“Do you really have to learn the sword?”
Ragna had asked. It was a venomous remark. It meant his body just couldn't keep up, and he was right.
Enkrid wasn't born with talent. He lived by adding honest effort to a clumsy body. However, he had spent countless hours meeting numerous instructors, learning swordsmanship, and contemplating on his own.
Because of this, his thinking was flexible, and his ability to apply what he learned was outstanding. It was only difficult to learn something for the first time; once he learned it, things were different when it came to real combat. In truth, everyone is born with at least one talent.
Flexibility and the ability to apply his skills—that was Enkrid's talent.
‘Just use whatever you have to fit the situation, to meet the need.’
By the standards of the Naurilia Kingdom, he was at best mid-rank or higher. In the mercenary world, he was also mid-rank. No matter where he went, his skill was about average.
That was Enkrid's current standing. But apart from his skill level, his combat prowess in a real fight was exceptional. Because he had lived a life with meager talent, Enkrid knew how to make the most of what he had.
A soldier's spearhead flew toward him. His sharpened ears heard the sound of it cutting through the air. It wasn't as precise as seeing it with his eyes, but he grasped the direction.
He pictured his opponent's movements in his mind.
‘A foot turning sideways.’
Enkrid took a step. The Heart of the Beast gave him boldness. He put his weight on his left heel, pulled his right foot back, and turned his body.
With that single move, the spearhead whizzed past his eyes. Even though a spearhead had suddenly flown out of the fog, Enkrid did not panic. There was no need to.
It was a spear that had already stabbed and killed him dozens of times. He had dodged that first thrust more than two hundred times. Instead of drawing his sword, Enkrid grabbed the middle of the spear shaft and pulled.
The enemy soldier, dragged forward with a jerk, opened his mouth in surprise.
“Huh?”
The soldier's head emerged from the fog, and Enkrid grabbed it and twisted.
Crack.
The soldier's neck broke. A person cannot live with a broken neck. The enemy soldier with the broken neck crumbled to the ground, and Enkrid picked up the dead man's spear.
He recalled the enemy's formation from before the fog spread. They were all clustered together.
‘If I throw this anywhere, it’s bound to hit someone.’
Stomping his left foot on the ground, he threw it with all his might. The spear cut through the air and embedded itself somewhere with a thud.
“Gak!”
A death cry was heard.
“What was that?”
“Crazy bastard!”
The panicked voices of enemy soldiers followed. After throwing the spear, Enkrid, who had been listening intently, lowered his body and dashed forward. Even if one had eyes that could pierce the fog, it would be difficult to see someone rushing in low to the ground.
Th-th-thump!
Quarrels and arrows flew over his head.
“Ugh!”
“Guhk!”
“Fuck, it’s arrows!”
Screams and curses erupted from his allies behind him. It was enough to make the hairs on his arms stand up, but it was fine. He had already done this several times.
The problem, rather, was the complete lack of tension. Enkrid closed the distance and drew his longsword. He had gauged the distance with his hearing, and it was accurate.
Shing!
He drew the sword, held it with both hands, and swung it in a modified overhead horizontal strike. Originally, the overhead horizontal strike was a technique where you blocked the opponent's sword with your guard and cut with the back of the blade. Enkrid changed it as he saw fit.
The stance was similar. He held the sword over his head, parallel to the ground, and switched to a thumb-up grip. From that stance, he drew a circle with the sword.
Because of his low stance, the overhead horizontal strike became a lower horizontal strike. It was a ridiculous stance, so the sword didn't carry much force. But it was an unexpected blow.
The enemy couldn't react.
Whoosh! Thwack! Thump!
He felt resistance from the swung blade.
“Agh!”
“What the!”
“It's on the ground!”
My, you're quick to notice. As he pushed through the fog and rose up, he could see the enemy soldiers. Even so, his field of vision was only about as far as his sword could reach, but it was better than nothing.
He could see the enemy, the weapon the enemy held, and the sword in his own hand. The situation was different from before. There were three men with deep cuts on their shins.
The three of them were limping, blood streaming down their legs. All were armed with crossbows. One of them grit his teeth and aimed his crossbow.
Enkrid used a passing step. He extended his left foot diagonally forward, followed by his right. In an instant, his position changed.
A quarrel flew past with a fwing, piercing the spot where he had been. Enkrid didn't stop at just dodging the quarrel. At the same moment he dodged, he attempted a crown cut.
The heavy longsword fell from above. The enemy soldier holding the crossbow reflexively drew a shortsword and tried to block, forming a cross with the longsword. Enkrid smashed it down with force.
Clang! Crunch!
Unable to withstand the force, the back edge of the shortsword pressed down on the leather helmet and dug into the soldier's head. It was less like a cut and more like a crushing blow.
Squelch.
The man with the shattered skull fell backward with a gurgle of bloody foam. Blood streamed from under the dented leather helmet, creating a red curtain in front of the soldier's face.
“Guh, guh.”
The soldier with the broken skull couldn't finish his words as he fell on his backside, his eyes glazing over. Enkrid retrieved his sword, took a step back, and turned his body. In a flash, he had moved a step to the side.
Just then, a short infantry spear whistled through the spot where he had been. The spearhead grazed his left side. His cloth armor tore slightly.
And that was all. After dodging, he thrust his sword. Not quickly, but slowly.
The man who had swung the spear reflexively pulled it back and blocked the blade with the shaft.
Thump.
The sword and the spear shaft met. From that position, the sword began to slide down the shaft. Advancing forward with a binding follow cut.
Screeeech!
The sound of the spear shaft being ground down was heard.
Thwack!
The sword's destination was the enemy soldier's chest. In an instant, the blade that had slid down the shaft tore into the soldier's chest. Flesh was gouged and bone was shattered.
When he pulled the sword out, blood gushed forth. The stream of blood soaked Enkrid's chest. From his slightly bent-knee stance, he recovered his sword and stood up.
He straightened his knees with a snap and righted his body. What he had learned so far were the fundamentals. It was a time to discard bad habits and build anew; looking at it coolly, he had only just reached his previous level.
However, now that he had trained in the fundamentals of the sword and swordsmanship centered on Vallen-style mercenary swordsmanship, what he possessed was entirely different. It was like putting wings on a lion's back. Enkrid's flexible thinking allowed him to produce results that surpassed his skill level.
The blood-soaked sword moved among the remaining soldiers. Enkrid silently performed a sword dance.
Six flag units. The commander of the Azpen Dukedom thought.
‘Even if they realize it's sorcery, they won't be able to figure out which of the six they need to take down.’
Victory was certain. Now it was time to consider what kind of victory to secure.
“Cut off their retreat.”
The Grey Dogs, left as an autonomous company, began to move. They were behind the Naurilia Kingdom army. Now, the startled bastards trying to flee the fog would run into the Grey Dogs.
The commander gave the order and reviewed his strategy for any flaws. There were none. General Frokk had come to reconfirm that this mission could not fail.
Otherwise, a general-level officer would have no reason to come to this battlefield. The commander ordered again.
“Kill them all.”
This battle would change the fortunes of Azpen and Naurilia. While his order was being given, in the first flag unit, Enkrid was performing his sword dance.
“Damn it all!”
The Naurilia battalion commander felt like he was having a terrible nightmare.
‘We lost the initiative.’
If the enemy had made preparations, so had they. But if they lost all their forces here, their preparations would be for nothing.
“Retreat! Retreat!”
The shouts to retreat echoed from all around. The battalion commander could not remain calm.
“Gak!”
Quarrels flew even at the backs of the retreating allies.
‘Those damned crossbow units!’
The battalion commander felt his head spin. He thought about how they had managed to hide so many crossbows.
Where?
The reconnaissance team's report had already provided the answer.
‘The tall-grass field!’
This was no time to be leisurely thinking about such things. The battalion commander's mind escaped from reality.
“Get a grip! Form up!”
Two of the more competent company commanders tried to rally the troops, but the enemy's skill was no ordinary matter. The unit that had come up from behind was the Grey Dogs. The autonomous company that was the pride of the Azpen army.
The battalion commander realized he had been had. He desperately tried to clear his head.
“It's the Fog of Annihilation! The Azpen army has employed a shaman!”
Sons of bitches.
“What do we have to do to clear the fog?”
Few among the adjutants had an answer.
“Bring me someone who knows!”
He couldn't see ahead, and enemies were hammering his forces from the front and back. At this rate, they could be annihilated. No, they would be annihilated.
Soon, an adjutant brought an answer.
“We have to destroy the medium for the sorcery!”
The medium?
It’s the flagpoles.
“Charge toward the flagpoles!” the battalion commander shouted.
“…We don't know which direction the flagpoles are in,” the adjutant choked out in despair.
The enemy forces they had first seen had switched positions like cogs in a wheel. They had spun around. That was why they couldn't pinpoint the enemy's location.
The battalion commander couldn't erase the word 'annihilation' from his mind. While the battalion commander was agonizing, the Elf Company Commander in charge of the Fourth Company sensed that the enemy would not let them retreat so easily. Her prediction was correct.
And that was not a good thing.
‘Without a turnaround, we're all going to die.’
She thought the battlefield needed a new wind, but in the end, no wind came. The battle was a crushing defeat. The Elf Company Commander barely survived, having overcome the threat of death.
As she fled, the fog behind her lifted. It was a total wipeout. There couldn't have been more than fifty surviving allies.
Clang!
Enkrid had fought well. He had fought incredibly well, and he was also satisfied. His allies were nearly wiped out, but he alone had taken down nearly twenty soldiers.
Blood flowed from the hand gripping the sword. It was because his forearm had been cut in the battle just now.
‘I can’t put any strength into it.’
Until now, he had invested all his time in fundamental training. Ragna had told him not to spar carelessly until it was perfected—that is, until he had gotten rid of the bad habits ingrained in his body. Then he had immediately added, “Though that’s not really something you can say on a battlefield.”
He probably thought it made no sense even as he said it. To tell someone not to fight in the middle of a battlefield in order to get rid of bad habits. Was he supposed to just die quietly?
But Enkrid could do it. By quietly offering up his life and dying, he excluded real combat. And today was the first time he had shown his skills in a real fight.
‘It's different.’
Until now, he had fought using any means necessary, whether it was Vallen-style mercenary swordsmanship or something else. That was how he had lived. It was still the same now.
If anything had changed, it was only that swordsmanship now stood at the center of it all.
‘I want to learn more.’
The desire to learn surged. He didn't want to end with just the fundamentals. The enemy forces did not approach Enkrid easily, the man who had single-handedly killed the strength of two squads.
For some reason, as he held his ground inside, Enkrid's vision cleared further. The fog created by sorcery no longer affected him. He could see the enemy soldiers standing in a semicircle before him.
All of them held crossbows in their hands.
“Let’s fight one-on-one like men.”
He said this, wanting to test the skills he had gained through fundamentals just one more time.
“Crazy bastard,” said a man who looked like the enemy Squad Leader.
Th-th-thump!
The crossbows twanged. Quarrels embedded themselves all over his body. The quarrel lodged in his eye brought excruciating pain.
‘This is agonizing.’
But it was also joyful. As he was dying, Enkrid thought of what he had to do in this repeated day. Ragna had constantly emphasized the basics.
“If you train and train again, and keep fighting with your life on the line, well, it will become a part of you someday.”
It was a terribly irresponsible thing to say, but it had meaning. Enkrid needed more real combat. The word 'death' settled over his entire body.
Before his last breath left him, an enemy soldier looked down at Enkrid and said, “Tough bastard.” Even then, Enkrid still held his sword in a tight grip. The blood he had shed pooled on the ground.
“No matter what happens, even if you die, do not let go of your sword. That is the first thing.”
Countless instructors had said it, Ragna had said it, and Rem had said the same. Enkrid did just that.
“Ptui!”
An enemy soldier who had lost countless comrades spat in Enkrid's face. And that was the end.
Morning dawns.
A new today began again. Enkrid mulled over what he had gained from yesterday's fight.
‘I need more real combat.’
That was the conclusion he reached. He grabbed hold of Ragna again and learned from him.
“Your fundamentals are more or less in place, but you seem like someone who’s only ever trained alone. Where did you learn them? The basics of swordsmanship?”
He was right. Enkrid felt it himself. What he needed now was real combat.
“Here and there.”
“…Here and there? Hmph, alright, let's go with that. It would be good to make what you've learned a part of you through sparring so you can use it anytime. And I don’t know who your teacher was, but they taught you well.”
That teacher is you. Without knowing it, Ragna was praising himself. Enkrid replied with a simple "Is that so?" and focused on sparring.
And that, too, was so enjoyable. In the repeated battle, Enkrid single-handedly cut down thirty soldiers. It wasn't done with skill alone.
Quarrels and arrows were flying at him. It was an achievement accomplished by skillfully dodging them. He had to use his head.
That was the only way to get even a little more real combat experience. He repeated 'today' several more times. And he swung his sword again.
Before he knew it, the things called fundamentals had stuck to his body perfectly.
“In terms of the basics, there's nothing more for me to touch up.”
In the end, Enkrid's skills had improved so much that Ragna was forced to say this.