A Knight Who Eternally Regresses
Chapter 787
Enkrid quietly agreed with Beelrog's words as he turned inward and summoned his Will.
Whether he agreed or not, it was only natural that he wouldn't stop what needed to be done.
He gripped the Will he had drawn out, making sure it wouldn't move on its own.
'Control.'
The first step is control—a halt.
After that comes the explosion.
He incorporated the Explosion of Lines with the Explosion of Pin Points shown by the House Head of Yohan.
He digested both techniques in his own way and unleashed them.
He resolved that it would be fine to die after a single strike of his blade.
A knight's Will only grows stronger through vows and restrictions.
Enkrid dropped all pretense of mental preparation and charged in.
The necessary preparations were already complete by the time he had come this far.
The instant his halted body moved, he plunged into a soundless world.
Time pressed in around him, as if the air itself had turned to mud and weighed down his body.
Beelrog, too, entered this same timeline with ease.
He had expected as much.
But Beelrog had not managed to fold his wings in time.
That would make the difference.
Enkrid was just a little bit faster.
The position of his feet, the hand gripping his sword—every part of him united as he swung his blade.
The move itself was nothing more than a simple diagonal slash, but it came before Beelrog's sword—Surtr—could reach him, and before the Fire Serpent—Salamandra—could strike.
His timing was perfect.
A swing blending Flash and Vortex grazed one of Beelrog's crystals.
Bwoom! Crack! Thunk! Clang!
The sound burst out belatedly as Enkrid's body was flung backward.
In that high-speed exchange, Beelrog once again released a mental wave.
—Endure.
Hurled back, Enkrid rolled just once across the ground and came to a stop, steadying himself.
In the process, his Dawnforged, stuck in the earth, gouged a deep scar into the ground with a hard scraping sound.
"Ugh!"
He spat blood the moment he stopped.
He'd taken a blow to the stomach from Beelrog's kick in the last exchange, leaving his insides damaged.
The instant his diagonal slash landed, Beelrog hadn't been idle, either.
Instead of giving power to his swing and fighting the resistance of wings and wind, Beelrog had used his foot.
His right foot struck Enkrid's abdomen as swiftly as the sword he wielded.
'His body itself is a weapon.'
Enkrid had always known that, but now it felt different.
The power behind Beelrog's kick, the sheer speed of it.
Bright red blood smeared his chin and dripped onto the ground.
With one knee planted in the dirt, Enkrid used his Dawnforged—stabbed into the earth—for support as he looked ahead.
He then reacted to Beelrog's last words.
"What?"
As he spoke, a few more drops of blood splattered onto the black soil.
Endure, he'd said.
It was a skill every knight learned—part of the path to eventually mastering Ironclad.
Basically, it was a technique for withstanding pain.
—Impressive.
Beelrog didn't care what Enkrid said; he just spoke his mind.
Enkrid looked at Beelrog's chest.
His sword had definitely struck one of those crystals.
Yet there wasn't a single scratch on them.
Dawnforged hadn't cut the crystal itself—it had sliced through the membrane around it.
You cunning bastard.
Today, in that previous encounter, Beelrog had revealed his weakness: the three crystals embedded in his chest.
However, Beelrog hadn't mentioned that he had formed a thick barrier over the crystals.
"No, I'd already figured as much."
Still, he hadn't expected it to be this tough.
Endure, the Will that starts as the power to withstand pain, served as Beelrog's additional armor.
That armor covered the crystals themselves.
"So, even that won't be easy to break through."
Enkrid stared into Beelrog's dark, yellow pupils.
It was as though his insides were boiling from the heat.
At the last moment, the fairy's cloak had stretched out on its own and wrapped around his abdomen—otherwise, he doubted he could have held on this long.
"To come across another human like this again in such a short time—impressive."
Beelrog said this.
Enkrid wondered what he meant by "again," but there was no time for further conversation.
A Fire Serpent shot out, and a sword of Black Flame burned and slashed through Enkrid.
Beelrog had lost interest in a broken toy.
He was burning alive in black fire.
Even though this wasn't the first time, it hurt just as much as the first.
But he had gained something from it: the membrane surrounding the crystals was even tougher than he'd anticipated.
"If I struck it with more force, I could have cut through."
He knew this instinctively.
However, in order to cut even a single one of those crystals, he would have to die.
-Your powers of observation are impressive. Very impressive.
Beelrog kept expressing his admiration, and the scene Enkrid saw before him changed.
SPLASH—
He saw the black river, the ferryboat, and the Ferryman—the master of the Violet Lamp.
"How pathetic you look."
The Ferryman taunted him.
He was also pushing him toward despair and surrender.
The moment Enkrid thought he stood up on the ferryboat, the Ferryman shoved him back.
He returned to reality—today, repeating once again.
And as Enkrid woke—
"Wait, hold on."
Before the other could start calling him a guest or whatever, Enkrid held up his palm—naturally with an air of intimidation—and just slowly nodded.
Fine, this is it.
If this method doesn't work?
I'll just move on to the next.
"...Am I a dog to you"
His opponent shook off the intimidation and snapped angrily.
The Single-edged Swordsman always got angry if he felt ignored, and this guy would always open his mouth and try to mess with people's minds before actually using his hands.
If that didn't work, he'd be the one to get flustered.
It was such a predictable trick.
By asking if he was being treated like a dog, he was trying to provoke carelessness.
Even if his eyes didn't actually dart around, he was desperately trying to come up with something to say that would throw his opponent off their guard.
"Was I wrong?"
Enkrid replied nonchalantly, while already thinking up another approach.
'Beelrog enjoys a good fight. Could I possibly make him let his guard down?'
No, that's impossible.
With Deception at the forefront, Enkrid was defeated yet again.
Enduring as the Endless Willow?
He'd already lost that battle ages ago.
Sure, he'd learned a few things along the way, but the Ferryman would just snicker at that.
"Why? Do you really think dying together would make things any better?"
If the fight dragged on, the Madmen Knights would show up from behind.
Enkrid had never faced them directly;
he'd only caught distant sounds of their voices and faint presences.
"We—coming—don't—fight—alone!"
A fairy, raising her voice unusually loudly.
"Once again, you're having all the fun without me!"
"If you're lost, just shout out. I'll come find you."
Rem and Ragna.
"My Lord, is there a prisoner inside this place that you seek?"
"Hold on, I'll be right there."
Audin and Jaxen.
That was right before it all ended.
In other words, it happened while he was holding out with everything he had, right when he failed to dodge Beelrog's final slash.
And as Enkrid was dying, he saw Beelrog's eyeball glisten.
Flames swirling inside his pupil flickered violently.
It was a look mixed half with bloodlust and half with excitement.
That was the lesson he learned then.
When Beelrog goes all out, just staying alive is almost impossible.
That was true even when Enkrid devoted himself solely to defense.
Once again, he spends the day inside the pitch-black place.
'If I could fight without hesitation.'
Enkrid's next step would be to fight by sacrificing his own body.
Unflinchingly unleashing violence, even as it shatters him.
Beelrog responded in kind.
-Fine.
With that, he even let out a cheer.
Surtr cut his left arm, and Enkrid's Dawnforged finally pierced one of the Crystals.
It was a desperate, all-or-nothing strike.
And in that moment, Enkrid sensed that something about his Will had changed.
'It's different again.'
Every time he crossed a certain line, he picked up on subtle changes in Beelrog's temperament.
It was similar to what Ragna showed when he was swinging his sword with all his might.
In fact, he'd caught glimpses of it in Rem and some of the others as well, though when he asked them about it, they just tilted their heads in confusion.
'Since you can't observe another's Will directly, you don't really know how yours differs from theirs.'
Dying and resurrecting over and over, Enkrid had come to experience and contemplate the differences between himself and others.
That didn't mean the knights of the Order just dismissed what he'd said.
They'd each added their own understanding, based on their experiences.
"So, you're saying the Captain's Will is kind of plain, but ours isn't, right?"
Rem's words flashed through his mind.
"I personally like hiding sharpness within simplicity. It's just my style."
Jaxen had said that, too.
"Because I'm going to cut, I just add that thought to it."
That was something Ragna had said.
He called it an explanation, but honestly, it was something only he could understand.
He'd say it, nod to himself alone, and wear this look like he'd just realized something all on his own—which just made it all the more baffling.
Audin, smiling, once remarked that Divine Power actually heads in a slightly different direction, didn't he?
"Want me to infuse you with Fairy Essence? Come find me tonight and I'll do it for you."
Even in the thick of it, the fairy's joke popped into his head and made him chuckle.
Time to return to reality.
"Did you just laugh?"
The guy drawing his sword from his sleeve furrowed his brow.
He was pretending to be angry, acting like he was offended by being ignored.
That was his specialty.
This was the seventy-sixth today.
Enkrid had only broken a single Crystal once so far.
Turning his opponent's carelessness against him, Enkrid thrust his sword forward.
The line of light shot out like a flash; seen head-on, it would look like a single point of light.
This was the Thrust, propelled with a burst from the Explosion of Points.
Back on his very first day here, he'd learned the basic form of this Thrust—but now, the skill was on a whole different level.
He was right on the verge of finishing his opponent.
The man, crossing both swords, let himself collapse backward as though falling.
In Enkrid's "calculation," his opponent should have twisted his body to the side to dodge and look for a counterattack.
But instead, he leaned back and extended his leg—a move that was almost acrobatic.
You could see the traces of years of training in that motion.
Balancing on just his left foot, he kicked out with his right.
A thin blade shot out from the tip of his boot, aiming to slash Enkrid's throat.
Enkrid pulled his thrusting sword back.
Clang!
The blade bounced off Dawn Forged with a sharp metallic ring, spinning up into the air over their heads.
Enkrid could have ended the fight before that blade even hit the ground.
Actually, even a moment earlier, he hadn't needed to block at all.
"My neck would've just been grazed, and that would be it."
And yet, he hadn't followed through.
Why was that?
Was it just caprice?
Or did he want more time to think?
This time, he hadn't tried to crush his opponent with sheer force.
"No, that's not it."
The attack his opponent had just shown was surprising, and for a split second, it overlapped with Beelro's kick in his mind.
Still standing on his left foot, the opponent struck the ground with his outstretched leg to launch himself back upright, drew two shortswords, and crossed them in front of his face.
He watched his opponent through the two blades crossed in a diagonal line.
He was studying this new "guest."
That last attack was one he'd been saving, and yet it had been blocked—that fact weighed on his hands and feet, keeping them still.
'What is this?'
As he stared, the guy with blue eyes only gazed vaguely into the air.
'Is he trying to lure me into dropping my guard?'
That was a trick he often used himself.
Those who favor the Deceptive Sword are always suspicious.
He was no exception.
'Where did a guy like this come from?'
He stared, genuinely surprised—but then the unfocused blue eyes came back into focus.
'Wait, was he actually lost in thought?'
What kind of crazy son of a bitch is this?
"We haven't even exchanged names yet. Not that it really matters—I don't need to know yours. Did you learn the basics of the Valen-style Mercenary Swordplay? Go on, let's see what you've got."
Enkrid's opponent, Rino, disguised his nervousness by covering his mouth and neck with his two swords, secretly swallowing hard so his opponent wouldn't notice It seemed like this newcomer was seriously crazy.
"Rino."
"I told you, names don't matter."
Enkrid said this as he swung his sword.
Rino instinctively pressed down harder with his crossed swords to block.
He attacked using the friction of the two blades meeting, and at the same time, sparks flew from the blades—each mixed with a special metal.
It wasn't a sustained fire, but a burst of sparks, almost like a sudden flash.
It was a technique meant to briefly block the opponent's vision.
Of course, for a Knight, whose senses are highly developed, losing sight for a moment isn't necessarily fatal.
But in the heat of close swordplay, when your vision suddenly disappears, even a brief hesitation is natural.
The two swords producing fire created just such an opening.
And in fact, Enkrid was actually surprised.
'Those swords.'
I didn't know they could do that.
He'd never seen it before, since the strikes had always come so quickly.
'It was like Beelrog's kick.'
That's what came to mind.
When Rino stretched out his leg while falling earlier, it felt similar.
The power, the result, and the movement itself were all different, but the process was alike.
'Beelrog uses deception too'
If it's to win, you must do whatever it takes.
Enkrid felt the same way.
And here, he realized something else.
"There's always something to learn from a farmer who's spent his life working the land."
That was something his instructor, who helped build his foundation long ago, used to say.
"He may not be much of a fighter, but you must have picked up something from Aetri, the blacksmith, right?"
Then Luagarne's words overlapped in his mind.
"You're a good teacher, Lua."
She's an excellent frog.
She does everything for her own desire.
Among the "everything", one thing is teaching Enkrid.
Her lessons are engraved deep in his bones.
"I was complacent."
It was time to reflect.
His current opponent, Donafa, and the Single-edged Sword user as well.
They were all knights trapped in Beelrog's Labyrinth.
There was much he could have learned from them too.
But he'd ignored all of it.
"I got too full of myself."
Was I just too excited to finally meet an opponent who could overwhelm me, after all this time?
Is that why, without even realizing it, I unconsciously thought of repeating today's events, just like before?
Even though I've always told myself not to waste a single day?
More reflection, and still more reflection.
"All right."
With all his heart, he watched and absorbed his opponent's techniques, stealing everything he could learn.
Enkrid genuinely regarded his opponent as a teacher.
"This is good—do you have anything else?"
Enkrid asked, and upon hearing this, Teacher Rino could only respond in utter disbelief.
"Is this crazy bastard for real?"

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