Chapter 375 - Aesia

Why was Aesia here?

The moment Encrid faced her, several facts came to mind. He did not even have to think them through; they surfaced on their own. 'The constable.'

Why had he come for Encrid? Jealousy was part of it, but he had also seen an opportunity. He had judged Encrid guilty of a crime.

That supposed crime was killing Viscount Vantra, but Proto Knight Aesia could have testified about that. Had she intervened, the arrest attempt might never have happened.

Yet it had. 'Aesia didn't stop it.'

The marquis had been involved in her coming to see him. Then whose side was the Marquis of Fertile Lands on?

No, had the knight order turned against them? Was that possible?

A knight order without knights. How many proto knights had Aesia said remained in the capital? One complicated thought led to another, tangling haphazardly like a skein of yarn children had played with.

Encrid decisively cut through it. He could not act like Krais, nor did he need to. Someone who could answer stood right before him. All he had to do was ask. "Why?"

Encrid spoke. A brief but weighty question. Aesia raised her sword. Its thin, straight blade stood on the boundary between light and shadow. She answered.

"I said you go no farther. Turn back." There was no emotion in her eyes. It was like facing a sword given human form.

The clash of steel and the shouting outside grew distant. They seemed like two actors facing each other on the stage of the corridor. Encrid drew Silver as well.

SHING.

The sound of the sword sliding from its metal-rimmed scabbard was chillingly clear. The silver longsword emerged as though displaying itself with pride.

He took the hilt in both hands and steadied his breathing. Sunlight filtered through the windows on his left, Aesia's right. Passing through the glass, it formed a long line between them, dividing Encrid from Aesia. "Turn back," Aesia said again.

Please.

That was what he heard in it. "Why?"

He thought as he asked. Naturally, no answer came to him. He knew too little to figure anything out, and Aesia did not seem inclined to answer willingly.

She simply watched him, without a trace of a smile. Aesia showed neither killing intent nor fighting spirit. She merely held her place like an inanimate object.

Along one side of the corridor stood rare ceramics said to be found only in the south. She looked no different from those pieces of pottery. Like part of a still life. Encrid adjusted his grip again. Seeing that, Aesia spoke.

"So you choose the bitter cup."

"It's a hobby."

He retorted out of habit. Even that failed to break her expression. Instead, her presence changed. Intimidation. The instant her presence shifted, Encrid seemed to see a wall blocking his way, with Aesia at its center.

Intimidation did not take only the form of a determination to cut down anyone who approached. Now she shaped her determination never to yield into intimidation. A wall of boundless solidity.

Too high to see its top and climb over it, too hard as steel to break.

Unfortunately for her, Encrid was the sort of man who enjoyed scaling such walls or digging into them. TING.

Encrid extended his sword to one side, measuring the distance to the wall. Silver's tip struck the wall on his right. He drew it back, took the hilt in both hands, and raised it overhead.

The corridor was narrow, but there was plenty of height. If they fought here, the paintings on the walls, the southern ceramics, and the expensive vases would be smashed.

But this was no time to worry about that. Encrid steadied his breathing once more. His opponent was reading it.

Neither Aesia nor Encrid swung first. They read each other's breathing, gauging the timing.

They had done this countless times already. They had sparred more than twenty times, after all. The line of light between them was steadily lengthening.

On the wall to their right, midway between Aesia and Encrid, hung three crossed swords. Above them sat a shield modeled after a Sun Beast, completing the display of ornamental weapons.

The sword in the very center hung perpendicular to the floor, its tip the lowest of the three. As the line lengthened, the light passing through the window naturally reached the tip of that central blade. Though unsharpened, the well-polished blade reflected it.

The instant it flashed, Encrid kicked off the ground. BANG!

He could not hold back. He had no room for that.

He surged forward with explosive force, putting everything he had into a downward cut. Aesia reacted the moment he approached. Her sword shot straight out, a stab faster than any arrow.

Encrid continued his downward swing. Her blade met Silver. CLANG! SCREEECH!

Encrid struck down with brute force, seeking to break the wall. Aesia twisted her wrist, diverting Silver's descending path.

Her masterful deflecting sent his strength flowing aside. Unwilling to let her have her way, Encrid drew one foot back to keep some strength in reserve. He let the sword follow its diverted course, ready to add force and counter at any moment.

The result was a long gouge beneath the windows on his left.

She had deflected even that thunderbolt of a downward strike. Aesia lifted the sword she had thrust, then slowly lowered it forward to aim at Encrid.

Point Aim.

Her specialty, her forte.

Yet it was different from what he knew. Hadn't Rem already said it?

["That won't be all she's got."]

He knew by instinct.

No, countless real battles and talent let him glimpse other pieces of what an opponent possessed. It was a realm Encrid could not see into.

Would that be a problem?

'Not at all.' The sword tip aimed at him. Nothing remained in the world but that point and himself. That was Aesia's Point Aim.

Illusion swordsmanship. The deceptive sword. Encrid already knew how to overcome that sword. Of course he did. Ragna, Rem, and Jaxon had shown him the answers time and again.

Rem fought with his axe screening the point aimed at him. Ragna ignored it, erasing it with his determination to cut through whatever blocked his way. Jaxon kept knocking the sword aside before Point Aim could begin. All three were right answers, but not all three applied to Encrid himself.

He had felt it ever since he had first taken a measure of Will into his body.

'It only means something if I solve it myself.' To advance, he had to walk properly. He had to set foot on the path and walk it. He could not walk with his feet on empty air. Lifting his feet in place would not take him forward, either.

Only by making the process itself his own could he truly advance. That meant setting foot on the path, treading the earth, and pushing through the sand.

If Rem, Ragna, and Jaxon each had their own way, Encrid had to find his. He did not expect all of this to happen at once.

He was no genius. He knew that well now.

["You're a genius."]

The words a mercenary had spoken when he was a child no longer lingered in his heart. Instead, the sword remained. His dream remained. What had stitched that torn dream back together?

The sword. Even when he had regretted Aesia's departure before, Encrid had thought he wanted to spar with her another two hundred times or so.

Why was she blocking his way? He did not know.

Did he know he could not afford delays on his way to save Krang? He did.

Yet he felt no impatience. Had every such event shaken his heart, he could never have held on to his sword and endured this long.

So he decided to do what he had to do now. No, he lost himself completely in the present.

If she blocked him, he would go over her. If she stood in his way, he would break through. In that briefest of instants, Encrid sorted through his thoughts, reached a conclusion, and drew the blade of a solution.

There was something he had wanted to try if he faced Aesia again.

His own method. Encrid closed his eyes.

If seeing was the problem, why not stop looking? "... You really are insane."

Something like emotion seeped into the voice of Aesia, who had become as still as an object in a painting.

How could she not be startled by this? She had held firm at his calling the bitter cup a hobby, but this was harder to bear. 'He closed his eyes?'

He meant to attack with his eyes closed. Was that something any sane human being would do?

Aesia had won even when he fought with his eyes open. Whether they risked half their lives or none of them, their sparring always ended the same way.

And now he was closing his eyes because her sword tip obscured his vision? "Are you underestimating me? Or have you trained for this separately?"

The questions spilled from Aesia's mouth. Something in those words gave Encrid the feeling that she was not here of her own choosing.

If she truly wanted to be here, she would have swung her sword before speaking. That was how she had always been in their spars. Of course, that was hardly his concern. Encrid enjoyed the present. He savored this moment. The sheer excitement of facing Aesia brought a smile to his face.

Still smiling, he kept his eyes closed and listened. He made his ears his eyes. ["Hone your sensory arts, and you can see without looking."]

Jaxon had said it countless times.

His men did indeed display that skill, discerning the movements of someone behind them without even looking. Audin had spoken of feeling disturbances in the air.

["You just know by instinct."]

Rem had attributed it entirely to Sixth Sense.

Ragna had asked whether he really needed to know what someone was doing behind him. He meant that all he had to do was swing his sword and cut them down.

Typical Ragna. Jaxon went without saying.

["You feel disturbances in the air through touch and hear sounds with your ears."]

Distinguishing and identifying faint sounds was fundamental to the sensory arts.

They were all similar; only the way they described it and the way they had come to understand it differed. Through all his honing, Encrid too had acquired a blade of Sixth Sense called the dodging sense.

Drawing on that, he moved with his eyes closed.

In short, the man smiling with his eyes shut was even attacking first. "You crazy bastard."

Aesia spat the words through clenched teeth. There was a measure of respect in her tone, rather than reproach. For his first strike, Encrid relied on memory.

He remembered where Aesia stood and heard her voice.

He activated Will of the Instant. BOOM!

The ground beneath his feet tore and burst. Stone dust erupted from under the carpet.

Encrid swung with all his strength. He would not hold back merely because he knew his opponent.

* * *

Aesia could not let Encrid pass. There was one overriding reason.

'If you get past me, you'll die.'

Letting him through would not save his life.

So she would stop him here. Whether she had come willingly, under threat, or because she had no choice but to stand here.

'That can wait.'

Before her stood an opponent committing himself to her with complete sincerity and all his strength. Eyes closed, he split the instant and closed the distance. His sword plunged down without hesitation.

Aesia countered at the same speed, without letting her intimidation fade.

Somehow, his strike seemed twice as fast as when his eyes had been open. She held her slender sword horizontally and struck upward, twisting at the ankles to disperse the force. As before, she deflected the strength behind his sword with her thin rapier blade. It would be too late if she took the blow. She had to catch the instant of impact and twist it off course.

That was what Aesia did.

Her rapier moved like fluttering cloth. TRILLLING.

The sound was incongruously gentle for the force of the downward blow. Encrid's sword slid aside. Aesia relaxed her grip, then tightened it again.

In that instant, the muscles beneath her leather bracer contracted, adding strength. Gathering her remaining force, she thrust forward. WHOOSH.

The air reached him before the sword did. Its force and pressure raised every fine hair on his body.

Encrid had no time to recover his descending sword. Instead, he was already holding Silver in his left hand alone, his right gripping the sword at his right hip.

He drew it in a reverse grip to block. The gladius intercepted Aesia's sword tip. CLANG!

With a precise point of impact and perfectly coordinated force, the rapier's thrust traveled through the gladius.

Both of Encrid's feet briefly left the ground as he flew backward. 'He has the advantage in muscle strength.'

Aesia knew that too. Encrid's superhuman strength was fearsome. A single mistake against one blow would cost her dearly.

But she would not make that mistake. She would never be struck by such a crude blade.

All the more so when attacking with his eyes closed robbed him of finesse. Encrid opened his eyes as he retreated. Aesia aimed her sword again.

She could fight like this all day. Fighting without rest was part of the knight order's advanced training.

Naturally, she had completed it. And Encrid said,

"One more time."

He smiled.