Chapter 38 - Flags Flutter and Soldiers Dance with Swords (1)

"Do I really have to learn the sword?"

Ragna had said that. It was a biting remark.

It meant that his body just couldn't keep up, and it was true.

Encrid was not born with talent. He lived by simply adding stubborn effort to his sluggish body.

However, because he had spent time meeting countless instructors, learning swordsmanship, and pondering alone.

His thinking was flexible, and his ability to apply what he learned was outstanding.

Learning it for the first time was hard, but it was different once he mastered it and entered actual combat. In truth, he was born with one talent.

Flexibility and adaptability—that was the talent Encrid possessed.

'I just need to use whatever fits the situation and the necessity.'

By the Naurilia Kingdom's standards, he was at best a middle-grade soldier or slightly above.

Even in the mercenary industry, he was middle-grade.

A skill level that would be considered average anywhere—that was Encrid's current standing.

But apart from his raw skill, his combat prowess in actual battle was excellent.

Since he had originally lived a life with meager talent.

Encrid knew how to fully utilize what he had.

A soldier's spearhead flew at him.

His heightened ears heard the *WHOOSH! * of the tearing air.

It wasn't as accurate as seeing it with his eyes, but he caught the direction. He also pictured the opponent's movements in his head.

'A foot turning sideways.'

Encrid took a step. The Heart of a Beast brought him boldness. He put strength into his left heel, pulled his right foot back, and turned his body.

With that single move, the spearhead brushed past his eyes with a *SWOOSH! *

Even in a situation where only spearheads suddenly flew out of the fog, Encrid did not panic.

There was no need to.

It was a spear that had already stabbed him to death dozens of times.

He had dodged that first spear thrust over two hundred times.

Instead of drawing his sword, Encrid grabbed the middle of the spear shaft and pulled.

Pulled in with a *WHOOSH! *, the enemy soldier opened his mouth in surprise.

"Huh?"

The enemy soldier's head pierced through the fog, and Encrid grabbed that head and twisted it.

CRUNCH!

The soldier's neck snapped. A person with a broken neck cannot live.

The enemy soldier with the broken neck collapsed to the ground, and Encrid picked up the dead enemy soldier's spear.

He recalled the enemy's formation in his head from before the fog spread.

They were all grouped together.

'If I throw it anywhere, it's bound to hit someone.'

Stamping the ground with his left foot, he threw it with all his might.

The spear tore through the empty air and lodged somewhere with a *THUD! *

"Gah!"

A death agony was heard.

"What the?"

"Crazy!"

The panicked voices of the enemy soldiers followed.

Encrid, who had been listening closely after throwing the spear, lowered his body tightly and ran forward.

Even if they had eyes that could pierce the fog, it would be difficult to see a person charging in right by their feet.

THWANG-TWANG!

Quarrels and arrows flew above his head.

"Aaaagh!"

"Ghk."

"Fuck, it's arrows!"

Screams and curses from the allies erupted from behind. It was enough to make the fine hairs on his body stand on end, but it was fine. It was something he had already done numerous times.

Rather, it was a problem that there was too little tension. Encrid closed the distance and drew his longsword.

He gauged the distance with his hearing, and it was precise.

SHING!

He drew the sword, gripped it with both hands, and swung it, modifying a high horizontal slash just like that.

Originally, the high horizontal slash was a technique of blocking the opponent's sword with the guard and slashing with the back edge.

Encrid had modified it as he pleased.

The posture was similar.

He raised the sword above the crown of his head to be parallel to the ground and changed his grip.

It was a thumb grip, with the thumb pointing up.

In that exact posture, he drew a circle with the sword.

Because of his tightly lowered stance, the high horizontal slash became a low horizontal slash.

Since it was an absurd posture, the power was not properly loaded into the sword.

But it was an unexpected strike.

The enemy forces could not react.

SWOOSH!

THUD! THWACK!

A sense of resistance was felt from the swung blade.

"Agh!"

"What is this!"

"The ground!"

*'My, you noticed me quickly.' * As he pushed through the fog and sprang up, the enemy soldiers came into view.

Even so, his field of vision was only about as far as his sword could reach, but this was still better than nothing.

He could see the enemies, he could see the weapons the enemies held, and he could see the sword he was gripping.

The situation was different from before.

There were three guys whose shins had been deeply slashed. The three guys limped, bleeding profusely. They were all armed with crossbows.

One of them clenched his molars tightly and aimed his crossbow.

Encrid took a passing step.

He extended his left foot diagonally forward, and his right foot followed.

His position changed in an instant.

The quarrel that flew with a *THWIP! * pierced the spot where he had just been.

Encrid did not stop at just dodging the quarrel.

At the same time he dodged, he attempted a crown-cleaving slash.

The heavy longsword fell from top to bottom.

The enemy soldier who had been holding the crossbow reflexively drew his shortsword and tried to block, forming a cross shape against the longsword.

Encrid pressed down on it with sheer force.

CLANG! CRUNCH!

Unable to overcome the force, the opposite edge of the shortsword pressed through the leather helmet and dug into the enemy soldier's head.

It felt like smashing rather than slashing.

SQUELCH.

The guy with his head cracked open fell backward along with bloody foam. Blood flowed continuously through the caved-in leather helmet, drawing a red curtain in front of the enemy soldier's face.

"Ghk, ghk."

The enemy soldier with the smashed head couldn't continue speaking and fell on his rear, his eyes losing focus.

Encrid recovered his sword just like that, took a step back, and turned his body. He moved a step to the side in a flash.

Then, a short spear for infantry flew with a *WHOOSH! * toward the spot where he had been.

The spearhead grazed his left side. His cloth armor was slightly torn. And that was all.

After dodging, he thrust his sword.

Not swinging fast, but slowly.

The guy who swung the spear reflexively pulled the short spear and blocked the blade with the shaft.

THUD.

The sword and the spear shaft met.

In that state, the sword began to slide down the spear shaft.

A step forward, a bind, and then a follow-up slash.

GRRRND!

The sound of the spear shaft grinding was heard.

THWACK!

The end point of the sword was the enemy soldier's chest. The blade that slid down the spear shaft in an instant tore through the enemy soldier's chest.

Flesh was gouged and bone was shattered. As he pulled the sword out, blood poured out with a *SPLAT! *

A stream of blood soaked Encrid's chest.

Remaining in a slightly bent-knee posture, he recovered his sword and stood up.

He extended his knees and stood his body completely upright.

What he had learned so far were the fundamentals. The time spent discarding bad habits and building anew—objectively speaking, he had only just reached his previous level.

However, now that he had trained his fundamentals of the sword and swordsmanship centered around the Valen Mercenary Sword Technique, what he possessed was entirely different.

It was practically like attaching wings to the back of a lion.

Encrid's flexible thinking allowed him to produce results that exceeded his actual skills.

The blood-soaked sword moved among the remaining soldiers. Encrid danced with his sword in silence.

* * *

There were six flagpole units.

The commander of the Principality of Aspen thought.

'Even if they somehow realize it's a spell, they won't even be able to figure out which of those six they need to knock down.'

It was a victory. Now, it was time to ponder what kind of victory to take.

"Cut off their retreat."

The Gray Hound (Persistent Lovers), left as an independent reserve force, made their move.

They were behind the Naurilia Kingdom's army.

Now, if the bastards startled by the fog tried to flee, they would encounter the Gray Hound (Persistent Lovers). The commander gave his orders and replayed his strategy to see if there were any errors.

There were none.

Frog General had come by to reconfirm that this operation must not fail before leaving.

If it hadn't been for that, a figure of General rank would have had no reason to come all the way to this battlefield.

The commander ordered once again.

"Kill them all."

Through this battle, the circumstances of Aspen and Naurilia would be changed.

While his order fell, Encrid was dancing with his sword at the 1st flagpole unit.

* * *

"Damn it!"

The Battalion Commander of Naurilia thought he was having a terrible dream.

'They beat us to the punch.'

If the enemy had prepared something, this side had prepared something as well.

But if they lost all their troops here, they wouldn't be able to do anything, preparations or not.

"Retreat! Retreat!"

Shouts to retreat rang out from all over.

The Battalion Commander could not stay calm.

"Kuhg!"

Quarrels flew in even from behind the retreating allies.

'Those damn crossbow units!'

The Battalion Commander felt dizzy.

He couldn't help but think they had impressively managed to hide that many crossbows.

Where? The answer had already come out in the recon unit's report.

'Tall Grass Fields!'

This was not the time to be leisurely thinking about such things.

The Battalion Commander's brain was escaping from reality.

"Pull yourselves together! Regroup!"

Two of the more capable Company Commanders tried to rally the troops, but the enemy forces' skills were extraordinary.

The unit advancing on their rear was the Gray Dog.

It was an independent company boasted by the army of the Principality of Aspen.

The Battalion Commander realized they had been had.

He desperately tried to gather his senses.

"It is the fog of annihilation! The army of the Principality of Aspen has employed a shaman!"

Sons of bitches.

"What must we do to clear the fog?"

Few among the adjutants could give an answer.

"Bring someone who knows!"

They couldn't see ahead, and the enemy forces were battering the allies from both 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 of the spell!"

The medium? It was the flagpoles.

"Charge toward the flagpoles!"

The Battalion Commander shouted.

"... We do not know which direction the flagpoles are."

The adjutant spat out despairing words.

The enemy forces they first saw had changed positions like gears. They spun round and round. Therefore, they couldn't pinpoint the enemy's location.

The Battalion Commander could not erase the word 'annihilation' from his mind.

While the Battalion Commander groaned, the Fairy Company Commander in charge of the 4th Company noticed that the enemy would not let them retreat obediently like this.

Her prediction was correct. And that was not a good thing.

'We're all going to die if there isn't a turnaround.'

She thought a new wind was needed on the battlefield, but in the end, the wind did not blow.

The battle was a crushing defeat.

The Fairy Company Commander barely survived, overcoming the crisis of death.

Behind her as she fled, the fog cleared. It was total annihilation. The surviving allies would likely be less than fifty.

* * *

CLANG!

Encrid fought well. He fought incredibly well, and he was also satisfied.

The allies were close to annihilation, but he alone had laid down nearly twenty soldiers.

Blood flowed from the hand gripping the sword.

It was because his forearm had been slashed in the battle just a moment ago.

'I can't put any strength into it.'

Up until now, he had only invested time in fundamental training.

Ragna had told him not to recklessly engage in sparring until it was complete—that is, until he got rid of the bad habits attached to his body.

And then he immediately added.

"Though it's not something to say on a battlefield."

Even after saying it himself, he probably thought it made no sense.

Telling him not to fight in the middle of a battlefield to get rid of bad habits.

Then was he just supposed to quietly die?

But Encrid could do it.

By quietly giving up his life and dying, he excluded actual combat.

And today was the first time he had finally shown off his skills in actual combat.

'It's different.'

Up until now, whether it was the Valen Mercenary Sword Technique or whatever else, he had fought by any means and methods necessary. He had lived like that. That was still the same now.

If anything had changed, it was just that swordsmanship had taken the center stage.

'I want to learn more.'

His desire for learning soared even higher. He didn't want to end it with just the fundamentals.

Facing Encrid, who had killed the forces of two squads all by himself, the enemy troops did not easily approach.

For some reason, as he held his ground inside, Encrid's field of vision opened up more.

The fog created by the spell no longer affected him. Before his eyes, he saw the enemy troops standing in a semicircle.

Crossbows were held in all of their hands.

"Let's duel one-on-one like men."

He said this in hopes of testing the skills he had gained through the fundamentals just one more time.

"Crazy bastard."

A guy who looked like the enemy Squad Leader said.

THWANG-TWANG!

The crossbows twanged their bowstrings. Quarrels embedded themselves all over his body.

The quarrel lodged in his eye brought horrific pain.

'It's agonizing.'

But he was also glad.

While he was dying, Encrid thought of what he had to do in the repeated today.

Ragna had continuously emphasized the fundamentals.

"If you train and train, and keep fighting with your life on the line, well, it'll stick to your body someday."

It was an extremely irresponsible thing to say, but it had meaning.

Encrid needed more actual combat.

The word 'death' settled over his entire body.

Before his final breath came out, one of the enemy soldiers looked down at Encrid and spoke.

"Relentless bastard."

Even until then, Encrid kept a tight grip on his sword. The blood he shed pooled on the ground.

["No matter what happens, even if you are dying, 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 thing.

Encrid did exactly that.

"Ptooey!"

An enemy soldier who had lost countless comrades spat on Encrid's face.

That was the end.

* * *

Morning dawned.

A new today began once again.

Encrid chewed over what he had gained from yesterday's fight.

'I need more actual combat.'

That was the conclusion he reached.

He grabbed hold of Ragna again to learn.

"You've roughly got the fundamentals down, but you seem like someone who has only trained alone your whole life. But where did you learn it? The basics of swordsmanship?"

His words were right. It was something he had felt himself. What he needed right now was actual combat.

"Here and there."

"... Here and there? Tsk, alright, let's go with that. It would be good to bring out what your body has learned through sparring at any time. And I don't know who your teacher is, but they taught you well."

That teacher was you.

Without realizing it, Ragna was praising himself.

Encrid replied casually and focused hard on sparring.

And how enjoyable that was, too.

In the battle that repeated once again, Encrid single-handedly cut down thirty soldiers.

He hadn't cut them down purely with his skill. After all, quarrels and arrows were flying in.

It was something he achieved by dodging them this way and that. He had to use his head well. Only then could he extend his actual combat experience even a little bit more.

He repeated today a few more times. And he swung his sword again.

Before he knew it, the things called fundamentals clung tightly and perfectly to his body.

"There is nothing for me to touch up on in terms of your basics."

Eventually, Encrid's skills had improved so much that Ragna ended up saying this.