The eyes are the windows to the soul.
If one can observe carefully, it’s possible to roughly imagine what the other person is feeling. This was especially true if that person was in a state of turmoil.
The woman standing before me was such a case.
At first, there was doubt, then anticipation, followed by despair and resignation.
Ultimately, the only emotion remaining in those blue eyes was strong distrust.
She spat out a question.
“What nonsense are you talking about?”
“It’s literal. There is a way to lift the curse.”
“That’s impossible.”
It was a sharp declaration, as if she were ready to bite.
Her reactions were always the same.
Extreme rejection, or she would resort to drinking.
At least when she chose the latter, communication was possible. But when she wasn’t drunk like now, she often displayed a fragile demeanor resembling cracked glass.
Just the way she glared at me through clenched teeth was enough to indicate her mindset.
She looked ready to strike if I provoked her even slightly.
“Do you know how much pain I’ve endured?! You probably don’t! Since the moment I was born, I have lived a cursed life… I’ve considered every possibility over time. But I’ve always found nothing but despair! And now, just a few days after seeing me…”
“All you have to do is become a Master.”
Perhaps it was because I had never thought about the response I gave even once.
The woman’s heated voice abruptly ceased. Her eyelashes trembled slightly.
Her expression revealed confusion about how to react.
And it was understandable. Even I found the suggestion I had just made quite absurd.
“As a Master, you can distort reality beyond merely reconstructing your body. Naturally, the curse that resides within your veins would also be resolved.”
“Is that even a statement?”
Her voice, perhaps due to its incredulousness, was somewhat softened.
Yet, the sharp tone remained unchanged. The glare directed at me was as piercing as a blade.
“Of course, it’s true that I’m close to becoming a Master. But there have been hundreds over the past few centuries who’ve reached this level… And do you know how many of them have actually become Masters?”
“That’s a story for when you’re alone.”
I shrugged my shoulders intentionally, trying to act indifferent.
The woman’s complexion deepened with skepticism, as if to say, ‘What do you mean?’
There was no need to beat around the bush. I got straight to the point.
“You know, I’ve received a special mission from His Majesty the Emperor to collect the martial arts visions of all organizations.”
“Are you asking me to hand over the Sword Circle’s secret techniques?”
“There’s no one left but you.”
“Absolutely not.”
Her expression suggested she wanted to add that right away, but I had no intention of giving her a chance to escape.
I continued my persuasion.
“And you’re qualified as a Grand Master of the Sword Circle. Think of it as bringing me into the Sword Circle as your disciple.”
“No matter how you put it…”
“The world might end.”
At my heavy warning, the woman instinctively sealed her lips.
How could she not know?
That was why she had come to this desolate North after being holed up in the mountains.
She had lost her sect and her family.
All because of the lurking schemes of the Dark Cult.
“We need to combine our strengths. This has been agreed upon by the Holy Kingdom, the Empire, and even the United Kingdom… Furthermore, it would be beneficial for you as well.”
“You plan to share the secrets of each organization. Then perhaps a new path would open up.”
If she already understood, there was no need for lengthy explanations.
I simply gazed at her in silence.
It was a sign that there was no other way.
The woman hesitated for a moment, but the outcome was predictable.
After all, this world might be on the brink of collapse.
She had no choice but to squeeze any remnants of her sect’s legacy.
Before long, a sigh escaped her lips, a sign of surrender.
“Fine. I’ll accept it.”
“Good choice. I’ll tell His Majesty about it in a favorable light…”
In the next moment.
With a crack, the woman’s elbow struck my solar plexus. There was no time to resist.
I hadn’t even realized she was moving in the first place.
Breath caught in my throat, a suffocating pain spread throughout my body. Before I knew it, I was rolling on the ground.
I pounded my chest for a moment, protesting the pain.
Looking at me with a blank expression, the woman calmly said, “Training in the Sword Circle begins immediately upon enrollment. Always keep ‘calm in motion’ in mind from now on.”
“What does that even mean…?”
In an instant, the woman’s figure stood right in front of me again.
She wasn’t moving particularly fast. However, the lack of warning made her seem almost ephemeral.
I felt a cold sweat break on my brow as I realized.
This was the vision of the Sword Circle.
The woman declared at me.
“Everything.”
My training from now on would not be easy.
“It’s not just swordsmanship. It includes footwork, close fighting, or even the tiniest details of everyday life.”
A blank expression, her cold voice radiating chill.
With an expression that showed no emotion, the girl made a demand that was impossible to comprehend.
“Until you master calm in motion, stay by my side at all times.”
I couldn’t help but let out a laugh in disbelief.
And thus began the relentless training from that day on.
Yet, the reason this memory brings warmth is, perhaps because there was still hope back then.
It was a time before a certain man had shattered emotions.
Coughing, I opened my eyes.
My vision was blurry. All the muscles that were overworked in a short period felt like shackles.
Heavy iron shackles.
The ground was white. A fierce blizzard fiercely battered my body.
Telling me to get up right now.
Otherwise, I would die.
I willingly accepted the warning of nature.
As I staggered to rise, I nearly fell several times.
Slipping, collapsing.
Yet, I stood on the icy ground. I could still sense someone’s presence in front of me.
It was a man, dripping with black mud from head to toe.
His grotesque face, burned and misshapen, and his frantic gestures as he struggled to scoop up the filthy mud.
I burst into a chuckle.
“Oh, no! The blessing of the gods, our hope!”
“Is that even hope?”
As I drew in a breath, my question captured the man’s attention.
I could feel a strong determination from those protruding eyes.
He staggered to his feet. Like me, his condition looked dire.
“You wouldn’t understand.”
I chose not to rebut him.
I merely wiped my eyes with my sleeve. The dried blood, touched by the chilly wind, shattered like ice.
“I advocated for forgiving everyone since childhood. That was the will of the Heavenly Deity! But after coming to the North, encountering elves always filled me with despair. Why can’t we forgive one another?”
He no longer used honorifics.
I gave a sarcastic remark in response.
“So?”
“And then one day, I was attacked by elves and left all alone deep in the coniferous forest. That’s when I met her.”
“An elf, then.”
“Yes! That child offered me bread! You know how precious that is to elves, right?!”
As I listened to Leorick’s story, I glanced around.
It seemed our swords and axes had been flung far away. From even farther away, I could hear faint breaths.
It was a familiar presence.
It seemed that the Imperial Princess and Ceria had also been caught up in the last explosion. I wondered why I hadn’t been flung away.
Meanwhile, Leorick continued his tale.
“Starving, I felt destiny that day… I embraced the girl who was freezing, and before long, we became so close that we seemed like father and daughter. No, at least I thought of her as my daughter!”
In the end, only Leorick and I remained here.
No one could help me. Leorick was in the same situation.
Two men in wretched states of disarray.
I smirked.
My path was practically laid out before me.
“That’s when humans attacked us. In truth, I might have been able to stop them… If only I had attacked them from behind just before they set fire to the food storage! But the pathetic teachings I learned from the Heavenly Deity Sect made me hesitate.”
“And then what happened?”
“It all burned. Everything…”
It was the final conversation.
It wouldn’t hurt to hear more of his woes.
Perhaps I would gain information previously unknown to me.
Even as I did, I carefully tensed my arms and legs.
It was time to loosen my body.
The decisive battle was imminent.
“I thought in that furnace. This is such a cruel fate; how can I possibly forgive? It was a naive arrogance. And on the day I woke from a coma after several days, what awaited me was the corpse of my starving daughter.”
“So you attacked innocent humans? For your pathetic desire for revenge?”
“No, to make them face their responsibility for creating hell!”
Black steam began to rise from Leorick’s gritted teeth.
Though he had lost most of his strength, it seemed he retained some power like burnt remains.
Not bad.
An excessively one-sided battle wouldn’t suit a conclusion.
“You turned our lives into hell! Did you even dare to imagine how miserable we have lived?!”
“No.”
It was a plain response.
With just those two syllables, Leorick’s lengthy tale ceased. He looked at me in surprise.
So I provided him the answer he sought.
“I know nothing. Not how the lives of elves have been, not even how humanity’s poor live… I knew nothing at all.”
Leorick gritted his teeth at my low confession.
His wide-open eyes seemed ready to pop out any moment. He had an expression of a benevolent priest, but deep within lay a profound hatred.
A hatred for humanity that took the lives of both him and his stepdaughter.
It was then that I stopped being afraid of Leorick.
He spewed broken words without understanding my feelings.
“Then it has been determined who is right.”
“Then are you?”
It was a comment thrown without allowing a rebuttal.
Leorick narrowed his brow. He presented the face of a witness facing an unreasonable interrogation.
And so I had to press him even harder.
“What about the feelings of the elves who sacrificed their families and neighbors to survive? What about the feelings of a sister realizing her sibling is addicted to drugs? And what about the pride of the elves that you destroyed?”
“Stop spouting nonsense… That was all done to survive.”
“And that’s what you’ve trampled on.”
With labored breath, I took a step forward.
Leorick didn’t back down. His eyes burned with black flames.
“Is sacrificing beloved family and neighbors just to scrape by truly different from a beast’s life? The elves I saw didn’t do that… They maintained their dignity even if they had to eat the bark off trees.”
“Nonsense… If that even means life isn’t sustained, it’s worthless!”
“No, isn’t it true that you’ve ruthlessly ignored that?”
The middle-aged man could no longer hold his breath and bit his lips.
His gaze was so fierce it seemed he could bleed at any moment. It was understandable, as everything he believed had crumbled.
I planned to cut his last lifeline.
“Your life has been hell, yet you’ve made everyone else’s lives hell! To fit that pathetic desire for revenge and sympathy… You brainwashed elves using their hunger as a weakness, making yourself their savior. Does it feel good? Like you’re giving her what you couldn’t give your daughter?”
“Shut up…”
Crack, thud.
Leorick’s eyes lost their black sheen. The veins bulged in his arms, neck, and face, looking surreal.
Yet I did not stop.
I wanted to release all the pent-up emotions I had harbored.
“No elf was ever happy to fatten himself by selling out his own kind! Was there even one elf who felt that sacrifice was hope and rejoiced in it?!”
“You made us this way!”
“Yes, and you too… You played a part in creating this hell!”
At this point, all my emotions had been expelled.
Breathing heavily, I steadied myself.
I didn’t need a weapon. After all, the items Senior Delphine had prepared for me were still in my possession.
Leorick’s body began to shake violently, his fists clenched as if to draw blood.
“I am not wrong…”
With a lurch, black mud was expelled from Leorick’s mouth like blood.
The muck emitted ominous fumes, quickly melting into the air. And soon, mud began to flow from all his orifices.
From his mouth, nose, and even sweat glands.
It felt almost like his whole body was crying.
In the deluge of filth, Leorick screamed as if fighting against his fate.
“I am not wrong!”
There was no need to listen any longer.
I stamped my feet into the ground, and my punch struck Leorick’s jaw.
And Leorick’s fist also came crashing into my face.
Blood erupted as the two men fell to the ground. It was a grotesque display.
