Chapter 155: The River Never Stops
The night shadow fell thin and pale. Darkness settled between the barracks, and the soldiers' breath drifted white over the frozen earth.
Calix stood in the sa place. He shed the tension from his shoulders and waist, quietly fixing the width of his stance. Srrring— the sword Srna slid free of its scabbard.
Then, just as Gregor had taught him, he wove the blade's path through the empty air. He had reached a level where his body moved without conscious thought.
Not even the faintest tremor. His breathing stayed even, steady even through the monts of exertion, and when the tip of the blade split the air, the barrier of sound tore thin.
He used neither his acceleration ability nor his energy. A Dance of the Wilderness perford with the body alone. In the snow-covered ground, footprints remained at even intervals. Beads of sweat gathered on the back of his neck and his hands.
At that instant, Calix's brow furrowed. To the eye it was flawless—yet stray thoughts tangled through his mind. His mother's words flashed before him.
"Mother need not worry."
Now that he knew the truth, those few words read differently.
What kind of life had that woman lived? With what heart had she pressed pen to paper? The sll of old paper and ink overlapped with the sound of a winter gutter.
The blade flowed again. He lowered the angle at his elbow, and his wrist eased—soft, the way sand sifts through a screen. Beneath his feet, the texture of the frozen earth ca through vivid and clear.
'Empty Heart is the state of emptying the mind. Yet human emotion fills endlessly.'
Calix looked into his own weakness. His upper body rotated and cut through the air, but the timing was a hair too slow. His heart wavered, and his body felt it.
"Keep people close, and do not leave your heart alone."
And yet—you were alone.
To protect her child, she had remarried Viscount Pentan, a man so twenty years her senior. She had beco a breakwater, enduring every insult and humiliation.
The more he turned it over, the more bitter and painful it beca.
A torrent surged through a heart he had once believed emptied. His feet tangled with it, the distribution of strength broke apart. The swordsmanship movent fractured here and there.
And Calix—
Whoosh.
Let it go. Rather than resist the overwhelming emotion, he surrendered his body to it. He accepted his mother's sacrifice, her pain, her suffering—exactly as they were.
What remained at the end was nothing but pure gratitude.
"When the spring breeze blows, your footsteps will be the first thing I hear. Please, stay well."
The last line of the letter had been unusually composed. It was such a motherly farewell that he had never doubted it was she who had sent it.
'Elnora Ashapel—she is my mother.'
After turning the question over countless tis, only one answer remained.
The tip of the blade traced a low arc and settled. The small tremors were gone. It descended softly, turned back out quietly. His feet did not move; the path opened through the rotation of his knees and waist. The wind caught on the blade and slipped away.
His disordered breathing, in the mont he took his next step, returned to where it belonged.
Deep in the small hours of the night.
His sword split the wall of air once more. This ti it did not tear through the grain—it parted it fine. Sweat beaded at his brow and fell. The pulse of his heart drew drip, drip—closer in interval to the sound of the gutter. The ring's resonance folded over and rged with the throbbing of his core.
Hatred and gratitude, the nas of family and the sentences of the letter—all of it sank like pebbles cast into water. He neither seized nor contained them. What was to be sent was sent; what remained was left.
Calix stepped into the world of the unconscious.
Now, his body moved together with his will. The strength left his joints and muscles. The weight carried in his sword grew lighter, not heavier.
Instead of cutting and pushing through the air, the surrounding environnt rose up to receive the blade in return. Calix's heart beca a single current and flowed.
A portion of the Gatekeeper's energy followed behind it, flowing outward.
[Secondary Core Fusion Detected]
[Acceleration Output, Rising Rapidly]
[4.3x, 4.4x, 4.5…… 4.7x]
Past Empty Heart—to the flowing water, Flowing Water.
At that instant, the world folded in on itself by one layer. The light of his vision blurred, and the sounds at his ears were pushed far away and swallowed. He could no longer sense even his own breath, even the limits of his own body.
Calix's heart no longer beat—no, it was still beating, but he could not hear it. He realized then that sothing had changed forever.
It was not simply a matter of thrusting a sword. With every movent of the blade's tip, every object nearby responded. There was no fla, no destructive explosion.
Only the path of the sword, and its result, remained.
Ssssss—
Instead of the force's wave pushing outward, it was drawn inward. A beat later, the flow of space twisted. The tent's surface pulled taut, then sank. The stakes holding the poles up gave a low hum, and the snowflakes on the ground tilted in a circle toward Calix.
Not only that—dust and ash, the banners representing the alliance forces, the flas of the campfire. All of it lurched to one side in an instant, then swiftly fell still.
'This is…… The Apex of Annihilation.'
Calix stopped for a single mont.
He stood quietly with his eyes closed, gathering his thoughts. He had awakened to a new level—yet at the sa ti, he had co to know his own limits.
'I am still unskilled. This is no more than glimpsing a single part of it.'
The outermost edge of a top-rank swordsman. Before his eyes stood a wall of incomparable scale—sothing he could not have compared to anything until now.
Yet he felt no disappointnt, and no fear.
He knew that if he continued forward, one step at a ti, just as he had done until now—this, too, he would one day cross.
* * *
As morning light spread, Calix walked slowly among the encampnt. Unlike before, the change in him was not outwardly apparent. Only—when his toes pressed into the snow, not even the sound of a crunch followed.
Instead, he spent most of the daylight hours among people. He accepted the eting requests of the nobles, and discussed the future of Sier and the Order. In his rest hours he mingled freely with the rcenaries, and checked over weapons alongside Basim.
He had set down the weight of the days past, and was taking his next step.
"Don't grip the handle so tight. It'll slip on you."
In a mont of watching over the young Antelopes' swordsmanship, Airien passed by and whispered with a small smile.
"You let it go."
At the voice—light as a brushing wind—Calix gave a quiet nod. Her help had been no small thing in restoring the balance of his body and mind.
The neural accelerator's readings proved as much.
[Nature Attunent 71%, Core 63% (Split State)]
Physical developnt had reached near its limit, yet the abilities tied to his energy were changing day by day. The advancent in his swordsmanship was especially striking.
[Ashapel's Instinct/Avatar of the Battlefield, currently 79%.]
[1% remaining until 4th Awakening.]
The fourth awakening was close. Soon he would gain yet another ability to accompany his sixth sense, his Mind's Eye, and his pressure field. Beyond that, the proportion of darkness had diminished, while chaos and cold and their like had grown by a leap.
Yet Calix did not dwell on each number. He sought, rather, to move beyond that standard altogether.
'Numbers cause you to set your own limits.'
He had beco certain of it only after gaining 4.7x acceleration in a single mont. His body had already been ready. It was only that his mind had not kept pace with it.
Just then, a sullen voice tickled at his ear.
"No sword dancing today. Up until yesterday you didn't skip a single day."
"Yeah—that's how it turned out."
"……You went up again."
Volga squeezed his eyes shut and groaned without end. While he had been wrestling with the administrative officers of the various houses, his brilliant friend had gone and done sothing utterly unfair.
Calix mumbled sothing or other, but Volga waved his hand to cut him off. Hearing the answer would only make him feel more wretched.
"No wonder—I felt a single spark fly from my sword! Ahh, couldn't even wait before running off again!"
"……"
Gregor looked at the young man clutching his head and let out a kick—a laugh.
"Nothing surprising about it!"
Calix turned to face the old man with a small smile. Volga stared at him for a long mont, then murmured blankly.
"He's not looking like a person anymore."
"Not a person—we're Mountain Rabbits!"
"No, what I an is—"
But his protest was heard by no one. News arrived just then from outside. The soldiers beyond the tent periter buzzed with talk.
"We're getting a visitor tonight?"
"Whether it's a visitor or not—wait and see. Either way, I hear Sevi Belgrado is coming."
"……He's Niboria's last Master now."
Respect filled the end of the words, though the rcenaries traded a rawer sort of conversation. Zoltan, captain of the Grima rcenary Company, led the talk in particular.
"Listen well. Sevi Belgrado is the one obstacle—and the one who could beco the greatest ally."
"……An obstacle? What can soone who couldn't even take down the Legion Commander—"
"Idiot—that's not what this is about."
Zoltan beat his chest, impatient with frustration, and continued.
"A Master isn't simply a strong swordsman. He is the teacher of the empire's swordsn entire. And he is the eldest among them. Even Lord Akran once studied under him. That is precisely why Captain Royce requested the eting himself."
At those words, the colour of the surrounding rcenaries' faces set hard. Only now did they feel the true weight of the na Belgrado.
A being capable of uniting proud knights as one. A Master could not be looked down upon—not for raw force, and not for what he represented.
* * *
That afternoon, as the sun neared the horizon.
The noise of the encampnt slowly quieted. A black cloak swept the air, following the sound of hoofbeats. Belgrado's fra was very small.
Even a reconstructed body could not erase the marks of years. Fatigue showed in his lined face, and his back was bent. His bushy brows and white hair made him look older still.
Yet a presence particular to him pressed down on the space around him.
Wherever his gaze briefly landed, the surrounding air settled and bore down. His eyes alone were clear and sharp as a well-honed blade.
Attention was drawn, belatedly, to Belgrado's attire. The old leather guards were streaked with sword marks; the poml of his weapon bore the deep imprint of battles long past.
Yes—he was a Master. One who had weathered thousands, perhaps tens of thousands, of battlefields. Presently, before the tent, Royce bowed his head and stepped aside.
This was no place for the nobles and knightly ranks to intervene.
Calix stepped forward quietly. The gaze of both t and tangled in the air between them. Before any sword was drawn, the current of energy shifted first.
A clash of energy.
Yet Calix did not display his strength as he once had. Like a diver, he let the other's pass through him—and drew it in.
A glint of sothing unusual settled at the corner of Belgrado's eyes.
A silent standoff continued. Then, at a certain mont, he too drew his energy inward. With both pulling from either side, a vast difference in pressure ford in the space between them.
Fuuu—Fwooooosh!
Krakk!
A gale that made it difficult even to open one's eyes, followed by the ground sinking wholesale beneath them. At the hostile-seeming conduct, Volga instinctively drew his weapon. Yelayen extended his staff and blocked him.
The greeting was rough—but this, too, was a threshold that had to be crossed. Above all, Belgrado could not push through one-sidedly. Calix was gradually driven back—yet in the end, he held his center.
Then, the wave of energy withdrew all at once.
"You have not yet taken the Law into your blade."
Belgrado spoke abruptly. A calm voice, with a slow manner of speech. The aning within carried less the weight of evaluation and more that of diagnosis.
He arrived at his conclusion swiftly.
"Yet you are fully capable of succeeding Imran."
The Master's gaze touched Royce, then returned at once.
"Who is helping whom, I wonder?"
Belgrado closed both eyes, tilted his face toward the sky, and laughed quietly. Hollow, and yet—at ease. Relieved, and glad.
"They said the waters of the Marbius River had turned black with rot—yet already, new water has filled its place."
Belatedly, those gathered throughout the encampnt let out the breath they had been holding. Together with the long winter, one age was drawing to its close.
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