Chapter 37 - What Is the Medium for a Spell?

“Where did you learn those steps?”

Ragna suddenly asked on the fifth today.

‘You taught me, of course.’

Encrid could not be honest.

“I went to more than twenty training halls.”

Some of them had been little better than con artists, but plenty had taught properly.

“Hmm.”

Ragna nodded.

Since Encrid moved based on the steps Ragna had taught him, Ragna’s expression was suddenly full of life.

He was enjoying this moment.

If judged coldly, Ragna was not a good teacher.

He could not be.

A genius cannot see beneath his own feet.

That is why it is hard for him to teach the path he has walked.

How is he supposed to explain something you simply do?

If told to swing a sword down, he thinks you only need to swing it down.

He does not explain the steps and shifting of weight needed in between.

No, he cannot explain them.

He was the worst possible type to open a swordsmanship training hall.

Encrid realized that on the first today.

Still, it was fine.

If the person teaching was a mess, then the person learning only had to be good.

In that regard, it would not be wrong to call Encrid the best on the continent.

“Where do my feet go? Which way should my toes point?”

“You need me to tell you even that?”

It was not a critical tone.

He was asking because he was truly curious.

“Yes.”

Ragna told him the direction his toes should face, corrected his posture, and showed him his own stance.

That posture was like a model of the fundamentals.

Anyone with an eye for it would have drooled over that talent.

For Encrid, just repeatedly seeing Ragna’s posture was helpful.

“What about my center of gravity?”

“Yes, do it with that timing.”

Encrid asked, and Ragna answered.

Throughout twelve repeated todays, Ragna taught Encrid only steps and posture.

“Posture and feet come first, fundamentals come next.”

“Sometimes you do swing decently.”

“Just now, you were at a level where you could not even split firewood.”

“If an enemy soldier dies to the downward strike you just made, tell that soldier three times, thank you for dying.”

“Just now, so, were you dancing?”

“It was dancing, yes. Since you danced while holding a sword, I suppose I should call it a sword dance, but I do not want to. Let us name it stick dancing.”

Ragna quietly poured out poisonous remarks.

‘Was this bastard always this type?’

Rem was a teacher several times gentler.

Sometimes, listening to him talk made one wonder if he was insane, but Encrid was still satisfied.

Because each day felt as though he were breaking out of an egg and being born anew.

Around the time he began the Diagonal Slash, Ragna said,

“The line connecting you and the opponent facing you is called the Line of Attack. This line is usually the shortest distance between two people, and it is also the path a weapon passes through when attacking.”

“Blocking your opponent’s Line of Attack and extending your own Line of Attack, this too is fundamental. You understood? It does not look that way. Ah, is this that thing? You understood it with your head, but your body will not listen?”

“I will say it again. Squad Leader, you understood only with your mouth.”

Ragna was the sort of person who could not teach unless he spat poison.

Encrid learned and learned again.

Twenty todays passed.

Twenty-five todays passed.

“... I thought your fundamentals were awful, but you do know how to use your feet.”

That was something he heard on the thirty-fifth today.

By then, Encrid’s pattern of action had changed a little.

After the fog rolled in, he did not die immediately.

He dodged the first spear thrust, charged inside, and died.

Spears would end up stuck in his body like quills in a hedgehog.

It was quite a decent method.

Because one spear would sometimes miss.

If someone charged in asking to be killed, why would they pull the spear back?

He understood.

It would be absurd to see someone suddenly lunge at you as if asking to be killed.

When the spear thrust missed like that, he had to writhe for an hour before dying.

That was truly a succession of unbearable pain, and a chain of terrible moments.

Each time, Ragna called or shouted to Encrid.

“Squad Leader!”

“Crazy bastard!”

“Hey!”

Later, he was so urgent he even shouted just hey.

Encrid filled each today faithfully.

“Your posture is better than I expected.”

He improved little by little.

Every time he changed like that, Ragna furrowed his brow.

“Until yesterday, you were definitely...”

He even muttered like that.

“... Where did you learn what?”

Around the time a hundred todays had passed, Ragna said,

“Who are you?”

Encrid looked at him, wondering what nonsense this was all of a sudden.

“You were definitely a complete mess until yesterday, so how in one day... Is it magic?”

Ragna was surprised.

At that sight, Encrid burst out laughing.

“Why? Am I a little better than you expected?”

“Not a little. Enough that I wonder if you are really the Squad Leader.”

Ragna showed eyes full of genuine suspicion.

This was the troublemaker squad, and Ragna was also a weirdo.

“So, are you not going to teach me?”

“That is not it.”

Ragna started again with an uncertain attitude.

After that, Encrid swung his sword while imagining an opponent in a duel.

The concept of the Line of Attack, how to grip a sword, how to use a sword as a means of defense.

“If it is a good-quality sword, you may block with the flat. If not, block with the edge.”

“Slashing, thrusting, cutting. These three are the basics. Your steps and posture are not bad, so focus on training those three basic sword techniques.”

There were many kinds of steps Ragna taught him.

Advancing, passing by, digging in, evading, circling to the side, turning around, turning wide.

Just memorizing them made his head complicated, but as he kept doing them, they also settled into his body to some extent.

No matter how slow a learner he was, when a swordsman of this level stuck to him one-on-one and kept teaching him, his skill improved.

Even weakness invisible to a genius’s eyes was a succession of ecstasy to Encrid.

“Picture your opponent in your head. Then swing the sword.”

CLANG!

Through dozens of todays, he continued to learn.

The Diagonal Slash, the bind where blades met, winding strikes, breaking cuts, high horizontal cuts, glancing strikes, crown cuts, counterstrikes, half-sword fighting, parries, deflections, combination strikes, closing in, pressing and drawing.

As time passed, the poisonous remarks decreased.

“You are better than I expected. Where did you learn blade-binding techniques?”

“One of my former instructors drilled nothing but binds into me until I was sick of them.”

“Excellent.”

Ragna said that satisfied him.

Encrid adopted this method when learning other techniques as well.

“At a previous training hall, they kept saying my high horizontal cut was a mess, so if you are going to teach me swordsmanship, I think it would be best to start there.”

“... I am the one teaching, but it seems you came after already deciding what you would learn.”

“It is not exactly like that.”

When Encrid shrugged, Ragna gave him a short test.

Then he soon did as Encrid had said.

“Let us do that.”

Ragna would never know, but after repeating today several times and teaching him, Ragna would decide this was enough and move on.

Every time that happened, Encrid moved on to the next lesson.

A repetition of todays in which he sweated buckets beneath the blazing sun as his roof.

For some, it might have been so tedious it made them nauseous, but not for Encrid.

Like that, around the time two hundred todays had passed.

“Hmm?”

When he opened his eyes, he saw a black river.

What was happening?

He saw the Boatswain.

The Boatswain with his eyes covered.

Encrid did not see his mouth open, but the voice pierced his ears clearly.

“Are you insane? You keep walking to your death on your own two feet? You stupid fool.”

The Boatswain’s tone was ordinary, but the content was not.

Before Encrid could answer anything, he woke from the dream.

Again, it was the familiar today.

Encrid only opened his eyes and did not move.

He fell into thought like that.

“Did you have a wet dream or something? What are you doing?”

Beside him, Rem said something a dog might spit out.

Ignoring him, Encrid raised himself up.

‘Let’s just say he wanted to call me a madman.’

Even if Encrid wanted to ask why, he could not exactly ask.

There was no point clinging to a problem that would not yield an answer no matter how much he thought about it.

Encrid got up.

“Do you know anything about spells?”

At those words, Rem whipped his head around.

“Spells?”

“If you know anything, tell me what you know.”

Every time the fog rolled in, Rem had said something related to spells.

He had to know something.

Until now, Encrid had been too busy training the basics of swordsmanship, but now he had gained some leeway.

That meant the training had settled into his body.

His skill had also improved enough to surprise Ragna every time he saw it.

He had not yet tested his skill, but what was certain was that Encrid himself could feel he had gotten better than before.

“A spell is a spell, what else would it be?”

“Recite what you know. It sounds like it will be interesting.”

The usual Encrid did not often start conversations first like this.

Rem grinned and opened his mouth.

“What wind blew in to make you curious? Fine. Mm, I will explain it simply. Do you know the difference between magic and spells?”

“Magic is more common.”

Magicians were rare, but they appeared from time to time.

But spells?

Even Encrid, who had wandered here and there across the continent, had never seen one.

That was how rare they were.

“That is not wrong, but.”

Rem spoke as he straightened his bedding.

He roughly rolled up his blanket, pushed it to one side, put on his boots, and stepped outside.

Encrid followed him out.

It was the same today.

He did not think it was tedious.

Whatever today it was, for Encrid, it would only become an enjoyable today.

When Encrid followed him out, Rem continued.

“Spells need a medium. I know magic sometimes needs a medium too, but with spells, sacrifices or mediums are reeeeeeally important. Without one, they cannot even start.”

“Did your tribe use things like that too?”

Rem was from the Western Frontier.

That region became the frontier because the empire of the central continent won the war.

Before that, the west had been the land of foreign peoples.

That too was already a story from more than a hundred years ago.

Now it had settled as the Western Frontier, and the western foreign peoples had been incorporated as a single race.

Even now, when people looked down on them, they called them barbarians, but in any case, spells originated in the west.

That was common knowledge.

“I have seen them a few times. But do you know there are actually very few real shamans? The bastards wandering the continent are all wicked spellmongers, wicked spellmongers.”

If Rem said so, then that was how it was.

Encrid nodded and went back to do what he had to do.

“Where are you going?”

“Training.”

He met Ragna and honed his fundamentals again.

Around the time the repeated today passed two hundred and fifty days, Ragna said,

“Were your fundamentals always this solid?”

Encrid saw Ragna’s red pupils widen as he swept back his blond hair.

“And it seems you used a longsword as your main weapon from the start.”

‘Yes, that is probably right.’

Because he had kept training with this sword.

It was a sword that felt awkward, yet familiar in his hand.

This was the first time Encrid’s hands had touched it, but this process had already been repeated several times.

It was a familiarity gained through repeated todays.

“It is time you needed real combat.”

Ragna said after training ended.

Encrid nodded as if to say, is that so?

“What are you doing? They say to gather.”

Rem called the two of them.

On the way back, Encrid got bread through Krais and chewed it.

He soaked the hard bread in water, forced himself to chew and swallow it, and got some jerky to eat as well.

He checked his equipment and stood on the battlefield again.

As the longsword he had exchanged with Ragna swayed at his waist, Rem asked,

“Did you not say you paid a lot for the sword you were using?”

“This one is more familiar in my hand.”

“I have seen plenty of bastards switch weapons overnight and go straight to their graves.”

Was this ill will, or concern?

“Worry about yourself.”

Encrid let out a breath and steadied his mind.

Just because the Heart of a Beast gave him boldness, he could not rely only on that.

If he was going into real combat anyway, it would be best if it became something for tomorrow.

Before the enemy came into sight, Encrid thought.

‘Spells need a medium.’

And that medium is far too important.

According to Rem, that was the case.

What if the reason the enemy stayed in the Tall Grass Fields was not to ambush, but to conceal?

What if there was something they wanted to hide?

Encrid had seen it in advance.

Flagpoles and flags.

When he set one tent on fire, had they not been busy putting out that tent’s fire instead of killing the intruders?

Soon, the enemy came into sight.

Right beside him, a soldier from the 3rd Squad frowned while holding his spear and muttered,

“Why is their formation like that?”

Since it was a formation grouped around the flagpoles, it had no tactical value.

Then it must have only spellcraft value.

Six flagpoles and flags jutted up above the enemy.

They were the mediums for the spell.

“Huh!”

The fog spread and covered his vision.

Now, then, shall I swim through the fog of the spell?

Encrid’s ears twitched.

It was time for the keen hearing he had gained from Jaxon to take the place of his eyes.