Aitri had watched Enkrid, absorbed in the sight of him tempering himself as though one year were a single day, and he had listened to his story.
In that way he had become absorbed in Enkrid's life, had fallen into it, and had taken up the hammer for a weapon that suited him.
His heart rose of its own accord, and he hammered steel. Every dawn, at a fixed time, he hammered steel, and he always managed his body so it would be in its best condition.
'You always have to be at your best.'
Only then would what came from his hands also be the best.
Aitri had set that iron rule for himself, and he kept it. When he had hammered the sword before, he had literally driven his own body into the ground doing it, but this time he did not.
That was why it had taken him more than a few months just to hammer the iron that would become the sword's material. He hammered that fine iron until it pleased him, and then spent a long time shaping it as well.
He was not bound by time. He paid no mind to completion. He devoted himself entirely to spending each day faithfully.
"Master, Sir Enkrid has returned."
Even when he heard his apprentice's words, he did not waver in the slightest. He did what he had been doing.
'The same every day.'
He had never counted them, but the number of hammer blows he swung each day was always similar. He hammered and hammered like that for months.
Only then did the shape take form, and onto that completed shape he poured his heart.
If Enkrid had seen Aitri's forging process, he would have said Will had been poured into it.
He hammered the sword with intent. Forgetting time, forgetting himself, he put into it what he desired.
"That's the end?"
It was his apprentice speaking. At the words that the work was finished, the apprentice wore a baffled expression.
On the outside it looked far too ordinary, but one person was enough to recognize the value of this sword.
***
The reason the world of my mind is a riverside is probably because I've met the Ferryman so often in my dreams.
There was no need to look around. Gravel covered the ground, and on one side gentle river water moved like ripples, carrying away a few pebbles before setting them back down again.
Right in front of Enkrid.
Should he call it the incarnation of the sword?
The sword Aitri had made by using his soul as a hammer and his body as an anvil was looking at him.
Blue eyes, black hair, and on its body nothing but a single set of thin black fuzzy clothes. The front of its chest hung open, exposing sharply defined pectoral muscles.
Was it an illusion that the clothes it wore looked like hard stone or metal? From above the shoulders and toward the back, something like a thin cloak streamed down as though sprouting from it.
Only after a light green cloak wrapped around its body did the man, who looked exactly like Enkrid himself, speak.
"Nice to meet you."
Enkrid silently observed the other.
It was innocent. A clean purity untouched by grime, a pure white snowfield, things like that came to mind.
'No matter what color you dyed it.'
It would become that color. It was like a newborn child.
'That's not wrong.'
Its edge had been honed, but it had never cut anything.
The sword's name was Today, an engraved weapon that matched Enkrid's own Will.
"What are you going to cut?"
It asked again. And as it asked, the fuzzy clothes on the man's body turned into blades. Thin, slender blades. The sharpness visible on the outside crushed Night so completely it was laughable. At the same time, it felt as though if it started running, it would be faster than anyone else.
Even without coming close, the force the sword spread was enough to leave a scratch on his cheek.
"Or shall I break things?"
At the same time as the words, its form changed. This was a world of the mind. Before he could even register the change in its form, he only registered the result.
The force of those sharp blades vanished without a trace, and now the man had grown so huge that even Audin would have to look up at him.
The fuzzy clothes had now become something like a single mass made of solid black metal. They had grown thicker and harder.
"Shall I drive them back and cage them so they can't do anything?"
As it spoke, it changed again. This time the fuzzy clothes turned into bars and enclosed the surroundings. Between them, a single eye-shaped pattern rose up, as though measuring everything.
"It's good to live by going with the flow too."
The man smiled faintly, and the fuzzy clothes turned soft. Even if a giant swung a mace, it seemed like all you would feel was softness.
"The truth is, I'm not really a sword or anything. I'm just a lump of metal. Harmless metal."
At the words that followed, the man in the fuzzy clothes quietly bowed his body, and looked endlessly small.
No matter how he looked at it, the mental image of that sword had originally taken shape from its own true form.
Inside those lowered fuzzy clothes, there would be a sword with its blade raised taut.
He could feel it.
Fast and sharp, heavy and destructive, exacting and tenacious, flowing softly, deceiving and deceiving again.
'Today.'
That was the sword's name.
Why had it been named Today?
What meaning did Today have?
'The end of a day.'
The end of a day, and therefore this blade was the boundary of a day.
'A day that can become anything.'
Someone would waste this Today. Someone else would live through a Today harder than ever before. And for someone else, it might become the happiest day of their life.
Most people would spend a Today just like yesterday.
The moment he understood the name given to the sword, he also understood what the sword could do.
Enkrid came back out of the world of the mind. The blade no longer trembled. The straight blade enjoyed stillness. That was fine too.
If needed, it would move however its master desired, at any time.
"Yes, nice to meet you."
Enkrid's mouth opened. He was speaking to the sword. It was an answer in response to words someone had addressed to him. There were only two who could speak here, and neither of them had opened their mouths, so the one who had truly spoken must have been that sword.
A simple but clear conclusion.
That was how it looked to Esther. To her, the meeting between Enkrid and his engraved weapon had not seemed dramatic. It looked like he had grabbed the sword and suddenly said nice to meet you.
She was a witch who handled spells. In her eyes, that was not a magic sword.
"Is it an ego sword?"
Esther asked. Sometimes a blacksmith who went beyond merely being excellent and handled magic metal would breathe a sense of self into a sword.
There were swords that vibrated when they sensed malice, and swords that could guide your direction even in a dark forest where the sun never rose.
Cases where a sword actually spoke were, for the most part, things imbued with lingering thought, so most ego swords were closer to cursed swords.
"It is not."
Aitri knew what kind of sword he had made. He had hammered it well, poured effort into it, and made it so it would answer its master's Will in any form.
That was why he had procured a metal that was the finest of true iron rather than mixing true silver and black metal to make it.
It was not a sword with self-awareness. Even so, the reason he was conversing with that sword would be because of the deep communion between them.
Esther watched in silence.
It was an interesting sight, after all.
Enkrid let go of the sword and turned his gaze. His eyes passed over Aitri's hands. As with all smiths, both of his hands were covered in wounds.
No matter what he said, he did not speak with visible confidence or overflowing certainty. A craftsman who made things was not an artist.
He had only forged the sword that best suited the one who would use it.
"I'm taking it."
Enkrid said.
"For that sword, I made the scabbard from the black metal sent over and the thread sent from the city of Kirheis."
Aitri, as though it were only natural, said only what he had to say as well.
"Excellent."
Esther added her own words. She had thought he had not touched it at all after she had gone to the trouble of making and sending over metal woven together with spells after mixing true silver and black metal.
The scabbard was dark green. It was such a deep color that the faint green only showed under sunlight.
Enkrid sheathed the sword.
Click—the feeling of it fitting into place was good enough to send a shiver down his spine.
Leaving aside that it was an engraved weapon, just from the craftsmanship of the sword itself and its finish alone, it was more than worthy of being called a masterpiece among masterpieces.
'Aitri.'
Enkrid marveled again and again. Without reciting even a single line of a spell, he had made a sword as remarkable as any magic weapon.
As it was now, this engraved weapon was a weapon that could not even be used without Uske.
'Should I say it's a sword made solely to use Will?'
That was the kind of sword Today was. Without needing magic or spells at all, it was a sword, a blade, and a hilt that existed for Will, accepted Will, and was used for Will.
A finish without a single ornament, and in every one of its elements, the sea could be felt.
Just from holding it for a moment, he could clearly feel the single greatest difference between it and other swords.
'It endlessly eats Will.'
A sword that resembled him, a sword that swallowed Will the more he fed it, as though it were resonating with the Uske inside him.
***
"That? A sword?"
When he returned to the knights' training grounds, it was nothing strange that everyone, starting with Rem, showed interest.
The lowest-ranked soldier who used to squeeze his eyes shut before flying blades and arrows was now a knight who crushed them beneath him, and their captain.
They had always known that his vessel itself was different from other people's, but now many things had changed after that.
It was only natural that the attention focused on him all the more.
"Yeah."
Enkrid answered and drew his sword. It showed none of the visible sharpness Night had shown, nor any hint of the lightness Penna had shown.
"Well, wanna test it?"
Rem stepped forward first. He swung his axe, and Enkrid raised his sword and took it.
The instant Enkrid reflexively misled the direction of his toes and thrust with his sword, Rem saw through the feint with momentary reaction speed and swung his axe.
Compared to the spar a few days ago, it was only the level of lightly loosening up, but for those watching, there was actually more to learn from this.
"Hm, so he nullifies feints with response speed."
Clemen muttered, and Aurelia standing beside him added,
"Or he recognizes the feint in the first place and extends the axe first."
No matter what the watchers chattered about, Enkrid felt no need to adapt to the new sword.
'The sword I held for the first time since being born.'
That was what it felt like.
That familiar, that settled in his hand. Starting from the leather strap wound around the grip, not one thing about it was the same as before, and yet it was.
If Night had rampaged in his hand like a demonic blade, then Today felt like part of his body.
"Huh, this feels a little strange."
Rem said as he swung the axe horizontally. A barbarian who handled sorcery had senses sharper than ever before.
He had felt that Enkrid's engraved weapon was different from everything he had faced until now.
And it was the same for Jaxon, who had been watching from the side.
The moment Rem stepped back as if ending the spar with that one remark, a few streaks of light flew from Jaxon's hand.
His hands had clearly been empty, but somehow he had already drawn and thrown them. Several blades aimed at Enkrid's chest, abdomen, and thigh.
The three blades flew with slight differences in timing. The one aiming at his chest came straight, the one going for the thigh came in a curve. The blade that flew at somewhere between those speeds was the one for the abdomen.
He accelerated his thoughts and widened the scope of his perception. The net of senses sharpened through training caught the incoming blades, and as he raised his sword, he knocked all three away.
Clang-clang-clang!
"This bastard, no warning at all."
Rem spat something like a complaint. It was aimed at Jaxon. He had already been the type to move without a presence, but after having crossed blades with him before, he was even worse than before.
Swinging blades all he wanted without any sign or warning.
The throwing knives he had just thrown felt the same way.
Enkrid let Rem's words go in one ear and out the other. There was no time to answer. As Today knocked aside the three blades, it clung tight in his grasp, feeling like he was holding a thin tree branch.
It endlessly sucked in Will, and as the Will inside him changed, the nature of the sword changed with it.
It was light, so it was fast.
After throwing the three knives, Jaxon was already swinging a dagger down vertically from behind him.
Even for a fairly skilled knight, it would have been difficult to catch that movement, but Enkrid pivoted on his left foot, turned half a circle, and answered with a swing of his sword.
Ting.
For an instant it seemed the blades had met, but the dagger knocked Today aside and bent down to descend from the side.
'A flowing sword.'
He had refined the flowing sword into something offensive by mixing it into a fast sword.
Was it Jaxon's hidden strike?
Because he had recognized it, it was not hard to receive. Will changed. Toward drawing a straight line.
As though all of this had been within calculation from the start, that was how he moved the sword.
He built a prison out of blades. A derivative of Snuffing Out the Embers, Blade Prison. If Snuffing Out the Embers cut off the starting point, then Blade Prison trapped an attack that had already begun and tightened around it.
Jaxon held two daggers in both hands and spun once in place. In time with his spin, dozens of blades flew.
Enkrid forced himself to knock every single one of them aside and pin them into the training ground floor.
"Hm."
Jaxon let out a short groan and stepped back, and then from behind him again came Audin's Love and Mercy pressing in.
That footwork was as silent as Jaxon's. Yet it was heavy. It felt as though a landslide had happened and a mound of earth was crashing over him from behind.
Enkrid's Today changed its nature once more.
It turned heavy and weighty, and he added Wave to it. Bzzzzng. The blade rang as it smashed toward Love and Mercy closing in from behind.
The force contained in that simple horizontal slash looked as though it could split a mountain ridge.
Just before the blade struck the gauntlet, Audin retreated.
He stayed true to instinct. He had judged that trading blows with it right now would be a loss.
That ended Audin's turn, and Ragna drew Sunrise and split Enkrid's head.
Fwoosh!
The Enkrid split by the heat-filled blade scattered like a mirage. It was an afterimage made by moving his feet in a brief instant.
Then from beyond that afterimage, a single point struck at Ragna's forehead.
Ragna caught that sword with the flat of Sunrise.
Bang!
The sound of blades meeting rang out brightly. At the same time as he blocked it, Ragna reversed his grip on Sunrise, extended it, and swung.
Even a technique close to grappling became different when Ragna used it. It was a sword strike where he seized it in a reverse grip, then grabbed the sword properly again and swung as though throwing it. The heat contained in Sunrise swept explosively through the surroundings. A blade windmill spinning in both vertical and horizontal directions.
"That idiot."
Again, from behind, Rem muttered.
Enkrid's sword changed with his Will, turning as soft as silk.
He swirled it just like that, trapping the heat pouring out of Sunrise and sending it upward.
Whoooom.
A blast of hot wind rose.
Ragna stopped at about that point too.
"You've turned even more into a monster."
Rem's evaluation was the conclusion. Among swordsmen, there was a saying that if you used a weapon that fit your hand perfectly, your skill looked to have risen dramatically.
That was exactly what Enkrid looked like now.
"Hm."
It was a moment to marvel at Aitri all over again.
It endlessly drank in Will, transformed Will as he wished, and answered. It felt as though the blade had become another self and was fighting alongside him.
If the engraved weapons he had used before had belonged to the class of famed swords that clung perfectly to the hand—
This was just—
'Another me.'
What an engraved weapon, a weapon engraved with oneself, truly was sank deep into his skin.
"A guest has come. What should we do?"
Just as the test ended, a soldier came up and said.
"Who?"
Clemen asked, turning only her head.
"They say they've come to challenge him."
His epithet of monster slaughterer and the name Balrog Slayer were spreading together.
Though among them all, the name Demonic Knight was said to be the most widely known.
Even so, in a situation like this, someone who came asking for him by name was truly rare.
"They say they're here to challenge Captain Enkrid."
If it had been an ordinary sort of opponent, the soldiers would have stopped them on their own.
The fact that word had reached all the way here meant it was not an ordinary sort.
"Send them in."
Visits like that were always welcome to Enkrid.