Chapter 167 - In a Today Where the Moon Rises

On his hundred and eighty-sixth today, Encrid grasped the concept of coordination and felt his body respond differently.

THWACK

The instant he sensed the spearhead coming from behind, he turned and snatched its shaft. It was an acrobatic feat. He twisted away from the spear aimed at his back, then reached out from that very position to seize the shaft. The scene looked as rehearsed as a play.

After that, the thud of his blade striking a skull was all it took. Once he perceived something and pictured a movement, his body moved on its own.

["The Isolation Technique is the foundation that lets you control your body with ease, brother."]

Audin's words struck home. Without the countless hours spent conditioning his body through the Isolation Technique, this would have been impossible. The movements he imagined became reality. Naturally, he began to see the flaws in his movements as well.

'With as little movement as possible.'

The realization tied into conserving stamina. The larger the movement, the more energy he wasted. He could not hold out that way. His movements could not afford so much waste. Now that he knew, he simply had to reduce it.

His Righteous Sword Technique training helped, too.

'If I predict their movements...'

He could cut down on wasted motion. Without realizing it, his swordsmanship was advancing another step. That had not been his intention. It was merely a side benefit of struggling desperately, of giving his all.

Though he had repeated today nearly two hundred times, until the rank odor of monsters and demonic beasts made him nauseous, Encrid smiled. The exhilaration of growth filled him, even as he failed again and again.

Nor did he stop struggling. He never stopped searching for a way to take that step toward tomorrow. And that effort bore fruit.

For an instant, he felt every nerve in his body come alive. It happened after he had passed his two-hundredth today.

He could see the blade coming. It was sometime after noon. He sidestepped with his left foot, and the blade sliced through empty air. A spearhead darted in from the side while an axe came at him from behind.

He ducked, pushing the spear shaft away with his palm, and took the axe on his shoulder, letting it slide off.

SCRRRAAPE

His leather armor was scraped, but he was unhurt. More spears, blades called gladii, axes, and clubs came at him. A mutant even swung a club as thick as a grown man's thigh straight down.

He felt his swords getting in the way. They hindered his movements. They were detrimental. Awkward. He sheathed them. No, he went further: still moving, he unbuckled his belt. His body felt lighter.

WHOOSH! SWISH! WHIZZ! SWISH!

He could not see the paths of every weapon. He decided simply to watch and react to each in turn. Forgetting himself, he focused entirely on seeing and reacting.

Before he knew it, the midday sun had passed overhead and was sinking westward. A sneaky hyena kept trying to bite his ankles. He evaded that as well, sometimes retreating, sometimes advancing.

At times he whirled sideways and drove a knee into the belly of a hyena demonic beast that had come close. Immediately afterward, he threw himself into a Knoll approaching from behind, shoving it with his shoulder. He used the recoil to straighten up, then saw another blade coming and reached out to tap its wielder's wrist aside.

"Gruk?"

The Knoll's blade veered sideways and slashed across a companion's head.

"Gruuuk!"

The other Knoll swung its hammer in fury.

WHOOSH

Its movement was broad, its swing wide. Not difficult to dodge. The only problem was that five or six such attacks came crashing in at once. What, then, was he to do? Watch each one and react. That was what Encrid did.

He pushed spear shafts aside with his hands, dodged, then dodged again. Killing his opponents no longer mattered. This was purely the dodging sense: evasion through intuition, instinct, and his sharpened five senses.

Before long, the sunset faded and the moon quietly raised its head. Encrid noticed neither day nor night. He was too busy simply 'dealing with' everything around him that sought his life. Dodging, knocking aside, sidestepping, moving. It looked less like a fight to the death than a game of tag.

Through these repeating todays, Esther had concealed her presence and settled on the roof time and again. She could see it, too.

'What is that?'

Put into words, the sight made absolutely no sense. Encrid evaded the wave of Knolls alone. He simply held out. He was going to die anyway. There was no escaping it. So why? Why? Why?

'Why are you smiling?'

A question rose in Esther's heart, though it would vanish when this repeating today passed. What Encrid was doing was astonishing enough that calling it an 'acrobatic feat' hardly did it justice.

He seemed to be playing with the wave of monsters, with the Knolls. He looked ready to die at any moment, yet never did. He dodged axes, dodged clubs, knocked blows aside, and blocked them. Sometimes he even wrapped his arms around a Knoll.

How could he do otherwise? Stay still and he would be beaten to death. Holding a Knoll from behind, he seized its arms and swung them as though they were his own, blocking the other Knolls' attacks. He knocked an incoming axe blade aside with its club.

CRACK!

It was madness. He abandoned attacking and devoted himself entirely to evasion.

The sunset faded, the moon rose, and the carriage called a day reached its destination. At last, the day came to an end. Gentle moonlight shone all around, illuminating the summer night.

In a place filled with nothing but foul odors, the stench of corpses, the heat of metal, and the rank smell of monsters, Encrid stayed up through the night. More precisely, he finished the day. Night had fallen without him ever seeing the leader.

'Ah.'

Only then did his absorption break. Only then did he realize what he had done.

'Ah.'

A second exclamation sounded within him. Understandably so. He had discarded his weapons and done nothing but evade. Why? Why had he done that? His movements had followed instinct.

And so he had acquired it: the ability to devote himself entirely to evasion. To see and react. A talent he had not originally possessed. His reflexes and athletic ability had changed.

It was a tower built through the Isolation Technique, filled in with the dodging sense, and raised through death by poison and blade in repeating todays. Hundreds had come at him. He had withstood them. He could not kill them all. Only a knight could do that.

But if it was a matter of holding out, of doing nothing but holding out...

'I can do it.'

Thrilling exhilaration, something like that, filled his entire body. Even the Knolls that had attacked him for a full day could have marveled at him. None actually did, of course.

His body was covered in scratches. Blood ran down his cheek as well. He could not escape every wound. That was impossible. But none of his injuries were critical.

At the end of that day, at the end of today, he watched the sunset depart and the moon rise, and realized the day was over.

"See you again. Somewhere other than here next time."

With that, he closed his eyes. Would this end today? Merely holding out? Not a chance. It could never be that easy. He had expected as much.

When he opened his eyes again, his surroundings had changed, of course. The black river, the boat, the ferryman.

"That won't be enough, will it?"

The ferryman passed him by. Encrid closed his eyes once more and opened them to the hut's ceiling. Today again.

Today repeated in the blink of an eye. He had experienced this before: further evidence that holding out was not the answer. Of course, that was no problem. Exhilaration set his heart pounding, but this was no time to savor it.

The countless todays he had repeated. The information he had gathered. The possibilities he had imagined. As soon as he got up, Encrid kicked Krais.

"Get up."

"Ow! What's this for, first thing in the morning?"

What else? Today was the day they would have to run their asses off to keep from getting killed.

He had thought of a method that could be called a bit of a shortcut around his hundred and twentieth today. Now he intended to try it. He had achieved his original goal of 'surviving today.' He had met the minimum requirement he had set himself for moving past this day.

'The dodging sense.'

Along with the Heart of the Superhuman, perhaps he could now say it had become ingrained in his body. He had a feel for it. The tangible fruits of his training were now his.

Did he have to repeat it again, then? This goddamned today? There should be no need. His blind devotion to sword training often made those around him overlook it, but Encrid was both articulate and quick-witted. In particular, he had no qualms about taking shortcuts.

* * *

Encrid had set a goal and achieved it.

'I held out.'

To live through an entire day and see its end. He had known instinctively that its conclusion would ultimately return him to the original today. No, it had been intuition.

'This isn't how you get over the wall.'

Simply holding out had never been the answer. If it were, escaping the mage Retsha and the wolf-men should have ended things. He would only have needed to avoid the traps of the mad mage who had built his lair in the tunnels beneath the city.

This was a curse. He needed a way to break it. He did not know the exact answer, but he had given it some thought. He had spent time considering how to escape today, and that had led him to this method.

If today repeated because of the cycle of killing and being killed, what would happen if he prevented that cycle from even beginning?

'All I have to do is try.'

Results came after the attempt.

"Did I mention that I worked as a mercenary for quite a long time?"

He had come outside with his gear. Sweat trickled down from his forehead and brushed his chin. Hot as ever. Merely getting himself armed and armored so early in the morning had sent his body temperature soaring. That suited him nicely. His muscles and joints were waking up without a separate warm-up.

There was no time for the Isolation Technique or any other training today. This much was just right.

"Hmm?"

Luagarne tilted her head at his words, wondering what this human was suddenly talking about.

'Has something gone wrong with his head this morning?'

That was what her look seemed to say. Encrid, of course, simply continued with what he had to say.

"I once fought those Cultist bastards. The Cult of the Sacred Demonic Realm."

He spoke with a perfectly straight face, feigning ignorance, and Luagarne reacted.

"... You speak of Cultists?"

Her reaction was as intense as ever. The air between them turned cold. Her presence was murderous. Encrid ignored it and spoke.

"Do you happen to know them?"

That had been a little awkward. He wondered if he needed to train his acting skills too, but Luagarne noticed nothing. Her attention was elsewhere, not on his awkward speech or manner.

He had mentioned Cultists. To her, they were bastards to be killed without exception. They were the subjects of her oath.

"One of them got away back then. I can't believe I only just remembered."

Encrid tapped his forehead as he spoke. That felt a little awkward too. Acting really did need practice. He had barely rehearsed at all. Of course, Luagarne still paid it no mind.

"Do you remember the fellow who followed that man Deutsch Fullman around?"

"The ugly human with the thick lips."

The Frog had a sharp eye for appearances. Yes, he did have a face like a fish. Encrid knew a few others besides him. Hadn't he repeated today over two hundred times already? Would that one man be all he had learned about in that time?

Still, that Cultist masquerading as a fish was definitely the most troublesome. In every repeating today, Luagarne had chased him and never returned.

"That's right."

"Are you certain? That he is a Cultist?"

"Yes. I stake my sword and everything I have on it."

Luagarne knew how much Encrid treasured his sword. It sounded much like her own oath upon her heart. For a human, his words carried weight. In other words, she believed him.

"If you don't believe me, you can go and ask him yourself now."

"I will."

That was that. She acted more decisively than he had expected. Drawing her whip, she wound it around her hand and set off at a near run. She looked ready to go straight to Deutsch Fullman. If she did not find the man there, she would probably hunt him down wherever he was.

"What, uh, was that? Why were you talking so ridiculously awkwardly?"

Krais asked from beside him, where he had been watching quietly. Had it really been awkward? Probably. But that was not what mattered.

"You'll need to get moving too."

Encrid spoke as he set off. Through his repeated todays, he had gauged and measured the timing again and again. How the monsters poured in like that. What on earth the problem was. He had searched for its cause as well. Not knowing the problem would have been one thing. But if he knew...

'Stopping it is easy.'

At least, it was for Encrid. He had already done it several times, so he did not hesitate.