Hard Carried by My Sword-Chapter 91

This won’t do.

Karen had been thinking that for some time.

She was once the infamous “Keeper,” who ruled over Blaine’s slums. No one dared challenge her there, and even Khan—reputed to be the apex predator—avoided facing her directly.

She was an elite assassin who could best any equal and manage even those stronger than her. Unless the battle was forced into a fair, head-on fight, no one was more lethal than an assassin.

Karen had always taken pride in her skills.

I was just a big fish in a small pond...

Traveling alongside Leon, the Hero, forced her to accept the truth. Standing beside the hero who held the fate of the world in his hands, even an elite assassin wasn’t much.

It had been the same during the raid in Blaine. She played a significant role, even juggling two personas, but in the end, it was Leon who defeated the final monster. Against truly powerful foes, assassination techniques amounted to little more than cheap tricks.

I have to become much stronger.

Otherwise, she’d be left behind on the Hero’s journey. Whether she died or was gravely wounded, the outcome would be something she couldn’t bear. 𝚏𝕣𝐞𝗲𝐰𝕖𝐛𝐧𝕠𝕧𝚎𝚕.𝐜𝚘𝗺

Leon’s growth rate was absurdly fast. When they first met in Blaine, she could have taken him down in under a minute. Now? It’d be a fight to the death.

Part of it was their Aura affinity, but even the gap in their raw ability had narrowed dramatically. Once he inherited the legacy of the former Hero Rodrick in this village, he would become even stronger, strong enough that he might not need her anymore.

I don’t want that.

She didn’t want it to end here. Not as “the Keeper,” but as Karen, she wanted to make a name for herself. Perhaps become famous enough that even the parents who abandoned her in the slums would hear of her.

I have to get stronger.

Since becoming an elite assassin, she hadn’t really trained. There wasn’t much point. Her physical limits were already maxed out, and Aura quantity and quality weren’t something that could be increased overnight.

She had no opportunity to learn secret sword techniques or new Aura arts either. All she could do was refine what she already knew.

That was the limitation of someone raised purely as an assassin. She didn’t know how to grow stronger on her own.

Just when she was thirsting for strength, the person who had first shown her the light reached out again.

“Karen!”

Leon appeared with an old book and a bundle of herbs.

She accepted the gifts, dumbfounded. A martial arts manual written by Rodrick himself, and elixirs aged over three hundred years, sounded almost mythical, not to mention the fact that Leon and the Giant King were now sworn brothers.

“I think I’ll be holed up with Kasim for a while.”

With that, Leon left her with a burden too great to repay and turned his back. His face, though, was quite pale compared to his usual complexion. Was there some kind of secret Hero training passed down through generations?

Karen stared blankly at his retreating figure, then looked down at what lay in her arms. The scent of herbs, the musty smell of old paper, the light weight in her hands—these alone grounded her in reality.

She could get stronger now. She wanted to not for herself, but for someone else.

“‘Twilight Waltz of the Duskgloom’...”

She didn’t need to read much to know. It was a martial arts manual made for someone exactly like her. It was suited for fighters of Darkness or Shadow attributes, focusing on fast, stealthy movements and surprise attacks.

Just reading the descriptions sent chills down her spine. Karen, too, was a natural-born assassin—she could sense the overwhelming depth of Rodrick’s ability in this book.

Even if I can master just half of this...!

She’d be able to break through the wall called the realm of Master.

Her eyes sharpened with conviction. Leon had laid out the path this clearly. If she couldn’t rise to meet it, she might as well be dead.

When she gained that newfound conviction, that was when the Titans started to take notice of her.

“May I join in?” she asked the sparring Titans.

Practice was just a way to refine form. To grasp its essence, she had to internalize it through combat.

They couldn’t fight to the death, of course, but this Titan village was littered with opponents stronger than herself.

The Titans were, quite literally, natural enemies of assassins. All their senses were several times keener than a human’s, and even their bare skin could dull an Aura Weapon’s lethality. Karen wasn’t even sure her dagger could pierce all the way to the bone.

“I’ll be using hidden weapons—and poisons too. If that’s too much, I’ll understand if you refuse,” Karen taunted the Titans.

“Oho? Bold young lady.”

“No wonder that human warrior keeps her close.”

To the Titans, fear was a pathetic emotion that they fed to the street dogs. Her provocation only piqued their interest, and warriors who had never fought an assassin began to gather.

In the mountain’s depths, combat was always a clash of raw power. The stronger, the faster—those were the ones who won. However, though techniques mattered when fighting fellow Titans, things like sneak attacks and tricks were rarely used.

“Damn, this is annoying!”

“Once she slips away, I can’t tell where she’ll show up again!”

“I want to use a wide-area attack, but she always slips through the gaps! She aims for our crotches and eyes, so it’s not like I can take those hits!”

And so, the Titans learned just how irritating an assassin’s hit-and-run tactics could be. However, that didn’t mean that Karen had the advantage.

She could annoy them all she wanted, sure, but their toughness rendered her poisons and hidden weapons nearly useless. The best she could do was stay on the move and try not to lose.

I’m faster than yesterday. I got deeper than two days ago.

It was acrobatics with her life on the line. Even without Aura, a Titan’s strike could shatter her body with one hit.

She kept slipping just past that lethal range, striking first and darting away. It was under such extreme pressure that genius would shine brightest.

Day by day, Karen grew stronger. Thanks to the Titans’ enthusiastic cooperation, her skills rose rapidly.

“Try this herb. We use it as an anesthetic, but for anything outside the mountain, it’s instant death.”

“See that purple mushroom? Touch it barehanded and it’ll dissolve your nerves. Wrap it in cedar leaves and squeeze out the juice—it makes a potent corrosive.”

“Everyone knows basilisk eyes can petrify, but not many know you can recreate that effect using fluid from its eyeballs.”

The Titans’ generous lessons of things only found deep in the Titan Mountains—toxic knowledge, poisons that even A-rank monsters couldn’t withstand—tripled the kinds of poisons Karen had in her arsenal, and her killing power increased tenfold.

They were so potent, they’d be overkill on humans.

I have to keep my place!

If she were to be the Hero’s companion, she had to do what the Hero could not. In every story, there’s always one rogue—a side character who disarms traps and explores ruins.

Looking at how fast Leon was growing, there was no way she could keep up with brute strength alone. It was clearly better to stand out in other areas.

It was a brutally practical decision. Her drive might’ve been slightly off-track, but the result was undeniable.

Karen was growing stronger by the day.

***

Meanwhile, Leon was dying. Or, at least, nearly.

“Ghhk...”

Only those who’ve pushed themselves to their absolute limit would understand. The pain of oxygen-deprived lungs, completely drained of capacity—it was agony beyond screaming, and all Leon could manage were strangled gasps.

His body convulsed on the ground, sweat pouring off him like rain. He was already showing signs of dehydration.

Whether one had good stamina or not didn’t matter. Once they pushed past their limits, the pain came for everyone just the same.

“Not yet?” El-Cid asked.

“Not yet,” Kasim answered as if it were obvious.

Psychokinesis was the power to influence the material world through pure, formless thought. It was an introductory step to a transcendent realm. If it were something you could learn in a day or two, then anyone could be a Master.

Kasim had learned it only after months of teetering on the edge of death. He knew better than anyone just how impossibly hard it was.

Forgive me, my brother Leon. I don’t enjoy this either, he thought with empathy.

Leon wasn’t just exhausted. He’d been beaten into a pulp, his strength depleted to the point where he couldn’t even heal himself. They would wait until he was on the verge of death, then restore him just before the end, and repeat the process from the beginning.

Even seasoned torturers would’ve given this method a standing ovation.

“He’s almost at his limit. Can I heal him?” El-Cid asked again.

With Kasim’s nod of approval, a gentle light poured out from the Holy Sword in Leon’s hand, healing his blood-soaked body and shredded clothes.

There was so much mana in the air that El-Cid could casually carry out sacred spells on his own. From Leon’s perspective, what brief moment of rest he had was being taken from him, but he knew too well that El-Cid was never the type to care about things like that.

Leon’s breath came in gasps as his heart restarted its rhythm.

“Huff! Huff! Huff...!”

With his pulse steady again, he resumed breathing and pulled himself upright. Who knew how many times he had crossed the threshold of death by now? His sense of time was long gone—it was pure hell.

“Want to go right away? Or take a break?” El-Cid asked.

“Give... give me five minutes,” Leon answered.

“Sure.”

Even Leon’s inhuman willpower had to ask for a short breather.

“Huff... Huff... Dammit. I’m really going to die at this rate.”

“Don’t worry. I’ll keep you alive no matter what!”

“That’s the first time I’ve ever been annoyed by the idea of being saved.”

He scowled at El-Cid’s joking tone, but he didn’t have the energy to stay angry. He gave up quickly.

That was how absurd psychokinesis training was. El-Cid’s teachings, which had seemed deep and philosophical, now felt nothing short of barbaric. Then again, it probably took something this extreme to awaken the ability.

“H-hey, El-Cid,” Leon called out.

“Hm?”

“How did you awaken psychokinesis? Just in case—it might be worth knowing.”

“I guess it’s not a bad idea to learn the theory first.”

El-Cid spoke as though he had zero expectations. If words alone could teach it, he’d have done it that way already.

“Consciousness in material lifeforms—like humans—is a collective output of electric signals in the brain. So, if you can project that brainwave network outward and synchronize it with the frequency of the material world, you can interact with matter like it’s part of your body. If your mental power is strong enough, you can change the weather just by willing it, or even interfere with someone else’s consciousness enough to kill them. In martial terms, they call it “intent-kill” or “spirit sword,” but it’s all just different names for psychokinesis.”

“....”

Though they were speaking the same language, Leon’s eyes glazed over like he was staring into an abyss.

El-Cid, seeing his reaction, asked cautiously, —Did you understand any of that?

“What the hell are you even saying...?”

“Knew it. Back to getting beaten, then, buddy.”

“Goddammit.”

Not even Kasim—who had trained for over three hundred years—fully understood those principles. There was no way Leon would grasp them in one explanation.

The precious five minutes passed. Leon stood up again, and Kasim slowly walked to face him.

“Haa... I wonder how long it’ll take before I succeed.”

Someone without the context might’ve thought he was just being impatient, but really, Leon just wanted to escape this cycle of torment. The endless duels against the Giant King Kasim meant losing over and over, unable to land a single hit.

Constantly forced to experience his own powerlessness was torture, both physically and mentally. Even though he could feel himself getting stronger, not once had he landed a meaningful blow.

Well... It’s simply not a fight where winning is possible.

He didn’t have the right to talk about luck, skill, or momentum. The gap between them was far greater than heaven and earth.

Even if Kasim fought using just one finger, Leon would die in a single hit. Even if his arms and legs were tied and he could only headbutt, it’d still end the same. Thinking about winning was arrogant in itself.

From exactly thirty meters away, Kasim spoke.

“Let’s begin.”

He never struck first. It was usually better for the weaker fighter to start defensively, but their difference in level made even that meaningless. If Kasim took the first move, Leon would be finished before he could react. So Kasim gave him the first move, all so that Leon could struggle for even one more beat.

“Here I come,” Leon said.

He couldn’t hold anything back. Leaving just enough life force to keep himself alive, he poured everything else into his attack. His irises turned gold, and a blazing torrent of Aura Fire erupted around his body.

At this state, he could fight for less than fifteen seconds. Win or lose, he would collapse from exhaustion. It was as “all-out attack” as it got.

With a step that shattered the sound barrier, Leon charged toward Kasim.