Ragna thought that Encrid would tell him where he needed to be.
It was a kind of trust—but Encrid didn’t say a word to him.
‘Why?’
If one were to divide the battlefield broadly, the front was held by his father, mother, and Lynox, while he was positioned slightly to the rear.
So far, he had cut down a few monsters here and there, but hadn’t stepped up to the front.
Should he go to his father’s side? Looking ahead, he could see a threatening enemy approaching.
In front of his mother, a Death Knight was lifting its head, rising up from the ground.
Where was he supposed to be? Why didn’t the captain tell him?
Standing in this ambiguous spot, quietly observing the battlefield, he began to understand—vaguely.
Why the captain hadn’t said a word.
Was this battle the captain’s?
No. He was only a supporter.
‘The reason I’m angry is because this is my home.’
He would live on as part of the Mad Knights, no longer the Border Guard. That decision had been made long ago and would not change.
Still, Zaun was where he had been born and raised.
‘What I leave behind?’
Now he knew the answer. He would leave Ann behind. He would leave Encrid behind.
In broader terms, he would leave behind people.
And it would be nice if his father and mother were among those people.
Ragna took a step forward. He knew where he had to go. The object of his fury lay beyond the battlefield.
His father and mother would overcome their crisis on their own.
The pounding wind and rain threw off his sense of direction.
Shhhhhhhhh.
The cries of the Scalors dulled his senses.
The cursed serpent floating overhead pressed down on his body, twisting his five senses.
Far in the distance, Medusa, a monster terrifying enough to become a Lord of the Demon Realm, stared wide-eyed—so much so that he couldn’t even open his own eyes properly.
And yet, in this situation, Ragna felt the brilliance of his own talent.
‘I can see the path.’
No disrupted sense could block the path guided by innate talent.
Ragna began to walk. This was something Encrid hadn’t anticipated.
To be honest, Encrid had hoped Ragna would stay back and only step out when needed.
Well, not everything goes according to plan. That’s war—and life.
That uncertainty is what sometimes brings joy, and sometimes sorrow.
Fortunately, this time, it brought laughter.
“Where do you think you're wandering off to?”
He had been walking for quite a while, using monsters as signposts, when someone spoke to him. It was a familiar voice.
Whoooosh.
Through the pouring rain, he saw a middle-aged man, soaked and with wet hair stuck to his forehead and face.
The man pulled the hair from his face and waited for Ragna’s answer. Ragna replied.
“I was on my way to find the bastard who caused all this.”
“Lost your way?”
“No, I think I’m on the right path. Finding my way is kind of my thing.”
Hescal was a calm man. So calm, in fact, that he rarely showed excitement, even once a year.
Even when bickering with Lynox, he never raised his voice or flushed red with anger. Even when confronting the head of the house, he had always spoken quietly.
There were very few who had seen him truly angry.
But now, even Hescal’s voice had a sharp edge to it, showing he was slightly irritated.
“Why didn’t you stay put?”
“I saw the path, so I walked it.”
Ragna’s calm demeanor showed the kind of confidence that only someone who truly believed in himself could have.
That confidence irked Hescal.
If he had just stayed still, he could’ve been found easily—but the brat just had to move, dragging them way off the battlefield.
Even he had to take a long detour to find him.
‘Why the hell was this kid walking alone through monsters gathered for the reserve force?’
He had to be out of his damn mind. And yet the bastard insisted this was the right path.
‘If I had ignored you, you’d have wandered around lost and only returned after everything was over.’
From Zaun’s perspective, one could say that a stroke of uncertain luck had turned into fortune.
If Hescal hadn’t come looking, Ragna wouldn’t have met him.
But if Encrid had been here and seen the path Ragna took, he would have understood.
Though, to Hescal, it still made no sense.
Everyone else was engaged in dangerous fights, so why was he here, not helping anyone?
From a tactical standpoint, it was a mess. From a human perspective, it was just the worst.
How could he ignore the danger his father and mother were in and come here?
“If I were Tempe, I wouldn’t have let you off so easily.”
“You’re smaller-minded than my father.”
Ragna replied casually.
When you looked at Encrid, you were forced to talk about things like the size of one’s vessel.
With those words, Ragna thought back on the path he had walked so far.
‘I’ve learned a lot.’
Really, he had.
When you held a sword, the path forward, the direction you had to go, naturally appeared.
But unless you actually walked that path, you couldn’t know its shape.
The path he had taken so far had inclines. It had descents. Some parts were rough, others well-paved.
And from directly placing his feet on those paths and moving forward, he had learned differently.
There is no such thing as a set path. When the process changes, everything else changes with it.
Who determines your limits?
If you’re not some idiot who lets others define you, then your limits are your own to set.
If you say, “This is as far as I go”, then that’s the end.
Encrid had faced his limits and denied them. Ragna had learned from that and followed suit.
The path that lies beyond your limits—
‘Is fun.’
That thrill he had felt the first time he held a sword rose up again, filling his entire body.
Could anything compare to the joy of pressing forward, again and again, to greet a new world?
Hescal’s eyes fell on Ragna’s greatsword. The blade was filthy with mud.
“You don’t have Sunrise.”
Sunrise was a longsword. Ragna didn’t seem to have any place on him where he could be hiding such a weapon.
“I’ll bring it later.”
“You’re not avoiding it because you don’t think you can beat the head of the house?”
The condition to obtain Sunrise was to be acknowledged by the Head.
And Tempest Zaun wasn’t the type to hand over the family heirloom to someone he deemed inferior.
Being his son didn’t mean he would just give it to him.
“My weapon is an engraved weapon.”
Hescal said.
Yours is not.
That was the unspoken meaning behind the words.
Ragna ignored him and grasped his greatsword grip with both hands. The tip of the sword still touched the ground.
It wasn’t pointed at the sky, but dragged behind his waist.
“Are you laying down your sword because you're afraid of lightning?”
With just a few words, Hescal tried to figure out Ragna.
No—he was trying to.
‘He avoids taking risks.’
Habits formed in childhood don’t change easily, and Ragna had the habit of never straying from the path laid before him. Hescal remembered that well.
If it’s someone he can beat with time, he doesn’t bother trying to win today.
Ragna had no sense of desperation. Thanks to his talent, he always learned and mastered things easily, so the habit of avoiding risk had become ingrained in his body.
A few battle experiences on the continent—could that have erased such a habit? Likely not.
For someone to break that habit, they would have to instill a sense of crisis in a genius.
But how many people out there possessed a talent comparable to Ragna’s? Truly rare. Even more so outside of Zaun.
And if no one in Zaun came to mind right away, has he ever met an opponent worth risking everything to fight?
Probably not. One of Zaun’s strengths was raising someone alongside an equal to hone their skills.
Ragna had never experienced that. His talent, which invited envy, had shaped him this way.
“Have you learned how to give your all?”
Hescal asked. Ragna didn’t respond. His crimson eyes pierced the darkness, gleaming—a sign that his entire body was filled with willpower.
‘Let me rate his skill higher than I expected.’
Hescal had a habit of overestimating his opponent’s strength compared to his own judgment.
That’s why he never fought with full strength. He always waited for an opening. If he went all out, he judged the odds as unfavorable and instead sought precise timing.
He gave up on overpowering his opponent with sheer force or explosive Will.
He would trap with a precise sword and pierce with an illusionary one. That was his strategy.
It may sound simple, but for the one on the receiving end, it was far from it.
Focus Point was a technique passed down by the House of Zaun. Which meant they both knew how to use it.
While they exchanged words, both began calculating rapidly at high speed.
‘I’ll kill you and throw your head at the Head of the House.’
That was Hescal’s thought.
Ragna, on the other hand, thought nothing at all. He simply felt the weight of the greatsword in his hands—and soon, even that faded away.
The first to move was Hescal.
With a soft tap, he kicked off the ground and thrust forward—but at a speed unbelievably slow for a Knight.
He twisted his body sideways and stabbed while swinging his left arm behind him. His body became a line and the sword a dot, aiming for Ragna’s brow.
Ragna moved to the side while gripping his greatsword.
Clink—skreee.
The tip of his sword scraped against the corner of a stone embedded deep in the rain-soaked earth, sending small shards flying.
Thus dodging the thrust, the two fighters repositioned themselves. Hescal still kept his left hand tucked behind his back.
Whatever he was hiding in that hand, it clearly wasn’t anything trivial.
Hescal’s engraved weapon moved again. Everyone around him, even his adopted son Riley, knew the name of his sword.
The sword was called Routine.
So named because, even though it moved with fixed power and a predetermined path, it was still incredibly difficult to block.
“Even now, while we’re doing this, your father is dying, Ragna.”
Hescal spoke with the same gentle tone as always—kind, familiar, as if he were genuinely concerned and urging Ragna to go.
But in truth, his words were meant to gain psychological advantage.
“Do you really believe that?”
Ragna asked back.
“The Head of the House has been wasting away from illness for years. Didn’t you see his withered body?”
He had. But that was a half-truth. Ragna remembered the father he had seen as a child.
“Alex is fighting a Death Knight right now.”
Hescal didn’t tell him to go protect him, he only chose words that would provoke. But Ragna wasn’t fazed in the least.
In the past—before meeting Encrid, that barbarian bastard, the sly alley cat, and the fanatic—he might have been shaken. But not now.
Encrid had a sharper tongue. The barbarian knew how to speak with more cowardice.
“Hescal.”
“Speak.”
“You’ve lost a lot of hair. The rain really brings it out.”
Ragna casually provoked him.
Hescal wasn’t the type to be rattled easily, but even he was a little surprised.
“Your wit’s improved since I last saw you.”
“My swordsmanship is improved even more.”
“That remains to be seen. But really, are you thinking of facing me without even an engraved weapon? I’ll give you a chance. Run. Abandon Zaun again like you did before. No one will blame you.”
Experienced, cunning—if we were judging based on psychological warfare alone, he was about on Encrid’s level. But the bald insult didn’t seem to work.
“I never abandoned it.”
“Is that so? Then did we abandon you?”
There was no point trying to win with words. Ragna really didn’t want to do this, but he borrowed Rem’s tone for a moment.
“Shut up and come at me, you bald bastard. What the hell are you flapping your gums for? Your breath stinks.”
As soon as he said it, Ragna felt a slight discomfort, but it seemed to have some effect.
Hescal’s brow creased briefly before relaxing again.
“Such astoundingly cheap talk. Even in the Hunter’s Village, I doubt they speak like that.”
“That’s because you’ve been stuck in a well. Get out on the continent. In the west, there are guys whose mouths smell like death.”
Especially Rem. That bastard even more so.
Hescal inhaled sharply, opened his lips as if to speak—but instead, suddenly lunged forward with a thrust.
It was twice as fast as before. Ragna dodged again.
Shhk—!
The blade grazed his shoulder, slicing part of his leather pauldron.
They exchanged blows, striking in the gaps between strikes, and Ragna swung his greatsword—an upward slash.
Boom!
The sound of air exploding forced Hescal to retreat.
Once, Hescal had been considered one of the top three geniuses in Zaun.
He narrowly avoided the strike that blew even raindrops away and returned a thrust in the exact same stance.
Ragna moved aside again—but this time, Hescal’s sword suddenly extended.
A completely unexpected attack.
In truth, Hescal had never told anyone the true name of his sword.
Its real name wasn’t Routine, but Camouflage Type-1.
Deception hidden within precision, a method that matched his weapon perfectly.
Camouflage—the blade revealed its true form and sank its fangs into Ragna’s shoulder.
Thud!
A sickening squelch echoed out—the sound of the blade piercing through the leather and boring a hole into Ragna’s shoulder.
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