Discordant Note: Crescendo | TBATE

Chapter 217: To the Apex

Thank you to my beta reader and editor, GlassThreads!

Arthur Leywin

A sword could be many, many things. In my previous life, the ways and arts of swordsmanship had been cataloged for thousands of years, exemplifying the variation in the weapon. Katanas were single-edged cutting weapons, designed to cleave in a single, sure strike. Rapiers and sabers operated on similar principles, but they were quick and biting–like a swipe of a talon or the thrust of a finger. A gladius was short, brutish, and easy to use in close quarters when you needed to gut a foe.

The old hand-and-a-half sword–my greatest proficiency–could cut or thrust. It offered amazing flexibility in its ability to be used with either one or two hands, freeing my body for infinitely complex maneuvers that made me a martial god in my past life.

But all swords had something in common. Despite the innumerable cultures that pit themselves against their neighbors and drew the blood of their fellow man, when they saw a sword, they knew it to be a sword, for one reason alone.

Swords needed to be sharp. Whether that be along the edge or the point, a weapon was purposeless if it could not draw blood. The greatest of swordmasters would fail to fell a single enemy if their weapon was faulty. No matter how powerful one was, if their steel had never felt the deceptively smooth kiss of a whetstone, they would die.

And as I threw myself around the practice arena in a barely conscious haze, I wondered how I was a sword. Each thrust and swipe of Dawn's Ballad trailed a brilliant purple arc that seemed to distort the light itself as I ran through martial forms at a previously impossible pace.

My body had become a weapon. I was a weapon, the true manifestation of the acclorite in my palm. Yet despite the new heights of strength I felt coursing through my body and how I could move faster than I ever thought possible before, I knew I was dull.

I cut upward, mirroring a feint toward an invisible foe at speeds only possible with my new, enhanced body. Yet as I sheared through the nonexistent enemy in front of me with precision and power that made wind trail in my wake, their eyes seemed to shift. Becoming glowing, severe suns. I couldn't help but picture every attack I leveled healing over in a wash of purple and orange.

Not enough, I thought angrily, my mind a furious blur. Not fast enough. Not sharp enough.

Toren Daen knew I was a reincarnate. He knew my greatest secret; and from how he'd apparently spoken to Sylvie and... and Tess... And the way his magic functioned... It was too intimate. Too close and understanding. I must have known him in my previous life. So why couldn't I remember him? Why couldn't I put a finger to the name?! How could he know so much?!

I screamed in anger, the phantom vision of Toren Daen staring at me with determination as the mana around me warped and trembled. The mana around me quaked–fire, water, earth and air all echoed my lament. And something else shifted, too–on the deepest edges of my perception, I could almost see purple.

And Cecilia. The idea that Tess–my childhood friend–was being prepared to be some sort of vessel for the Legacy made my stomach twist and my teeth clench. If Agrona's goal was to bring the girl who had committed suicide on my sword–who had thrown her life away to escape being someone's tool–into this world as a pawn, bringing her back to the very thing she'd killed herself to escape...

And as my thoughts struck that one stumbling block, it all became incoherent again; a slurry of questions without answers and questions with answers I wished I didn't have. And I could do nothing.