Early the next morning, Noah arrived at the courtyard of the Sword God’s residence on time.
Gal was already waiting in training clothes.
The moment Noah appeared, Gal tossed him a wooden sword through the air.
Noah caught it.
He had barely planted his feet before Gal moved.
‘We’re starting already?’
The complaint hadn’t even finished forming in Noah’s mind before Mind’s Eye and his body reacted ahead of conscious thought.
He tightened his grip and tried to raise his sword into a guard.
Gal didn’t bother with a stance.
He simply took one long step forward.
[Mind’s Eye] screamed a warning.
Noah saw only a blur.
A wooden sword slid past the side of his neck and cracked against his shoulder blade.
Only afterward did the displaced air brush his ear.
“Am I swinging too fast?
Or were you not ready?”
Gal withdrew the sword and held it loosely at an angle.
His expression was blank.
“The Dragon God won’t wait for you.”
Noah gritted his teeth and reset his stance.
The strike hurt, but Gal had controlled it well enough that Noah could still move normally.
The second strike came.
This time, Noah saw slightly more.
He shifted half a step sideways in advance.
Still got hit.
The wooden sword struck the same shoulder with familiar force, landing exactly where it disrupted Noah’s center of gravity.
He staggered.
“Center of gravity’s too high.”
Gal occasionally pointed out flaws like that, then immediately attacked again.
Noah lowered his stance according to the advice.
The next strike smacked his thigh.
His leg buckled and he nearly dropped to one knee.
“Beasts rely on instinct, but swordsmen don’t fight with their eyes alone either.
Feel, intuition, whatever you want to call it—do you have none of that?
Is this all you’ve got?”
Gal’s tone carried a trace of mockery.
“At least get some experience being hit.”
Noah spent the entire morning getting hit.
Gal used no ultimate techniques.
Ordinary swings.
Ordinary footwork.
Ordinary predictions.
Yet against those supposedly “ordinary” movements, Noah couldn’t evade anything.
As for attacking back, Noah had tried that on the first day.
He got beaten even worse.
In truth, Gal’s entire purpose was to sharpen Noah’s reactions and force out something like Ghislaine’s animal intuition.
The gradual increase in speed was deliberate pressure.
Because Noah had to keep every part of his mind focused merely to survive, he couldn’t even perceive the tiny increments Gal added.
…
From Noah’s perspective, he’d simply gone over there and received another beating.
What kind of teaching method was this?
But he couldn’t exactly say, “Screw you, old man, I quit.”
After thinking it through, Noah decided to embrace hit-and-run tactics.
The Sword God Style prioritized seizing the initiative and ending the battle in one strike.
But if the first attack failed, a swordsman could immediately transition into relentless hit-and-run pressure until victory was achieved.
Brothers, retreating first is wisdom.
Having reached this brilliant conclusion, Noah returned home and threw himself into his ten-thousand-swing project.
As he practiced, Tsubame Gaeshi felt increasingly smooth.
The pain Gal had hammered into his body faded from Noah’s awareness as concentration deepened.
So focused was he that he didn’t notice Nina arriving to visit.
She had planned to ask about several technical details of Tsubame Gaeshi.
She also wanted to warn him about the rumors she’d heard: several disciples intended to target him during the general sparring session.
But Noah remained completely absorbed in swinging his sword.
His seriousness made it strangely difficult for Nina to interrupt.
In the end, she simply stood there and watched him practice Tsubame Gaeshi in silence.
…
The third day of Gal’s instruction.
“What Sword God Style swordsman turns his back on the enemy?!”
Along with Gal’s shout came a heavier strike than usual.
Noah, who had attempted to implement his brilliant hit-and-run strategy, was instantly sent flying.
Against overwhelming speed, there was no running away.
After suffering an even more vicious beating than usual, Noah returned home and reflected seriously.
At present, Gal Farion was like a wall with no visible top.
No matter which direction Noah tried to go around it, he only smashed face-first into the same wall.
Attack?
Useless.
Run?
Useless.
Was getting beaten passively his only option?
He could see Gal’s attacks.
He just couldn’t avoid them.
And that was only because Gal deliberately reduced his speed to a level Noah could perceive.
At Gal’s true speed, Noah suspected the old man could cut his throat before Noah finished thinking about having a throat.
So even when Mind’s Eye predicted where the next strike would land, Noah’s body couldn’t follow.
The moment his mind reached a conclusion, the sword was already on him.
Somehow, that was more torturous than not seeing the attack at all.
Noah couldn’t think of a solution.
‘Well, we’re already here.
Might as well keep swinging.’
He picked up his practice sword and resumed Tsubame Gaeshi.
…
The fourth day of Gal’s instruction.
Another day of being beaten.
But this time, Noah changed the way he got beaten.
If Mind’s Eye could see the attack but his body couldn’t dodge it, then fine.
He wouldn’t focus on dodging.
He would focus on defense.
The idea had occurred to him the previous night while practicing Battle Aura Flow and Battle Aura Coating: Hardening.
If he was going to get hit anyway, why not make it hurt less?
As Gal’s usual unavoidable strike approached, Noah used Mind’s Eye to predict the impact point.
While still attempting an evasive motion, he concentrated as much battle aura as possible on the place about to be struck.
Smack!
Noah failed to evade and took the sword again.
But the pain was far weaker.
The battle aura had absorbed part of the impact, visibly reducing the damage.
Gal noticed immediately.
This wasn’t what he’d planned, but he was delighted by the development.
The Sword God grinned and silently allowed Noah to continue using battle aura to defend.
The point of this training was to sharpen reaction and battle instinct.
If Noah could defend in time, good.
If he couldn’t, he got hit.
That day, Noah returned home mentally drained and nearly empty of battle aura.
He rested for quite a while before resuming his daily swings.
That evening, he started thinking about how to make getting beaten even more comfortable.
And, more importantly…
How could he finally hit the old bastard back?
…
The fifth day of Gal’s instruction.
Noah was still being toyed with like a mouse beneath a cat’s paw, forced backward again and again under Gal’s continuous attacks.
Then Gal’s wooden sword descended toward Noah’s left shoulder.
This time, Noah used only half his battle aura to defend the impact point.
The other half surged into the wooden sword in his hands.
The night before, Noah had practiced applying Battle Aura Coating: Hardening to a weapon.
Now the result finally appeared.
These near-live-combat sessions had made his practical use of battle aura improve at terrifying speed.
Gal’s sword still landed on Noah’s shoulder first.
But Noah’s wooden sword struck Gal’s immediately afterward.
Crack!
Gal’s wooden sword shattered.
Noah followed with a horizontal sweep toward Gal’s waist.
Gal sprang backward in a huge leap—then reflexively blasted Noah away with battle aura.
‘Holy shit!
Train hard while you’re young and even your backstep comes with sword qi!’
“Good.
We’ll stop here today.” Gal narrowed his eyes at Noah, who was pushing himself upright with his sword.
“Looks like practical combat really is the best way to teach you.
At this rate, it won’t be long before you grasp the Longsword of Light.”
Gal was increasingly satisfied.
He had admittedly struck a little too hard at the end.
Best to keep progress gradual.
Unlike ordinary sword techniques, which spread battle aura through the entire weapon, the Longsword of Light demanded that aura be compressed into an infinitesimal point near the tip, producing an almost solid beam of concentrated energy.
The technique discarded curves, sweeps, thrusts, and every unnecessary variation.
Only a vertical or diagonal straight-line slash remained.
Maximum speed.
No hesitation.
One forward step had to be light and explosive.
The center of gravity shifted like wind, then arm and sword released power as one continuous ultra-high-speed strike.
The enemy couldn’t predict the angle and could barely block or evade it.
Even masters of the defensive Water God Style struggled to fully neutralize it before reaching the God realm themselves.
What Noah had just done looked remarkably similar in principle.
He shattered Gal’s wooden sword partly because Gal hadn’t coated it with battle aura and partly because Hardening had amplified Noah’s attack.
But Gal also recognized something else.
Noah had begun learning to compress battle aura into a smaller region of the weapon to increase destructive force.
He was approaching the principle behind the Longsword of Light.
Noah’s swordsmanship talent startled Gal yet again.
His expectations rose higher.
Noah himself hadn’t expected the day’s training to end so early, but he had taken more damage than usual.
He nodded, said goodbye to his cheap master, and headed back toward his residence.
Gal watched him disappear.
Then he spoke without turning.
“Nina.
You’ve watched enough.
What do you think?”
“I don’t understand…
and I can hardly believe it.”
A confused, incredulous voice came from deep in the corner of the courtyard where shadows concealed the wall.
Nina stepped out and stared at Gal’s wooden sword, most of which had been shattered away.
Shock remained written across her face.
‘Father—the man practically worshipped as a god in the Holy Land of Swords—can have his weapon broken?’
According to Gal, Noah’s swordsmanship was already approaching the level required to grasp the Longsword of Light.
The Longsword of Light was famous for its simplicity, efficiency, and broad applicability.
It was widely considered the most difficult of the three great schools’ techniques to defend against.
But it was absolutely not something a person mastered casually.
Nina couldn’t understand.
Because of her injury, she’d taken several days off from Timothy’s lessons and had secretly watched Noah train with her father instead.
Gal didn’t care that she was there.
Noah, meanwhile, was usually too busy being beaten into a swollen mess to notice anybody hiding nearby.
“On the first day he trained with Father, all he could do was take hits.
Same on the second.
The third was even worse.
On the fourth, he suddenly began defending with battle aura.
Today he actually shattered Father’s weapon…
How did he do it?”
Nina still sounded disbelieving.
Gal glanced at his daughter, who looked as though reality itself had struck her.
He understood that feeling.
Life had already taught him one simple truth.
Some things were decided from the very beginning.
No amount of unwillingness could change them.
“Nina.
The world is huge.
There will always be geniuses, and there will always be true monsters.
Some people are born knowing how to use a sword.
Some people are simply born different…”