Chapter 170
“Can’t open the door? Just a crack, enough for one person to slip through would be ideal.”
Encrid’s words made the soldier hesitate in shock.
“Right now?”
Their eyes met, and Encrid nodded.
“Yeah, right now.”
The soldier blinked.
Where should he even start? That opening the door right now would let in a horde of gnolls?
Or that opening the door at all was simply impossible?
Should he ask if Encrid couldn’t see that they were physically blocking it for a reason?
As the soldier fumbled for words, Encrid offered a compromise.
“Didn’t you build a side door next to the main gate?”
His tone was casual, as if they weren’t surrounded by gnolls and hyena beasts clawing their way forward, impaled by arrows like pincushions, yet still charging ahead.
Panicking wouldn’t change anything. Nothing actually changed by doing so.
Hadn’t he lived through this exact day over two hundred times?
He knew all too well—if left alone, those creatures would keep coming.
But saying, “I’ve fought through their ranks before, and even if you kill a few, they still charge like berserkers,” wouldn’t exactly be helpful.
Besides, for now, they had managed to hold them off. That was a good start.
Expecting things to go smoothly from here would be foolish, but—
A bad start is always worse than a good one.
In any case, they couldn’t afford to open this gate every time someone needed to pass through. There had to be a smaller emergency exit.
That was standard practice when constructing a fortress of this scale.
Even if this was just a pioneer village, the intent to build a full-fledged castle was clear.
The quarry, the workers, the architects they had brought in—it was obvious what they were planning.
Of course, that deduction came from Krys. Encrid had just nodded along when he explained it.
Training and combat took priority for him, so he hadn’t thought much about it.
But Krys had a point, and after repeating this day over two hundred times, even an idiot should have noticed by now.
Encrid had to break the cycle. To do that, he needed to get outside.
“There is a side door, but…”
The soldier still sounded hesitant.
“Then open it—just a little. That’s an order.”
It was clearly a ridiculous demand, and any sane person would refuse, but Encrid’s unnervingly calm demeanor made the soldier comply.
“It’s over there…”
Still reluctant, he pointed. Encrid walked over. Sure enough, there was a door.
If fully opened, it was just big enough for two people to pass through at once.
It was located to the left of the main gate.
Guuuuuuk!
A gnoll howled from just beyond the wall.
Finally, something seemed to click in the soldier’s head, and he spoke up.
“If we open it now, we’ll all die trying to hold them back.”
It wasn’t that they couldn’t open it.
It was that if they did, they would die.
A polite refusal.
Encrid didn’t bother thinking it over.
“Esther?”
They weren’t so close that they could read each other’s minds, but in this moment, they understood one another.
Esther nodded.
The small leopard had grown slightly but was still on the smaller side.
Not that size mattered.
“That thing’s unnatural,” Rem had said before.
Esther wasn’t an ordinary beast.
And she was proving it now.
With a light thud, she landed on the stone wall.
A hyena beast had been desperately scrambling up with its short legs. Esther scaled the wall as if she were running on solid ground, using her claws to grip the stone effortlessly.
Even considering the sharpness of her claws, her speed was unreal.
To an untrained eye, it would look as if she was walking on air.
Even to Encrid, who knew what she was capable of, it looked that way.
“She’s climbing the wall?”
The soldier watching muttered, eyes wide with shock.
If they had seen her leaping from rooftops and trees before, this shouldn’t have been surprising.
But to an outsider, it was downright unbelievable.
The wall was more than three times the height of an adult man, yet Esther cleared it effortlessly.
And she didn’t stop there.
“Uh, uh—”
The soldier’s mouth hung open, unable to form words.
It was understandable.
Because Esther had just leapt down to the other side—right into the midst of the gnolls and hyena beasts.
Her job was simple: disrupt the harmony.
To throw oil into their well-coordinated chaos.
Encrid expected nothing less, and Esther delivered.
Krrrrrng!
A deep, rumbling growl echoed from beyond the side door.
A vibration rolled through the air, shaking their bones.
The sound alone made one’s legs go weak.
“Don’t shoot the panther!”
Deutsch Pullman’s voice rang out.
Between the gnolls’ howls and the hyenas’ high-pitched yelps, a few agonized death cries could be heard.
Guuuuuk!
The gnolls’ cries became more distant.
The horde blocking the door had shifted.
Encrid’s sharp hearing picked up on it immediately.
“Now.”
He barely whispered the word, but the soldier stiffened.
“Huh?”
This idiot needed to be retrained from scratch.
He was far too slow.
“The door.”
Encrid grabbed the soldier’s wrist and pulled.
Of course, he applied force.
He also let out a sliver of killing intent, a refined aura he had learned to control through the Gate of the Sixth Sense.
“Hic!”
The soldier hiccupped.
That hardly mattered.
His hand trembled toward the lock.
“If this goes wrong—”
“I’ll take responsibility. I’m the military commander of this village.”
Then why was he volunteering to die?
The soldier thought as much, but still, his hand moved.
Click.
The latch was undone.
“Don’t lock it—just block and hold. I’ll tell you when to open it again.”
“What?”
What was he talking about?
The door cracked open.
Beyond it, the gnolls and hyena beasts had all turned their attention elsewhere.
Because Esther had thrown their ranks into complete disarray.
Encrid spotted the back of a gnoll’s head.
At least none of them were wearing helmets—that was a relief.
Not that it made them any less dangerous.
Just gripping a weapon in their hands was enough of a threat.
In reality, helmets weren’t even worth worrying about.
As he stepped out through the side door, Encrid let his arms hang loosely.
The moment his body was fully outside, he relaxed completely.
Then, excluding the Whistle Dagger, he flung multiple throwing knives in all directions.
Throwing a knife was nothing like shooting an arrow.
He quickly gauged their weight with his fingertips, then flicked his wrist.
Four daggers flew, embedding themselves into the heads of the turned gnolls with a sharp pabababak!
A gnoll couldn’t possibly survive with a blade longer than a handspan buried in its skull.
That was a given.
By the time four gnolls had collapsed, and a beast turned its head, Encrid was already upon it.
Swish.
A downward slash, starting from the midsection—short and efficient, without any wasted motion.
The beast’s back split open.
Puk.
Encrid’s sword cleaved through its spine, organs, and even part of the bone.
It was severed in two instantly.
At the same time, he took a single step to the left and drove his knee into another beast’s skull.
The force of his twisted hips crushed the skull inward, causing its eyeballs to pop out, leaving the optic nerves dangling.
With two beasts down, Encrid finally let loose.
His movements, honed through Perception of Evasion, turned into pure coordination.
The moment he saw, felt, and reacted, his body moved on its own.
Dancing between the beasts, his short yet deadly swordplay left three gnolls and two beasts sprawled on the ground.
Heads, chests—again, heads.
One gnoll had a silver-coin-sized hole punched clean through its body.
A combination of precise crown strikes and thrusts had done the job.
Thud.
Only then did the door behind Encrid shut.
“Were they watching?”
They had been so dumbfounded that they had been slow to close it.
Clank-clank!
The sound of locking followed immediately.
“I told them not to lock it.”
Then again, it wasn’t like they were actually going to leave it open.
Getting back in was a problem for later.
For now, he had work to do.
With Encrid’s blade and terrifying precision, gnolls and hyena beasts fell in waves.
Perhaps witnessing that, the remaining creatures turned their fury toward him and Esther.
Even with just the two of them, it was only natural to fight back-to-back.
Esther moved toward Encrid.
But even as she ran, she didn’t just run.
The panther’s performance was breathtaking.
Tatak.
Pushing off the ground, she extended her claws in a swift slash—
Gnolls and beasts caught in their path split into two, then three.
Whether it was the head or the chest made no difference.
It was a terrifying balance of raw strength and cutting precision.
As Esther lunged and the beasts surged forward, wielding their claws, fangs, and weapons—
“Esther, watch my back.”
What?
Her eyes questioned him, but Encrid didn’t answer.
“That bastard—”
For a brief moment, Esther was filled with rage.
Encrid had drawn their attention—then suddenly disappeared.
That wasn’t all.
He rolled through the blood of the fallen gnolls and beasts, pressing his stomach flat to the ground.
Who would the enemy attack now?
It happened in an instant.
Esther and Encrid had crashed into the battlefield together.
In mere seconds, they had cut down dozens of enemies.
Esther had drawn their attention.
And just as quickly—
Encrid had vanished.
The gnolls’ pupils turned crimson, as if possessed by berserker rage.
“Guuuuuuuk!”
Their bloodshot eyes filled with fury as they charged at Esther, desperate to tear her apart.
She dodged skillfully, stepping back.
She wanted to ask what the hell Encrid was doing, but—
He was already crawling on the ground.
A few gnolls even stepped on him as he inched forward, but he held his breath and kept moving.
It was clear what he was aiming for.
“You idiot.”
That idiot had asked her to watch his back.
Esther exhaled sharply, then moved.
She infused her magic-enhanced strength into her muscles.
The magic in her claws gave them a mysterious cutting edge.
The two hyena beasts lunging at her were sliced into three pieces each.
Then, she continued to weave through the chaos, staying just out of reach.
This was exactly what that insane man wanted—he had thrown all these monsters onto her.
Her guess was correct.
It was exactly as Encrid had planned.
He let the gnolls step on him, hiding his presence in the blood, flesh, and guts of the fallen.
Using Jaxson’s assassination techniques, he erased his killing intent entirely.
His objective was clear.
The leader among the gnolls.
—
Encrid felt the change in himself.
“I’m different.”
So different that it was impossible not to notice.
In the past, he had needed to repeat things over and over just to learn one skill.
But this time—
It was completely different.
This day had been dedicated to Perception of Evasion.
He had relived it countless times, training relentlessly, crawling through every mistake.
He had never stopped.
And now, every single day, every single failure—
Had propelled him forward.
That was why he had changed.
Not just in his swordsmanship.
In everything.
“If you know how to unleash killing intent, you should also know how to hide it.”
Jaxson had said that once.
When Encrid had asked about The Deathless Thrust, the peculiar technique Jaxson had used.
“You don’t need to learn it, but understanding the principle might be useful.”
That’s what Jaxson had said.
But his eyes had said otherwise.
They had scolded him, chiding his slow progress in mastering Perception of Evasion.
“How much longer are you going to take?”
But Encrid hadn’t cared.
If something didn’t work—he would simply keep at it until it did.
Back then, he had only asked because he was curious.
Now, he was putting it into practice.
Moving with absolutely zero killing intent, he executed a perfectly silent thrust.
Even to the naked eye, the attack was so subdued that it was hard to believe it was meant to be a thrust.
No killing intent. No pressure. No aggression.
That was the end of Jaxson’s explanation.
Among the two hundred repetitions of today, Encrid had realized that controlling his own presence was also necessary.
In the process of dodging, evading, and dodging again, something had settled into his body naturally.
He no longer reacted to bloodlust—he moved purely by instinct.
He had focused solely on refining his body’s ability to respond, discarding all reliance on intimidation or momentum.
And in doing so—
He had discovered something.
Encrid used that knowledge.
He hid his presence, suppressing his aura.
A technique similar to that of an assassin.
Of course, it wasn’t perfect.
He was merely mimicking it—lowering his presence, slowing and deepening his breaths.
“This isn’t enough.”
He rolled across the blood-drenched ground, smearing himself with the gnolls’ and hyena beasts’ stench.
Then, he wrapped himself around a gnoll’s corpse and continued crawling.
If anyone had seen him at that moment, they would have been awestruck.
Even with the weight of a beast on his back, he crawled at an unnerving speed.
“Crawling is my specialty.”
In terms of low movement, Encrid was beyond first-class.
And so, he crawled.
Then crawled some more.
Behind him, he heard Esther let out a sharp “Kyaah!”
“Sorry. I’ll get you two pieces of jerky when we get back.”
He made a mental note as he continued his advance.
By the time he reached a small rise in the terrain, only a handful of gnolls and beasts remained nearby.
Using his momentum, he scaled the slope.
The stench of blood and guts clung to him, thick and nauseating.
The smell of monster blood was always unbearable.
But to Encrid, it was familiar.
As a mercenary, he had lived on the battlefield. This was nothing new.
He had long since learned that monster blood was an excellent disguise.
Reaching the top of the slope, Encrid felt a deep sense of satisfaction.
His target was right there.
How could he not be pleased?
