Chapter 313 - Slipping Through the Grip

Slipping through the grip. Some things are darkness until understood, and light once you understand them. He had grasped it. Recognized it. And so he had seen a path made of light. In an earlier today, he had placed intent above his dodging sense. That had been the best way to save the child. This time, he had to blend intuition with intent. 'The idea that I have to win through force.'

That was a narrow view. He would discard it. A wall could take any form. Swords and spears were not the only things imprisoning him in today. Of course, swords and spears were the immediate weapons, the physical things that had sliced through his flesh and bone. But were they everything? Were they the only things of substance? What truly imprisoned him was a strategist's mind. He had been dancing in the palm of that man's hand. 'Then where do I start?'

Waking to yet another repeated today, Encrid had one task: work out how to struggle free of this day. The answer lay among things he had already experienced. Encrid admitted he was not all that clever, having only just realized this. It felt as though he were repeating the same mistake. Before, the ferryman's words had misled him and narrowed his vision. This time, without the ferryman's help, he would not have seen the true wall beyond the false one. No, it would simply have taken longer. Was that a problem? No. In truth, even without the ferryman's help, even if he had to repeat this today dozens or hundreds more times, he would have done it. He would have struggled for as long as it took. He would never have known surrender. In the end, he would have overcome it. Suddenly, he wanted to see the little herb gatherer. The child he had saved. He had received the mother's thanks but had not seen the child. Had those words been blurted out in the heat of the moment? Or did the child truly want to make a living gathering herbs? What was your dream? Wasn't even the question strange? To live in a world like this and speak of dreams might be a luxury, and yet... "It's fun."

Still, he would speak of them. Still, he would ask. He rose, murmuring to himself, and immediately spotted enemy soldiers. Unlike on other todays, he had slept late. "Here—!"

The man never finished. Encrid rushed over in an instant and clamped a hand around his mouth. The soldier beside him shouted instead.

"Ambush!" Not an ambush. You were the ones who came while I was sleeping peacefully. With that thought, Encrid wrenched the soldier's jaw out of place and pulled. He felt the joint pop through his fingers. A feat worthy of Audin now came naturally to him. Through the repeated todays, the techniques his body had learned had become supremely clean and practiced. "Ngh!"

The soldier resisted, swinging a fist even with his face caught. Encrid caught the incoming wrist and twisted it, then whirled around to seize the man from behind. CRACK.

Bones ground out of alignment in the wrist he held. "Ghhgh!"

With his jaw dislocated, the soldier could not even scream. Drool streamed from his mouth. Naturally, his face had gone deathly pale. Would taking a hostage work? He had already tried. It wouldn't. "Fire!"

As expected, it didn't. THRUM-THRUM-THRUM!

Dozens of bolts flew toward him. Encrid hurled the soldier forward and threw himself sideways. THUD-THUD-THUD!

A dozen or so bolts buried themselves in the soldier with the dislocated jaw. He fell, drooling, and died. Encrid drew his sword as he leaped. Another enemy soldier stood wide-eyed where he landed to the side. He swung at once. A blue streak traced a short semicircle. WHOOSH! CRACK!

A cut to the crown delivered as a snapping strike split helmet and skull together. It was like an orange cleaved in two with the peel still attached. The only difference was that the contents were brains and blood instead of fruit. Blood burst out and splashed his face. Encrid paid it no mind. Instead, he sharpened his dodging sense, his intuition, and his blade of Sixth Sense. He had experienced this before. There had been a similar today. At least, that was how it felt to him. Beneath the cobbler's house in Border Guard's market, where a mage had been staying. That was the today. 'Nothing but instinct.'

He had needed to sense spell traps through instinct alone. The scale was greater now, and the circumstances different, but he was no longer the man he had been then. He was very different indeed. Was it thanks to the ferryman's advice? Or had he simply been lucky? Encrid had learned one thing but realized two. There was something else worth adding to intuition and Sixth Sense. 'I need force too.'

Simply unraveling the enemy's strategy was not enough. Understanding it and evading it was not the end. He had to add force to the equation. That was the answer. With his dodging sense honed, Encrid let foreboding wash through his entire body. He instinctively factored in his own fighting strength as well. 'Here.'

Encrid began to move. After that, he died six more times. As always, he did not waste a single day. Even so, he needed seven more todays. Even that was only possible because he had already lived through nearly four hundred todays. He had seen every measure the enemy strategist had prepared at least once. He could not understand how they coordinated their movements. He did not know what military doctrine they were using. He relied entirely on Sixth Sense and intuition, judging by instinct. His decisions rested not on reason but on the sensations that came to him in the moment. He sensed foreboding and gauged its severity. Wherever he found the slightest opening, he broke through. Disguising himself as an enemy soldier was pointless. Hiding was even more so. Once that damned shaman appeared, he found Encrid no matter how well he hid. And if hostages were useless too... 'As always.'

He simply had to win his way through with his own arms and legs. Burns remained on his back, and he had not fully recovered from the blows taken in earlier fighting. His body still bore the effects of yesterday's battle, which now felt impossibly long ago, but... "This is driving me crazy."

The words escaped him unbidden. To walk because he could see the path. Every fine hair on his body stood on end. It was electrifying. He was so happy he could die. So excited he could go mad. Taking a step forward did not necessarily mean growing stronger in combat. The exhilaration of progress, of growth itself, raced through his body. Now that he understood, he could only rejoice. "After him!"

This was the result of all he had endured. Beginning today full of certainty, Encrid had decided his opening move: travel through the trees and scour his surroundings for his target. It was not easy to find. "There he is!"

They pursued him.

"Where do you think you're going!"

He planted a foot on an approaching soldier's head and split the head of the archer beside him with his sword. Fighting without hesitation, searching and enduring, he finally saw his target. "Hup!"

The shaman. The instant they met, an invisible shock wave swept toward Encrid. His dodging sense activated, and he saw the spell the man had cast. He caught it not with his eyes but with his senses, thanks to a sense for the blade honed so keenly it seemed it might snap. He had seen this perhaps once or twice before: the blade of Sixth Sense took visual form, revealing exactly what the enemy had done. Having precisely sensed the approaching formless pressure, bending at the waist with barely a moment to spare was easy. He ducked low beneath the shaman's attack. The man did not stop there. His lips moved. But the moment Encrid ducked, he was already putting strength into his toes. He compressed that strength beneath his feet. The frozen earth sank slightly under him. The 'Will' of the Instant erupted. BOOM!

He burst the ground apart and charged. As he kicked off, earth fountained upward. Fragments of shattered stone sprayed in every direction. It was a charge worthy of being called superhuman strength. He no longer had any reason to envy the charge of the proto knight he had once seen. Everything around him rushed backward. He slashed with the gladius as he raced forward. Relaxation, contraction, explosion. Following the force of his push-off, he twisted his waist muscles and carried that power into his sword. The Heavy Sword Technique's Steel Cut cleaved the shaman's torso. BOOM!

The sword stroke cracked like an explosion. The shaman's upper body burst upward, driven by the slash that followed Encrid's tremendous speed. The strike was not yet fully refined, but its power was tremendous. 'That's one.'

This was the beginning. The shaman brought foreboding at every stage. There could be no next step until this man was gone. So this part called for force. Next... Amid the foreboding closing in from all sides, Encrid stepped toward the place where it was least severe. To the enemy soldiers, it looked half-mad. He seemed to be deliberately running toward a firmly entrenched line of heavy infantry. Anyone charging toward the densest concentration of soldiers would look like a lunatic. "Stop him!"

The commander's cry split today's sky. A today that some would live only once. A today that someone else had lived hundreds of times.

* * *

"Nilf, report!" Abnaire had driven Encrid into a corner. In truth, he had. He had killed him hundreds of times. But to a man who repeated today, death was only a chance deferred. Of course, Encrid had nearly been trapped. That was how vicious Abnaire's snare was: an unseen dagger that had somehow lodged in his heart. Even so, there would always be people who pulled it out and pressed on. "Not good. Even a loach couldn't slip free like this. He moves as though he knows everything we've prepared."

Reports of Encrid's position were coming in as it changed. That was how serious Abnaire was about killing the man. The space between Abnaire's brows twitched, a habit of his when things were not going his way. His fingers tapped his thigh. Anxiety? No. It was a gesture of concentration. He had no intention whatsoever of letting his quarry escape. "Keep pressing him. Do not let him get away. What about the Gray Hounds?" "They're pursuing him. He keeps weaving through astonishingly dense ranks of soldiers, which threw them off." 'Does he know what he's doing?'

Was that possible? When a vast force pursued you, naturally you moved toward an opening. Your feet carried you wherever you saw a gap. It was human instinct. Abnaire had commanded accordingly. He left tiny openings and stationed the Gray Hounds there, along with the mages and the shaman. Pieces lay scattered across the raised board. He swiftly rearranged them. 'What if he's worked out our tactics and is moving to counter them?'

Then Abnaire could reverse his own movements. Originally, he had stationed the Hurrier family's swordsmen and the others where the ranks were thinner. Now he would do the opposite. He moved them all, sending them after Encrid. 'You are not a knight.'

Therefore, he could not break through a wall of a thousand soldiers alone. And what about the places where the engineering unit had built stone walls? The cliffs? The traps concealed in between? They had dug more than eighty pits alone. That slow advance had not been for nothing. BANG!

Abnaire slammed his hand onto the board.

"After all this, surely we can't let him escape?" Foreboding was an ability everyone possessed. Encrid's Sixth Sense and intuition were closer to premonition than reason. He had not worked out Abnaire's intentions. 'Something bad will happen if I go this way, won't it?'

He moved on thoughts as simple and crude as that. And that was what confused Abnaire. Time passed, and reports continued.

"He's falling back again." What was he doing now? They had prepared a trap for him now that he had reached the perimeter, yet he was suddenly returning to the center? He was already outside the spell's range, so he should have roughly regained his bearings. Yet they said he was heading back to the original encirclement. Of course, it had been a trap. Everything was ready to catch him if he kept charging ahead. But how did he know to pull back? "Injuries?"

"He took two quarrels in the back."

"Poison?"

"They weren't coated." He had issued poisoned arrows to selected marksmen, but not to every archer.

'Did he knowingly take those hits?'

Had he deliberately avoided the dangerous arrows? 'That's delusional.'

An exaggerated conjecture. An empty fantasy. No human could discern all of that. 'Or has he really become a knight?'

No, that was not it either. Judging by the reports, his skill had clearly improved yet again since yesterday, but he was not a knight. And still, they could not catch him. Abnaire had plainly placed him in his palm and closed his hand, yet he could not hold him. The man slipped between his fingers as though coated in oil. How was this possible? The next report left Abnaire even more incredulous.

"Commander."

Nilf's voice was urgent.

"Speak." After hearing the report, Abnaire lost his smile. That bastard Encrid had been trapped in his palm, yet he had pried his way out. But this was not the end. He still had measures in reserve. "What about Galaf and the proto knight?"

"I've sent a messenger."

"Tell them to come at once!" Galaf was a mage he had spent a fortune in gold coins to summon. And gold was not all he had spent. He had made any number of promises for this operation. He had even secured the king's permission to borrow the services of that precious man. Still, Abnaire was the commander here. Galaf would come when summoned. That was their agreement. He could not simply send his apprentices and wash his hands of the matter. Galaf and the proto knight. They were the second barrier he had prepared in case Encrid escaped this place. Of course, until then, each had work of his own to do. Abnaire possessed an exceptional mind. He was clever and quick-witted. He did not leave his forces idle. Nor was that all: he had looked ahead to the future after killing Encrid and that handful of elites. 'Turn everything around.'

Change the course of the battlefield. Reverse it. Turn defeat into victory. That would happen if everyone did their part. Such was Abnaire's intention. "Call in the assassination unit too!"

After Galaf and the proto knight, he would use everything he had prepared. His resolve was firm. But not everything in the world went as one wished.

* * *

'Every direction feels ominous.'

Even so, there was a path. It barely qualified as an opening, but what did it matter if the gap was small? He could force it wider. He would employ force even as he sensed foreboding. Encrid deliberately targeted a stone wall. He swung his gladius at the man-made barrier the enemy soldiers had built. 'This much won't break it, will it?'

The dwarf who had handed him the sword had not seemed particularly confident, but Encrid was fairly certain: in sheer sturdiness, the gladius in his hand was the best sword he had ever used. BANG!

He struck with the flat, not the edge. Part of the stone wall broke. He kicked at it and pulled stones out by hand. Meanwhile, as archers closed in, he dodged some of their arrows and endured others with his body. He did exactly as his intuition told him. This was better than trying to dodge them all. Hadn't a week of failure taught him that? And so it proved. Glancing sideways, he saw several Fairies with longbows and poisoned arrows. Had he hastily dodged away, he would have acquired a few more arrow decorations. They were quick on their feet too, making them a nuisance to chase. Besides, that direction felt deeply ominous. Hundreds of todays, hundreds of deaths. Everything he had gathered and learned from them helped supply an intuitive answer. It was a tower built from experience, the source of the intuition that sensed foreboding. Encrid struck the stone wall again.

BANG!

A second explosive report rang out. Stones clattered down. Having made a gap he could barely squeeze through lying flat, Encrid struck the man-made wall again and again. More enemies converged in the meantime, but at last he found an opening. The poorly built wall's outer edge collapsed with a roar where it met the precipice. This was what had just made Abnaire think Encrid had pried his way out of his palm. Dust rose as the wall collapsed. The northern winter had brought one dry, warm day after another. Soon, dust obscured everyone's vision. "Mages!"

Leblanc Hurrier shouted. He had just lost two companions. Only two of the four mages had survived as well. That fight had been strange too. With just a little more effort, Encrid could have killed the remaining two mages, yet he had withdrawn. Of course, had he hesitated then, they would certainly have caught him from behind. But how could he have decided to pull back at that exact moment? Amid the dust raised by the collapsing wall, Encrid's eyes shone blue, brilliantly blue. His senses linked one after another, and his dodging sense was opening a new path for him. In other words,

'I can see the path.' His five senses mingled, blurred, and merged, taking visible form. An illusory line appeared clearly before his eyes. A path made of blue light. A path that would bring this very long today to an end.