Chapter 242 - Daily Life Remained the Same, but What Filled It Had Changed

'Why isn't he leaving?'

Edin Molsen's presence did not trouble Encrid. At first, he had wondered whether he should really be beating the man so badly, but repetition dulled such concerns, didn't it? In short, he had decided to respect the man's indomitable spirit as an opponent who kept coming at him, rather than think of him as Count Molsen's son. Which meant he had devoted himself to beating him up.

"Go easy on him. Easy."

It had reached the point where Krais could no longer bear watching.

"He keeps coming at me."

Encrid was not beating him senseless for no reason. Here was an opponent who challenged him endlessly, who kept coming back for more. How could he possibly give such a man a halfhearted response?

He simply could not. He had walked that same road himself. If Edin realized he was being treated halfheartedly, it would only do him harm. That would be the greater insult. Respecting his opponent was the easier, more comfortable path for Encrid. Of course, that was his own perspective, his own way of doing things.

"Come on."

Again. Edin Molsen had come with a wooden sword. Surely he was not throwing himself at Encrid out of sheer stupidity. At least he no longer brought a real sword. Encrid had initially knocked him down without even drawing his own, but not anymore. Naturally, he now swung, slashed, and thrust.

Encrid never forgot his manners. To him, good manners meant not disregarding the sincerity his opponent showed. His courtesy took the form of...

CRACK!

...a blow to the skull without the slightest mercy, or...

"Urk!"

...a thrust around the solar plexus that knocked the man out with a single strangled cry.

"Brother!"

Watching, Edin Molsen's younger brother would start in alarm. At first, anyway. As already noted, repetition dulled the senses.

"Are you all right?"

By now, even when Edin fell, his brother was unperturbed. If Encrid had meant to kill him, he would have done it long ago. The same went for crippling him. Hadn't they already sparred more than twenty times?

"What, he's back again? Tough body on that one, at least."

In a sense, Rem was Edin's mortal enemy. Hadn't he killed his sibling? Yet Rem showed no sign of caring. The man certainly had a face of steel. Were all barbarians like this?

A pointless question. It hardly mattered. Shameless or not, Rem was Rem: a monster with an uncanny command of two axes. And Encrid could not have been more pleased or satisfied with that monster's skill.

"I'm warmed up."

A smile spread across Rem's face at Encrid's words.

"I'll say it again..."

"That I might die?"

Even with his words cut short, Rem kept smiling. Encrid answered that broad grin.

"So might you."

"Fuck. Takes a fair bit to make me swear, but you know what? Nothing makes me happier than smashing your face in, Captain."

Encrid agreed, both inwardly and outwardly. He genuinely understood the feeling.

"That makes two of us."

"... You make a habit of punching yourself in the face?"

Encrid stared straight at Rem. Those gray eyes stared right back into his blue ones.

Rem had not been idle all this time, either. Just as Encrid had learned the heart of the beast from him, Rem had learned something too. Looking at him now, his technique had improved enormously. His tongue technique, that is: the art of twisting someone's mood and making their blood boil.

"Yes. I do have that habit."

At this abrupt admission, Rem furrowed his brow.

"You're admitting it now?"

For every runner, there was someone who could fly. Ignoring the mental blow and responding with something the other person never expected: that was the essence of a war of words.

"Are you just going to wag your tongue?"

At the question that ended their verbal sparring, Rem's axe swept through the air with a whoosh. He had two again.

Given everything the Lunatic Company had accomplished, requisitioning an axe from the smithy was nothing. What had changed was that Rem, who had never been particular about his weapons before, had specified everything this time, right down to its center of gravity and balance.

["I can't make it to such exact specifications."]

["Then it can't be helped."]

Judging by how little he argued with the smith, he did not seem all that concerned. In any case, what mattered was what he could do with that different axe.

TING.

Encrid extended his sword and tapped the axe blade.

"Quit breaking my axes, will you?"

Muttering, Rem charged. For a moment, his body seemed to swell in size. He was that swift, that bold.

It brought home a familiar truth. Who had possessed the heart of the beast in the first place? When it came to daring and decisiveness, Rem was second to none.

Encrid cut straight down, perpendicular to the ground. His sword, too, was as swift as lightning, but...

SWISH.

It sliced through empty air. Rem's body blurred. His accelerating axes struck like rays of light, one from above, one from below.

At first, Encrid had fallen to axes that curved like whips. Once he could endure those, he had fallen to slashes like shafts of light. And now?

CLANG-CLANG!

Encrid swept his sword up and down. The blade rippled like a wave, deflecting both slashes. Wave Deflection of the Flowing Sword Technique. He had taken what he saw from the rapier swordsman, refined it through Pell the Shepherd, and completed it while facing Rem.

Rem paid no heed to being blocked. The instant his blows were stopped, he tossed one axe into the air. Then he charged headlong with only the other in hand. Unorthodox and audacious. Bizarre and bold. That was Rem. To cut to the conclusion, Encrid lost.

"That was close."

"Was it?"

"It was."

Should he be satisfied with those words? Was that enough? No, there was no need to settle for that. Today, too, Encrid had learned something new. More precisely, he had recognized what he lacked.

From the sense for the blade to Sixth Sense and the dodging sense. Jaxon called them the "sensory arts." Encrid had never neglected honing them, yet they had become the very reason for his defeat.

'I was too sensitive.'

He had paid too much attention to the axe Rem tossed overhead. Should he have ignored it, then? Even though that bastard Rem had eventually kicked the falling axe, accelerating it into his shoulder?

'Choose and focus.'

Review. Revisit and understand. It was a familiar process, part of Encrid's daily life. What had changed was his ability to absorb what he learned.

It was like the times he had awakened what one might call talent before. The heart of the beast, the sensory arts, Concentrate on a Single Point, the Isolation Technique: if those had done it before, this time was no different.

'Refusal.'

It was only refusal, but he had experienced "Will." That experience had given him a different way of seeing.

What was a genius? It defied explanation. Everything came naturally to them. He seemed to have gained a little of that natural ease. Even now, it showed in how he moved from defeat to Review, and how quickly he recognized his mistakes and identified what he needed. He was not as he had been before.

Encrid was not conscious of it. He was simply doing what he always did. Of course, Rem and everyone else could see it.

'Will, of all things.'

That troublemaker of a Captain, wielding "Will."

'Well, I'll be damned.'

The chick who might have died on the battlefield at any moment had somehow become a chicken with a steel beak. No, he could no longer even be called a chicken. A wild beast would be a better description. Hiding his admiration, Rem spoke.

"That ill-mannered count bastard's boy. He must be up to something, if he keeps this up."

"I see."

Already sunk deep into himself, Encrid paid no attention. No, even if he had heard, he would have ignored it.

Hadn't everyone, not just Rem, already said their piece?

["That brother is hiding something inside."]

Audin had said as much. Jaxon had indicated with his eyes that the man bothered him, while Krais had actually devised several theories.

["Why he's here? Broadly speaking, I see two possibilities. One, the count may want you for himself, Captain. Two, he's trying to find your weaknesses."]

Krais said he had indeed sensed something along those lines in Edin Molsen's gaze: the look of someone watching, or probing. Encrid agreed with some of it.

Edin Molsen's bodyguard had shown similar signs, but the look in his eyes was not what mattered to Encrid.

'Should I draw it out of him?'

The bodyguard had never shown the full extent of his ability. Sometimes his eyes flashed murderously, raising Encrid's hopes, but he always held himself back. He went no further. He never revealed all his skill, never raised his presence to a dangerous level.

["That bastard knows how to use it."]

According to Rem, the bodyguard had also stepped into the realm of "Will." That made him at least Encrid's equal, didn't it? In any case, after that, the bodyguard had refused even his requests to spar.

["I am merely Lord Edin Molsen's bodyguard."]

Then why had he challenged Encrid before? A test, a check, an assessment.

'For what?'

Encrid briefly considered whether he needed to know. Probably not. So he ignored it. He ignored Edin Molsen's strange looks. He ignored the peculiar gaze with which Edin's brother stared at his face. He ignored the bodyguard's occasional loitering.

Jaxon subtly encouraged him to give an order, suggesting that removing them was an option if they bothered him, but he ignored that too. He simply gave Edin a proper match whenever he asked for one.

And so several months passed with Edin Molsen remaining in the territory, until the weather grew cold enough to make people remark on it without thinking. Snow seemed near. Several things had changed in the meantime.

"I am Teresa the Wanderer."

The half-Giant often muttered this to herself. During the day, it was fine. It seemed like a vow, a reminder. When she said it in her sleep, however, she was talking in her dreams, drenched in cold sweat.

Whenever Audin heard those murmurs, he would quietly lay a hand on her forehead.

"May you sleep like ashes settled into stillness."

The god of war was the incarnation of burnt ashes, and Audin was his representative. The prayer continued.

A follower of the god of war praying with his hand upon a Cultist's forehead. An incongruous sight indeed, but Teresa voiced no objection even when she woke. She would only blink, always look once at Encrid, and then go back to sleep. By now, it was familiar.

There were plenty of other changes to their daily lives. Dunbachel decided to do something other than get beaten by Rem, because Rem forced her to.

"It's only right I get a teaching fee."

His argument was that he had taught Dunbachel, and now she ought to pay for it.

Dunbachel did not point out that she had never wanted any of it. In fact, what she asked Encrid was:

"What is that barbarian?"

That was a difficult question to answer.

'A lunatic? A man with a broken brain? A noble killer? An axe murderer? A crazed axeman?'

Too many possibilities came to mind to choose just one. Fortunately, Dunbachel did not wait for an answer.

"I've gotten better."

When Encrid faced her himself, he found she was right. In other words, she had not been insulting Rem. She had asked out of genuine wonder.

"You have improved."

Whimpering after a vicious blow to her thigh from the flat of his sword, Dunbachel nodded with tears pricking her eyes.

"Yes."

She had improved. Almost beyond recognition. Were all Beastmen like this? Or was it because of some legend about golden eyes? There was no knowing. Nor was he interested.

Feeling Dunbachel's gaze, Encrid looked her way. Her golden eyes met his. At that very moment, she was thinking he was a monster. After enduring Rem's violence, she had gained the confidence to defeat two of her former self. Yet Encrid had gone even farther in the meantime.

'A genius.'

She was mistaken, but it was not her fault. Anyone would have thought the same. Above all, there was "Will." Only a part of it, but "Will" nonetheless. He had grasped it: the willpower that belonged exclusively to knights, to those with knight-level martial strength. That change had settled upon Encrid.

Watching him, Ragna realized the time had come to address his own shortcomings. There were things he had recognized before but lacked the motivation to do. Now he did them.

"Krais, I want a sword with two layers, like this."

"Do I look like someone who brings you things just because you say you want them? If so, you've got me exactly right."

Partway through, Krais had weighed the pouch of Krona Ragna handed him and counted the silver coins inside. His attitude was faithful to the money.

Ragna acquired a sword. It was unsharpened, and its size and shape resembled a bastard sword's, but it weighed several times as much as an ordinary blade. Taking it in hand, he began swinging it slowly.

There was no speed to it. With dogged, unwavering persistence, he performed each movement slowly. He spent more than half his waking hours that way. It was an enormous step forward, one that would astonish anyone who knew him.

Encrid spent most of his waking hours training, but this was Ragna. The man was laziness incarnate. Though it did not quite amount to half a day, the very sight of him applying himself to training like that was remarkable.

In any case, back in the present, Rem demanded Krona from Dunbachel, and she agreed without complaint.

"Go earn some Krona."

Lately, bands of demonic beasts and monsters had been swarming the surrounding area as never before. It was winter. Only natural. When the season of scarce food arrived, they were bound to grow more rampant.

"Looks like snow, doesn't it?"

Krais spoke as he cut Ragna's hair. Encrid silently looked up. Dull, dark clouds were edging in, covering the sky. A little colder, and the devil's discharge would come pouring down.

Well, around this time last year, clearing the fallen snow had been quite the ordeal. But now...

"Training company, assemble!"

That one shout would suffice.

In any case, life had continued after the rapier swordsman left. Their daily routine remained the same, but the things within it were changing.

Edin Molsen had become a long-term guest, while his bodyguard had left ahead of him, saying he had business to attend to. He had departed without a separate farewell.

It was the beginning of winter, with the first snow seemingly imminent. Dunbachel went out on a demonic-beast extermination commission. Pin, who had begun spending her time away from the barracks at some point, transferred from the Independent Company to the Fairy Company Commander's command.

"Can I go?"

She looked livelier leaving than she had when she joined. Was that something to be grateful for?

"Suit yourself."

Encrid answered casually. He had neither a reason nor a need to hold her back.

Teresa had joined, and Pin had left. Yet it was one of those days when daily life itself had not changed.

"Independent Company Commander, you've been summoned!"

A messenger arrived late in the afternoon as Encrid swung his sword, drenched in sweat despite the winter cold.

"They said it was urgent."

At that, Encrid went straight to the Battalion Commander's office.