Chapter 97
Chapter 97
Ch. 97 .｡.:✧ Dakia’s Sword (1) ✧:.｡.
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Translated By Arcane Translations
Translator: FusionX
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Learning the secret technique was important, but to win the duel, he first needed to research his opponent.
Of course, there was no time to gather information through inquiries, so he decided to analyze what he could gather quickly.
Perhaps because Elvenguard high warriors were a rather inconspicuous bunch, the name Rex didn’t ring a bell even after 12 loops.
“His name is Rex. He trained in the Merida Style swordsmanship after his brother, who was also a high warrior, died. Two years ago, he became a high warrior and led a force of 50 soldiers. He was clearing dungeons north of Elvenguard and just returned today…”
“What bad luck, running into him on the day he returned.”
“Look who’s talking… This is all your fault. Anyway, why did you kill his brother?”
“Do you remember how many pieces of bread you’ve eaten in your life? Can you recall the shape of the bread you ate three years ago today? Or the circumstances? No, you can’t. It’s the same thing.”
“…!”
This bastard.
They killed people as casually as eating bread?
Suddenly, the world spun.
He had made up his mind.
He needed to ditch Transylvania after learning the secret technique.
After hundreds of years of killing people as easily as eating bread, it was only natural that people filled with resentment would be after them wherever they went.
It wouldn’t be strange if someone picked a fight with them while they were just walking down the street.
“Try to remember.”
“Why bother? It’ll all be over once you cut him down in the duel.”
“Then his younger brother will become a high warrior and come to kill me!”
“Then you kill him too.”
“…!”
He couldn’t get through to them.
It was only natural for someone who had lived as a rogue their whole life.
If possible, he wanted to persuade Rex with words.
He didn’t care about Rex’s grudge against Transylvania, but at least he wanted to clear up the misunderstanding about Yulia.
Of course, the chances of that working were slim, so he’d have to beat him into submission first.
“Just try to remember. It’s important.”
“Well… I’ll try. But first, I need to see your sword.”
Transylvania brushed off his request and sat cross-legged, causing their hoodie to ride up slightly, revealing black boxer shorts underneath.
Fortunately, it was too dark to see clearly.
He thanked his poor eyesight as he drew the sword disguised as a bag.
“It’s still fascinating. I’ve never encountered disguise magic that I couldn’t detect.”
“You want to see my sword? Do you mean you want to see the 0th to 14th forms of the Dakia Style?”
“Show me freely. Imagine your opponent is in front of you. You can even link the forms.”
A swordsmanship demonstration in front of the founder of the Dakia Style’s secret technique…
It was a bit embarrassing, but there was no helping it.
“Haa…”
He took a deep breath and channeled his magic power throughout his body, sparing no expense.
Then he assumed a stance based on the 0th form and charged forward with a thrust.
He followed it up with a sidestep and a horizontal slash.
Without pausing, he twisted his sword and delivered three vertical strikes.
He showcased his ability to advance and press his opponent, as well as to retreat and control the distance.
Of course, throughout this, the speed of his swings never slowed down, only accelerating.
Although he had learned three different swordsmanship styles, he had started with the Dakia Style and found it the most useful, so his sword was also crafted for the Dakia Style.
Outwardly, it might look like he was swinging his sword wildly with brute force, but his center of gravity barely shifted.
He swung the sword purely with his wrist strength, and even with that minimal effort, the tip of his blade broke the sound barrier, creating a chilling sonic boom.
From the 0th form to the 14th form, he showcased them all roughly once or twice through continuous combos.
He finished with an imitation of the secret technique, the long-range slash, that Transylvania had shown him.
“Ugh…”
He tried his best to replicate it, but the wind generated by his sword only shook the water bottle in the distance slightly.
It neither sliced it nor knocked it over.
Swallowing his bitter disappointment, he turned around to see Transylvania still in the same position, their expression unchanged.
For some reason, Undecided, who was sitting next to them, was also frozen stiff.
“So? How was it? Why aren’t you saying anything?”
“Hmm. I admit, I underestimated you. Judging by your physique, I assumed you were a novice who had only been holding a sword for three months. But now I see you’ve been training for about two years.”
“…”
Ah.
They thought he had been training for two years?
It had actually been 12 years.
His experience had been reduced to a sixth of its actual length.
But he didn’t bother correcting them.
It was too embarrassing.
“There might be some hope for you after all!”
Transylvania stood up abruptly.
They unwrapped the bandages, revealing a worn wooden scabbard, and drew a single-edged sword in a flash.
The Dakia Style was originally meant for single-edged swords, but it seemed it didn’t matter if he used a double-edged sword, as he wasn’t criticized for it.
“Shall we begin then? With the basics.”
“What? The basics?”
“Your basics are a mess. I told you, geniuses adapt swordsmanship to their bodies. You did adapt it to your body, but… you twisted it in a bizarre way. We need to start from the basics.”
“B-but, in three days? Is that even possible?”
“It might be if we don’t sleep.”
He was screwed.
He was losing his motivation before they even started.
He was being told to rebuild his basics, which he had spent 12 years solidifying…
“Well, since you’ve only been holding a sword for three months, it should be quick to fix. In a way, that’s fortunate. Now! Stop spacing out! Hold your sword properly!”
“Ah…”
He was truly screwed.
The secret technique training was brutal and merciless.
He didn’t realize that fixing his basics meant changing everything from start to finish.
From his breathing to the angle of his toes and his gaze…
It was driving him crazy.
That didn’t mean it was inflexible.
Naturally, a swordsman’s stance had to be fluid, adapting to the situation, terrain, and opponent.
It seemed Transylvania didn’t intend to fix anything except for the parts that were abnormally twisted.
But even then, fixing his already twisted basics was an incredibly difficult task.
It was a swordsmanship he had honed for 12 years.
He could swing his sword even in his sleep, and it was ingrained to the point where it would come out automatically even when he was thinking about something else.
It was impossible to fix it overnight.
Still, he kept swinging his sword, adjusting his posture until his joints ached and his muscles cramped.
It took 24 hours to solidify his basics and correct forms 0 to 14.
He thought he was finally ready to learn the secret technique, but…
“Hmm. It’s no use. It’s not fixed at all. It’s like the body of an 80-year-old man. Even if I correct it, he’ll just go back to holding the sword his own way.”
“…”
Transylvania had given up.
They said it wasn’t fixed?
After making him suffer for 24 hours, that was what they had to say?
“What am I supposed to do then?”
“Hmm… Give up?”
“Hey.”
“Hahaha. Just kidding, just kidding. I guess there’s no other choice. We can only pray that you can learn the secret technique even with those bizarre basics.”
“…”
They tried to laugh it off, but Transylvania’s expression was clouded with darkness.
He knew it too.
That he would never master the secret technique.
“We only have two days left. Just teach me the long-range slash.”
“Long-range slash? You’ll never learn the secret technique with that approach. Let me rephrase. The secret technique of the Dakia Style starts with the concept of expanding the range of your attack.”
“Isn’t that the same thing?”
“You damn…”
Why couldn’t they just explain it properly?
The concept of expanding the range of attack?
What did that even mean?
It was like a Zen riddle.
“Your attitude is far worse than I expected. Can I give up now?”
“Don’t be ridiculous. You need to explain it better.”
“Even if I explain it better… the secret technique of the Dakia Style is summed up in one sentence: ‘Expand the range of your attack.’ Anything I add to that is just superfluous and distorts the meaning.”
Expand the range of attack…
Did that mean it wasn’t just limited to slashing at a distant enemy?
It was still unclear.
“Are you sure you’re the one who created the secret technique? Why is your explanation so unhelpful?”
“I didn’t create it. I inherited and refined it. But there’s no phrase that’s more concise and accurate in describing the secret technique-”
“Then bring the one who created it. He’ll probably be better at explaining it.”
“He’s already dead. That’s why I inherited and perfected it.”
“…”
They weren’t even the original creator?
He wished he could just resurrect the original creator with necromancy and learn directly from him.
At least he would be better than this one.
“I think you’re too dumb to understand it with your head. It might be faster to just move your body and learn by feel.”
“That… might be true.”
He was about to retort, but then he calmed down.
Indeed, trying to understand and grasp the secret technique of swordsmanship with his head was a shameless mindset.
Even if that was possible, understanding it with his head and actually executing it with his body were two different things.
“Just copy me. Try to copy my movements as closely as possible. If you can’t achieve enlightenment with your head, you just have to endlessly repeat it with your body until you stumble upon it. At some point, you’ll feel something different. Dig into that feeling.”
Transylvania stood beside him, assuming a stance similar to the 0th form.
Then, with a sonic boom, his blade sliced through the air, and the gust of wind generated by their sword ripped through the water bottle, cutting it in half.
“So you create a straight and powerful wind with your blade.”
“What? Wind?! No! That’s not it!”
“It is.”
“It wasn’t originally… Ugh. Well, if that’s how you understand it, I can’t really refute it. It’s not technically wrong. For now, try swinging with the intention of creating wind.”
After their initial outburst, Transylvania sighed resignedly and stepped back.
Did they just give up on him?
They seemed to.
‘What does ‘expanding the range of attack’ even mean? Damn swordsmanship guys, they sure love acting cool…’
Bang. Boom.
Every time he swung his sword, a sonic boom similar to the one Transylvania had produced echoed through the room.
But the effects that followed were completely different.
He thought he had perfectly matched Transylvania’s posture, breathing, and movements.
Even if they reviewed the video footage, the judges would declare them to be identical movements.
But the wind produced by his blade only cut through the air slightly before dispersing.
He didn’t feel anything different from usual.
“Is that really all there is to it? Don’t you have anything else to teach me?”
“That’s it. Now it’s a matter of your inner self.”
Bang. Boom.
He tried slightly twisting the angle of his blade, lifting his heel, narrowing his shoulders, and every other trick he could think of, but the results were the same.
Or rather, he was only getting more lost.
Of course, he didn’t expect to master the secret technique in just a few hours, but being told to figure it out on his own after just one demonstration and the vague concept of ‘expanding the range of attack’…
This wasn’t a college textbook, the pace was way too fast.
“You seem too fixated on replicating the exact form. There’s no need to match your stance perfectly to mine. Once you grasp the secret technique, you’ll be able to cut through anything beyond the sword’s reach, regardless of your stance or the sword you use.”
“Why are you telling me this now?!”
After about three hours of mindlessly swinging his sword, Transylvania, who seemed to be getting impatient, picked up their sword and began demonstrating the long-range slash in various stances.
They even did it with one hand.
It was only then that he realized.
The secret technique wasn’t a specific move, was it?
That meant it didn’t require a specific stance.
‘This isn’t some Buddhist training, what the hell.’
So if he achieved ‘enlightenment’, he would be able to freely shoot out sword slashes like magic…
What kind of concept was this?
Did it even make sense?
“…Water.”
“Haa.”
After gulping down the water Undecided handed him, he swung his sword again.
Endlessly.
Mindlessly.
Now that he knew the stance wasn’t important, he tried changing it to suit him, but… no matter how he changed it, it just felt wrong.
He didn’t feel any closer to mastering the secret technique.
‘This is a complete failure.’
On the second day, he realized it.
That he was not the kind of person who could master a secret technique.
But Transylvania, who was watching him from the corner, was acting strangely.
He thought they had given up on him long ago, but… they had been sitting upright, watching him the whole time.
“What are you staring at? Keep practicing.”
“…!”
If they thought something was wrong, they should point it out.
Why were they just silently watching him?
This didn’t feel good.
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‘What is that?’
Bang. Boom.
The blade endlessly cut through the air in the spacious warehouse.
Transylvania couldn’t tear their eyes away from the shimmering tip of the sword.
‘It’s like…’
It was strange.
He seemed desperate to imitate Transylvania’s sword, but his movements weren’t remotely similar.
At first, he had only been swinging his sword awkwardly, with an awkward stance.
It looked like just ordinary practice swings.
But every time he swung his sword, a subtle change occurred.
A small change that even Transylvania could barely discern after observing for a while.
There was no way the one swinging the sword could notice it.
The change brought about by that subtle crack was simple.
The movements that had initially been mere imitations of Transylvania’s sword were gradually becoming his own.
The awkwardness was fading, replaced by a sense of mastery.
And that wasn’t a good sign.
…In a normal case.
In swordsmanship, arbitrarily reinterpreting and modifying a form was considered taboo.
If one did such a thing, the connection between different forms would be ruined.
But what if someone had the ability to modify all of the forms and make them their own after mastering them all?
That would be the realm of creation, not just modification.
It was rare geniuses like that who created new schools of swordsmanship and established entirely new styles.
Was Yoo-jin one of those geniuses?
No, absolutely not.
Yoo-jin was so far from mastering the connection between forms that he hadn’t even mastered the first step, the basics.
That was why Transylvania had been so surprised when they first saw Yoo-jin demonstrate the linked movements of the forms.
Those messy movements, those inefficient, broken forms, were actually connected.
It wasn’t clean, but it worked.
It was unbelievable.
How could different forms, each adapted to an individual’s physique, be linked in such a way?
It was either an incredible coincidence or the extreme of inefficiency achievable only through over 10 years of constant struggle.
It wasn’t the stubbornness of someone who had only held a sword for a day or two.
They might have thought he needed to fix it, but his body didn’t agree.
Knowing that any attempts to fix it would be quickly undone, Transylvania had given up on correcting the basics early on.
They simply let Yoo-jin’s swordsmanship, with its ruined efficiency, stamina, and everything else, remain as it was.
That was why even when Yoo-jin tried to imitate them, his movements were completely different.
No matter how hard he tried, it would only be a slightly flawed copy.
‘Uh…?’
Movements that resembled Transylvania’s but were fundamentally different.
As they followed the tip of Yoo-jin’s blade, Transylvania felt a strange sense of deja vu.
‘A copy?’
They had seen this swordsmanship before.
It wasn’t just simple deja vu.
A long-forgotten memory, buried in their subconscious, was slowly resurfacing.
Transylvania rummaged through the depths of their memory, struggling to pinpoint the source of that memory.
Finally, they remembered.
The swordsmanship of the founder.
Dakia’s sword.
The sword that Transylvania had imitated.
‘Which one is the copy?’
Transylvania’s sword was an imitation of the late Dakia’s sword.
They had incompletely refined the secret technique that Dakia had left unfinished.
They had forgotten that fact until now.
At first glance, it seemed perfect and flawless, but Transylvania’s Dakia Style secret technique was merely a cheap copy.
They had initially thought that it would be ideal if Yoo-jin could perfectly copy this replica, but…
That thought was now wavering.
‘It’s like…’
The quality of a copy should deteriorate with each subsequent copy.
A copy of a copy should be even more flawed.
But somehow, Yoo-jin’s swordsmanship was starting to resemble Dakia’s sword more and more.
‘It’s like Dakia’s sword.’
The sword that Transylvania had pursued their entire life was now being manifested through the hands of a stranger.
By copying a copy, the original had emerged.
It was a strange phenomenon.
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