A Knight Who Eternally Regresses

”Undo it.”

Esther spoke, formed a hand seal with only her right hand, then pursed her lips and murmured words no one could understand.

Even before Esther spoke, Enkrid had not wanted to go over the wall. More exactly, he had stopped first, before she restrained him.

’Why?’

He asked himself. The answer came quickly. He had sensed a spell. If he had to put it into words, he would just call it a feeling, but he had sensed it with instinct and intuition.

’It feels wrong.’

He had felt it again and again while training spell-killing with Esther. Enkrid had not forgotten that. The senses that had grown sharper than before testified to it.

Was it because he had decided to use Assimilation and move like Jaxon?

Or because through Indules he had figured out how to change Will in real time?

Both must have had an effect.

Then Esther’s muttering ended, and the aversion vanished. The wall became just a wall again.

’The spell’s form is noise?’

The type that alerts the estate when someone climbs over the wall. Enkrid classified the spell through sense alone.

If Esther knew, she would have been horrified. Even when she had trained with him, he had not been this far along.

’Avoiding it too.’

That would be possible.

That was what Enkrid thought.

Even if Esther had not dispelled it, it would not have been a problem. Of course, he did not say that out loud.

Enkrid was not an idiot who said something like that to a witch who had already used her hands for his sake beside him.

”Thanks.”

He said this instead.

”Something about it felt off.”

Rem tossed out something close enough to thanks too.

The three went over the wall. Enkrid and Rem were skilled enough to cross without a sound with nothing more than their fingertips catching the top, and in terms of pure bodily movement, Esther was no worse than either of them.

The leopard’s strength and agile body control she had gained by overcoming the curse still remained in her body.

They said the duke’s estate took pride in its shrubs and gardens.

It was true. Square-cut hedges, symbols of a gardener’s endless labor, and topiaries shaped like rabbits and deer came into view.

That made it easy to move while hidden. There was no light source, but tonight the moonlight was unusually bright, the two moons shining brilliantly in full. For that and other reasons, slipping into the estate was easy.

Even if it had been difficult, they would have done it anyway.

”It’s a little cold tonight.”

The conversation between two maids reached Enkrid’s ears. It was from the dining hall. The three pressed themselves flat against the outer wall of the dining hall and only barely stuck their heads past the window to look inside.

”It’s warm during the day, but times like this are exactly when you have to keep an extra layer with you. There’s no one to look after you if you get sick.”

”You’ve got me.”

The two maids giggled. It was the kind of talk that was nice to hear and nice to watch.

In the middle of it, Esther stopped.

”A servant has been tampering here.”

The three crouched beneath the window. Because she adjusted the volume of her voice just right, only the other two heard Esther’s words.

”I’ll deal with it and come.”

She said it, and Enkrid asked nothing. She had said it herself, so she would handle it herself.

There was no reason to waste more time here, so he left Esther behind and moved around along the wall. As he did, he tried a new art.

’Was it like this?’

He spread the Will winding through his whole body across a fixed area.

”When the five senses go beyond mere sharpness, they become a sixth sense, and as experience accumulates, they manifest as intuition.”

He remembered what Jaxon had said. By nature, it was something based on instinct or intuition, but used deliberately.

If the foundation of sensory enhancement was strengthening and sorting the five senses, then the next step was hearing what could not be heard and seeing what could not be seen through Will.

He laid Will over the five senses and woke the sixth sense. Everything within a certain area was perceived as though he could grab it in his hand.

There was no need to click his tongue and use echolocation.

’Three beyond the wall.’

It was thanks to using what he had learned while spending time with Jaxon. Enkrid laid Will over the five senses. Everything was clearer than ever before. It felt as though he could even hear the sound of moonlight soaking in.

’No hostility, but three trained soldiers.’

They were private troops raised by the Duke of Octo. He walked along the wall and searched for the target. It did not take long.

”Feels like our roles got switched, doesn’t it?”

Rem muttered it. He had noticed what Enkrid was trying to do. Enkrid did not answer and kept walking. There was no shortage of things to do tonight. Soon both of them stopped.

Will, intent—if you could read Will, reading hostility was even easier. And reading the distinct demonic energy carried by a servant of demons was easier still.

Tap.

Enkrid pointed over the wall with a finger.

The meaning was clear. Here.

Rem stroked the wall with his palm, then looked at the window above his head, kicked up a loose stone with the tip of his foot, caught it, and threw it.

Crash.

The window shattered. The loud noise rang out inside, and while the attention of everyone beyond the wall and inside it focused upward—

Rem ran with the wall at his side, twisted the estate’s door handle apart with one hand, and went inside. He looked like a swift beast running wild. A beast with a very clear purpose, and a very intelligent one at that. Enkrid sharpened the edge of his senses and followed behind.

Rem pulled his mask down beneath his chin and threw up his hood, then drew a shortsword from somewhere.

The motion was so quiet and economical you could not even hear the sound of the blade being drawn, yet it was not slow.

Just inside the corridor he had entered, beneath the wall sconce, a faint silhouette could be seen inside the shadows. It was a woman in a thin white dress. She seemed to have opened the door and come out because of the disturbance.

”Who—?”

Her eyes filled with shock.

A false emotion. Enkrid recognized it. Tormented by a fairy as he was, he was an expert at distinguishing fake emotion from real emotion. Naturally, Rem recognized it too.

Rem did not hesitate. He pushed off the floor softly, bent his body halfway, and shot forward. At the same time, he threw the shortsword in his hand.

The servant must not have expected him to throw it. There was no reaction.

Thud!

The blade pierced the throat. And it was not just a blade—it was a blade steeped in sorcery. Even after throwing the shortsword, Rem did not slow his charge.

He closed the distance and pulled the sword back out of the woman’s throat.

Run, throw, pull free—the motions all happened within a single breath. The woman clutched at her throat, staggered, and sank down.

Black blood streamed through the gaps between the fingers gripping her neck.

She took her hand off her throat. Flesh on both sides of the hole the shortsword had made tried several times to stick back together, then fell apart and lost strength. The woman’s eyes turned white. Was she trying one last act of resistance? Enkrid watched from behind.

The nails on the hand that had covered her throat started to lengthen, then stopped. Like a servant, she held demonic energy and had tried to alter her body, but failed.

”One.”

Rem muttered.

Footsteps came from beyond the corridor. Tap-tap—someone running hard. Even though the upstairs window had been the thing that broke, this was the sound of someone immediately checking the first-floor corridor and charging over.

’Awareness: pass.’

As Enkrid generously scored the man’s response inside his head, the man spotted them too.

”Who are you!”

Shing!

He drew his sword with the words. No, he did not stop there. He came charging in with the blade already out.

He asked who they were while swinging his sword. Whoever had taught him had taught him well. It was a quick-draw built on deceitful swordsmanship.

Rem set his shortsword upright, received the diagonal downward strike, and shoved it aside.

He had tried to read the direction the force was flowing and push it off. Since he was trying to deflect a blade that had come in with skill, the man swinging the sword shot a foot forward, aiming to step on his lead foot.

’You’ve improved a lot.’

Enkrid gave him another generous score. At this level, it was proof he had not been lazy about training and discipline.

Instead ✧ NоvеIight ✧ (Original source) of letting his foot get pinned, Rem barely knocked the sword away and jumped back. Enkrid had already withdrawn much earlier.

”Guard!”

Even though the commotion had started on the second floor, the man who had immediately caught on and run down to the first-floor corridor was Andrew Gardner.

A noble, a royalist who had served as the current head of the capital’s public order, and someone who had trained within the Mad Order of Knights, making his skill one of the best in the capital.

In every sense, he was a rising star of the capital, acknowledged by everyone.

Even while shouting, he did not take his eyes off the two masked assassins in front of him. Since this was no time to look toward the dead noble’s body, it was the natural response.

Well, even if he had only glanced at it, it would have looked like nothing more than one dead person.

If inspected closely, traces of demonic energy remained, but it would take a priest examining the body in detail to know that.

In other words, on the surface all that remained were two noble-killing assassins who had appeared out of nowhere.

Andrew shouted for the guard and charged with sword in hand.

”Hup.”

He gathered strength into a single breath. He too had trained without pause. He had learned much among those mad knights.

’Not a single day is wasted.’

He had lived that way too.

Boom! Will gathered and added force to his charge. Enkrid felt a pang of nostalgia.

A very long time ago, when he had led the Mad Platoon, had he not seen a junior knight charge like that in front of him?

Now Andrew was showing that same kind of charge using Will.

Of course, compared to then, the present Enkrid had become someone who could dismiss even that charge like a joke.

’Knock him out and go?’

Rem asked with his eyes. Enkrid judged that to be too much. Making sure Andrew would not see it, he clenched a fist in front of his chest, opened it, then only shook his little finger. It was a hand signal to withdraw as they were.

Enkrid immediately ran down the back side of the corridor and out through the door they had entered. Rem stuck close behind.

”Guards!”

Andrew shouted again as he burst Will to launch himself forward, then shouted once more before rushing outside the estate and chasing their trail.

He could still barely catch sight of them, so this time he burst his Will properly and kicked off the ground.

Feeling the presence behind him, Enkrid ran toward the estate’s front gate, then suddenly cut left. He changed direction at a right angle without slowing the forward speed of his run. Then he sprang upward toward the wall. Once he cleared it in a single bound, all that remained was to hide himself in the darkness.

Because Andrew had gathered Will in his thighs and burst it, he could not manage a direction change on top of that. He hit the stone statue of the God of Plenty set in front of the estate with his right hand, spun around it once, and kept chasing, but he soon lost the trail.

”What kind of freaks are this fast?”

Andrew muttered.

When he crossed blades with them, they had not felt like knights.

But if they were professional assassins...

Andrew’s thoughts tangled.

Naturally, Rem had hidden his skill on purpose. If someone around knight level pulled something like this, suspicion would come far too easily.

The name of this operation was Capital Murderer. Rem had not forgotten that.

***

”What’s next?”

After shaking Andrew and hiding in an alley, Esther strolled calmly into the back lane behind the tavern where Enkrid and Rem were waiting.

The smell of urine and other foul odors stabbed at the nose, but all three stayed calm.

No one here was the sort to wrinkle their face just because it smelled bad while they were working.

”This one should be easier.”

Back at the duke’s estate, whistles were sounding and light was starting to spill out. It seemed they had lit not only candles and torches, but also magical lamps, a rare kind of spell object.

”The maids?”

Enkrid asked. Anyone who could be saved should be saved.

”Four of them were under suggestion. They’re fine now.”

Naturally, undoing spell-born suggestion was as easy for Esther as drinking tea that had gone lukewarm.

Enkrid checked the map in his head and moved. The next place was a small estate.

What was this one again, some viscount’s house?

”This damned nobility, no matter how many you kill, more just keep showing up.”

This time too, Rem put on the performance of his life. He faithfully played the role of a noble-killing murderer, reciting the line loud enough to be heard in front of the wardrobe where a servant was hiding.

Then he pulled the sword out of the servant’s split skull.

Thunk.

Blood dripped from beneath the blade as it came free of the skull. The blood was not black. Just because someone was a servant did not mean black blood always came out.

Some had only had their minds overpowered, and some had defected of their own will while completely sane.

The next target was one of those. A bastard who had been fully sane and turned to the demons’ side.

”Who are you? Did the king send you? Sharp of him to catch on.”

He was the owner of a small merchant company. His eyes were sharp, and his body had been trained solidly too.

”They’re all arrogant. In the end, we all die. Even that mighty empire could do nothing about the Demon-lands, so how do you think they’ll survive after making enemies of every demon? How can they not see that our side is the one that will live on?”

A cultist.

You could tell just from hearing him talk. That too must have been thanks to experience piling up.

”Our god abides in the Demon-lands.”

He acted exactly as Enkrid had sensed he would. Like a proper cultist. Black soot rose around both his hands, and he thrust them out.

Of course, every one of those actions was cut off before it could even begin.

Enkrid had already closed to right in front of him before the bastard finished speaking, and drew the blade straight down.

With one precise vertical slash, the man’s body split in half.

And in doing so, Enkrid found himself admiring it again.

’If needed, like Night Walk.’

His sword had changed that way. It had grown sharper than Night Walk, received his Will, and resonated with it.

Snap.

Esther flicked a finger, and the black soot crumbled apart into powder and scattered across the floor.

”Next.”

That night, the three of them killed five in total. They were nobles, a merchant, and a tavern owner.

There was not a single one an ordinary person would call ordinary.

All of them stood in positions with more than enough influence over those around them.

Or else they stood beside people who held special status.