Chapter 407 - Watch. That Is My Friend.

Audin knew he could not overcome his opponents with speed as he was now. Their charge alone told him that.

Others might not know it, but Encrid and a few others understood that Audin had an exceptional eye and used his head in battle. His appearance suggested a man who solved everything with brute force, but that was not the case. 'Too fast.'

He could easily catch them if he endured the pain and summoned his divine power, but there was no need.

Audin calculated, then moved. In a sense, his fighting style came closest to the Righteous Sword Technique. Two opponents attacked him. One carried a trident, the other a long spear. Both kept their distance, thrusting at him and withdrawing with irritating persistence. Spearheads faster than a bee's sting viciously sought to pierce and tear his skin.

Audin compensated for his lack of speed by minimizing his movements. He kept his defense solid, knocking the spearheads aside with the backs of his hands. FLAP-FLAP-FLAP.

The cloak draped loosely over him whipped about with his movements. Little more than a rag, it offered scant protection. Each passing spearhead tore away another strip. Audin held out like that until, suddenly, he bent low and lunged forward. He moved so fast his body seemed to stretch. If he committed everything to a charge, he could match their speed for an instant. "Hah!"

The trident wielder shouted. With Audin crouched low, the spearhead grazed his back. The thrust carried such monstrous strength that even a glancing blow split the ragged cloak in two and scraped his skin.

But no blood flowed. Audin's skin was akin to iron armor, nothing like an ordinary person's. Charging in, Audin wrapped his arms around his opponent's knees. The other man might be more agile, but Audin would not lose in strength. And close combat was where unarmed fighting truly shone.

He lifted the man by the knees, taking the trident wielder's feet off the ground. "What!"

The trident wielder cried out in shock. His trapped legs would not budge, as though wedged between enormous boulders. His reflexive attempt to wrench free accomplished nothing. How could he not be shocked to find himself hoisted into the air? Seeing this, the spearman immediately thrust. Audin read the spearhead's direction from the disturbance in the air and turned his body just a little.

SWISH!

The spearhead slid along his torso, almost curving away to the side. Body deflection.

Audin was the one who had taught Encrid this art. Naturally, his execution was superior. Despite his bulk, his body moved as softly as a wad of cotton. The spearhead struck his back, only to skim past.

All the while, the man whose knees he held remained suspended in the air. The dangling man dropped his trident and reached out with both hands. Newly grown claws sought to dig into Audin's forearms, but he ignored them and slammed the man into the ground.

BOOM! CRACK-CRACK! Of course, he did not stop at slamming him down. Still gripping both legs, Audin pitched forward as though rolling, forcing them back behind his opponent's head.

Having folded the man's body in half at the waist, he planted his right foot on a shoulder and ripped out his spine.

CRACK-CRACK-CRACK!

Blood-red bone met the air. Blood burst outward under that monstrous force. There was no question of the man's claws reaching Audin's shoulders. Everything happened in an instant. With one opponent dispatched, the spearman flinched. Even half out of his mind, he could only wonder what he was seeing.

"A monster?"

Audin smiled at the words coming from a monster's mouth.

"The Lord awaits you, Brother Monster." The ensuing fight was no different. The monster that even two of them could not handle deflected the spearhead and closed in.

Even Audin's ironlike skin suffered scratches and spat blood. His opponent's strength was nothing to dismiss. Yet the distance kept shrinking.

Once Audin caught him, his arm was torn off and his back broken. At the end, Audin even performed the brutal feat of gripping part of his neck vertebrae with his fingers and ripping it out. Encrid almost applauded.

Had the enemy possessed overwhelming might? Yes. Yet this was the result. These human chimeras might resemble knights on the surface, but...

'They still aren't knights.' Even now, the count remained motionless in his strangely deep-black chair.

Jaxon had come up behind Encrid, breathing a little hard.

"A troublesome spellcaster."

From Jaxon's assessment, he was clearly no easy opponent. Encrid looked at Count Molsen. Veins stood out on the count's forehead, and murderous intent seethed in his gaze. Calling it ferocious would scarcely do it justice.

"I should have killed you long ago." The count genuinely regretted it. He had never imagined they would obstruct him to this extent. For matters to come to this without even a knight intervening was infuriating.

That did not mean he had failed, however. Besides, had he not had a clear reason to keep them alive?

He would implant wraiths in them and make them his thralls. If he could not have them serve him as humans, he need only leave them in a form that was no longer human. "I won't be able to sleep with my legs stretched out until I've killed every last one of you."

"I'll fold your legs up nice and tight so you can sleep in a coffin."

Encrid parried the count's words with ease. He would not die, so he would fold the count's legs instead. The childish joke came at just the right moment.

Needless to say, it twisted the count's insides yet again. Whatever else might be said of him, the bastard's tongue could rival a knight's sword. Though now even the sword in his hand had become a threat. "Yes, babble all you like. I'll tear you limb from limb and burn you to death. I'll keep you alive to watch your own body being torn apart and burned!"

Then he would take the soul that remained and leave it neither alive nor dead.

As the count spoke his promise, two voices seemed to overlap. The sound sent a sharp ringing through Encrid's head. Oddly enough, hearing the count's curse, Encrid felt his field of vision expand. It was the same sensation he had gained when trapped in Abnaire's clutches, unable to escape.

He saw the battlefield through intuition rather than strategy or tactics. Intuition and the realm of Sixth Sense expanded, seeking a path to accomplish his purpose. This was the realm of instinct, not reason.

With what Esther had told him, the realization came naturally. 'It won't end until I kill that thing.'

His intuition told him that the war would end only with the count's death.

Just as he was turning that intuition over in his mind, Rem asked,

"Going to leave him be?" Encrid stared at his barbarian subordinate. Behind him, Ragna, Audin, and Jaxon came into view as well.

They all seemed a little tired, though none was the sort to show it openly. Perhaps a finger was broken: Audin set the bone with a crack and smiled.

"Brother, allow me to add my prayers to your journey."

He meant they should fight together. Encrid glanced around at the four, then turned toward the count. His gaze conveyed his purpose.

"Together?"

At the brief question, all four nodded as a matter of course.

Rem stepped forward, Ragna following. Jaxon quietly took his place beside them. Audin moved at the very rear, as though watching over them all. "Thought he was a fucking bastard from the start," Rem muttered.

"Agreed. That thing needs to die," Jaxon answered.

"No need to look for a shortcut," Ragna said, looking at the count in plain sight.

"My Lord, my Father. I shall send up one more soul of feeble heart."

Audin prayed.

Encrid walked ahead of the four. Sinar did not join them. Frankly, she did not think she would be any help now. She had just cut down the mutated Fairy, but her opponent's sword had gashed her thigh, making it difficult to run properly. Even with the spiritual essence of spring sustaining her, it had been no easy fight.

She took out a bandage and wound it tightly around her thigh. If she could not help, she could at least avoid getting in the way. Dunbachel and Teresa could not bring themselves to join in. Encrid had also told them to head to the rear. They could not help hearing it as an excuse not to remain here, but they obeyed faithfully.

As the two withdrew, Encrid and his companions steadily advanced. In truth, none of Rem, Ragna, Audin, or Jaxon was in good condition. Jaxon was the best off, but frontal assaults were not his specialty. In swordsmanship alone, Encrid could now be considered his superior.

Still, the five advanced.

Do what must be done.

That was how Encrid had lived every today. And so he chose to walk on, to bring the civil war to its end. Krang and Marcus, arriving late, saw them too.

"More than all those months of worry, toil, and preparation, it seems one friend I met by chance will put a crown on my head."

Krang smiled as he spoke. He looked utterly free of worry.

Marcus marveled that he could smile so brightly in this situation.

"You can smile at a time like this?" Their side—or, more precisely, Encrid—had displayed overwhelming might, but Count Molsen remained unchanged. Without moving a muscle, he exuded something dark and sinister.

He seemed seated on a throne called death, in a palace called the battlefield. Marcus could have believed that the chair's name really was Death. Aesia also led her knight order's members to a place from which they could see Encrid and his company. Roford, a squire under her command, spotted the group and spoke urgently.

"I'll help them!"

Somewhere along the way, he had come to respect and follow Encrid more than any knight. Who else could fight like that, step forward like that?

Roford was ready to rush out at once, but his orange-haired superior stopped him. "Don't get ahead of yourself."

"What?"

"He stopped the entire battlefield and stepped forward so idiots like you wouldn't die. Just watch. Watch how he fights." Aesia herself was dissatisfied.

'He didn't even ask me to come?'

She was a proto knight. She could fight. True, she had lost to Encrid, but those at his side now had all been through brutal battles. They could not possibly be uninjured.

Surely he should have taken her, relatively unscathed as she was?

"How annoying." A sudden longing to join them surged through her. She belonged to the Scarlet Cloak Knight Order, an organization without equal in Naurilia. Yet now she wanted to stand beside Encrid.

Whatever the price, she wanted to be there.

So the words she had used to restrain Roford were just as much for herself. The Shepherds of the Wastes had also begun edging out of the abruptly halted battlefield. But Pell, unable to contain his curiosity, approached under the pretext of guarding Krang.

'Huh?'

A familiar face.

'That moonlit night.'

Wasn't that the crazy bastard who had asked to be cut again and again, even after Idol Slayer wounded him?

Pell had known he was no ordinary man, but...

'Was he that good?' He could see the man's back. The back of someone who had played a part in everything happening on this battlefield, who had stopped the fighting and was now moving forward.

'Is it duty?'

A duty to fight and protect?

As Pell considered this, Krang spoke with shining eyes.

"Watch. That is my friend." His friend, he said. Then the man was not bound by duty to the royal house. Yet he still stepped forward.

For what?

Pell had heard his declaration that he would end the war. Then that alone was why he had stepped forward.

To a Shepherd who acted for practical advantage and gain, such behavior did not quite resonate. ["Pell. To lead our people, you must see the world in more than profit and loss."]

His father's teaching came to mind. Pell gained a small insight: sometimes one had to accept a loss for the sake of an ideal.

At the same time, he made a decision. He would leave the Shepherds for a while. Not merely because the elders did nothing but nag.

'There will be much to learn.' Pell sank into thought, while Krang smiled and told everyone not to intervene.

Only Marcus burned with anxiety.

He knew it too. Encrid could not be stopped now. Even so, he wanted to resort to a dirty trick. Even if he were cursed for the rest of his life, he wanted an arrow fired at the count's head right this instant.

Of course, it would not work. But he could not help wanting to try even that. He wanted to stop Encrid from walking into the embrace of a bastard whose danger was obvious at a glance. That made Krang's smile grate on him, and he asked,

"I truly cannot fathom how you can smile."

"Commander Marcus. If not now, when? If Enkie dies, it looks like we'll all die anyway."

"... We still have our last resort."

"I will not use it."

"Why not?"

"No crown is worth letting a friend die for." Krang had not changed. He was who he was. Marcus found that frustrating, but it was also why he served him.

Only then could Marcus put his mind at ease. All he had to do was stake everything on Encrid.

"Then..."

With a sense of helplessness, Marcus smiled too.

* * *

The count was not watching the men approaching him. His eyes were on the back of the battlefield. The detached force he had sent to slit that damned witch's throat was just attacking the rear.

'Fucking bitch.'

He was inwardly cursing Esther for perhaps the hundredth time.