'Anu.'
The Mercenary King of the East wielded a spear that multiplied weight. Its name was Bull.
In the image in his mind, the man charged at him without warning. Dust scattered across the dirt ground, and the spearhead came rushing in like a bull.
'The purpose is to make me block.'
If you blocked, the weight settled in. That was Bull's power, and the technique that made the opponent's weapon fly out of the hand. Enkrid swung his sword at the imaginary Bull. He swept it from below upward, knocking it aside.
Thud—
The weapons met. Had more weight been added to Today in his hand like that?
No. Now he knew what technique Anu had used.
'Transfer, penetration, injection.'
He changed Will into weight and laid it onto the opponent's weapon.
'What a nasty bastard.'
Enkrid understood one of Anu's vile tastes. With skill at that level, the man could have done plenty of other things too. And yet he had deliberately put effort into a technique like this.
Enkrid changed the opponent before his eyes.
"I swear and vow that I will kill you."
It was Cypress, who made sword and armor out of oaths and vows.
His engraved weapon, Resolve, did not give off light, which made it even more dangerous.
If Anu was a master of deception, then Cypress was a gambler.
He had dragged the stage of shaping one step farther and trapped the light inside the sword.
'Should I call it the next stage after shaping?'
No, this was an application too. It was the same as Wave. Enkrid laid Wave over Today in his hand.
He held the vibration inside the sword so it would not tremble outwardly. Watching Cypress do it made it easy for him to imitate too.
'It's worth more than enough to learn.'
It was inside his imagination, but since it was not far from reality, Cypress's swordsmanship was real.
A sword that bent and snapped. The two of them dodged and dodged again, and when the blades finally met, the pressure shoved at his body. Enkrid held his breath and endured, spinning Will through his entire body.
He had trained every morning through Audin in how to hold the center of his body. Standing on one leg and training his waist and glutes had not been for nothing.
While he stubbornly endured like that, Cypress instead stepped back.
'Just because he's a stubborn gambler doesn't mean he mindlessly rushes forward.'
In pure combat experience, Enkrid was no less than those two. He understood the reasons behind Anu's and Cypress's actions and grasped their tactics.
In that regard, Enkrid was clearly above the two of them. His inborn tactical sense and the role of his tactical teacher were both large reasons.
Because Luagarne, in this regard, had been a Frog with sharper eyes and better ideas than anyone.
When Cypress withdrew, the next opponent appeared. It was the old silver-haired knight, Bartolo. Silver dust trailed from between the strands of hair tied tight behind his back.
A spell from the very start. What was woven into that spell?
It muddled the opponent's mind. It was like fairy dust. Their dust, the dust of those little fairies, sent a person's mind to the happiest moment of life.
If someone started reminiscing about a first kiss with childhood love in the middle of a fight, that would be a perfect way to die.
'Useless.'
Enkrid had experienced the Demon land called Silence. The fog that spread there gifted hallucinations that gnawed away at a person's mind in real time.
Inside Silence, he had overcome auditory hallucinations, visual hallucinations, even phantom tastes. Based on that experience, he drove the spell away.
'When you cut spells, they use spells that can't be cut.'
Now he understood what old knight Bartolo's tactic was. Enkrid overcame it without much trouble.
The goal of this mental training was to break that tactic apart and go beyond it.
He was not ignorant of the fact that if they truly fought, they would be even more vicious than they were now, but even with this much, there was truly a lot to learn.
'Next.'
He drew up his concentration. He forgot the present and left only the enemy and himself. The opponent in his imagination stepped forward.
"All of it is futile. You won't be able to protect anything, and you'll die without any meaning at all. You should have stood on this side instead."
It was neither provocation nor an attempt to shake his resolve. The man simply said it because he truly believed it.
The blond swordsman he had met in the spring of his twenty-seventh year extended his sword.
What was the name of that engraved weapon, and what was its specialty?
'I know nothing.'
The enemy he had created in his mind instantly became a wall. A huge wall, broad and vast, with no visible end.
The wall became a swordsman again and stepped forward. It compressed down small and became a single person. That person opened his mouth and said,
"If you want to die, then sure, you'll have to die. If you don't like that, then go hide somewhere in the mountains and live there."
Receiving the opponent's sword was not easy. He knew that before it even began. He knew because he had already experienced it. He knew because his insight told him so.
Cold sweat ran down the back of his neck, and the tension squeezed his heart.
Would the sword in that hand thrust first? Slash? Upper? Lower? Middle? Vertical? Horizontal? Diagonal?
He did not know. Even if he brought out everything he had, it was hard to predict.
"If you don't know what the opponent is going to do, fall back."
That was Luagarne's teaching. It was true. But what were you supposed to do if it was a moment when you could not retreat?
"This is why life is fun."
Enkrid said it to the imaginary opponent.
"...Fun?"
The blond swordsman did not tilt his head, but a question remained on his face.
"Yeah. Fun."
At the same moment as the answer, the blond swordsman's blade moved. It was a thrust. Enkrid received the one-handed thrust as it flew at him, guiding it aside and winding it away.
Then he spun his own sword half a turn over his head, shoved the other man's blade outward, and twisted into a slash.
A cut aimed at the opponent's upper section, near the head.
The blond swordsman knocked Today away with a bare hand.
'It was sharper than Night.'
He had smacked aside the sword barehanded, yet there was not even a scratch on his hand. Instead, brilliant golden light shimmered there.
Completely unfazed, Enkrid pulled the sword back and tried another upper horizontal slash.
Whether he had entered the soundless world or not, the foundation of a fight remained exactly as he had first learned it. He moved by measuring distance and transmitting force.
He walked a thin rope where even the slightest mistake led straight to death. It was a rope stretched between one cliff and another. Just when it felt like he had crossed the whole thing, another long rope appeared ahead.
It was the beginning of an endless tightrope walk. In the end, he fell from that tightrope. The blond swordsman's blade dug into the space beside his ribs. He twisted his body to the last moment to avoid the strike aimed at his heart, so the blade stabbed into his side instead, and he did not die instantly.
"That's idiotic."
It was after the blond swordsman said that.
Behind him, Ferryman appeared and said it again.
"That's idiotic."
"That's for me to decide."
Enkrid answered at once and came out of the mental world. When he opened his eyes, he was inside the swaying carriage. The floor jolted and shook, but Leona had said it had been fitted with a shock-absorbing device, so it was much more comfortable than before.
That had been true. Part of it was because they were only traveling over the well-maintained Safe Road, but the shaking really was much lighter.
It was a two-horse carriage, and like a noble carriage with seats facing each other, it was the kind of size that felt full with four riders.
"We'll rest around here."
Rem said from the driver's seat. There had been no need to hire a coachman, and the road was one they could have simply ridden on horseback, but a well-kept road and a carriage gave a person room to breathe. It was the road leading to the capital, Nauril.
They were traveling to arrive on the date Crang had asked them to come without fail.
The only ones going with him were Rem, Kraiss, and Esther.
"I don't know who will come as the envoy, but I should at least see their face."
That was what Kraiss had said in rare seriousness right before departure.
"Why, because you think the Empire might invest in your salon?"
When Enkrid joked, Kraiss's eyes went wide in shock.
"How did you know?"
The bastard was nothing if not consistent.
Enkrid finished his mental training and brushed aside the exchange with Kraiss from his head, then recalled the old knight who had remained in Border Guard until a few days ago.
More precisely, he went back over the talk he had had with the King of Evergart who had come with the old knight.
"I was curious whose sword the conqueror of Nauril bore."
Ruger Evergart the Fourth.
For the king of a nation, he had been excessively young, and excessively polite.
That did not make it easy to nod if someone asked whether he was a soft target.
And if someone asked whether he was the sort Enkrid disliked, he would have shaken his head.
Excluding Crang, Enkrid had never met anyone like him before.
"The continent has been entangled in war for far too long. Until now, I was busy protecting only the inside of my own country, but it seemed His Highness Cradianat Randios Nauril had a different thought."
He had already met Crang, apparently.
"His Highness did not describe you in any other way. He called you only a friend."
He was a young king, as young as he looked on the surface. In other words, a king as young as Crang.
"In Evergart, not only the Guardian Knight, but the king as well vows for generations to protect the peace and safety of the nation. Thanks to that, peace is what is spoken of inside the country. A flower garden left alone after avoiding the flames of war—our national name contains that meaning as well."
He was someone who had been educated and trained from childhood to become king. A tool for protecting the collective called Evergart, that was what he was, perhaps.
That was not Enkrid's impression. It was what Ruger had said himself.
"Everything is nothing but armor and shield for protecting Evergart."
Ruger stayed in Border Guard for several days just like that, drinking wine, spending time with them, and talking.
Meanwhile, the old knight sparred with Enkrid, measuring each other's skill and sharing what they had learned until now.
Honestly speaking, Enkrid had found the old knight more fun, but that did not mean the time he spent with Evergart's king had been boring.
'There's something to learn from everything that passes by my side.'
He could not remember exactly who had said it, but it was something he had heard back in the days when he scraped together silver coins to learn swordsmanship.
Enkrid had learned a great deal while talking with the king as well. The way one used a sword was, in the end, the way one lived life. The man before him was someone full of courage.
Wasn't courage originally stepping forward while knowing fear?
"I am glad I reached you before the news of the Empire's envoy did."
The king kept talking. He laid out his intentions. He spoke sincerely, with no lies mixed in.
"We wish to become friendly forces. Allied forces. Our goal is the same."
When the King of Evergart said this, it was the first time he had chosen his words. He said goal, then paused once before continuing. He even looked awkward saying it aloud himself.
"May I ask why?"
Because the other man had spoken politely, Enkrid raised his own speech as well when he asked.
It was less that he asked because he was curious and more that the other man seemed to be waiting for him to ask it.
"I will answer that it is not duty, but desire. It is the first complaint and first stubborn demand I have ever made since the day I was born."
The drunken king said it, and the old knight who watched him had eyes as gentle as if he were looking at a grown grandson.
"That's one hell of a complaint you're throwing."
Rem said it after a drink.
"You're saying we should throw a drunken fit?"
A drunken Dunbakel babbled nonsense.
"A complaint."
Ragna repeated the word once for no reason.
Jaxon silently nodded, and Audin added,
"The Lord said, how can one who does not love oneself love others? One must live for oneself first in order to live for others as well."
Scripture could be interpreted any way you liked, but right now it was a line that fit surprisingly well. Ruger held out his hand, and Enkrid clasped it.
But wasn't this something that should be said over there in Nauril, not here?
"Have you finished speaking with Crang?"
When he asked that, Ruger Evergart the Fourth answered.
"No. I said I would decide after seeing you. And now I have."
It was something that should have left Enkrid baffled, but he let it go. Even by his own judgment, that king's words had been filled with sincerity.
If it turned out to be some kind of crafty scheme and he had been fooled, then that was that, but hadn't he also exchanged words through the sword with the old knight? They had been sincere.
"We're going to kill the five demon lords left in the Demon lands."
Enkrid started to say, and—
"Before that, when we speak to the Empire's envoy, you may say without issue that the continent will stand as one against them."
Ruger Evergart the Fourth finished the thought.
***
"Do you truly intend to unify the continent?"
Ruger had asked Crang that when he met him.
He wanted agreement, not battle, but if that failed, then he would not hesitate to use force. To an outside observer, Crang's course could look like that too.
On that point, Crang had already given Ruger his answer. He laid bare his true feelings cleanly.
"I want unification. And I want to erase the Demon lands and erase war too. I am greedy. I mean to seize all of it."
That was Crang's answer. Ruger possessed a spell passed down through Evergart's royal line called Eyes of Truth.
If Naurillia had Paradise Water, then Evergart had eyes gifted by God. That was why he knew the other man's words were true.
In any case, Ruger, King of Evergart, found something in common between himself and Crang in that conversation.
Crang did not say a single word about what kind of king he wanted to become for the sake of his own wealth or honor. He spoke only of a single goal.
He looked like a man wrapped in duty.
The same as himself, born to protect Evergart.
Then had the king of Naurillia too been trained and educated from childhood in the same way he had?
No.
Ruger Evergart the Fourth had been shocked when he saw Crang. His childhood had been different from his own, and even the thoughts they held about duty and responsibility, which Ruger had thought were the same, were different.
"It's simply something I can do, and it suits my heart."
It suited his heart?
For what reason had Ruger protected his country, his people?
Duty. Nothing but duty.
But Crang answered that it was not duty, but desire.
Why was the king of that nation different from him?
When he asked old knight Bartolo, the man answered,
"I like things as they are now. If the people of this country are happy, like the nickname flower garden suggests, then I'm satisfied."
Was it because of the difference in the size of their vessels?
While he clung to a single nation, the men called Crang and Enkrid looked toward the entire continent.
It was easy enough to steel his heart. Hadn't his body been trained for that since childhood?
Ruger Evergart the Fourth only nodded to Crang, and Crang told him that if he was curious about the next part of his dream, he should go meet Enkrid. That was why he had come to find him.
And the man he saw in Enkrid was—
'A madman.'
A man saying he would smash a mountain with a single little hammer.
What else could one call a man who said he would fight beings like demons, the Demon lands, and the Empire with a single sword in hand?
Ruger was terribly afraid of all of them. He was a coward. That was why he hid inside the fence called a nation and lived under Bartolo's protection.
Then why was his heart pounding and pounding like this now?
"How do you feel?"
Bartolo asked.
The king opened his mouth.
"Tense. Scared."
He paused for a moment, then spoke again.
"And excited."
One step toward a life he wanted, not a life of duty.
Ruger faced the self that had wanted such a life.
It was a change born from meeting Crang and Enkrid.
Of course, it was also a change that had begun because he had been watching the changes of the continent and had stepped forward on his own.