Holding the tomahawks, Rodos thought back to the first time he had ever swung an axe.
He had been younger then than he was now.
He had not been this excited.
It had been the moment he finally held twin axes instead of a sword, just as he had always wanted, yet he had been terribly nervous.
He had struggled just to endure the weight of axes he could barely lift properly, and their gleaming, razor-sharp blades had frightened him.
That nervousness had made Rodos keenly aware of exactly what he was holding.
Weapons.
Things meant to injure and kill someone.
They were never something to be swung with a careless heart.
‘Never forget that feeling.’
That had been his master’s first lesson.
Never forget the weight carried by a weapon.
It was one of the most important things a warrior had to engrave upon his heart.
Even so, Rodos had hesitated.
That weight had seemed to press down upon his entire body.
His master had spoken to the frightened Rodos.
‘Always remember that our weapons are not meant to kill someone. They exist to protect ourselves and the people precious to us.’
Only after hearing those words had Rodos finally been able to swing his axes.
‘To protect.’
Rodos looked down at the two tomahawks in his hands.
Their blades gleamed beneath the sunlight, sharp enough to look as though they could cut through anything.
He placed his index finger against one of the keen edges.
The blade lightly sliced his finger, drawing blood.
It stung.
Blood trickled down along the axe blade.
As Rodos watched the droplets fall to the ground, he felt his mind settle.
The axes felt different now.
A sense of weight traveled through his hands, reminding him that these were not things to be swung carelessly.
Keeping that weight firmly in mind, Rodos swung an axe at the dummy.
CLANG!
The axe failed to cut into the dummy and bounced away.
His body was still incapable of assuming the proper stance.
‘Still too crude.’
There was no trace of the skill he had possessed as the Great Warrior.
His movements were terribly crude.
His body moved inconsistently.
Rodos focused.
Ultimately, his body needed to become accustomed to the movements.
He had to repeat them countless times until they were engraved into his muscles.
Remembering his beginnings, he continued swinging.
The axes repeatedly failed to strike the dummy properly and bounced away, but he paid it no mind.
SLASH!
With a heavy sound, a deep gash appeared across the dummy’s chest.
At last, he had landed an attack worthy of being called one.
Although the blade had not lodged inside, both its power and accuracy had improved considerably compared to before.
There was an enormous difference between swinging a weapon at random and swinging it while fully aware of what one held.
‘Move like ever-changing weather. Sharp as a cutting wind, flexible as a flowing stream.’
That was the essence of Northern Axe Technique.
His movements had to be ever-changing, yet precise.
An attack that could not strike an enemy’s vital point was utterly useless.
The magic placed on the dummy activated, restoring the gash in an instant.
Had it been an enemy, that would have meant Rodos had failed to inflict meaningful damage.
Rodos moved again.
He needed to keep repeating the motions until swinging the axes became natural.
The axe in his right hand slashed across the dummy’s chest first.
The axe in his left hand immediately followed.
It felt right.
Although the two axes had been swung with a slight interval between them, their trajectories formed a single line.
“!”
Just as Rodos had expected, a straight gash had been carved across the dummy.
At first glance, it looked like a single line, but upon closer inspection, there were two.
Rodos nodded in satisfaction.
He had succeeded after fifty attempts.
As long as he did not put too much strength into his swings, he had recovered a reasonable degree of accuracy.
‘Now I increase the power.’
Next came increasing the force of his attacks.
Simply putting more strength into a swing did not necessarily make it more powerful.
Even a small amount of strength could produce greater power if every bit of it was transmitted into the axe.
He needed to focus on transferring all the strength generated by his body into the weapon.
THUD!
The axe blade buried itself in the dummy’s shoulder.
Only after Rodos gripped it tightly and wrenched it from side to side did it finally come free.
The accuracy left something to be desired, but its power was satisfactory.
All the time he had spent strengthening his body had not been wasted.
THUD!
The result was the same this time.
The axe lodged itself in the dummy’s side.
The impact of striking the solid dummy left his hand tingling, but Rodos was satisfied.
‘I am getting used to it.’
The weight of the tomahawks and the sensation of their handles in his grip had become familiar.
His body also seemed to be remembering how it needed to move.
In that case, his next objective was to smash the dummy apart.
Rodos took a deep breath.
He intended to unleash the greatest amount of power his current body could produce.
Rodos leaped into the air and brought both tomahawks down vertically.
CRACK.
Fractures began spreading through the dummy from the impact.
Restoration Magic activated and attempted to repair the damaged sections, but….
CRASH!
The tremendous impact overwhelmed even the Restoration Magic, and the dummy shattered completely with a crisp sound.
Only then did Rodos lower his tomahawks and steady his breathing.
‘I succeeded.’
He had achieved his goal of destroying the dummy.
Rodos was pleased.
He was rapidly becoming accustomed to wielding axes again.
At this rate, he felt that he could awaken his aura within a few days.
“Hey, look over there.”
“Why?”
The apprentice knights training nearby had all turned their attention toward Rodos.
“My goodness. He actually broke the dummy.”
“Did the Young Master really do that?”
Their reactions differed, but they all had one thing in common.
Disbelief.
The training dummies used by the Imperial knights were renowned for their durability.
They had been constructed from exceptionally sturdy materials and reinforced with all manner of magic to enable high-level training.
An apprentice knight with sharp features spoke.
“I heard you have to be a full-fledged knight before you can break one….”
One normally needed to be at least at the Sword User level to destroy a dummy.
That only made the apprentice knights even more incredulous.
“Then that means the Young Master is at the Sword User level.”
An apprentice knight with a round face added.
The sharp-featured knight shook his head in disbelief.
“Do not be ridiculous. He only started wielding a weapon today.”
Rodos could not even be called a Beginner.
He was a complete novice who had only picked up a weapon that very day.
By contrast, every apprentice knight gathered there had trained in swordsmanship for anywhere from one to three years.
“He must have talent. How else would he have broken it?”
“Did you forget what the Commander told us? The path of swordsmanship is like swimming through a cave with no end in sight. Talent alone is not enough.”
The path of swordsmanship was exceedingly long.
Ordinarily, it required at least three years of training to advance from Beginner to Sword User.
For a Sword User to reach the Expert Realm, they first had to awaken aura, and awakening aura generally required at least ten years of wielding a sword.
Even that was impossible without extraordinary talent.
The higher one climbed, the wider the gulf created by differences in talent became.
It was said that only ten Sword Masters, the pinnacle of knighthood, existed across the entire continent.
Prodigies blessed with extraordinary talent sometimes reached the Sword Expert level by the age of fifteen, but such individuals were exceedingly rare.
“One of the senior knights probably nearly destroyed it earlier, and it just happened to break when he hit it.”
The sharp-featured knight spoke irritably.
There was no other way to explain the dummy that had been completely shattered.
There was no possibility that a young master of a prestigious magic family possessed talent for martial combat.
CRASH!
At that moment, another crisp sound rang out as a second dummy shattered into pieces.
“See? He broke another one.”
The round-faced apprentice knight pointed toward Rodos as though proving his point.
“That makes no sense….”
The apprentice knights tried to deny the unbelievable sight before them, but they could not.
They had just witnessed him destroy another dummy.
The first time might have been a coincidence.
The second was not.
“My goodness….”
The apprentice knights could only stare at Rodos, mouths hanging open in astonishment.
After smashing the second dummy, Rodos repeatedly nodded to himself.
He had still had some strength left, so he had tried swinging his axes again.
Destroying the second dummy had not been particularly difficult.
‘My experience as the Great Warrior helped.’
His body might have changed, but the experience and instincts he had accumulated in the past could not be ignored.
“That is truly impressive. You have already caused quite a scene.”
Rodos turned his head.
A knight with a sly, unpleasant face stood there.
Silver epaulettes, the mark of a full-fledged knight, rested upon his shoulders.
Rodos immediately recognized the man before him.
“Kradil.”
“Oh, you remember my name. I heard that you lost your memories because of the accident.”
Kradil.
He was a full-fledged knight of the Sixth Knight Order and was close to Harka, Rodos’s tenth sibling.
Desperate to forge ties with House Augustus by any means possible, he had become Harka’s loyal hound.
The other knights disliked him for currying favor with mages, but Kradil did not care.
After all, he had chosen the path of knighthood in order to rise in the world.
“Young Master Rodos, even if you are a blood descendant of House Augustus, you have done something rather troublesome.”
“What are you talking about?”
“This is not a place for using magic. It is where knights hone their swordsmanship. Behaving like that in such a place brings disgrace upon your family.”
With an irritating smile, Kradil glared at Rodos.
But Rodos had not lived such an easy life that he would fall for such an obvious provocation.
“Do not pretend that you did not hear me. I saw it clearly. I saw you using a magic item, Young Master. You used one, did you not?”
“…….”
“Are you not going to answer? Remaining silent does you no favors.”
When Rodos did not respond, Kradil stepped even closer.
His stride was filled with confidence, as though he already knew everything.
“Then may I answer in your place?”
Standing directly before Rodos, Kradil looked down at him.
No one stepped forward to stop his outrageously disrespectful behavior.
Rodos remained still.
He intended to see just how far Kradil would take this.
Kradil began speaking with obvious enthusiasm.
“Everyone, pay attention.”
At Kradil’s words, all the apprentice knights focused on him.
Within the Knight Order, the words of a senior knight were absolute.
“You all watched the Young Master train, did you not? Even to my eyes, his martial skill was quite impressive.”
“See? I told you I was right.”
“However, there is something I want all of you to remember.”
“???”
With one hand resting on his waist, Kradil began to lie.
“The Young Master was only able to accomplish that because he received assistance from a magic item. Martial skill does not improve by leaps and bounds overnight. You are not the youngest young master of House Augustus. Do not hope for such shortcuts. Continue devoting yourselves to your training.”
“Yes!”
The apprentice knights nodded.
Between Kradil, a Low-Tier Expert with many years of experience as a knight, and Rodos, who had only just picked up a weapon, it was obvious whose words they would believe.
“I knew it. The Young Master at the Sword User level? Even you thought that sounded strange, did you not?”
“No, but I really saw him….”
The round-faced apprentice knight could not answer.
There was no possibility that Kradil was wrong.
Rodos was dumbfounded.
The accusation was so absurd that he had nothing to say.
A full-fledged knight was picking such a petty fight with him.
There was a strong possibility that Harka had ordered Kradil to do this.
“Young Master Rodos, you continue to disappoint me. Had you simply been honest, I would have tried to preserve what dignity you had left. Instead, you have thrown away even the little that remained.”
Kradil sighed as though deeply disappointed.
At that moment, Rodos raised both tomahawks and pointed them at Kradil.
“Draw your sword.”
Rodos did not waste words.
There was no need to struggle through an argument.
He could simply prove the truth with the two axes in his hands.
“What are you doing?”
Kradil appeared flustered by the unexpected response.
This was not the Rodos he knew.
Was he really challenging him to a duel without warning?
“You truly have become strange.”
As he spoke, Kradil drew his sword.
If anything, this was even better.
It was an opportunity to carry out Lord Harka’s order to humiliate Rodos at one hundred and twenty percent.
At that moment—
Both of Rodos’s axes struck Kradil across the head.
CRACK!
It happened in the blink of an eye.
Caught completely off guard by the unexpected blow, Kradil foamed at the mouth and collapsed unconscious.