There are those who are stronger in actual combat than in training.
Why is that?
Why do they show greater strength in the heat of battle?
It could be due to heightened senses, or perhaps a matter of talent.
Maybe itâs because they can only concentrate when their lives are on the line.
But in truth, Enkrid possessed none of those things. He had none of it.
His senses were average, which made him poor at responding to unpredictable attacks.
He lacked any kind of brilliant ingenuity or spark of creativity.
Concentration that only ignites in moments of crisis? If he had something like that, he wouldnât have died so many times already.
He didnât have any of that.
But what Enkrid did have was experience.
An endless amount of training, drilling, and practice.
âWhat if I twist this way? What if I push that way? What if I deflect, then immediately strike back?â
He would think, then translate that thought into movementârepeat it, again and again.
This came after he had mastered the core forms of proper swordsmanship and their variations.
He never stopped. Never got tired. Just kept at it.
It was a method that couldnât be called anything but foolishâno, even calling it brainless would be generous.
There were times when he tried applying the techniques heâd gained from that process directly into combat.
Because he had no talent, he had to repeat everything dozens of times.
In the midst of that repetition, he would come to notice the smallest differences in movement.
Where others could master something with ten swings, he needed to swing a hundred times. And if a hundred wasnât enough, he swung it over a thousand times.
So what happened then?
He ended up focusing more on the essence than the utility of the technique.
He had no choiceâif he didnât understand it, he couldnât move on.
Why is it that some deflection techniques involve intentionally matching blades?
Why do you then rotate your body to avoid the blade?
Why bring the middle of the opponentâs sword into the crook of your elbow?
By turning his body halfway, he could gain a chance to press down the opponentâs hand.
If he caught the center of the blade with the inside of his elbow, he could use the strength of his arms to disrupt the opponentâs force at a crucial moment.
Then does he have to twist his body?
If closing the distance is necessary, couldnât it be solved with a single step?
No, is grabbing the opponentâs hand even necessary?
What about countering during the deflection?
Itâs all about the essenceâthe reason the movement exists.
He repeated that kind of thing relentlessly.
While dying.
And even when he wasnât dying.
Thatâs why. Thatâs why Enkrid was stronger in battle than he was in training.
His relentless pursuit, his constant challengeâthat was what made the difference in real combat.
His bright blue eyes shimmered with light.
The apostle was a master of necromancy.
In terms of necromancy alone, even Esther would have to concede a step.
âEthereal Form wonât work.â
While in Ethereal Form, he couldnât fully utilize his spell realm.
Instead, he blocked with a veil and used pre-cast magic.
He had an artificial relic, made by imbuing power into sacrificial offerings obtained in the West and treasures pulled from a magical domain.
He planned to use that.
Forget fear.
If he were overwhelmed by it, he wouldnât be able to cast his spells properly.
Forget fear.
If he were overwhelmed by it, he wouldnât be able to cast his spells properly.
The calculations began in his headâbut everything went awry from the start.
The apostle couldnât even see Enkridâs blade.
Clang, crash, clang!
In the span of a single breath, all he could see was the veil he had cast being shattered and destroyed.
âWill it hold? It will hold.â
Right before the veil broke, the apostle began chanting another spell.
Right before the veil broke, the apostle began chanting another spell.
âOh, Eight Siblings of Gulrak!â
He opened his spell realm.
Eight ghouls burst outâone from the ground, another from the air at waist level, another above his head.
Black holes like lumps of pitch appeared, and from within emerged the monsters.
More precisely, they were artificial ghouls crafted by magic.
One with long arms, one with long legs, one with a long tongue, one filled with poisonâ
Each of the eight had a different grotesque trait.
It was simply the apostleâs misfortune.
Enkrid had already encountered knight-class ghouls in the Grey Forest magic domain, once enemies of the city Oara.
That experience was still vivid in his mind.
The one with the blue eyes swung his sword eight times.
Stepping left, he slashed diagonally. Pulling his right foot in, he sliced horizontally.
Then he drew his sword and struck the top of a ghoulâs skull.
When another ghoul thrust its claw, he treated it like a bladeâpressing gently with the flat of his sword and then thrusting in.
Just because it was a soft movement didnât mean the blade had turned into cotton.
Its lethality remained intact.
It was a snake-sword techniqueâwhat they called the flowing blade.
Next, he wrapped his blade around another ghoulâs neck, slashed sideways to sever the head,
then swept it back, drove it into a chest, and pulled it upward to split the head of a remaining ghoul vertically.
With a horizontal slash from above, he gave a three-eyed ghoul a new lid for its skull.
Switching the sword to his left hand, he finished with a one-handed thrust.
Naturally, it was all too fast for the spellcaster to perceive.
Thud, crack, thunk, rip, crunch, pop, thunk.
All eight ghouls that had manifested were killedâbeheaded, pierced through the skull, or with their heads split open.
The apostleâs eyes widened as he gripped the relic.
The apostleâs eyes widened as he gripped the relic.
He saw two long lines.
A blue strand that extended, and after that, a silver thread.
He saw two long lines.
A blue {Nâ˘oâ˘vâ˘eâ˘lâ˘iâ˘gâ˘hâ˘t} strand that extended, and after that, a silver thread.
Time slowed as those lines moved, stretching endlessly.
âBlock it.â
He still had plenty of spells prepared.
The Boil Veil of Gulrak should be enough.
It could absorb physical shocks.
He had other protective relics for his body.
Heâd even modified his skin.
What then, after blocking it?
Use the relic.
If he used the artificial relic, the giants over there would gain monstrous power.
They would transformâjust like the two giants the Westerners once called monsters before dying.
Then he could slaughter everyone here.
If that still wasnât enough, heâd detonate the relicâs power.
No one would surviveânot even himself.
He would summon a blood-forged golem from his spell realm, attach the relic, and detonate it.
It contained the blood of a thousand.
If that much blood exploded, no one would survive.
It was a forbidden artâbloodburst.
That would do it.
There was a way.
The calculations were complete.
He just had to move.
His thoughts continued, but his tongue never moved to chant the spell.
The silver thread moved faster.
The silver thread that Acker had transformed into touched the apostleâs neck.
It was a chain of coincidences.
Enkrid had recently come to a realization.
That the sword in his hand was a magic weapon.
That through Esther, he had learned how to pressure a mage.
That the apostle hadnât expected the battle to begin this way.
That the apostle normally opened with declarations and proselytizing.
And that Enkrid had skipped all thatâand simply answered with his sword.
Rrrrmmmmm!
This translation is the intellectual property of Novelight.
The silver thread that Acker had become was halted, if only for the briefest moment, in front of the apostleâs neck.
It was only naturalâit was a sliver of time too small for the apostle to perceive.
His defensive relic had activated.
Among them was one that turned his skin slippery like an oiled toadâs.
Another created a steel-like barrier a finger-width thick just before the point of impact.
He was a prepared bodyâan apostle of the Sacred Demon Domain cult.
Of course he carried a variety of relics on his person.
His body had even been modified with monster skin, far tougher than any humanâs.
But none of that mattered if his head was no longer attached to his body.
The sword strike was centered with precision on his grounded left foot.
A blade swung with perfect control, embodying the core essence of the technique.
A sword strike imbued with a knightâs blow.
Acker sliced through the apostleâs defenses, through his preparations.
The relics fulfilled their purpose and then shattered in the apostleâs grasp.
Lacking sharpness? Then compensate with strength.
He pinpointed the strike with perfect focus, and the Heart of Might amplified his power.
Splurt!
The apostleâs head floated into the air.
It bounced once and dropped to the ground.
His body collapsed atop the corpses of the half-giant and the fairy.
âFather!â
It was one of the seers from the canyon.
A youngâno, a downright boyishâman, marked with tear and dagger sigils.
With his cryâ
KWWEEAAAAHHHH!
All of the giants suddenly let out screams, like howls of agony.
As they raised their heads and roared, purple veins bulged across their muscles.
Crk-crk-crk-crack!
Their muscles swelled, their eyes glowed as if torches had been jammed into their sockets.
Their hair surged upward, and their skin darkened into a deep bronze hue.
The sheer presence of the transformed giants seemed to push away sunlight and wind.
Most of the apostleâs will was destroyed before it could manifestâbut the will sealed inside the artificial relic had activated.
It was the awakening of every giant present.
âYou bastard!â
The moment Enkrid killed the apostle, he sensed a force bearing down behind him.
He turned and swung Acker.
It was a light strikeâbut not something anyone could casually dodge or block.
It was delivered at a difficult angle, with both speed and power.
Thud!
But it was blocked.
Did that just get blocked? It mightâve been surprising, but Enkrid didnât flinch.
He recovered the blade from its slicing motion and struck again with the same angle.
This time, it was a weighted middle-sword style meant to split the clavicleânot a snapping cut, but a driving one.
The opponent was mid-air.
As he swung, Enkrid scanned the opponentâs outfit and posture.
A vest of short fur, trousers, armbands, facial markings, a black stick strapped diagonally across his back?
A blade made of obsidian.
The weapon that blocked Acker was a curved dagger, known as a karambit.
The dagger was so sturdy that it neither broke nor was sliced by Acker.
Only a single notch appeared on Ackerâs edge.
Hatred and malice burned in the enemyâs eyes.
He blocked the second strike tooâ
twisting the dagger to deflect the swordâs power.
That was truly something worth being surprised at.
In terms of innate talent, he could rival Rem.
Though he lagged behind for now, heâd catch up quickly if left alone.
He merely twisted the direction of the swordâs force and blocked it.
As soon as he landed, he rolled backward.
Enkrid moved to chaseâbut then stopped.
It was instinct, warning him.
As the man rolled back, an obsidian spear floated into the air.
A trick? No, it was sorcery.
Without touching it, the spear hovered and then flew straight forward.
His martial intuition flared in alarm, so Enkrid remained still.
He couldnât see it, but he knewâ
something had grabbed the spear in midair.
A guardian spirit, maybe? Something like what they spoke of in the West.
Clink!
Blocking it was trivial.
He matched its speed as it flew and guided the spearâs edge aside with his blade.
Then he took a large step forwardâ
and as he moved, spun Acker half a turn behind his head and brought the sword down vertically, perpendicular to the ground.
All of it happened in a single breath.
FWOOOM!
But even then, Acker failed to cut his target.
It sliced only air.
The foe who had seemed ready to charge straight at him suddenly leapt back.
He retreated and raised his left hand.
Jingle.
What kind of accessory was that? Each of his fingers had a golden bell attached.
He raised and shook his left hand, then opened his mouth.
âI will steal your eyes.â
Enkrid blinked. Nothing happened.
The enemy stood frozen with his hand outstretched.
Gnash.
He ground his molars, then shouted again.
âTake three steps and collapse!â
The first was the Curse of the Blind.
The second, the Curse of the Lame.
Naturally, neither worked.
Enkrid didnât feel even the faintest ill omen.
Instead, some idle thought came to him:
âIs the boatman somewhere letting out a big belch right now?â
Or maybe he was shouting something like:
âDelicious!â
Orâ
âItâs you. Youâre the one who swallowed the curse.â
A youthful voice rang out.
The enemy glared at Enkrid with murderous eyes, then turned and bolted.
With a few taps of his feet, his figure blurred and shot into the distance.
Watching the retreating figure, Enkrid hurled a dagger.
Fwooshâ
The spinning dagger embedded itself in the back of the sorcerer.
The man staggered for a moment, but still dashed off and vanished.
He was fast.
Not so fast that he couldnât be caughtâbut Enkrid had more pressing matters.
The giants and the black-armored warrior were still fighting behind him.