Chapter 279 - Black Blade Is Good at Scheming (1)

"Throw."

Jaxon's hand moved the instant Encrid spoke. There was no time to concern himself with the sound of it cutting through the air. Standing seven paces ahead, the reddish-brown-haired Sneaky alley cat threw a stone. What had looked like a dot swelled before Encrid's eyes. As his concentration sharpened, he perceived the incoming stone's trajectory. The moment he twisted aside to avoid it, he spotted another stone in his path. Jaxon was staggering his throws to occupy different spaces. Encrid's body twisted unconsciously. Pivoting on his left foot, he drew back to the right while twisting his waist the opposite way. His body contorted into a truly bizarre shape. Using the snap of his waist for momentum, he ducked his head and rolled forward, evading every stone. "Weren't you supposed to dodge without leaving your spot?"

The indifferent question reached his ears.

"I will eventually." Even if he could not do it now, repetition would get him there. He did not need to see the future to know that. Keep walking, and he would pass the milestones and reach his destination. He had proved it with his body and learned it through his life.

Encrid answered calmly, rose, and brushed the dust off himself. The rising sun was breaking apart the blue light of dawn, turning it orange and yellow. It was early morning, when everyone was waking. As though by prior arrangement, the Company members had all come out to watch Encrid and Jaxon. Each had a different look in their eyes. Bundled tightly in warming fur, Rem's eyes seemed to ask whether raising hell at dawn in this cold was some custom from Encrid's hometown. Audin wore a pleased smile. Ragna watched indifferently, rotating his wrists. Teresa was absent, on duty. Dunbachel looked from Rem to Encrid, then shook her head to herself. She wanted to try what Encrid was doing, but asking Rem to help seemed likely to end with him throwing a boulder and cracking her skull. Ignoring their eyes, Encrid sank into his thoughts. These were thoughts he had mulled over for two full months of walking, running, and fighting.

'Dodging sense is a reflex that operates in the unconscious mind.' Sight, hearing, touch, taste, and smell were the five senses. Sixth Sense crushed those five into one, arriving at a conclusion before one could grasp the process. Intuition meant understanding without going through sensation, experience, association, judgment, or deduction. Dodging sense was a technique born of intuition within the realm of Sixth Sense.

Until now, he had thought that alone was enough. 'No.'

Thinking things through was Encrid's habit, his everything. He had thought it through and seen the road ahead. As always, it was a path of thorns. A rough, treacherous path. A climb up a rock face.

Even so, he would enjoy every step. 'In the conscious mind.'

Read every incoming stone's trajectory, dodge, and add deliberate movements. Those would be his 'preparations' for the movement that followed. What he had learned from Nameless's Righteous Sword Technique, what experience had taught him, and what watching Jaxon's preparations had revealed—this was the conclusion he had drawn from all of it. "Again."

His aim was to dodge every stone thrown at close range without leaving his spot, achieving the reaction speed he intended. Of course, this was not all he did. Once it was over, Audin was next. "You enjoy hardship, brother."

"Why are you grinning so broadly when you say that?"

"Why, because the Lord said that one cannot speak of hardship without first walking its path." Encrid interpreted the words of this hulking, muscle-headed religious zealot in his own way. In other words, it sounded like he was delighted to have permission to half kill Encrid with training.

Encrid smiled back. If the path of hardship bore fruit at its end, he would be satisfied whether it was sour or sweet. To a man who had kept walking in place without stopping, even the smallest yield would be precious. Sweet or sour, fruit was fruit.

That, in turn, delighted Audin. He had put it indirectly, but here was Encrid smiling even after being told he would be half killed. "Let's begin."

Audin taught Encrid how to strengthen individual parts of his body. It was an advanced practice even within the Isolation Technique, a true path of hardship. Previously, he had worked on flexibility by isolating and stretching the body joint by joint. This time, he would train its different parts separately. He divided the day into three: upper body in the morning, lower body at midday, and hunting down hidden muscles to torment in the evening.

"Some muscles are easy to feel and see, but others are not visible. In the Isolation Technique, we call these deep muscles. Here, for instance."

As he spoke, Audin jabbed a finger into Encrid's waist. Terrible pain spread from his waist through his entire body, as though knives were stabbing him all over. "Ngh."

It hurt enough to draw an involuntary groan.

"Precisely. Those are the muscles we will train."

This came after the regenerative body.

"The hardened body." From deep muscles to surface muscles, he trained them with something close to abuse. He put himself through the wringer, over and over.

"Normally, this would take years of effort, but you may be a genius at building your body, Brother Company Commander. Physical training is also a matter of talent. Many people don't realize that. I must add, it is quite mysterious. Your physical talents were plainly meager as well, yet look at you now. I believe this is a talent my eyes cannot see." Less than half of Audin's running commentary reached his ears. With three boulders lashed together on his back, repeatedly squatting on one leg and standing again, he could hardly hear anything around him.

Sweat streamed down his body. What was winter weather against the passion for training? "Excellent."

Audin smiled, and Encrid smiled back. Just because it was hellish did not mean it was bad. This had its own pleasures. Every exercise was extreme. He would do the beast walk with boulders or Audin on his back, for instance. To develop ankle flexibility, he would stand on one leg with a boulder on his back and pick copper coins and the like off the ground. He repeated all of it dozens, hundreds of times. It was agonizing, breathless, difficult work. His concentration could not waver, either. Nor would it yield results overnight, so it could easily have been tedious. Still, he did it. What would remain of Encrid without perseverance?

Besides, he did not find it tedious at all. "I'm doing it too!"

Dunbachel jumped in beside him, only to turn blue after fifty round trips of the beast walk—an Isolation Technique exercise that trained the muscles by using the hands as feet. Yet even with sweat dripping off her onto the ground, she doggedly saw it through. Whenever things grew difficult, she would stare intently at Encrid a few times with a deeply strange look in her eyes, but it was nothing he needed to concern himself with. He was busy reviewing and refining his own training. Pushing his body again and again became his daily life. But even as he did so, he could not neglect the sword. The first move of the Flowing Sword Technique: striking gently did not make a blade any less a blade. He polished the swordsmanship he had eventually, rather casually, named Snake Sword. Next came Nameless's Righteous Sword Technique. Then he returned to the Heavy Sword Technique, before finally pondering speed and the Artful Sword. He honed what he had, searched, yearned, and repeated it all countless times. "Rem!"

He never neglected putting what he had learned and understood into physical practice against Rem, either.

"Goddamn it, am I some combat puppet that fights whenever you call? You're treating me like a human golem." Encrid was startled. Deep down, that was halfway how he thought of Rem. Could he read minds?

"If you don't want to, move aside."

Ragna, who had been watching quietly from beside them, spoke as he sharpened his sword with a whetstone. SHING, TING!

Seeing him maintain his sword, unlike before, felt rather like watching a child finally grow up. "Fuck off, you lazy weasel, before I split your skull with my axe."

Rem immediately turned and glared. Business as usual.

"Yes, the edge is nice and sharp now. A little barbarian blood would suit it nicely."

Ragna took hold of his sword and started to rise. By the look of them, they were about to have it out. "You can both come at me."

Encrid provoked them both. Rem and Ragna turned their eyes back to him. Rem blinked, and Ragna sat back down. SHING.

He resumed sharpening his blade. It had been only one sentence, but it was an excellent way to break up a fight.

"You beat him up," Ragna said from his seat.

"Gladly." Rem approached, tapping the back of his axe against his palm. Ragna rose with his sword, took a spot on one side of the training ground, and began swinging it. Sometimes slowly, sometimes quickly. Encrid gave him a glance, then silently raised his sword. Wrapping both hands around the grip, he concentrated, trying to read Rem. Sword against sword, blade against blade.

Cold air divided them. Their very first spar, long ago, had been a whim for Rem, not even enough to count as a diversion. Later, his axe had carried a touch of playfulness.

And now?

Even Rem could not afford to take Encrid lightly. 'A monster. That's what he is.'

That was Rem's private assessment. No word fit better for someone who had broken through the limits of talent with effort. Which made this all the more entertaining. At first, he had only meant to watch and see when the man would break. Yet somewhere along the way, he had become a member of this man's Company. His genuine subordinate, it seemed.

'The people back home would be horrified.'

For a moment, Rem remembered the past—or, more precisely, what he had left behind at home. Then he forgot it, sending the thoughts fluttering out of his head. What did any of that matter? He moved both hands, crossing his axes. The blades met and exchanged a light greeting.

CLANG.

At the sound of the crossed axes, Encrid moved. He bent forward and kicked off the ground, rushing in at once. Rem's eyes took it all in. Boldness welled up around his heart, allowing him to look his opponent squarely in the face. His ability to track movement was on an entirely different level from an ordinary person's.

Rem turned his left foot and drove out an axe. WHOOSH!

Normally, even a block would not have stopped this flash of a slash from cutting through sword, forearm, and torso alike. It was a heavy flash, speed added to weight, but Encrid caught and deflected it with his sword. Yet he had failed to take another half step forward, so even after diverting the axe, he could not send his sword out ahead. Snake Sword had been thwarted.

Rem swung his second axe. Two cuts. It was a technique he trusted.

And Encrid blocked the second axe as well. The instant Rem realized it, delight filled him.

"That's more like it!"

The warming hide that had remained draped over his back until then went flying behind him. With both arms bare, Rem bared his canines in a broad grin. Having deflected both slashes, Encrid faced him with his sword raised. Naturally, he was smiling too.

To an onlooker, they were utterly mad. Why smile while fighting as though they meant to kill each other? At any rate, this had been Encrid's routine of late. Since returning, he had devoted himself entirely to training, sparring, and conditioning. He was not even fulfilling his duties as training company commander. Before he could offer being busy as an excuse, the scouts had needed reorganizing, and the number of troops on duty had doubled. The situation around them was that grim. They could not go running outside for training or head out to kill demonic beasts and monsters. Naturally, commissions had stopped too. But they could not bar traveling merchants or large trading companies. The territory was still in the process of becoming a center of trade. All of that might now go up in a single blaze, but this was the best they could do for the moment.

In short, Marcus was pulling every string he could to contain the crisis. Encrid paid no mind to either Viscount Tarnin or Black Blade. He had decided what he needed to do, and did it. He moved. He acted. When the time came to step forward, he would. He felt that time was not now.

Marcus would have been dumbfounded to hear it, but in truth, Encrid's involvement would not have changed anything. This was the right course. About fifteen days passed like that.

"Same as ever."

Marcus came to see Encrid at the private training ground in front of the Independent Company's barracks. Snow poured down overhead, the kind of weather that made soldiers curse. Left alone, it would turn the ground to ice and become even harder to clear, so they would be sighing deeply at the falling snow. They had put up pillars and something resembling a roof along one side of the training ground. Half leaning against the central pillar, Marcus gave a bitter smile.

"They got me good." "What do you mean, sir?"

"I'm going back."

Encrid stared, wondering what he meant. Marcus sighed and continued.

"To the center. The capital." All of a sudden? Encrid had ears too. He knew the situation around them had gone to hell. Without reinforcements, they were becoming a feeble lamp exposed to the wind. Not that this feeble lamp would go out easily, of course. And Marcus was pulling out now? No, he had said they had gotten him. That could not be it. He was not withdrawing of his own accord. Someone had applied pressure.

"The First Company Commander will succeed me as lord." Encrid let out a breath of white mist and lowered the iron club he had coaxed and begged the blacksmith into making, as heavy as ten swords. It was an excellent training tool: swinging it naturally built strength in his forearms and arms, even his waist. Of course, it also helped train his swordsmanship, a way to instill greater precision in his body. At the resounding thud, Marcus glanced down. The blunt sword tip had lodged at an angle in the hard-frozen earth.

What was that thing? Marcus was reminded of just how much of a monster this man was. Just then, Krais poked his head out of the quarters.

"Oh, Battalion Commander, sir."

He opened the door and offered something resembling a salute. His movements were far too sloppy to look like anything more than an approximation. "None of that."

Marcus waved him off. Encrid brought his hands together, resting one over the other on the grip.

"A smoke?" Marcus asked.

"I don't smoke." Marcus put a cigarette between his lips. Just as he was wondering whether to strike a flint, Krais scurried over and offered a small flame. Marcus lit the cigarette, took a deep drag, and exhaled. White smoke mingled with his misty breath and spread through the air, its acrid scent stinging the nose. It was a cigarette made from tightly rolled leaves, and the smell was far from pleasant.

What he said afterward was simple and clear.