Chapter 435
Chapter 435
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Translator: Ryuma
Chapter: 435
Chapter Title: Moon Shadow
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"Galatrick Style."
The swordsmanship created by the greatest swordsman of all time had branched into countless variations over hundreds of years. Passing through the hands of innumerable swordsmen, it diverged into diverse forms and techniques.
If one were to describe its shape, it would be like a massive tree.
A tree that begins from a single root stretches its branches in all directions. Some branches bloom into beautiful flowers, while others wither and fall as leaves. Some branches stray from the path and are pruned away, but regardless, the branches continue to reach toward the sky.
"Modified."
In their own forms.
Blossoming in their own ways. Diverging. And thus, the flowers bloomed on those extended branches might look entirely different from the very first flower.
"Sixth Form."
Different shapes, different colors, different scents.
Even if they had strayed far from the origin...
'That's why it's the Galatrick Style.'
He, too, was a flower bloomed from the Galatrick Style.
A flower on the highest-reaching branch. The swordsman who bloomed that flower gave it a name.
Galatrick Style, Modified.
Sixth Form: Moon Shadow.
Kalt's sword scattered moonlight.
The sword aura traced an eerie trajectory. Shadows fell along the path of the blade. The blade was the moon hanging in the sky, and the ground was a mirror reflecting it.
Kiiing.
The moment their swords clashed, Kuntel furrowed his brow. It didn't feel like his sword was being deflected or parried. What he felt through his palm gripping the hilt was an uncanny sensation, and what his narrowed eyes saw was his own blade tip pointing somewhere entirely different.
Whoosh.
Kuntel's sword, aimed at Kalt's shoulder and swinging downward, was suddenly pointing at the empty sky when he came to his senses. The sword's trajectory had twisted. The path of the blade had warped.
...How?
It wasn't a slide along the flat of the blade. Nor was it a deflection. Even as he felt the strangeness, Kuntel swung his sword. This time, with more force, more powerfully. Steadier.
Kiiiiing!
This time, the sound rang out louder.
It wasn't the clash of blades or the scrape along the edge... it was like the sound of drawing out sword aura. Kuntel's brow furrowed deeper. His narrowed eyes fixed on the point of collision.
The space at that point was warping.
The instant their swords met, Kalt's sword aura rippled. The shadow of the sword on the ground shimmered. An incomprehensible sword. An incomprehensible technique. Yet even so, Kuntel responded immediately.
Sching.
No matter how the trajectory twisted or what stance it forced him into, Kuntel delivered a perfect strike. But it no longer overwhelmed Kalt completely. One step forward, one step back. Their footprints stamped chaotically into the earth.
...Moon Shadow was a sword meant to face Kuntel.
Kalt exhaled shortly.
He had buttoned the first step toward victory. Bloodshot veins rose in Kalt's wide eyes. A smile formed at the corner of his mouth.
"Here I come."
Behold, this is my sword.
2.
Moon Shadow, the moon's shadow.
Kalt didn't know how to wield the Galatrick Style's Sixth Form. After all, no one else had ever reproduced it. But he understood the essence contained within the technique.
'It's not limited to deflecting or parrying... it's swordsmanship that advances beyond that.'
Twist the opponent's sword path.
Before the sword can draw a perfect line, before its power fully manifests, change its direction. To do that requires perfect prediction and the skill to interfere with the trajectory of the opponent's blade.
'Prediction, I could always do.'
Kalt was born with the talent of a tracker.
In reading opponents' habits and predicting actions, no one surpassed Kalt, so he always met the first condition.
'What I lacked was skill.'
Physical prowess and sword aura output.
Kalt knew what he lacked. Knowing that, he had searched for a way to compensate. At the end of that search, he found his answer. Perhaps that answer came from a clue provided by the mage who had been closest to him.
"Magic is a tool."
"A tool that fills what I can't do, what I lack. Or part of my body. Isn't your sword aura similar? To me, it doesn't look all that different from magic."
The form of his sword aura was moonlight.
When he tilted the sword cloaked in moonlight at an angle, a long shadow stretched across the ground. A shadow that changed shape with the angle. There, Kalt found his answer.
'Sword aura is a tool. A tool that can change form as needed.'
Transform it as much as you need.
Moon Shadow. Like the moon's shadow rippling.
Kwajik!
Kalt stomped the ground and rapidly rolled his eyes. He saw Kuntel's ceaseless sword swings right before him and predicted them. Kuntel's habits in life. The unique movements of his pieced-together body.
Observation yielded perfect prediction.
Kalt glimpsed the sword path visible to Kuntel's eyes with his own. Kalt's sword intervened in the path Kuntel traced. A sword that should have been pushed back by the difference in skill...
Kiiiing!
The moment the new moon-shaped sword aura wrapped around Kuntel's sword path, it shook. Like the moon's reflection rippling in a lake, Kuntel's path bent following the sword aura. The blade tip pointed somewhere else entirely.
Sslash.
Watching Kuntel's sword cut through empty air, Kalt pressed forward another step. The moon's shadow rippled, changing form once more. Kalt smoothly deflected Kuntel's sharply thrusting blade, twisting its trajectory.
Thud.
Kalt kicked off the ground and advanced.
For the first time in their back-and-forth of one step forward, one step back, Kalt took two steps ahead. For the first time, Kuntel retreated two steps.
The distance closed.
Kalt's sword, swung precariously close to the ground, raked across Kuntel's forearm. For the first time, with a shaaak, blood stained Kalt's blade.
Sching.
Not missing the momentum, Kalt pressed Kuntel relentlessly. Blood sprayed long each time the sword aura flashed. No less than Kalt, who had bled from countless glancing blows, Kuntel now began to bleed all over.
Plip plip.
Blood sprayed with every swing.
Even when Kalt twisted his path, Kuntel stubbornly straightened it and carved wounds into Kalt's body along that path. Seizing the gaps created in that exchange, Kalt swung back, etching wounds into Kuntel's body.
Blood flew with every strike exchanged.
None were fatal, but none were light either. Before long, the ground where they trod was pooled with blood matching their footprints.
Kaaaaaaaang!
The clash of swords.
Kiiiing!
The twist of sword trajectories.
Plip plip.
The sounds of spraying blood lingered endlessly. In the blink of an exhale, five strikes were exchanged. Kagagagang, sparks flew from the blades.
From above, left, right, below, and all around, facing the downpour of strikes, Kalt gritted his teeth. In this moment where missing even one meant death, Kalt continued to hone himself.
Sharper, more precise, more daring.
Only now could he finally clash blades.
Only now could he finally stand in the same arena as that noble swordsman, seeing the same scenery and swinging his sword. He couldn't allow this moment to be tarnished by carelessness or mistakes—no way.
Grind.
Kalt gritted his teeth.
The opponent he must break, in front of his benefactor—Kalt laid bare everything he had. He displayed before his master all he had built over a lifetime.
Sslash.
Kalt's sword raked a long gash across Kuntel's shoulder.
Blood sprayed far. In the instant the arcing blood obscured Kalt's vision, Kuntel's extended blade pierced his shoulder. Kalt's sword swept upward, blocking the downward slash. Blood mixed with blood.
...Kuntel, too, acknowledged the swordsman before him as a worthy adversary.
No unnecessary sentiments for the disciple he had raised remained in the current Kuntel. What he showed now was respect toward the swordsman staking everything. The utmost praise for a worthy foe.
Kuntel exhaled deeply.
His fingers gripping the sword cracked and popped loudly.
Chaaaaaaaang!
What followed was a massive surge of sword aura.
Kalt succeeded in twisting even that, but had to retreat greatly. As he exhaled and prepared to charge at Kuntel again, Kalt flinched and halted for a moment.
Guwoong.
The air was trembling.
As the dust from the sword aura cleared, it revealed Kuntel slowly raising his sword. The aura was different from before.
A single sword aligned straight with the sky.
Kuntel, holding it, narrowed his eyes.
Just as the swordsman before him had shown everything he had, Kuntel would now show everything he possessed. The moment their gazes met, Kalt suddenly realized.
It's coming.
The strike to end this duel was coming.
3.
The sword raised toward the sky.
The blade perpendicular to the heavens gleamed silver-white. Kuntel's sword aura, settled into the blade, emitted a low sword cry. At the sword's wail, the rolling stones and dirt fragments on the ground trembled faintly.
The air quivered.
Space creaked.
The settling dust along the sword pointing to the sky surged upward. The rising dust coiled around the blade, whipping into a storm.
'...I can't see it.'
Gazing at Kuntel's sword, Kalt smiled bitterly.
The strike Kuntel was preparing, the sword path Kuntel saw—it was invisible to Kalt's eyes. Just as Kuntel couldn't comprehend Kalt's Moon Shadow, Kalt couldn't comprehend Kuntel's sharpest strike.
However, even so.
'What I have to do doesn't change.'
Kalt gripped his sword.
Exhaling deeply, he slammed his foot down with a thud. The moon's shadow stretching on the ground rippled and rose. From new moon to half-moon, half to full.
Kalt's sword shone more brilliantly than ever.
Exhaling, Kalt widened his eyes.
He no longer read Kuntel's sword path. What Kalt saw now was solely his own path, permitted only to him.
...The path of the sword, the sword road.
Transcendent swordsmen all say the same thing.
The moment you grip the hilt and point the tip at your target to cut, the path the sword must take becomes visible.
Someone called that path an extension of superhuman senses. They claimed it was a form of foresight born from accumulated experience and long training, fused with superhuman perception.
That claim wasn't wrong.
'But that's not all of it.'
Kalt knew that wasn't the entirety of the sword road.
A swordsman is one who speaks with the sword. One who lives by the sword. Thus, if there is a path the sword must take, it must surely be...
'The path of my life.'
The very essence of a swordsman's existence.
The path he had walked was the path of his sword. Looking back along that path, at its starting point stood the great founder of the Galatrick Style. And right behind him stood Kuntel. Between them stood countless swordsmen.
A path continued and connected.
Gazing at that path, Kalt now looked ahead. Before him stretched an endless wasteland. The path he must continue. Tearing his eyes from the path, Kalt looked at the present.
There lay the enemy he must cut down.
In his hand was gripped the hilt.
"Ah."
Kalt smiled.
"I see it."
The path of the sword was visible.
The one path leading to victory.