Chapter 76 : What Do You Want to Do

Chapter 76: What Do You Want to Do?

“What… is this?”

It was a reaction uncharacteristic of Seah.

She truly seemed surprised, her eyes widened and her lips slightly parted.

Geez, why was she making such a fuss over this.

“That’s not even half of its original performance.”

Gwoooong–

A low, resonant vibration.

The younger ones clad in Magical Armor loosened up their bodies across the training yard.

It was as if each of them had ascended by at least one level—their strength and speed were completely different from usual.

Even the precision and sharpness of their movements were like those of entirely different people.

“You’re saying that’s not even half?”

“Yeah. To use Magical Armor properly, you need to ‘activate’ it. And for that, you have to be at least at the Stage of Reading the Sword.”

Only by communicating with the Armor Spirit could one initiate the activation.

But the only ones who had reached that level were Katrina and Catch, so the others were just using ‘automatic mode.’

“If automatic mode is that powerful… then what happens when it’s activated?”

“It becomes like that.”

I pointed with my chin at Katrina.

Paaaang!

“Oooh! Oooohhh! This is [Charge]!”

Just then, she used a ‘skill.’

The moment she used it, her body shot out with a sudden whoosh, as if disappearing.

Even just using it like that was terrifying, but when she pushed off the ground with her feet, it turned into a dash so fast that even a Swordmaster would have trouble reacting.

“You can turn skills on and off like that whenever you want.”

“My god.”

Of course, that wasn’t all.

“Look over there.”

This time, I pointed at Catch.

He—

Paaaaaang!

With overwhelming momentum, he brought his sword crashing down, then suddenly sprang back, swift as a leopard.

Seah narrowed her eyes.

“Catch Oppa’s enhancements seem bigger. Both his strength and his speed.”

“Exactly. You can channel output into specific functions. Enhance your senses, or focus more on strength or speed.”

“That’s an enormous difference in battle, isn’t it?”

“Right. In automatic mode, all the stats are locked to their default values.”

“But if the opponent suddenly channels everything into strength and strikes down…”

“There’s no counter. That’s why I said the difference is at least twofold.”

In automatic mode, only passive skills like [Shield] and [Inertia Control] were applied, and you couldn’t turn them on and off at will.

Even the consumption of the Mana Heart was higher.

But—

Even so—

That was still a weapon so outrageous that no one had ever seen anything like it before.

“So even in automatic mode it’s this strong. Now I understand what you meant, Oppa.”

Seah nodded to herself and continued.

“One year for me, one month for you, right?”

“Yeah. Well, we’ll just have to see how it really turns out.”

“With this kind of power, anything should be possible. But there’s still a problem. With strength alone you can conquer, but you can’t gain obedience. Without obedience, you can’t go any further.”

A most reasonable point.

That was also where my own worries lay.

Seah looked up at me intently and asked,

“Do you have a plan? Other than my counterintelligence scheme?”

“Ah, it’s not like I won’t use your stratagem at all.”

I flicked the report in my hand—the one Seah had given me.

“Depending on the situation, I might even use your stratagem more aggressively.”

“So, what are you planning to do for now?”

“For now….”

Drawing out my words, I let my gaze sweep slowly across the training yard.

The younger ones were almost fully adapted to the Magical Armor now.

Not that it was difficult to adapt to in the first place.

Good equipment was meant to be like that.

With that, I didn’t have to worry about my siblings anymore. With [Shield] as a default option, they weren’t going to die easily.

Therefore,

They now had power.

Strong power I could wield without hesitation.

And with that power, what I intended was—

“I’ll have to start with a conversation.”

First, I’d confront them head-on.

“An honest one, at that.”

I’d stand with a massive sword at my back and ask the question.

Now, what will you do?

*         *         *

The date of the operation was set for three days later.

In the meantime, I shut myself away alone in the personal training yard.

For a while, I rested deeply.

I reunited with my siblings. I stabilized Kinalo.

Now it was time to face the worries I had been putting off.

“…Was this really what protected me?”

What I was looking down at now was the completely melted and crumbled Dragon’s Magical Armor.

The fact that it was broken wasn’t strange in itself.

I had drawn out power far beyond its limits.

Even now, the memory sent chills down my spine.

Seven heads. The monster that could bring the world crashing down.

I actually fought something like that.

It wouldn’t have been strange if I had died—or at least ended up crippled, like before….

No,

“How did I even survive?”

That was the stranger part.

“I certainly didn’t kill it. Three heads were still left.”

So the one who finished it must have been Lorraine.

Which meant she had poured dozens of Mana Shells into it…. But how did I survive, right there beside her, when my Magical Armor was shattered, my Aura dispersed, and I had even lost consciousness?

“Did the dragon’s will truly protect me?”

There had been that faint but unmistakable voice lingering by my ear.

[Thank you.]

Was that a memory? Or just an illusion?

I couldn’t tell.

But—

“If not for that, there’s no way to explain how I survived.”

For now, I decided to assume it was true.

That the dragon’s will had protected me.

But according to the theories of the Ancient Era, that was impossible.

‘A will-image is merely a will-image, not a soul. It has no will, only blind obsession, and it can never change.’

The ancients had regarded this axiom as truth.

So it made no sense.

A will-image that had been raving to kill suddenly expressing gratitude to me?

Even going so far as to willfully protect me?

Impossible.

For a will-image that retained only blind obsession could never change.

It didn’t make sense…

But still, I decided to assume it had happened.

‘There’s something there.’

An intuition.

A strong intuition that perhaps this riddle held the key to advancing toward unity of sword and self.

I sank into thought.

Again, I used the method of elimination.

I conjured up countless scenarios, then erased every impossible one.

At the end, a single possibility remained.

Like a magic lamp lit in the dark night, it illuminated my path.

‘Will. The dragon’s will-image merged with my will.’

A clue.

In life, the dragon must have been slain by that Apostle-like being.

For at first, the will-image had done nothing but blindly cry for me to die, but after it noticed the Apostle, its cry shifted to, ‘Kill that one.’

I wanted to kill the Apostle, and so did the dragon’s will-image.

As a result, my will and the dragon’s will-image aligned, and the two finally merged.

‘That’s why the will-image might have changed. A will-image fused with my will became something more than just a will-image.’

It was a faint explanation.

Why the dragon’s will-image had suddenly changed its stance and protected me.

But my thoughts didn’t stop there; they reached even further.

At that moment, the will-image merged with my will, becoming something else… and that something was contained within Banroa.

Yes. Contained.

It was undeniably contained.

As I recalled that, Grand Duke Laitena Celsius’s teaching flashed through my mind.

[The Stage of Full-Sword means forging your own sword with your soul. When the sword born in your small universe dyes even the sword you hold in your hand, then the Stage of Full-Sword is complete.]

The Stage of Full-Sword.

The realm of the ancient Swordmasters.

He had uttered those words offhandedly, saying he would show me the goal first.

Now they echoed inside my head.

If ‘forging my own sword’ meant honing my will as if it were my own blade…

And if the act of infusing that will into the actual sword was the realm of the Stage of Full-Sword, the way to create Sword Steel….

‘In that moment… I brushed against the realm of the Swordmaster from ancient times with a fingertip.’

A shiver shot like lightning down my spine.

‘That’s why I could cut it. That monster.’

This, too, was intuition.

That Apostle must have been something on a higher dimension than me.

Just as an arrow drawn in a picture cannot strike the one outside it, just as a blade inside a dream cannot cut someone outside the dream, in truth, I should not have been able to harm it. That sudden realization struck me.

The only reason it had been possible—

Was because at that moment, even by a fingertip, even by the edge of a fingernail, I had brushed against the Stage of Full-Sword.

‘But how?’

I hadn’t even broken through to Unity of Sword and Self, the hallmark of a Peak Expert, let alone the Stage of Full-Sword of a Swordmaster. How had I leapt across two entire stages to reach that place?

Even if my will and the dragon’s will-image had fused to create something new….

‘Ah…!’

There are such moments.

Moments when realizations cascade endlessly, like a sudden downpour.

[Though it’s separately classified as the Stage of Sword Support, in the end it’s nothing more than a process toward Unity of Sword and Self.]

Once again, his voice resounded.

Grand Duke’s voice.

If Sword Support was merely part of the process toward Unity of Sword and Self—

‘Then perhaps Unity of Sword and Self is nothing more than part of the process toward the Stage of Full-Sword?’

That was why it had been possible.

To leap across two stages.

For stages were just divisions made by humans, while the true path stretched unbroken from beginning to end.

Through the performance of the Magical Armor, the dragon’s will-image blended with my will, my heightened consciousness, my sharpened focus—all those coincidences came together, and I stepped upon the shadow of something that stood at the end of that path.

Saaaa—

At some point, the goosebumps faded.

My heart was endlessly calm, and I finally understood.

It was like standing atop a high hill, where the road I had to walk stretched out clear and bright into the distance.

‘Now I finally understand the words you spoke then.’

[It’s less communion, and more convergence… and transcendence. The paths up the mountain are all different, but at the summit, they all meet. There, they meet and transcend.]

Convergence.

That was the realm of a Peak Expert, Unity of Sword and Self.

Transcendence.

That was the realm of the Swordmaster, the Stage of Full-Sword.

First convergence, then transcendence.

Just as the dragon’s will-image and my will became one, so too, first, my will and the will of the sword must become one—that was convergence.

To hone the single will of “cutting,” sharpening it distinctly, and uniting my will with the sword’s will.

That was Unity of Sword and Self.

After that came transcendence.

Surpassing the simple will of “cutting.”

Forging “my own sword,” letting it overflow until even the blade in my hand was dyed by it, transcending together.

That was the Stage of Full-Sword.

So this was it.

The realm I had stepped into, unknowingly, on the day of my Rebirth.

It had been here all along.

I drew Banroa.

I swung it slowly.

No—

I danced together with it.

“Cut.”

A dance embodying only that single meaning.

Just as two different beings meet at the summit and become one.

Banroa vanished, and I vanished.

What remained was only the dance of the sword.

Sword Dance.

Wooong! Woong–!

Gradually, deep-blue Aura overflowed along Banroa.

Like the time I underwent Rebirth, the Aura swelled, becoming a whale, becoming a lake, becoming a storm.

Joyful, and joyful again,

I once more lost track of time.

Then suddenly, when I came back to myself, night had already fallen.

The shattered moon cast a gentle light upon the training yard.

“Ah.”

So that’s how it was.

Another truth I came to know, instinctively.

The path I had just now stepped onto—Peak Expert.

But if I were to walk this path to its end, if the time came when I gazed upon the realm of the Stage of Full-Sword, then….

‘I’ll be able to cut even what does not belong to this world.’

Even as a Peak Expert, almost like a Swordmaster.

Even the smallest, faintest will, I would be able to place within the blade.

Because by a chain of coincidences, I had already glimpsed the edge of the Stage of Full-Sword.

Jjirrr—

A shiver coursed through my body.

I simply stood there, savoring the lingering resonance.

A moment when everything was fragrant.

“Master!”

Suddenly, a voice pulled me out.

It was Seklan.

“Tomorrow’s the operation day! Shouldn’t you rest now?!”

It was tomorrow already?

So I had spent two whole days swinging my sword.

“Ah, thanks. I was just about to head in.”

Answering thus, I calmed the goosebumps that tingled over my skin and turned to leave.

“But Seklan.”

“Yes.”

“When are you going to stop calling me Master?”

“Ah? Well… since that’s how it was when we first met, it’s not so easy….”

“Is that so. Anyway, I told you, didn’t I? You can drop the honorifics anytime. Just like Daisy.”

“Yes! I’ll do that when it feels right!”

“Good, kid.”

I ruffled Seklan’s hair and headed toward my chamber.

Since departure was tomorrow, I needed a deep rest tonight.

*         *         *

That night,

Before sleep, Ransen suddenly thought of a question.

‘I’ve just stepped into Unity of Sword and Self… but I still don’t get that.’

The supreme realm of Aura that Cain Manus had shown him.

Grandmaster.

The path to reach it was still nothing but a puzzle.

‘Just cramming Aura tightly into the body doesn’t seem like the way….’

Aura that lingered in the air even after being unleashed.

Aura that bloomed on its own in the void, regardless of the sword.

The Soul Blade, symbol of the Grandmaster.

How in the world was that achieved?

While he pondered this quietly,

Ransen did not notice.

Sarak–

In the training yard where he had spent the past two days, a single leaf had just been cut down.

He did not notice the faint Aura that still drifted there, floating slowly.

Sarak–

A thin streak of deep-blue Aura just split another small leaf in two and vanished.

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