Ch.208Sword Saint Society (5)

When Llewellyn first manifested his miracle.

Lie Hezedia testified that she could vividly feel its influence.

“I could feel you reading my life, and then understanding and affirming it.”

Llewellyn took a sip of tea and asked the Finance Minister, as if adding a thought.

If it hadn’t felt unpleasant.

If it wasn’t like reading a diary, if she hadn’t felt any discomfort or anything like that.

“Unpleasant…? It wasn’t like that. Rather, I would say.”

With the clinking of teacups, the woman wearing a monocle with skill smiled gently.

It was a kind and comfortable smile. A smile that made Llewellyn, sitting across from her, wear an even more awkward expression.

“It was… a very comfortable feeling.”

Llewellyn didn’t take Lie Hezedia’s words at face value.

Rather, it was the opposite. Llewellyn judged that his miracle was deeply imbued with his own factor.

His father’s factor, that power that unconsciously enchanted the three clans.

So Llewellyn manifested his miracle without hesitation.

There were two main reasons.

To gain the Sword Saint’s favor for a more advantageous negotiation, and to learn and temporarily use the Sword Saint’s techniques to apply that experience in future battles.

It would be fine even if the first attempt failed. Even if that happened, he thought he could use what he learned from understanding the Sword Saint’s life in negotiations.

But.

The moment Llewellyn peered into the Sword Saint’s life, he froze, his face turning pale.

Even Lie Hezedia, who as Finance Minister had dealt with gold and silver colder than blood and had killed people, couldn’t view her own life coldly.

Only one thing filled Llewellyn’s vision.

A line segment created by the intertwining of life and death.

Sword marks that remained everywhere, splattering blood and dividing life and death.

Countless, infinite sword marks that transcended space and time, filling the surroundings and even the sky.

The killing intent that had poured ceaselessly for 200 years toward the man called the Sword Saint. Amidst it all, a single blade shone brightly.

That was the Sword Saint.

Shadows swirled around the light cast by the sword. Where the shadows couldn’t reach, dried bloodstains touched the light.

The bloodstains looked like some kind of map. A vast map that seemed to spread from the shadowed areas to fill the entire world.

Looking at it, Llewellyn thought.

‘How could a human live such a… life?’

Manifesting a miracle isn’t about reading a subject’s life realistically, accurately, and in detail.

It’s about completely dissolving and temporarily accepting that being’s life, with a strong reflection of how that individual views their own life.

Just as Lie Hezedia had set her sights on swords and trading after losing her parents and feeling powerless.

So the details of how she overcame, how she developed her swordsmanship through detailed commerce, and what she did to reach the top of the imperial economy weren’t visible.

In the same sense, the Sword Saint’s life wasn’t visible.

No, it might be better to say nothing was visible. As Llewellyn’s gaze seemed to flicker and distance itself, and the hellscape that had been cast lifted.

“Is this how my life appears to others’ eyes?”

A voice resonated before him. Clear words reaching close proximity.

And before those words, a sword strike aimed at Llewellyn’s neck, and Llewellyn’s body instinctively, perfectly deflecting it.

CLANG!

The ringing metal sound is loud. With a ringing in his ears, Llewellyn saw the Sword Saint.

“Look again.”

He saw the giant who had closed the distance quickly enough to make his clothes flutter, gripping his sword properly.

The Shield Breaker in his hand didn’t display any extraordinary technique or principle beyond technique.

It was simply faithful to the basics.

A near-perfect sword strike. Targeting Llewellyn’s head.

It wasn’t especially fast or especially powerful.

As sword strikes typically are, it was reasonably sharp, fast, and strong.

Exhaustion and power coexisted, as if wary of any counterattack or defense that might come.

A beautifully perfect sword strike.

A sword that had reached the end, beyond killing sword and living sword.

It was an attack that needed no other flowery words.

Llewellyn knew his body was moving as if entranced. Twisting his waist, he responded to the sword strike shot from over the shoulder by turning his right foot and swinging upward.

He could see the following movement. Feel it. Predict how it would move.

Llewellyn, completely forgetting the hellscape he had seen moments ago, saw the swordsmanship dissolved in that life.

Llewellyn was intoxicated by the sword.

CLANG!

As the upward sword strike seemed to interlock with the other, Llewellyn’s sword rotated around the point of contact and aimed for the head.

The Sword Saint blocked it with his sword hilt and deflected it, then cut even the sparks that rose from the displaced position.

A horizontal slash that seemed to leave a long trace in space.

Not a single waste, just a straight sword strike.

Neither stubbornly specialized for a dragon’s body like Dragon Slayer, nor unrealistically using abundant anti-magic power like Valterok’s technique.

Just a sword established through vaguely accumulated time and experience.

Therefore, more stubborn than Dragon Slayer, and so perfect it felt surreal.

There was no belief contained within it.

Just.

‘I want to wield the sword better.’

A voice echoing in his mind, the voice of the still-young Sword Saint.

On a map drawn with the blood of his family, the giant who had been a boy became intoxicated with the sword of the Sword Saint who had killed his family.

Just like Llewellyn now.

Llewellyn’s exhaled breath spread white, and the Sword Saint’s twisted smile at the corner of his mouth shone white.

Crack!

Cutting even that breath, two Shield Breakers danced.

CLANG!

He countered the sword strike delivered with a twisted body from a straight stance.

As the clashing blades scattered blue sparks, Llewellyn tilted his body to dissipate the aftermath of the strike.

Naturally pulling back his dragging foot, he retreated one step.

‘Counterattack.’

And faster than his dragging foot, his wrist flipped.

Llewellyn immediately twisted his wrist and aimed for the Sword Saint’s head.

CLANG!

As if waiting for such a strike, the Sword Saint released his left hand from the hilt.

With the sword now moving freely, he swung it with only his right hand.

Aiming for a sword clash. The point of collision was the end of the hilt.

Thus, he deflected the thrust by matching the sword hilt.

CLANG!

The Sword Saint, rather, twisted his body while gripping the retreating sword and used the momentum of Llewellyn’s swing to thrust his sword downward without a hint of opening.

SWOOSH!

A flash close to the speed of sound.

As Llewellyn twisted his body to avoid it, the blade stuck into the floor, and Llewellyn stepped on the back of the blade to fix it.

The advantage in strength was Llewellyn’s.

But it was a misjudgment.

‘I can still wield it better.’

Just as he seemed to hear the Sword Saint’s thought, Llewellyn’s body soared upward.

He had disrupted his center of gravity to make him soar. The meaninglessly projected force lost direction, and Llewellyn twisted his body in midair.

Then came a white light. The trace of an approaching blade.

Llewellyn, who had soared from where he had stepped on the back of the blade, faced the sword strike aimed at his head.

As far as Llewellyn knew, there was no way to block or avoid it in midair.

But Llewellyn’s body, his still rapidly beating heart, and the Sword Saint’s experience knew.

Twist the body in midair, utilize the force that pushed the body.

All that remained was to use the part that would be the center of the sword strike. As Llewellyn moved his thoracic spine to scatter the sword strike.

CLANG!

It made a sound like a swarm of bees.

And to the audience, it looked as if the sun had risen at the place where the sword strikes collided.

The sparks that rose between the countless colliding metal pieces looked like that.

As the surrounding sword masters marveled, Llewellyn twisted the corner of his mouth.

It felt good.

It was a different kind of “feeling good” from omnipotence or base, impulsive pleasure.

The fact that there was a path to go further, that there was a longer path of the sword stretching ahead of the path the Sword Saint had walked.

Yet if he looked back, the current position felt dizzyingly distant from the starting point.

A chillingly good sense of achievement and overwhelming feeling.

At the same time, a competitive spirit boiled up.

A pleasant sensation that gently filled his body and surged like an electric current from his waist to his head.

As Llewellyn’s mouth corners rose, and the Sword Saint smiled with the exact same expression.

The feet of the two men simultaneously moved toward each other.

Crunch, they twisted their bodies around their planted feet. The crunching sound beneath their feet was eerie.

But they didn’t stop. Llewellyn gradually twisted his body from his planted foot.

Twisting his ankle sideways, slightly bending and twisting his knee, drawing power from his rotating calf and thigh.

He refined the boiling power at his waist. The waist is the axis. The line rising from the waist to the thoracic spine is the center that makes the sword strike flow.

Knowing this, Llewellyn drew in his breath.

He twisted his waist. The power that started from his waist finally passed his shoulder.

Finally reaching his fingertips, all the way to the sword.

From the tilted wrist to the straight blade, accelerating with the mighty force that had risen from the earth.

A technique that could only be performed with a giant’s body trained and built up over 200 years.

He catches up. Reading life through the miracle, reaching with a body that far transcends the human of a homunculus.

Like a bent bow unfolding, like a cracked whip tearing through space beyond sound.

And like wielding a sword with both hands.

The blade accelerated transcendentally around Llewellyn’s body.

In that moment, though brief, Llewellyn became the sword.

Like a single strike wielded by a massive being, he made his body the hilt.

The sensation of the sword becoming the blade, and Llewellyn himself becoming the hilt. Within that, Llewellyn couldn’t even know the path of his own sword strike.

A transcendent single strike that far exceeded his own senses.

With such a strike contained, the two swords shot toward each other and collided.

It was a quiet collision.

As if without any aftermath, quietly, Llewellyn’s Star Cluster and the Sword Saint’s Shield Breaker failed to withstand the collision and slipped from their hands.

Llewellyn didn’t have time to frown in confusion.

He realized belatedly. That the sound had disappeared in the area due to the too-fierce impact.

In the vast silence, Star Cluster broke and returned to Llewellyn’s soul, while Shield Breaker spun through the air and stuck into the ground.

As Llewellyn’s gauntlet shattered and blood gushed from his hand, Llewellyn saw the Sword Saint’s expression before the pain.

He was smiling. As if very relieved, and also as if exhilarated.

‘Why…’

Just as Llewellyn stiffened, not understanding the expression.

—!

Sound returned to the space.

A fierce shockwave wrapped around everything nearby and scattered dirt in all directions.

As Llewellyn’s cloak fluttered wildly, by the time the shockwave cleared, the summoned miracle had long since dissipated.

Exhaling a rough breath, Llewellyn raised his head. There stood the giant.

Withdrawing his relieved smile, the continent’s greatest sword master looked down at Llewellyn with expectation and a sense of achievement in his gaze.

He placed his hand on Llewellyn’s shoulder.

“Do you now understand why I came here?”

Llewellyn stared blankly at the giant’s hand on his shoulder, then at his own burst and bleeding hand, before answering.

“No. I have no idea.”