Chapter 12: A Blade Against the Tempest

The naval warrant officer raised his boarding axe, sizing up the traces of boyhood still lingering in Julian’s face. A bloodthirsty grin spread across his own.

“Don’t be a pirate in your next life. Return to the Lord!”

In this supernatural world, where non-firearm weapons had never left the stage of history, warriors employed all manner of arms and fighting techniques. Most of those techniques, however, grew out of swordsmanship refined through countless trials. Whatever weapon a warrior ultimately chose, the first step was to learn the sword.

And every attack, traced to its roots, came down to three actions: cut, thrust, and slice.

The burly warrant officer opened with Roof Guard, one of the four basic guards, raising his boarding axe high overhead before bringing it down at Julian in a crushing cut. He clearly intended to settle the fight with a single blow.

But Julian had already read his history.

[Name: Owen Mercer; Age: 21; Height: 204 centimeters; naval warrant officer aboard Severe; Military Swordsmanship (beginner).

His inherited fine-quality mail armor accompanied the ancestors of House Mercer through the Battle of Crecy and the Battle of Poitiers against the Kingdom of the Iris.

The family later declined, and the mail gathered dust.

Battle Axe: total length 162 centimeters; weight 2.6 kilograms.

(Once fighting begins, he loses himself completely and abandons coordination with his companions. Opens aggressively with a cut, follows through with a thrust, then closes the distance for a slice.

A hopelessly rigid three-move routine. His Military Swordsmanship might as well have been taught by a grammar teacher! Unsatisfactory!)

Conclusion: A failure who could not pass a knightly order’s selection trials and had to settle for joining the naval marines.]

The warrant officer was not a supernatural practitioner. To [Echoes of History], he was an open book.

The axe whooshed down.

Julian did not raise his sword to parry. He simply retreated half a step, easily avoiding a cut powerful enough to split a man in two. The rush of air brushed his hair without severing a single strand.

His control of distance was exquisite.

The warrant officer’s expression changed. Instinctively checking the axe’s descent, he shifted into Fool’s Guard, another of the four basic guards, with the axe’s point angled downward. He twisted his body and drove a sudden thrust at Julian.

A cut or slice might leave its victim alive. A thrust, however, could easily punch through the body, rupture organs, and cause massive bleeding. It was the deadliest sword attack.