Chapter 294 - The Ferryman Spoke

He was aboard a ferry drifting over dark waters. A violet lamp hung motionless, shining alone, but its light did not reach far. He could barely make out his own hands. Though he had seen this scene often, it felt more sinister today. The ferryman's voice, too, carried greater weight. It seemed to reverberate through his heart and shake his head. Encrid repeated the part that particularly intrigued him.

"Paths?"

Didn't this fellow enjoy watching him suffer before a wall? Now he wanted to tell him something? "Step back and watch. Avoid it, and a path will open."

Normally, letting today pass only made it begin again. Avoidance could not bring him to tomorrow. Yet he was telling him to avoid it? The ferryman's voice grew heavier still.

"Avoid it."

The resonating voice burrowed into his entire body. It felt as though it were churning through his entrails. There was no pain. It was a matter of sensation. No, this was a mental world, so even sensation was the wrong word. It was something mental. Whatever the voice was causing probably wasn't what mattered. Encrid had no doubts about the ferryman. Nor did he doubt his purpose. The ferryman needed to keep him in today. Perhaps that understanding was why a passage from the scriptures Audin recited every day suddenly came to mind.

["The devil always comes in the guise of an angel."] "Avoid it."

Again the ferryman hurled words at him that churned his entrails and scrambled his mind. Then the black river abruptly receded. With the strange experience of opening his eyes once more when they were already open, Encrid greeted another today. The ferryman's words remained etched in his mind more powerfully than ever. This was different. Usually the dreams left only hazy memories, but not this time. It felt as though he had been brainwashed. 'Run away. Turn back. Abandon just one child, and you can easily get through this today. That's enough.'

So that was it. Encrid understood the situation clearly. The ferryman had offered him an easy way past today. He mulled those words over several times and felt the urge to follow them. "Do you really have to go this far?"

He let Krais's slightly altered words pass him by. The ferryman was right. His urges, his desires, and his reason all pointed down the same path. Yet why, at this very moment, did he remember that little girl, hands planted on her hips and chin raised as she chattered?

["I'll still acknowledge you later. Maybe I'll even give you one if I make some famous potion, so you'd better get on my good side."] Normally, his Will, refusal, was supposed to respond only to pressure of the same kind. It could refuse only techniques such as intimidation born of willpower, or the primal fear monsters instilled in humans. Encrid knew this instinctively, yet he murmured inwardly. 'I refuse.'

The "easy path" still echoed in his mind. Reason told him again and again that it was right. Instinct agreed. Even so, Encrid limped to the front of the battlefield.

"... You're going out again today?"

The soldier beside him asked. Tiny scratches covered Encrid's face.

"And tomorrow, too." As he answered, he pulled off his leather helmet and tossed it aside. A helmet narrowed his vision and blocked some of his senses. This time, he would drive his sword in before the spell activated. 'By the fastest route.'

He plotted the path and pictured the movement that would follow it. Wind brushed his cheek. Though it was daytime, the sky was dim, and the wind against his face was bitter. Through that cold, sharp wind, the scents of the battlefield assailed his nose. Blood, iron, excrement, apprehension, terror, excitement, tension. Everything became a smell, interpreted by his brain. His five separate senses merged into one, opening his Sixth Sense. Concentrate on a Single Point activated, setting his brain ablaze and making everything on the battlefield seem slow. Soon, a child came running. He shut out the surrounding sounds. He had no need to hear them. He took in nothing but the child. He had no need to see anything else. What he saw, heard, smelled, and felt blurred together, drawing a single line. Point to point.

'I, too, am a single point.'

He perceived himself as a point and saw the line of the child's approach as another point. The fastest path connecting those two points. He bent his right knee deeply, then straightened it. Though his thigh held no Will, its absurdly rigorous training propelled his body forward at a terrifying speed. At the same time, he extended the sword in his left hand. To the watching soldier, the blade appeared before the human body behind it. The blade, suffused with blue light, sped forward faster than an arrow. That was how it looked to the soldier. Encrid met this today faster than any before it. He saw the child's face. The eyes. The nose. The line of the mouth. Over it, he saw the face of the child who had dreamed of gathering herbs, the child already dead. His sword stabbed toward the child's shoulder. With a minute adjustment, he severed the strap draped over it. Cut in two, it fell loose, and the scrolls swaying against the child's chest poured out light.

He had failed.

* * *

"How foolish."

The ferryman spoke without inflection. No emotion could be read in his voice. Encrid did not answer. He acted as before. He repeated the same today. When did people despair? If told from the outset that something was impossible, they were instead calm. They accepted it. They recognized the end. But what if it seemed almost within reach, yet remained beyond their grasp? That was when despair came. What if, at such a moment, they were shown a side road, subtly offered a shortcut?

The ferryman questioned this being unlike any he had seen since becoming what he was now. Why did this human not give up? Why did this human not lose heart? Why, for what reason, how could he be like this? Questions brought doubt. That doubt prompted the ferryman to make his second offer. Eighty-six todays had passed. "It is too late for regret."

At the abrupt remark, the human named Encrid tilted his head. To express that much emotion in a world within the mind was astonishing, but there was so much astonishing about this human that this barely counted. "But I am generous."

"Generous?"

Even chiming in with a question. It showed how firm his intent and determination were. In a world within the mind, one spoke not with a body, but through determination. His manner of speaking and his attitude were exceedingly disrespectful, but that was fine. The ferryman already knew that, and he knew that playing along could make him look ridiculous as well. He ignored it all and said what he had to say. "I shall grant you one more chance."

"Another?"

Still, those interjections grated. All the more so because his tilted head and furrowed brow seemed mocking. But the ferryman could remain composed, for he had long since transcended humanity. Had he been someone living in the real world, he would have started swearing. But he was different from such humans, was he not? "Keep the one who embodies the wall from approaching. Have them cross the river before they reach your side."

The ferryman maintained his air of gravity. Encrid, still in the same posture, asked,

"River?" The ferryman took a breath, something he ordinarily never did because he had no need. A deep breath. Then he drove the human out. Only after Encrid vanished from the mental realm did he freely express his determination. "Son of a bitch."

A brief but forceful and unmistakable expression of determination. And despite all his urging, despite having thrust his determination into Encrid's mind...

'The son of a bitch will do whatever he likes.'

He sensed that Encrid would defy his intentions. Realizing that, the ferryman laughed without meaning to. "Hah."

It was the first genuine emotion he had shown since becoming the ferryman. A laugh half bemused, half delighted.

* * *

'He keeps spouting bullshit. Is he bored?'

Encrid had always refused to take a detour even when one was available, trampling everything underfoot instead. Naturally, he ignored this offer completely. Only one thought filled his mind.

'Can I be faster than this?'

He connected point to point, his brain burning with concentration until his eyeballs felt ready to pop out. Yet he still failed. Then what was speed? Of the principles of the Oniak Sword Technique, he had thought he had seen plenty of swords embodying swiftness. The answer came suddenly, and easily. "When I picked pockets, I didn't have the fastest hands. But I was the best. My hands might've been a little slow, but I was quick to read people. You just do it when they're not looking. Why try to win with quick hands while they're watching? That's what idiots do." Krais said this as he passed by, after Encrid had sought out Ragna to exchange their fastest sword strikes and then Audin to ask about opening attacks in Balaf-style martial arts. It was an idle remark. Krais had meant little by it. No, what he said next was what he really wanted to say. "The enemy came here knowing all about us. This is like trying to snatch a purse of Krona with quick hands while they're staring straight at you."

He meant that their situation was so bad they needed something to change the odds. Encrid did not answer. No, he could not. Krais's words sent lightning through his mind. 'Outside their awareness.'

Speed was relative. If he revealed his intentions, he was slow no matter how fast he moved. If the enemy knew his intentions, they would prepare. "Huh, there he goes again. You can't hear me, can you? Hey? Enkie, you bastard?"

Krais waved his hands and bounced up and down in front of him, but Encrid heard nothing. He sank into his own world. His mouth hung half open, drool trickling out. Still, his thoughts did not stop. "Enough."

Ragna pulled Krais away. Encrid was breaking through something that had confined his thinking. The enemy's intentions and his own. Humans could convey meaning with a single gesture. Techniques for diverting someone's gaze with a gesture had developed from that. That was how conjuring worked, using sleight of hand rather than magic. Such tricks were common in gambling dens, too. That was the nature of intent. 'Deceive them.'

Intent alone could deceive an opponent. Speed meant acting outside the opponent's awareness. Was this a contest of speed with both sides watching each other in plain sight? No. At least, Encrid did not accept it as one. This wall was about whether he could save the child. He had decided that himself. Therefore, what he needed was illusion swordsmanship or the Artful Sword. The Valen Mercenary Sword Technique had countless such techniques. 'Ah.'

One realization followed another. Lightning struck inside his skull again and again. What was speed? Acting outside the opponent's awareness. Finishing without even showing the opponent a fast sword. The Intentless Stab Jaxon had demonstrated flashed through his mind, and he added something new.

'The dodging sense puts instinct first.' The dodging sense evaded everything that entered the range of his Sixth Sense. What if he layered intent over it? What if he gave instinct a direction? It was a path he had never seen before. Success had seemed so nearly within his grasp. That was why. That was why he had crammed his head with nothing but speed. No. There was more than one path. 'And if I'm fast in absolute terms as well, all the better.'

They said that if you chased two rabbits, you would catch neither. But all the experience he had accumulated, his left arm and speed honed through misjudgment, now showed him the paths both rabbits were running. He felt he could catch them both. Above all, his earlier training with Jaxon helped. Hadn't he practiced using the dodging sense at close range? What had been the point of training by dodging stones? A question needed intent behind it. Training, too, was a process that led toward a result. For Encrid, there was only one result.

'Intent over instinct.' The dodging sense was a dance of instinct. It made his body react to his Sixth Sense and intuition. That was why it was the dodging sense: an art born of the instinct to protect his own body. Encrid twisted that art. 'Imbue it with intent.'

It was a concept that could just as well be called an attacking sense. CRACK.

The psychological shackles the ferryman had planted shattered. An easy wall, seemingly within reach. Yet a wall he could not surmount. The offer made at that moment. All of it was a trap. All of it a prison closing in around him. But Encrid had never set foot anywhere near that prison. He ignored the offer and found a new path, opening it himself. 'Ah.'

At the end of his realization, another today, another battlefield, was already waiting for him. "Today, too..."

"The pain that cannot kill me..."

He stood at the forefront of the battlefield. He cut off the soldier beside him, who asked the same question every day. The soldier met his eyes blankly, then answered.

"Only makes me stronger." The actual saying was that the pain that killed him made him stronger. But he preferred the current chant. Encrid stepped out into the bitter wind. From across the battlefield, a child wrapped in scrolls came running.