Chapter 323 - Knight Jamal

Knight Jamal

Insight had struck like lightning, but putting it into practice was the body's work. When Encrid sprang up at the start of a new today, Krais startled beside him.

"What is it? Sleep paralysis?"

Encrid merely stared into space without answering, so Krais rambled on.

"They say that happens when you're run-down. Just get some proper rest."

"Is that so?"

Only then did Encrid reply absently and turn over his insight. Would it work? It felt as though it would.

That feeling, that Sixth Sense, sent a thrilling heat through his entire body.

"Why does he seem to get worse by the day?"

Krais muttered beside him. Encrid ignored him. After that, he had to invest ten days and then another two. He needed to thoroughly ingrain the sword technique he had grasped within his repeating today. "... What is that?"

Ragna, who helped him through the process, showed a rare moment of surprise.

"What?"

"When did you come up with something like this?"

"It just came to me."

"Talent, is it?"

Ragna muttered to himself. He did not seem particularly curious. Encrid refined his swordsmanship, discussed it with Ragna, and sparred lightly with Sinar using the edges of their hands. The Fairy's hand movements were exceptional. Her ability to read her opponent's intentions, in particular, was... beyond all common sense.

When he asked about it, she answered,

"A Fairy's knack." That, too, was more than worth learning. In fact, Encrid realized he was already using part of that knack.

All that remained was training. That was what he did best.

So he did exactly that, honing his swordsmanship and training over and over. He was just as unhesitating about asking after the Fairy's knack and stealing what he could learn. Though it was hardly fair to call it stealing, when Sinar explained so generously. "We read emotions, so with a slight adjustment, we can do something akin to reading minds. You simply apply that to combat."

Above all, Sinar was a relatively good explainer. Compared with Rem, Ragna, Jaxon, or Audin, she was an angel. An archangel, even.

Audin at least offered something resembling an explanation, but he believed people learned faster through their bodies. In other words, he preferred physical explanations to verbal ones. That was not entirely a blessing for the student. In any case, Encrid practiced repeatedly to ingrain that knack as well, building on Sinar's explanation. The shackles of foreboding helped him again.

Dodging sense meant facing his own instincts squarely. Where did those instincts come from?

From what happened before his eyes. They were a warning born of everything that flashed through his five senses in an instant. That was what Sixth Sense was.

Dodging sense was an evasive technique that used Sixth Sense. What about the Fairy's technique, then?

He could not imitate her race's innate ability to read emotions. Encrid used another means.

It began with his eyes. After learning the Isolation Technique from Audin, he had developed an eye for gauging an opponent's abilities. To that, he added concentration. He regarded the opponent before him as a single point and focused. While keeping his body, forged through the Isolation Technique, ready to move at any moment, he observed his opponent with Concentrate on a Single Point.

Then he honed his sensory arts over and over to a keen edge.

He saw with his eyes and felt with his senses. This was the foundation for stealing and imitating a Fairy's knack. "You, just now..."

When he demonstrated the knack before the Fairy, she was startled. Her expression did not change, but her pupils widened ever so slightly, too little to notice without Concentrate on a Single Point.

Even Encrid marveled that he could see it. It was visible only when he immersed himself more deeply and intensely than before and looked squarely at his opponent.

After learning to spread Concentrate on a Single Point over a broad area, he had now returned to its original form and learned to delve deeper. "I copied you."

"If it were something you could simply copy, we wouldn't call it a racial secret art."

"Is that so?"

"You could show them that knack when you meet my Fairy clan."

"Meet them?"

"You should show your face at least once before we have a child." Fairy society was structured much like a clan society. Encrid had heard that they practiced communal child-rearing, so their village, their homeland itself, was effectively their parents, relatives, and family. "Wouldn't a half-human, half-Fairy child be unhappy?"

"It will be fine. We need only surround the child with love."

Encrid had tried to counter her joke, only to have it turned back on him. He laughed despite himself.

"You smile readily."

Sinar said it upon seeing him laugh. It sounded like she was saying his smile was pleasant to look at. Encrid let it pass without fuss. It was time to focus again. Ultimately, the Fairies' racial secret art allowed them to miss nothing of their opponent's breathing, movements, or even the smallest changes.

A knight was human, too. He was no god, and so he had a tiny opening, a gap as narrow as a thread. Encrid intended to dig into it. 'There's no chance of recovering fully.'

Then he would have to make do with what he had. He decided to compensate for what he lacked with strength.

The Heart of the Superhuman, in other words.

It would be the driving force that pushed his injured body beyond its limits. He could not afford to care about the damage the backlash would cause. Worrying about that shit would never get him through today. Once most of his preparations were complete, Encrid suddenly realized something.

There was no need to drag this today out. No, there was no reason to drag it out.

Was that conceit? Arrogance? Or a delusion?

He did not know. He would not know until he faced it. So he would simply move forward. Encrid passed through his repeating today again and again, and greeted the morning.

Today was the day. The day he would make today into yesterday. As he rose and rubbed his face, Krais asked,

"What's wrong? Not feeling well?"

"Moderately unwell."

"What does moderately unwell even mean?"

"It means I'm moderately sore, but I can move."

"Ah. Right."

Krais tilted his head at the somewhat crazed look in his captain's eyes. Had he taken drugs? Surely not? "I'm going to tomorrow."

Determination blazed more firmly than ever as Encrid muttered to himself.

"Seriously, isn't there a priest anywhere? It's your head, isn't it? You fell headfirst off a cliff while escaping the enemy camp, didn't you?"

Krais made a great fuss. The man really was acting strangely.

"People die when they fall headfirst off cliffs."

Even Sinar's correction did nothing to change the way Krais looked at him. His captain, who should have immediately retorted, kept his mouth shut, moved his body briefly, and lay down again.

It was truly strange.

Krais continued to experience one oddity after another. His captain, who claimed he could move, did not get out of bed. He gave all sorts of orders without so much as lifting a finger. "Seriously, what is this?"

He had said he could move. So why was the Fairy Company Commander spoon-feeding him porridge?

Dunbachel had tried to feed him, too, but she lacked a delicate touch, so Sinar had stepped in. On top of that, he kept ordering Krais around, which was why Krais had answered so sullenly. "I'm resting."

"Yes, and to me it looks like you're resting for dear life. Have you been given a date to die or something? You made it out alive. All that's left is to win, so why are you acting like this? You're making me nervous."

Krais's antenna for foreboding seemed to have activated. Who put this much effort into resting? He was not the sort to act like this unless something was wrong. "I'm training in the art of resting hard."

Encrid shut Krais's mouth with an effortless quip. Eloquence was knowing what to say at the right moment. Encrid's eloquence was superb.

"He's hurt his head and taken drugs. Definitely."

Krais reached his own conclusion. Until sunset, Encrid rested for dear life, just as Krais had said. He was getting his body into the best condition possible.

"Is the sun going down?"

"Huh?"

"Go out and check."

"Yes, it's starting to." After having Krais check the time, Encrid did not rise until just after the sunset glow had faded. Then he began warming his body.

He checked the flexibility of his joints, tensed and relaxed every strand of muscle, and adjusted his equipment and the position of his sword belt. Alongside his physical preparations, he steadied his mind.

He set a single blade upright within it. Everyone stared, wondering what he was doing. No matter how they looked at him, he seemed strange. He had never been normal, but today he was especially peculiar.

Enough that Krais finally asked in earnest,

"Captain, are you really sick?"

Encrid answered with complete sincerity.

"No. I'm going to be in pain."

Even if he succeeded, he doubted he would come out unscathed. RIIIP.

Just before Krais could say anything more, the tent tore open. An ordinary-looking man with brown hair stepped into the opening.

"Sorry about this."

The same routine as always.

"One strike. That's the least decency I can maintain."

Much the same words. He was not asking for their understanding. He had no need to. The words were only for himself. The moment Encrid had been waiting for came next.

He stepped forward first. The enemy's attention turned toward him.

It was time to show what he had been waiting to show.

* * *

"Sir Jamal, I beg you."

"Do you realize you're asking me to tarnish my honor?"

Abnaire had no answer.

"You know this is unacceptable, too? No, of course you know. You know, and you need it done anyway. Is that it?"

The knight Jamal spoke with barbs in his words. Thorns, too. Sharp though they were, Abnaire gritted his teeth. He had no choice but to endure their blows and their pricks. "I beg you."

"This settles the 'favor' I owe you."

"I understand."

Jamal neither frowned nor swore. There was no need. It could no longer be undone, either. That did not mean he was pleased about it. "One strike. I'll swing my sword exactly once and return. You understand that's the most I can do?"

"Yes, I do."

Abnaire bowed his head. Knights were also beings bound by honor. They preserved it through oaths and vows.

Why did they need to do so?

It was not purely a moral conviction that they ought to. Practical considerations played a greater part.

If 'Will' was willpower, how did one preserve it? How did one strengthen it? One knight had sworn to look upon the world through only one eye for the rest of her life. In return, she had gained an eye whose sight no other knight could match.

She was a woman called One-Eyed Ruper. Willpower was invisible. The moment one doubted oneself, that power weakened.

They needed a way to assert something unseen with strength. Shackles to bolster their determination.

Restrictions, vows, oaths.

This was a large part of why those things had become the axis of a knight's existence. Oaths grew stronger through vows. They also clung to honor. The title of knight was forgotten when honor was forsaken. Had anyone who forgot honor ever kept an oath?

Ultimately, honor was a foundation of the 'Will' they had gained through holding true to themselves. One of its foundations. For the sake of honor, the knights had established a rule among themselves:

Knights were to be faced by knights.

Jamal was about to break that rule. Of course, they could not always uphold it in war. Amid the chaos, they even used tactics that involved deliberately plunging into ordinary enemy soldiers. Those were special cases, however.

Some convictions and forms of honor took precedence over the rule that knights should face knights. Loyalty, and another realm of chivalry. But he had to go cut down someone he knew was neither a knight nor prepared to face him.

'I could hardly object if they called me an assassin knight.'

That was why Jamal was reluctant to do this. It was also why he intended to finish it with a single swing. Of course, despite saying that, he would not make some halfhearted swing. He would assess his opponent and strike with precisely enough force to make the blow impossible for them to block.

Distasteful though the work was, it involved a vow.

'At least that will clear one promise forced upon me.'

Had he not known from the start that he would have to do something disagreeable? He took what comfort he could in the fact that it was for Aspen. Jamal stood before the enemy camp's palisade, found a gap in its defenses, and slipped inside. No matter how many sentries they posted, they could not guard everywhere.

Passing unseen by ordinary soldiers was simple for him. He only had to spread his 'Will' to locate the enemy. Once he was inside, it was simpler still. Assimilation.

A technique that used 'Will' to let his presence and existence blend into his surroundings.

Violent movements would disrupt his presence, and it was a mere trick that did not work against other knights. In this situation, however, it could not have been more useful. He could not use his imprinted weapon for work like this, so as he passed an empty tent, Jamal found and picked up a shortsword. It had been woefully neglected.

With it in hand, he surveyed his surroundings. His target was not difficult to find. 'Once. Just once.'

He would put a sincere effort into his swing. His opponent would not be able to block it. Jamal knew that better than anyone.

The words were merely a way of mastering his own heart, bound by restrictions and vows. Without even this concession, his heart would be uneasy, and that unease would hinder the growth of his 'Will.' 'There are no wrong choices.'

He steadied his heart. Honed his willpower.

That was what Jamal did. Now it was time to work. Not all knights were alike. As a proto knight, Jamal had sacrificed much to obtain what he needed. Among those sacrifices had been the taking of a vow.

More bluntly, the relationship was closer to a contract. He would grant what the other party wanted. That was what this task entailed. RIIIP.

He tore through the tent and stepped inside. His gaze moved among the eyes watching him and stopped on one man.

It was a face that would be hard to forget wherever he saw it. Even bearded, with his hair tousled and flattened, the man's face seemed to shine. It was in an entirely different league from Jamal's own ordinary looks. "Sorry about this."

Jamal spoke.

His target, Encrid, showed no surprise in his eyes and said nothing. Instead, he moved his feet.

The movement was not stealthy, but neither was it an open declaration that he intended to charge. It simply bothered Jamal. There was a hint of an intent to attack. Jamal pursued the thought no further. He would simply keep his vow as a knight. Though it was closer to a contract, he did what he had to do.

He also told them that one strike would suffice. He had explained their chance of escape. In his heart, he swore that if even one of them blocked his sword, he would turn away.

It was a knight's oath. Then Jamal decided to begin by cleaving the heart of the radiant-faced target before him. He intended to aim only for their hearts, all of them. Leaving their faces intact would be a kindness to their acquaintances and comrades. As his heart stirred, his determination rose. As his determination rose, his body moved.

The ill-maintained shortsword emerged in the knight's hand. CLINK, TIK!

Even the sound of its draw lacked grace, but that would make no difference.

So Jamal thought.