Chapter 367 - The Hard Stone Has Brains, Too

Moonlight shone brightly over the city. That meant the Moonlight Beast could appear at any moment, yet Encrid did not run. He merely walked at a comfortable pace, his footfalls tapping along the street. As he walked, occasionally looking around, some residents lighting the lamps atop their poles greeted him. "Where are you off to?" one asked, glancing behind Encrid. "A nighttime stroll."

His answer was nonchalant. "I'm telling you, it's dangerous."

They spoke with easy familiarity. Aesia's gaze flicked between them. When had they become so friendly? Encrid whispered casually, "He's a fruit seller. Says his daughter's marriage prospects have been giving him headaches lately. She's fallen for some layabout with a pretty face who fools around with all sorts of women." "... How do you even know that?"

"It came up while we were talking." Putting people at ease was one of Aesia's own specialties, but...

'Even I don't think I could manage that.' As they walked on, Encrid spoke.

"Jaxon."

"I'll locate it immediately if there's a disturbance." At that, Aesia glanced at the man named Jaxon. He was exactly her type. Those nearly closed eyes, that neat mouth. His looks alone would leave plenty of women in tears. She also had a fair idea of what he could do. 'His senses are exceptional.' For three days, they had done nothing but eat, sleep, drink, fight, and spar. It had been an intensely enjoyable time for Aesia, too. Hadn't Luagarne said that Encrid was surrounded by monsters? Coming from a Frog's eyes, that assessment was bound to be accurate. She had known it already, but experiencing it firsthand had brought the words home. They were all monsters. How would she sum up Jaxon's fighting in a single word?

'Calculation.' Despite saying he would sit out, Jaxon had eventually taken up his sword a few times. Their bouts hadn't put half their lives on the line like her first match with Encrid, but they had crossed blades. And crossing blades had told her a great deal. He fought by watching movements, calculating, and predicting. He took everything into his head and looked ahead to what came next. His keen senses made that possible. The quality of his sight and hearing was extraordinary. Becoming a proto knight meant training all five senses, too. Was any part of the road to knighthood easy? As a member of the knight order, Aesia trained those faculties as well. Even so, there was something exceptional about Jaxon's senses. ["If you want to move a step ahead, you first have to know where your opponent's feet will go."]

Her master's words came back to her. That was precisely what Jaxon did. He anticipated her sword and moved first. She hadn't even managed to properly use her specialty, Point Aim. Before she could begin the technique, his sword invariably came at her, on exactly the right trajectory to disrupt her stance. Or he would strike the flat of her blade and knock it off course. 'He's exceptionally skilled.' Of course, she would win if they fought in earnest. His observation and prediction were excellent, but the pressure emanating from his longsword was not particularly impressive. Not that this made the longsword any less deadly. 'I can take him.'

That was Aesia's assessment. If Jaxon was calculation, Ragna seemed to be instinct made flesh. The problem was that whatever this instinct-driven monster felt like doing tended to be the right answer, the right course. 'This bastard.'

His sword resembled that of the bastard who had dealt her a bitter defeat and forced her to reflect on her past. Talent, in other words. A monster made entirely of talent. A calculating monster, and a monster of pure talent. Aesia hadn't managed to beat Ragna even once. ["What is that?"]

["A fast, heavy sword."]

She had blurted out the question, and that was his answer. A fast, heavy sword, he said. What a load of fucking bullshit. It was easy to say. Making it happen was a matter of talent. It was beyond Aesia's reach. Jealousy would have been natural, but she would never have reached her present level if she let such feelings consume her. ["Does someone else's loaf look bigger? There are plenty of bastards with better techniques than you. They're everywhere."]

Her master's teachings came back to her again. That was how much insight these bouts had given her. 'What I have is excellent, too.'

Her opponent's skills might look impressive, but she simply had to beat them with her own. She had far too much of her own to blame her talent, accept her limits, and retreat. 'If the heart crumbles, determination crumbles. If determination crumbles, so does the sword.'

Repeating it like an incantation kept her jealousy as nothing more than a spur. That was Aesia's secret to improving. Looking at Rem in that frame of mind, she could only wonder...

'Is he a crazy bastard or a crazy genius?'

Both. If Jaxon was calculation and Ragna was pure talent armed with instinct, Rem was...

["How's that? Can't block it, can you?"]

Fun. The bastard lived for fun. His techniques had no fixed form. More than half were improvised on the spot. It was much the same when he showed his established skills. Unpredictable and violent. He charged in, ignoring minor wounds. Ragna improvised a great deal, too, but this was something different. It was purely for fun. He fought for his own enjoyment. Naturally, talent made this possible as well. Rem added his experience to the mix. Making absurd movements work, a barbarian who did it all for fun. That was Rem. ["How's that?"]

The best example was the technique he had used to break her Point Aim. What should she call it? Axe-Edge Aim? Axe-Edge Screen? He had screened her sword point with his axe blade. That smothered the pressure directed from her point. Erased it. A bold, peculiar move. And when he closed the distance like that, well...

'It was frightening.' A madman was more frightening than a violent man. This mad barbarian looked as though he would calmly accept a blade in his body if it brought him pleasure and amusement. Did that make Rem the most intriguing of them?

No.

There was still Encrid. 'He never stops amazing me.'

Peculiar, endlessly peculiar. Aesia could not look at Encrid without thinking how peculiar he was. 'Like a lump of stone made by carefully trampling and compressing it.'

His fundamentals went beyond solid. They were hard. Yet he did not lack flexibility. His swordsmanship seemed to have been forged through tens, hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands of repetitions of the basics, until they adhered perfectly to his body. How could she put it? It was as though he had repeated the beginning tens, hundreds, thousands of times to make an earthenware vessel that could never break. It was utterly fascinating. Normally, people played to their strengths. They built upon their fundamentals. That was how most honed their swords: learning physical techniques, expanding their skills, making them their own.

'With talent as the foundation.' But Encrid was the opposite. He could not move on without properly understanding each and every part. Talent had not brought him along this road. His sword seemed to have forced its way through by revisiting and digging into every fundamental. A man who had hit his limits again and again, yet ultimately climbed over them, broken through, and moved on. That was how he appeared. Limits ate away at people. They eroded determination. They brought the word surrender to mind and gave despair in return.

'He overcame all of that?' Surely not. She must be imagining things. Then how had he reached his present level? That was what she found so endlessly fascinating. Whatever else she didn't know, she understood one thing.

'It must be built on that relentless drive to improve, to move forward no matter what it takes.' Just watching him brought the word relentless to her lips. A relentless madness that made him smile even on the verge of death. Even while sparring with her, he hadn't stopped conditioning his body. She had been left shaking her head when she saw him have the Beastman named Dunbachel pound his sides with things like rocks. Even the knight order had no such training. She had once seen a priest break stones with his palm as a form of spiritual discipline. It reminded her of that. Every time Encrid trained, she glimpsed a kind of quiet madness. The Beastman's skill and talent were unusual as well. Did that make her exceptional? Aesia couldn't say. But she was curious. Where had he found all these people? Had she known it all began with Border Guard's former Battalion Commander throwing them together and leaving them to live or die as they pleased—the same man now watching his step and juggling allegiances in the palace—even Aesia would have been unable to hide her disbelief. In any case, no one could dispute that they were a fascinating bunch. As she walked, sorting through her thoughts, they reached a place where alleyways branched out in every direction. "Let's split up here," Encrid said beside her. Darkness pooled throughout the area. It bordered the slums, and criminal guilds had made their nests here as well. "Here?" Aesia asked.

"Here," Encrid replied.

"Why?"

"I'll explain as we go." "Only Aesia comes with me. Ragna, go with Dunbachel. Jaxon and Rem, go separately." Putting those two together invited trouble. Aesia had known them only a few days, but even she knew that. And Ragna could get lost just taking a stroll around the mansion. "Whoever lets it get away's a fucking idiot, a fucking loser, a fucking moron."

Rem hummed his even stranger lyrics to a strange tune as he entered an alley. "Well, then."

Encrid moved first. He seemed about to enter an alley, only to catch hold of a wall and climb up. Some roofs were flimsy constructions of wood and straw, but others had been finished with solid plaster. As life within city walls had developed, houses had generally been packed tightly together outside the wealthier districts. Their roofs adjoined as a result, making it quite possible to run across them with a good sense of balance. A few buildings stood tall enough that a fall could break several bones, but Encrid didn't climb that high. He merely settled on a reasonably sturdy rooftop. "Why here?" Aesia asked again. She simply wanted to know. This wasn't part of her duties—or the knight order's, for that matter. Nor did it fall within the oath she had chosen for herself. But a job was a job. Better to succeed than fail. Leaving the creature alone would only mean more deaths, so they needed to deal with it for the citizens' safety as well. That was why she asked. She needed to understand if she was to respond properly. "Understanding its habits makes it easier to understand your opponent," Encrid said. As he went on to explain, Aesia found herself nodding again and again. "Appearing only on moonlit nights means it's like a madness it can't control through its own determination." That made sense. Like madness, it was beyond control, and that lack of control left traces. "If it had perfect control over itself, it wouldn't have caused all this commotion." That was sound reasoning, too, for the same reason. What would Aesia do if she had to kill someone in secret? She would choose her target and establish their movements first. Then finish them in some secluded place. That was the easiest way, without even resorting to assassination techniques. The knight order trained her in those as well, but she would take that approach if she didn't need them. Apart from a single priest, the victims so far had been...

'Commoners.'

Once in the slums, three times in the residential district. Encrid had told her that as well. Whenever he had found the time, he had clearly done his research. "The days of rain will have worsened the madness. If moonlight affects it, a full moon will awaken powerful urges and desires." Right. That was possible. It might not fit perfectly, but the possibility was there. "If I suffered from madness and knew it, I'd try to satisfy my urges as far from where I lived as possible." That meant he had already narrowed down the culprit's location to a degree.

'The farthest point from the slums and residential district?' Aesia's gaze drifted naturally across the moonlight toward the heart of the city. Near the palace, behind its separate inner walls. Nobles unable to stay within the palace lived around there. "Those uncontrollable urges would cause a commotion, so I'd need to keep suspicion away from myself."

His explanation ended there. Aesia understood and agreed. Listening to him had given her goosebumps.

"When did you work all this out?" "We've been out and about a few times. I thought it through based on what I heard then." Why did a stone hardened by being trampled again and again have brains, too? That question and her astonishment were plain in Aesia's eyes. Encrid took her look in stride. All he'd done was visit the market a few times and piece together what people told him. Why hadn't Aesia known?

'Because she wasn't interested.' She could have learned all of this had she properly involved herself from the outset. But she hadn't thought about things like how many commoners had fallen victim. It was the attack on a squire that had given a proto knight cause to act. The palace was already preoccupied with civil war. Something like the Moonlight Beast would be a secondary concern. This wasn't the first strange incident in the capital, either. With the assassins' alliance roaming about even in broad daylight, Encrid had long since realized that public order was a complete shitshow. Naturally, he had concluded that no one would conduct a proper investigation and looked into things himself. From the first victim to all those who followed. He hadn't even needed detailed interviews. The rumors had spread like a ghost story until there was no one who hadn't heard them. A few words with the fruit seller. A few words at the smithy. A few words from a gambling-den guard. A woodcutter, a timber merchant, a glass merchant, a bard, a librarian, a tavern serving girl, a noble's bodyguard. He had reached his conclusion by gathering and organizing everything they told him. A monk's testimony had been particularly decisive.

["It was wearing clothes. A rather expensive-looking coat. Then, with the moon at its back, the monster ignored me and attacked the priest."] Even while gripped by an urge to slaughter, it was making rational judgments. That made predicting where it would appear easy. Monsters and demonic beasts moved on instinct, but humans did not. They put reason first. If an opponent thought before acting, all he needed was a glimpse of the basis for those thoughts. 'Divine power is a threat, so deal with it first. Then cause trouble far from your own neighborhood so you won't get caught.' A human turned into a monster by madness was unlikely to steal an expensive coat and put it on. It must have been something they already wore. Since there had been no more mention of clothing afterward, they must have stripped naked before transforming. Jaxon's guess was a Lycanthrope. Encrid had reached much the same conclusion. Then...

HOOOO.

A sound like a night bird's call rang out from somewhere. Encrid judged it to have come from near the direction Ragna had taken earlier.

"Let's go."

Only then did he run, with Aesia following behind.