Chapter 165 - Before the Surging Wave of Monsters

Encrid did not count his enemies. He simply swung his sword, again and again.

Monsters attacked without end, and human screams rang out one after another. No, at some point the screams had died away, leaving only a rank stench and the cries of monsters and demonic beasts.

The battle had begun at dawn, but it was already noon. The sun passed overhead.

Encrid could not block every attack. A hyena demonic beast's severed head hung from his left thigh, and his left arm dangled limp. His right hand was intact, but not his right foot. A hammer had crushed every toe. His body swayed from side to side as a result. His vision had blurred a little, too.

Still, the monsters kept coming.

GRRRR!

No more pleas for help came from around him. No more screams reached him from elsewhere.

Dragging his feet, Encrid swung his sword. Every muscle in his body screamed from overusing the Heart of the Superhuman. From morning until past noon, for nearly half a day, he had cut down Knolls and hyena demonic beasts alone. Their number exceeded a staggering hundred.

Had anyone known, had anyone seen it, they would have been appalled. But only one person remained here: himself.

"Ah, Krais."

He stepped back and caught his foot on something. A corpse. Its belly had been ripped open, spilling its entrails, and it could not even groan beneath his foot. He knew the face. It was Krais, demonic-beast tooth marks embedded in his cheek.

His face was ruined. He had always insisted it was his greatest asset.

Pin had gone on patrol again today. It was fortunate she had left to survey the surrounding terrain. She would flee when she saw this. At least Pin would not die.

Was everyone else dead? Perhaps.

Today would repeat. This was a wall. His premonition bordered on certainty. He felt he knew without the ferryman telling him. No, he could almost hear the ferryman's mocking voice already.

"You think practicing your sword alone will get you over the wall? Go on, try. Monsters and demonic beasts will surround you until you suffocate. That is how I will make you feel your limits."

Encrid let out a breath and tightened his grip on his sword.

'Limits, my ass.'

After attacking for so long, the Knolls finally stopped.

GROOOH!

GROOOOH!

GROOOOOOH!

Harsh cries erupted. Then the monsters parted to either side. A single Knoll emerged between them.

It walked out with its neck lowered in the characteristic Knoll posture, back hunched and spine jutting upward. It was not a head taller like the mutants. Nor did it carry an impressive weapon. In some ways, it was rather ordinary.

The only differences were its more bristly fur and longer muzzle. It also held a dagger in each hand. Something coated the blades, making them glisten in the sunlight.

At its appearance, the Knolls' howls grew louder.

GROOOOH!

The air vibrated. The resonance battered his ears until his eardrums ached.

Encrid raised his sword before his eyes and felt his arm tremble. He had overused the Heart of the Superhuman.

'Well, this is something.'

He felt a little wronged. What was all this? He had woken up and tried to get some training in, only for monsters to come surging at him like a wave. And now here he was.

The Knoll before him stared with gleaming yellow eyes. Encrid's lake-blue eyes looked back. Blue eyes and yellow eyes acknowledged one another.

Monsters that formed colonies had leaders. The atmosphere alone told him: this was the leader.

The leader raised both daggers and twitched its nose. Then its muzzle split wide.

Was that a smile of certain victory? Was the Knoll smiling? Was that really it?

After turning it over a few times, Encrid decided to ignore it entirely. It was not a pleasant sight, but what did it matter whether a Knoll smiled? He merely reflected on what had happened during the desperate melee.

'I spent all that time studying the Righteous Sword Technique.'

Then again, he had only been trying to drill the fundamentals into his body. He could hardly expect meaningful results right away. The Righteous Sword Technique was particularly difficult to use against monsters. This was an entire wave of them, after all.

'They're hardly opponents I can play swordsmanship games with.'

Luagarne had also said the Righteous Sword Technique was the least suited to fighting monsters. Well, a human would have to be knight-level—or at least proto knight-level—to cut through a wave alone.

Then had he gained nothing from this desperate struggle? No. He had.

Encrid smiled too. As always, he had found a new clue, and the discovery thrilled him. Something he had felt while facing countless spears and blades, demonic beasts and monsters.

'If I can advance even knowing I might die.'

He could never make the dodging sense his own through ordinary training alone. But now he saw a chance to seize it.

The countless wounds on his body: bites, slices, slashes, crushing blows. He had felt it in every one of those moments. Each time he was hit, he thought. Why had he been struck there? Why had he been unable to dodge? He pondered as he fought, reflected as he fought.

Whether it recognized Encrid's smile or merely disliked the atmosphere, the Knoll leader closed its grinning mouth and attacked. It kicked off the ground and rushed him with terrifying speed.

It lacked weight, but its speed was enough to remind him of that proto knight. Without his moving-object tracking training, he would have lost sight of it. No, even now he could barely keep up.

Encrid barely twisted aside, half sinking to the ground as he dodged. Knolls were monsters. They wielded weapons, but they did not practice swordsmanship. Its slashes were simple and direct. Otherwise, dodging would have been out of the question.

Encrid gripped his sword with both hands and cut upward. His battered body could not deliver his best strike, but he had not expected the Knoll to evade it so easily.

The Knoll leader darted back as swiftly as it had charged, all but leaving an afterimage. Encrid's sword sliced uselessly through empty air.

Black spots amid yellow fur vanished like a blurred picture, then reappeared at once, swelling before his eyes—right under his nose! Having evaded the sword, it had charged again.

This time he had no way to dodge. A dagger sank deep into his thigh. Burning pain spread from his thigh through his entire body, as though a red-hot skewer had pierced him.

The moment the dagger pierced his thigh, Encrid tried to grab the creature, but it evaded him again. His hand swept futilely through the air. After retreating, it stared steadily at him. It merely circled him at a slow walk.

Stalling? At a time like this? Why? What was this monster doing? Just as he thought that—

"You little bastard."

Encrid's smile gave way to admiration. The dagger that had stabbed his thigh. That glistening substance. A dull, stinging pain came with a surge of nausea. Not the sort he could hold back.

"Bleurgh!"

Of course he vomited up blood and his food. Poison. It had coated the daggers with poison.

'Sneaky bastard.'

It knew its own strengths well. Its hands, feet, and reactions were twice as fast as other Knolls'. It knew it could win by giving its opponent even a scratch. It knew how to fight, and it knew how to win.

"Ugh."

With that, Encrid collapsed.

'Luagarne isn't coming back.'

He had wondered whether she might come if he held out. He had not expected it. Nor had he relied on her. He had simply acknowledged a fact. Now he knew she was not coming, and that was enough. That was all. If he knew he had to hold out alone, then that was what he would do.

What followed? Pain unlike any he had known. As though playing a game, the dagger-wielding creature jabbed him all over his body. Poisoned, Encrid suffered for more than half an hour before he died.

Blackness. Darkness. The ferryman again.

"The Righteous Sword Technique? Will that really suffice? You're a little boat caught in a wave of monsters and demonic beasts."

Ah, how to put it? The ferryman's reaction was all too predictable.

"I see."

Remembering Deutsch's reaction, Encrid tried the same trick on the ferryman.

"... Huh? You little bastard."

The ferryman apparently saw through him at once and flew into a temper.

When Encrid opened his eyes again at dawn, he reached for his equipment first. Amid the clatter, he put on his second sword, assorted throwing weapons, and armor. Their weight pressed heavily against his whole body. It felt reassuring.

All the noise he made arming himself would have woken his companions. He had expected that too. No, he had intended it. He had something to ask.

Luagarne, the Frog, spoke.

"Fully armed first thing in the morning?"

"Do you know anything about evil cults?"

His abrupt question sent a chill through the hut. The Frog was responsible. This was not the ever-unruffled Luagarne.

"Where did you hear about that?"

From Luagarne's own mouth, of course, but—

"Briefly, in my mercenary days."

"Hmm."

"Could we talk outside?"

Luagarne suppressed the pressure that had made the air so heavy. There was no need to challenge him just yet. Fine, she would hear him out outside. She was intensely curious why he had brought up an evil cult.

Encrid went outside and checked his equipment. Nothing was wrong. He moved straight into the Isolation Technique. Moving in full gear naturally added weight and discomfort.

The discomfort made him adjust his posture, and the adjusted posture brought Audin's teachings back to mind.

["Training the body is inherently uncomfortable."]

Hmm. What a truly crazy bastard.

Uncomfortable, yes, but the strain had to fall on his muscles, not his joints. How much time had he invested in this? How many todays had he repeated?

Encrid quickly corrected his posture. Today's Isolation Technique session would have to be short and intense. He did not have much time.

Luagarne was dumbfounded to see him engrossed in training the moment they stepped outside to talk, but what could she do? That was simply the kind of man he was.

"Why bring up an evil cult all of a sudden?"

Encrid glanced at her. He had seen cultists before, even wiped them out. They could be surprisingly rampant in the damp back alleys of cities.

Of course, the temple's Inquisitors prowled the cities with eyes blazing, so those problems were no business for mercenaries. But when such trouble occasionally arose in rural villages, village chiefs or headmen would hire mercenaries.

Encrid had dealt with people who rolled up mind-destroying herbs and smoked them like tobacco. They had been half mad. Luagarne could not have meant people like those when she mentioned an evil cult.

So he had to ask and hear her out. She was the one who had suddenly mentioned a cult and rushed off.

"It suddenly came up in a dream."

Encrid had a way with words. Being good with words meant knowing how to read another person's mind, noticing things, and thinking on one's feet. He knew there was something unusual in the way Luagarne looked at him.

'She won't think I'm normal anyway.'

Wouldn't she more or less accept that explanation? If not? Then so be it. He could give up on hearing about the cult. Half his reason for asking was curiosity; the other half was a feeling that something else was entangled in this.

Nobody needed to tell him this was no ordinary colony, no simple incursion by a band of monsters. The numbers swarming in were not normal.

"A dream?"

Luagarne had stayed because the man before her fascinated her deeply. One reason for that fascination was that Encrid was not right in the head.

'That could happen.'

In short, she accepted it. Even now, the man was exercising. In full gear, no less. How was that normal? Truly worthy of being Captain of the Lunatic Platoon, was he not?

"Real cultists are dangerous. Extremely dangerous. You must be careful even about speaking their name lightly," Luagarne said.

"Yes, I see."

Had she not explained enough? Luagarne considered that, then added a few words.

"Evil cults spring up all across the continent, but the only dangerous ones are those who believe the Demonic Realm is their holy land. The Cult of the Sacred Demonic Realm. Also called the Church of the Second Coming. They serve the Six Demons."

That would suffice. It barely scratched the surface, but he would not need to know more. Luagarne held back the rest, and Encrid thought he had heard all he needed.

The Cult of the Sacred Demonic Realm, the Church of the Second Coming, or those who worshipped the Six Demons.

'So she has some connection to them?'

He could hardly ask Luagarne that much. He could work it out from the clues in time.

Encrid continued training. Watching him, Luagarne let out a bubbling croak and asked, "Aren't you hot, though?"

Sweat ran down Encrid's forehead. He was indeed hot. Strength training in full gear. It would look a little strange.

"The weight of the equipment puts a useful strain on my muscles."

Encrid covered for himself with whatever came to mind. Of course, even then, he made it sound plausible. That was thinking on his feet. Luagarne thought it made a certain amount of sense.

Time passed once more. Encrid looked toward the rear to see whether he could get Esther or Krais to safety beforehand.

The thick palisade was no easy barrier to scale, and there were two gates. One stood at the front; the rear one opened onto the rocky hill used as a quarry.

Send them out the back? But the rear gate was firmly sealed too. Krais had said they never opened it under normal circumstances and did not want anyone seeing the area around the quarry.

'What are they hiding?'

It was none of his concern.

Encrid did not push his body too hard. He only warmed up moderately. Even so, sweat dripped onto the ground. It was hot. Even in the morning, merely wearing this equipment was enough to make him sweat, and he was swinging a sword as well.

As he waited for the monsters and demonic beasts, he seemed to hear the ferryman ask:

"What can one human standing alone do before a surging wave of monsters?"

No, that was not the ferryman's question. It was a question Encrid was asking himself.

What could a mere human do, standing alone? What indeed? Plenty.

Things he had realized. Things he had reflected on anew. He could hone his senses within the wave of monsters.

Train his reactions. Train his judgment using information coming in within a brief instant. Train his ability to contract his muscles in a flash. Train his ability to manage danger, earned by throwing himself about amidst countless blades.

Everything was training.

Had he not learned it before, facing the mage Retsha, the wolf-man colony, and Aspen's ambush troops? That as he repeated today and made his way toward tomorrow, he would use everything he had. That he would go beyond not wasting today and use it to the fullest.

He had said he would, and so he would.

Encrid raised a blade within his heart. With that inner blade as his foundation, he pointed the sword in his hand forward.

Thus he greeted a new today. Encrid turned his back to the dawning sky.

THUD!

GROOOH!

Soon a Knoll's cry erupted amid the uproar.