novelraw Chapter 124 : Chapter 124
Chapter 124 : Chapter 124
124
It felt as if a massive castle wall was tilting and collapsing towards me.
It wasn't a single stick or a single blade flying at me, but a long plane blocking my every path of movement.
‘Don't be deceived by what you see.’
I lowered my body as much as possible, dodging outside the plane the spear was creating.
A plane is ultimately two-dimensional.
I had to fight using three-dimensional space, not a flat surface.
‘Not just front and back, left and right, but up and down.’
I took a step closer and tried to swing my sword, but the spear was already creating a small plane again.
‘Axis.’
Unlike a sword, a spear didn't have a fixed handle.
The entire pole serving as the shaft was a space that could be gripped, and at the same time, a space that could be let go.
The moment the attack stopped, he changed his grip on the pole, making the outer edge of the blade a defensive line blocking my attack.
I tried to swing my sword to pierce through that spear curtain, but.
‘……Gasp.’
I stopped as a pain suffocating enough to take my breath away seemed to spread from my heart to my entire body.
It was a pain even more severe than before I fainted.
No, it was the first time in my life I had experienced pain of this magnitude.
It seemed less painful even when I had only one Mana Road?
‘Ah.’
Aiming for the moment my movement stopped due to the pain, the spear rotated once and stabbed straight at me.
This time, not a plane, but a line.
I dodged the attack coming in a straight line and simultaneously swung my sword imbued with Aura.
Pain surged as if my wrist would explode and snap right then and there.
CLANG!
However, The Spear God also wrapped his entire spear in Aura and blocked my attack.
Of course, his achievement was lower than mine, so it seemed like the Aura of my sword would split his spear at any moment.
SWISH!
The spear rotated in place and was pulled back, parrying my sword as it was.
“Hup!”
As The Spear God pulled the spear towards himself, the axe-like part on the spearhead caught my sword.
At that moment, as if the weight of the spear had doubled, a strong force seemed to forcibly press down on my sword.
‘Turbulent Snatch!’
He intended to control my sword by matching the core principle of handling a spear.
But if I read his intention, it wasn't difficult to counter the technique.
I also let my sword flow as it was, matching the rotation range of the spear.
Not resisting the opponent's force, but following the opponent's force towards the center.
The thing to be careful about is that there isn't just one central axis.
‘His two hands are crossing each other.’
Every time his long-stretched arms swung the spear, he was changing the central axis moment by moment.
It was the moment I pulled my body back, aiming for when that axis changed.
As if waiting for it, the spearhead flew, aiming at me.
From plane to line, and the last was an attack aiming for a point.
‘He's going to cut.’
This was an attack flying perfectly aiming for my movement path, so I couldn't avoid it.
I took a stance using Fel's Three Swordsmanships, as clumsily as possible.
I stretched my foot back, retreating, and lifted my sword as if by coincidence toward where the point aimed.
The moment the sword blade and the spearhead met.
CLAAAANG!
Aura clashed against Aura, and an explosion occurred with a roar as if magic had collided.
I was launched into the air and flew towards the students, but just in time, Hati caught me from behind, lessening the impact.
And The Spear God was.
“Ho-oh.”
As if amused, he was wiggling his fingers while holding the staff with one hand.
“I see. I see. It's understandable.”
“Old man! Our teacher almost died!”
“What nonsense. He wouldn't have been an idiot who couldn't see those attacks just now, right?”
“I told you our teacher has a disease that hurts if he swings a sword!”
Rozalin shouted shrilly from the side.
Well, she wasn't wrong.
‘This is driving me crazy.’
Every time my whole body pounded as if it had become a heart, it seemed to vibrate along with it.
From the tips of my fingers to the tips of my toes.
Even though Hati clearly lessened the impact, I felt as if every bone in my body had shattered into pieces and was flowing through my veins.
I tried to raise my body from Hati, but with a groan, I collapsed right back down.
My breath, which had been blocked, leaked out thinly.
“Tsk tsk, the body can't keep up with the mind, yet you're chasing ideals, so of course it has to hurt.”
“What is he saying? Grandma Ulf and the Saint now, huh? They already told us it's because the Mana Roads are all severed?”
“That is a physical disability. Mind and body are always in harmony. The problem is that there is an abnormality in the mind as much as the disability of the body.”
“?”
Rozalin blinked with a blank expression.
My expression probably wouldn't look much different.
“Elder, does that mean…… you know the reason why I hurt like this and can't use my body properly?”
“What? You bastard, you didn't even know that yet? Tsk tsk. This is why guys who only study at desks are rotten. A person should fight a lot, roll around, and survive in the wild. A guy with perfectly fine limbs.”
Hearing someone with not-so-fine limbs say that made me feel incredibly ashamed.
He grumbled as if fed up and shook his spear once to shake off the dust on the pole.
There wasn't a single drop of sweat on The Spear God's face.
‘He really is amazing.’
I couldn't do anything.
It was the first time I failed to seize the initiative in a sparring match to this extent.
‘He barely used his body, too.’
Originally, the reason I wanted to spar was because I wanted to learn how to use the body through his movements.
I thought if I knew how he utilized his body with his small, inconvenient, and painful physique, it would be helpful to me and the students as well.
However, The Spear God barely moved his body while sparring with me.
All he moved were his arms, two hands, and a few steps.
‘The way he moved his hands was certainly interesting.’
The way he changed his center and created the flow of the spear itself was excellent, but not novel.
At that moment when I wondered what to do.
“Stretch your arm forward.”
The Spear God spat out words.
My arm?
Following his words, I stretched my arm straight forward.
My arm, where the pain hadn't subsided yet, trembled finely in the air and slowly sank down.
“Hold your arm like that and try to cut with a sword.”
I gave strength to my arm, took a stance as if holding a sword, and lifted it into the air.
“Ugh.”
Zap, pain arose from my shoulder to my chest as if electricity had pierced through.
“That is the mistake.”
“This is…….”
“To be precise, you have no basics.”
The Spear God clicked his tongue, tsk tsk, as if he knew it would be so.
“You bastard, who was the first person you learned the sword from? It seems you learned quite advanced swordsmanship.”
“It was Captain Perdius of the Lionheart Knights.”
“That was the problem. Your eyes were forcibly opened because of swordsmanship you couldn't handle. Your body is less prepared, but you are only chasing the will, so that's why you are so weak!”
Eye, and will.
I could vaguely understand what The Spear God was trying to say.
It was something Professor Hollians taught me at the Imperial Academy when I was young.
A person's eyes open first, the head follows, and finally, the hands develop.
The sense to recognize good art develops first, then one becomes able to understand why it is good, and finally, one can reproduce it.
It seemed he meant that because I captured Captain Perdius's sword in my eyes from the beginning, my head and hands couldn't follow it, creating a gap.
“But isn't that merely a story of the past? Since then, I have learned cheap swordsmanship and continued sword training…….”
“The swordsmanship Perdius wielded that day is a life containing Perdius's lifetime. Not swordsmanship, but life. To wield that sword, he must have gone through countless deaths, fought wars, built stamina, and trained. But look at you bastard.”
The Spear God tapped my shoulder with his long spear shaft.
“This feeble body. You probably only dug into swordsmanship frantically. Look at the mercenary who blocked for you, isn't his body different?”
Indeed, as he said, Hati's physique was nothing but rugged despite his somewhat short stature.
It wasn't just Hati.
The mercenaries of the mercenary guild, and the knights of Lionheart too.
Everyone built their bodies to equip their stamina and follow their swordsmanship.
“Have you heard about Pan in the past?”
“Yes, Rozalin told me.”
“He had a body more rugged and outstanding than the current me, and anyone else in the world.”
Because he had such an outstanding body, he could wield outstanding swordsmanship.
“Like a fool who only chased swordsmanship. That's why Sword Intent dwells even in simply moving the body and moving the arm. Right now, you must erase the meaning of the sword from all movements and train solely stamina itself.”
Perhaps because they thought the sparring was definitely over.
Before we knew it, instructors and students who were watching the sparring had gathered around us.
Among them, The Spear God pointed at Hati and Freutche with his finger.
“You guys seem like the idiots who would use only your bodies without thinking the most, so teach that teacher well. As I see it, if stamina fills up well, even that weak body's lifespan will increase threefold.”
At those words, Freutche's and Hati's heads turned towards me so sharply that a whizzing sound could be heard.
Not only that, but the gazes of people like Pan, Bridget, and Rozalin who were listening together also turned towards me.
Somehow, their eyes were scary.
* * *
“Come on! One more set!”
“W-Wait a minute……! M-My arms really hurt! I'm telling you my muscles are tearing?”
“That's a side effect because you are putting Sword Intent blah blah blah into it! The important thing is to empty your thoughts and focus solely on your posture! That feeling of stamina increasing! Enjoy the feeling itself of muscles filling up and pain rising moderately!”
“If I do the same exercise for 30 minutes, isn't it natural that it hurts……?”
“Mind! Overcoming! Pain! Is the way!”
The next day, morning, lunch, dinner.
During the time the party rested while eating, Freutche and Hati stood on my left and right and started making me exercise.
They were what you call bodyweight muscle exercises, but to me, they seemed like techniques the Dark Moon, Red Moon, and Blue Moon of the Empire would use when torturing.
After finishing training for a long time like that, when I lay on the ground and turned my head, my eyes would meet the gaze of the carriage horses grazing leisurely.
They say horses usually have the intelligence of a 7-8-year-old child.
That meant the horses fully understood what the meaning of what I was doing now was.
‘You're suffering a lot like us too.’
There were many cases where they sent gazes of sympathy or gazes of ridicule together.
A life pitied even by horses.
“It's hard, isn't it?”
Rozalin came to my side and handed me water.
“Uh…… I'm dying.”
“Does it seem to have some effect?”
“It's only been two days, what effect.”
“Still, Teacher, it seems a lot of Sword Intent falls away when you move your body.”
That was true.
Perhaps thanks to Freutche and Hati, the two muscle-heads, rolling me around until I couldn't think of anything, the excessive Sword Intent imbued even when moving my body generally decreased a bit.
I don't know how that could really be connected to my health or the pain when swinging a sword.
The Spear God, who first brought up those words, just continued meditating with his eyes closed as if he had no particular interest after the first day's sparring.
“Grandpa Spear God, he's like an old fogey and a bit strange, but using the body and wielding a spear, he's really like a ghost with those. It won't be a loss to listen to him.”
“Right.”
“Anyway, only one day left now.”
It was as Rozalin said.
Our long journey had only one day left now.
As we approached Akarind Academy, a strange premonition felt like certainty.
It seemed the demon had appeared in the Belmein Kingdom, and near Akarind Academy.
“Nothing bad will happen.”
Rozalin smiled and comforted me.
Consequently, Rozalin's words were wrong.
“Oh my, you've come.”
At Akarind Academy, Berlis smiled awkwardly and waved her left hand.
On her opposite side, her right arm was completely gone from the shoulder down.