Southeastward Bound

Without even going far, just moving to the vacant lot next to the smithy, Luwiming swung her sword with a movement that made it absolutely impossible to believe she was blind and spoke cheerfully.

"Judging by how well-trained you are, my Human Race friend, you must have worked pretty hard even unarmed. Let's try it without aura first."

She changed her movements while muttering to herself things like 'Was it this? No, was it that?' But she wasn't just switching between high, middle, and low stances—she was switching entire swordsmanship styles. To the point that if I'd watched without knowing a damn thing, I would've thought she was a complete rookie who just picked up a sword for the first time. She swung the sword a few times with a standard grip, and now she was adjusting her stance while even swapping the positions of her left and right hands.

"Among warriors without aura, the Isavil style swordsmanship was probably dominant, right?"

Maybe because she'd spent so much time alone, she had an unusual amount of self-mutterings.

I couldn't tell what she was muttering about, but Luwiming seemed to reach some conclusion of her own and nodded. She faced me as though ready and took an extremely orthodox middle guard, and I slowly raised my sword into position as well. I brought the sword up to head level, turned it horizontal, and aimed it at Luwiming's face. As I gave her a brief opening, a strange smile spread across her lips.

"Dragon horn, huh. An aggressive friend, I see."

And then she abruptly took a stance similar in form to mine.

Fuck. She matched my stance and responded just by hearing the rustling sound I made? I was so dumbfounded my stance nearly broke, but her following words and actions made me grab hold of my senses.

"You're very stable, so there's no need to yield the first move, right?"

Incredibly, Luwiming was the one who attempted an attack first, closing the distance in a single dash. But what was even more astonishing was Luwiming's movement itself.

Her movements were so fast that I briefly forgot this was the person who had suggested we try it without aura. Even so, because her follow-up attack was a short horizontal slash targeting my face rather than a thrust, I was able to respond in time.

"Good reactions."

A continuous flurry of strikes followed. I had braced myself somewhat after hearing she'd handled a sword for about 80 years, but the speed at which she exploited gaps was on a different level from the start. To me, the top ranks in swordsmanship experience were jointly held by the Ogatorf family sword instructor and Sir Ekaf as number 0, with Envelde at number 1. But through just six attacks, she overturned all that and ascended to the absolute number 0 spot.

Even though each strike was a ferocious attack, the reason I could hold out was because she was blind.

Just as she'd shown when offering me a handshake, Luwiming couldn't gauge positions perfectly, so thrusts were extremely rare in her attacks. Even the few she mixed in mostly targeted the torso, the larger target. That alone gave me a lot more breathing room.

You might ask how much difference it makes just because thrusts are mostly absent, but the fastest attack you can attempt while pressing down the opponent's sword when blades clash is a thrust, and the fastest attack you can attempt when distance opens up is also a thrust. By that same token, the risk of counterattack is high, and you become defenseless if it's parried—but with that level of skill, she'd have to be operating on the premise that another counterattack would follow from there anyway.

The moment swords clash, you have to worry about dozens of variables you need to keep in mind, deploying both your instinct and intellect at full capacity to the point your stress gauge instantly maxes out. In that situation, having a dozen or so branches of variables simply vanish made an enormous difference.

The problem was that even with that advantage, all I could do was withstand this blind elf's attacks. It was exactly like playing janggi after taking the chariot and cannon off the board.

Even though her height and build weren't larger than mine, the attacks swung from proper stances were heavy enough to be impossible to ignore. The severing cuts mixed in to replace thrusts carried enough force to push my sword aside and dig into flesh in a moment of carelessness.

She was strong. There were no other words to express it.

"Huh... you blocked all that?"

She was this much even without sight—if both her eyes had been fine... no, even if just one eye had been intact, I couldn't even guess how strong she would have been. I was inwardly clicking my tongue when Luwiming suddenly widened the distance and opened her eyes wide in surprise.

"How did you block it all? You're really not using aura?"

Her tone suggested she absolutely couldn't understand how I was holding out when I should have been taken down instantly. But there was no room for stubborn pride or anything else. At this point, it only sounded like a compliment.

"Rather, that's something I'd like to ask you."

"Hahaha. What do you mean? Obviously I was using it."

"You were... what?!"

No, fuck, what did you say?

I let out a dumbfounded voice at the absurd answer, but Luwiming didn't care in the slightest and loosened her shoulders.

"This time I'll use it a bit more seriously, so you use it too."

Before I could even get a handle on the rising sense of betrayal, Luwiming closed in at a speed incomparable to just moments before.

◈

"This fucking...!"

With a short curse thick with genuine sincerity, Eldmia's movement changed. Luwiming barely suppressed a hollow laugh as she confirmed that he really had been enduring her attacks with purely physical ability up until just moments ago.

The answer she'd given Eldmia had not been empty words. She had deliberately adjusted her output little by little to draw out unconventional responses, and near the end, wanting to make absolutely sure of her assessment, she put extra force into a cutting strike while their blades were locked.

Of course, she had absolutely no intention of actually hurting Eldmia, so she didn't ramp up her aura. Rather, she made it obvious enough that even a very weak aura user would notice. Only to that extent could she grasp the defensive posture Eldmia instinctively took when he felt threatened, and her goal was to create armor that would fill the gaps based on the openings that emerged at that moment.

But Eldmia blocked even that. With swordsmanship so rigidly orthodox it was almost stubborn. He hadn't even realized she was using aura. Then the number of possibilities she could assume was extremely limited.

Either a hero who had reached the transcendent realm through sheer physical ability, without Mana or aura...

Or a member of the Dragon Race, or the Demonfolk.

'He's not a dragon.'

Spirits and nature recognized dragons no matter how much they changed their outward appearance. If Eldmia truly were a dragon, a strange stillness would have settled over the forest.

Demonfolk? By fifteen, their horns grew enough that anyone who wasn't blind would notice. At most they could use magic to conceal their appearance, and there's no chance Cellevian would've failed to notice something like that.

Then a hero who had reached the transcendent realm? No matter how much of a genius he was, that was impossible at such a young age. People like that didn't just become that way by being born exceptional. They shone without realizing it through countless trials, receiving the admiration and blessings of the gods, building up layer upon layer of great deeds. In that process, they might forget their age and break free from the shackles of aging, but eventually, some kind of aura would manifest outwardly.

If it was neither, there was only one answer. However instinctively she wanted to deny it, she now had to accept that every concrete hypothesis she could formulate was wrong.

Truly astonishingly, it meant that the member of the Human Race standing before her was a being the likes of which she had never once seen in her long life.

'He's fast.'

His technique was still lacking.

Even as she thought that to herself, she acknowledged it was a harsh assessment. The 'lacking' she spoke of was by the standards of the long-lived species. When had this boy of the Human Race first picked up a sword? Five? Eight? Whatever it was, he couldn't have learned properly for even ten years.

The weight of eighty years of sword training was no small thing, even if she hadn't devoted all of that time to a single style. Eldmia was keeping up through physical ability, an unidentified power, and the straightforward skills he had steadily built for himself.

No, 'enduring' was the wrong expression. Because he wasn't just desperately defending—he was also attacking in the gaps. Those attacks were never to be taken lightly. Occasionally, they were so intense and heavy that she found herself involuntarily regretting not fixing her eyes sooner.

If his fundamentals were this solid, time and experience would clearly resolve the gaps and weaknesses. Having finished her assessment, Luwiming decided to conduct one final test. She released her aura and simultaneously warned him.

"If you flinch, you'll get hurt!"

From a distance that was ambiguous—too vague to call it a perfect retreat, yet too vague to call it closing in—Luwiming's sword suddenly raged like a storm.

The parts targeted by the attacks, which far surpassed ordinary human movement, were simple. Head, hands, feet. Only those. But the swordsmanship built on the foundation of the alien power called aura made her arms and sword swing and thrust faster than arrows, even leaving afterimages.

That swordsmanship, created under the premise of exercising unilateral violence rather than an exchange of blows, belonged to the Demonfolk.

After taking up the hammer, she had often sparred against scouts and guards, but she had never moved to this extent. The elves born after ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠the era of peace had arrived, when the clinging swamp god met his end beneath the sacred light burning green, were infinitely weaker than the previous generation. But there was no need to teach based on those hard times...

'Ah.'

That's right. There had been such an era.

As ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠wars diminished, the average strength of her people had gradually fallen, and the same was true not only of elves but of the world as a whole. Luwiming was perceptive enough to understand what it meant that a memory so ancient it normally never surfaced was now raising its head.

The member of the Human Race who was parrying her sword almost ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠perfectly reminded her of that era when hope like ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠grains of sand burned brilliantly to drive out the despair that had overturned the entire world.

'The world is trying to change once again.'

But 'almost perfect' wasn't enough, so precisely the 23rd strike finally pushed aside Eldmia's sword and touched near his ear. Eldmia and Luwiming, both understanding exactly what that meant, simultaneously stopped moving and caught their breath.

It was Eldmia who spoke first.

"...Could someone who isn't a member of the Demonfolk use that swordsmanship to that extent?"

At that young age, with that much skill, he could easily have been upset by losing... yet in an astonishingly calm voice, he was still politely asking for advice. The corners of Luwiming's lips rose on their own at the many-layered question.

"It's because the era I fought in was different. And among the Demonfolk, there were plenty of even worse bastards."

A low grumble laced with curses followed, but it was aimed at the Demonfolk, not at Luwiming. He probably had his own circumstances. Short-lived people showing signs of entering the ranks of heroes were usually like that, so Luwiming didn't mind in the slightest. She withdrew her sword and spoke with laughter in her voice.

"Well then... shall we talk while making the helmet first?"