Chapter 555: Sword Training

From a certain standpoint, the opponent I was currently fighting was probably the most difficult opponent in the entire world.

I took a deep breath, and then… turned around and ran!

What? Did I seem like a coward? But since I couldn’t win, was I supposed to wait around for death?

But, with him chasing me, even running away wasn’t easy. A sharp burst of sword energy barely missed me, scratching me on the back of my neck. Meanwhile, angry roars filled with killing intent and a Whirlwind of Swords attack followed me closely.

His large black sword had absolutely no magic powers. However, his pure brute force was enough to tear through even the strongest of tower shields. His violent sword swings appeared to be reckless, but, actually, he had sealed off all possible escape paths.

“It’s impossible to escape.”

My honed combat instincts instantly arrived at this conclusion, so I turned around and swung my own sword.

“Clang!”

My ice sword powerfully clashed against his black greatsword. While I was sent flying backwards, I saw to my delight that his greatsword had been shattered into tiny pieces. The difference in quality between our weapons appeared to have given me the victory.

“Ha, was chasing after me quite fun? Take this…”

But, I was forced to swallow my arrogant words as before I could even begin my counterattack, two more black greatswords stabbed straight for my head and feet respectively.

I could only roll around on the ground to escape this, yet a broken sword suddenly appeared before my face. The broken blade stabbed directly for my left eye, while the master of the broken sword had a calm expression.

“Stop!”

My loud shout was instantly accepted by the training facility. The three spirit images instantly stopped attacking me, and I could finally heave a sigh of relief.

“As expected, two Karwenzes is my limit? Three Karwenzes are far too dangerous. I should train more with only two Karwenzes.”

Right now, three identical spirit images were before me. Perhaps their faces looked identical to mine, but nobody would ever confuse us for each other. Even though we clearly had the same face, Karwenz’s eyes were forever filled with vigor and ambition as if he was permanently burning up with passion. As for me… I suddenly understood why Karwenz was so popular back in the day.

“Silly cat, is there something in my eyes?”

“Sure, there’s some eye gunk. You forgot to wash your face today.”

Tsk, as expected, I couldn’t count on the silly cat. So, I turned to look at Amelia.

“Although the two of you look identical, your younger twin brother looks so much more spirited and like a protagonist than you do…”

Hmph, even if she didn’t tell me this, I knew what other people thought already. My father always said, “Roland, you didn’t wake up yet?” Meanwhile, he would always ask Karwenz, “You brat, which family’s daughter have you seduced today?”

That was right, the three spirit images before me were all duplicates of my younger twin brother Karwenz. As for the so-called two or three Karwenzes, that referred to how many Karwenz duplicates I was able to handle at one time.

It was quite a pleasant surprise when I learned about this training facility which was capable of duplicating the strongest warrior in a person’s memory. At my skill level, it would be rather difficult to find anyone who was good enough to be my opponent in sword training. But now, I only needed to press a few buttons and provide some energy to meet the perfect sparring partners. Such a wonderful deal.

As for why I was using Karwenz spirit images instead of Roland spirit images… Well, I felt like I would much prefer to slice at Karwenz rather than myself.

The training facility’s spirit images had their limits. My Roland spirit image copy had at most only half the swordsmanship abilities that I did. Still, the spirit image creation machine would be more accurate if the person had more detailed memories and was more familiar with the duplicated person. This Karwenz spirit image seemed to only have 70-80% of his swordsmanship abilities. Still, his style was replicated quite faithfully, making Karwenz an excellent training partner.

I had already experimented with every Sword Saint in my memory. Just about all of them ended up being too easy for me to deal with (even including Adam, because I was too familiar with him). This was because almost all of them were powerful because of their special abilities, and not outstanding swordsmanship. They just needed to reach a sufficient power level to cast sword energy. Their swordsmanship abilities alone weren’t all that strong.

While I could also copy Donatis the Chaos War God, and he would be a powerful opponent indeed, he was physically far too large and thus an unsuitable opponent. In the end, only my bastard of a twin brother seemed like the best training partner.

Karwenz’s spirit image duplicate’s sword techniques mostly stemmed from two major battles that I had seen Karwenz in, the battle of the Northlands and the battle of Hell. I actually hadn’t seen Karwenz fight very often, but I felt that the spirit image was 70-80% accurate in imitating his techniques. In a way, I actually lacked experience fighting against Karwenz even though he was my twin brother. His swordsmanship style had also shocked me back then.

“Even though the two of you are clearly twin brothers, your swordsmanship styles are exact opposites. Did you two have different teachers?”

Gah! The truth was we had actually been taught by the same teacher, a royal Sword Saint of the Mist Kingdom. We were taught solid foundational techniques, and then we slowly added our “individual” styles throughout all our battles.

For both of us to have such different styles despite the same upbringing was due to our different understanding of swordsmanship.

For me, swordsmanship wasn’t foundationally different from other forms of martial arts. Swordsmanship was simply another method to use one’s body. It was only a pure technique. Perhaps some treated it as a philosophy or way of life, but to me, swordsmanship was just one method of killing others among many.

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This was also how most Sword Saints understood swordsmanship. So, when these Sword Saints obtained undying bodies and special abilities, they would typically create a special style of swordsmanship most suited to complement their own abilities, becoming a type of magical swordsman.

Perhaps due to my way of understanding, I could also use war hammers, spears, or other similar weapons as substitutes for swords. Maybe it was my Chinese heritage of concepts into swordsmanship as my own swordsmanship was filled with my understanding of various concepts. Every sword technique and sword style of mine had a specific goal.

So, my sword techniques didn’t contain any deep philosophy or passionate ultimate moves. Rather, my swordsmanship was filled with various traps and scams. Sometimes I would use direct attacks, sometimes I would use abnormal angles, and sometimes I would use bursts of speed. But, my final goal was always to confuse my opponent, learn more information about my opponent, find their weakness, make them fatigued, and then find an opportunity to land a killing blow.

Meanwhile, Karwenz’s swordsmanship was incredibly direct, with no trickery whatsoever. His direct swordsmanship was filled with wildness and killing intent, as well as… just being casual!

Indeed, as unbelievable as it sounded, his swordsmanship was almost all instinctive despite the fact that he had survived the pure slaughter contests in the Chaos Abyss. His swordsmanship was efficient because it was simple. He never intentionally sought attacks that were powerful or effective, but would never miss a single chance to kill his opponent.

His swordsmanship was simply whatever he felt like at the time. His attacks were simple stabs and slices with zero tricks. Although it seemed so casual, his sword would always appear at the most critical location.

“Karwenz’s swordsmanship is just about perfect. His sword is extremely quick yet not extravagant at all. The biggest headache about fighting him is that his sword will always appear at the most critical location during the most critical moment. It’s as if everything he does is pure instinct.”

Perhaps only that endless amount of slaughtering would be capable of transforming swordsmanship into a pure instinct, a combat instinct that could be used to kill others at any time.

Not only that, his instinct was actually capable of seeing through all my scams. When I was quick, he was quick. When I slowed down, he slowed down. He always had the perfect counter. If I used direct attacks, he used his own direct attacks. If I used tricks, he simply attacked my weakest point.

Perhaps our swordsmanship abilities were nearly equal, but he would always manage to time things perfectly by attacking the place hardest for me to defend. It was as if he was my mortal enemy.

That was why I was a bit disadvantaged during my earlier practice fight.

But, after I finally got used to his style, it became much easier to win. That was because the spirit images didn’t have souls, nor did they have Karwenz’s true swordsmanship abilities or any top-level weapons.

“You’re doing so well. I can’t even beat a single Karwenz.”

Meanwhile, not far away from me was Reyne, who was forced to run everywhere and only stay on the defensive by another Karwenz spirit image. Tears of anger streamed down her cheeks as she couldn’t take it anymore. She ended up summoning her Divine Sins to one hit KO the spirit image.

She then enviously looked over in my direction and then summoned another Karwenz spirit image, starting her fight with him again.

From a certain standpoint, Reyne was indeed far more mature than before. If this was the previous Reyne, she would have started slacking off and doing something else instead.

“Go, Barton! If you’re a man, try lasting thirty seconds.”

Barton was in a far more pitiful state. Although he wasn’t forced into running everywhere like Reyne, and even though his “grandfather” Winlair kept cheering him on and using spells to buff him, Barton still had an incredibly difficult time where he could only remain on the defensive.

But, thanks to him always being able to shout “Stop!” in time, he hadn’t been seriously injured yet.

So far, all the Sword Saints here, including Reyne and Barton, were completely unable to defeat even a single spirit image Karwenz. Of course, if it was in pure swordsmanship, they were also unable to defeat a single spirit image Roland.

In my future plans, since I had so many Concepts that I could transform into my weapons, how could I possibly let go of this chance to improve my swordsmanship, which was a core element of my physical abilities?

So what if Karwenz was my perfect counter? A large enough rat would be able to eat a cat. I would be able to mature faster if I practiced more against my biggest counter.

Well, it was likely that only Sword Saints would need such a difficult trial and training. This was probably the most extravagant method available to use this training facility.

“I can probably come up with an even more ridiculous method.”

The silly cat then tossed out a cat clone after saying this. The cat clone summoned a dog and started fighting with it…

This training facility could even be used like this? I supposed that in the slime cat clone’s memories, a dog was its worst enemy.

“Will you die if you stop commenting about me?”

“I won’t. But, can you tell me that you’re really practicing all this swordsmanship to improve yourself, rather than to deal with the real person in question?”

I was unable to say anything back. Even if I didn’t say it out loud, it was likely that the most dangerous part of our planned trip to the Chaos Abyss would likely be that unreliable brother of mine.

“Relax, I have confidence in myself.”

“Confidence that you can win or confidence that you can run away successfully?”

I glared at her. As expected, all word games were useless against her since she had a soul connection to me. But could she please stop going against everything I said? That would affect everyone’s morale!

“I’m confident that I can run away faster than you can!”