Chapter 257 - On How to Handle Idiots (2)

Krais did as Encrid had told him.

'A way to deal with Black Blade.'

Hadn't that been what he'd been told to find? He pondered it, turning it over in his head. Black Blade was going to try something. That was a given. So what would they do?

No, before that, how had he learned they had such intentions in the first place?

Simple. They had told him themselves. How considerate of them. 'Either that, or they're fucking idiots.'

He leaned toward fucking idiots, but that wasn't what mattered. "Isn't it obvious when you think about it?"

"What is?"

"These bastards. They kindly tell you they won't leave you alone, Captain, and then, even after we slit that fellow's throat, they send someone else." As he spoke, Krais walked into the sunlight. Pulling his coat tighter against the cold morning air, he continued. Meanwhile, Encrid was waving his sword this way and that. To Krais, it looked like someone stirring a ladle through stew. Just aimlessly stirring. "This time, they thoughtfully sent someone who wasn't even one of theirs so we wouldn't kill her. I'm starting to wonder if they're actually pretty gentle souls."

"Bandits?"

"Or fucking idiots." Their enemies were fucking idiots. Considerate fucking idiots, at that. Yet Krais kept imagining ominous possibilities. It was a product of his upbringing and his innate disposition. 'What if they send a knight?'

Could they hold out if someone at knight-level came?

He could see Encrid training, and behind him, the closed door to their quarters: a dull, dark-brown door set into a stone wall made by pouring mortar over gravel. Inside were a barbarian asleep with his warming stone and furs because he was cold, a great bear of a man who had beaten a priest just yesterday because he didn't like him, a troublesome man who wandered off despite having no sense of direction, an intimidating bastard who vanished at the drop of a hat, a half-Giant former Cultist, and a Beastman former bandit. 'Could they even take on a knight?'

For a moment, that nuisance called hope intruded on his ominous imaginings. Nonsense. A knight was a knight. They were monsters, disasters.

Krais shook his head. "So what's the plan?"

Encrid was trying some sort of movement, swaying his sword from side to side as he lifted his feet and set them down. To Krais, it looked like a dance. A dance performed while stirring stew. Staring at his Captain as ominous imaginings once again rummaged through his brain uninvited, Krais said,

"We do everything we can." He meant that literally. Their enemies had kindly warned them that an attack was coming.

'If I were a bandit.'

If he led this group called Black Blade and intended to kill them?

'The Captain is a proto knight who has awakened Will.'

And every member of his company was a monster. Dwarves used their insight to compare people to metals. Fairies, with their peculiar sensitivity, often compared others to plants and animals. Krais saw his fellow company members as gold coins.

'How many coins?'

Impossible to measure. He wasn't yet capable of estimating their worth. From one perspective, they were blockheads who caused nothing but losses. From another...

'An incomparable fighting force.'

An outsider would certainly have to judge them an outsized concentration of strength. His mind racing, Krais assessed what their opponents, the Black Blade bastards, could do, might reasonably do, or would very likely attempt. Then he voiced his conclusions.

"Assassination, ambush, poison, persuasion."

Four broad possibilities. Encrid wasn't an idiot either. He paused his sword. The next movement wasn't falling neatly into place anyway. He had just failed at imitating Snake Step. "I suspect the trouble will start on the way back."

"What's the plan?"

At that same question, Krais made just one request.

"Company Commander Torres... Or is he a Battalion Commander now? If we ask Battalion Commander Torres for support, will he lend us troops?"

"Probably." Why wouldn't he? The issue would be how long. They couldn't leave the territory short of men for too long. Encrid didn't need to point out something Krais already knew. Martai was shorthanded as it was. He had heard that plans were also underway to hire mercenaries and turn them into a private army. They were undertaking something quite ambitious this time: pouring their earnings in Krona into sweeping every monster and demonic beast from the Grateful Forest area. Between Martai's response, the battle with the colony, and his training, Encrid had been thinking. What could Border Guard do to keep the trade routes safe?

'Expand our patrol area?'

What came to mind was still vague. He needed to think it through more deeply. "We're heading back once we get the weapons from the dwarf, right?"

"The moment we get them."

Assuming there were no problems, that was the plan.

"Understood." And so Krais disappeared that morning, leaving Encrid with time to himself again. Time for himself and his sword, that is. He had practiced the Isolation Technique with Audin at dawn. His words had stayed with him.

["Why do you train your body? If you've found that answer, the next question must be 'how,' yes? And I believe I've already taught you how, haven't I?"] Audin was a good teacher. What he meant was that Encrid should think for himself. He was saying he had already laid that foundation for him.

Encrid was neither dull nor stupid. The problem had always been a body that refused to move as he wanted. And now?

'Because I move forward.'

He would greet tomorrow. He could greet tomorrow. That outlook hadn't changed. What had changed was that it was twice as enjoyable as before. Encrid swung his sword. It didn't matter even if it felt meaningless. This was how he thought. This was his way of meditating. So that was what he did. He entered his own world, sinking deep. He sank, watched, contemplated, and understood. He added thought to his earlier revelations.

'No one tells me which swordsmanship to learn.'

Even Ragna, who had taught him the Heavy Sword Technique, didn't particularly mind him using other styles. Just then, Ragna came outside, stood beside him, and began swinging the absurdly heavy sword forged earlier at the Border Guard smithy. There was nothing ingenious about his movements. He cut straight and true, from top to bottom. His thick blade seemed to slice through the sunlight. 'Cut, and cut again.'

Cut through whatever stood in the way. That was Ragna's sword, his swordsmanship. The essence of the Heavy Sword Technique. Encrid reviewed what he had learned. The Valen Mercenary Sword Technique was illusion swordsmanship. Nameless's swordsmanship was Righteous Sword. What he had learned from Ragna was Heavy Sword.

Later, Ragna had taught him the basics of Flowing Sword, and he had developed some proficiency on his own. Watching his enemies and learning from them, he had discovered how to deflect and unsettle. 'No, I learned that from Audin too.'

Balaf-style martial arts. Ultimately, martial arts meant using one's hands, feet, and body as weapons: the shortest weapons a human could wield. Then what formed the foundation of unarmed combat? Flowing, swift, heavy, light. Everything blended together. It couldn't be divided into the categories of the Oniak Sword Technique. Balaf-style martial arts encompassed them all. An ideal brought to completion. But it wasn't swordsmanship. Even so, he could incorporate parts of it into his sword. Absorbed in his swings, Encrid reflected on what he possessed and focused on Flowing Sword. Even his physical training had emphasized flexibility. He still trained with heavy rocks and lumps of iron, but spent just as much time loosening and stretching each individual muscle. All of it was to improve his flexibility. Why Flowing Sword? Because he had properly awakened his Sixth Sense.

'Flowing Sword is defense. A defensive style.'

What mattered most for that was the eyes. Or, put another way, the senses. Only by seeing and understanding properly could he twist the point of contact and redirect the force. Everything he saw, heard, tasted, smelled, and felt. His five senses blurred together, transforming into a single sense. Previously, his Sixth Sense had been little more than a new sensory offshoot, an extension of the five senses. Now it was closer to a genuinely new sense.

There was a reason people described it as opening a third eye. At some point, Jaxon had come outside and sat on one of the stone seats arranged in a circle off to one side. They were large rocks embedded in the ground, roughly hewn into chairs. They must have been bitterly cold to sit on in winter, but he didn't seem to mind. Why would he? His own training had been far harsher and more painful. Cold like this barely even registered as cold.

His eyes settled on Encrid. 'What is it?'

What drove that man to move like that? The question remained. But now, alongside that question, he also had a reason to stay.

'We're becoming entangled.'

That Captain had become someone he needed to achieve his own goal. "Uaaagh. Hey, alley cat. What are you staring at so hard?"

Rem the barbarian came outside too, his mouth stretched wide in a long, lazy yawn. It was a petty provocation. Jaxon ignored it as usual. Rem's gaze turned toward his Captain.

"... Well, look at that."

A rare show of surprise from the barbarian. Ragna and Audin were no different. Swinging a sword while immersed in one's own world. Every one of them had experienced it at least once. That was why they understood Encrid's current state. He had sunk so deep that he was enclosed within his own world. Was that dangerous, then? No. It was an opportunity. A chance to train that came only a handful of times in a lifetime. A chance to recognize one's limits and advance, covering several strides in an instant. "Hey, cat. We'd better clear the area. You too, lost boy. Hey, bear?"

"I know, brother. Sister Teresa and Sister Dunbachel, we'll need your help as well." At Audin's words, they moved quietly. Without warning, on that winter morning, Encrid's companions formed a circle around their quarters. What they did was simple.

"Stay back. And keep your voices down."

They controlled access, turning away everyone who approached. "Hey, I heard you beat up a priest. I came to talk about it."

Even when the lord himself arrived.

"That man was a disgrace to the priesthood, Brother Lord. In any case, now isn't the time." Some people couldn't understand it. A few soldiers frowned, wondering what had gotten into them. Those who understood Encrid's condition simply withdrew in silence. More than half the men in Martai's barracks were easterners. And easterners were tough, stubborn, and loud, but...

"Make a racket and I'll split your skull."

"They say silence is golden. The Lord has said: raise your battle cries upon the field, but be gentle when you return home. So I ask that you sew those traps shut for a moment and keep quiet."

"Quiet. Or I'll cut you."

"Do not cross this line." The four acted according to their usual temperaments. Dunbachel watched Encrid quietly and moved her own body. Impatience tormented her. She had to train, even if this was all she could do. Teresa found the man remarkable all over again.

'I am Teresa the Wanderer.'

Steadying herself with her usual thought, she looked at him: a man swinging his sword alone, grinning like a lunatic.

'Does he enjoy training too, not just fighting?' Born and raised in the embrace of an evil cult, Teresa knew nothing of the world. Her world had been narrow. Even now, she didn't know whether her choice had been right or wrong.

There was only one thing.

'I want to fight.' She wanted to swing her sword at the man occupying the small training ground in front of the quarters. Hard enough to split his skull. She wanted to charge her shield into his torso, too. To throw punches and kick him.

She wanted to fight. The desire boiled up with an intensity that gave her chills. Right and wrong had no bearing on this.

"Calm yourself. Master your feelings, Sister."

It was Audin, always at her side. Teresa adjusted her mask and answered,

"I am Teresa the Wanderer. I can be patient." Patience was a virtue. She had been born with no connection to such virtues, but now she wanted to learn and observe them. Only then could she fight that man and experience that moment of ecstasy.

* * *

Within his own world, Encrid sometimes wandered, sometimes ran, and sometimes crawled. It didn't matter which. He thought about swordsmanship. At one point, the ferryman appeared like a phantom and spoke. Now that Encrid could see his face, he could almost grow fond of him. Seeing someone so often could do that.

"You lunatic. This isn't a wall I made." What was he talking about? A phantom, a hallucination. So Encrid ignored him. What mattered now wasn't the ferryman. Nor was it his repeating today. The Oniak Sword Technique. Of its five divisions, Encrid had properly learned Righteous and Heavy Sword. Yet even after learning them, he felt uncomfortable with them. Quite apart from their difficulty, they had never felt like a perfect fit. Why? 'Clothes that don't fit my body.'

Swordsmanship that began with talent, rested on talent, grew from the soil of talent. It was not a path for the ungifted. He hadn't consciously realized all of this right then. He simply moved on according to what he felt in the realm of Sixth Sense and intuition. Still walking, crawling, running.

Simply asking,

'Which way does my path lead?'

And choosing his direction through that brief question. And so Encrid found a new path beyond the fundamentals of the Flowing Sword Technique. It was the process of creating a new style of swordsmanship. Not everything could be done at once. Emerging from his immersion, Encrid merely understood what he had done. He also understood that he still had to refine what he had achieved today, make it part of his body, and continue building upon it. 'Swordsmanship.'

Aspiring to become a knight or creating a new sword style: both were acts of incomparable madness, and would sound to others like empty, hollow lies.

But so what? When had anyone else's opinion ever mattered? When he emerged from his immersion, the sun was still high in the sky.

'It was only a moment.'

Thinking that, Encrid raised his head. Before him stood the girl-like dwarf, her lips jutting in a pout.

"Hey, I'm a busy woman too."

And the dwarf spoke.