Chapter 87 - Those Who Deserve to Die Must Be Killed

["You read the moves and respond."] Even as Rem beat him, Jaxon taught him about Sixth Sense, and Audin wrung him dry with the Isolation Technique, Encrid had faithfully continued his sword training with Ragna. Whether his skills improved or not, he was nothing if not consistent. ["Don't you find this frustrating?"]

Ragna would sometimes ask him that. Frustrating? There was no reason to be. Ragna's teaching was both a path beyond the fundamentals and a signpost pointing the way. How many long days had he spent wandering, not knowing where to go? Now, each step revealed another path ahead. He could only be delighted. How should he react when an opponent brought a sword down? What if he faced a demonic beast? What if someone suddenly stabbed at him from behind with a spear? In any given situation, how should he extend his sword? Once he had the fundamentals, he needed to learn to apply them. He could not prepare a response for every situation. This was much the same as the rest: the point was to get the knack of it. Naturally, that was anything but easy. ["I thought we'd get through this a little faster."]

That was what Ragna said, but not a chance. Encrid knew how abysmal his talent was. Would he have struggled this much if he had even a reasonable amount? Probably not. Still, he bore no resentment. He would rather spend that time swinging his sword once more. ["Applying swordsmanship only means something if you read the moves and respond."]

Whether facing a demonic beast, a monster, or an enemy soldier, he simply had to watch its movements, distinguish feints from genuine attacks, then cut or stab it. Ragna never tired of teaching, and Encrid never tired of learning, but his progress was painfully slow. He knew he was slow and lacking. He knew he had to work several times harder than others. And so he used everything around him—every situation, his surroundings, even the briefest moment he was given—as a tool for growth. That was what Encrid did. As he explored deeper into the tunnel, four wolf demonic beasts sprang out. WOOF! WOOF! Barking like dogs, they charged without giving him a moment to breathe. The sight of the powerful wolves hurtling toward him, kicking up dirt, was enough to make anyone's knees buckle. Their eyes held a beast's ferocity. Between their drooling jaws and lolling tongues, yellow teeth gleamed red in the torchlight. 'Heart of the beast.'

Boldness. It let him remain unblinking even with a blade thrust before his nose. This was no different. Encrid remained calm. In the space of a few breaths, the wolf beasts were only a few paces away. He added instinctive intuition to his swordsmanship. It was a reflex born of boldness, because he believed this, too, would be a stepping stone to growth, and meant to make it part of his training. 'There's no better training than a real fight.'

The only drawback was that he had to stake his life every time. He could not accept wasting today. If all he wanted was to stay alive from one day to the next, he would have tilled the fields and begged for divine blessings rather than sung of his dream. Though he had resolved to cherish every today, he still had to risk his life and press on. This was the only way Encrid could sing of his dream. He was not charging in to die. He was risking his life to live. As his intuition told him. Following his instincts. CLACK! A wolf beast's teeth snapped together right before his nose. Encrid slid his left foot back to evade the bite, then bent his elbow and brought his sword down. SMACK! YELP! He struck with the flat, not the edge. Hit on the head by the heavily weighted blow, the wolf beast toppled to the ground. Encrid followed the swing with a smooth step to the left. He had thrown the torch to one side, but it was still burning, providing light. Stepping left, he blocked that light with his body as he evaded a wolf's forepaw. The heavy blow whooshed through the space where his stomach had been. If it caught him wrong, it would surely reduce his gambeson to rags. Demonic beasts were monsters with the traits of animals. Two of them cunningly circled to get behind him. Thinking they had their chance, they lunged for his thighs from either side, thrusting forward jaws that looked packed with short knives, twice as sharp as an ordinary wolf's teeth. FWEEEE! A strange sound spread through the dark tunnel, lit by a single torch. It happened in an instant. Encrid turned and flicked his hand, and a whistling blade buried itself with a thud in one charging wolf beast's forehead. It was truly as fast as a ray of light. He pulled his thigh back from the other wolf as it lunged, then drove his knee upward, dodging and striking in one motion. THUD. The blow must not have been hard enough; the wolf beast did not retreat. Instead, as though showing off its powerful legs, it tried to pin his foot with a forepaw. Drawing his raised knee back, Encrid retreated half a step to evade it and came to stand between two beasts blocking him front and rear. He was effectively surrounded. Even in what could fairly be called a crisis, Encrid's eyes were not watching the two wolves. Focus, and more focus. His surroundings did not seem to slow as they had before. Nor did everything disappear except points and lines. He simply saw the wolf beasts' movements with perfect clarity. He could picture their next actions in advance. Seeing the beasts' next movements made his own actions simple. There was no need for complicated feints and swings to press them. He swung his lowered sword in a great arc. The tunnel was too narrow for a wide sideways swing, but high enough to trace a broad, vertical semicircle. What kind of swordsmanship was the Heavy Sword Technique? He recalled the fundamentals he had learned. It specialized in smashing an opponent with a single blow. WOOF! The two wolves lunged at once. Encrid performed the movement he had pictured. WHOOSH! THUD! RIP! CRUNCH! Swung with all his strength, the longsword did its work. The wolf beast on the sword's side split from chest to jaw to skull. The other's head burst beneath the downward strike that completed the semicircle. Had his timing been even slightly off, one of the two would have torn a bite out of him. That strike had been a feat of raw strength. "Whew."

Encrid released his held breath, calming his heart. 'One.'

One beast remained. As the last wolf beast hesitated, Encrid sprang forward. Oddly, he ran not straight toward it but to the left. As if it had failed to see him, the beast leaped in that very direction. 'Pivot on the left foot.'

In a state of extreme concentration, he followed his intuition, his body, and the experience distilled from all his training. He planted his left foot and extended his sword. A stab. The point shot straight into the wolf's mouth and out the back of its head. SHUNK! With that sound, the wolf's weight settled onto his arms. He smoothly relaxed them, letting the wolf drop as though slamming it to the ground with a thud. Planting a foot on its head, pierced from mouth to skull, Encrid pulled his sword free. It came out with a wet pop, and the beast's red blood spilled onto the floor. Its body shuddered. WHINE. The last beast's breath faded away futilely. Leaving the beasts he had killed where they lay, Encrid let his arms hang and reviewed what he had just done. 'I can see it.'

The wolf beasts' movements were simple, driven by instinct. That made them readable by Sixth Sense. Concentrate on a Single Point and the instinct of Sixth Sense: together, they had produced a succession of sword strikes guided chiefly by his senses. 'I can do it.'

Now, he felt he could demonstrate the swordsmanship applications Ragna had spoken of. Read the opponent's intentions and movements. Then all that remained was to bring down the sword honed through the fundamentals. Deceiving an opponent worked on much the same principle. ["You already know how to do it. This is merely a matter of giving it structure and ingraining it in your body, and yet..."]

Ragna's words came back to him. Yes, that was right. He had been doing it all along. But doing it knowingly and doing it without understanding were as different as a cat and a tiger. Encrid opened and closed his hand, going over it again and again. Even as he picked up the torch and continued forward, he kept picturing his sword in his mind. Only the talented could ingrain something after doing it once. That was why he thought it through and rehearsed it. Encrid made everything he did into training. He encountered no more monsters or demonic beasts. Instead, at the tunnel's end, he found a passage connected to the sewers. Only then did something other than swordsmanship enter his thoughts. 'A madman.'

Digging a tunnel like this all the way out here. What was the point? Spell traps were expensive. They were no cheap mousetraps. What was the intention behind laying them across all six branches, blocking every route? Even a wealthy merchant with Krona to spare would hardly do such a thing. And there were Ghouls—man-eaters—and demonic beasts besides. Why go to such lengths to bar the way? What on earth awaited him beyond? Part of the answer came into view. "Crazy bastard."

The words escaped Encrid's lips unbidden. He had followed the foul-smelling sewer to this place. In the torchlight, he saw things hanging all around like laundry. Nails had been driven into the walls, with cords strung between them. But what hung there was not clothing. It was the body parts that should have worn it. Human organs, flesh, and bones made up a scene of horror beyond words. Even Encrid, who had seen his share of terrible things, felt sick to his stomach. 'Crazy bastard.'

Whoever had done this had to be killed. He deserved to die. Wasn't killing someone like this a knight's duty, too? Encrid knew dreaming alone would not make him a knight. But he could not see this and simply walk away. Here and there were intact corpses—or at least ones that still retained a human shape. One seemed to be alive. It blinked a few times, then opened its mouth. "Grrrgl."

It could not speak. Of course it couldn't. How could a person speak when nothing remained but a head? Merely opening its eyes and attempting speech in that state was grotesque. "Grrrgl, grrrgl."

What was it trying to say? He could hardly even guess. In its place, Encrid thought he would beg to be killed. He could not tell what made it move. Nor could he tell how the cord had been threaded through its head, and he did not want to know. For all he had endured, this atrocity was truly revolting. "What are you?"

A voice spoke just then. Encrid turned toward it. At the end of the path decorated with human corpses, in a corner of the sewer, he saw the corpse lover's face. It belonged to a young man with white skin and a pallid appearance. He wore a drab green robe and had long hair. Encrid asked, "This is your handiwork, I take it?" The man seemed to ponder for a moment, then spoke, partly to himself.

"... How did you get here? Does God love me? Sending me test subjects when I haven't even done anything. Now, let's see. You look like a standing-army soldier. What a well-trained body. Good. Very good." His voice was light and cheerful. He sounded like a blacksmith who had received fine iron, or a merchant who had closed a profitable deal. In a way, he even sounded like an innocent young man quietly confessing his feelings. It was strange, utterly strange. "What shall I make you into?" Encrid raised the torch. Beyond the wavering shadows behind the man, he saw a bizarre corpse pieced together from assorted body parts, sitting propped against the wall. Its eyes were closed, and it showed no sign of breathing. As far as Encrid could judge, it was dead. "Isn't he lovely? He'll be my finest masterpiece. His name is Bamillo." Encrid reached his conclusion. In truth, there was no need to speak further. An utterly insane bastard. He hurled the torch. Its flames flared as the shaft spun rapidly, tracing a long, looping arc toward the madman's head. THUNK. The madman deflected the torch simply by raising a hand. A spell. So he was a mage. Was that a reason for Encrid to stop? No. Those who deserved to die had to die. Encrid had thrown the torch, and even after watching it fly aside with a single gesture, he did not stop. He kicked off the ground and lowered his body. Skimming low over the sewer's sticky floor, he sprinted forward. He kicked through the filth with a thud, and his body shot up to the mage with a swish. Using the momentum of his charge, he swung his sword. The upward diagonal cut cleaved the darkness left by the vanished torch.

* * *

Esther usually stayed pressed against him at night, but on days Encrid was in the city, she sometimes prowled nearby. Of course, there were plenty of days when she did not. 'Staying close at night is enough.'

And there was no need to remain beside him all the time. It was the sort of day she would ordinarily have spent idling in the barracks. MRROW.

Off you go. As she saw Encrid off, he caught her unawares and flicked the tip of her nose. HISS!

This bastard! "I'm off."

Then he simply left. Afterward, Esther secretly followed him.

'What are you off to do, hitting someone else's nose like that?'

She had begun tailing him out of pure curiosity. Her decision to follow had started with a whimsical flick of Encrid's finger. Something that had not happened in yesterday's today. TAP, TAP. The black panther soon made her way along the rooftops between alleys, out of sight. Her steps were light and nimble. Moving unseen was no trouble at all. And so Esther descended into the underground passage Encrid had entered. 'What's he getting up to now?'

It was pure curiosity. Then, in the place he had entered, she caught the foul scent of spells. 'If things go wrong...'

The human she had chosen might die. That would be a problem. She still needed him. She had to go inside. Spotting and evading spell traps was child's play for Esther. Once, she had been a witch who sang of the stars and held them within her. Traps this crude were nothing. That was how she came to watch the man fighting Ghouls.

'Has he improved?'

She knew little about the sword. But she had watched Encrid every day—truly every single day.

'He has.'

She could see how much he had grown. Then came the fight where he killed the wolf beasts. Even Esther found it strange.

'What is this?' Encrid moved as though possessed. To Esther's eyes, which pierced the darkness, his movements were one incomprehensible act after another. He swung, cut, and stabbed with his sword, striking the wolves with his feet and knees. She had thought it a chaotic melee, yet he sustained no fatal wound. A scratch was all he took, and even that was only on his armor. Could such a tangled fight really end like that? 'Are those beasts half-wits?'

They didn't seem to be. Of course, had she regained her original power, such demonic beasts and monsters would not have dared raise their heads before her. 'But he's still going?'

Surely it was time to turn back. Encrid kept moving, and eventually Esther saw the scene of horror, too. She was not quite shocked. There were all kinds of lunatics among those who fashioned spells. And she finally realized that a mage lay ahead. 'What should I do?'

Should she help him face the mage? With the pitiful amount of power she had gathered so far? That would mean waiting even longer to regain her body. Though she had already infused his armor with some of her power. 'You're making this a headache.'

In the end, Esther withheld judgment and followed Encrid in hiding. She watched him come face-to-face with the mage. After exchanging a few words, Encrid immediately attacked. What followed astonished Esther, again and again. With good reason. Hidden in a cloak of darkness, the Lake Panther's eyes held nothing but Encrid. And the man was performing an impossible feat.