Disarm
Enlightenment.
It was the act of recognizing one's own shortcomings. Of knowing them, accepting them—and through that acceptance, growing deeper still.
Like the common expression of "breaking through a wall," it meant discovering what had always existed beyond that wall, and thereby expanding one's world by another layer.
Enlightenment came only to those who hungered for it, only to those who remained open. Naturally, if a person believed themselves complete—if every path forward and back was sealed shut—enlightenment would never arrive.
This was how Wilhelm defined enlightenment.
To hunger endlessly, to be greedy—and yet to set oneself down.
…Huh.
And yet, right before my eyes, enlightenment was taking place.
The man who had claimed he would teach me was instead receiving a lesson of his own. I stopped everything I was doing and simply watched Raiga.
He stood with his sword locked against mine, eyes closed. Like a freeze-frame, he did not move a single muscle. Only the energy rising in soft, billowing waves from his entire body bloomed gently outward, accepting the world.
He was connecting.
He was seizing hold of a sudden flash of insight before it could slip away.
And when those thread-thin strands of energy finally reached me as well—
I want to live…
For an instant, I thought I heard Raiga's voice.
I want to live. I don't want to die like this.
For the first time, he had cast his own voice—his will—out into the open. He had pretended to accept death with humility, but the truth was that he had wanted to live. By recognizing his own insufficiency and accepting it, he had come to desire life.
A door sealed shut for long years finally opened.
From the setting of the sun until the rising of the moon.
"…Mm."
For more than half a day, I waited in silence while he opened that door. I spread my mana so that nothing could approach and no sound could reach him. Only when full night had fallen did he open his eyes.
The moment he did, the pupils that found me trembled violently.
"Did you… wait for me?"
"Congratulations."
"…Thank you."
Raiga drew a deep breath. Thank you. He could not even remember the last time he had used those words. But he meant them—truly.
Enlightenment was a fleeting thing, always racing past like an arrow. Fail to seize that instant, fail to grasp every last thread of it, and there was no telling when it would come again. Yet that kind of concentration could shatter from a single small movement, a single breath. For a powerhouse like Raiga, it was even more so.
Knowing that, I had stopped with him and waited. It would have been impossible without absolute focus on my opponent. And remaining motionless in that same posture for more than half a day—that, too, was no small feat of endurance.
"It was only what I should have done."
And not only that. Even the words he chose sat so well. He must have been itching and uncomfortable the entire time, and yet—
Perhaps that was why. For the first time since his master, Raiga felt something like genuine fondness for another person.
I believed I had reached the absolute realm of the Heart Sword—but I had not even properly achieved Unity.
A swordsman's path held many stages. Among them, the realm called the Heart Sword—or the Swordless—was a term reserved for those who had become an Absolute. Raiga had grasped the Heart Sword on the border between life and death, and so he had believed himself an Absolute. Only now did he understand that he had not even achieved the unity of essence, energy, and spirit.
The problem with the Palga's secret art—the Opening of the 5th Gate—is that the unity of essence, energy, and spirit never flows smoothly.
…And so proper energy accumulation never took hold, and opening the 5th Gate led straight to death.
At last, he had grasped the flaw in the Palga. He even had a rough idea of how to fix it.
Connection. Infinite, unbroken connection.
"…"
Raiga parted his lips, then closed them again. But he steeled himself and asked the boy before him:
"…Can you teach me the rest of the Sutra of Life and Death?"
The Knot.
To bind, and to sever.
Raiga's enlightenment had given me the seed of an awakening of my own. When his Knot touched me, there were things I came to understand.
Wilhelm binds. Raiga severs. But only when both exist is the Knot complete.
Wilhelm's swordsmanship bound. He read his opponent, shared their wavelength, and let everything flow through naturally. Infinite circulation. Endlessly binding, and binding again—that was Wilhelm's art. He used his opponent's power, rolling it larger and larger before striking back. The stronger the foe, the more unimaginable the rebound.
Raiga was the complete opposite. He severed the Knot. Before a stance could even form, he shattered the center. He smashed the balance of mind, energy, and body. But severing a Knot was harder than it sounded—and all the more so because it was the total inverse of Wilhelm's swordsmanship.
Once I can fully bind a Knot and fully sever one… I can advance to the next stage.
That conviction settled in me. Sword Mastery Level 35. I would reach the world that lay beyond it.
When my mastery hit Level 35, Disarm appeared in place of Sword Gang.
At Sword Mastery Level 20, you could use Sword Qi. Past Level 30, you could manifest Sword Gang. But after that, I had never known. I never expected a new technique called Disarm to awaken at Level 35.
Even the mere one-hundred-percent increase in damage was absurd enough. Which meant, in other words, that there was still a world beyond that.
Disarm… the power that lets you strike what cannot be struck.
It was not an energy that bloomed outward the way Sword Qi or Sword Gang did. But its capability was absolute. Different from the piercing force that punched through defenses—and in a certain sense, a power that surpassed even that. Absolute evasion. Or the ability to attack something that was simply unattackable. That was Disarm.
In the truest sense of the words: stripping the enemy of their arms.
For example—
"There are things you can see the Knot of, yet still cannot sever. Things with indestructible or invulnerable abilities. Things built entirely on the premise of 'evasion.' Formless spirits fall into that category as well."
Perhaps because I had taught him half of the Sutra of Life and Death, Raiga was now teaching me the study of the Knot. What could be cut, and what could not.
But as I listened, a question rose.
If one reached the realm of Disarm—wouldn't even those things become attackable?
"Then how should one deal with an enemy who possesses true invulnerability—destruction itself made impossible?"
I voiced the curiosity, and Raiga answered.
"There is no such thing as perfect invulnerability. There is almost always a condition that allows destruction, or that undoes the invulnerability. If such a 'gap' exists, you can read the Knot and strike through it."
The Dragon Gods had been like that. Divine beings who possessed only a single weakness. Find that weakness and they became endlessly fragile—but finding it was nearly impossible.
And yet reading the Knot could solve it?
"So if you read the Knot, you don't even need to find the weakness?"
"Indeed. If you truly know how to read the Knot, you can drive into that gap. There is no need to go hunting for a weakness the hard way."
…Suddenly I remembered the hell I had gone through during the Great Expedition, trying to find Isera's weakness. According to Raiga, if you could simply read the Knot and drive into the gap, none of that suffering would have been necessary.
But almost no one truly knew how to read a Knot. No—the only person in this world who could read a Knot and sever it perfectly was probably Raiga himself.
"And if there is no weakness at all?"
"If you meet an enemy like that… run."
Raiga answered as if it were nothing. But that only made me more curious.
Disarm, and the art of severing the Knot. If those two principles were combined… it might actually be possible…
Invulnerability and indestructibility. Perhaps those two unsolved problems could finally be cracked. They were options that had never been overcome in Pangenia. Defense could be pierced with penetration force—but for those two, there had never even been a proper discussion of how to break them. Beyond Pangenia, even most gods were likely ignorant of the method.
…Exploring the unknown.
The fact that something still remained in this Pangenia that I had not yet overcome made my heart pound like mad.
Teach him one thing and he grasps ten—a hundred. He's already awakening to the principles of the Knot.
Raiga watched Hyun and could not stop marveling. The boy absorbed his teachings like a dry sponge—far faster than he had ever expected.
To think I would feel slow…
Raiga was learning from Hyun as well. But compared to the speed at which Hyun mastered things, his own progress felt sluggish.
The art of binding a Knot, and the remaining half of the Sutra of Life and Death. The two were strangely related.
It's the power of Absorption. Connecting to the opponent and taking what is theirs—that is the content of the other half.
The Palga taught only how to sever the Knot. They never taught how to bind one. Having never learned it, he had no idea how to begin. But the answer was close at hand.
Hyun.
Watching the boy, things became clear of their own accord. Things he came to understand.
…What a strange kid.
Like an onion with no end, no matter how many layers you peeled. The desire to see the end of him rose strong. To do that, he would have to overcome the 5th Gate. He would have to keep advancing through enlightenment.
Even if time ran short, he would not give up. Now he had a reason he could not abandon.
Raiga and Hyun. Watching each other, they filled what the other lacked. They learned, and learned, and learned again.
And so, after half a month of ceaseless travel—
"This is the Sanctuary of Honor."
They finally arrived.
The Sanctuary of Honor. …The place where the Palga had been sealed.
The Sanctuary of Honor was enclosed by a vast palace. This was a place where one proved one's own worth and received recognition. Because those who believed themselves honorable came seeking it, the grounds thronged with people.
The method of confirming one's qualification at the Sanctuary was simple. One swore an oath before the chalice named Honor. One asked to be measured.
"I, Amurum, stand before you by the right of a King! Acknowledge my worth, O Chalice of Honor!"
A man named Amurum—who had conquered several cities by pure strength alone—shouted before the chalice.
Whooooosh—!
Light poured from the chalice. But the light did not reach Amurum. Instead—
THUD!
…It hurled him back.
Amurum's face flushed purple with rage.
"How dare…! A mere object rejects me!"
Shing—!
The instant he drew his sword in fury—
Slash!
Amurum's head was severed. He never even knew how he died.
"Drawing a weapon in the sacred Sanctuary is punishable by summary execution."
The man who had been guarding the chalice spoke. Yet even the drawing of his own blade had been invisible. Sword-drawing technique refined to its absolute peak.
Then the man looked at Raiga.
"Leave, Lord Raiga. This land is not permitted to you. And moreover…"
Even knowing it was Raiga, the man spoke with open hostility. He glanced at me, then shook his head. The look of someone who already knew exactly why we had come.
At that cold reception, Raiga's expression hardened.
"…Summon all eight elders. Before I smash this place to rubble."
"This is your final warning. I do not fear you."
"Ha! The likes of you?"
Raiga snorted a laugh. Then he shrugged.
"Fine. Kill you, and the rest will show themselves. Judging by the look of things, you seem to be my next successor, so—"
"Stop!"
At that moment, an old man in white martial robes appeared—white hair thick and full. …As if he were an immortal, riding upon a cloud.