Goldilocks lifted his sword as if readying for a swing, but then suddenly hurled it toward one of the cavalry that still hadn’t regained his eyesight! Such a heavy implement would strike hard—but not so hard that the blow might penetrate his foes’ armor. The maneuver seemed like little more than a desperation strike, born of the despair that his sword would never be long enough to strike the enemy before he was felled.
Reality defied their every expectation.
Schutzwolfe’s fang pierced the breastplate and sunk deep into the hapless mercenary’s shoulder. He screamed in pain and toppled off his horse. It took the other soldiers a good few seconds to realize what had happened. The scene defied all doctrine of battle, all technique, all common sense. That breastplate had been warded against blades of all sorts and all seasons, and to begin with, no fighter with their head on straight would strike at an enemy in heavy armor with a bare blade! Everyone knew that in such a matchup, the smart thing to do was strike at the joints with heavy, percussive blows! It dazed them more than the flash had.
“Come on, then! Soup’s on!”
A scream tore the very world apart. The air itself was creaking; the world was screaming from the heavy load. The sound of glass scraping against glass, of rusty cogs being forced to turn, of a tree being ripped in two—the sound of the very world crying out. It was a sound that no one could understand; an uproar with no meaning. Despite that, everyone understood it. It was love. The ecstasy of being desired, gratitude for being put to use, the mad joy to be had in catching the scent of blood to spill and souls to unhitch for one’s master—the sum of all a sword’s affections.
Space itself started to rend in twain as a sword slithered into existence in Goldilocks’s hand. It was a zweihander, and the blade bore a dull glint in the cloud-blotted gloom. Upon the hilt, golden letters in a script illegible to mortal eyes glowed eerily.
This sword that sang of its twisted love was held in the hand of a swordsman with a farmboy’s easy smile. As he approached, everyone held their breath. No gleaming tale of a hero’s deeds ever touched upon sights as dreadful as these.
[Tips] Just like swords, armor can also be enchanted, to the envy of all soldiers. Regular enchantments improve its sturdiness, remove its weight, or make it as comfortable as cotton while remaining just as rugged as ever. Of course, there are high-quality pieces too, which are imbued with powerful effects that can protect the wearer from being blinded, create physical walls, or even summon gusts of wind to blow away arrows.
Everyone knew that a sword could not cut through armor. That was why you learned how to cut in between the gaps. Naturally, anyone who somehow could stick that landing would be sitting on an outstanding opportunity to seize the initiative while everyone else was picking their jaw up off the floor.
I’d achieved this through a combo of my Scale IX Hybrid Sword Arts, Scale IX Dexterity, and Enchanting Artistry—a stack of bonuses that meant regardless of how the dice fell, just about anything on the receiving end was hosed. If I wanted to make it even tougher I’d have to incorporate other traits or skills, but at this point, my physical capabilities were already well buffed by Insight and Lightning Reflexes, so adding more to the mix would be inefficient. I had thought about covering for my other senses and improving my thinking speed even further with Mind’s Eye and the like, but the experience cost would be too much to make it worth it. If I hadn’t already reached Scale IX in both of these (Divine and Divine Favor, respectively), then it might have been worth it, but little extra tricks wouldn’t help at this stage when my raw power was so high. And, in all honesty, it would be a bit boring.
I was a swordsman and solved things with my sword, but I still hadn’t forgotten my dreams of becoming an arcane swordfighter, despite keeping it hidden. More accurately, I aspired to be the kind who could cut down his foe before they had a chance to know what hit them.
Lady Agrippina had said that the essence of a magus lay in either killing on sight or killing someone with methods they couldn’t comprehend. With that in mind, what was the difference to an arcane swordsman? There were many theories, but I supposed there was one coherent throughline on which the question had to hang: how one enchanted one’s weapon. Huge swords coated in flame that burned as they sliced. One-handed blades that would freeze over the cut. Rapiers that sent waves of electricity with each thrust. All of them were pretty damn flashy. For all that special-effects bluster, they tended not to measure up mechanically or practically, and so I hadn’t given the whole idea much thought.
Instead, I’d cooked up a spell of my own (with the help of some heaps of experience I had to spare at the time). It was far quicker and cheaper than Schism, and would still remain in effect after my sword left my hand. Your average magus would call it stupid and sniff their nose at it, but it tied back to one of my old standbys: Insulating Barrier—my go-to solution to all my woes when roughing it outdoors. By very, very lightly coating my sword with a similar barrier, this new spell could “insulate” it from the world. Sacrificing all of the barrier’s protective value, the enchantment instead left it momentarily fine and rigid enough to sever bonds at the molecular level.
I called it Monoplane Barrier.
Its precision was still low, and I could only activate it for a few seconds at a time, but it made a path that let a blade pass through what would usually be impenetrable.
In other words, it was an extreme type of Armor Piercing attack. It seemed like it was easy to neutralize, but a hit could prove fatal. Not only that, unless your eyes were really good, it was hard to tell if it was activated or not, meaning it served my kill-on-sight purposes too. I could whip it out at an ideal moment during a proper sword fight to destroy an enemy’s sword without leaving them the option to respond. Basically, I had managed to replicate the illogical benefits from my fey karambit with any sword I used.
There was purpose to throwing my sword too. The sight of Schutzwolfe stuck in a breastplate, having cut through the chain mail and armor underneath, was quite the spectacle.
I had neutralized three cavalrymen with my Flashbang, and so there were a dozen left. I needed to cross this difficult distance between us—which meant it was time to bust out my secret weapon. I had wanted to hide it for as long as possible, but it was wake-up time now. It had been awfully loud, knowing that I’d let it sit through so much of the fight already. It (or he, or she) was almost too much to handle in its default zweihander form, but if I was going to go all out, I’d settle for no lesser sword—not least because I could count on it to take on a more agreeable shape for handling a mounted charge from heavy cavalry.
The world and my mind both bent under the pressure of its ecstatic howl. It was bigger than normal today. This wasn’t the usual nighttime practice session, held in secret and out of sight; this was the first time in a long while that it would get to cut down a real enemy. Its joy seemed vaster than usual. That wordless scream that assaulted my brain had a meaning behind it: I love you; I adore you. I supposed such thirst for blood had left it without much other vocabulary.