Chapter 110: Improvised
What are sword techniques?
As far as Kael knew, sword techniques were not merely a collection of battle stances or skillful swings of a blade, but rather a manifestation of many forms of combat style that connected one's very soul to the sword itself. It was a way of fighting that transcended the simple act of learning how to swing a weapon.
According to some, it was not only about linking the soul but the entire body to the sword, making it feel as though the blade had become an extension of the body itself. When the body moved, the sword would already know where to follow, and when the sword shifted in motion, the body would move in perfect harmony with it. This delicate synchronization created movements that were precise, fluid, and flawless, and to anyone watching, it would almost resemble a dance rather than combat.
But Kael had never shown any real interest in such things, not even in his earliest years. In truth, he had even despised the idea of combat at one point in time. The art of the sword, and especially the sword techniques that came with it, had always been something he loathed more than anything else. It might sound laughable, but Kael had genuinely hated holding a sword. It was not because he refused to learn how to swing one, but rather because he simply could not.
Not everyone in the world was born with the ability to master everything that existed. That was one of the world's cruelest truths. Worse still, sword techniques required talent, a certain sense of understanding that could not be gained through effort alone, and Kael lacked precisely that. To be unable to wield a sword properly while being born of noble blood was a humiliation in itself. And to make matters worse, he had been regarded as the supposed legacy of a hero. What a pathetic joke that was.
Many would often say that wielding a sword had nothing to do with talent, and they might have been right and wrong at the same time. There was a vast difference between merely holding a sword and truly holding a sword. One was nothing more than grasping a weapon and swinging it aimlessly against an enemy, without rhythm, without form, and without understanding. The other was a union of body and blade, a dance where both moved as one. And Kael lacked precisely that union. He could never grasp it, never feel the connection between his soul and his weapon, and as a result, his movements always felt unnatural and rigid, as if the sword refused to move in his hands.
His body simply would not move according to the rhythm of the techniques. He lacked the most fundamental aspect of swordsmanship, the very essence that gave life to a technique—flexibility. To fight with smoothness, to attack with precision and grace, the body needed to be supple and responsive, but his had always felt stiff and unwilling. Each time he tried to swing his sword, it felt heavy and unresponsive, as if it was not part of him at all. No matter how hard he tried, he failed each time. He could not tell whether it was his body that restrained him or his mind that refused to learn, but something within him always held him back. And eventually, through those countless failed attempts, his hatred toward the sword grew stronger until it rooted itself deep within him.
But then, someone had shattered those invisible chains that kept him from moving forward. He did not know who that person truly was... perhaps his strange Master, the one who had taught him so much about the nature of magic, its flaws, the elements, and countless other secrets. He could never tell whether that being was a man or a woman, nor how they had managed to release him from the shackles that bound him. Still, Kael was grateful. He was grateful that this mysterious master had done something no one else could.
Because of that, he now stood here with a sword in his hand, fighting with the very weapon he once despised. Who could have imagined that the man who once loathed the sword would now rely on it in battle? Life had an odd way of twisting itself, and indeed, the future was always unpredictable.
Even so, Kael had still never mastered any kind of sword technique. Such techniques were often passed down through generations, inherited from family legacies, or developed and refined through years of practice. As time went on, those techniques evolved. Each generation altered and reshaped them, making them smoother, more efficient, more refined, and sometimes even creating entirely new styles of their own.
Humanity was a curious race; never satisfied with what they had, always seeking something greater. It was this unending desire that kept the world in motion, constantly changing.
But to Kael, none of that mattered. The noble lineages, their inherited techniques, their proud histories... none of it held any meaning for him. What drew his interest was something deeper, something that lay beneath the surface of every technique. He called them the two legs on which every sword technique stood. The first was unpredictability, the ability to move the sword in such a rhythm that no opponent could foresee the next strike, no matter how skilled they might be. The second was swiftness, the smoothness of the body that allowed a fighter to alter their movements instantly, turning every attack into a new form. Together, unpredictability and swiftness formed the true essence of any refined technique.
And Kael lacked both of those. His attacks were predictable, his movements slower than they should have been, his rhythm easy to read. It was the first time in his life that he had truly been concerned about that. The reason was simple. His current opponent, Effie, was much like him. She too fought with desperation, with willpower, with determination that went beyond form, yet she also lacked any real technique.
Their battle became a clash of pure intent rather than structured skill. They were both driven by resolve and instinct, trading decisive blows that lacked the refinement of technique but carried the raw emotion of survival. To an outsider, their attacks might have appeared unpredictable, yet they were not. They were simply rushed, born from urgency rather than mastery.
Kael had been fighting more desperately than she had, and because of that, he barely had the time to plan his next move. His strikes were impulsive, his guard often left open. Gradually, he had been pushed into a defensive rhythm. His coat and pale shirt now bore several cuts and bruises, marks of Effie's sharp precision. Thankfully, none were deep enough to kill him, but they served as reminders of how far he still was from true mastery. In return, he had only managed to leave a few shallow scratches on her face, nothing that could decide the outcome.
And for the first time, Kael truly understood how far the difference between a fighter with technique and one without could stretch.
Kael backstepped, barely able to dodge a sideways horizontal strike that came sweeping toward his shoulder, a strike so swift that even the sound of it seemed to cut through the air. But before he could even regain his posture, her leg moved with a frightening speed, twisting and rising toward his neck in a merciless kick. Naturally, a woman's kick would not kill him outright, so he prepared to catch her leg midway.
However, in the very next instant, his face went pale behind the mask. Because right before his eyes, her leg began to freeze itself entirely, and within a heartbeat, it turned into an icy boot of blue obsidian, gleaming sharply in the dim light. The edges of it looked so thin and cruel that Kael had no doubt it could slice through flesh as easily as a blade.
"Crap… she's forming sharp boots in an instant… just how fast can this woman cast her magic?"
Instead of blocking that deadly kick with his bare hand, he shifted his weight forward, catching her leg between knee and knuckles with a controlled grip that stopped her movement just before the strike could reach his neck. It was not something unfamiliar to him, since he had already learned that lesson long ago from the Hollow-Tongue, a creature whose wrists were filled with backward knife-like spikes capable of catching or crushing a hand with ease. He had learned to avoid that mistake at all costs. But now, he was no longer that same Kael who used to struggle against such things. His power was no longer limited, and neither was his speed.
Even so, the coldness from her icy leg crept into his hand, biting against his skin until he felt the numbness spread faintly across his knuckles. He quickly pushed her leg away, using the motion to create distance, then moved back a few steps to take a breath.
The air itself seemed to tremble between them.
And at that moment, he finally understood a few things clearly. Earlier, when he had struck her abdomen with all his strength and magic, he was certain that blow would have been devastating enough to crush a ribcage, but it hadn't managed to knock her down. Now it made sense. At the very last moment, she must have formed a thin icy armor across her abdomen, and that was why his knuckles had split open and bled. That was why it had felt as though he had struck a mountain rather than flesh.
"Just what else can this bitch do…"
Before he could even finish the thought, she twisted her body suddenly, leaning her weight on the leg that had just returned to normal, and in the same motion, her other leg moved again with that same swiftness, transforming into another icy limb that came slicing toward his neck, aiming to cut straight through his throat.
"Ah… just how flexible is this woman actually? Why can't I ever be the only one who's this flexible…"
He braced himself, preparing to block her leg again, but the expected impact never came. At the very last second, she withdrew her leg with astonishing speed, her body spinning gracefully, and then, using the momentum, she thrust the same leg forward once more, this time straight at his chest like a spear.
His eyes widened in disbelief.
The kick would have pierced through his chest entirely if not for his crossed arms that came up just in time to shield him, his hands wrapped in a swirling pressure of wind magic. Even with that protection, the force of the strike was so fierce that it threw him into the air, slamming his body against the bridge wall behind him. If not for the fact that he used wind as a shield, the kick might've broken even his bones.
The stone cracked apart beneath the impact, and part of the edge began to crumble toward the cold water below.
For a brief moment, he felt his balance slipping, the air rushing around him as the bridge groaned and broke apart. If he fell into the freezing water, it would be over. He had already experienced that unbearable pain in his bath, and he refused to let it happen again.
With a desperate push, he leapt forward just before the crumbling edge collapsed, landing roughly on the solid part of the bridge. He steadied his breathing, though his arms trembled as that part fell into the water, making its sound.
He couldn't help but think, how was he supposed to win against this woman? But then a thought struck him... he had found a way earlier, hadn't he? Or at least, he thought he had, before his attention was stolen again by the relentless pace of the fight.
Come to think of it, she had changed her combat style entirely. At the beginning, she was relying only on her sword, her movements clean and direct, but now she had started mixing in trickery and unpredictable feints meant to catch him off guard. Wait, wasn't that exactly what he had been doing earlier? If she was learning from him, then she was truly adapting fast.
"Good learner, huh? That's it… that's exactly what I was searching for. That's the key to defeating her."
Crawling forward through the dust, Kael reached out, grabbing his longsword that had fallen nearby, and pushed himself to stand. But before he could rise fully, a black silhouette appeared before him, her body hovering slightly above the bridge.
The blade of her rapier gleamed faintly in her hand, aimed directly at his neck.
That was when realization dawned on him. In the middle of the chaos, he had noticed it, but ignored it. Her speed. It had grown faster. Much faster. From the very beginning of the fight, he had the advantage in speed, but somewhere along the way, she had matched him, and now she was exceeding it. She had been learning constantly throughout the battle, imitating him, adjusting herself in real time.
That was why he could not overpower her.
As her rapier sliced through the air with a sharp whistling sound, Kael gritted his teeth and swung his sword upward to block it. The clash sent sparks and shards of ice scattering through the air, the impact strong enough to drive him down to one knee. She pressed forward with terrifying strength, the weight of her assault feeling like ten of him at once. Kael held his ground, every muscle straining as he kept her weapon at bay.
Then, through the sound of their blades grinding, he heard it... the faint cracking noise of something giving way.
Before he could even blink, her rapier shattered into countless shards of glimmering obsidian ice that scattered into the wind. It seemed her blade had been formed entirely through ice magic rather than forged steel, and the sheer pressure of their clash had broken it apart. And that was the opening Kael had been waiting for.
Her eyes widened in shock, but before she could move, Kael tightened his grip on his hilt and swung his sword in a wide, powerful arc, the blade cutting through the air toward her. She tried to backstep, but it was already too late.
The tip of his longsword grazed across her side, slicing through her left breast and down toward her right-side waist, the motion tearing through her clothing.
For an instant, he thought he had wounded her, but then his eyes caught something strange. Soon, her clothes had parted where his blade had struck, the fabric splitting open and falling away to reveal the curve of her chest.
Unfortunately for him, that breast of hers shimmered faintly, pale blue and glassy, as if her very skin had turned into sculpted ice, gleaming under the dim moonlight. The sight made his breath hitch for a moment, his gaze fixed in disbelief.
It seemed she had managed to forge a breastplate in that brief heartbeat before his sword could dig deeper, and even though the blade had been stopped midway, the faint mark of his strike still lingered on her skin, a small but undeniable proof that his sword had reached her despite that impossible defense.
Luckily for him, she still hadn't managed to regain her posture, her balance lost in that brief moment of impact, and that gave him a narrow window of chance. Kael leaned his weight on one arm, pushed against the ground with all the strength he could muster, and leapt upward. His body twisted in the air, and in the next instant, his boot found her abdomen with a decisive blow that sent her flying several meters back.
Yet even as she slid across the ground, it became clear that his strike had done little to harm her, as though her strange armor, whatever it truly was, had absorbed most of the impact.
But it didn't matter.
Even though his whole body screamed in pain, even though his bones ached as if they were cracking apart from within, he had long grown accustomed to pain. Pain was something that had always followed him. It no longer frightened him. What did trouble him was the fatigue that was slowly spreading through his limbs, dulling his senses and dragging his speed down with every passing second until even his thoughts began to blur. Still, through that growing haze, one truth had finally reached him, a truth he should have noticed much earlier.
Nevertheless, amid the chaos of that exchange, he had learned something. A single truth about her fighting style, the truth that explained why he had not been able to defeat her no matter how many times their blades clashed. How could he win when she was using his very own style against him?
At first, he had not been sure, but the longer the fight dragged on, the clearer it became. Either the witch had been observing him throughout the entire battle, memorizing every rhythm of his movements, or she had been deliberately holding herself back, adjusting her strength to match his, mimicking his rhythm until she could reproduce it perfectly. At some point, she had managed to learn his patterns, predict his strikes, and deflect them as though she had always known them. It was a frightening realization, but it also confirmed something he had suspected all along.
Kael's style was not something born of discipline or refinement, and perhaps that was the reason it was so easy to imitate. Whether one could even call it a battle style was doubtful. His way of fighting lacked the beauty of proper swordsmanship, lacked the clean precision that true warriors sought. When he fought, he swung his sword with nothing but resolve and hatred, with conviction and fury, and his blade never hesitated when cutting through flesh. There was no elegance in it, only violence and purpose. That was what had carried him this far, that was what had carved his path.
But now, standing before an opponent who wielded his own way of fighting against him, he realized how fragile that path truly was. She was stronger, faster, and possessed mastery over magic greater than he could ever hope to be, and under such conditions, his defeat seemed inevitable.
However, he was not ready to accept that.
No, he refused to accept that.
If his own style had been turned against him, then he would change it. That was why, in that single burning moment of clarity, he began to understand why swordsmen sought techniques, why they trained their bodies and souls until they moved as one with their blade. Techniques gave them freedom, flexibility, unpredictability, and a speed beyond mere instinct.
He had never learned such things, nor had he ever connected his soul to his sword, not even once. But so what?
Was he supposed to die here, defeated by his own reflection?
No, he refused again.
If he couldn't perform sword techniques, then he would create them himself, no matter how crude, no matter how incomplete they were.
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(Chapter Ended)