The Knight of Incomparable Comprehension

Chapter 3: The Blaksmith

Three months had passed since Leo's epiphany.

Since understanding the essence of the stellar sword art, his daily practice had put physical training aside for some warm-up and stretching to focus entirely on his swordplay.

Days and weeks of constant study paid off in the form of steady improvements over his mastery of his sword art.

In fact, each day proved to be very productive in this regard.

Unfortunately, soon his pocket money ran out, and he had to get more.

With no food and no money to buy it, he had to stop his training until he could get enough money for a few more months.

How would he do it, you might ask.

Well, for as long as he could remember, Leo had the benefactor in his life, who was almost like his father.

The blacksmith.

That grumpy old man, whose main job was to create and repair harvesting tools, needed help with some frequency.

This frequency was strangely aligned with when Leo's money was running out.

Leo, after all, understood that the blacksmith was helping him in his own way.

In exchange for expendable help, they were paying him a small but decent "salary" and even giving him food during that time.

For him, who had no foothold in an unfamiliar environment, it was as if they were saving his life.

Leo was extremely grateful for this, but could do nothing to show it.

If he was alive, it was because of him.

*

I felt the trembling of my arms after each hammering against the red-hot iron. I felt its heat and sparks on my hardened skin.

I was a blacksmith, and this was my daily work. Heat, watch the iron, hammer, cool, and repeat.

I had been doing this for over forty years now, and I had no regrets.

The sound of the hammer hitting the metal was like music to my ears.

When it reached the shape I wanted after repeating the procedure several times, I put the finishing touches on it and set it aside.

The third tool of the day was over, as was my work before lunch.

As I left the shop hungry, the boy came walking toward me,

"Dude, I already ran the errands."

He had his messy black hair and wide eyes .

.. he looked silly and distracted.

"The mayor wants 200 nails, the barber wants you to make him another razor, plus-"

"Then some other time you tell me all about it. We'll have lunch first."

I had to stop him before he started ranting with everything he found out in the morning.

This naïve-looking brat was Leo, an eight-year-old orphan.

When he came to the village he was just a kid, with no way or hope of survival.

But maybe because he reminded me of someone?

I decided to help him. I took care of him in my own way, and that's what I've been doing until now.

... just like any other guy.

There were other people willing to raise him and support him, but it was decided that I would do it. Not because they wanted to help him, but because I was the least inconvenienced.

It was sad for this boy, but neither he nor I was to blame.

In exchange for a little help, I gave him my money to buy his own food.

I taught him to be an honest person, getting his things by the sweat of his brow.

It was the least I could do.

In the end, he ended up growing up relatively well. He had no trouble talking to others or thinking like a normal person. He even had a rare intelligence for his age.

A few months ago, he seems to have developed a taste for swords in general.

He even asked me to help the carpenter create a wooden one with the right weight balance.

I wasn't an expert on them, but I was a blacksmith after all, and I knew the basics.

The wooden sword the carpenter and I created ended up strapped around his waist for the rest of the time.

While he ate, while he slept, or just when he sat and watched me forge, he always had it by his side.

That could somehow be justified on the grounds that he had unrealistic dreams like any other kid his age.

But something was strange.

With each passing day, this brat looked more and more like someone who knew how to use a sword, a real one.

The way he held it or walked with it were just clues. What convinced me were his eyes.

I had seen many swordsmen in the past. Being a blacksmith, I created swords for them, of course.

But not everyone who uses a sword is necessarily a swordsman. They could be knights, soldiers, commanders and many other things.

You might wonder what differentiated a swordsman from someone who only uses a sword.

The answer is their eyes. That was the way I, a normal person, could tell them apart.

They were all the same. Some were normal guys and some were crazy bastards, but their eyes always held the cutting edge of a sword.

Rather, their eyes always held the edge of their sword.

This brat had a look befitting his age, but the edge of a sword in the depths of his eyes did not escape my experienced sight.

"Dude, aren't you going to eat?"

I was immersed in my thoughts when he spoke to me.

There stood the brat, chomping away at the meat like a rat.

The meat for which he had begged the butcher....

"You brat, you...!"

"Oh, sorry, sorry! I won't do it anymore, I swear!"

"Take that meat out of your filthy mouth!"

*

The art of the stellar sword turned out to have a deep and complicated essence.

This was made up of more than 50 movements, each of which was deeply interwoven like cloth.

The old swordsman's ability to change the order of his movements with complete naturalness was distant and incomprehensible to me.

When I tried to imitate him, I ended up swinging my sword from side to side without any kind of is

There was no target behind my sword, like a child swinging it dr from side to side.

Well, technically I am a child but I would like to think that my mastery of swordplay is not that low after so much time invested.

After understanding the art of star sword watching the old swordsman train, I understood what my own imitation lacked.

Since then I started training with my sword with only one goal in mind.

To give all my movements an essence.

So far, out of more than 50 "forms" (kata), I had only discovered the foundation of about seven.

It turned out to be a task not as difficult as I had imagined.

Learning something new with each attempt was the best feeling I had ever felt.

Although I was not someone avid for knowledge, understanding things so easily could become somewhat addictive for me.

*

Beyond the sky, beyond the world's boundaries.

In the infinitely vast blanket of stars.

A small destined star was born, shining brighter than any other and representing the emergence of a new destiny.

An unexpected and chaotic destiny, which would bring disorder and usher in a new era.

Whether it would usher in a golden age or a dark one, no one could know.