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Chapter 27

Hayden placed Leonard into the attacking range of his sword in two steps, and he struck downward. Leonard easily dodged it and kicked the back of Hayden’s knee. It was a low-turn kick aimed at the foot carrying Hayden’s center of gravity.

Hayden had the experience of rolling on the ground after being hit on the same spot several times before, so this time, he blocked it with his knee. A blunt collision briefly sounded, as both sides were wearing greaves.

“Haaaap!”

With the successful block, Hayden gained some confidence and began to aggressively attack with his sword. Even though he knew it wouldn’t work, he tried to mislead Leonard’s gaze by swinging his sword around. It was like a haze blurring his vision, or like a snake hiding its venomous fangs.

He unleashed a series of stabbing thrusts.

The tip of Hayden’s sword did not reach Leonard. Leonard moved half a step, no, he took a smaller movement than that, and dodged all the stabs.

Leonard advised, “Senior Hayden, stabbing requires you to pay more attention to your feet than your arms.”

The Dianchang Sect’s Sunstrike Sword Art was a prime example. They did not stab while staying still in place but charged in by explosively kicking with their hind foot. The attacking range of the sword was not determined only by the length of the arm but also by the distance that could be shortened with movement arts.

In addition, the stabbing range of a sword or saber was usually performed with one hand, unlike a spear. If Hayden only relied on his arm strength, his strength and speed would drop significantly.

“Really? Then, like this!”

Hayden took Leonard’s advice right away, adding strength and variation to his monotonous footwork. It could not be considered a proper movement art, but it was a world of difference from his previous footwork, which exposed both his advance and retreat. As Leonard expected, Hayden was worthy of taking pride in being a genius even among the Cardenas.

Hayden exerted force with his knee, stopped, then pivoted with his ankle, making his moves unpredictable. Even for a martial artist in the Body Refining Tier, he overworked his joints to the point that they started to ache.

Hayden dashed past Leonard with reckless footwork, snapping a few strands of Leonard’s hair. If Leonard had not evaded, he would have been cut on his forehead, but none of them had been worried he’d be cut.

“How about this!” Hayden said.

“Do you think you can catch up just by receiving one word of advice?” Leonard replied sourly to Hayden’s whining but inwardly praised his footwork.

He had taught Hayden how to improve the movements of his unskilled swordsmanship, and now, after dodging all of Hayden’s stabs, it was time for him to teach Hayden the danger of the sword. Leonard’s forearm muscles swelled.

Clank!

The side of the sword struck Hayden, causing him to stagger. Any force that traveled quickly in a straight line was extremely vulnerable to being hit on the side because charging in such a way with a sword caused a person to tilt more to one side. This was a weakness that was difficult to find in long-range armed arts like spearmanship.

Hayden’s upper body was full of openings, and he tried to grab hold of the sword, which was about to be deflected. In that instant, Leonard’s sword flew toward his neck.

“Argh!”

Hayden reflexively swung his arm into the sword’s trajectory, guarding his neck in exchange for his arm. This decisiveness would be extremely useful in actual battle.

Leonard’s sword was about to cut off his arm, but a protective shield formed over Hayden’s right arm, deflecting it. It was an energy shield, a representative ability of the External Force Tier.

Hayden had used it subconsciously, but it was pretty sturdy.

Well, even if he didn’t use an energy shield, I would have stopped.

Leonard looked at the energy shield around Hayden’s arm with a fascinated gaze. Even though it was translucent like mist, it had a red tinge. It seemed Hayden had mainly trained his fire-element mana core. Heat was in the rebound force, and it flowed into Leonard’s sword.

Watching the confrontation between the two on the edge of the open area, Ian and Gale raised their voices teasingly. They were urging Hayden to move out of the way as quickly as possible so that their turn could come.

“Hayden, that’s foul play!”

“You wuss! Do you think Leonard will not be able to stop his sword?!”

Hayden said, “Tch, I used an energy shield subconsciously. Is your hand okay?”

“I’m fine.” Leonard nodded and showed his palm.

The protective qi used by Peak Realm experts—or, in this world’s terms, the energy shield used by External Force Tier experts—went beyond just protecting the user’s body. It could also wound an opponent who comes into contact with it.

Hayden’s mastery level was still only level two, and he did not use it with ill intention, so Leonard only felt a little heat. If Leonard had recklessly collided with a properly executed energy shield, he would have suffered severe internal injuries or died on the spot.

As expected, the External Force Tier is equivalent to the Peak Realm. To use protective qi at Hayden’s level, one would need to be at least intermediate in the Peak Realm.

The difficulty of controlling qi would be greatly reduced when the small meridians in the entire body were unlocked. At the beginning of the Peak Realm, the limit was either covering the entire body with protective qi by force or covering one area with a concentrated amount of qi, which would cause a wound to be made shallower.

“Okay! It’s my turn now!” Gale quickly jumped forward as soon as Hayden stepped back. “I’ll be in your care, Leonard!”

Leonard raised his sword instead of answering with words. Just like before, the chilly wind clutched Gale’s body tightly, squeezing cold sweat out of his pores.

Be that as it may, Gale smiled fiercely, just like Hayden had. Unless the mind was completely isolated by reaching the Creation Realm, the mind was bound to follow the body. Even if someone was not sad, they would be when they cried, and wouldn’t be when they didn’t. The way to counter fear was to laugh.

Gale kicked the ground and bounded forward. Leonard observed Gale, who was moving like a wild boar that was looking down at the pile of dirt kicked up behind it. Leonard seemed to be inconsistent, but both Gale and Hayden possessed the same system of thought.

I was mistaken. The swordsmanship of this world is not all formless; only the Cardenas’ swordsmanship is derailed.

Leonard had figured out the systematic structure of martial arts taught in the Cardenas family while sparring with the trio, and he had been mesmerized by it for a few days. It was inevitable. As the saying “all rivers run into the sea” implied, who could have imagined that there would be a martial art that went against the basic principles of martial arts!

By training one martial art to the pinnacle, a person could deal with everything else. However, they would usually die or give up before then.

If there were anything missing in addition to talent, effort, and luck, it would be impossible to reach the pinnacle. They would have to at least be in the Apex Realm, and most had to cross the wall into the Creation Realm to even begin to try to understand the basic martial principles.

However, if they trained in that method in this world, there was a high possibility that they would die before breaking through to the External Force Tier, let alone reach the Transcendence Tier. Perhaps due to that, the progenitors of the Cardenas family had come up with a solution. It was such an unconventional and absolute solution that even the Sword Emperor Yeon Mu-Hyuk had no choice but to doubt his own sanity.

To think they thought of teaching thousands of things and integrating them into one. Anyone slow-witted or mediocre would never be able to use this swordsmanship even if they learned it for the rest of their life.

The Cardenas’ martial arts system began from distinguishing the form of the enemy to understanding their basic steps. For example, they started with different sword styles designed to be used against humans, beasts, birds, and reptiles. Then, from there, they taught detailed techniques and skills to each apprentice according to their aptitude.

Besides that, the introductory phase included memorizing defensive methods and the posture and attacks that responded to different forms.

Even after grasping the form, it is equivalent to interpreting whether the enemy is big or small and whether their movements and abilities can be overpowered with the martial arts that they have trained in. It would take at least ten years for even those known as geniuses to learn everything.

Even if it took a person ten years to learn something, it didn’t mean they had mastered it. Still, in order to reduce the training period, the Cardenas family had been tempering the children with practical experience since childhood. It was the privilege of a family where all blood relatives were born with talent!

If a normal clan or family fostered their descendants this way, not a single clan or family would be able to endure. They would end up in ruins.

It was faster to overcome the danger of dying once in an actual battle than to practice for one hundred days in the training hall. Everyone was aware of that, but there were reasons preventing them from putting it into practice.

The slow-witted would die without being able to overcome the crisis. Struggling and somehow barely surviving would be the limit for those who were mediocre. However, the gifted and those even more talented would be able to swiftly give shape to the martial arts that they memorized in their heads.

“Ugh!”

Leonard’s blade was sharp even though he was immersed in other thoughts. In the face of Gale’s violent and harsh attacks, the position of the attacker and the defender were reversed when Leonard stabbed a few vital points revealed in the flow of attacks.

If Hayden’s attacks prioritized speed, then Gale’s attacks were heavy.

As Gale retreated and slowed down his momentum, which was supposed to crush the opponent like a landslide, Gale revealed many openings. He realized he had them, but he was already a few steps late to step back to safety.

A sword stopped in front of his neck. Gale looked at the sword, then swallowed his saliva to check whether his head was still intact.

“... I lost.”

“Good try.” Leonard retracted his sword. “Don’t stay fixated on just one sword form because you are fighting against humans. It’s great that you follow that advice, but the gap in skill level of each sword form is too stark. Moreover, why are you using the technique for beating a bear to death when facing me? My movements do not resemble a bear at all.”

Gale replied with an embarrassed expression, “Ugh, I thought I could catch you off guard like that.”

“It’s true that mind games aren’t always the best option, but you shouldn’t keep them as your last option on purpose.”

“I will keep that in mind...”

After Gale was rebuked for using petty tricks, Ian stood in front of Leonard, as it was finally his turn. It was the beginning of the third spar.

***

“Thank you again for today. We’ll be back in three days!”

“Stay safe!”

“You can always come to us if you need anything!”

After finishing their routine sparring session, the trio bid farewell and left. They had been beaten up without being able to match Leonard’s attack once, but thanks to their skills improving day by day, they were smiling from ear to ear.

Only Leonard, who unintentionally became their swordsmanship instructor, sighed.

Sometimes I enjoy it, but as expected, it’s bothersome. I’m more used to going around alone.

When the trio left, the eyes constantly surveilling Leonard’s house left too. The curiosity of an unknown mid-rank knight had been piqued, so the knight had been paying attention to Leonard.

“Because he’s been paying attention to me, he’s like my smoke screen and has been obscuring my whereabouts.”

Constant attention was not good, but neither was absolute indifference. It would be suspicious if a person was never seen. In that sense, the sparring session with the trio instilled an awareness of Leonard’s existence. To others, Leonard seemed like a child who was training sincerely and matching his senior’s pace to look good to his seniors.

“Yesterday, I chose Hayden... Should I turn into Ian today?”

Leonard used the Face Changing Art, and his face changed into Ian’s. As he continued using it on a daily basis, his skill level increased, and now it was impossible to distinguish between real and fake even if seen from close up. Moreover, he also changed his clothes. The dark outfit that he made was mended with the hide of the monsters he had caught further inland and an armor he had requested his seniors to buy.

The dark clothes were meant to camouflage him on the island after sunset. Besides monsters that could detect others with their sense of smell or hearing, he was able to avoid the eyes of the instructors standing watch high and far away.

I can’t believe the Sword Emperor Yeon Mu-Hyuk is sneaking around. If the old man Shintu saw this, he would laugh so hard he’d fall off his chair.

Leonard smiled wryly.

“I thought you were going to use it all if you learned it. Learn my stealth arts too, you brat!”

Yeon Mu-Hyuk, who had thought that he would have nothing to do with sneaking around, was mistaken. He disappeared into a shadow beyond everyone’s eyes, benefiting from the stealth arts again.

Leonard went to the Forest of Bones first. Its outer areas had a risk level of two skulls, but its depths, which people avoided, had a risk level of three skulls.

It was also one region near the island’s center that he had visited for the first time three months ago.

“I should get myself some spiritual herbs once they’re all raised.”

At some point, Leonard had adapted excellently to the island.