Chapter 198 - Two Textbooks

The man with clenched fists drove his feet into the ground and charged. His ankles flexed like springs, propelling him forward. Power passed perfectly through his knees and thighs into his upper body. He was frighteningly fast as a result, but not too fast to react to. Naturally, he would be no match for Rem. Rem raised his left-hand axe at an angle and made to swing down. Just before the man's fist could connect, at the instant his head should have split in two, the charging man accelerated again. He left a faint afterimage behind him. It was a trick that used a sudden burst of speed to confuse an opponent's eyes. WHOOSH! Rem's left-hand axe cut through empty air. Having closed the distance, the brawler pivoted on his right foot, stamped his left foot down, and drove his knuckle-clad fist forward. One look was enough to tell he had been properly trained. Then came the impact.

THWACK! "Now, why would you stick your neck into my axe?"

Rem's calm voice followed the noise. Encrid reviewed what he had just seen. A charge that began at a steady pace, then changed tempo. There probably hadn't been many who could easily block that blow. At best, they would have dodged, and the brawler's method would have been to keep attacking from his preferred range once they did. Hadn't Audin said as much?

["A brawler who fights with his fists works harder than anyone to control the distance, brother."] Rem had responded almost indifferently to the charge meant to secure that range. He pretended to play along with his left-hand axe, then swung the axe in his right hand several times faster. It was much the same tactic his opponent had used, but with a different result. The axe blade flashed out like a ray of light and severed his neck. The headless man's fist tapped Rem's stomach, naturally without the slightest force behind it. His severed head hung in the air for a moment before dropping to the ground with a thud. Still holding his axe, Rem pushed the outstretched body away with the back of his hand, and it crumpled. "He's no pushover. Nobody let your guard down!"

The halberd wielder shouted, and five of them converged on Rem. All five were men: one with a trident, three with swords, and another fiddling with a dagger. "Now this is fun."

Even facing five opponents, Rem was calm. No, more than calm. He even shimmied his shoulders as though enjoying himself. Ragna strode forward with a hand resting on his sword grip, heading toward the halberd wielder. "Kill him!"

The halberd wielder shouted. At that moment, a female bandit up on a branch fired something. TWANG! A short arrow shot toward Ragna's shoulder. He twisted aside to avoid it and drew his sword in the same motion. It was smooth and natural, as though he had planned it. SHING!

As he swept the freshly drawn sword in a wide arc, the halberd wielder brought his weapon in front of him. CLANG! "Ngh!"

Had he thought there wouldn't be much force behind the cut? Blocking it made him tilt sideways, if only briefly. Another twang sent a second arrow flying. Naturally, Ragna dodged it. The short arrow struck a rock embedded in the ground and bounced off with a clink. 'Up there.'

Encrid could see where the arrows were coming from, too. Up in a tree, a small figure was firing arrows from a device mounted on her wrist. He moved as well. He had no whistle daggers, but he had properly learned the Throwing blade technique. He stretched out an instant. Activating Concentrate on a Single Point, he gauged the distance to his target and flicked his hand. His left hand, free of his sword, was now as skilled as his right. The dagger flew through the air, thrown with the aid of his concentration and keen senses. The figure in the tree hooked her legs over a branch like a monkey and flipped upside down to dodge. THUNK! The dagger passed through the spot she had occupied and buried itself in the thick tree trunk. "Kill him, Rumt!"

The halberd wielder shouted when he saw it. Someone approached Encrid, carrying two daggers. The man called Rumt glanced over Encrid's waist. The daggers taken from the bodyguard he had killed earlier hung there. "You, those daggers..." "They were a gift." Encrid answered without missing a beat, before the man had even finished speaking. Rumt's brow furrowed. Sparse eyebrows and unusually small irises gave him a vicious look. Well, looking vicious and being skilled were two different things, so it hardly mattered. 'A common enough face among mercenaries.'

There were mercenaries everywhere whose scar-decorated faces were terrifying just to look at. "I trained him." The man was around forty. Anyone still fighting on the front lines at that age would be quite skilled. Encrid's heart pounded. He would be better than his pupil. Would he be better than the Knoll leader, too? A curious anticipation rose within Encrid. If there was anything else he wanted... "You're going to fight me alone?" Five for Rem, three for Ragna. Why did he only get one? The remaining one was the monkey flitting about in the trees. Rem was grinning and waving his axes at his five opponents. They were cautious, having seen him kill their companion with a single blow. The halberd wielder was cautious, too. With numbers on their side, slowly surrounding an opponent was more advantageous than charging recklessly. He and his two companions formed a circle around Ragna. Those facing Rem were doing the same. "I'll kill you, then tear that Beastman bitch apart at the crotch." Whatever his relationship with the black-clad bodyguard, he was thoroughly enraged. Even so, he wasn't rushing in. Out of caution? No, probably experience. Encrid saw no reason to wait. He pushed off the ground and advanced. A few words from Ragna had given him a new insight into swordsmanship. Maintaining Concentrate on a Single Point, he honed the edge of his senses. The prickling killing intent his opponent radiated stabbed at his skin. As Encrid charged, Rumt's hands moved. Fast. Frighteningly fast. His hands whipped about so quickly that there seemed to be several blades, not two. Encrid extended his sword, using the Righteous Sword Technique as his foundation. If the man blocked it, he intended to knock the block aside, wind inward, and stab. His opponent swung both daggers and knocked Encrid's sword away. CLANG! The parry relied on technique, not strength. It struck the center of the blade to upset its balance. Encrid couldn't stab where he had intended. His point drifted aside. As it did, the man closed in and thrust a dagger at him. Its trajectory briefly took it out of sight. From below, upward. Sensing the approaching blade solely through his Sixth Sense, Encrid pressed down with his left big toe and stopped his body. He abruptly checked his movement for an instant. He drew back his elbow to block the approaching dagger point with his bracer, but the dagger curved like a snake toward his chin. Unorthodox, fast, and bold. Encrid threw his head back. The point grazed his chin. He pulled his extended sword back inward, and his opponent rolled aside to avoid it. Then the man crossed his daggers and glared at him. His eyes seemed to ask:

'You dodged that?' Encrid extended his sword again as though it were nothing. Why shouldn't he have dodged it? Though, honestly, it might well have killed him before he learned the dodging sense. Now his body reacted as long as he perceived the attack. A fairly satisfying opponent. Yet, how to put it? Encrid could see openings, too. There was certainly a clear difference in skill between this man and those who had accompanied the Beastman called Dunbachel. 'At least special-grade, no higher than a proto knight.'

That was how he judged his opponent's skill. With that thought, Encrid drove his sword forward again. The daggers came flying once more. A trick he had already seen. THUMP! The dodging sense wasn't the only thing he had gained while harvesting heads in that field of Knolls. His swordsmanship had improved, and he also had the Heart of the Superhuman. He awakened his heart, and power surged through his entire body. He shifted more weight onto his left foot. Advanced as though bearing down on something ahead. Put power into the movement. Superhuman strength his opponent could neither gauge nor anticipate. His concentration and sharpened senses made the approaching daggers look not like afterimages, but a sequence of discrete images. CLAAANG! Sparks flew as the daggers struck the flat of his sword. That was all they accomplished. For a technique to work, its user needed at least enough strength to contend with the opponent. The daggers could neither push Encrid's sword away nor deflect it. He bore down with overwhelming force. Within that slowed time, he saw his opponent's eyes. Watching the bewilderment in them, Encrid drove his sword home. SHUNK! The leather armor covering the man's chest tore as the blade passed through it. He twisted until the very last moment, trying to deflect the sword, but Encrid's sword was far too good. Its point gouged mercilessly through the leather. Slicing through the flesh and muscle beneath was no trouble at all. Encrid stabbed at an angle beneath the collarbone, then pulled the sword free. Blood burst out. TWANG! A short arrow flew toward him. Ragna had made dodging it part of a continuous motion. Encrid imitated him. Dodging the arrow, he pivoted on his left foot. He briefly turned his back, hiding the beginning and end of his hand's movement as he threw a dagger. WHOOSH! Perhaps the monkey-like bandit hadn't anticipated that much. The knife struck her squarely in the thigh. "Urk!"

She froze on the branch. Encrid's fight had ended relatively early. Why wouldn't it? Two exchanges of attack and defense had finished it. His gaze naturally turned to Rem and Ragna. Well, naturally, the two were overwhelming their opponents. These were people who claimed they could kill not just someone near the feet of a proto knight, but even a proto knight if circumstances favored them. The difference in skill was obvious. The cause of their opponents' defeat was, of course, ignorance. They hadn't known Encrid and the Lunatic Company. And because they hadn't known, they had to suffer for it. Encrid turned his gaze toward Ragna. WHOOSH! The halberd feinted a stab, then swept in horizontally. Ragna swung his sword to meet it. A defensive move? No. CLANG! SCRAAAPE! 'A bind.' Blocking with the edge would damage it, so he caught the halberd on the flat and adjusted his pressure, winding his sword around it. Then a spear and a rapier came at him from either side. Both seemed to rely on speed. The weapons extending from the two female bandits' hands came with vicious momentum. In a brief instant, Ragna combined several movements into one. First, with both hands on his sword grip, he raised it up and to his left, winding upward as though pushing the halberd aside. The flat remained in contact, maintaining the bind. Having changed the halberd's course, he stabbed straight ahead. Neither fast nor slow. As he wound his sword and took a step forward, the spear and rapier crossed through the place he had occupied. The halberd wielder clenched his teeth and pulled his weapon inward, pushing the stabbing blade aside. Rather than exerting more strength, Ragna simply took another step closer. He aimed his sword point at the left side of the man's head. The halberd wielder arched backward, but couldn't avoid it entirely. SLICE. Half his ear came off with a chilling sound. Blood soaked the left side of his face and streamed down. The two women waiting nearby moved their hands faster. The rapier flew in as though dancing, while the spear wielder made a wide sweep at Ragna's feet. Immediately after cutting the ear, Ragna drew back his sword. He blocked the rapier's path and knocked it aside, then leaped far to the side, moving entirely out of range of the spear blade aimed at his feet. It was an astonishing blend of distance control and precise swordsmanship. 'Why?'

Watching him, Encrid wondered. It felt as though Ragna was tailoring his fighting to his opponents' skill. No sooner had the question occurred to him than he realized the answer. 'He's showing me.' What was swordsmanship? Every movement had a purpose. Ragna's evasion meant more than simply avoiding an attack. He had moved to the halberd wielder's right. As a result, the woman with the rapier now had to face Ragna with the halberd wielder between them. Without even pausing for breath, he launched a one-handed stab. He surged back in as far as he had retreated and aimed for the halberd wielder's throat. Once again, the strike was neither fast nor slow. To put it more precisely: 'Just slow enough for his opponent to block.' Encrid's eyes grew busy. His mind was busier still. Every one of Ragna's movements was a lesson. This was a place of learning, a textbook he couldn't afford to miss. Yet he couldn't watch only Ragna, because Rem was doing much the same thing. "Tsaah!"

With a strange battle cry, Rem swung his axe in a wide vertical arc. One of the approaching bandits blocked it with a longsword. CLANG! The sword broke in a single blow. "Bastard, this is a good axe!" True, it was a good axe. Encrid had picked it up from a mercenary some time ago and given it to him. Rem was holding back, too. His focus was also on demonstrating. Whereas Ragna was emphasizing an uncharacteristic precision and the purpose behind the forms of swordsmanship, Rem used his superior strength to show how to fight, rather than dwelling on swordsmanship. If you weren't going to use the advantages you had over your opponent, what were you going to use? Encrid could almost hear Rem saying it. And this was a lesson in fighting. He wasn't using only his axes to defeat his opponents. His mouth never stopped, relentlessly getting under their skin. "Was your mother a Ghoul?" Encrid even saw Rem using something he had learned from him. All the while, the axes deftly parried, struck, and battered their opponents' weapons. His unhesitating footwork cunningly secured better positions than theirs. Watching the two of them, Encrid realized anew:

'Those two are better at showing things with their bodies than explaining them in words.' Only a brief moment had passed, yet he already felt he understood what they were trying to tell him. That truly was how it felt.