A Knight Who Eternally Regresses

Rem spoke toward Enkrid, who lay still. He was unconscious, but Rem spoke hoping his words would get through.

“You know that if this goes on, I can’t even use my sorcery, right? So you need to get up.”

More than hoping it would get through, it was also something he was muttering to himself. Even if you inject vigor into someone who’s dying with a hole in their stomach, they won’t come back to life.

‘At best, it’ll turn into a malicious spirit.’

If so, it would be better to just let him die. Rem knew that too, so he didn’t do anything.

That bastard Ragna was sprawled there in a near-death state too. Rem’s gaze lingered on Ragna, then fell away. That bastard had sword marks all over his body too, but it wasn’t enough to kill him right away. Well, an ordinary person might have died, but he was someone with a knight’s body and vigor overflowing through it.

The wound in his stomach wasn’t healing to the point it was strange, but that just meant he could endure it with sheer grit.

So that bastard Ragna was fine. The one on the verge of death was only the Captain.

“Still the same?”

Crang came into the tent and asked.

“What’s the point of asking?”

Rem answered without even turning his head. It was a mess of an attitude toward the king of a nation, but there was no one here who would nitpick that.

“Have you arrived, my king brother.”

Audin was the same. He was checking the Captain’s condition, wiping blood away and changing bandages. The bandages were red. He had stopped the bleeding by compressing the blood that kept oozing out, but sometimes the blood still surged up in a gulp.

When Ragna first came in, dragging blood and carrying Enkrid on his back, every one of them used every method they had, saying they would save him.

Crang poured the royal family’s elixir onto the wound and wasted that precious medicine on the field bed.

Rem tried placing several spells and then gave up, and the entire priesthood including Audin and Teresa poured holy power into him, but all of it was useless.

“It wasn’t a monster that did this.”

If it had been a demon or a monster, even if there was a rejection reaction to holy power, treatment would still have been possible.

Purely from swordwork, his stomach had been pierced, and whatever trick had been used, the wound only worsened as time passed.

Watching all of it, Rem thought they were short on time. If he had even a month, he would find a way, but by then Enkrid would already be dead and his flesh would be rotting.

‘Don’t mess with me. You’re dying like this?’

Irritation surged up in Rem. Audin’s feelings were no different.

‘If we find the principle that rejects holy power and dig into it, we could—’

Not enough time.

They reached the same conclusion, but neither said it out loud. In this situation, there was no point in saying useless words.

The strange thing was that someone should have chewed out Ragna, but everyone including Rem kept their mouths shut.

They all knew. That Enkrid wasn’t someone who would fight while being protected by someone else, and that Ragna wasn’t the type to just sit still and take it.

They also knew that words or feelings of resentment weren’t what was needed here.

“He blocked out sound with magic and fought. It was near the Demon-lands, so it wasn’t even the soldiers’ patrol route.”

Ingis took on the role of grasping the situation, and the rest became onlookers. Shinar sat by Enkrid’s head and looked at him.

It had already been two days since she had stayed in her place without sleeping.

“My fiance, I am waiting.”

Shinar murmured.

“There’s no way you die here.”

Lua Gharne spoke from near his feet. Temares was colder than all of them, but that didn’t mean he was enjoying this situation.

‘He dies here?’

Through his entire life, Enkrid was the most interesting person. He would probably be a great figure they would have trouble meeting again.

Just like that, five days passed.

Everyone knew. Enkrid would die. In a way that didn’t suit him, he would be on a bed, panting shallow breaths, and then close his eyes.

His end would not be on a battlefield, but on a field bed.

Among the people here, excluding Crang, they were all skilled at killing people. If they couldn’t do anything about that wound, he would die. That fact didn’t change. Enduring five days was a miracle. They sensed Enkrid’s end.

“He’s dying.”

Cypress murmured.

No one argued with those words. Instead, they only showed their resolve.

“I’ll find who it was. For sure.”

Rem said.

“I’ll send him to the Lord’s side too, so you can cross swords again in the heavens.”

Audin spoke as well. Who the person was that he would send to the Lord’s side was obvious.

Fire went into Pell and Rophod’s eyes too. A blaze. An ember that would not go out before they died.

If it had been before, the knight order would have wavered the moment Enkrid was gone, but now they gathered around one intent.

“Yeah, we have to find them. My fiance, go on ahead first. We’ll meet again.”

Shinar quietly stroked Enkrid’s hair. On the fifth day, Enkrid opened his eyes and closed them three or four times.

Each time, he only threw a blurred gaze.

Then now he opened his eyes again and spoke in a voice clearer than ever before.

“...Still.”

What?

Rem blinked.

What is he saying? This crazy Captain bastard.

“...Indeed.”

Cypress admired. His breathing was clearly hanging by a thread. In that middle of that, what did “still” mean?

It was him showing the will that he had not given up, that he would not die.

“Yeah. Still. Enki, the world we want hasn’t come.”

Crang said.

“You are not at the time to die.”

The Dragonkin muttered too.

“Fight. Enki, fight to the end.”

Lua Gharne showed a vain hope that didn’t suit a Frokk.

“Are you pushing away the hand of God?”

Audin hoped too.

They leaned once more on the miracle Enkrid had shown until now.

And there was no miracle. Enkrid breathed out his last breath on the bed.

Teresa shed tears. Dunbakel, with unfocused eyes, repeated, “It’s fake, right? It isn’t, is it?” Shinar, instead of crying, gripped a blade with her bare hands, bled, and said,

“A vow will be needed.”

On his last breath, Enkrid heard words like that.

***

It was an ambiguous point, whether death had been postponed or he had died and seen the Ferryman.

Something like the boundary line between life and death.

So he asked.

“Am I dead?”

If a question came up, he asked. It was truly a simple way of thinking.

“With a state of mind that I can’t tell if it’s dull or thick.”

The Ferryman said with a sigh.

“Yeah. You’re dead. On the fifth day after you got stabbed.”

In the Ferryman’s eyes, it was the worst result. If you die lying on a bed, you will only keep repeating death endlessly while carrying that wound.

If there was something more painful than dying by being stabbed or dying by burning, it would be a death like this.

You writhe in prolonged pain and then die. You die without time to resist, without vigor.

So he called it the worst, but was that something that applied to everyone? Usually it would, but not for Enkrid.

“Ah.”

That short sigh was all of Enkrid’s reaction. Then he muttered to himself.

“So I was half out of my mind and couldn’t properly perceive it.”

The moment he heard he was dead, he looked for a path. He started by grasping the situation, muttering to himself.

If the end was a cliff, he would walk even if he had to build a bridge. That was the kind of person Enkrid was.

“Indeed.”

At that, the Ferryman burst into laughter. It was clear he was a person who made admiration come out on its own.

“You died because the wound that happened on the bed didn’t heal.”

For some reason, the Ferryman leisurely gave Enkrid the answer he wanted.

“Will you struggle?”

He asked.

Enkrid looked at him with eyes that said, what’s the point of asking?

The Ferryman answered.

“Yeah. Try it.”

So he was becoming an onlooker now.

Who knew.

A time when he came to his senses for a moment between pain and death.

That short instant—something you couldn’t call a long time, not even a day—was the time given to Enkrid. Even in that time, he struggled.

He opened his eyes. Pain struck his whole body, and Rem or Shinar and the others came into view.

‘Why am I dying?’

The start was grasping the problem. The Ferryman wasn’t there, and thanks to the dream, there was enough time to think. It was after he had sent off his second death like that.

“Give up.”

At the Ferryman’s words, spoken without even putting strength in, Enkrid waved his hand back and forth. A gesture telling him not to talk to him and to stay still.

“...You’re really someone I want to beat to death.”

Part of the Ferryman’s personality muttered.

Enkrid ignored that too.

‘What can I do?’

Do his hands and feet move? No. They don’t.

Right. He couldn’t even twitch his hands and feet, and lying on a bed, he had to do something in an extremely short time.

‘I can’t see anything.’

It felt like his whole body was bound up and locked inside a pitch-black coffin. It also felt like he was falling down under a distant cliff, not into a wall. The ground under his feet floated, and his back felt empty. And on top of that, he felt stifled.

Contradictory suffering gnawed at his mind.

“Give up.”

Now and then, the Ferryman came out and spoke to him. Enkrid ignored those words completely. He didn’t even perceive them. It wasn’t that he heard them and let them pass out one ear—he didn’t hear them at all.

“You’re not listening to me.”

Even if the Ferryman asked, Enkrid sank into thought and obsessed over it.

After he died, it was only for a moment, but he opened his eyes and only said “still.” That was all he had done so far. If it weren’t a dream he shared with the Ferryman, he wouldn’t even have time to think.

‘So is that the end?’

No.

Even when he was awake, not in a dream, his head still turned, so he could think. Even if his hands and feet didn’t move, his senses remained.

The first step was escaping that haziness. If he didn’t properly perceive his condition, there was no solution either. Remove vagueness and grasp it clearly.

If he was going to perceive the state of his body in reality, not in a dream—

‘I have to accept the pain.’

That haziness was mental escape to forget the load on the body. A reflexive, unconscious defense mechanism.

The experience of repeating countless todays, dying and dying again, shone this time too.

‘Death.’

He stares straight at the death that slowly comes closer and perceives the pain.

“Ghk.”

Since he couldn’t properly count numbers, Enkrid gave up on counting todays. He used all that attention and focus solely to perceive and accept the pain. He struggled to keep even a little clarity.

Enkrid vomited blood and accepted the despair that started from his stomach. Pain raced through his whole body.

‘More than just being in pain.’

With the pain, strength drains out of his whole body. The limpness he felt when he had used up Will was cute compared to this. Compared to the helplessness he felt now.

‘Helpless.’

He couldn’t do anything. Death is something you accept. It isn’t something you overcome.

‘No.’

He wasn’t dead yet.

Even if there wasn’t even a thread of hope.

Even if a wall with no end blocked him.

Even if he knew he had reached the edge of the cliff.

Somehow, he moved forward. This time was the same.

“In a situation where you can’t even twitch one finger, what can you do?”

An apparition appeared and asked. The apparition looked exactly like him. In other words, it was him who had finally given up and collapsed. A bastard with black under the eyes, skin that had lost its shine and gone rough, wearing an old coat that looked like it would stink.

A bastard who, after spending all night rolling around drunk on cheap joy in a gambling den and drunk on liquor, got up and sprawled in the shade to avoid the sunlight.

To him, sunlight wasn’t warmth, and it wasn’t comfort. It was only something that stung his eyes and made him dizzy.

Not tomorrow but today, not today but yesterday—his form that stayed in the past and collapsed.

“Accept helplessness.”

The Ferryman appeared where the apparition scattered and spoke.

Was it a trick he was pulling because Enkrid ignored him again? Or was it an apparition that appeared because Enkrid had perceived helplessness.

“This is a proposal I’m making for the first time in a very long while.”

The Ferryman continued. This time, it was a proposal Enkrid couldn’t possibly ignore.

“I will return the beginning of your life. To right before you meet that bastard.”

If you weren’t tempted, you weren’t human.

“But you will not be able to escape that today.”

Will you keep struggling through that painful today?

Or will you go back to the today that was at least peaceful?

If you could go back to that today, a person would sell even their soul. The Ferryman’s proposal, as always, was a deadly temptation.