Your Village Is Finished! -1
"…I can't see a thing."
A quiet voice drifted through the darkness. With nothing but silence hanging in the thick black fog, even that soft murmur spread wide into the surrounding void.
"Why is there no one at my side?"
The girl's anguished cry went unanswered. Only the bitterly cold wind replied.
The black-haired girl began to walk, trudging forward with heavy steps. She kept going, determined to press on until she met someone—anyone.
Then something caught her foot. She pitched forward and went sprawling.
"Ugh…!"
She clamped a hand over her mouth. It wasn't the fall that made her cry out—no demon ever felt pain from something so trivial. What made her flinch was the shape of the thing she had taken for a root or a stone.
A severed demon arm, lying alone. The ragged, torn stump told her its owner had died a horrible death.
"What in the world happened to this land?!"
With a thunderous crash, she drove her fist into the ground. A massive shockwave erupted outward for five hundred meters in every direction, scattering the black fog—and what it revealed left her stunned.
Demon corpses littered the scorched earth in every direction. The girl could only stare down at the ground and let out a long, heavy sigh.
"If only I had been awake…"
Left alone without the faintest idea of what had befallen the Land of Darkness, the black-haired girl swept her hollow gaze across the ruin, then closed her eyes.
I need to know everything that happened here…
She unfurled a pair of pitch-black wings the same color as her hair. Her destination lay across the sea—the continent. On that land still overflowing with life, the truth would surely be waiting.
Holding that conviction close, the girl rose into the sky.
"Huh…? This isn't the place?"
Having finished our business, we left the village early that morning and set out for the dwarves' settlement. Only Rene knew the location—she'd visited it as a child with Breeze—so we'd asked her to lead the way. And yet even she was lost.
"Th-this is strange! I'm certain it was somewhere around here!"
"It was decades ago. Hard to remember every detail."
"The terrain's shifted since then, too. That makes pinpointing it even harder."
"Or maybe the dwarf uncles just packed up and moved somewhere else!"
I hadn't expected much from the start. Finding the village right away from such old memories would have been the real surprise. So aside from Rene, none of us were particularly rattled. Figuring the search would take a while, we'd already set up tents in advance.
"I'll find it before the day is out, Bern! You just wait right here!"
"Wouldn't it be better if we looked together?"
"Absolutely not! My pride as a memory-keeper is on the line!"
Rene spread her silver wings and shot into the sky. Nothing had turned up from the ground, so she meant to search from above. I watched her go, staring blankly at her retreating figure as she vowed to find it no matter what.
"We'll leave the rest to Lady Rene and take a break. Or, if you'd rather, we could continue yesterday's sparring right here?"
"If we're killing time, the latter sounds better."
"Very well."
I caught the practice iron sword Rin tossed my way.
"I won't go easy on you this time, either."
"Hard to ask for a painless lesson when I'm the one who requested the teaching."
I'd learned something in the Jealousy Dungeon: I didn't know how to use a sword properly. Of course I didn't. Before the possession, I'd been nothing more than a college student drowning in coursework. The only reason I'd managed to fight at all was that this body still remembered swordsmanship. Without conscious thought, it moved on its own and cut along the grain.
But I couldn't lean on Bern's body forever. I needed to understand the blade in my own hands before it would ever truly hit with force. Magic thrived on creativity; swordsmanship demanded that I hone myself. So the day before, I'd asked Rin to teach me. When it came to the sword, even Bern—and Kang Junhyuk, for that matter—had been a step below her.
"Before we begin, have you given any thought to what I asked—what a sword is?"
"Honestly, I'm not sure. As far as I can answer, it's a tool to an ordinary person, and something like a limb to a swordsman."
Trace the sword back far enough and you land on the stone knives of the primitive age. It had always been a tool for cutting things, so that was the only answer I could give.
"Not wrong, but it lacks any personal color. I'd like you to look at the sword more subjectively."
"Hmm. Subjectively…"
"A simple example: to me, the sword is another eye."
"An eye? Don't you sense and judge everything through mana?"
"In daily life, yes—I rely on mana. In combat, it's different. I see my surroundings through the sword and gauge the distance to my target with it."
Rin leveled her iron sword at me. A fierce fighting spirit rose from her like heat, and I felt myself being drawn into her blade. I couldn't know what she felt or saw through it—but at least her words landed as truth.
"Even saying that, it may be hard for you to grasp. Our views of the sword differ. Still, you need to assign your own meaning to it. That is the first step as a swordsman."
"I think I get the idea."
"I'm glad the time was useful, then. Shall we begin?"
"I still haven't given you an answer."
"Sometimes emptying your head and clashing blades is the better path to insight. The world looks different when your body is moving."
"Can't argue with that."
The moment I nodded—
Clang!
I knocked aside the iron sword coming for my throat. A one-sided ambush with no signal, but I couldn't fault her for it. Fights arrive when you least expect them.
"We're not done."
The blade I'd thought I'd deflected came driving in again. Block one strike and a second followed; turn that aside and a third bloomed in its place. Rin's sword grew hotter by degrees, her attacks sharper and more precise.
"Then how about this?"
"Kh…!"
From a chain of vertical and horizontal cuts, a thrust suddenly appeared—a deceptive variation. I managed to stop even that, but the problem was serious. Bern's body had anticipated the move; I had not. I needed a wider view. Understanding the sword demanded broader vision.
"If all you do is block, you'll never seize the initiative. Even if it's hard, you must not shy from the pain of twisting your body!"
"Endure the pain, huh…"
Instead of trading blows, I jerked my head aside and slipped the thrust aimed at my face. A thin cut opened on my cheek, but I bore the sting and drove into Rin's guard. A rising vertical cut shot up from her dead angle.
Clang!
She folded her extended arm and smoothly caught the blade. I could have forced my way through with raw strength, but I wanted to meet her with technique alone. Maybe I was just a novice putting on airs in front of a master—but if I meant to grow, now was the time for reckless courage.
I stepped back from Rin, drew the sword behind my hip, and poured power into my right arm. The moment I surged forward again, I planted my left foot in a deep stamp and swung the blade in a great arc—a crude, almost arrogant horizontal cut.
"A fine sword."
Before I could even retort This garbage?, my prized strike was dismantled and I was shoved clean backward. If I hadn't caught my balance in time, I might have landed on my rear. That was how much rebound the attack carried when blocked. And still Rin called it fine.
Was this some new form of backhanded praise?
"Hard as it may be to believe, it's true. Until now, none of the swordsmanship you've shown carried any heart or will. That last strike, faint as it was, let me glimpse the sword you yourself are pursuing."
"The sword I'm pursuing?"
"Yes. It's something you must realize on your own, so I can't spell it out—but I guarantee that once it's complete, even I won't be able to ignore it."
Not Bern's sword—mine. I still couldn't grasp its shape, but the mere fact that it existed made my chest tighten. Even someone who had never held a blade before the possession had a path forward as a swordsman.
"From here, if you learn finer movement and shore up the obvious openings, you'll improve little by little."
"I see. Thanks for the advice."
"Think nothing of it."
Before I knew it, Rin had closed to point-blank range and raised her sword. She brought it straight down at me. Her words and her actions were running on separate tracks. I barely managed to block, and the ground beneath me cracked. If this hadn't been Bern's trained body, I might have been crushed flat.
"I took the strike you showed me and adapted it my own way. How was it?"
"…You saw that once and already applied it?"
"I did. Is that a problem?"
So the rumors of an untouchable genius with the sword were true. If Rin hadn't died mid-story, a few of Adokchoe's episodes might have gone a lot more smoothly. Especially if she'd survived through Part 7's Sword Demon arc—she might have absorbed even that swordsmanship and become a monster on par with Kang Junhyuk.
The thought alone drew a dry laugh from me.
"I-I'm sorry! I should have asked your permission first…!"
"That's not why I laughed. Just a hollow little daydream. Don't worry about it."
"Is that so?"
"Yeah. Actually, do it one more time. If I take it with my body, maybe I'll catch the principle."
"Understood!"
Rin settled into stance to demonstrate again. The instant she raised her sword and stepped forward—
"You shameless surface-dwellers! If you're gonna play with swords, take it somewhere el—gack?!"
The ground suddenly split open and a squat little figure burst out—only for Rin's foot to plant squarely on the crown of his head and shove him right back underground. An impressive entrance, followed immediately by an equally impressive exit.
"Uh… that person who just popped out. That was a dwarf, right?"
"Yes. Short stature, long beard—matches every description of the rumored dwarves, though…"
"Looks like they were living underground, not on the surface."
"Seems that way."
After all that wandering in every direction without meeting a single one, the way we finally found the dwarves' village turned out to be nothing more than a noise complaint.