Even before dawn broke, Aitri tempered a sword.
He tempered it using only true silver, and after that he named the sword Noon.
'A sword that melts down and cuts through any spell.'
He made what he imagined into reality. Because he knew the joy of that moment, Aitri put his life on this work. He poured time into it and invested effort.
When he took that result into his hands, his assistant and disciple was the first to be moved.
"This is really…"
The dwarf beside him clicked his tongue.
"You swung the hammer like a crazy bastard."
Even without help from spells, it was a sword that burned up every spell. Sunlight blazing at midday melts and erases everything. It was a sword that held that meaning.
Aitri melted that sword down, too. Just like when he tempered the sword called Dusk.
"Master, why?"
His assistant and disciple panicked.
'The sword forged after dawn is Dusk.'
He melted that sword down, too. Would this time be any different.
Aitri didn't rest. After noon came night. The sword's name was Midnight.
It was a sword that looked like it had been made by drawing out only the dark color from dark gold. It was a sword that even the Frog jewelry craftsman watching exclaimed over.
"Did you even care about the look?"
the Frog asked. Aitri nodded. It was a form closer to an artwork. A curve bent to one side, a sword a little different from the forms he had made up to now.
He packed into it a will to cut anything it could hit.
'A sword that cuts even the trace of what it cut.'
He didn't even swing the sword—he only brought pig hide up to it, and swish— it was cut cleanly as it was. Beyond outstanding cutting power, it was like the blade a demon possessed.
"This isn't a famed sword. You should call it a cursed sword."
The dwarf Argan said.
"If you aren't going to temper even a demon sword."
As if he couldn't hear, Aitri only muttered. It was a weapon he had made by giving up living like a person for days, hammering away.
Then he melted down even the "night."
In the middle of that, Aitri had a dream. It was a night he slept deeply for the first time in days.
Jjeong—!
A dream where dawn broke, and the broken blade lodged into Enkrid's neck.
"The sword you made only went this far."
In the darkness, someone's voice was heard.
"And your limit is only up to here, too."
A voice urging despair followed, and even if everything he was seeing wasn't all truth, an instinct filled his head that it also wasn't all lies.
As he watched and felt that, Aitri focused on only one fact.
'How did it break?'
Because the hardness was lacking? Or for some other reason? How was the fight? What did the opponent have?
A desire to know boiled up. Then a creative impulse rose, wanting to make something, and his heart leaped.
Waking from the dream, Aitri realized he still wasn't satisfied. He couldn't understand why he had melted every sword down, but action came first, and realization came after.
'Dawn is a beginning.'
It was the first sword he tempered after realizing, learning, and mastering how to make an engraved weapon.
Rising from his seat, Aitri suppressed the urge to swing the hammer right away.
Instead, for days on end, he only ate and drank. That appearance was like a warrior preparing for battle.
Eat and drink and chew and rest. Sleep deeply, wake in the morning, and run. He repeated the same day for months to a startling degree. He acted like a soldier training the body. And he didn't relieve the desire—he compressed it. Then Enkrid returned.
"I broke the sword."
It was a light tone, like he'd broken a fork roughly made out of wood. The memory of what he'd been through vanished far away, like a flowing river.
Aitri opened his mouth.
"The sword's name is Today."
Not dawn, not noon, not night. It holds a whole day. Still, that Today is the Today of someone who does not give up no matter what happens.
He put a double meaning into the name.
'Today, or now.'
If you said it in the language of the fairy folk, it was Noongk.
'A sword of a person who lives in the always-best posture and does not give up.'
Even before Enkrid came, preparation was finished. If he had come back years later, Aitri would have repeated the same Today for years and waited for this moment.
He didn't even need new metal. The iron that fit this man best was the highest-purity metal even among Valerian true iron.
He had already obtained it, refined it again and again, and smoothed it. Seeing it handled like that, the dwarf craftsman said it had already stopped being ordinary metal.
It was a sword he made, broke, melted, and tempered countless times in his head while running every day.
'Doing your best in the present.'
That was why the name is Today.
"Nice."
Enkrid answered with a nod. From the outside, it was so not a big deal that it looked like he didn't care at all.
"Then."
Aitri finished what he had to say. That ended the two of them meeting. From this day on, Aitri held the hammer again.
Except for the time he woke up in the morning and ran, and the time he ate and slept, he hammered iron all day long.
"Is it okay that an engraved weapon broke?"
It was what Kraiss said when he first saw the broken sword in Enkrid's hands.
It wasn't a training wooden sword that broke.
It was an engraved weapon. A weapon like that, held in a knight's hands, was hard to see breaking.
Didn't some knights keep a sword with them until they died, and even put part of their self into that sword.
But Enkrid was fine.
The engraved weapon breaking was a shock, but it didn't become a reason to stop.
He hadn't done it with any meaning in mind, but to the ones watching, it was an attitude that made them think a lot.
'Should you say the opponent was strong?'
That would be one reason.
'Was the engraved weapon a bit soft?'
That would be one reason, too.
If you tried to find reasons, everything was a reason. It was already something that had passed.
When dawn broke, Enkrid felt like every bone in his body had broken, but he endured.
And he extended his foot toward tomorrow. That was all.
That guy he met again in front of the Demon-lands became a wall again this time, too. A wall of reality, and the heart is a wall. For an ordinary person, it would have been fine if they lay sick for days from the pressure that wall gave, but Enkrid was calm.
Hadn't he been tormented by the ferryman and seen all kinds of things.
A stain remained in the heart, but to feel defeated by something like this now, the road he'd walked up to now was too long and harsh.
It was fine to sing of frustration and despair by his ear, so this time too he let it pass like that.
'Even if it's not now.'
If you move forward, you meet it. Someday you catch up. It might not have to be today. Enkrid was someone who realized that principle and carved it into his body.
This attitude had been like that before, but this time too it influenced the entire order.
Pel, holding his Idol Slayer, muttered while thinking for days.
"I don't know. Is it right to say it's fine even if it breaks? Or do I have to believe there won't be a day it breaks?"
Pel's worry represented the hearts of some. He shared this worry with everyone, and the answers that came back were each different.
Shinar entered the fairy city and there was no news, but the rest answered the question as if tossing it out.
Rem said his axe would not break, and even if it broke it could be restored.
Ragna said if it broke you could just stick it back together.
Jaxon answered that since all you had to do was kill, it didn't matter if the weapon broke.
Temares, being a dragonkin who used his own bone as a weapon, gave an answer only he could give.
"You can pull out one more bone."
Does that mean it doesn't matter if it breaks?
"But my bones won't break."
Temares was bad at speaking while assuming something. That was why he seemed to feel this was even more fun now.
When Luagarne asked him why he didn't leave, he only answered that he didn't know either. It looked like he was thinking about the reasons and principles of his own behavior.
And the way he kept chuckling was very strange.
Is it fun because he doesn't know? It was hard to guess at his inner thoughts.
"That's an interesting worry. Shepherd brother. I will answer like this. Isn't it more important that your neck doesn't break than that your sword breaks?"
Audin's answer ended Pel's worry.
"That's right."
Hadn't they come this far to survive and achieve what they wanted.
Whether the sword breaks or not, what's important about that?
'What's important is me.'
It's what I do. That day, Pel sat still in a corner of the training grounds for two days and sank into thought. It was a process of recalling something, digging into it, and chewing it over again.
Watching Pel, Lawford moved his body twice as diligently as usual.
If nothing else, he couldn't become someone worse than Pel.
And Pel himself learned a lot from seeing Lawford's sense of responsibility. The two influenced each other.
Aurelia, who had come together from the south, didn't know any way to match the mood.
Instead of caring about Pel's worry, she was busy digesting the training Enkrid spoke of.
'It's an outrageous amount of training.'
In the meantime, she even learned how to handle the body from the holy knight called Audin. The legs of a half-giant woman twice her size split straight apart, showing the motion she would do.
Should she say wonder was felt just from watching.
'Her body is big,'
but endlessly flexible. Here too, Aurelia danced every day, tore and stretched muscles.
The funny thing was that in her eyes, no one was playing around.
Meaning literally, whether it snowed or rained, they did what they did every day.
Just watching, it felt like it would make you dizzy.
It was a day when snow was falling in thick flakes, not even many days after she returned like that.
That day too, Enkrid came out at the same time, and whether it snowed or not, he lay down holding iron and dropped a stone onto his belly.
Then he got up and headed for the recruit training ground. It was hard to guess the reason, so she asked directly. The answer came back right away. He tended to answer every question sincerely.
"My lord, you're not even training knights—why are you personally putting your hands into soldier training?"
"Because it's fun."
The answer was brief. This man, the knight who cut a demon, Balrog Slayer, enjoyed mixing in among recruits and encouraging them.
Of course, to the ones running with him directly, his encouragement wouldn't feel like encouragement.
"Run."
They ran even after leaving the city, and ran all day long. Naturally, people gave up and sprawled on the ground.
"You stop here? Huh? Are you crazy? Are you out of your mind?"
Then from the back, a junior knight with the nickname Clemen jumped out and kicked their backs.
Watching that, Enkrid only kept repeating for them to run.
"Is this hell?"
Aurelia, participating in that roadwork for the first time, clearly heard what a soldier said right beside her.
"Let's go absent without leave. We have to get out."
On the other side, she also saw a soldier who showed a will to get out of the army no matter what.
She also saw and felt various units besides that.
"What is it? You're new?"
Rem's corps, the sword-obsessed swordsmen corps, the sacred infantry corps that prized martial arts and served the War God.
And even people who rode horses and shot bows.
'An army trained to a frightening degree.'
Aurelia's sharp head saw that the very existence of these people would become a deterrence to every surrounding city and country.
In reality, that was the role.
"The trade city wants to enter under the kingdom."
The start was a trade city-state that, in arrogance, was said to be number one on the continent.
It was like saying they would give up first the position of being a country built by merchants.
People who had pride so high that they rarely bowed their heads first, knelt, and acted like they would bring and offer everything they had.
Of course, even this behavior would be for the sake of taking what they wanted.
'A merchant moves for profit.'
They judged that throwing away the name of a country and joining was beneficial, and in the process they planned to get something out of it.
Aurelia's sharp head, comparing it to the continent's situation, pinpointed what the trade city wanted.
The surprising point here was that someone called Kraiss noticed the trade city's intent and refused.
"There's no need to go that far. Instead, open one more trade route."
He didn't change the current shape on purpose. Instead of removing the trade city's "anxiety," he proposed a road that benefited both sides appropriately.
Of course, the reason all of this was possible was because the strength called Enkrid and the Mad Order of Knights held the central axis.
'Monster-like people.'
It felt like watching the process of making a monster-like army.
"Go and learn at least one more thing. Looking at it now, even if we fought bringing all of the Red Cloak Order of Knights, I think we'd lose."
Her grandfather, and the master of the order, was someone who never neglected learning and mastering. Also someone exact at objectively evaluating strength.
His words were sincere. The depth the Mad Order of Knights had would have been very impressive even to him. Still, it didn't mean to learn something from that order and bring it back here. It only meant: if there is something to learn, learn it. That was all.
"If possible I want to send Ingis too, but he has a lot to do even here. So you go and learn and come back."
Aurelia faithfully followed her grandfather's words.
So she came here, and except for the fairy saying something like threats a few times, time was passing without anything special.
The fairy's threats weren't much. If she did something clumsy, the witch would place a curse, or so she said.
"That man is my fiancé. If you aim for him and get caught, I'll cut you."
From those words, she felt a vow as firm as what her grandfather had shown.
Even if she called it time without anything special, precisely it was a continuation of training, but she didn't know.
This was only an adaptation period.
Aurelia thought she had, somehow, soaked into the unit. Her thought was right.
"Now, shall we start?"
One morning, didn't the madman called Enkrid call her and say that?
"What do you mean?"
Even now, compared to where she originally was, the time spent training had increased by half again. But start what?
"Your body's all loosened up, right?"
While Aurelia tilted her head, Enkrid held a sword.
"Sparring. You're a spy of the Red Cloak Order of Knights."
Enkrid was serious about teaching. He even taught ways to fluster the opponent and make them show an opening.
"…What spy?"
The flustered Aurelia got caught by Enkrid's foot and rolled on the ground.
Kwadang— making a loud sound, Aurelia popped up in the air and fell, then lifted her head.
"Get up."
From that day on, in less than even two days, Aurelia became close friends with the soldiers who had run left and right during roadwork training.
She perfectly understood the words of the soldier who sang of going absent without leave and the soldier who talked about hell.