Chapter 380 - I Refuse

The ferryman continued.

"It only ends when you kill her with your own hands."

He meant that this wall would not end unless Encrid killed Aesia. "Must I?"

The question escaped Encrid before he knew it.

"I gave you clues from the very beginning."

At the ferryman's words, Encrid closed his eyes for a moment and sank into thought. 'What happened to Aesia beyond that corridor?'

She must have died. Probably.

It was conjecture, but his intuition bordered on certainty. Did that mean Aesia's death itself was the trigger that made today repeat?

He recalled the death he had witnessed on the first today. "That's right."

The ferryman answered as though reading his mind. Instinctively, Encrid felt there was not a shred of falsehood in what he had just said.

In truth, the ferryman had never toyed with him through lies. He had stated everything correctly. Encrid simply hadn't taken his words at face value. "Kill her. Then you will get past it."

His vision blurred at those words. From beyond that fading view, the ferryman's voice came once more.

"Try enjoying this, too."

His words carried anticipation. Encrid opened his eyes. It was a new today.

'Do I have to kill her?'

The ferryman had called that the wall and said he must overcome it. It was early morning, before daybreak. Encrid went about his usual routine. He went outside and exercised, using the Isolation Technique as he sank into thought.

Moving the body helped the mind work, after all.

'Should I kill her?'

The same question lingered in his heart. He couldn't concentrate. He knew it himself, yet could do nothing about it.

'Why?'

He asked himself the reason. An answer seemed close, yet would not come. He spent longer and longer agonizing over it.

At some point Andrew came over and said something, but Encrid gave a perfunctory reply and continued his monotonous movements.

That was how he began today, his mind clouded with stray thoughts. "You scoundrel!"

He encountered the constable and retraced the actions he had repeated countless times in previous todays.

'Kill her, and I get past it.'

The answer was settled. Clear. Then all he needed to do was get past it. How many people had already died at his hands?

In an age of war, killing could hardly even be called a blemish on one's character. Aesia had stood in his way. She was a Knight and a proto knight. She would know that facing someone in combat could mean death. Surely she had prepared herself for that much.

So he simply had to kill her.

["Kill her. Then you will get past it."]

He heard a voice that wasn't there. The ferryman's words lingered, echoing in his ears. When he faced Aesia, naturally, the same opportunity as before did not come. His mind was too cluttered. He could not overwhelm her through skill.

"You've lost your drive. If you don't want to fight, go back."

By the time someone became a proto knight, they could use at least a fragment of Will. That was an expression of willpower. A tangled mind inevitably made for disordered swordplay.

Aesia had put her finger on it. "I refuse."

He blurted out the answer to her criticism and drew his sword again. He held on through technique and swung on reflex. Another today passed that way.

A today in which he could not kill Aesia, but Aesia could not kill him either. A day that felt meaningless. The guilt of having wasted his time. Those things filled his chest.

It had happened only once, but he had surrendered this today to familiarity instead of struggling and fighting desperately. Afterward, it felt as if someone had smacked him in the head.

No, someone really had. SMACK! "... I think you owe me an explanation."

Struck in the back of the head, Encrid asked without moving from the position the blow had left him in, his neck bent forward. "One look told me someone had planted a curse in your head. My palm is the cure for that kind of curse. Divine power itself."

Rem raised his palm toward the sky as he spoke. Sunlight shone upon it.

"Give thanks for the divine power dwelling in this hand of mine."

A crazy bastard doing something crazy. "... Why does that thing even live?"

Jaxon offered a rare remark.

"If you want to die, come at me."

Ragna kindly informed Rem that he was willing to kill him.

"You idiots don't know a thing, so shut up."

Rem shot back. Watching them, Encrid had a thought. Should he just kill this bastard? Being told to kill Rem rather than Aesia might have made him feel a little better.

Of course, Rem wasn't the sort to obligingly die just because someone wanted him dead.

And if he really were told to kill Rem, he had no intention of obeying... Lightning struck inside his head. The shock of that smack passed through his skull and tore through his brain.

"A curse?"

That was the question it brought out. "I'm saying, stop thinking useless thoughts."

Rem made a show of tapping his head with his forefinger.

"What's there to make complicated?"

"Ah."

The exclamation escaped Encrid. Why had he felt guilty about wasting a day? Why had he failed to make the most of today?

It was as if chains had bound his arms and legs. Those chains had begun with the ferryman's words.

["Kill her, and you get past it."]

Because he did not like that proposition, his heart would not move.

He knew he had to kill her, but he hated it. He did not want to. So his heart would not stir. This wall was not one he would overcome by killing Aesia. That was what he decided.

With all the sincerity of that feeling, Encrid opened his mouth.

"I refuse."

Just two words. Words with all context stripped away.

Yet they held his true feelings. If words could hold power, it was only when they came from someone who had proven them through action.

Every day Encrid had endured, every today, everything he had been through lent weight to his words now.

And so they resonated.

They rang out. Spoken with a wholly united heart, they reached beyond his own chest into the hearts of everyone around him. Rem scratched his head with the finger he had been tapping against it.

"Then keep at it."

How could he stop someone who refused that strongly?

No one in the world was perfect. His captain, too, would have moments when he needed to wrestle with such things. "Yes. I refuse."

Now Encrid was positively smiling.

"I said I get it."

"I refuse."

He met Rem's eyes and said it with a broad smile.

"Ah, damn it. I get it."

"I refuse."

"Look, I said I get it."

"I refuse."

"Fine, my fault. Go ahead and hit me." Rem offered the back of his head. Looking at it, Encrid said,

"I refuse."

"Fuck!"

Then Encrid burst out laughing. The words hadn't been meant for Rem. It had nothing to do with him.

Whether today repeated or not, what did Rem's misunderstanding matter?

The bastard would forget soon enough. Today repeated again. Encrid held on and on as before. Once again, an opening to kill Aesia came, but he let it go.

The ferryman appeared in his dream again and spoke.

"Those words were meant for me, I take it."

Encrid gave a nod. "Then you will be trapped in today. Do you think that is better? You'll abandon your dream to save one person, merely because you happened to form a connection?"

The ferryman spoke of his dream.

His words were a keen blade. A strike aimed at the heart.

But Encrid's heart was encased in a Frog's heart guard, and that blade was stopped. "I just have to subdue her completely and move on."

"What?" Encrid dreamed of becoming a knight. And his ideal was an antiquated notion of chivalry.

All he had learned of knights came from poems and songs.

That was his standard. His boundary. His conviction. His oath to protect the weak and his comrades.

Hadn't he told the marquis as much? ["I came to reduce the numbers of monsters and demonic beasts. I came to protect those who cherish their people. I came to punish those who use strength to oppress others. I came because I want to protect the weak and safeguard the dreams of those who have them."] Aesia had her reasons. He had vaguely sensed that through countless repeated todays.

"I'll subdue her without killing her, then move on."

"You think that's possible?"

Why shouldn't it be?

Encrid answered with his eyes, and the ferryman said no more. He closed his eyes and opened them again. It was the same today, but his outlook had changed. More precisely, he now had a goal.

He would subdue Aesia, not kill her. That was what he would do. That was his decision.

He refused to kill her.

Crazy bastard.

He heard the ferryman's voice again, though it wasn't there. This time, he ignored it. And so he faced another today that began with the constable and ended with Aesia.

Another two hundred and forty todays passed that way.

* * *

"What?"

Aesia reacted to what he had just said.

"I'm asking why you're doing this. Why you're standing in my way."

He had sensed it from the start. Was Aesia here because she wanted to be?

'Half and half.' If she had truly become his enemy, all she needed to do was defeat him and watch him die. But she didn't. She stepped in front of him again to shield him. She said there was no need to kill him, yet staked her own life on it.

She had also mentioned her younger sibling before dying. He remembered that.

More than anything, there were things he sensed as they crossed swords. Everything he had seen, heard, and judged through repeated todays.

Encrid brought it all together in his mind, silently untangling the knots and arranging everything in order.

As Krais always said, Encrid had an innate gift when it came to intuition and the realm of Sixth Sense. "Is your younger sibling being held hostage?"

Aesia's hand twitched. She was a proto knight, and he knew from crossing swords with her all this time that she was not someone a few words or taunts could shake.

Yet her reaction was different. Her sibling must mean a great deal to her. No sooner had he finished speaking than something akin to killing intent flowed from her body. It was far denser than anything she had shown before. Intimidation activated of its own accord, pressing down on him.

Naturally, the Will of refusal within Encrid responded. Shaking off the intimidation, he straightened his chest and looked at her. Aesia's presence weakened a little.

No, her presence remained unchanged, but the dense killing intent thinned.

The intent to kill was replaced by fighting spirit, the desire to fight. "Right. You wouldn't be mixed up with bastards like that. How did you know?"

"I picked up on it."

"... You really do have a quick mind." Aesia remembered mentioning her sibling herself while staying at Andrew's mansion. He must have guessed from that.

Of course, he had worked it out relatively easily because he had repeated today. She had no way of knowing that. "That's half of it."

Aesia continued. Encrid, too, had thought a hostage alone wasn't the reason she was here.

She must have had other choices. Then why had she chosen to stand in his way?

"And the other half?" Aesia worked her mouth a few times, then let out a breath and spoke.

Her reaction was more animated than on any other today.

"Go back if you don't want to die. That's all I have to say."

She spoke stiffly, forcibly suppressing that animation. "Why? Because I'll just die if I go?"

Another guess, and another hit.

"Did you learn mind reading or something? That would be a problem."

"No, nothing like that." He only knew because he had repeated today. Beyond Aesia was the man who broke the rhythm of his attacks.

How skilled was he? He must be on Rem and Ragna's level. Otherwise, no matter how exhausted Aesia had been, he couldn't have taken her down so easily. That was probably why she kept dying.

First, Encrid would have to reach that level. Encrid adjusted his grip on his sword. At the sight, the wavering in Aesia's eyes ceased.

"Just go back. That's half a plea."

Half again?

He looked her straight in the eye and asked,

"The other half?"

"A threat."

Encrid nodded. "I respect your judgment, Proto Knight Aesia."

He meant it. As always, his words were sincere.

Because he respected her judgment, respected it more than anything, he decided to surpass it. "Even if I let you through, you'll die."

As his presence changed, Aesia repeated her warning, but Encrid paid it no heed.

Instead, he steadied his breathing and readjusted his sword belt. He changed his stance and committed everything in sight to memory. He had repeated today more than three hundred times. For most things, a glance was enough to recall their position.

The decorative practice sword hanging beside him, the windows, the vases. Everything. "You can't stop me."

Encrid spoke from his ready stance.

If not today, then on another today, he would get past her. In the end, she could not stop him.

In Aesia's memory, he was still the Encrid who couldn't even overcome her Point Aim. "Prove it."

A smile formed on her face without her realizing it. That confidence, that refusal to retreat. Wasn't it a fine sight?

To have become a proto knight in a knight order meant having lived with that same intensity.

Above all, this man, Encrid, displayed an enthusiasm that stirred everyone around him. Naturally, Aesia was no exception. She truly wanted this man not to die here. That was why she would not let him pass. Nor would she kill him.

She extended her sword and took aim.

Point Aim. Unless he overcame this, he could not even begin the fight. Despite herself, Aesia felt anticipation.

She found herself thinking he might overcome her technique.

'Am I hoping he might actually do it?'

Because the presence he projected was so full of conviction?

He had shown that same conviction consistently in their spars. Why should it strike her anew now? She didn't know.

It was just a feeling. A proto knight's instinct.

Focusing more intently than ever, she drew up her Will.

She even abandoned the intimidation that declared she would not retreat, pouring her Will into Point Aim alone.