Chapter 53 – Among the Countless Stars

It’s hot.

No, it’s freezing.

I just want to sit down and rest.

But I shake off the temptation.

Just moments ago, I had prayed.
I’d begged to protect the village, that I would gladly throw my life away to do so.

Has my resolve changed in mere seconds?

“――!!”

Someone shouts from a distance, but I can’t hear them.

A barbarian warrior approaches, axe in hand.
Yet, instead of charging right in, he stops.

He stands there, ranting about something for a while, then he finally attacks.

I meet his strike with my two-handed sword.
As I block the blow, I counter in a single motion, cutting him down.

Once, my master had told me:

‘You seem naturally lacking in strength. Your bones aren’t particularly sturdy, either. No matter how much you train, no matter how much hardship you endure, your gains will be minimal. But even so, you must never give up. If you do, you won’t even be able to protect yourself. The one good thing is that your lungs are strong. If you use that well, you’ll tire less quickly than others.’

To survive, you must train.
Gaining strength comes after that.

…That’s why enduring the training my master demanded of me was already a trial in itself.

He had said it was close to impossible.

Hearing those words, I made a bet.

If it’s only close to impossible, that means with enough effort, it can be pulled further away from the impossible.

Even my daily labor to earn a living became part of my training.
I even approached rest and play with complete efficiency.

You must rest to grow.
You must eat well, move well, and rest well.

Never compare yourself to others.
There was no time to be jealous.
There was no time to mourn misfortune.

Even loneliness was a luxury.
When I stopped caring about it, endurance became easier.

Even when she watched over me and eventually felt disheartened,
I couldn’t comfort her with a pure heart.

…Because in the end, it was my own weakness.

We are standing in hell.

A desolate, wretched place with nowhere to go.

Like fallen leaves, swept away at any moment.
Even if we stay still, we rot and fade into the earth.
Even if we are swept away, it is never by our own will.

How miserable a life is that?

Even if we somehow grasp happiness,
…this cruel reality reminds us that happiness can shatter at any moment.

I could not accept that so easily.

Another warrior charges at me.

A giant of a man, wielding a shield and a club.
He’s much larger than me.

Thinking back, the last one was also absurdly built.

And as if proving his worth, just a few clashes were enough to damage my blade, to the point of dulling and even bending it.

Trying to match force with force had been reckless.

But it was too soon to give up.

I reached for my waist.
A new sword fit snugly into my grasp as I drew it.

All I lost was a single blade.

My hands and feet weren’t broken.
My life wasn’t severed.

That means there’s no problem at all.

More than anything,
The stronger our enemies are, the stronger we become.

Because,
We’ve always turned our foes’ strength, their own mistakes, against them.

“Where does water flow?”
My master once asked me.

I answered instinctively.
It flows forward, wherever there’s an opening.

But my master denied it.

“No. Water flows from high to low.”

“……?”

Come to think of it, he was right.

“That is why the ocean is the king, the father, and the mother of all rivers.”

The reason the ocean can embrace all waters,

“Is because it exists at the lowest place of all.”

Our swordplay must be the same.

“But that is not the end. The water falls, and then it rises again. It ascends to the sky, becomes clouds, turns into rain, becomes snow, and falls once more.”

“Wait… does that mean rain was originally river and seawater?”

“…Precisely.”

I didn’t fully understand.

But my master repeated that wielding a sword should be like that.
That exerting force should be the same.

“It must be like the wind, moving without obstruction, unhindered, following the path that is open, resisting entanglements naturally, slipping through like a breeze.”

When we move our bodies, we must be the same.

“If you master even this much, few will be able to handle you on the battlefield. Given your physical limitations, you cannot wield mana in complex ways. You cannot manipulate it as others do. So, for you, this is the only way I can offer.”

Master.

Even now, I still don’t fully understand what you meant by awakening.

…Yet, I have somehow defeated those who wield sword energy, those who radiate light, those with monstrous physical abilities.

And though it may be insignificant, I take some pride in that.

I do not fear defeat.

What I feared most was dishonoring your teachings.
What terrified me was tarnishing your name.

That is why I could never confidently proclaim who my master was.

…Because that was just another sign of my own lacking and weakness.

“How is he doing that…?”

“Is he… a monster?”

Had I taken down five?

By then, they had abandoned any pretense of one-on-one duels.
They had shifted their focus to overwhelming me instead.

Had they started throwing arrows or stones, this might have been difficult.

Honestly, them closing the distance made things easier.

I barely had the strength to move forward on my own.

All I could do was stand.

I had no strength left in my body.
I barely had the energy to keep my legs from trembling.

And yet,

“Ghhkk!”

Why?

“Ugh, Aaaaah!”

……Why am I,

“L-Lord…”

Why am I not collapsing?

Then, a sudden realization.

If I fall here, If I sit down now, who will stop them?

If just a few of them made it to the village, I wouldn’t have the strength to stop them.

And yet,
Why?

Why were they all still watching me?

Why did they hesitate?

Why did they, too, seem… afraid?

Why.

How can I remain standing in the midst of their relentless onslaught?
How am I the one instilling them with caution, with fear?

Relax your strength.

Nature is free of artificial force.
Forcing power, squeezing, injecting, it’s all meaningless.
Irrelevant.

The human body is not designed for such things.

…But unless that principle is applied to the body,
manifesting nature’s way through the body is impossible.

Using mana to artificially recreate it? That is the peak of artifice.
Yet, even if it’s false, if it works, then it becomes reality.

Therefore, it is a path.

Is there only one way to find the answer?
No.
This, too, is an expression and realization of will.

…But.

A man with no legs cannot climb stairs with his feet.
A beast without wings cannot fly like a bird.

…I see.

I had misunderstood all along.

There was still more for me to learn.

No, rather, I feel the depth of my inadequacy.
Why did it take me so long to realize this?

But it makes sense.

No matter how exhausted or battered I had been before,
I had never felt anything as grueling as this.

As my body naturally sheds tension,
my opponents remain strong, relentless.

And because of that, a path opens.

Just as a river converges when a valley narrows.

Or… no, perhaps this is something else?

I don’t know it in my mind.
But I feel it.

This is what Master spoke of…

====

I chased the illusion.

Though it felt like I had lost consciousness for a brief moment, everything he had sensed surged backward, flowing into my mind like a tide.

When taking a stance, be like rock and tree.

And,

When moving, be like water and wind.

Simple words. Nothing remarkable.

But one thing is certain.

This is…

The wind blows.

Even when everything is blocked,
if there is even the smallest gap,
the wind will naturally find its way through.

That is what I am now.

I let my body follow the illusion.
I raise my sword.

―!!

The moment my blade clashes with a greatsword, my body is hurled to the side.

But I do not lose balance.

My posture remains intact.
Rather, I let myself flow in the intended direction, sliding with the force, as if gliding.

And from there,

I deflect an incoming axe, redirecting its force into my own momentum.

Now, I slip in the opposite direction, arriving before another warrior’s chest in an instant.

I lower my stance, sliding between his legs.

I grab his ankle.

A pillar of a man, standing firm.

But I use that very foundation against him.

With my grip as leverage, I twist my body, swinging my sword, severing his ankle.

“GUAAARGH!”

Not too deep.
Not too shallow.

As pain and shock twist his scream, his body lurches forward.

I roll across his back, landing on the other side.

Their encirclement wavers.

No matter how tightly they surround me, as long as I keep moving, gaps will emerge.

Water and wind.

They do not stagnate.
They do not stop.

A warrior kicks at me.
I don’t just evade.

I grab his foot.

Instinctively, when he tried to retract his leg, I used that force to propel myself forward, launching onto his chest, climbing up his shoulders, gripping the knot of his hair.

“What are you doing?!”

“Enough with the games!”

When the head tilts back, the body naturally follows.

The head is, surprisingly, the heaviest part of the human body.

Controlling it means controlling the body’s center of gravity.

But that isn’t the end.

Before descending, I swing my sword mid-air, slashing his nape.

Not deep.
Not shallow.

But a lethal wound.

Even more devastating than a stab to the gut.

Before he can clutch his neck, before his hand can reach the wound, he collapses.

“……”

The illusion’s way of fighting is different.

He flows past attacks with his sword, occasionally slashing, sometimes kicking, even throwing punches to his opponent’s chin.

In the chaos of battle, alone, he moves like flowing water, like the wind, deflecting, evading, countering.

He moves through the battlefield.

But that is his way.

His body, his circumstances, his environment.

…I cannot be like him.

But,

The foundation is the same.

The way he applies principles, his objectives, his means and methods, I finally understand them.

“Aaaaahhh!”

A towering brute lowers his head, charging like a bull.

I, too, lower my body, as if pressing my torso against the ground.

Both his massive hands spread wide, reaching for me like a wolf’s gaping jaws.
I slipped through.

At the same time, I slid, escaping his charge.

From there, I remained on the ground, twisting as I moved, slashing across his ankle.

Thud!

Unable to resist the momentum, his broken ankle sent him crashing forward.

I deflected a sweeping spear.

I dodged a descending blade.

I barely redirected an upward axe swing and dove in.

A warrior reaches to grab me with his bare hands.
Instead, I seized his fingers.

I rolled my entire body, dragging him with me.

“AAGH!”

Fearing his fingers might snap, he instinctively rolls along, and in that moment, I sliced his throat.

Rolling over him, I land and immediately cleaved another warrior’s ankle.

The formation collapses.

“This is ridiculous! He’s just a damn kid!”

“Swarm him! Overwhelm him! If we can’t even do that… ?!”

“How much longer will you disgrace yourselves?!”

The illusion fights with the minimum force, the minimum action necessary to disable his foes.

The illusion strikes only the weak points: eyes, wrists, ankles.

Not wasting a single movement.

A fist strikes the jaw.

A foot swings upward between the legs.

Even as more warriors cling onto him, he seamlessly seizes them, pulling, pushing, tossing them aside like puppets on strings.

They trip over their own feet.
They slam their heads into the ground.
Their upper bodies collapse.

They fall, sprawled across the battlefield.

Weapons fail, so they resort to grappling.
Grappling fails, so they try to pin him down, smother him, crush him.

But nothing works.

Just as one cannot bind water with their hands, arms, or even their entire body, just as one cannot embrace the wind, everything they attempt is meaningless.

And every failed attempt only creates another opening, another chance for him to counterattack.

He turns even their own strength against them.

There is no need to drive a blade deep into an eye socket.
A shallow cut across the eyeball is enough to render them powerless.

Even if they charge again, countering them is not difficult.

Slice the tendons at the ankle.
Sever the throat.
Cut through the wrist.
Carve into the solar plexus.
Slash the thighs.
Split the femur.

He knocks them down.
He leaves them sprawled.

Not a single strike lands on bone, ensuring his weapon remains undamaged.

No matter how strong their muscles, he targets only the most vulnerable, the least protected spots, executing his attacks with precision.

====

The figure within the illusion—at some point, he had already neutralized more than ten warriors.

“……”

Before I even realized it, more than a dozen massive warriors lay collapsed at my own feet as well.

“…I see.”

Only then did the illusion come to a halt.

And I realized, that illusion…

It was staring directly at me.

I, too, looked back at him.

“…So, in the end…”

Everything he had shown me,

Even the battle he recreated as an illusion,

It was all…

…A preparation.

For me.

At this moment, I understood with absolute certainty.

He had been waiting.

For no one else but me.

Through centuries,
For three hundred years,
He had stood in that place, alone.

…For this very moment.