Chapter 182

Chapter 182

Half a month had passed since Leon had begun his special training camp. It had stretched on longer than planned. At first, he had intended to stop once Elahan’s Holy Weapons were repaired, but the results had been so much better than expected that it became difficult to end it early.

His spars with Elahan were the fiercest.

In her robes, she looked like someone who couldn’t harm even a single flower. That all changed the instant she entered combat stance. It was clear why the Saintess bore the title of vice-commander of the Holy Iron Inquisitors.

She was unstoppable. Sheathed in immense divine energy, she crushed her foes beneath massive, heavy weapons.

Her defense was like a fortress, able to withstand direct hits from siege engines. Her strikes were powerful enough to shatter cliffs in a single blow. With Holy Law constantly restoring her, her stamina seemed endless. Elahan, as a combat partner, was, in short, a nightmare.

She left no openings whatsoever. No matter what mind games Leon tried to play, her mastery of brawling and her psychological feints made it nearly impossible to catch her off guard.

Elahan summed it up succinctly, “Fair fights are a luxury on heretics.”

Against heretics, ambushes were allowed. Against heretics, ganging up was allowed. Poison and traps, too, were fair game.

The Holy Iron Inquisitors had strict codes of conduct, but most of them loosened drastically when it came to fighting heretics. After all, there was no room for calculation and mercy against enemies like the Evil Order. Perhaps that was why Leon, with far less experience in dueling people, suffered all manner of indignities when fighting her.

She tugged his clothes to stop him from retreating or snapped his fingers in the clash of weapons.

“Wha?!”

Extremities were difficult to keep in check, like one did with their vital points. That was a lesson that Elahan drilled into Leon through painful repetition.

However, the move that left Leon the most speechless was when she spat in his face mid-spar.

“I-I’m so sorry! Let me clean it off right away!”

Even though she immediately apologized, forgetting the training entirely, the incident was seared into Leon’s memory.

And Elahan wasn’t his only sparring partner. Training with Karen was the most exasperating.

Unlike Leon, who preferred straightforward combat, Karen excelled at catching him off guard and striking vitals unilaterally. From pointed gestures to casual jokes, Karen did anything and everything to distract him.

She would glance sideways, and when he instinctively looked too, she’d kick his shin. She’d back away, and when he stepped forward, his foot would fall into a pit she had somehow dug.

“That’s so dirty!” Leon exclaimed.

“

Hehe

, I’m an assassin, remember.”

Every time he fell for it, Karen burst into laughter, and Leon, stung by pride, forced himself to stay calmer. Getting angry only clouded his judgment. With Rodrick’s Vision, if he viewed the whole battlefield as a single picture, no trick could sway his focus.

However, Karen had an infinite number of tricks up her sleeve.

“Smoke bombs and tear gas...? Come on, Karen...” Leon grumbled, half his face blackened.

“You blocked your ears well enough, though. That was the real trick,” Karen offered her praise.

“I figured after my eyes, you’d go for my ears.”

“Looks like you read me this time.”

As expected of a top-class assassin, Karen had more tricks than he could count—many that disrupted or distorted the senses. She could never fool Leon completely, but even a fraction of a second was more than enough for an Assassin Master.

Twilight Waltz was a killing art of shadows, where one could control enemies like puppets, create clones, and strike without sound or presence. Karen’s mastery of it had grown high enough that even Leon lost track of her movements whenever he grew the slightest bit careless.

“Checkmate!” Karen exclaimed.

“No, that’s a draw at best.”

As Leon adapted, she began using her real body as bait to have her clones strike from behind. Hers was a combat style of trickery, unlike Elahan’s brute force.

Without firm resolve, it was nearly impossible to respond in time to her secret assassin techniques. Her aim was to offer her flesh to sever the enemy’s bone and offer her own life like an arrow in a mutual kill.

If it had been real combat, how many times would he have died? Even though Leon deliberately restrained his Sun Sword’s power and relied only on swordsmanship, he couldn’t excuse all those losses.

“And now, my turn.”

But of course, of the three, the most difficult opponent was inevitably Irexana. Elahan’s brawling, Karen’s dirty tricks—none compared to the level of mastery Irexana displayed.

Every day, he switched weapons, yet Leon never once saw a lapse in proficiency. Sword, spear, axe, club, whip—anything in his hands became a lethal threat.

This time, Irexana brought out the urumi. It was a flexible sword, a relic from old martial traditions. Blades two to three meters long whipped like a lash, their arcs filling the air with a chilling hiss. Even a graze tore the wind apart.

Driven by centrifugal force, the whip-blade surpassed the speed of sound, striking at Leon like a venomous serpent. Leon deflected it with his Holy Sword, only for another strike to follow immediately.

That was the crucial difference from a whip. Where a whip delivered one heavy strike, the urumi unleashed relentless chains of attacks, overwhelming multiple foes at once. There was no chance to block and counter.

Even with Rodrick’s Vision, the bizarre weapon disoriented his eyes, making it difficult to advance recklessly.

A weapon focused purely on speed and change...

Swift and dazzling. That was all, but when combined with Irexana’s mastery, it became a killing hell Leon dared not enter.

Four slashes came in a single step, and each was a strike that ignored high, middle, and low lines, sweeping from all directions. Orthodox swordsmanship wasn’t the answer to this problem.

Then...

Before this special training, Leon would have tried to break through with his sword alone. Now, however, he didn’t hesitate.

He raised his left arm, and when the urumi whipped in from his side, he thrust his arm into it. Faster than Irexana could retract, Leon wrapped the whip-blade around his forearm.

Any ordinary gauntlet would have been sliced apart like a carrot. However, on Leon’s arm gleamed the Sun Shield. A small round barrier, like a buckler, managed to render the urumi’s edge useless.

Looking down at the Holy Sword stopped at his throat, Irexana praised Leon with a gentle smile.

“That was a good decision, Hero Leon.”

A swordsman was someone who used the sword, not someone who used

only

the sword. No matter how great one’s strength was, it couldn’t carry a person through every trial. Unless one was a fanatic like Cedric, obsessed with the sword alone, the more options one had, the better.

“I didn’t expect you to improve this much in just half a month. When bad habits take root, they can take years to correct, but in your case, I see you improving day by day.”

“

Whew

, that’s a relief.”

“In fact, I don’t think the habits you had were bad to begin with. That’s part of why you’ve grown so well.”

“My habits aren’t... bad...?”

“

Hm

,” pausing for a beat, Irexana continued in a more thoughtful tone. “As I’ve told you before, your martial arts follow the perfect way, and the royal road. If you reach the end of that path, no one will be able to touch you. But...”

Leon smiled bitterly and finished the thought, “You mean my ability is lacking.”

“It can’t be helped. After all, the only one who’s ever reached the end of that path was the Holy King.”

Everyone longed to follow him, but a being like Rodrick was so absurd that even appearing once in the entire history of mankind was a miracle. Whether the opponent carried a sword, a spear, wielded magic, Holy Law, or exolaw—it didn’t matter. With only his own strength, he overwhelmed all. He was an undisputed genius who had touched the martial extreme from birth.

Even Leon, who could be called his direct disciple, found it hard to imagine challenging such an achievement. The Icarus Wing was the wing of one who dared to challenge the impossible. Which meant, deep down, Leon instinctively judged it impossible to surpass Rodrick.

So what.

Even after hearing Irexana’s sharp words, Leon didn’t loosen his grip. He may have inherited Rodrick’s martial arts, but he was Leon, not Rodrick.

That meant he had to fight in his own way. Think through affinities, devise counters for the enemy’s tools, and win the contest of exchanges.

“There’s also the fact that your four Stigmata, your mind-body, and your Aura Blade are far too powerful. With them, you are strong enough to overwhelm peers easily. Naturally, this makes you lean less on auxiliary skill and technique.”

“So, you mean the stronger I’ve grown, the simpler I’ve become?”

“When one has sufficient strength, there’s no need for tricks.”

His body had been reconstructed stronger than any ordinary Master’s. His stamina and willpower were backed by four Stigmata. His Aura Blade, Solaris, was one of the most explosively powerful even among Masters. Not even Al Razzaz or Varg could face Leon head-on now and come out on top so easily.

“But you still lack the decisive power to end a fight,” Irexana said.

Those words struck true at his weakness. Leon might be powerful in direct combat, but all an enemy had to do was refuse to face him head-on.

Dodging strengths and striking weaknesses—that was the essence of strategy. To overcome it, Leon needed the power to force the enemy into a direct clash.

Just as Varg used overwhelming speed to seize the initiative, and just as Cedric’s frenzied blade work left no room to evade, Leon needed to build his own, unique formula for victory.

“Thank you, Your Eminence. I’ve learned a lot over the last couple of weeks.”

Leon bowed deeply to Irexana, tucking away that realization inside. It wasn’t as a hero to a cardinal of the Church, but as one warrior to another, moved by priceless guidance. And yet Irexana smiled as kindly as ever, as if he had given away nothing of value.

But then, an urgent voice called out to Leon.

“Hero Leon!”

From outside the training grounds, Elahan burst in, still in her Saintess robes. Unlike her usual self, her face was urgent, and both Leon and Irexana stiffened instantly.

They hadn’t neglected the world outside during training. If anything, staying put had made them more sensitive. No news was good news, as the saying went, and they had prayed for silence. Now, that silence was broken.

“A rebellion has broken out across nine border fiefs of the Empire. The rebels have declared the overthrow of the Mad Emperor Nex, and their numbers are already around five hundred thousand, growing by the hour.”

“What of the Mad Emperor’s response, Saintess?” Irexana asked, and at that, Elahan’s face turned pale.

“Over five hundred noble kin hostages kept in the capital were executed that very day. Their bodies were impaled on stakes and hung from the city walls. The Imperial Guard, the Household Knights, every force under the capital’s direct control has been put on wartime footing, and they’ve begun ruthless conscription in the surrounding fiefs.”

“A full-scale war, then,” Irexana muttered.

Anyone who knew the Mad Emperor could have predicted it. He was not the sort to back down. He would slaughter every noble who rose against him, and leave not a single relative alive of any who served them.

Despite his brutality, his power base was firm, and his mysterious legions were said to be even stronger than the Emperor’s personal guard. The Holy Church had already suspected the Evil Order behind them, planning to investigate further, but they could not sit idly by anymore.

“In this case, we’ll have no choice but to intervene,” Irexana declared without a trace of hesitation.

Both Jugend and the Holy Church would enter the Clyde Empire’s civil war. However, Elahan’s expression grew graver.

“There’s more. Reports say the Kingdom of Ferma, the Kingdom of Hispania, and the Maritime Union of Meril have all deployed forces to the Empire’s borders in the past few days. Judging by their numbers and composition, this isn’t simply about containing spillover.”

Leon and Irexana’s eyes widened almost in unison.

“No...”

If three neighboring states, plus Jugend, joined in the Empire’s civil war when they had no aligned interests, the aftermath was obvious. This was a grand brawl, a continent-wide conflict, with millions—tens of millions if collateral damage was counted—destined to bleed.

A great war was about to begin.