Chapter 166 - What Can One Human Standing Alone Do?

What was the dodging sense? It was not simply a technique for evasion. Thinking about it, there were plenty of peculiarities. Encrid had scratched Rem's cheek, but had he ever seen his platoon members hurt like that before? Whether facing him or fighting on the battlefield, they never got hurt easily. They suffered no wounds. Unless they deliberately let an attack land, they generally fought without injury. How was that possible?

'The dodging sense.'

It was more than simply knowing how to dodge. He had a vague grasp of something, and now he intended to take it apart piece by piece and find out. Facing the charging Knolls, Encrid swept his hands through the air. To the untrained eye, especially Krais's, it looked as though he had simply waved his hands. That was not what had happened. THRUM-THRUM-THRUM! His hands were bowstrings, his chest a launching platform. Using the spring of his entire body, he hurled daggers that became streaks of light, burying themselves in the heads of the oncoming hyena demonic beasts and the throats and skulls of Knolls. The drawing and throwing motions were terrifyingly fast, almost impossible to see. Why wouldn't his throwing skills have improved in the meantime? They had improved too, thanks to the Isolation Technique, strength training, and the all-around development of his control over his body. Three died in an instant. Their corpses tumbled across the ground with the momentum of their charge. Other Knolls and hyenas tripped over them, and still more Knolls and hyena demonic beasts clambered over the resulting pile. The pattering, thudding footsteps grated on his ears. "The evil cult!"

Luagarne, who had drawn her whip and been wielding it beside him, gave the same cry and sprinted away. "Damn it! What the hell!"

He heard Krais's startled voice too. "Hiss!"

Esther guarded his side just as before. "Th-th... Aaaah!"

Even the worker who had come out to piss cried out. It was the same today. But Encrid faced it differently. His hands moved without rest. This was his second today. Unlike the previous one, he had a little room to breathe. He already knew an indiscriminate wave of monsters was coming. He hurled every last dagger he had. FWEEE! Whistle daggers and all. He killed the charging monsters and demonic beasts by the dozen, but some things did not change. There were too many. The horde of monsters and demonic beasts became a wave once more. Leaping over the corpses, they fell upon Encrid. "Captain, in front!"

Krais shouted as he drew his own shortsword with a ring of steel. Encrid regulated his breathing. What he had realized in the previous today, what he could feel only because he had fought with his life on the line. He honed the edge of his senses. Within the realm of Sixth Sense and intuition, he caught the Knolls' attacks one after another, knocked them aside, and drove his sword into the openings. With greater vigor than ever. Whatever else he might lack, Encrid was confident in his stamina. With all his experience added to it, he was like a crushing press grinding monsters and demonic beasts to pieces. CRUNCH! Some died with their heads severed. Others were stabbed to death. Amid it all, the clash of steel alternated with the sound of flesh being torn.

CLANG-CLANG! CLANG! THUD!

Watching, Krais's eyes widened of their own accord. 'Is he a monster?'

The thought that came to him when he watched Rem and the other platoon members surfaced here too. Encrid's movements warranted it. He blocked everything, knocked everything aside. Then his sword swung, and Knolls and hyenas died helplessly. Whether Krais was moved, admiring him, astonished, or spouting nonsense, Encrid drew his concentration higher. No, he slipped naturally into a world apart. He shut out his surroundings. A world where only the sword remained. Time slowed, leaving only the enemy and himself, the sword and the world, and his keen intuition. The best one human standing alone could do before a raging wave of monsters. Encrid swung his sword. It did not change the outcome. Noon again. Sunlight. He was less injured than before, but this time both his thighs had been slashed deeply. He had failed to evade two damned gladii. This time he could not even find Krais's corpse. Encrid lasted just as long in this repeated today.

'Should I be glad about that, at least?'

At some point, Esther had climbed onto the hut's roof. Some emotion seemed to fill her large blue eyes, but he had neither the time nor the luxury to discern it. "Grrroook!"

Amid the distinctive hyena cries, the colony's leader stepped forward. The chief of the monsters. It was the same as before. With his thighs injured, there was little he could do, and dodging was even harder. Perhaps it would be more accurate to say things were worse. Yet Encrid was certain his skill had improved in just a single day. Brutal and horrific though it was, it honed his senses all the sharper. "See you again."

He tossed the Knoll words it could not understand, then died writhing from the poison. Darkness. The ferryman did not appear, and a new today began. This time, he did not ask Luagarne needless questions. She would leave no matter what he did. There was no need to indulge his curiosity with pointless questions. Nothing would be more futile than asking why she had left instead of defending this place. Telling her to return would be meaningless too. If she would come back just because he asked, she would never have left in the first place. If she charged off, then that business must matter more to her. Instead...

CLATTER, CLATTER.

"That's a peculiar way of waking someone up, isn't it?"

He would still have to wake them while putting on his gear. "It's a fine day. I thought getting up early would be nice."

"Ugh. It's dawn. Dawn! The moon hasn't even gone away yet."

Krais complained beside him. Encrid ignored him. He worked up a sweat again. This day was short. No, to be precise, the time he could devote to training was short. What should he do, then? He simply had to make combat a place to practice and train. So he did. The agony of poison, the terrible pain and suffering? He only had to endure them. What let him forget the pain, really? The exhilaration of progress, even if he had to crawl forward. More importantly, it felt as though he was walking now, not crawling. Walking at a somewhat brisk pace, moving forward. How could he not rejoice? 'A little further this time.'

Perhaps it was a succession of challenges. Encrid set a goal of his own. Simple, but definite: in each repeated today, put off the moment he got hurt for as long as possible. The first time, he had taken a blow to the shoulder after only a few exchanges. The next day, both his thighs had been slashed. After that, a spearhead struck his abdomen. His sturdy armor kept him from dying, but if his subsequent reaction had been even a little slower, it might have been a fatal wound. 'Still lacking. Still so much lacking.'

It was an objective assessment of himself. Through his experiences so far, Encrid understood his shortcomings. ["Brother Platoon Commander, the first priority in martial arts is to learn through repetition. Make your body remember, not your mind. Now, let us have you rolling."]

Audin's words came to mind. ["Your body need only react the moment you see it. Then you can dodge. You don't need that lazy fellow's strange concentration technique."]

Jaxon's words came to mind. Normally, the training developed coordination so that the body reacted the instant moving-object tracking and the other senses detected something. Encrid was reproducing that training in a different way. 'What if I make my muscles remember every situation?'

That was what he did. Within the repeating today, amid the wave of monsters. The third today, the fourth, the fifth. In every today, he fought desperately, again and again. More than twenty todays passed that way. Training was a given, but if the wave of monsters the ferryman had spoken of was the wall, it was enough to make the thought of surmounting it seem impossible. Unless he became a knight right now. Or had a military force of equivalent strength. Encrid did not let such matters distract him. He merely piled up todays for the sake of tomorrow. No stray thoughts. He simply did what he had to do within the repeating today. At first, he could manage fewer than ten. After twenty days, he could stand sword in hand amid the Knolls, blocking and dodging everything for dozens of breaths. "Wow."

It was a feat that left a worker gaping in astonishment when he should have been fleeing. That did not mean Encrid could dart through their ranks without suffering so much as a scratch. What could he do, then? Repeat. Thirty-odd todays passed. Then forty-odd. Being poisoned every time left him shuddering at the pain. He found a trick to it: even after being poisoned, he held on and swung his sword. What would happen if he plunged into the Knolls immediately after the poison struck? Blades, hammers, axes, and spearheads would fly at him from every direction. THUD-THUD-THUD! Being hacked apart was several times better than wasting away from poison. So he put himself through the wringer among the Knolls and hyenas, paying with his life. Again and again. Between todays spent that way, he also had chances to ask about the evil cult.

"Have you heard of the Cult of the Sacred Demonic Realm?" The question was partly deliberate. Each today repeated, and with so little time available, he could only ask something new each day. He used that as his marker: once every ten days, he would ask about the evil cult. That was how he counted the days. Well, since he was asking anyway, he made the questions meaningful. "A rotten band of fanatics."

True to her nature as a Frog, Luagarne made no attempt to hide her hatred. It was hatred indeed, enough for the centers of her pale, puffed cheeks to look bright red. "I'll kill them all. Every one I see."

So that was why she had charged off.

"I swore it. On my heart." When she spoke the word "heart," Luagarne showed herself to be an experienced Frog. She had hesitated a little, but had said it nonetheless. That alone showed what an extraordinary Frog this woman was. The Cult of the Sacred Demonic Realm. He did not know whether that was its official name, but in any case, they were crazy bastards who believed their god was imprisoned in the source of monsters, a place humans could not tread. The evil cult to end all evil cults. The continent's foremost heresy. Apparently, they actually performed strange summoning rites using humans as sacrifices. What emerged from those summons? Monsters. Sometimes they called up evil spirits too. Not all monsters were alike. There was one quite famous across the continent, and it was widely said to be the product of a summoning rite. Encrid had thought it might be nonsense circulating among mercenaries, but Luagarne confirmed it was more than a rumor. "You know Salamander?"

There was no way he would not know that monster. It was the nickname of a creature that not only scattered flames from the skin all over its body, but breathed fire too. "That was those bastards' handiwork."

The rumor was true.

"I was there."

Luagarne was a witness. Was any of this important, then? No. It was merely a landmark to remember as he repeated today. Practice and training began anew. There was also the process of reviewing the mistakes he had made in the previous today. It was around the time he passed fifty repetitions.

'I pushed too hard.'

Confident in his stamina, he had poured out everything he had from the start.

'I need to rethink how I pace myself, too.' How to fight when surrounded by numerous enemies, perhaps. Such things, too, naturally became ingrained in him. The days passed until the musky reek of Knolls was enough to make him shudder. Encrid had repeated today eighty-nine times, yet he still could not stand before the leader without a single wound. No, it would be more accurate to say the leader never stepped forward unless he was injured. Where he had once lasted until noon, he now lasted until evening. Even so, nothing changed. Apart from being able to watch the sunset as he died, his death remained the same. "You're a sneaky one."

He had to be wounded. The leader emerged only when he suffered a critical injury. A hole in his abdomen, for instance. Or a foot half-severed at the ankle, dangling loose. Of course, the creature could not understand him. On his ninety-sixth today, the leader's dagger took his life. His desperate struggles ended in death. Days that seemed bound by a predetermined fate. Amid the repeating time, he naturally learned the Knolls' habits too.

'Knolls have long torsos and short legs.'

Things he learned from the monsters' build. Their feet were slow, but their hands were fast. They wielded human weapons, but had no form. They simply lashed out. Their strength matched an ordinary adult man's, but their short legs made their charges slower than he expected. They favored attacking from blind spots and bit without hesitation once they closed in. Bites were best avoided at all costs. Their jaws were exceptionally powerful. Both the hyenas' and the Knolls'. Once they bit down, it was hard to pull them off without activating the Heart of the Superhuman. He learned something else too.

'Two swords.'

With two swords and the Heart of the Superhuman activated, he could do truly absurd things for that brief instant. "You'll cut them all to pieces."

Enough for Krais to sound that relaxed. The problem was how long it lasted. No matter how carefully Encrid conserved his stamina, he could not keep it up indefinitely. Repeat again. Dodge, and dodge again. The dodging sense was, to a degree, the province of talent. Jaxon had substituted training for that, but naturally, it only worked for those with the aptitude. Encrid solved the problem by engraving each response into his body. In other words:

'The muscles remember.'

By repeating everything he saw and physically reacted to countless times, he etched it into his muscles. It became an evasive technique engraved not in his mind, but in his body. After repeating it over and over, he could now react the instant he saw something. Coordination had finally become firmly ingrained in his body. Dodging and reacting the moment he saw. He could do it now.