SEC Chapter 28 Clash of the Twin Swords
Chapter 28 Clash of the Twin Swords
After emerging from the crevice of Avalon, the first thing Arthur did was look down at his hands.
With the sword in the stone in his left hand and the sword in the lake in his right, the two holy swords were of completely different weights.
The sword in the stone is light yet resilient, and the curve of the hilt that fits the palm of the hand seems to have been honed over a thousand years.
The sword in the lake was heavy and steady, and the hilt wrapped in dark blue leather had an unfamiliar texture that required his fingers to readjust.
But neither sword rejected him.
The sword in the stone was not dimmed by the fact that he had an extra sword in his right hand, and the sword in the lake did not refuse to acknowledge him because he held another holy sword in his left hand.
They simply hung quietly in his hand, the light on the swords flowing independently, neither intruding on nor obscuring each other.
However, Arthur sensed something else.
Something that comes from his body.
The power of the two holy swords was flowing along his arm toward his heart, where they met at his chest.
They did not merge after making contact with each other, but instead fought for each other!
They were vying for the pathways within his body.
The "chosen" power of the sword in the stone and the "salvation" power of the sword in the lake are like two torrents forcibly merged into the same river, colliding, squeezing, and pushing each other apart in his magic circuits.
With each heartbeat, the conflict between those two forces intensifies.
His fingertips began to go numb, his tiger's mouth throbbed with pain, and his chest felt like it was stuffed with a wad of cotton that kept expanding.
He possessed magical circuits, and from the moment he pulled the sword from the stone, he knew he had it inside him.
Pendragon's bloodline contained ancient magician genes, which, although diluted by his generation, still left behind more than forty complete loops.
These loops are enough to make an ordinary person a qualified magician.
At this very moment, these magical circuits are being simultaneously infused with the power of the two holy swords.
The blue and white starlight of the sword in the stone flowed in from the left hand along the loop, while the golden radiance of the sword in the lake flowed in from the right hand along the loop.
The two forces meet at the loop node in the chest and then clash.
The loops were too narrow; each of Arthur's more than forty loops could only accommodate one force to pass through stably.
When the power of the two holy swords flows into the same path at the same time, it is like two torrents being forcibly poured into the same water pipe.
The water pipe wasn't cracked, but the water was colliding with each other inside the pipe.
Each impact caused his circuits to spasm.
"Stop looking," Mary's voice came from ahead. "Looking at them won't turn them into three."
She walked ahead with light steps, her long, silvery-white hair gleaming softly in the afternoon sunlight.
She wasn't looking at Arthur, so she didn't see that his hands, which were gripping the sword, were trembling slightly.
"Merry."
"Um?"
"The power of the two swords... is colliding within my body."
Mary paused, turned around, and her amethyst eyes swept over Arthur's hands.
The blue and white starlight of the sword in the stone in his left hand was pulsating uncontrollably, while the golden light of the sword in the lake in his right hand was also flashing at different frequencies.
The light from the two holy swords overlapped on his body, appearing both chaotic and discordant.
She walked up to Arthur, reached out her hand, and pressed her cold fingertips against his chest.
Directly above the heart is the intersection of several major pathways.
"Does it hurt?"
"It doesn't hurt," Arthur said, "but the 'blockage' is too narrow; the power of both swords poured in at the same time, neither willing to give way."
Mary withdrew her hand, her amethyst eyes unusually devoid of any mockery.
"Do you know what the Sword in the Lake is?" she asked, her tone no longer as flippant as usual.
"It is not a man-made weapon; it is a holy sword formed from the power of the planet within the Star Sea."
The planet uses it to protect itself against enemies from beyond the stars who want to destroy it.
It was not "forged", but "nurtured".
Human beliefs are its raw material, and the will of the planets is its furnace.
It is the pinnacle of the holy sword, 'the radiance that exists to save the world.'
She paused, her amethyst-like eyes staring directly at Arthur.
"Therefore, its power is not the kind of power that ordinary weapons have that you can use as soon as you hold them in your hand."
The power of the sword in the lake is essentially the "will of the planet".
When you hold it, you are not wielding a sword; you are resonating with the will of a planet.
The power of a planet's will is beyond the capacity of your forty-odd loops.
The Sword in the Stone is the sword of kings. Its power originates from "acknowledgment." It acknowledges your right to be king, so it lends you its power, the extent of which is limited to your capacity.
But the Sword in the Lake is different; the Star Holy Sword's power of "salvation" has no concept of "capacity".
It possesses planetary-level power; its default channel width is the size of an entire planet.
She reached out her finger and poked Arthur's chest.
"Your forty-odd loops are nothing more than capillaries in the face of planetary-level power."
And now, it's like trying to drink an entire ocean dry with a single straw.
Arthur looked down at the sword in the lake in his hand. The golden light was still warm and vast, and the star gems on the sword blade shimmered with a deep light.
He could feel the scale of that power; it was boundless, like standing on the shore gazing at a sea that never seemed to end.
Endless.
His forty-odd magic loops appeared as thin as hairs in the face of this ocean.
"Is there a way to solve this?"
Mary tilted her head and thought for a moment.
"Two options. First, abandon one of the swords."
"impossible."
"I knew you'd say that." A slight smile played on Mary's lips, a hint of knowing "I knew it all along."
"The second method is not to use the sword in the lake as an ordinary weapon."
It's not about 'driving' it, but about 'resonating with it'.
The wielders of the Lake Sword throughout history have all been 'legitimate successors'.
They are the 'containers'; the planet pours power into them, and they then release that power from the tip of their swords.
But you are no longer "orthodox," you no longer have such a large container, so don't be that container.
The light of the two holy swords in Arthur's hands, one blue and one gold, was reflected in her amethyst eyes, weaving together into a strange starlight in her gaze.
"You become the river channel; the container holds the power, and the river channel guides it."
The container needs to be large enough, otherwise it will overflow.
The river channel doesn't need to be big, it just needs to be deep enough for the water to flow through without taking away the riverbed.
You channel the power of the sword in the lake into your path, but don't let it 'stay' in the path; let it 'pass through' your path.
Like water flowing through a riverbed, never stopping, let the power enter from the left hand and exit from the right.
Let your detour be merely a stretch of riverbed it passes through, not its final destination.
Arthur closed his eyes and let his consciousness sink into his body.
He "saw" those two forces.
The blue and white starlight from the sword in the stone surged into his left hand and spread along the flesh and blood inside the passage.
The golden light of the sword in the lake surged into his right hand, crashing against the flesh and blood on the outside of the path.
The force was so immense that his circulation began to spasm the moment it surged in.
The inner walls of the passage trembled violently under the golden light, each tremor causing his heart to skip a beat.
Arthur tried to let the power flow through.
His heart pounded violently, and with each beat, it continuously generated dragon power.
That was the Dragon's Furnace within Arthur's body boiling.
He is a descendant of the red dragon, continuing the legend of the British red dragon.
The furnace core throbbed slowly in his chest cavity, each contraction pumping a surge of pure dragon power into the circulation.
He did not use the power of the dragon to counter the power of the sword in the lake, nor did he use the power of the dragon to reinforce the inner walls of the passage.
He was using the power of the dragon as a "riverbed," laying the power of the dragon beneath the loop, like laying a smooth stone base for the rapids.
The golden light of the sword in the lake fell onto the riverbed paved with the power of the dragon, no longer impacting the inner wall of the loop, but instead began to flow along the riverbed.
It flows in from the right hand, through the shoulder, down the spine, to the left hand, and then meets the blue and white starlight of the sword in the stone.
This time, they did not clash.
The two forces flowed side by side on the riverbed paved with the power of the dragon, neither invading nor obscuring the other.
They simply pass through his body, coming from the sword and going back to the sword.
His return journey was merely a section of the river they traversed, not their final destination.
Arthur opened his eyes.
His hands no longer trembled; the blue and white starlight of the sword in the stone in his left hand was as steady as the moon, while the golden radiance of the sword in the lake in his right hand was as warm as the sun.
The light from the two swords shone brightly beside him.
Meanwhile, in his chest, the Dragon's Furnace was beating powerfully and steadily, each contraction deepening the riverbed of dragon power.
The feeling of being "stuck" disappeared, replaced by an unprecedented sense of smoothness.
His path didn't get wider; he simply stopped trying to "hold" those forces in and let them flow through.
Meryl stared at him for a long time, her amethyst eyes reflecting the two beams of light, one blue and one gold, beside Arthur.
They no longer interfere with each other, but flow quietly on their own, like stars of different colors in the same galaxy.
"You did it," she said softly.
"Instead of using a loop to contain the sword in the lake, a loop is used to guide it."
Do you know what this means?
Containers have an upper limit; no matter how large the loop expands, there is always a capacity limit.
Each generation of wielders of the Lake Sword has been constantly approaching that limit, which is the ceiling for the 'legitimate successor'.
However, there is no upper limit to the river channel. The river channel does not rely on its 'width' to carry the water flow, but on its 'depth' to guide the water flow.
The more water there is, the deeper the riverbed will be eroded, and the deeper it is, the more water can be channeled.
Your upper limit is no longer determined by the number of loops at birth, but by the depth of the riverbed that is eroded each time you let power flow through your body.
The inheritor is the container, you are the river; the container has a top, the river has no bottom…