them, in the blink of an eye, the swords swapped into her hand. Faced with that contradiction that couldn’t be explained physically, Solomon swallowed his breath in silence.

“Ah, indeed.”

In the midst of that incomprehensible three-sword exchange, the mage wasn’t flustered at all. Rather, he only smiled as if he were pleased by Violet’s sword strokes, like someone delighted by a child’s antics.

None of the swords could break the fractal barrier blocking the man. It didn’t even get scratched.

“I thought they wouldn’t send just any swordsman for something like this, and I was right.”

After smiling, he continued leisurely, as if savoring that composure with absolute superiority assured.

“To think there would still be a swordsman who can use 「Schrödinger’s Swordsmanship」.”

Schrödinger’s Swordsmanship. At that name, Solomon blinked. And Violet, the very wielder of that sword art, silently adjusted her grip on the hilt.

[Schrödinger’s Swordsmanship was a school of sword arts that, by the Uncertainty Argument, could superpose countless possibilities and choose one ‘possibility’ among them to fix into place.]

A sword art that superposed countless possibilities according to uncertainty, then selected an arbitrary possibility and fixed it. Even after hearing it, he couldn’t tell what it was saying. He understood one thing. It had deliberately been said in the past tense.

“By the Uncertainty Argument, it’s possible all practitioners of Schrödinger’s Swordsmanship died.”

Hearing that, Violet replied calmly.

“Or they might not have. —Either way, it’s only a superposed state of possibility.”

“Haha, you use difficult words.”

Hearing that, the Uptown mage laughed.

“I’m not sure I understood correctly, but would you like to hear it?”

“Go ahead. I’m kind to morons.”

Violet said. The mage answered without losing his composure.

“Either way, if you want to kill the cat in the box… it’s better to just pierce the whole thing.”

With that reply, a flash streaked out from beyond the fractal barrier. Death Ray. An unavoidable flash of death pierced her. It clearly struck and pierced through.

“!”

Solomon panicked, but that was when it happened.

Before he knew it, Violet who had “not been pierced by the flash” was there. Drawing her sword again as she kicked off the ground.

As if the fact she had taken that blow had never existed in the first place.

The distance closed. Before long, the sword strikes of the Sword Watch’s First-Class Swordsman, Violet, didn’t stop at simply swinging one sword after another.

‘…!’

He couldn’t believe it even as he watched.

He thought she thrust, and it was a slash. She executed a slash, and it became a thrust. She aimed right, and it surged from the left.

The moment he thought she had taken a certain action, she was reborn into another form of “possibility.”

‘That’s Schrödinger’s Swordsmanship…!’

Solomon didn’t know everything about this world either. Even so, that sword art Violet showed him was a shock so singular it stood alone. Could you even call that swordsmanship in the first place?

Rather than magic… no, it wasn’t even magic. It was filled with the unexplainable, impossible to describe.

Even so— it doesn’t reach.

More shocking than the incomprehensible logic beyond reason was the power that overwhelmingly crushed that incomprehensibility into the ground.

‘It won’t break through.’

That fractal barrier wrapped around the mage, Solomon knew it too. And the swordsman Violet would know as well.

The secret itself wasn’t much. Endless self-repair. Unless you dealt damage that overwhelmed the repair and shaved the barrier’s energy down to zero, you could never break it.

‘It doesn’t look like it’ll be enough.’

That was why Violet kept up her offensive without end, and the mage watched leisurely, occasionally tossing out a strike.

A surging flash of annihilation. Violet dodged that very flash.

“All the effort of the last 1 minute and 29 seconds has gone to waste.”

In the brief gap as she dodged that strike, the fractal barrier had already repaired all the damage and returned to its initial state.

“Your girly attacks too.”

“Is that really so?”

The Spectral Spear Mage sneered. In truth, every time a flash pierced her, a Violet who had not been pierced, uninjured, was overlaid there. At a glance, both looked similar in having no visible injuries.

“…Kuh-luk!”

Then, blood suddenly gushed out of her mouth.

“The poor cat in the box is suffering within a state of superposed uncertainty.”

The Spectral Spear Mage said in a relaxed voice. Solomon might not know what the words meant, but he could tell what they implied.

‘She… can’t keep holding on forever either.’

That ability wasn’t something that could be spammed without limits. Solomon swallowed his breath.

The proof was that, from a certain point, her movements trying to ‘avoid’ the flashes had visibly increased.

“1 minute and 23 seconds. What a waste.”

The Spectral Spear Mage sneered.

“Like a possibility failing to come true and collapsing into nothing… nothing drives a person to despair quite like it.”

Violet didn’t answer. Blood flowed again. Not from her mouth or nose.

Blood was running from beneath her sunglasses. Even while shedding bloody tears, she didn’t care and readjusted her grip on the sword.

“…!”

Solomon couldn’t do anything. Just like Dr. O’Neill over there.

No, Dr. O’Neill was already critically wounded, collapsed, and unconscious.

In contrast, Solomon stood on his own two legs, perfectly able to move, and yet he stayed silent.

Even knowing— he couldn’t even step into the fight between them.

Just watching was overwhelming. Even tracking it with his eyes was difficult.

For Solomon, who was only Level 4, even First-Class Swordsman Violet was a sky-high opponent. And even that sky-high opponent was struggling before another opponent in that same sky.

A mage who bore the name of the Five Great Houses.

‘…I got no more spell slots, and if I butt in recklessly, I can’t guarantee the outcome.’

So he bit his lip in silence.

Powerlessness.

For the first time, the miserable helplessness of being unable to do anything in this world swallowed him.

It was different from the desperation of struggling to survive. That, at least, had never been something to be ashamed of.

But now, standing there, watching the fight unfold right before his eyes and being unable to do anything at all, his situation felt shameful. Utterly and completely powerless.

‘Maybe I should just run and at least save myself…’

He could turn his back on their fight and run. Even so, he couldn’t. His feet wouldn’t move. Why? Was it because of his pride?

He didn’t know.

Their fight far surpassed anything Solomon could handle right now. Clumsily inserting himself into it would likely not help, but instead drag her down.

He knew it in his head. He knew it.

In this situation, the most ‘efficient and rational’ move was to run without looking back. At least, when he played TRPGs, he wouldn’t have even questioned that answer.

‘Then why… what am I hesitating for?’

In fact, the mage no longer even glanced at Solomon. As if he wasn’t worth that much.

To him, Solomon’s existence was no different from a bug. Even if Solomon ran, it would be nothing more or less than the feeling of letting a bug slip away.

‘…Treated like a bug.’

If he fought, it would just be a dog’s death. In this world he didn’t understand, he’d die a meaningless death without understanding. And knowing that, he was supposed to risk his life over some petty pride? It was foolish. It was a ‘foolishness’ not even worth considering as a player. Solomon bit his lip.

After biting it—

Kaaak!

With fluttering wingbeats, the Black Crow Spirits all surged toward the mage.

“What a pathetic stunt.”

Thirteen dark spirits scattered in all directions, rising around the man. Then, without even looking at the Black Crow Spirits surrounding him, the man snapped his fingers.

Pajik!

Thirteen flashes precisely pierced the thirteen Black Crow Spirits.

“You don’t actually think that was a decisive blow, do you?”

After that, the mage sneered and turned his head.

And there, Solomon was no longer in sight.