A Knight Who Eternally Regresses

The shape of the spell power flowing from Rem’s body raises like feathers and sharpens into points. Emptying out the inside of the body, it speaks for speed with endless lightness. With that, any blade becomes a sharp edge.

Then a small lump stuck to it and added a heavy force. Strictly speaking, it wasn’t heaviness—it should be called a deft kind of force, maybe? A sense of balance that’s hard to put into words. That’s how it felt.

‘Replace power with speed, and attach deftness as a small lump.’

That was the conclusion.

The two spell powers complemented and supported each other. It was no different from using two Wills at the same time.

Except spellcraft was different from Will.

‘Even if the root, the origin is the same.’

It gets used differently depending on the person using it.

“What the hell did you do?”

That was why Rem had said that during the spar.

Enkrid watched the spellcraft Rem used. Even though Rem hadn’t shown anything at the stage of “shaping,” Enkrid perceived the entire flow.

‘I can see it.’

Eyes that see a span ahead are insight that reads the opponent’s preliminary movement. Along with using Will, if your vision opens wider, you reach the level of reading momentum and preparing for it.

Enkrid had experienced both, repeating today over and over and engraving it into his body. Now he’d taken one step beyond that.

Is this how an explorer feels when discovering a new continent?

Rem’s movements and momentum—he could see them all in advance. Right before Rem moved, he could see the omen of Will. In terms of body motion, it was like seeing the direction of the toes change and the muscles tense, like seeing a finger twitch. If all of that is an omen of motion, then the flow of Will is beyond an omen of intention and action.

You could call it peeking at intent with your eyes. Because of that, pinpointing the movement that would come out was far too easy.

Then if you can do something like this, what more can you do?

‘I know what the other person is seeing, too.’

If you know the movement in advance and know the intent, fooling the other person’s eyes is easy. You can hide your own intent and do something like driving your sword in.

‘What you were seeing was probably like this too, right?’

Enkrid recalled the blond swordsman he’d met in the southern Demon-lands.

Hadn’t he been cut by that kind of swordsmanship? A strike with no omen, hiding intent perfectly beyond movement and momentum.

All of this only becomes visible with a single point of concentration alongside it. Enkrid scattered the Will he’d gathered in his eyes.

An explorer who discovered a new continent saw a new shadow hidden by fog far in the distance. So satisfaction wasn’t possible.

‘Still a long way to go.’

The blond swordsman hadn’t shown him only this one thing. Everything that man had shown was a signpost to Enkrid.

Like a guide leading the way to a new frontier far away.

There was road left to walk. No—he had already seen it. Even after walking that whole road, you still wouldn’t be able to call it the end.

Enkrid was excited by that fact, and felt exhilaration. Enough that a smile naturally rose on his face.

BANG!

The disk Rem threw pierced the body of the Black Bird that had been circling. The axe that had been flying through the air would circle back to its original owner.

Spell power stretched out from Rem, still connected to the descent weapon. Just as expected, the axe pierced the monster, scattered black blood across the sky, then drew a circle and returned to Rem’s hand.

Thud.

“Where do you think you’re going.”

Rem said it. It looked easy from the outside, but after seeing the flow of spell power, Enkrid knew how incredible what Rem had done just now was.

He could’ve hit it with a sling, but he deliberately threw the axe to land the hit—this had to be an extension of the spar from earlier.

A kind of training to hone his skill again and step forward.

And he must have done it because he was confident he could kill it even like that.

The axe blade pressed tight at Enkrid’s back gave the nape of his neck a chilly sensation. Not that it happened physically—just the way it felt. They don’t stop. They’ll chase after him at a pace even faster than the one he’s walking.

It’s fun, and it’s glad, because there are people behind him like that, bracing his back as much as he looks forward to what’s ahead.

“What, was my axe work that nice to watch?”

“Smell of an excited male.”

At Rem’s words, Dunbakel added from the side. Enkrid hadn’t bothered hiding his feelings, and she’d smelled it. Meaning if he tried to hide it, he could hide it as much as he wanted.

“That’s a weird way to put it.”

Rem muttered. Enkrid answered.

“I still have a lot to learn.”

At that, Rem nodded a few times and said,

“So it flared up again. Hey, stench. Quit babbling and go find the next one.”

Rem knew Enkrid. He was used to Enkrid acting like a madman like this sometimes. Of course, the same went for Dunbakel.

“Yeah.”

She listed the traits of several other famous monsters in the West besides the Black Bird.

‘What was next again.’

A spell-casting scorpion, wasn’t it?

She separated scents and chased them. When Westfolk passed word about monsters from here and there, they went there and chased.

Once the monster’s position was pinned down, they climbed onto a bellopter and sprinted as-is.

After the Black Bird, the next was a scorpion monster that used a teleportation spell.

The moment Enkrid faced that monster, he grasped the principle of the spell it used. Thanks to how his eyes had changed, what he could see had changed.

‘Only a shell, and the inside is empty.’

More precisely, everything filling it inside was the same kind of intangible power as Will. Since it was a monster, it wouldn’t be Will, but demonic energy.

It had replaced all its blood and flesh with demonic energy, leaving only a shell.

Because of that, the body that had slipped free of the world’s rules became no different from something that belonged to a spell.

‘It’s not teleportation. It’s running at high speed while hiding its body.’

Its shell had a nature that excelled at reflecting sunlight and hiding itself. A monster that hides its form and dazzles human eyes with high-speed movement, you could say.

The scorpion monster hid itself and bolted the moment it spotted the three, but it couldn’t escape Dunbakel’s sense of smell.

Dunbakel’s scimitar smashed the shell. Rotating on her left foot as an axis, the blade she drove down looked like a bolt of lightning.

BOOM, CRUNCH!

The lightning warped space as-is. With a thunderous roar, a crack formed in midair starting from the spot struck by the blade, like glass splitting. It was the sight of the fused shell breaking.

The intangible vapor that had filled the broken shell turned into black smoke and leaked out.

Fsssssh- With that sound, the demonic energy that had replaced blood and flesh scattered as smoke. It was a monster no different from an evil spirit.

Enkrid cut the smoke that came out of the scorpion monster one more time. When Night Walk cleaved through the vapor, it dispersed and vanished.

“Mm. Yeah, that’s how it really dies.”

Dunbakel nodded.

The West warriors who’d faced this monster said it didn’t disappear no matter how many times they killed it.

Of course. Its shell was fake. It was closer to an evil spirit.

Enkrid had cut the true body of an evil spirit. Spell-slaying—something he’d done by feel until now—he could do it while seeing it with his eyes now.

“Next. Let’s go.”

And it was also really fun to put it to use.

The third monster was something that had changed from a rock snail. Its shell resembled wood, and wings had grown on its back, its appearance in the middle of turning similar to a dragon.

A monster that had become a mutant beyond a unique specimen.

Because it had taken in too much influence from Silence, it was becoming a lookalike of the dragon they’d seen in the forest.

Enkrid’s blade split its shell. Night Walk showed off its ability to the fullest.

He twisted his body with his left foot as the axis and added force. A heavy, fast sword, and a blade that drops straight down in a hook.

A shell that would normally ignore any ordinary blade was cut open like slicing a perfectly baked potato.

Whitish flesh and black blood poured out of the transformed rock snail’s body.

“Damn, that’s vicious.”

Watching it, Rem muttered. Somehow, every time Enkrid used it, the blade got more vicious.

They spent three days like that, hunting monsters.

“They’re monsters. All of them are monsters.”

Badukbeom knew the monsters that had been harassing his twelve tribes. One colony of ratmen, and two Spiral Worms with spikes growing out of their backs.

Every one of them was hard to deal with, so they were a headache. They were also enduring while accepting damage.

Especially the ratman colony—like it planned to build a monster city as-is, it kept increasing its numbers without end.

In fact, once Elder Bear’s council ended, he’d planned to gather every warrior under his twelve tribes and wipe them out.

He’d meant to prove his tribe’s strength with that.

The Spiral Worm was just as much of a headache.

How are you supposed to drag out something that hides and moves underground and fight it?

The three of them solved it.

“Guide us.”

Badukbeom became the guide who led them to those two monsters, and watched as the three—called monsters and disasters—handled the monster packs.

Against the ratmen, Rem cut off the heads of five that served as leaders.

The other two killed every remaining ratman without leaving a single one.

The dark blue-green blade that cut through everything blocking the way was like the scythe held by a reaper. That reaper only moved with an indifferent expression, a dark green cloak fluttering.

‘Heavens.’

Badukbeom felt awe.

Even this alone was enough, and yet handling another monster reached the point where it was hard to believe even after seeing it with his own eyes.

The moment the Spiral Worm lifted its head aboveground, a single line flashed past, cutting across the worm’s body sideways like lightning.

The distance to the worm had been more than fifty paces, but that gap vanished in an instant. It was something the beastman—turned into a single white line—had done.

There was no way Badukbeom could see something like kicking off the ground, drawing a scimitar, and swinging.

He only saw the dead monster.

Black blood flowed over the dry ground.

After watching it all, the dazed Badukbeom was jolted on the way back.

“There’s training left?”

On the way back after dealing with the monsters, Enkrid asked if he’d felt something after watching, and said they should do the remaining training too.

Is this bastard really a mine? A messenger of the Demon-lands that came after Silence died? A devil? The incarnation of an evil-tainted kidney?

“Isn’t today’s spar still left?”

He only asked back like it was nothing.

Badukbeom’s eyes dyed themselves the color called despair.

“It is.”

“Glad you’re happy. Makes me feel good too.”

Enkrid tossed those words out like it was nothing.

Badukbeom’s insides twisted, but if you don’t have the strength to resist, isn’t following the nature of a West warrior?

And it wasn’t even something wrong.

Enkrid taught him in the quickest way. He had to. Hadn’t Black Wing told him to treat Badukbeom like a special, top-class warrior?

So Enkrid raised his sword for Badukbeom. This was all for the West of tomorrow.

“Glad.”

Black Wing showed what was inside while watching that. As twilight settled, the only sad one here was Badukbeom.

“I want to rest today.”

Badukbeom said it without being able to hold onto his muddled mind.

“You’re still not thinking straight.”

To Enkrid, it didn’t even count as words.

After that, Badukbeom cultivated a straight mind in the clouds for more than ten days, resented Black Wing, and then became comrades with Black Wing.

It wasn’t only Badukbeom who rolled around. Black Wing rolled around just as much.

Badukbeom, who reached what you’d call junior knight level, crossed one more limit in less than half a month.

Only then did Enkrid take Rem and Dunbakel and leave the West.

The caravan that moved together now included Leona and Juol.

“What we gained this time is ten times what we’ve gotten so far from trading with the West.”

That was what Leona said. Thinking of what they’d gain going forward, she said.

“Well, from now on we’ll have to run our feet off even more, but tell Kraiss. Trade with the West is going to grow tenfold.”

“Will do.”

They were on the road back, chattering like this and that again. They’d enjoyed Westfolk’s cheers and hospitality enough.

“If needed, call us anytime.”

Westfolk don’t get ahead of themselves. They’d received great help before, and this time they’d received even more.

Even if Rem stood at the center of it, there wasn’t a single person who didn’t know it was thanks to Enkrid.

“We’ll stand with your wish.”

That was the road they’d left on.

Between a brief rising train of thought, a real voice came through.

“Let’s spar once. Lightly, without weapons.”

It was Rem clinging to Enkrid.

“Let me in too.”

Dunbakel was the same.

Enkrid didn’t refuse. He shared what he’d realized. Rem was a deft genius. He quickly grasped the direction Enkrid needed to go.

“There’s a saying in the West. Sometimes you can sit still and spellcraft just stays in your body on its own. I thought that was what folks here call Uske. Doesn’t seem like it is.”

After finishing a few spars, Rem grabbed one of the carriages on the way back, went inside, and spent over half the day meditating.

Dunbakel was less deft than Rem, but the beastman instinct was outstanding.

“Will changes, is what you’re saying. I already know.”

And Endure wasn’t unfamiliar to her either. It was a beastman trait.

When the body changes, momentum changes, and what you hold inside you changes with it.

If you could make that change on purpose?

Her task was clear. After that, Dunbakel spoke less too.

And then it was right before they slipped just past the West’s boundary again.

“Let’s talk!”

A giant with legs and forearms like logs blocked the way. Rem got out of the carriage and was about to throw his axe, but when Enkrid put a hand on Rem’s shoulder, Rem stopped.

“Leave it?”

Seeing that, Dunbakel asked. The beastman had been about to jump out too, then stopped.

Enkrid nodded. Out of habit, he read the other person’s Will.

If that giant wasn’t at the level of the blond swordsman from the southern Demon-lands, then there wasn’t even a scrap of Will to fight right now. It didn’t look like the giant had any kind of technique to hide Will, either.

“Grant me one favor!”

The giant said.

No, shouted.

His ears rang, booming.