Hm?
I flinched before I realized it.
-Kheheh, that guy just made our job easier.
Velkarion said something stupid.
'Are you an idiot?'
-Pardon?
'That's no ordinary man.'
-R-really?
'You claim to know so much, but you're a little dim on stuff like this?'
-A d-dimwit! How dare you call the Seventh Circle Lich, Velkarion Asengrave, a dimwit!
'Want to die?'
-......Hm? What did I just do?
'Getting uppity again?'
-S-surely not.
A complete "who, me?" routine.
It was looking more and more like he did it on purpose.
'Didn't you see that guy cut off his own comrade's head just now?'
-I did see it, didn't I?
'Not a shred of hesitation. What does that tell you?'
-That he's cold-blooded?
'Like hell....... Sharp observation, decisive judgment, and execution without a moment's pause.'
-Ahhh.......
The most efficient way to deal with low-grade Undead was to sever the head.
'He figured out they were Undead in an instant, didn't he? And in that moment, without a sliver of hesitation, he cut off his own comrade's head. You can't do that without serious combat experience and instinct.'
-Is that so?
Something was off about this skull bastard's reaction...
'Hey, don't tell me?'
-Don't tell you? What?
'Are you a shut-in Archmage?'
-Wh-wh-what kind of goddamn nonsense is that?!
That's what they called mages who had reached the higher Circles through nothing but research and study.
Those types had zero combat experience.
'Come to think of it, you were pretty sloppy when you fought me too, weren't you?'
-Th-that's not true! How dare you, to a Seventh Circle....
'Your speech keeps coming out half-cut, huh?'
-Th-that's not true, sir! I am the great Lich, Velkarion Asengrave.
'Yep, a pissant.'
-Y-y-yooou!
'Now that I think about it, of the three Liches I hunted, you were the easiest.'
-Th-th-th-there's no wa...
What a waste, in hindsight.
The first Lich I'd hunted had nearly killed me.
That one had fought magical combat in ways I'd never imagined.
If I'd hunted this half-baked skull bastard first, the rest would have been far easier.
-Th-th-that guy! That knight!
The skull frantically changed the subject.
-Isn't he a natural enemy for a Master who lacks combat experience?
'Enjoying this, are you?'
-That's not it.......
But the knight's combat instincts actually worked in my favor in one regard.
His stance.
A deeply lowered center of gravity and knees coiled like springs.
A posture from which he could launch himself in any direction.
Preparation for a mage's ranged attacks.
Relaxed shoulders, tight grip on the hilt, the sword tip aimed at center mass.
Sacrificing power in favor of speed and flexible directional shifts.
Because against a mage, who is physically weak unlike a knight, even a light blow could be lethal.
A textbook stance for fighting mages.
Having faced knights countless times as a mage before regression, I knew it intimately.
'Unlike a certain shut-in Archmage, I've got plenty of combat experience as a mage.'
-I said I'm not, didn't I?
When someone is that fixated on guarding against magical attacks, what happens when a knight's attack comes instead?
I minimized any noise.
Trusting the fog I'd made with Dark Magic, I crept closer quietly.
Then I told Velkarion.
'Cover me well.'
-Pardon?
The skull was still asking when my feet had already left the ground.
-W-wait, hold on, you bastard!
I kicked off hard.
Internal Energy, mana, answered my intent.
Mana surged from my Dantian and coursed along the Mana Circuits, racing through my body.
And at last it reached my fingertips, unleashing a fierce burst of power.
WHIIISH!
The blade carved heavily through the air.
"Gah!"
The knight only realized I was there when the sword was nearly at his face.
Shock registered vividly across his features.
Then his blade moved.
CLACK-CLACK-CLACK, SHRRK!
He blocked.
But not completely.
"Guh!"
The knight's scream, and the feel of muscle being cut traveling up my palm.
THUD-THUD-THUD-THUD!
The knight scrambled backward.
Blood trailed along the ground in his wake.
"A knight?"
The knight's voice was laced with disbelief.
No obligation to answer.
I pressed the attack without giving him room to breathe.
CLANG, CLA-CLANG, CLANG!
My longsword and his clashed violently in midair.
Over thirty exchanges of attack and defense in a flash.
Mostly me attacking, him defending.
Not good.
The exchange had become a disjointed mess.
It couldn't be helped.
This body was a knight's, but its soul was Aizel Renhardt, a mage.
I didn't know swordsmanship, so my attack patterns were inevitably simplistic.
The one saving grace was that his shoulder was wounded.
And the other advantage: he couldn't focus entirely on me.
His eyes kept darting around, scanning his surroundings.
A dark mage.
Since he was fighting me, a knight, he was bracing for the dark mage who had to be lurking somewhere.
That I was the dark mage wouldn't cross his mind in a thousand years.
Another ten exchanges followed.
The feel of swinging the sword was growing more and more familiar.
But then.
The knight's eyes changed.
The gaze of someone who had made up his mind.
He'd resolved to cut his losses and eliminate me first.
Ah, I might be screwed here?
That was the moment.
HUMMM!
A strange vibration hummed from the knight's longsword.
I recognized the sound.
A thick haze rose along the knight's blade like heat shimmer.
Sword Aura.
PIIIING!
His Sword Aura-infused longsword drove toward my throat.
My stance had faltered, so I couldn't dodge either.
No choice but to block.
An icy sensation shot up my spine.
I couldn't die here.
"GRAAAAGH!"
Every hair on my body standing on end, I let out a bestial roar on pure reflex.
I poured everything I had into meeting his longsword head-on.
That was the moment.
ZIIIIING!
A strange vibration erupted from my sword as well.
And what I saw was a thick haze rising from my own blade.
Sword Aura.
CRAAASH!
An impact heavier than anything before boomed through the air.
"Gah!"
The knight cried out and staggered back from the collision.
The gash on his shoulder had torn wider from the shock, blood pouring freely.
This was the opening.
BOOM!
I planted my foot hard and surged toward him.
And a single thrust shot forward.
"Huh?"
The instant that involuntary sound escaped me, a clamor of steel rang out.
CLANG, CLA-CLANG!
My body was dancing with the blade.
The knight began retreating nonstop.
And I couldn't help but be awed.
Incredible.
I hadn't intended any of it, yet my body was performing swordsmanship of its own accord.
The knight's occasional counterstrikes were dodged with uncanny precision.
Those I couldn't dodge caught against the extended blade and came to nothing.
And without fail, the knight stepped back again.
It wasn't my will.
My body had reacted first.
Before I could assess the situation, before I could form an intention, my body had already moved.
Swordsmanship ingrained in the flesh had transcended the speed of thought entirely.
GRIIIND!
Driven onto the defensive, the knight clenched his teeth.
His gaze no longer wavered.
"I'll take you as a traveling companion to the grave, at least!"
The man who'd still been minding a dark mage that didn't exist gave that up.
He leveled his sword squarely at me.
Another fifty exchanges followed.
The swordsmanship ingrained in this body began registering with perfect clarity.
And then.
"Guh!"
A faint groan escaped me without warning.
What?
Something sharp struck my temple like a migraine.
Then something surged.
What's this?
Memories.
Sword techniques.
I recalled gripping a sword and swinging it faithfully along the Sword Path.
At first, clumsy slashes.
But the memories piled on.
Once, twice, ten times, a thousand.......
After swinging along the same Sword Path more times than I could count, the technique was fully mastered.
That mountain of accumulated memory branded itself into my mind in a single explosive rush.
No.
It wasn't being branded.
These memories had always been in this body, in Kalian Facial's body.
And now they were flowing into the soul of Aizel Renhardt.
With every Sword Path I traced, new memories piled up.
And then.
SHRRK!
Through my hand came a sensation both chilling and clean.
At the same time, what floated gently into the air was the knight's severed head.
THUD!
His headless body crumpled to the ground.
In the rapture of swordsmanship, I had killed the knight.
In that instant, an explosion detonated inside my skull.
Years, fifteen years of memories, exploded all at once.
The shock rattling my brain drained the strength from my knees.
The excessive load on my soul had shaken my body as well.
That was how overwhelming the volume of memories being etched into my soul truly was.
Memories that hadn't surfaced until now had suddenly emerged.
This almost certainly meant that Aizel Renhardt's soul and Kalian Facial's body were synchronizing.
So a shock of this magnitude was only natural.
And when the strength returned to my knees, every memory had settled perfectly into place.
"Hoo!"
A sigh of satisfaction escaped my lips.
The Internal Energy in my Dantian had come entirely under my control.
-Uh... uh....
The startled skull kept letting out strange, groaning noises.
I, too, held my tongue and sank into my inner self.
This was where the Sovereign Body Art shone.
The basis of the Sovereign Body Art is Contemplation.
The act of examining.
Extreme bodily control is possible only because one can contemplate.
And so I turned Contemplation inward.
The Internal Energy awakened by the fight was circulating actively along my Mana Circuits.
The mana's nature was like oil heated to a roiling boil.
The surface of boiling oil is calm, so the eye alone can't judge its state.
But fall in, and you're deep-fried by the tremendous heat in an instant.
The Internal Energy in my body was exactly that.
It was mana whose nature seemed to lay bare the temperament of this house, House Facial, itself.
Because that was what this house was like.
Leave them alone and there was no issue. But provoke them even slightly, and you had to be prepared for annihilation.
Like my own family, House Renhardt, which was destroyed before the regression.
I quietly searched my memories and recalled the Mana Cultivation Art.
"Hooooo!"
I sat down, settled into position, and steadied my breathing deeply.
Then, following the Mana Cultivation Art in my mind, I set the mana in motion.
Only after taming all the roiling energy did I open my eyes.
Only then did the skull collect himself and ask.
-What just happened?
'The memories of this body, Kalian Facial's, surfaced.'
-Surfaced?
'No, that's not right. They were originally in this body's flesh... More precisely, the body and soul have fully converged.'
-Ohh! So a body and soul from different origins can synchronize like that.
Velkarion sounded genuinely amazed.
Honestly, I was a bit surprised myself.
Research in this area was impossible, so every new discovery was truly novel.
-So does that mean you now have both people's memories?
'No, it's a bit different from that... I can't recall them naturally, as if they were completely my own.'
-Then how does it work?
'How to put it? It's like a book.'
-A book?
'It's like taking a book off a library shelf and reading it. To remember something, I have to dig for that memory before I know it. It doesn't surface naturally like a memory that's completely my own.'
That was exactly how it had been when I recalled the Mana Cultivation Art just now.
-I see.
He said so in a voice brimming with genuine interest.
'Shut-in Archmage or not, a mage is a mage after all. Look how interested you are in new knowledge.'
-I-I told you, that's not what I am!
'Quiet, pissant.'
I cleanly ignored his protest and tidied up the area.
Time to head back to the city.