The sword art the Ferryman had shown before for beheading a giant looked different on the surface, but its core was the same as Vortex.
"Gather every bit of muscle strength and Will and load it into a single blow."
Naturally, if you scrutinized the details, there were differences. If Vortex was rotation, what the Ferryman showed was drop.
"Using the body's full elasticity and weight."
Whoever mainly used this sword art had probably worn full-body armor forged of black gold. If not that, then some other method.
"A technique that only has meaning if you increase body weight."
The scene of leaping high and driving down was vivid before his eyes. With that one strike, he severed the giant's neck.
"Could you increase the body's weight with Will?"
That would be difficult. But if he gathered Will at the instant of impact and struck, it would become a very heavy blow that felt as if the weight had changed.
A few thoughts crossed and converged on an answer. Enkrid put his head to work as a matter of course.
In Temares's view, Enkrid's talent for using his body was, unbelievably, dull.
He had already reached the level of a knight, so it was natural that he'd stepped outside the track of an ordinary person, but nothing beyond that showed a special brilliance. Instead, Enkrid reflected, schemed, and investigated.
It was an innate temperament, and also something further refined by repeating today.
He naturally thought again and again, digging through and prying apart everything he saw, felt, and experienced.
"The Sword of Drop."
The motions could not help but be large. Gaps would inevitably be born. If he himself, the owner of the art, assumed he used the Sword of Drop, would he leave an obvious weakness as-is?
"Of course not."
It was a sword art created by a knight. Of course not. Then how?
There had been ample time to ponder. To create a new sword art, expansion of concept and field of view is essential.
Enkrid opened his eyes wide. Not in the physical sense, but in the mental.
He did not forget to learn, did not forget to listen.
What he had practiced, experienced, learned, and realized—he compiled it all to a conclusion.
"Press with Will."
The basis of the Sword of Drop was the use of overawing pressure that binds the opponent. In a way, it would be similar to Aisia's swordsmanship. She binds the opponent with pressure, imposes limits on movement, and then cuts and thrusts.
It's a technique called the Sword of Detention. Aisia does not use a greatsword, but the form of the sword art was similar.
"It'll help later to tell Aisia to train with a heavy sword."
In the course of reflection, a sudden realization popped up midstream. There is no perfect person in the world. Also, the me of today and the me of tomorrow are different. One who improves day by day must always change.
If he had known this then, he would have told Aisia more.
Letting the thoughts of Aisia that had intruded in the middle drift away, he immersed himself again in swordsmanship.
"Killing Strike has a different principle."
But is the root different? It is not. Enkrid mixed the Killing Strike—the drop—the Ferryman had taught into Vortex.
If he had established it in his head, it was time to enact it with his body. So he swung with the knife-edge of his hand as his sword, even without a blade.
"What are you doing?"
The Ferryman asked.
Now, the moment he arrived in the dream, or the realm of mental image, he trained without a word. The boat creaked and swayed. Enkrid paid it no mind.
"How is it?"
He'd been asked what he was doing, but a question came back instead. The light of the lamp in the Ferryman's hand faded and deepened in cycles. It was like a blink.
"Not bad."
The Ferryman humored him. Enkrid bobbed his head as if it weren't awkward at all.
"Then how about this?"
Next he showed a few sword arts derived from the dragonkin. Fundamentally, there were five sword arts.
Wavebreaker and orthodox swordsmanship, Flash and Chance, and then Vortex.
Into these he mixed what he had learned and practiced. And to Enkrid, this process was nothing short of delightful and fun.
Even facing the Ferryman who had stepped out of the dream, he couldn't stop.
"Watch."
The Ferryman spoke and gestured, and through that gesture Enkrid drew a sword. A sword that had somehow appeared in his hand.
"When Detention tightens,"
he continued.
Following the Ferryman's words, Enkrid naturally manifested the Sword of Detention. Strictly speaking, it was the beginning of the heavy-sword art called Vortex. In the process of gathering strength, he revealed pressure and oppressed the opponent.
From within his robe, the Ferryman lifted one corner of his mouth. Flakes of grayish scale fell from the skin of his face.
At the same time, he thrust out the skewer-like sword in his hand. The thrust he extended punched a hole in the Detention.
"And at the same time, the Flowing Sword."
The Ferryman did not stop at the thrust; just as he thrust, he twisted his wrist and shifted the blade's angle.
The force of Will exuded for Detention ran along the angled blade. It resembled the flowing sword the dragonkin had shown.
It went beyond merely shedding a physical attack, to shedding even the Will contained within it.
"A sharp needle pierces thick leather."
The Ferryman's words struck his mind. Enkrid chewed them over.
"Needle and leather."
To keep a needle from piercing leather? Be thicker than the needle. Conversely, to pierce any leather? Be a needle long and hard.
"The one using the sword is a person—you get that, right?"
It was the next line the Ferryman tossed. Enkrid nodded. The master of the ferryboat upon the river of steel had pointed out a few essentials of swordsmanship. After the instruction, the Ferryman brought out his own purpose.
"This is forbearance."
"Pity."
"Compassion."
The Ferryman's voice overlapped. Each layered voice was a different persona.
"You'll regret not having been trapped in today already."
Said the Ferryman. That talking about swordsmanship now was because he pitied him.
Enkrid grasped the gist of those words and hesitated a moment.
"If I act pitiful, will he tell me more?"
A thought only a madman would have. The Ferryman also read that inner thought of Enkrid. It wasn't because he had a trick for reading minds like the dragonkin.
It was because Enkrid wore expressions that laid his insides bare.
However, Enkrid had never once acted pitiful in his life. His brows drew together. It was the process of pondering.
To be perfectly frank, Enkrid didn't even know why his present self looked pitiful.
That six demons of the Demon Realm were targeting him?
That was what he'd wanted anyway. He targeted them as well. So that's that. Six of one, half a dozen of the other.
What else beyond that? As he was pondering, the Ferryman spoke.
"You must feel the signs of war? Will you be able to protect everything you want to protect? Will that loss leave you as the you you are now?"
The Ferryman suddenly felt the impulse to draw out a part of himself and show his memories.
He wanted to teach the pain of loss. If you lose everything and remain alone, what meaning is there in that today?
Enkrid glimpsed, behind the Ferryman, the vision of a woman with braided hair holding a spear.
But whether he saw it or not, he crossed his forearms and wrapped his thick forearms as he asked,
"Do I look pitiful?"
Whatever the Ferryman said, he merely plunged into the anguish of how to look pitiful.
"…Are you insane, you bastard."
The Ferryman couldn't hold back and spat a curse.
***
Enkrid recalled his meeting with the Ferryman the previous night. He had been kicked out as-is, but even what had been taught up to that point was plenty useful.
"An engraved weapon receives its owner's Will. So there's little chance of the edge getting badly marred, but if you maintain it well, so much the better."
Tta-ang, tta-ang.
Off in the distance, Aitri's apprentice hammered. Aitri, whom he'd seen for the first time in a while, had hollower cheeks than before. He somehow looked more worn than when he had tempered Dawn.
"Nothing special going on?"
Enkrid asked. It was the face of a man with something going on.
"Nothing."
Enkrid stared straight into Aitri's eyes. Were those the eyes of a man with nothing going on?
"Recently, Sir Jaxon among others came by to order a few weapons. Sir Kraiss also gave me enough krona to live on for a lifetime."
If Aitri had wanted to live piled up on gold coins, he wouldn't have lived as he did now. He had had a desire and achieved it. Was that why a hollowness filled his eyes? Had his strength drained away, as it often does for one who has reached his goal?
No. His gaze still shone bright.
Thump!
In the place where the apprentice's hammer-blows spread like background music, Aitri's eyes reflected the forge's flames. The craftsman who had long lived with the blaze as his companion stroked the blade of Dawn Tempering with his blunt fingertips.
"A fine sword, isn't it?"
He asked. There was no need to say it twice.
"Of course."
Aitri bowed his head and, with a touch brimming with care, oiled the blade, then checked and turned over the joints of Dawn one by one before handing it back.
The hot breath the smithy exhaled pushed out the cool breeze that claimed autumn had arrived. In here it was still as hot as the Salamander's season.
Aitri's heart was the same.
"If there's anything you want, say so anytime."
Enkrid said. He was the man who had given him an engraved weapon. He was fully willing to grant anything.
"I will."
Aitri answered flatly, as ever, without even a single smile. This blacksmith was not a man who readily showed emotion.
The dragonkin watched closely the human who had tempered Dawn.
The dragonkin, Temares, knew it was rare for something to pique his interest. The experience of long years proved it.
"There's another."
But here he saw another human who merited it. A man who had poured the two characters called "life" into his field.
His hair had begun to whiten, and there were signs of trouble in his eyeballs. The whites were cloudy. A harm born of living before the blaze for a long time.
And yet the purity of Will held in his eyes was high. The dragonkin read a part of the other's insides.
This man did not even know what he desired. He was filled only with a boiling fervor.
What would happen if that fervor found direction?
To the dragonkin, Will and fervor of high purity became objects of interest. They had to be truly rare in degree, however.
"Everything began from this man."
Also, the dragonkin knew this was no mere coincidence. It had started from the man called Enkrid.
"Well then."
As Enkrid turned away, Aitri asked,
"There must be a reason you named it Dawn, Dawn like that?"
Dawn Tempering, a sword that shone as if its light had been forged at daybreak.
"Why. You don't like it?"
"No. It's still a good name."
Enkrid felt as if Aitri were hiding something. His eye for detail was above average. All the more so now that he had become a knight—his five senses had sharpened further and even his sixth sense had developed. But he asked nothing. When it was time to speak, he would speak.
Rather, the apprentice who had been hammering paused and snuck a glance. So did Prok, who had been fiddling with ornaments beside him.
"Mm, what is it?"
In the midst of this, a dwarf stepped into the smithy. They were acquainted. Enkrid searched his memory and spoke.
"Rotten Eyes."
The rest was hazy, but he remembered the gist.
"My name is Argan."
It is said dwarves are by nature stubborn and fierce, but that too varies by individual. Having long since been steeped in the human world, the dwarf Argan had adaptability more or less like a human's.
He did not rashly provoke the other party. Especially not the man before him now—there was nothing good to be gained from provoking him. How had his first meeting with that man gone? Not very pleasantly.
"Have you paid off the debt you owed to Martai?"
Enkrid dredged up one more thing about the dwarf and asked. Kraiss was a man who never forgot anything related to krona. He had used the dwarf named Argan very shrewdly.
At root, it had begun with the debt this dwarf owed to Martai.
How many times had Kraiss told this story? More than ten.
"I paid it ages ago. Is that even a question."
The dwarf swept his eyes once over Enkrid and company. Prok, a fairy, and a dragonkin were with him. Jaxon had already left to take care of his business.
"Off to slay a demon king or something?"
Half a joke, half serious. The demon king was a joke, but seeing the lineup gathered like this, the words came out on their own.
"No, an outing."
Enkrid spoke lightly and stepped out. There was something as important as training. Broadening one's field of view and looking at the world.
Would Enkrid not know what Esther had realized?
"If not for these two, it would be a date."
Shinar, who had been silently watching until now, added a line.
"Pretend I'm not here. I'll only be watching."
Said the dragonkin.
"What do you mean, watching? That's a phrase open to misunderstanding, Temares."
And Prok, incidentally, was in the midst of helping Temares acclimate to this place.
The dwarf Argan had grown as quick on the uptake as a human. Reading Aitri's face and Enkrid's reaction, he grasped the situation and closed his mouth.
A short while later, Enkrid and company departed.
"You didn't give it?"
Argan asked. He was now a dwarf who had steadied his heart and lived exchanging craft and mind with Aitri. He knew the sword Aitri had tempered recently.
"I did not."
Aitri answered.
In the past few months, he had tempered a sword to stand beside Enkrid's Dawn.
"The sword's name is Dusk."
When not even a month had passed since tempering Enkrid's engraved weapon, Aitri had felt a great regret.
"Better today than I was yesterday."
So he began to temper a second sword.
Since Enkrid used two swords, he thought this would suit him quite well, too. Though the witch had not infused it with the scent of the night sky, nor had the fairy personally suffused it with essence, he tempered a sword akin to that one. He named it Dusk, to make a pair with Dawn. But he was not satisfied.
The sword he had made now was the result of compromise. As fine as Dawn? No. It only looked that way.
"Melt it down."
"Sir?"
Aitri gave up the sword he had personally been tempering. The apprentice started in fright. Argan was about to be startled as well.
"Hey, that—"
Even Prok, stationed to one side of the smithy, tried to stop him. It was an item into which the craftsman had poured such effort that it was like engraving his soul. Everyone who had watched knew it.
"This isn't it."
Aitri had never wished for a Dusk to match Dawn. And so, he broke off the sword he'd been tempering.
***
"Message from His Majesty the King."
While Enkrid was away, Kraiss received the messenger sent by Crang.
"The southern forces have begun to move."
The messenger spoke. Kraiss listened calmly. He was no longer the kind of man who showed unease on the surface as he once did. Kraiss too had changed.
"A campaign, then."
Kraiss answered the messenger.