Some people were stronger in actual combat than in training. Why was that? Why did they perform better in a real fight?

Perhaps their senses were exceptional, or perhaps it was a difference in talent. Or perhaps they could summon their full concentration only in moments of crisis.

In truth, Encrid possessed none of those gifts. Not a single one. His ordinary senses made him clumsy at countering unconventional attacks, and he lacked flashes of inventive brilliance.

Concentration that only awakened in a crisis? If he'd had any such thing, he would never have died so many times.

He had none of that. What he did have was experience: countless hours of conditioning, training, and practice.

'What if I twist this way? Strike that way? Deflect, then strike immediately?'

He thought it through, put it into practice, and repeated it. This was after he had learned techniques from each branch of The Oniak Sword Technique. He had doggedly kept at it, without resting or tiring of it. Calling the method not merely crude but downright dim-witted would hardly have been unfair.

He had also gone through the process of applying what he gained that way, piece by piece, in actual combat. Without talent, he had to repeat things over and over, discovering tiny differences in movement along the way.

Where ten swings were enough for others, he needed a hundred. If a hundred were not enough, he had to swing more than a thousand times.

What came of that? He began to focus on a technique's essence rather than its usefulness. He had no choice. He could not move on until he understood.

Why did one parrying technique deliberately bring the blades together? Why twist the body away from the blade after making contact? Why turn so that the middle of the blade came inside the elbow?

Turning halfway gave him an opportunity to press down on the opponent's hand. Bringing the middle of the blade inside his elbow allowed him to bend his arm and use its strength to control the point of leverage, briefly preventing his opponent from exerting force.

Did that mean he absolutely had to turn his body? If closing in was what mattered, footwork might accomplish the same thing. No, did he even need to grasp the hand? How could he counter a parry?

That was the essence. The reason a movement was necessary. He had repeated, pondered, reviewed, and practiced such things countless times. He had done it while dying. He had done it when he wasn't dying, too.

That was why Encrid was far stronger in actual combat than in training. His willingness to keep challenging himself made the difference in a real fight.

His vivid blue eyes shone.

The apostle was a master of necromancy. In that discipline alone, even Esther would have conceded his superiority.

'I can't do this with astral projection.'

While incorporeal, he could not properly use his spell world. He would block with a barrier and use the magic he had prepared. He had an artificial sacred relic made by imbuing sacrifices obtained in the West with mana and using a treasure obtained in the Demonic Realm. He intended to use it.

Forget the terror. If he let fear consume him, he would be unable to cast properly. Calculations began in his head, but everything went awry from the outset.

The apostle could not even see Encrid's sword strokes.

CRACK! BOOM! CRACK!

All he saw was the barrier he had created cracking and shattering in the time it took to draw a breath.

'Will it hold? It will.'

Just before the barrier broke, the apostle chanted another spell.

"O eight brothers of Gullak!"

He opened his spell world. Eight Ghouls burst out. Holes like pitch-black lumps appeared in the ground, in the air at waist height, and overhead, spewing monsters.

More precisely, they were artificial Ghouls created through magic. One had long arms, another long legs, another a long tongue, another carried poison, and so on. Eight monsters, each with a different trait.

The apostle had been unlucky. Encrid had encountered a knight-level Ghoul from the Gray Forest Demonic Realm, the enemy of the city of Oara. That experience remained vividly with him.

The blue-eyed man swung his sword eight times.

He stepped his left foot out to the side for a diagonal cut, then drew his right foot in for a horizontal cut. Drawing his sword back again, he cut to the crown.

Treating the arm of a Ghoul thrusting its claws at him as a blade, he set the flat of his sword against it, gently pushed it aside, and stabbed. A gentle stroke did not turn a blade into cotton; it was more than lethal enough. This was the Flowing Sword Technique called Snake Sword.

Next he wound his blade inward and swung horizontally, sending a Ghoul's head flying. Then he circled over and stabbed a chest, drew the sword upward in a rising cut, and split another Ghoul's head vertically.

A high horizontal cut made a lid of the seventh Ghoul's three-eyed head. He switched the sword to his left hand and finished with a one-handed stab.

Naturally, the speed was beyond the spellcaster's ability to follow.

THUD! CRUNCH! SHUNK! CRACK! CRACKLE! CLANG! SHUNK!

All eight manifested Ghouls died, their heads severed, pierced, or given lids.

Clutching the sacred relic, the apostle's eyes widened. He saw two long lines: a trail of blue, followed by a fine silver line. Their movement stretched on endlessly as time slowed.

'Block it.'

He still had plenty of prepared spells. Gullak's Boil Barrier would do. It had the power to absorb physical impacts. He also had numerous protective artifacts, and had modified his skin.

And after he blocked it? Use the sacred relic. The artificial sacred relic would give every Giant over there monstrous power. In other words, they would become like those two Giants that all the westerners who had died earlier had called monsters.

Then he could slaughter everyone here. If even that was insufficient, he could unleash the relic's power in an explosion. No one would survive, himself included.

He would summon a golem made of blood from his spell world, attach the sacred relic, and detonate it. It contained the condensed blood of a thousand people. No one could survive an explosion of that magnitude. It was a secret art called Blood Explosion.

That would do it. There was a way. His calculations were complete. All he had to do was act.

His thoughts continued, but his tongue never moved to chant. The fine silver line was faster. Aker, transformed into that line, reached the apostle's neck.

This was a convergence of coincidences.

Encrid had recently gained new understanding. The sword in his hand was a magic sword. Esther had taught him how to keep a mage under pressure.

The apostle had not expected the fight to begin this way. Ordinarily, he enjoyed proclaiming his purpose and proselytizing. That was why he had tried to speak first.

And throughout it all, Encrid had dispensed with words and answered with his sword.

DRRRRRR!

Aker, now a fine silver line, was stopped very briefly before the apostle's neck. It was, of course, only an instant, a sliver of time the apostle could not perceive.

His defensive artifacts had activated. One made his skin as slippery as an oil toad's. Another wrapped a steel-hard barrier a finger joint thick directly in front of the point of impact.

He was an apostle of the Cult of the Sacred Demonic Realm, prepared for battle. Naturally, he carried a wide assortment of artifacts. His body had also been grafted with monster skin, making it incomparably tougher than a human's.

Of course, none of that mattered once his head was separated from his body.

The sword was under perfect control, swung from an exact stance with his planted left foot as the pivot. It was a swing that pierced to the essence of technique, a sword stroke incorporating a knight's strike.

Aker cleaved through his defenses and preparations alike. Having served their purpose, the artifacts crumbled inside the apostle's clothing.

Not sharp enough? Then strength could make up the difference. Concentrate on a Single Point pinpointed the exact place to strike, and the Heart of the Superhuman supplied the strength.

SPLURT!

The apostle's head flew into the air. It sprang upward, then fell to the ground. His body collapsed atop the corpses of the half-Giant and Fairy.

"Father!"

It was one of the fortune-teller tribesmen who had emerged from the canyon. A young man with teardrop and dagger markings—or rather, a boy.

At his cry, it happened.

GRAAAAAAH!

Suddenly, every Giant let out a monstrous, scream-like roar. They threw their heads back and bellowed as purple veins bulged over their muscles.

CRRRRACK!

Their muscles swelled, and their eyes blazed as though someone had shoved torches into them. Their hair billowed, and their skin began turning a deep brown. The transformed Giants looked as though they were pushing away even the surrounding sunlight and wind.

Most of the apostle's determination had burned away without manifesting, but the one intention he had placed in the artificial sacred relic activated as a spell: the awakening of every Giant present.

"You bastard!"

No sooner had Encrid killed the apostle than he felt a presence bearing down on him from behind. He turned and swung Aker. It was a light stroke, but not one just anyone could evade or block. Strength and speed reinforced an angle difficult to dodge.

CLANG!

Yet it was blocked. He blocked that? Encrid might have been surprised, but he wasn't. He drew back his short, sharp stroke and brought the sword down again at the same angle.

This time it was the Heavy Sword Technique's Collarbone Cleaver, with weight behind it. Rather than checking the stroke, he drove it through. His opponent was still partly airborne.

As he swung, Encrid's eyes took in the opponent's clothing and stance. A short-furred vest, trousers, arm guards, facial markings, and a black rod tucked diagonally across his back? It was a blade made of obsidian.

What had blocked Aker was a dagger called a karambit. It was so hard that Aker had neither shattered nor cut through it. Only its edge had chipped a little.

Resentment and curses filled the boy's eyes. He managed to block the second stroke as well, twisting his dagger to redirect the sword's force.

That truly was impressive. In raw talent, perhaps he rivaled Rem. He lagged behind for now, but left alone, he would grow quickly.

Having blocked Encrid's attack by merely redirecting the blade with his dagger, he rolled backward the moment he landed. Encrid started to pursue, then stopped at a warning from his Sixth Sense.

As the boy rolled backward, an obsidian spear rose into the air. A trick? No, a spell. Untouched by any hand, the throwing spear floated up on its own, then shot toward him.

Encrid remained where he had stopped at the warning from his sensory arts. He thought something unseen must be holding the spear. Perhaps it was one of what the westerners called ancestral spirits.

TING!

Blocking it was trivial. He gauged the incoming spearhead's speed, set his blade against it, and deflected it.

Then he took a great step forward, circling Aker halfway around behind his head as he advanced before bringing it down perpendicular to the ground. All of it happened in a single breath.

WHOOSH!

Once again, Aker failed to cut the enemy. It sliced empty air. The boy who had acted as though he would attack recklessly had leaped backward instead.

Having retreated, he thrust out his left hand.

JINGLE!

What sort of ornaments were those? A golden bell hung from each finger of his left hand.

He raised and shook that hand, then spoke.

"I will take your sight."

Encrid blinked. Nothing happened. The boy froze with his left hand extended.

GRIND.

He ground his molars and shouted again.

"Take three steps and fall!"

The first was the Curse of the Blind, the second the Curse of the Lame. Naturally, neither worked.

Encrid felt no foreboding whatsoever. He merely found himself wondering whether the ferryman was belching somewhere.

"Delicious!"

Or perhaps he was shouting that.

"It was you. You swallowed the curse."

The voice was youthful. After speaking with a murderous glare at Encrid, the boy fled outright. He stamped the ground a few times, and his body blurred away into the distance.

Watching him flee, Encrid threw a dagger. It whistled through the air and buried itself in the shaman's back. He staggered briefly but kept running until he disappeared.

He was fast enough to make pursuit difficult. Not impossible, but a more urgent problem remained. The Giants and the black warrior were still fighting behind Encrid.