“This isn’t right……”
Damon was looking around in utter dismay. He wore an expression as if something had gone far from what he had expected. The area around him looked as though a storm had clawed its way through.
Mercenaries, their entire bodies reduced to rags, lay sprawled here and there amid broken weapons, groans constantly spilling from their mouths.
“Guuuh.”
“Damn it, I think something’s definitely broken. Ugh.”
In the midst of the scattered mercenaries, someone stood like an iron tower, gripping a battle-axe. It was Winslet, the Dullahan, an undead without a head. Judging from the situation, it seemed the one who had beaten the mercenaries down was none other than him. As if delighted to have fulfilled his master’s command, Winslet beat his chest and let out a fierce battle cry.
“Kraaaaah!”
Unable to endure it any longer, Damon roared.
“Shut up, you bastard! I summoned you as a sparring partner, so what am I supposed to do if you completely smash them to pieces?”
Startled by Damon’s shout, Winslet quietly lowered the hand holding the battle-axe. The way his eyes rolled around as if he found his master’s reaction unfamiliar was oddly comical. Watching him, Damon clicked his tongue.
“Well, I was the fool for expecting too much from you.”
As if dumbfounded, Damon shook his head. A short distance away, Juliana and Mitchell were looking at the sprawled mercenaries with pitying expressions. Their eyes still showed the shock of Winslet’s merciless lynching from a moment ago. The mercenaries’ groans continued without pause.
“An undead really is an undead.”
“How can he beat people so brutally?”
Damon shot a sharp glare at the two of them for adding fuel to the fire, then silently cast healing magic. For now, treating them was the most urgent matter.
“It’s still too much for them to face Winslet.”
As he cast healing, Damon shook his head.
Once he confirmed that the mercenaries had more or less laid the foundation for the mana cultivation method, Damon decided to train their swordsmanship. Although they had learned the Asura Death Spirit Art, an internal energy method of unparalleled greatness, techniques were no less important.
In the eyes of Damon, who had once been an unrivaled master, the mercenaries’ swordsmanship was truly abysmal. Kasim, the leader, was the best among them, but even then, the difference was negligible. It did not satisfy Damon at all. In their current state, his precise judgment was that even if Kasim went all out, he would not be able to kill a single ogre.
Of course, the result would be different if he mastered the Asura Death Spirit Art to completion. Even so, Damon felt something like an obligation to train them by any means necessary. Since he had taken them in as comrades, he had to raise their abilities accordingly. As part of that method, Damon had long been planning a duel against Winslet.
“To improve one’s swordsmanship, one must repeatedly fight with one’s life on the line and acquire real combat experience and the knack for battle.”
As befitting a master from the unorthodox faction, Damon held an extremely simple theory regarding martial training. He believed that if one repeatedly sparred while being beaten to a pulp by a master, the skills of fighting would naturally be ingrained in the body. The sophistication of forms was not a particularly important issue. After all, the martial way he pursued was thoroughly practical combat arts—irregular and efficient.
Moreover, Damon had thought it would not be difficult to find a suitable sparring partner. He had Winslet, who could sufficiently be considered a master. Damon soon put his plan into action.
“As I mentioned before, how about sparring with Winslet to improve your swordsmanship?”
When Damon revealed his intention, the mercenaries agreed without hesitation.
“Sounds good.”
“You had better steel yourselves. He is not the kind to go easy on you.”
“As long as we don’t die, it’s fine.”
And so the fight between the mercenaries and Winslet came to pass. Taking the difference in skill into account, Damon prepared a seven-on-one battle.
However, the result was truly hollow. A complete defeat for Kasim’s mercenary band. In the blink of an eye, all seven mercenaries had been reduced to battered wrecks. It had happened in less than ten minutes. Kasim, fittingly enough for the leader, held out the longest, but in the end, he too could not escape collapsing with his entire body beaten into mush. Even all the mercenaries together were no match for Winslet.
Looking at the mercenaries strewn about, Damon realized he had been mistaken about something. As a warrior, Winslet was second to none, but as a swordsmanship instructor, he was completely unsuitable.
The reason was that Winslet had no ability to think whatsoever. Damon clicked his tongue and muttered to himself.
“I didn’t know the gap in skill was this large. If Winslet had intelligence, he would have gone somewhat easy on them during sparring. Unfortunately, I can’t expect that much from a stupid Dullahan.”
While Dullahans possessed outstanding combat ability, their thinking ability fell far short of it. If ordered to defeat an enemy, they simply carried out the command blindly. There was only one command Damon could give him: do not kill the enemy.
Because of that, Winslet attacked the mercenaries by any means necessary, and they had to collapse helplessly without even putting up a proper fight. Winslet showed no mercy at all.
The method Winslet used to bring down the mercenaries was unexpectedly simple. With attacks that made proper use of his monstrous strength, he knocked their weapons away in an instant, then struck the mercenaries’ vital points without the slightest restraint and neutralized them at once. In short, the mercenaries had no room to resist whatsoever.
“As an instructor, he’s a complete failure.”
Having finished casting, Damon walked among the mercenaries and used healing on them. As their groans subsided, the mercenaries began to stagger to their feet one by one. Kasim looked at Winslet with a sickened expression.
“He is terrifyingly strong. So strong that I can’t even remember how I was taken down.”
“He truly lives up to his name as the murderous mercenary who once plunged the entire continent into terror.”
Every one of them looked as though they were shuddering. Since it was sparring, they had certainly let their guard down to some extent, but there had been no way to withstand Winslet’s simple, ignorant attacks. No, even if they had steeled themselves completely, Winslet would still have been an opponent difficult for them to handle. Kasim looked at Damon with frightened eyes.
“Do we have to fight Winslet again?”
Before he had even finished speaking, the mercenaries shuddered, so they seemed thoroughly terrified. Even though their treatment was already complete. Damon smiled bitterly and shook his head.
“No. Until you gain a certain level of skill, it seems it would be too much.”
“I-I think so too.”
Seeing how quickly he nodded, it seemed Kasim was frightened as well. Damon gave him one look as if he found it pathetic, then silently turned away.
‘How am I supposed to train these guys? In this state, even if they master the Asura Death Spirit Art, it’ll be hard to expect any clear results.’
In truth, no matter how powerful an internal energy cultivation method one learned, without fundamentals to match it, it would all be wasted effort. That fundamentals were the most important thing in swordsmanship was a truth fixed throughout all ages. The problem was that Damon had no clear method to train the mercenaries’ fundamentals.
“It’s not as if I can ask the Death Knights……”
The Death Knights he possessed had once been the greatest absolute beings in Truvenia. Even without that pride, they were the kind of fellows who listened to Damon terribly poorly. There was no way such beings would become sparring partners for mercenaries who did not even know how to operate mana.
That was a method he could only consider once the mercenaries became able to control mana, and also became capable of facing Winslet one-on-one. As Damon sank deep into thought, someone called him from beside him.
“Hey.”
When he turned his head, Juliana’s prim face came into view. Damon deliberately frowned.
“What do you mean, hey? I told you to call me mister, didn’t I?”
Juliana glared at him as if he had lost his mind.
“Are you crazy? I clearly finished saying it ten times as promised. So why should I do that again? Just thinking about it gives me goosebumps……”
“Ahem. Well, that’s……”
As Damon cleared his throat and stammered, Juliana’s eyes gleamed.
“Judging from the situation, it seems there’s a bit of a problem with that Dullahan serving as a swordsmanship instructor.”
Damon grimaced and grumbled.
“That’s what I’m saying. But there’s no way to grant intelligence to a Dullahan that’s already been made……”
“There is a way.”
“What?”
Damon’s eyes widened. She had a way to solve this predicament? Juliana smiled faintly and pointed behind her with a finger.
“There’s Mitchell. Though he may not be as good as the Dullahan, he has enough skill to train the mercenaries. In my opinion, he’d teach far better than the Dullahan……”
Damon looked at Mitchell with an unwilling expression.
“Would that guy really do it?”
It made perfect sense, but in Damon’s view, Mitchell was not the sort of fellow who would. His relationship with Damon himself, of course, and with the mercenaries was not smooth at all.
Of course, Damon fully acknowledged his skill. Since he had polished his fundamentals extremely solidly, in some respects he might be the most suitable person to serve as an instructor. However, swordsmanship was something that could not be taught unless it came from the heart. Seeing Damon’s skeptical reaction, Juliana smiled brightly.
“How foolish. You have to use your head.”
“Hm? My head?”
Juliana nodded and continued.
“Mitchell has an extremely calculating personality. Since we grew up together from childhood, there’s probably no one who understands Mitchell’s personality as well as I do. What matters most to Mitchell is compensation. In other words, as long as you promise him something in return, he’ll definitely step forward and say he’ll teach the mercenaries.”
“Compensation?”
“Yes. What he wants most right now is a sword and armor. Of course, anti-magic defensive armor would be the icing on the cake, wouldn’t it? You have an enormous amount of money, so obtaining it shouldn’t be a problem. So try persuading him with anti-magic armor as the condition.”
“Should I?”
Damon nodded as if Juliana’s words made sense. Anti-magic armor was no problem at all for Damon. He did not even need to buy any. The Increcia was full of anti-magic armor, and only the finest pieces at that. If he handed over one of those suits of armor and had Mitchell teach swordsmanship to the mercenaries in exchange, it would by no means be a losing deal.
Juliana warned him from the side.
“He may look like that, but Mitchell has quite high standards. So it’ll be more effective if you use something worthwhile to persuade him.”
“Kekeke. Don’t worry about that. I’ll bring out something that will make his eyes go wide.”
Letting out a sinister chuckle, Damon opened the Increcia. He already had a suitable suit of armor in mind.
‘The Phantom Armor would be perfect. Since it contains orichalcum anyway, the Death Knights can’t wear it.’
The Phantom Armor. It was anti-magic armor that the Dragon Lord had poured his heart and soul into making. As such, if it appeared on the market, its value would be beyond imagination. However, to Damon, the Phantom Armor had been nothing but pie in the sky from the very beginning. Because of the orichalcum inlaid on its surface, the Death Knights could not wear it at all.
Damon had originally intended to give it to Kasim. Of course, that would have been after he gained the ability to manipulate mana freely. But at a glance, the Phantom Armor did not fit the imposing, broad-shouldered Kasim. The reason Dragon Lord Cranus had made the Phantom Armor was to use it when polymorphing into human form, and dragons generally tended to go around in the form of handsome, slender swordsmen or mages. Therefore, there was no way to put the Phantom Armor, made to suit that sort of physique, on the muscular Kasim.
But by chance, a way to use the Phantom Armor had appeared……
‘It’s not as if I’m so short on money that I need to sell it and turn it into cash anyway……’
Damon silently recalled in his mind the coordinates where the Phantom Armor was stored. Damon had identified the coordinates of most of the treasures inside the Increcia. It was the result of the Death Knights’ toil day and night.
Sssssss.
The surface of the Increcia moved like rippling water, then soon spat something out. A set of armor that looked extraordinary at a single glance appeared, worn by a wooden mannequin.