Once he stepped into the soundless world, everything around him looked as though they had stopped. Enkrid measured his own speed through that difference in sensation.
"The transmission of force."
Every movement had to remain within the basics.
It was something he had realized through the blond swordsman, and then engraved into himself once more by sparring with Rem, Ragna, Audin and Jaxon.
Not a sword that was merely fast, but a sword that cut properly.
He poured speed into everything he had learned, practiced, and awakened to. It was a sword stroke like lightning.
That didn't mean the trajectory now advanced in a zigzag like before. It had simply become a fast sword so swift, and accompanied by such thunderous force, that the name "lightning" suited it perfectly.
As that lightning fell straight down, Valmung swung his club as well.
Thump.
There was no sound, yet when the wave spread through his entire body, it left behind the feeling of a collision like that. The shock raced through his whole frame. The aftershock born from the instant Today and Valmung's club met shoved both their bodies in opposite directions.
As if by prior agreement, Enkrid and Valmung moved their feet and bled that force away.
Both twisted their bodies halfway and let the spare force flow off. It was a skill for shedding impact through the body. Enkrid had learned it from Audin, and Valmung displayed a similar skill.
Having bled off the shock, the two exchanged a second attack. Enkrid stamped the ground with his foot and mercilessly poured Will into Today's blade.
Bzzzzng.
Even in the silent world, it felt as though a sound rang out.
Will, having reached the stage of shaping, turned into a faint blue and covered the blade. Valmung clenched his molars so hard that the muscles in his jaw stood out as he raised his club vertically. He gathered Will too. Something like red strands swelled and coiled together over the club.
If they crashed together like that, it felt as though one of them would be badly hurt. A technique too dangerous to use in a simple spar had suddenly burst out.
And yet, it also didn't feel like either of them would truly be hurt.
Weren't they both experts in fighting?
And knights, at that. They would know how to strike and withdraw at the right point.
Valmung judged it that way, but Enkrid thrust his sword as though he had half his life on the line.
This time it was a diagonal slash. His posture was proper, like something straight out of a swordsmanship manual.
"Heavy strike."
He chopped diagonally down from above. It was a sword swing made while stepping forward with his right foot that had been behind him.
Valmung felt this was more dangerous than the vertical slash from a moment ago. But if he retreated, he would lose far too much ground in the offensive exchange.
"I'll block it."
His blunt weapon was useful in defense too. Making use of a weapon's strengths was also skill.
Valmung opened his empty left hand, spread the thumb wide, pressed the other four fingers tightly together, tensed them, and braced that hand around the middle of the club. Then he raised his right hand gripping the handle above his head and slanted the angle. It was a guarding stance.
"Block, then bind or counterattack."
An outstanding knight possessed the insight to see several moves ahead. In that instant, Valmung had already calculated five moves into the future.
It was combat foresight, a gift born from a mountain of experience built up over countless battlefields. Since his opponent was also an outstanding knight, the path of foresight was not just one. Three possible directions lay before him.
"Twist the blade away."
One was a direct counter in which the other man simply knocked it back by force.
"Stick to the blade and pull."
The second was to use a bind, close the distance, and transition into wrestling with hands and feet.
"Make the Will surge and use the impact."
That meant deliberately detonating Will at the point of collision strongly enough to have a meaningful effect on both bodies.
He liked the third method especially. A blunt weapon was better than a sword at taking that kind of shock.
Valmung braced himself and prepared, but instead of striking Valmung's weapon, Enkrid suddenly cut empty air.
And that slash through empty air was followed by a shoulder driving in as though that had been what the motion was meant for all along. It was a body check.
"You little—"
It was deception. He had used the sword strike as a feint. In an instant, Valmung realized what Enkrid had done and hurriedly twisted his body to the side, preparing for the impact.
***
Wheeeew.
Rem whistled. In this place, he was the only one who could clearly follow the fight between those two.
"Damn."
The admiration slipped out on its own.
"He tricked him."
From start to finish, it had been a sword meant to deceive. He had begun with a sudden vertical slash and steered the opponent's thinking. Then he had landed a solid blow with the body check.
Everything about it was superb, down to the way he fixed the opponent's attention on the swinging blade.
"Wasn't he calling it Enkrid-style orthodox swordsmanship?"
What a truly infuriating name.
As Rem watched, the distance between the two widened. Valmung knit his brow, then relaxed it and spoke.
"What was that just now?"
Enkrid answered in an utterly solemn tone.
"Enkrid-style orthodox swordsmanship."
He had even attached the word orthodox to his own name. To anyone looking at it, it was swordsmanship that seemed to refine the basics, but in truth, it was swordsmanship deliberately made to screw with people.
To everyone else, all they had heard was the repeated sound of lightning crashing—kwarrrng—and things bursting with a bang.
"You won one round."
Crang said it by feel.
"Looks that way."
Kraiss answered the same way, also by feel.
The Royal Guard watched the fight in taut tension. Watching a fight like this was enough to make the heart clench on its own, and this one was happening practically under the nose of the king they were sworn to protect.
"What do you think, Rem?"
Kraiss was clever enough to know that, rather than trying to judge the outcome of a fight he couldn't properly see, it was better to ask someone who could.
"He won't lose."
Rem was certain. Valmung was an outstanding knight. Faster than anyone they had met before, and his physical strength was outstanding too.
But.
"He's Balrog level."
That was how Rem saw the current Enkrid. Enkrid half lowered his blue eyes and raised his sword again. Seeing that, Valmung spoke.
"I can't exactly bet my life on this. This is really a problem."
His eyes gleamed. They were full of killing intent and fighting spirit.
"Don't worry. I won't kill you."
In contrast, Enkrid's gaze remained calm.
"Don't regret this, swordsman of the continent."
Valmung spoke and swung his club. He was stubborn too. Having been fooled once, he might have tried something different, but instead he used a trick of his own.
He feinted as though he were swinging the club, then abruptly hurled it. Enkrid calmly caught it with his palm and guided it away.
It was a technique he had already seen once before when killing that bastard named Gelt or whatever, back when the man had been fleeing through the Empire.
"I knew I shouldn't have shown you that then!"
Valmung shouted. Without replying, Enkrid smacked him across the abdomen with the flat of his blade.
Jjaaang-!
The fight was long, if one chose to call it long, and short, if one chose to call it short. To a knight's eye, it was long. To someone who didn't know what they were looking at, it was short.
They had come to the sparring grounds and exchanged only a few swings before Valmung staggered back.
Throughout the entire fight, Rem had watched Enkrid overwhelm his opponent through swordsmanship.
"I lost."
Unlike how he had looked when he charged in, Valmung's admission of defeat was clean.
"I won."
Apparently in a good mood, Enkrid teased him right to the very end. Instead of letting the veins in his forehead bulge, Valmung merely shook his head.
This bastard really never lets his mouth rest. That was all he thought.
"How about we resume the talks at the dinner banquet?"
Straightening his posture, Valmung said this to the king, and Crang nodded. With that, the first round of talks came to an end.
"That was fun."
Enkrid's impression was simple. Crang's was more complicated.
"So now it begins."
"You noticed."
When Kraiss picked up the remark, Crang, in a way unbefitting the king of a nation, lifted only one corner of his mouth and put on a deliberately wicked smile.
"Did you think I'd just sit there and take it?"
The forced viciousness looked like a scene from a stage play.
"It's hard to predict anything when we don't know what the other side wants."
Kraiss honestly voiced what was on his mind. One of his strengths was saying he didn't know when he didn't know.
"I won, so I'll just use that as an excuse to ask."
Enkrid inserted his opinion into the conversation.
"And if you ask, do you think they'll meekly answer?"
Crang asked back.
Even if they didn't answer, what then? Could they force it through strength? Did they have to go to war with the Empire too? Send thousands of soldiers onto another battlefield?
Those were the unavoidable worries that tormented Crang as king. And yet he wasn't truly tormented.
If you suffer over things that have not yet happened, it becomes hard to focus on the present. Crang knew that truth, so he simply looked at what was before him now.
"Thank you."
When he said that to Enkrid, Enkrid stared blankly at him.
It looked as though he were asking what there was to thank him for.
"For winning."
"And if I'd lost?"
"I'd still be grateful."
"For stepping up even knowing I'd lose?"
"You know, so why ask?"
Rem said that from the side with a scowl.
"Why're you saying such embarrassing crap?"
"Shh, there are a lot of ears listening. It's good to show that side of yourself every now and then."
Kraiss took the words right out of his mouth. Rem knew that too and had only said it for the sake of saying it. Around the royal training grounds, there were more eyes watching than one might think.
Servants, retainers of nobles, and even nobles themselves stealing glances.
They were the same people who came and went now and then while Enkrid and his group were staying there. There was no real way to control the entry and exit of every single person.
And it wasn't as though the number of people working inside the palace was small.
After seizing royal authority, Crang had doubled the number of working staff compared to before.
The kingdom was not going to run smoothly just because he formed the Council of Ten and got rid of a few stupid nobles.
Crang always thought there was a shortage of capable people.
At any rate, that was why there were so many eyes watching, and Enkrid had won, and the king was now speaking intimately with Enkrid. Watching that, Kraiss felt as though someone had pulled off a kind of trick impossible in a card game.
"A king and a knight, an assassin and a spy, and a strategist."
All of them were on the same side, trusted one another without suspicion, and took the lead in standing against demons.
In card games, the representative card used and discarded as an unavoidable sacrifice was the soldier.
"And yet our king and our commander do their best to protect those soldiers."
The world was not like a card game. He felt that all over again. It was simply a thought that crossed his mind.
The group rested well until the dinner banquet, then gathered again. Palace protocol said the head steward should arrange the table, call in the guests first, and have the king sit last, but Crang didn't care about such things.
"This is the moment of receiving an envoy from a foreign nation. It would be best to observe proper etiquette."
That was Marcus speaking, the man who had now become Duke Baisar. As he said it, he shot a glance at the Duke of Octo. Originally this wasn't his role to speak up, but Octo had kept his mouth shut the whole time for some reason, so Marcus had stepped in instead.
"If you say it like that, does it look like I'll agree?"
"No, not at all. But things still need to be said."
"Fine. Then say them."
While Crang and Marcus traded banter, the imperial delegation entered. It was the same as before. The knight, the mage, the priest, two women, and one attendant.
"Does the Empire eat differently from us?"
Crang asked while seated.
"Can what goes into people's mouths really be all that different? Or does the Hero of the West eat something else, perhaps?"
He had been waiting for Valmung's answer, but one of the women stepped forward and replied instead. Perhaps because she had washed up well in the meantime, her skin looked clearer than before. Her hair had been neatly braided back, a sign that the female attendant had been busy with her hands.
The question had been directed at Rem. She looked at him with a clear, graceful sort of face.
"Broadly speaking, it's the same. Look closer, and it's different."
Rem replied from his seat with sleepy eyes. It was the sort of answer he gave when he couldn't be bothered with a question. What he meant was that people ate the same kinds of things, meat and grain, but the methods of preparation and the ingredients varied a little.
"In the Empire, fish dishes are usually precious. Fish provided by the trade cities are quite rare."
"Then I suppose that's a relief."
Crang took up those words.
On the dining table sat a flat-steamed fish. It was flounder, heavy with roe, a seasonal delicacy eaten only at this time of year.
It had been caught directly from the sea by a trade city and rushed over the same day.
Without something like a basket imbued with cold, it would have been impossible to eat it like this.
It truly was the sort of dish one would expect only in a kingdom.
In truth, Crang did not especially like such precious food. It tasted good, so he liked that part, and there was no point in letting a spell object go to waste, so he used it.
Well, Crang was human too, and he didn't think it was wrong for someone like him, seated on the throne and suffering through it, to receive at least this much of a reward.
"Eat."
Crang said, and everyone enjoyed the meal. Enkrid also quite enjoyed eating. Rem and the weren't any different. Kraiss especially rather liked to call himself a gourmet.
And while they ate and drank, the woman wiped the corner of her mouth with linen and spoke.
"It would not do to come before Your Highness empty handed, so I prepared a gift."
It was a brazen shift in stance, but that was also how a conversation moved forward.
Valmung had abruptly put force first, while the woman, as an envoy, made her position known and offered a gift.
It was a small box filled with several stones of different colors.
"Each of those stones contains magic. All of them are meant to protect the body."
It was a precious treasure. A relic.
"Would you mind getting to the point?"
Crang said after glancing at the box. You didn't come here to give gifts, did you? That was the meaning.
"Yes, of course."
The female envoy answered without the slightest sign of fluster.
"His Majesty the Emperor has invited Your Highness the King."