Chapter 533 - Plunder

The knight Jamal stirred his Will, making the sword in his right hand sing.

HUMMM!

Once again, his sword vibrated. Encrid watched its trembling blade leave afterimages. As the sword sang, its blade seemed to multiply into dozens, hundreds, like the beating wings of a bee. Unless that sword was more of a chatterbox than Aker, this had to be Jamal's swordsmanship.

"Try taking this one, too."

Jamal swung as he spoke. There was no sound of feet kicking off the ground, no sound of a blade cutting the air. A sword swung in earnest by someone who had attained knighthood moved beyond an ordinary person's perception. It came flying at a speed beyond human limits, killing sound itself.

This realm was called "the moment sound dies," a name coined by a Bard who had heard it described. In truth, it was simply swinging a sword faster than sound. To ordinary eyes, the sound and movement appeared out of step. For those moving within that space where sound died, however, nothing was different.

Encrid read the attack a step ahead with foresight, and at the same time judged it difficult to evade. Its trajectory made dodging awkward. No, this was a swing meant to be blocked. It looked like a ploy to settle things with one strike rather than a sequence of attacks. If he dodged, he would have to concede the offensive.

Encrid swung his sword up into the path of Jamal's blade, pouring out all his strength in that instant.

'Knock it aside.'

The moment he imbued it with determination, that resolve became Will, turning into a heavy mass that strengthened his legs, lower abdomen, and right arm. Naturally, the Heart of the Superhuman activated as well.

BOOM!

An explosive report erupted as the two weapons met. This time, they did not exchange positions. They simply struck with their swords and each retreated two steps.

"How crude," Jamal said.

Encrid merely jerked his chin, a gesture that said Jamal was the cruder one.

HUMMMMM.

Jamal's sword still sang. Its vibrations produced steady waves, and those waves added force to his strikes. Knights used Will to draw out strength beyond their limits. With waves added to such a knight's sword, it could cleanly slice through even a lump of refined metal. That was how the superhuman strength in Jamal's sword worked.

Encrid, on the other hand, had met it with sheer strength. The Isolation Technique had tempered his body as never before, and the Heart of the Superhuman multiplied the strength within it. That made their clashing strikes roughly equal in power.

That was why Jamal had called him crude. He had blended technique into his attack, while his opponent seemed to have blocked it by using Will in one solid mass. Was his method simply wasteful? Or was he born with that strength?

'He met the waves with brute force?'

As Jamal watched, Encrid transferred his sword to his other hand and shook out his right. He seemed to be working off the shock. Jamal immediately stabbed at him. In contrast to his easy tone, the stab shot toward Encrid's heart like a ray of light. Even if he could meet a cut with strength, what would he do about a stab?

CLANG, CLATTER-CLATTER-CLATTER-CLANG!

Encrid caught and redirected the stab with the sword in his left hand. No, he did not stop at deflecting it. His sword continued moving, curving toward Jamal's neck like a noose.

Jamal tightened his waist and leaned back, drawing in his extended sword. The blade nicked the tip of his chin. Before a drop of blood could scatter, it dropped straight toward his belly. Still leaning almost flat backward to evade it, Jamal pulled his own sword back harder.

His weapon was longer. Cutting instead of dodging would give him the advantage. It was a split-second judgment, but an effective one, forcing Encrid to fling himself sideways. He could not give up his neck in exchange for stabbing Jamal's belly.

Jamal's sword swept back through the air with a whoosh. Encrid had already moved a step and a half sideways from its path. Swiftly righting himself, Jamal smiled.

"So there's more to you than strength?"

His opponent's technique was formidable, too. For a moment, Jamal almost envied his talent. Just look at him. How many years had it been since Jamal became a knight? Even if this man had attained knighthood immediately after surviving his sword back then, it would have been only a year or two. Yet he was not far behind Jamal in either strength or technique.

'Would Corwin despair if he saw this?'

That boy had been intoxicated with his own talent since childhood. His arrogance, his ability to revel in that talent, was itself a gift, but the man before Jamal seemed no less gifted. A refined blade. He looked like a blade forged by hammering steel countless times.

'Not content with the talent he possesses, he lights his path with effort.'

Anyone could have made that mistake. It was not Jamal's fault. Encrid had broken through with effort alone, not talent, but Jamal had no way of knowing that. He had attained knighthood. Who could look at Encrid now and speak of meager talent?

Mistaken or not, nothing changed. Jamal raised his blade, watching his opponent.

'The waves won't work.'

What should he try next? Jamal moved on to the next step. He made good use of the waves, but they were not his specialty.

No matter whom he faced, Jamal never gave his all right away. He enjoyed revealing what he had one piece at a time. Varnas disliked that aspect of his character, but it was also the approach best suited to Jamal's specialty. In that sense, this was his best effort.

In any case, next came the Righteous Sword Technique. With Corwin, that peerless prodigy of foresight, in the knight order, Jamal had naturally needed to train tirelessly in it. To land a move against someone who read every move, he had to conceal his intentions and twist them over and over. He tried the same approach now.

CLANG! THUD! CRACK!

When Jamal swung his blade in a broad strike to the crown, Encrid switched swords and lashed out. It was his Valeri steel sword, reflecting blue light.

If Encrid had deflected the strike to the crown or merely blocked it, Jamal would have stepped forward with his right foot and angled his blade downward, making the attack's path impossible to predict. Instead, the move had been stopped before it began. And that was not all.

Next, Jamal drove in a slanting stab, then gripped his ricasso to engage in half-sword fighting. Encrid handled that deftly as well and immediately thrust his forehead forward in a Headbutt.

Jamal's Righteous Sword Technique relied on twist after twist. His opponent should have been bewildered by his sword swings and footwork. Unsettling the enemy with unconventional techniques was its very essence.

Jamal also feigned a cut, then lashed out with a low kick at Encrid's calf. It was one of the widely known techniques of mercenary swordsmanship. Even such tricks became lethal in a knight's hands, and this was no exception.

Yet Encrid cut off every movement, every opening move in that unconventional game of moves and countermoves.

'He's reading everything?'

Or was he simply responding on instinct?

Jamal did not know it, but thanks to the consciousness trapped in a sword, Encrid had trained in the Righteous Sword Technique, the sword art called Aker's Web, until he had all but worn away the lines on his palms. Frankly, Jamal's game of moves and countermoves looked downright sloppy.

Aker was a master of the game of moves and countermoves who had fought the knights of his day like a madman. If what Encrid had learned from the demon sword The Tutor was a wooden sword in a child's hands, Aker's version was a blade wielded by a master, sharp enough to cut with the slightest graze.

Jamal found himself under pressure before he could finish setting up his moves. While he had tried to tangle Encrid's thoughts with movement, Encrid layered intentions over his attacks through Will. In an instant, Jamal saw Encrid's sword targeting his head, chest, legs, the back of his hand, his neck, and then his shoulder.

This was the immediate future revealed by Insight. It was also an impossible future. A sword slicing his entire body at once? It was a trick wrought by Encrid's Will. What he had learned from Aker was bearing fruit.

"What an interesting trick."

If he held his ground, he risked more than a nick on his chin. He could easily end up with a hole somewhere in his body. Jamal sprang backward. That movement proved his experience. In the situation he had just faced, even deciding to retreat was difficult. Most people, upon seeing a future in which they were cut, would be too busy trying to block the incoming attack.

But by springing back, he rendered the formless attack wrought through Will meaningless. Would extending that Will farther in another advancing strike change things? If an opponent had opened the distance once, could he not do it twice? Unless Encrid wanted to play tag, further attempts were pointless.

Only after retreating did Jamal grasp his enemy's trick.

'With Will?'

Jamal, too, had reached this point through an abundance of talent. That gave him the knack to recognize his opponent's methods at a glance. He could not imitate what Encrid had just done, but he roughly understood the principle. Not that understanding meant he could not fall victim to it.

'Tricky.'

What should he do, then? It was enough to send cold sweat trickling down his back. And precisely because of that, Jamal felt enjoyment. How long had it been since he had faced a situation like this?

From the moment he first picked up a sword, few people around him had been a match for him. The first time he had felt his life threatened was when he faced the monster named Varnas Hurrier. That Beastman truly was a monster. Few other opponents had ever made him feel tense.

Such experiences had become especially rare lately. Knights could not simply roam about as they pleased, so there were few opportunities to face an enemy in combat. And now the opponent putting him on edge was another knight.

Jamal let his exhilaration show, but Encrid, the very opponent who had made him tense, looked calm.

"Now I'm serious."

Jamal swung again as he spoke. It was an honest attack, stripped of his inadequate Righteous Sword Technique. His speed left no time to think. A swift sword, swifter still. The instant Encrid sensed Jamal's sword moving, he had to react.

The sword that had mimicked a hummingbird's wings abandoned its vibrations to focus on speed, becoming a veritable ray of light. Encrid reacted to it. Of course he did. Failure meant death.

When Jamal's sword rose vertically and came down, Encrid wound his blade around it, deflected it, and stabbed. Jamal dodged and swung horizontally.

CLANG, TING, CLANG-CLANG.

Sparks flew between them without cease. Even someone capable of following their fight could not have lightly declared either man superior. Jamal seemed to be pushed back, yet always managed to extend his sword. He stabbed and swung, finding a way to bring their blades together.

In speed and the difficulty of evading its paths alone, Jamal's sword was far more threatening than the Ghoul Encrid had encountered in the Gray Forest. Strikes he could never have evaded without attaining knighthood rained down in countless numbers. Encrid met that entire shower of blades.

Once Encrid had adjusted to the speed a little and begun mixing attacks into his defense, Jamal spoke.

"I'll tell you my specialty."

He continued, steadying his breath. "Better you die knowing than look at me with resentment because you understand nothing."

CLANG!

Their swords met again in a great burst of sparks. Blue and red flames scattered light between them without pause. Heat flowed outward, pushing back the falling sunlight. Within it, their seething Will became formless pressure that drove back everything around them.

The watching soldiers gaped, dumbstruck. One even screamed, "Aah!" as a stone flung out of the clash struck him in the head. From outside, it looked like a raging storm. Naturally so, since the spectators could not even properly see how the blades were moving. A voice rang out from within.

"My sword's name is Plunder."

Jamal's imprinted weapon was not as tough as Oara's sword, nor was it impossibly light like someone else's weapon. It was close to an ordinary longsword. Instead, the Will carried in his blade absorbed and dispersed his opponent's Will. In other words:

"With Plunder, I never tire."

Upon awakening Will and attaining the rank of knight, the first thing one learned was one's limits. As Jamal learned and understood those limits, a thought had occurred to him.

'Could I perhaps steal it?'

Why had such an ability manifested? Perhaps because taking what was around him had been a natural part of his life since childhood. Jamal had stolen his sibling's position and his father's house. Born a bastard, he was now master of his family. One wrong step, and he might have become no more than a robber skilled with a blade. A knight accustomed to a life of taking. That was Jamal.

More precisely, Plunder was actually a weapon for dispersing Will. Taking all the Will contained in an attack did not make it his own. Will was not a power that worked that way. But he could make it appear so to his opponent.

His Wave Sword, Righteous Sword Technique, and Swift Sword had all been preparations for this. Each clash robbed his opponent of strength. If a sword normally carried one unit of Will, facing him required three.

'How long can you last?'

Jamal smiled confidently. Encrid, meanwhile, had stopped listening to him some time ago.

Through training, he had taught his real body everything he had gained in the world of consciousness with Aker. Now he was simply bringing it all out in actual combat, demonstrating it over and over. Why?

'This is driving me mad.'

Because it was so much fun. It was a kind of enjoyment Encrid had never felt before, perhaps. That pleasure set him ablaze.