After encountering the Thirtieth Shadow in the Owl Plains, Leonard had executed a somewhat sloppy plan. He took the corpse of the shadow knight, stored it, and moved it to the vicinity of the Forest of Bones, where the apprentice knights’ night training was taking place. To prevent the monsters from erasing any traces, he had scattered some of the Owlbear’s blood around the area.3

Killing the shadow knight by forcefully opening the Baekhoe point wasn’t as bad a move as he thought. Since there were no wounds that could be considered a cause of death, the augmented sword energy that Leonard had used seemed as if it were the final blow.1

With the keen senses of a strong knight like Bradley, he should be able to recognize it immediately.0

In this world, the ability known as Aura Blade, or augmented sword energy, could be used at the External Force Tier, but it was rarely used. Forming an Aura Blade could take anywhere from several seconds to minutes, making it impractical, and its completion was so poor that it only exceeded the power of a regular sword strike by a small margin.0

However, Leonard’s augmented sword energy was of such high quality that it couldn’t be mistaken for anything less than a Transcendence Tier knight’s attack.0

A Swordmaster is here.0

Knowing or not knowing this fact made all the difference. Leonard had created a situation where Bradley...0