Chapter 667: Penna is Enough
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 667: Penna is Enough
There could be no greater praise for Eitri. Yet, the iron-striking madman merely stood up, his face completely devoid of a smile.
"True Iron."
His parting words were just as curt.
"Understood," Encrid replied with a blunt nod.
Leaving the smithy after their brief exchange, Encrid quickened his pace. He wasn't in any particular rush; he simply wanted to get back as quickly as possible to swing his meteoric iron sword.
To be precise, its name was the Ink Gold Truesilver Meteoric Iron Sword, but that was far too long.
‘I need a name like Odd-Eye.’
Something just as intuitive and catchy would do.
‘The Three-Iron Sword?’
If the sword had a soul, it would have leaped from its scabbard right then and there to run away from home. Of course, since the sword possessed no ego, no such thing happened.
‘Actually, I like it.’
Encrid inwardly admired his own naming sense.
Though meteoric iron was its core, calling it simply a "meteoric iron sword" felt a bit off. They said meteoric iron varied wildly in quality. The batch Eitri had worked with this time was brittle when honed into a thin edge, but when forged into a solid, pillar-like core, its hardness skyrocketed and its center of gravity became perfectly balanced.
It wasn't for nothing that the one called Black Snake Elle had fashioned armor out of it. Its properties were far more suited for protection, but Eitri had used his mastery to turn it into the central axis of a blade. As for the leftovers, Encrid had left them behind, as Eitri wanted to use them for research.
By the time he stepped out of the smithy, his mind filled with various thoughts after their conversation, people were beginning to trickle into the market, starting the morning bustle. Still, it wasn't so crowded that there was no room to move. Ever since Krais had divided the city sectors, the streets rarely became congested to the point of gridlock, and it was still early in the day.
Encrid walked straight through the market. Left foot forward, then the right. Before his left foot could touch the ground again, Encrid placed his hand on his sword's grip, spun on his left ankle, and brought his right foot half a step back, coming to a dead halt.
In that single, brief motion, Encrid took in everything around him.
To his upper right was a rolled-up tent and a building under construction with its wooden frame newly erected; beneath it lay nails and a hammer left by a carpenter. To his left, a child who had woken up unusually early sat on the steps of his house with a dazed expression. Sunlight poured down from the clear sky, blocked by buildings and tents to cast sharp shadows through which people bustled back and forth.
And there, neither hiding in the shadows nor particularly concealing herself, was a swordswoman.
She stood beyond the intersection in the center of the market. She was clad in a breastplate made of joined iron plates, with leather armor wrapping her waist down to her thighs. Her very posture exuded an excess of confidence. Her lips parted.
"You're him, right?"
It was a question, but not really. It was the kind of question asked by someone who already knew the answer. Thus, instead of waiting for a reply, she sprang into action. With a light tap against the ground, her body shot across the intersection.
Ching!
Drawing her sword, she dashed forward, weaving past the people standing in the intersection. Viewed from above, her path would have traced a smooth, elegant curve.
She lunged, moving through the crowd like a clever serpent. Having threaded through the mass of people, the serpent's fangs transformed into a cold blade, thrusting straight toward the space between Encrid's brows.
Whoosh.
Naturally, the blade failed to find its mark. Encrid sidestepped, slashing Penna upward.
His newly received sword was not yet familiar to his hand. He couldn't afford to gamble by drawing an unfamiliar weapon against an opponent of this caliber.
Swoosh.
Penna failed to find its mark as well. He had read the exact moment of impact and slashed along an unavoidable trajectory, but his opponent had anticipated the move and retreated. Before he knew it, she had positioned herself beneath a tent with its support pillars erected and its roof rolled up.
Deep shadows shrouded half of the swordswoman's body. The slight curl of her lips spoke volumes about her current mood.
‘She's smiling.’
She looked amused. Then, she moved again. Her speed was in no way inferior to Encrid's.
Blades clashed, followed by a flurry of evasive maneuvers. Neither could easily secure a victory, nor did they rush to do so. With their matching speed and insight, predicting each other's next move was an arduous task. Since she was just as capable as Encrid, it became a battle of reading and counter-reading intentions.
Whoosh, clink, scrape, swish.
As if by unspoken agreement, the two swung their swords amidst the crowd. Yet, not a single soul was harmed.
Penna grazed the air just above the head of the dazed boy staring blankly forward. Thanks to Encrid's restrained movements and perfect control of force, only a gentle breeze stirred the boy's hair. Sensing the presence of the two who had already dashed past, the child ducked his head and patted his hair in confusion, but they were already far behind him.
The opponent's blade swept over the shoulder of an old woman walking at a snail's pace. Since it hadn't even grazed her, the old woman merely paused and tilted her head in confusion.
"Huh?"
It wasn't that no one noticed the fight. It was just that they couldn't quite comprehend what they were seeing. A baker preparing bread in the early morning blinked. Did something just pass by?
In truth, it was difficult to get a proper look. Because they moved without stopping, something would flash into view and vanish in the blink of an eye. It almost looked as if they had agreed to play a game of tag, weaving through the crowd.
The only problem was that the players held swords. Because they swung their blades incessantly, it was impossible to take in the whole picture, leaving onlookers utterly bewildered.
"Is that... a fight?"
Naturally, those were the kinds of murmurs that arose.
Encrid knew that fighting in the middle of the market put him at a disadvantage. If his opponent targeted the bystanders, he would have to fight while protecting them. The swordswoman was skillfully utilizing the crowd as human shields. Though Encrid held the advantage in raw strength, this was a terrible battlefield to unleash it.
‘My tactical positioning is terrible.’
To avoid this exact scenario when fighting the demon One-Killer, he had deliberately drawn the creature's attention first, ensuring it couldn't look anywhere else. The swordswoman before him now possessed a far greater understanding of tactics than One-Killer.
Did individual duels lack tactics? No. Not only did they exist, but they were abundant. Every effort to exploit environmental factors and seize even the slightest advantage fell under the domain of tactics.
‘She's better than me.’
After a few clashes, Encrid knew one thing for certain: his opponent knew how to utilize her surroundings to secure the upper hand. Right now, every single person around her served as her shield. Conversely, for Encrid, everyone around him became a burden he had to protect.
Yet, he did not view them merely as a burden. If he had, he would never have sworn his oath to protect everything behind his back in the first place.
‘Time to calculate.’
Thought Acceleration, Thought Partitioning, and the Wave-Blocking Sword—these were not merely for defense; they were tools to train his mind.
Since returning to the Border Guard, he had spent time training alongside his comrades. Had he learned nothing during that time? Far from it. Though he was slow—a trait Rem had once described as a "wonderfully annoying talent"—Encrid kept moving forward, step by step. And he had gained something from it.
He was expanding the domain of his Wave-Blocking Sword. To do this, he had borrowed a portion of Sachsen's specialty.
"You expand the domain of your senses to create your own territory."
Just as Sachsen had said, Encrid did something similar. What entered his eyes, what reached his ears, the scents in his nose, the sensations on his skin—he channeled everything into his sixth sense to predict what would happen next. He absorbed all surrounding information in an instant, calculating and recalculating it in his mind.
‘An awl pierces a circle.’
He linked the thought process of the Wave-Blocking Sword to the secondary benefits he had gained while training it. In other words, he was seeing the future through calculation.
‘Thought Acceleration allows me to see further than my opponent.’
His eyes burned, and a sudden nosebleed trickled down, brushing his upper lip. To pull this off, several conditions had to be met.
First, it had to be a familiar place. Otherwise, there would be too many variables to calculate, and his head would literally split open. Second, he had to know his own limits.
‘If I overdo it, I'll pass out.’
A human brain would fry if overheated. He had already experienced this firsthand.
Encrid was now executing both conditions flawlessly. Though he didn't frequent the Border Guard's market often, the path was familiar. Second, regulating his limits was something he had done countless times through his endless repetitions of "today." The key was regulation and control, and when it came to controlling Will, Encrid was the greatest of all madmen.
Thud.
He stamped his foot against the ground. It was a deliberate move. With that, the eyes of the crowd gathered on him. Calculation was a game of probability.
He drew several lines in his mind beforehand. Instead of choosing a path that merely evaded and gained a minor advantage, he pulled in a future of direct collision. It was a process of cornering his opponent to a point where she could not escape.
Encrid summoned the future he saw in his mind into the present.
Sensing the crowd's attention shifting toward him, he stepped to the side. It was an incomparably slower pace than before. Misinterpreting this sudden variation in his high-speed movement as an opening, his opponent's blade flashed toward him. It came from his back left. Encrid smoothly twisted his waist, drawing his sword along the shortest possible path.
‘Here, I'll use the new sword.’
With his left hand, he drew his newly received sword halfway, using it as a shield. If his opponent retracted her blade here, he would immediately pursue and strike. Knowing this, she could neither retract her sword nor attempt any other trick.
Clang!
It was an intentional noise. At the roaring clash of steel on steel, someone finally screamed.
"It's a fight!"
Back when his anxiety had peaked, Krais had made the residents of the Border Guard undergo evacuation drills. It was to ensure no one would end up dead from a stray blade while standing idly by. At the time, some citizens had cursed him for making them do useless work, but the moment they heard the clash, they swiftly ducked into houses and slipped inside shops.
"Call the guards!" someone else shouted.
"Our time is short, isn't it?"
Realizing she had been outmaneuvered, the swordswoman spoke. Even so, she didn't seem particularly disappointed that her human shields were scattering. She didn't grab anyone to use as a meat shield, either. She was a knight. Or at least, someone of comparable skill.
Instead of responding to her words, Encrid sheathed the half-drawn sword.
Click.
It was smooth when drawn, and just as smooth when sheathed. It truly deserved to be called a masterpiece. Even the scabbard felt like an extension of the blade itself, showing the meticulous care put into its finish. If he lacked confidence in winning or if a moment of dire peril arose, he would have drawn the new sword regardless of whether he was used to it.
‘Penna is enough.’
Since he didn't feel like he would lose, Encrid chose not to switch.
Strangely, her face looked somewhat familiar. Yet, he couldn't quite recall where he had seen her. No matter how good he was at remembering faces, considering all the "todays" he had lived through, it was impossible to remember every single person he had ever crossed paths with.
"Your tactical thinking is excellent. You judged the battlefield to be disadvantageous and eliminated that disadvantage, didn't you?"
The swordswoman spoke again, and Encrid nodded. The mere fact that she hadn't targeted the fleeing civilians made her worthy of a response.
"And you're confident enough that you can take me down? Is that half-drawn sword one you just received? You must have changed your other weapon recently too, right? You're using it because it compensates for the disadvantage in length, and seeing how it's single-edged, it must be specialized for slashing?"
Her questions contained their own answers. In other words, she wasn't actually demanding a reply. The woman lowered her sword. Its blade was exceptionally white. From their single clash earlier, he already knew that her sword was no ordinary weapon.
"I wonder what the others are doing right now?" she suddenly asked. "Did I come here alone?"
Whether it was a habit or not, everything she said was phrased as a question.
"Probably not. No, definitely not."
Even when she wasn't asking, her tone was highly suggestive, but the underlying meaning of her words was crystal clear.
"Who are you?" Encrid asked.
If she hadn't come alone, it meant others were being attacked as well. In that case, it sounded like they were targeting the Border Guard rather than just him. Her identity was hard to guess; he had too little information. But he could always ask more later. Of course, he would have to beat her half to death first.
"Who do you think I am?"
She asked as she moved again. As if she, too, had found the human shields cumbersome, her footwork was even faster than when they first clashed. Leaving afterimages behind, her blade turned into a streak of light, slicing through the air as it lunged.
Encrid did not stop his calculations. He pushed his brain to overheat even further to see ahead of his opponent. He calculated the probabilities and found the most optimal path. Perhaps this was the very method to make every single strike the correct answer.
His overheated brain searched for the solution. Reading his enemy's intent through the trajectory of the incoming blade, he chose his response. His trained muscles served as excellent tools to support his accelerated thoughts.
Clang!
Once again, their blades met and parted. His opponent possessed formidable strength, enough to make Encrid's grip tingle.
"You're incredibly strong, aren't you?" she asked, seemingly surprised, though her voice sounded stretched out. It was because she was already moving again, dashing dynamically even as she spoke.
Calculating the probabilities amidst the flashing blades, Encrid felt a surge of pure ecstasy even as blood streamed from his nose. In truth, he was having so much fun that it felt as if his brain were slowly melting.