Chapter 187 - Are You Really Going to Become a Knight?

Watching the man named Encrid made people clench their fists without realizing it. Most of the soldiers felt much the same when they saw him. They knew he had clawed his way up from the bottom. They had seen hard work rewarded before their very eyes. Looking at Encrid, the soldiers, Vengeance among them, clenched their fists. In those hands they gripped spears, swords, and maces. They gathered together and swung their weapons. An unexpected fervor set the barracks ablaze once more. "The soldiers seem to be working even harder lately. What's suddenly gotten into them?"

The atmosphere was different from usual. Feeling it keenly, Encrid remarked on it. Krais snorted beside him. "Are you seriously asking because you don't know?"

Would he ask if he knew? "Things aren't looking good around the market. I'll go take a look."

Instead of answering, Krais left. Well, passion and fervor were words Encrid liked, too. The reason hardly mattered. All that hard training would help them save their own lives someday. As a result, more people came to him like this.

"Please spar with me!"

Something similar had happened before, and Encrid welcomed his visitors wholeheartedly. If anything had changed from before...

TAP. CLACK.

It was only that every fight ended in one or two exchanges. There had to be something resembling a fight for him to actually fight. Their openings were far too obvious, and his body moved reflexively in response. He did not even need to strike an incoming blade with his practice sword. A push was enough. His newly learned swordsmanship was based on the Righteous Sword Technique. He shifted his body left and swung his sword right, creating a blind spot in his opponent's field of vision. People grew uneasy when they could not see something, so they immediately turned to eliminate that blind spot. He used that opening to stab from the opposite direction.

Two simple movements, yet they worked time and again, even against members of the Border Guard. "You've changed."

Even a blunt-tipped sword left an ache around the solar plexus when it landed squarely. Clutching his stomach, Torres almost muttered the words. No, changed hardly covered it. A proto knight? He looked to be around that level. How had he improved so much?

The Border Guard, too, challenged human limits. It was a collection of people versed in all manner of techniques and sword styles. Torres was one of them, and one of those who had watched Encrid at close quarters. 'This bastard might really become a knight.'

There had been a time when that ambition was mocked, dismissed as a faded dream. Now, even to others, Encrid's dream no longer seemed like mere fantasy. "Shouldn't you be addressing your Company Commander as 'sir,' soldier? Trooper Torres?"

"Huh?"

"I'm a Company Commander. A temporary one, but still."

Encrid pointed his thumb at himself. "... Sir."

"I'm joking."

"You bastard."

Torres laughed as he said it. Rank was rank, and relationships were relationships. Encrid had no need to treat Torres or Vengeance as subordinates. He was not their direct superior, anyway.

The standing army at Border Guard was fairly lax about hierarchy. He had heard that misreading someone's rank insignia in the capital's garrison could get you beaten half to death, but that was there. This was here. "You're starting to sound like the Fourth Company Commander."

Torres's words gave Encrid much to think about. Those Fairy jokes? "Whew. Anyway, I'm off."

After Torres left, several more members of the Border Guard requested sparring matches. Encrid truly had no reason to refuse. Upon waking in the morning, he practiced the Isolation Technique and trained his swordsmanship. Once he had eaten lunch...

"Time for a round, eh?"

Rem came at him. He was still formidable. If Encrid properly activated the Heart of the Superhuman as well, perhaps he could come close to matching him. 'If I overdo it, I won't get through my afternoon training.'

He had already paid several times for getting carried away. Encrid paced himself. This was training, not real combat.

Rem held himself back, too. Getting excited and splitting Encrid's head open, as he had nearly done before, was not what he wanted either. Once their midday sparring ended, familiar faces began turning up one by one.

"Take a look at my skills, too."

Vengeance visited often. It was an outright request for instruction. Encrid agreed that one learned by teaching, so he did not refuse. "Aren't you forgetting how to address me?"

But he never forgot to joke.

"Are you turning into the Fairy Company Commander?"

He heard the same thing Torres had said. That was... rather irritating, somehow. The sunshine had been lovely for days. Apart from a brief dawn shower on the third day after his return, one brilliantly sunny day had followed another. "Lovely weather. A good day to train."

"Pretty sure you said the same thing when it rained. Is there any such thing as a bad day to train for you, Captain?"

Pleased by the bright morning sunshine, Encrid had murmured to himself, prompting Rem's question from behind him. He considered it carefully before answering.

"No." "... One more knock on the head might put you back to normal. Don't give up, Commander! You can still become a normal person!"

Rem shouted with fervor. Encrid told him to wipe the sleep from his eyes before talking and went on with another ordinary day. The next day it rained, but his schedule was unchanged. It was as though yesterday had been pasted in and copied exactly.

Many eyes in the barracks watched him. What could they say? Perhaps that he never tired of it. Rain or snow, he had always been that sort of man. Greater skill, a change in ability, becoming a Company Commander—none of it had changed him.

Encrid was still Encrid. A fortnight after his return, on another fine day, Rem wiped the sweat from his forehead with his sleeve and sat on the ground after their midday sparring. "That cider was good."

Rem tossed out the remark, but something about it caught Encrid's attention. Intuition, or Sixth Sense. It sounded as though Rem had something to say and was talking around it.

Rem, of all people, beating around the bush?

It was such a rare sight that Encrid waited silently for him to speak. "If you've got any left, slip me some."

There was none. All that remained was a little of Encrid's own share, reserved for a genuine emergency. He had told them to sip it and share, but Rem had guzzled the stuff. There was no more going down that bastard's throat. Even Ragna had offered rare praise for the drink. In short, everyone had enjoyed it. Jaxon had taken a couple of sips, and Audin, he thought, about five.

But that made twice the bastard had dodged the subject. Encrid decided something was up. "Did you kill someone?"

He asked about the most likely possibility.

"Huh?"

"I'm asking if you killed an officer from another unit while I was away."

Could they salvage the situation? If Rem had not been caught by now, at least he had covered it up well. The problem would be dealing with the aftermath. "What are you talking about?"

So he had not killed anyone?

"Did you beat someone up? Cripple them?"

That would be a serious problem, too. Still better than murder. He only hoped Rem had not gone as far as crippling anyone. "Not someone from First Company?"

At the further question, Rem replied,

"... Now I have to ask. Just what do you take me for?" A rabid dog that went berserk at the slightest provocation. A lunatic who beat up anyone he disliked, superior officer or not. A perverted bastard who tormented nearby soldiers when bored, and tormented them twice as much if he liked them. "That look... Fuck, I think you just really hurt me. No one's ever looked at me like that before."

Never? That was surprising in itself.

He did suspect something, a little—just the tiniest bit—but it had been a joke. Their usual routine was to catch their breath over a few jokes like these, then go eat lunch. Rem had spoken up during that breather. "Well, as long as you haven't killed or beaten anyone."

At Encrid's words, Rem sighed, glanced up at the sky, then began speaking. His gaze remained cast to one side. He was beneath a tree, about five paces from Encrid. Battalion Commander Marcus had had a tree transplanted beside the training yard, hadn't he?

["A training yard without shade is too bleak."]

He was surprisingly thoughtful.

Seated on opposite sides of the tree, Encrid began to hear Rem's story. "My father first taught me to use a spear when I was little. Well, it was fun."

What was he trying to say?

For no particular reason, Encrid recalled the stream of words from the evil spirit in the demon sword. Family, swordsmanship, bloodline, an unfulfilled wish. Those things had bound him to the earth.

Did Rem have such things, too? Were humans not creatures bound to something, whether dreams, status, power, or Krona? "I learned to hunt. That was fun."

But this bastard...

"Learned the sword, too. That was fun as well."

Did he need to be taught how to talk all over again? He was so glib when teasing and tormenting others, yet now he stumbled awkwardly over his words. At times like this, he seemed even less put together than Ragna. Then again, all the remaining company members were much the same whenever they spoke about themselves. Awkward, stumbling; teaching swordsmanship was when they spoke most clearly.

Encrid knew because, while he did not know everything, he had picked up bits and pieces of their stories. Rem came from the west, Ragna from the north. Things like that. Even so, this particular story of Rem's was different. The telling was clumsy, but the substance was worth hearing.

"Around then, the Western War broke out. That wasn't a pretty sight, but what could you do? When they're coming to kill you, you can't just meekly offer your neck." Countless wars still raged across the continent. Had Naurilia not recently escalated its own war with Aspen and taken the Green Pearl plains? Given time, that too would be named something like the War of the Green Pearl Plains. And the Western War Rem spoke of had been a particularly terrible one. Dozens of pioneer villages had each proclaimed a king of their own. Some called it not the Western War, but the War for the Throne.

One tribe had won in the end, but it was a hollow victory. Afterward, it had been forced to submit to the Empire on the grounds that it had left the west ravaged and desolate. "I used a sword then. That was fun, too. Why are you looking at me like that?"

Fucking genius bastard. Every weapon he picked up was fun, apparently.

From the gist of his story, Rem seemed to have distinguished himself in the Western War. Judging by his age now... "You'd have been about fifteen?"

"Around that, yeah."

Only fifteen.

'What was I doing then?' Had he been desperately trying to leave his village? Had he still believed he had talent? Had that been when he believed time was fair to everyone, and effort would be enough?

Time was not fair. Rem's story alone made that clear. The clocks of the gifted could yield more than those of the less talented. "So there's something I want to ask."

The story had rambled without context or coherence, with some unintended boasting about his genius mixed in. Somewhere along the way, Rem had also mentioned killing some bear of a man from a neighboring tribe during the war. Encrid did not even know who that was. Why should he care?

At the end of it all came these words. A question. "Are you really going to become a knight?"

The question came completely out of nowhere, yet Encrid was not taken aback at all. Perhaps because it was a question he always considered.

How could he not have asked himself? 'Can I become one? Is it possible? What is a knight?'

There were no answers within those repeated questions. So he simply took one step forward at a time. He did so because there was no other path. Quite literally, through rain and snow. Beneath the blazing sun. On the road for a mission. Even knowing that today would end in death.

Calling him steadfast would hardly have been enough. "Yes."

There was not a trace of hesitation in his answer. Encrid was calm. No different from any other day. The answer, too, was the same as always.

Yet Rem found it striking all over again. "Can you, though?"

"I don't know."

That was the honest truth. No one knew the future. He did not even believe prophets. "That so?"

"Yes."

"I see."

"That's how it is."

A few inconsequential words passed between them. What followed was ordinary. Eating, resting, sparring. Rem did not ask anything like that again. He acted untroubled. There was no way to know what he was thinking. Rem was deliberating.

If that man really became a knight—if he did...

'Should I go back for what I left behind?' It was a fairly serious dilemma. What he had left behind when he departed his homeland. If he retrieved it, he might not become what these people called a knight, but he would at least be knight-level. Those stingy continental bastards insisted there was only one path to knighthood, but Rem thought differently. And he had reason to. In the west, they used the word Hero instead of knight. The Hero who would pioneer the continent: the term came from an ancient legend.

And Rem was foremost among the candidates to become the next Hero. Had been foremost. After a brief deliberation, after several thoughts flitted through his mind, Rem reached a decision as he watched Encrid swing his sword day and night. "Then I'll become a knight, too."

Rem tossed it out as a passing remark. Ordinarily, Encrid might have teased him, perhaps with some sarcastic twist. Something like:

"Why bother?"

"Beating up your superior won't make you a knight."

"Something wrong with your head?"

That was what he had expected to hear. "Yeah?"

A perfectly calm response. Then came the most natural words in the world.

"Want to spar?" That, too, made Rem strangely happy. Was the man not astonishingly consistent?

He also liked, quite a lot, the hint of something like respect in the sentiment behind those words and the way they were spoken.

* * *

As Rem shared his decision with Encrid, someone outside the city, face wrapped in a black hood, gazed at Border Guard's walls. 'High.'

Most monsters would struggle to leap over them. But what about a high-tier demonic beast?

And on top of that... "This is a temporary alliance."

Ten bandits from Black Blade.

Would that not be enough to cause a proper commotion?