Chapter 466: They Were No Longer Equal

The sunset lit up half of their faces. That only made the other half look even darker.

Sunlight cut between the two.

As if the light had divided them, placing each on their own side.

Enkrid had wiped off his smile. Now his face was expressionless.

Rem’s expression was even more indifferent.

Both had their arms hanging down, neither had drawn a weapon.

Dunbakel and Lua Gharne felt the pressure just from the posture the two held.

‘The calm before a storm.’

So thought Dunbakel,

‘Waves churning within a swamp.’

So thought Lua Gharne.

Their emotions were similar, but not the same.

Because they were looking from different directions.

Dunbakel saw what would soon come rushing forward.

Since she fought on instinct and intuition, she believed that a single moment’s decision could decide victory or defeat.

In contrast, Lua Gharne enjoyed battles of the mind, and believed the winner would be the one who came out on top of the invisible currents flowing beneath the surface before any real movement began.

Both were right.

A quiet battle, yet with rising waves.

It could be called the most serious and the slowest duel between the two yet.

In most of their spars, Enkrid usually charged in outright, or Rem would suddenly swing first to begin the fight.

Clouds stretched wide and evenly across the sky.

As the sun sank beyond the western horizon, two faint moons began to appear, blurry in the distance.

The orange sky subtly turned violet.

Watching the horizon made it feel like the sky and earth had become one.

A breeze that seemed to blow from that horizon crossed between the two.

Whooooom—

It was a wind with considerable force.

On days like this, the westerners called the phenomenon a “low sky,” and this kind of wind was either called a “provoking wind” or a “blocking wind.”

By the time you got here, it didn’t really matter what you called the wind.

When it blew head-on, it was a wind that stopped your heavy steps. But from behind, it felt like it pushed you forward, supporting your back.

It was a unique atmospheric effect.

Enkrid raised a hand and calmly grabbed the hilt of Acker in the wind.

In the meantime, Rem had drawn her axes.

Srrrk—

Holding Acker in his hand, he stared at Rem again, and Rem split the two axes into either hand and let her arms hang down once more.

Enkrid tilted the tip of Acker downward slightly, lowering it from its previously horizontal position, letting the blade angle off slantwise.

“Oh.”

Lua Gharne’s wide eyes rolled as she let out an admiring breath.

Rem stepped one foot back and shifted her center of gravity to her right leg.

The tip of Acker had been aimed at Rem’s thigh, and she had adjusted her stance so she could dodge at any time.

A similar battle of feints unfolded.

In Lua Gharne’s words, a wave surging in a pit of mud.

When Enkrid pushed the wave, Rem either dodged or blocked it.

“You think this’ll get us anywhere?”

To Rem’s provocation, Enkrid silently agreed.

This was, in short, a test.

How well would what he had learned actually work?

He had unleashed pressure, but that alone wouldn’t work on a black mountain barbarian.

Then what about a strategy based on a battle of presence, to overwhelm the opponent’s spirit?

It was a technique he’d learned from Lua Gharne.

“You said you were ready to win from the start. This is just doing that a little more blatantly!”

Fixing his sword belt, shifting his stance, adjusting the position of his feet—everything «N.o.v.e.l.i.g.h.t» was part of preparing to win.

If pointing your blade a certain way or already gripping your sword in advance could put you on the high ground, then wasn’t that the right move?

Of course it was

It just didn’t work so easily on Rem.

The sword and axe moved suddenly.

Thud!

Acker’s blade came down in an arc, and the two axes crossed to block it.

Silently, the axes caught the sword at the edge of the curve and tried to push back, but Acker withdrew the instant it made contact. From the start, the move had no real intention of transferring force—it was simply a blocking tactic.

A chip of axe blade flew into the air, but neither paid it any mind.

“Not bad, huh?”

Rem grinned.

“Likewise.”

Enkrid smiled too.

Immediately, sword and axes slashed and struck without mercy, aiming for the neck, stomach, chest, thighs, forearms, and fingers.

Thud! Tatatatang!

In the moonlight dyed with violet evening, blades of iron proved their worth to each other.

Each fiery clash announced its force, each strike aimed to burrow into the opponent’s flesh.

After several exchanges—

Clang!

With a sharp clang, Enkrid’s body rushed into Rem’s space.

Seeing it, Rem raised her knee, and Enkrid blocked it with his left forearm.

Whump, thud, tak! Thock.

Lua Gharne and Dunbakel saw Acker embedded in the ground.

Whump was the sound of Acker stabbing into the dirt.

Thud was the sound of Rem’s left-hand axe falling to the ground.

Tak was what happened the moment Acker made contact.

Enkrid rubbed his left forearm with his right hand as he stepped back.

Thock was the sound of Rem’s knee smashing into Enkrid’s arm.

“...Damn, you’ve gotten good.”

Rem said.

“I think so too.”

Enkrid replied.

How could he not?

Experiencing a knight’s strike had caused an unexpected transformation in Enkrid.

It became both a stepping stone and an accelerant for his growth.

Enkrid had knocked away one of Rem’s axes with Acker and darted into her guard, then slapped her jaw with his right palm.

Rem, sensing his move, tried to block the charge with a knee and twist her waist to dodge.

But at that moment, Enkrid showed something like a knight’s strike.

That is, he unleashed it with an unexpected speed.

Rem couldn’t dodge in time.

Thock was the sound of Enkrid’s palm smashing her jaw.

She hadn’t expected something like this from a spar with Enkrid, but it happened.

Her head spun. She could’ve withstood more, sure—but a loss was still a loss.

She plopped down on the spot.

“Huff... and my jaw hurts too.”

When you get hit properly on the jaw, rage tends to surge.

“You turned your head at the last second though.”

Enkrid said as he retrieved Acker from the ground.

It hadn’t landed perfectly. But it was a clean hit. If the fight had continued...

‘I could win.’

So the outcome had been decided here.

“Grrrrrr...”

A snort puffed up from Lua Gharne’s cheek line.

Even she found this progress astonishing.

Dunbakel was even more surprised.

Her golden eyes widened larger than the moon hanging in the sky.

After staring at Rem for a long while, she asked,

“Did you get weaker?”

Crack.

Rem twisted her neck left and right a few times as she stood up and answered,

“Come here, let’s test that out, shall we?”

Of course, Rem hadn’t gotten weaker. The blow from earlier had been shaken off without even a breath.

But if it had been a real battle, that opening would’ve been fatal.

“Gack!”

This translation is the intellectual property of Novelight.

Dunbakel took a few hits that day, and Enkrid quietly caught his breath.

Something inside him had flared and boiled, but it fizzled out with a soft hiss.

He was pleased, but not wildly ecstatic.

He enjoyed it, but not enough to burst out laughing.

It was just confirmation.

‘I’ve made it this far now.’

It was just proof.

He had seen Oara die, seen her fight, and now, having overcome today once more—

Enkrid was able to imitate the gesture of a knight.

“There’s no one at the semi-knight level who can stand against you now.”

That was Rem speaking, her heart pounding.

“One more round?”

“...Let’s do it. Come.”

Lua Gharne was greatly surprised, but she accepted the current outcome.

In a way, it was only natural. Hadn’t she already seen him fight that monstrous ghoul?

And still, why was she so shocked?

‘Isn’t it weirder not to be surprised?’

Every time she looked at the man called Enkrid, she saw someone who had already reached their limits. It was impossible to understand how he kept improving like this.

He seemed like someone who had risked his life thousands of times to unlock something—and then spent hundreds of days polishing that something again.

‘Even normally.’

He poured every minute into swinging his sword, into analyzing and refining.

She had seen it right next to him.

In terms of pure experience, Enkrid already surpassed anyone on the continent.

‘A body honed by the sum of all that experience, a temperament forged through worldly training, and ideas that always struck at the enemy’s blind spots.’

That was what had allowed him to surpass Rem.

In the second round between Rem and Enkrid, no one got hit in the jaw or dropped to the ground.

But Enkrid was certain.

‘I can catch her.’

If he set his mind to it, he could defeat Rem.

Equal? They were no longer equal.

He had the upper hand.

“Just now, you were thinking that if you really wanted to, you could take me down, weren’t you? Cut it out. Yeah? You know damn well that it’d be different if we were actually fighting to the death.”

“You know it too, don’t you? I haven’t exactly been fighting to the death in these spars either.”

“...See, the way you talk really gets under people’s skin, you know that?”

Before they knew it, they were already on their third round.

Rem’s gaze had shifted. So had Enkrid’s presence.

“One of you’s gonna die like this.”

Dunbakel said, her sharp senses picking up on the change in their momentum.

It was their second camp, reached after a full day’s march.

After gathering firewood and stretching out their knees from exhaustion, their blades moved again.

This round didn’t last long.

But every technique in it was deadly.

Tang!

The sound of metal-on-metal was rare. Rem’s weapons weren’t like Acker; clashing only chipped the edge more.

Before long, the axe blades had become like saws.

Calling them axe-saws wouldn’t have been wrong.

They were fighting as if this were a real battle.

In the midst of it, Enkrid held himself back again.

Rem, once more, showed another side of herself.

Even though she acted like this was “just a spar.”

A murderous aura passed between them.

Then suddenly, both stopped.

Their shoulders heaved, breath spilling ragged from their mouths.

Neither was the type to fall behind in stamina, yet here they were. That’s how exhausting this clash had been.

Their sword and axe were frozen in place, both aimed at the other’s heart.

“Act cocky again, huff, huff, and you’ll get a hole in your chest, right there.”

“Huffff... You’re already dead.”

That was Enkrid’s answer to Rem’s threat.

“Fucking hell.”

“You dumbass.”

The two stared at each other... and burst out laughing.

“Alright, fine. We’re gonna be on the road for over ten days, so you’re gonna keep demanding spars anyway. Might as well let you win one.”

Rem backed off.

“You’re not letting me win. You lost.”

Enkrid pointed it out deliberately.

“Yeah, yeah, fine. Let’s say I lost.”

Rem said, still unable to hide her amazement.

‘What a strange feeling.’

She’d lived a life where losing was a rare experience.

She wasn’t called a genius for nothing.

There were days when people called her the strongest of the West, the most gifted of the Western tribes.

Among those who had trained her, barely any lasted more than a month.

‘Okay, learning magic was a bit of a pain.’

But she still learned it, mastered it, understood it.

Several shamans once debated over naming her as their successor.

And then she left that land.

Even after leaving, she almost never lost.

Recently, sure—there was that crazy suffocation bastard, and that damned wildcat going nuts out of nowhere.

But before that? The concept of losing had barely existed in her life.

Of course she wasn’t used to defeat. It could’ve felt awful.

But this time, it didn’t.

It had been different when facing the suffocation freak.

‘Why doesn’t it feel bad?’

—There could be many reasons, but maybe it was because that crazy blacksmith of a bastard didn’t look like he was planning to stop anytime soon.

It wasn’t like her life had been just a checkpoint he passed through.

And it wasn’t like he was some ultimate goal she had to catch up to.

‘It just happened.’

Something that happened as she moved toward her own dream.

That’s why he was still swinging his sword.

“This campsite’s pretty damn uncomfortable, huh.”

Dunbakel said while lighting a fire.

“And my throat’s dry.”

Lua Gharne chimed in.

The weather was getting drier the deeper into the West they went—it made sense that fatigue would hit harder.

“Alright, let’s see here.”

Rem said, then started digging into the ground.

Everyone’s eyes turned to her.

“Hold on a bit. Gotta have something to drink, right?”

This was the West—the land where she had been born and raised.

Go deeper in, and they’d hit all kinds of wild shit.

‘If I don’t enjoy the moment now, I’ll regret it.’

Always, always enjoy yourself.

That was her creed, wasn’t it?

Rem dug roughly into the dirt, shoved one of her axes in, then pried up the ground by using the back of the blade.

Crackkk.

The ground came apart more easily than expected, and something popped out.

It was too big to grab with one hand, but a little too small to hold comfortably with both. A round fruit.

“Fruit growing underground?”

Like a root fruit?

Enkrid asked, puzzled.

“A delicacy of the West—ground squirrel fruit.”

Its hard shell was made of fine-packed soil. When Rem cracked it open, wrinkly fruit came out from within.

She dusted off the dirt, split it with her axe blade, and inside, water sloshed.

“Try it. Once you get a taste, you’ll never forget it. The old traders used to call it ‘paradise water.’”

Enkrid took the fruit first and drank a sip.

It slid down smooth, and a sweetness bloomed in his mouth before spreading through his whole body.

It was incredibly sweet, but not cloying.

The kind of sweetness that made you want to keep drinking more.

“If you drink too much, your mouth’ll get even drier. One per person a day is just right.”

“You’re officially our guide to the West.”

Enkrid said, impressed. Rem responded with a string of curses.

Just hearing the word “guide” made her cuss on reflex.

Of course she was the guide—who the hell had been leading them all this time?

Sometimes, that damn captain had a way of flipping people’s insides with just one sentence.

And this wasn’t even the same as admitting defeat.

It almost felt like he was comparing her to that suffocating bastard again—and that pissed her off.