Chapter 70 - Isolation Technique

The foundation of the isolation technique was overload.

It meant developing physical ability by repeatedly performing movements while holding something heavy.

In other words, training while holding something heavy did not simply stop at increasing muscle strength.

"Shall we do it now?"

A month had passed, and they stood in a corner of the training ground where the cold had not yet faded.

Encrid proposed a sparring match.

Audin smiled and nodded.

"Would you prefer an arm? Or a leg, Brother?"

It was a signal that he meant to twist one of the two.

"Your tongue is long, Audin."

Both of them were barehanded.

He had not spent the entire month learning only the isolation technique.

The two glared at each other.

To meet Audin's eyes, Encrid had to tilt his head up at an angle.

The difference in their builds was obvious.

Even so, the one who moved first was Audin.

With a light tap, he kicked off the ground, lowered his body, and charged in, so fast an afterimage seemed to flash for an instant.

It did not suit his nickname, the praying bear.

If it had been the old Encrid, his best response would have been to raise his knee.

Now, it was different.

He lowered his stance in the same way, clenched his fist, raised his thumb, and aimed it forward as if to stab.

It was positioned so that if Audin charged in, Encrid could burst his eyeball.

At that, Audin stopped his charge midway and sprang sideways.

He kicked off the ground with sharp, rapid steps, and his huge body changed position as nimbly as Esther.

In other words, he was like a swift panther.

It was agility and explosiveness that did not match his size.

If Audin took his back, the fight would end there, so Encrid turned his body several times as well.

Then, at some point, Audin extended his fist.

Before he knew it, they were within reach of Audin's arm.

Encrid had no idea when he had allowed that distance.

He was in a state of Concentrate on a Single Point.

Encrid judged and acted within a split fragment of time.

He tried to thrust his forehead forward and block before the fist reached its point of impact.

It was one of the wrestling techniques, a way to take a blow without pain.

As Audin extended his fist, he opened his palm and grabbed Encrid's hair.

Then he pulled the hair he had seized downward, struck Encrid's back with his left elbow, and pressed down with his weight behind it.

For a moment, Encrid endured Audin's strength and weight.

He did not stop at merely enduring; he even tried to throw him over his back.

Audin did not obediently climb onto Encrid's back.

He put his weight into it and pulled Encrid's hair forward.

Because Audin pulled his hair with ghostlike timing, Encrid's center of gravity wavered.

He could not move his body the way he wanted at all.

It was because he had lost his balance.

Now there was nothing he could do.

THUD.

Encrid shielded his face with his hand and was pinned beneath Audin.

"You offered up your body instead of an arm or a leg, Brother Squad Leader."

Audin laughed heartily.

It was a bold, cheerful laugh.

"If it were the battlefield, I would have had a helmet."

He was talking about Audin grabbing his hair.

Since he spoke while pinned down, Audin answered with a smile.

"Then I would have used another method."

He was right.

Encrid had not said it because he was dissatisfied either.

He had asked because he was curious about the other method.

"If you had been wearing a helmet, I would have grabbed the nape of your neck with my palm instead of your hair, or pressed against the back of your head and pushed you down all at once."

"I see."

He was still pinned under Audin.

The weight of the praying bear crushed down on him, making him feel as if his guts might burst at any moment, but to Encrid, the one thing he had just learned was more important.

Leaving Encrid to concentrate, Audin brushed himself off and stood up.

A month.

For some, it would have been a routine boring enough to drive them mad, but for Encrid, it had become a calm daily schedule.

In the morning, he learned the isolation technique, and after lunch, he learned wrestling.

Then he trained in swordsmanship again until before evening.

After dinner, he reviewed what he had learned so far.

Heart of a Beast, Sense of the Blade, Concentrate on a Single Point.

There was room to improve all of them.

If he could develop further, why should he stop?

Even so, the speed at which he learned was slow.

It remained that way despite being supported by Concentrate on a Single Point, Sense of the Blade, and Heart of a Beast.

So Encrid crawled.

He was a slow snail and a tortoise that had climbed onto land.

"You really do improve slowly."

Audin, who had risen to his feet, said as he straightened his clothes.

Since the cold still had not faded, white steam rose in wisps from his shoulders.

Encrid's shoulders were the same.

Both the isolation technique and wrestling were activities that drenched him in sweat.

Encrid recalled Audin's teachings again and again.

They were worth that much.

'How to gauge skill.'

The body contained all information.

For example, a right-handed swordsman tended to have more developed muscles in his right arm.

It was the discernment to read an opponent's experience and level of training by looking at their physique and degree of physical development.

It was something he had newly realized after beginning training with the isolation technique.

What he learned afterward was valuable as well.

After laying the foundation of his body with the isolation technique, he learned wrestling.

Audin broadly divided wrestling into three categories: striking techniques, joint locks, and throws.

He said that if the opponent was smaller than oneself, simply throwing and slamming them made the fight easier.

"What if I'm the smaller one?"

Encrid knew how to listen properly, but he also had just as many questions.

When it came to learning, he never let anything pass easily.

Each time, Audin would think the same thing.

That this was precisely the Squad Leader's strength.

"If you are small, there are ways to fight as someone small.

Those skilled in joint locks, striking techniques, and close combat also use the opponent's strength against them.

Counters are one kind of such method."

What the Fairy Company Commander had done must have been that sort of thing too.

The technique that had knocked him down with a single gesture came to mind.

Audin actually demonstrated that method as well.

Audin was kind.

When they did the isolation technique together, he was like a demon, but when teaching wrestling, he was rather gentle.

"If I apply more force here, your arm will break and the joint will be ruined.

Unless holy healing is involved, it cannot recover, so you would be left with a crippled arm."

With even the slightest mistake, Encrid's body was liable to be dismantled barehanded.

Naturally, wrestling became the mild version.

"Strength and speed are naturally things you must have.

Beyond that, you must learn to identify vital points, methods for knocking someone down, methods for breaking bones, methods for destroying joints, and so on.

None of them can be learned half-heartedly.

That is why, rather than learning something new, you must repeat what you have learned now even more.

And yet you still want to learn something new?"

Sometimes he scolded him too.

He had reason to.

Rather than reaching mastery in a single technique, Encrid tried to learn as much as possible and hammer it into his body.

'This is right.'

Encrid had the repetition of today.

With what he was learning now, he could not hope for mastery of the techniques.

To Audin, it would only look like he was greedy and his body could not keep up, but for Encrid, this was the right path.

His thoughts reviewing what he had learned were broken by Audin's voice.

"Why do you think your hair was caught in that situation just now?"

"Distance."

Encrid answered plainly.

It was not that he had been caught because he did not know.

"Exactly.

Distance.

I have told you countless times, and yet Brother Squad Leader is truly dull and slow."

Encrid was the same as ever.

Words like that did not hurt him.

He did not have time for that either.

He was busy repeating what he had learned today again.

There were dozens of kinds of joint locks alone.

Just memorizing them and hammering them roughly into his body was already his limit.

On top of that, he had to learn throws and striking techniques as well, and he had to engrave the basic principles into his body.

"I have told you many times.

Stamina is essential.

Reading distance is the same as in swordsmanship, and finally, if you are not agile, everything is useless."

Audin was a good teacher.

Not because his way of teaching was excellent.

'He doesn't know how to give up.'

Even when Encrid was slow and sluggish, and his growth was not visible, Audin taught him steadfastly.

For Encrid, this kind of teacher suited him best.

Steadfast teaching was bound to leave at least something in his body and mind, so while putting off proficiency and mastery for later, Encrid also learned and practiced steadfastly.

"Stamina, distance, physical ability."

Encrid repeated Audin's words.

Whether sword, spear, blunt weapon, or wrestling, strength and speed were essential.

As for gauging distance, he had become fairly used to it, but Audin was more skilled than Encrid.

That was why he had been caught.

"Rolled around on the bare ground again today?"

When he finished wrestling and came back, Rem was waiting.

"Are you resting today?"

It was the same question every time.

"No."

This time, it was the sword.

There were times when he picked up a wooden sword, but now, a real sword was more comfortable.

The longsword familiar in his hand aimed at Rem's entire body.

He did not face only Rem every day.

On some days, Ragna did.

"After watching, I find myself wanting to have a bout too, Squad Leader."

On other days, Jaxon stepped forward.

"I have time left.

Come out with your sword."

Every one of them was someone who did not refuse Encrid's requests.

At the same time, they all did have similar thoughts.

For example, Rem thought,

'What kind of shitty talent is this? Does he need real combat experience?'

On the battlefield, his skill had definitely seemed to improve day by day, but after returning to the city, he was back in place again.

Of course, he was better than before.

There was no dramatic growth.

That was how it looked to Rem.

What had improved compared to before was at least thanks to Heart of a Beast, Concentrate on a Single Point, Sense of the Blade, and the isolation technique.

Because thanks to the isolation technique, the quality of his muscles was changing.

Of course, he could not bring about a dramatic change in only a month.

He advanced little by little, half a step at a time.

Like a slow snail crawling, he moved forward that way.

Ragna thought similarly.

'His fundamentals are solid, so why does he improve so slowly in applications?'

Had his talent not blossomed at thirty?

Why had he become an idiot again?

He could not know.

Even so, Ragna showed enthusiasm.

Encrid was a person who naturally stirred enthusiasm.

Every day, whether he had duty or other circumstances, he somehow repeated the same brutal training.

If he had morning duty, he would still hold stones and take strange postures late in the evening.

Wrestling and swordsmanship were the same.

If he had duty during that time, he stood his watch, then returned and began training.

He shaved away his sleeping time and shaved away his eating time.

When they entered unit training, Rem, Ragna, Jaxon, Audin, and Krais, the five of them, would slack off or get through it roughly, but Encrid gave his all even in training.

After that, he returned to the quarters, went out to the training yard, and repeated his own training again.

He was consistent to a disgusting degree.

Because of that, Ragna was stimulated by watching the Squad Leader.

Jaxon was the same.

'His senses.'

His hearing was at the level of having eyes on the back of his head.

But after that, the sharpness of his senses did not develop.

'Why?'

Was it his own fault for teaching?

Or was Encrid, the one learning, the problem?

'The problem is with the learner.'

He knew because he had already taught several times.

That was why he could only find it strange.

The way his skill improved so slowly and sluggishly.

*'And yet he doesn't give up.

He's unusual.' *

Jaxon almost smiled with satisfaction, then returned to his usual expressionless face.

'What does the Squad Leader matter so much?'

Even while thinking this, he always did his best.

As they taught in turns, an order naturally formed, and among them, Jaxon worked the hardest.

Esther watched the man she had chosen.

The other person's image was caught in the blue eyes of the black panther.

How could he be like that?

There had been a time when she, too, had lived madly immersed in the world of spells.

There had been a time when, if she spent all day with her body immersed in the world of spells, she needed nothing else.

She had not desired eating, sleeping, or anything at all.

'And then I ended up like this.'

Esther chewed over the past, then followed Encrid with her eyes again.

'He is different from me.'

That man's daily routine was simple and repetitive.

Even eating, sleeping, and resting were done as part of his schedule.

He was a person for whom the words "resting hard" suited surprisingly well.

As she watched him,

'If there is anything I can help with, then I too...'

She began to want to help.

He was that kind of person.

Encrid himself had no leisure to look around.

Literally, he was too busy engraving various things into his own body.

He had always been a training-crazed bastard, but recently it was even worse.

The isolation technique had played a part as well.

'The quality of my muscles is changing.'

He wanted to take off his clothes and look at his own body in a mirror.

Who would feel that best?

Encrid himself.

When a movement that had been difficult before came out smoothly, he was not merely pleased, but almost mad with delight.

Starting from thrusts to the basics of the Heavy Sword Technique.

Doing them with a changed body made everything different from before.

Smoother and more graceful.

Even the deflections of the Flowing Sword Technique had now become familiar to his hands to some degree.

CLANG.

Sword met blade, and he deflected the opponent's weapon.

He had just knocked Rem's axe to the side.

"It has gotten a bit better."

It was a deflection that Rem acknowledged.

It could not be called perfect, but

'It is better than before.'

Even Encrid himself felt that the degree of completion of the technique was different.

At the foundation of all this lay the technique for building the body.

In other words, the isolation technique.

"Do you regret not learning it sooner?"

Audin had asked that at some point.

He meant, did Encrid not think it was late to build his body?

"No."

Encrid shook his head.

He had no regrets about days gone by.

If such regrets had remained,

he would already have been trapped in "today."

At that time in the past, the things he learned then had been important.

Therefore, being faithful to the present.

That was right.

During the month, he had a dream in which the Boatswain appeared exactly once.

"You live no differently from being trapped in today."

The Boatswain, propping up his chin while radiating boredom from his whole body, said that and faded away.

Where had the bastard who had mocked him so fiercely before gone?

The Boatswain's words were right.

Encrid spent a month that was no different from the repetition of today.

The only things that changed were his duty hours and the weather.

"If you had learned it before, your body would not have been able to accept it."

Audin left those words behind.

Encrid did not particularly concern himself with them.

Because what mattered was today, this moment.

Before he knew it, the end of the four seasons, the day when winter, the fourth and said to be the harshest, had passed its middle, approached.

"Let's speak for a moment."

On one of those days, the Fairy Company Commander came to see Encrid.

When he went out in front of the quarters, the Company Commander, with the cold at her back, looked at him intently with green eyes and said,

"It's a mission."

The Border Guard standing army was often drafted according to need.

Fighting on the battlefield was not the entirety of their duties.

"Yes."

"It is to escort the successor of a merchant company.

Have one person from the fourth squad be drafted and come with you."

The Company Commander conveyed the matter as an order.

It was an instruction from above.

Encrid had to follow it.

Requests and missions.

Originally, he was not particularly fond of them.

But now, he had also become interested in building merit.

Build skill and build merit.

That was the path to becoming a knight.