Chapter 336
Rem hurled the axe he held in his left hand.
The moment his left arm drew a circle, the axe shot forward faster than an arrow.
To Encrid’s eyes, it was nothing more than a long vertical flash of light.
His [Perception of Evasion] reacted, and his body moved on its own.
He raised his sword face-first to block the trajectory of the spinning axe.
From the side, it looked as if Rem’s arm and Encrid’s movement happened at the exact same time.
Clang!
With a crisp sound, the axe bounced away to the side.
Encrid’s grip felt heavy.
The force behind the incoming axe had not been small.
It was a fitting force behind an axe thrown by Rem.
As Rem’s left hand brushed his waist, a pebble popped into the air.
It looked meaningless.
Wasn’t it just tossing a pebble upward?
But throwing the pebble created an opening, and Encrid didn’t miss it.
He shortened the distance and activated the [Will of the Moment], thrusting out Blazeblade.
It was a sword technique he named [Lightning Flash].
Starting from the thigh muscles, he used the elasticity of his entire body to leap as if flying.
He had roamed the battlefield countless times today.
After watching a knight’s sword, he had trained and trained, refining it into a perfectly smooth thrust.
It was a streak of light Rem couldn’t ignore, shooting out as a single point.
Clang!
Rem twisted the remaining axe to the side.
When he blocked Blazeblade with the side of the axe, the axe blade dented deeply as the Blazeblade blade pierced through half a hand’s length.
And the moment it pierced—
The Blazeblade blade began twisting sideways, creaking.
The instant Blazeblade pierced the axe blade, Rem twisted his wrist to release the force.
Without that, Encrid would’ve planted a dot straight into Rem’s skull.
Rem could wield a longsword as well.
And he was extremely skilled at it.
When it came to handling weapons, he was the most outstanding among the unit.
Encrid acknowledged that.
Encrid pulled back the Blazeblade as it slid to the side.
Crunch!
The steel-piercing blade came free.
With the momentum of the Will of the Moment and the force of a heavy sword, this much power was expected.
Encrid was about to attack again, but Rem had already pulled out a sling and spun it once above his head. With that motion, the pebble he had thrown earlier slipped neatly into the leather pouch.
A sharp whirring filled Encrid’s ears.
It was a sequence of movements as if he were performing a rehearsed play.
Rem had expected everything up to this.
Driving the flow of battle through prediction, calculation, and responsive thought—this was an application of the [Proper Sword Style].
‘I got hit.’
Encrid, who had also trained in the Proper Sword Style, realized his calculations had fallen behind.
Pop!
The sound hit at the same time the pebble shot forward.
It was incomparable to the daggers Jaxson used to throw.
It was several times faster than the axe from before.
His Perception of Evasion rang an alarm.
Encrid felt a burning heat in his eyes and head.
His focus ignited like never before.
Relying fully on his Perception of Evasion—his sixth sense—he dodged the pebble.
Using his left foot as a pivot, he flung his body to the side.
The pebble grazed his hair with a ping and shot past him.
A boom echoed behind him.
It sounded like a chunk of rock had fallen from the sky.
Encrid didn’t have even a moment to steady his breath.
He had dodged the pebble, but now he had to give up ground against the axe flying in after it.
His stance had been broken.
“Hup.”
Encrid swallowed a short breath and swung his silver greatsword upward from below, vertically.
He used the vertical slash of the heavy sword style in reverse.
The axe halted mid-flight and bounced back.
‘Crazy.’
It was a feint.
If it fooled even the realm of instinct, then Rem had been fully committed up until the very moment of attack.
The second pebble followed, and Encrid barely dodged it—only to almost get his neck sliced by the axe blade.
Had it connected, his neck would’ve been halfway severed. He’d nearly died.
The reason he survived?
He instinctively leaned back, and at the last moment Rem withdrew his strength.
“You could die doing that.”
After catching his breath, Rem spoke.
“Then I’ll enjoy it properly.”
Encrid, who had fallen to the ground and stood back up, answered calmly.
“Dying during a spar?”
Was that enjoyable?
Rem asked with genuine curiosity, staring at him like he was some strange creature.
Without a single change in expression, Encrid answered.
“Yeah. It’s fun.”
“You insane bastard.”
Rem couldn’t hold back his true thoughts, but the spar continued regardless.
Encrid in particular continued to learn new things.
Especially from Rem, he learned how to handle various weapons.
“Axe, spear, mace, flail—do you know the best way to train against these weapons?”
Encrid didn’t know.
He didn’t answer.
Rem didn’t wait for an answer either.
It was a line that came after two weeks of sparring that felt like having one foot in the river of death.
“Use them yourself.”
And Encrid did exactly that.
For the remaining two weeks, he used maces, axes, spears, halberds—anything he could get his hands on.
Rem handled all those weapons as skillfully as he handled an axe.
Encrid’s experience had long surpassed the level of being simply decent.
He quickly grasped several tips and applied them.
With the tips, learning the basics wasn’t difficult.
“Are you kidding me? That slow?”
Rem complained endlessly.
Even after that, it was nothing but sparring, training, and tempering.
But for Encrid, all of it was extremely valuable.
And the moment came when that valuable time would be put to use.
It had already been decided.
* * *
“All right, it’s a creature called a gray ghoul.
It’s dangerous.”
Krys was the one who had been running around busily.
He brought the mission.
Technically, it was a job coordinated with the central forces to stack merit on their side, but the process didn’t matter to Encrid.
He was simply glad that a real battle—something training alone could never replicate—had arrived.
That didn’t mean they were leaving immediately. They had to finish the current spar first.
Today was his match with Audin.
“Hey, wait. Let me finish this first.”
It was a day in early spring, just after winter had ended.
Krys didn’t stop his captain.
He didn’t need to.
Ghoul extermination wasn’t an urgent matter.
He hugged the brazier close and waited for Encrid’s group.
It was spring, but the wind was still chilly.
The warm heat from the brazier seeped into his body.
He grew sleepy.
As he waited, Krys thought this was the first step toward the Border Guards’ own advancement.
There were plenty of reasons for that.
His eyes slowly drooped.
Even while dozing, he organized everything he had to say in his head.
—
The Boatman looked at the human who was now entangled with him beyond the realm of thought.
He saw death.
Many times, he saw it.
It wasn’t even a wall, yet the man raged to die alone.
He wasn’t trusting in today’s repetition.
It wasn’t that.
Anyone could tell at a glance.
He was just insane.
But did he die?
No, even in moments he should have died, he survived by a hair.
Was it skill or luck?
The Boatman judged it was skill.
The combined skill of the opponent and his own twisted what should’ve been a guaranteed death.
‘What kind of bastard is this?’
The Boatman was in a light mood today.
He observed his counterpart.
He would no longer offer praise.
It only served as fuel that made him grow further.
So now he would simply watch—
“You insane bastard.”
He repeated, revealing the temperament of today’s Boatman.
Unable to hold back, he left his words in Encrid’s mind as the man briefly fainted.
It was praise.
Encrid, who stepped into the mental world briefly, opened his eyes with a puzzled expression.
The Boatman had lived a long life, and those who lived long often developed a natural intuition.
He could read meaning from someone’s eyes alone.
He understood the unspoken question.
Encrid’s eyes asked if he wasn’t busy.
“I’m busy!”
the Boatman shouted.
The mental world blurred.
In truth, he had nothing to be busy about.
Watching was his life and his everything.
—
Encrid opened his eyes and recalled the final moment.
Audin’s fist had curved and smashed into his head.
The flow, the process, the trajectory—they were etched vividly in his memory.
‘I stepped.’
He had performed an evasive maneuver, but Audin had moved his feet as well.
For his massive body, his footwork had been impossibly swift.
Normally, with a shock like that, memory would cut out. But whether it was because of the Heart of the Beast or because he tried to absorb his opponent’s afterimages, techniques, traces, and aura until the very last moment, he had no missing memories.
‘I diverted the force right before it hit.’
He had released the impact through his body.
It was a technique he learned from Audin, something that had now become instinct.
“I patterned it after the company commander brother’s Snake Sword.”
Audin had transformed it into a new technique.
Encrid felt it again.
Audin was a genius.
To create something just by watching his sword.
Rem, Jaxson, and Ragna had all done similar things.
They were all geniuses.
But there was no reason to feel deprived.
Returning to the barracks after finishing the spar, he saw Krys nodding off in a chair beside the brazier.
He looked sleep-deprived.
Esther was also in a corner.
She glanced at Encrid indifferently.
“You’re back?”
That was her greeting.
“Yeah.”
She shifted between panther and human form, and today she was human.
Still in a black robe, but underneath she wore a soft dark-red shirt as Encrid had suggested.
It suited her well.
“Oh, you’re back?”
At the sound, Krys opened his eyes.
After mentioning the gray ghoul and then leaving to spar, he had taken a nap at an odd time.
It was brief but refreshing.
“Ugh, I’ve been pushing myself too hard lately.
I need some good medicine, but Jaxson still isn’t back?”
Jaxson was the one who used to bring various medicines for Krys.
Krys had procured some in return, but when it came to herbs and tonics, Jaxson was more knowledgeable.
“He’ll come when it’s time.”
Encrid genuinely believed that.
Krys didn’t bother searching for him.
“All right, shall we begin the explanation?”
Krys rubbed his eyes.
Every task required order, and cause and effect mattered.
Knowing what you were doing made a difference.
That was how Krys thought.
But Rem and the rest of the unit had different thoughts.
Ragna had been sleeping more lately.
Rem had gone off to make another sling or sharpen the weapons Encrid brought, saying he didn’t care.
Maintaining your weapons was basic warrior discipline.
Though he had been careless with that in the past.
Well, times had changed.
A knight had appeared.
Rem had heard.
‘If one appears, I can’t just sit by and watch.’
Where he grew up, there were no knights.
Instead, there were those called heroes.
The word simply meant brave people.
There were always reasons why they earned that title.
Come to think of it, didn’t beastkin also call their exceptional figures heroes?
Rem didn’t care.
What would they do if a knight appeared?
To not lose, what was needed?
The same thing Encrid was doing.
Training and discipline.
Rem trained harder in places no one could see.
So fatigue had built up.
The past several months had been breathless grinding.
‘I’ve never worked this hard in my life.’
Except for when he first learned to wield a weapon—no, he might’ve worked even harder now.
Encrid’s skill had improved, making him difficult to face.
Every moment was like walking on thin ice.
One wrong move and he’d lose—or kill.
Teaching weapon techniques Encrid wasn’t familiar with reduced the danger, but settling for that would be insanity.
‘Crazy human.’
With the usual conclusion, Rem lay down.
He had already finished training and stopped by the bathhouse.
The warmth from the hot water returned as drowsiness.
Audin had left for prayer time, and Dunbakel and Teresa weren’t particularly interested.
Esther, of course, had never cared at all.
Only Encrid remained, but Krys expected this.
When had they ever listened attentively to explanations?
At least the captain listened.
If even he didn’t, that would be a problem.
“Are you aware that the area around the Border Guards is riddled with danger?”
Krys’s explanation was long, but Encrid was an excellent listener.
And though long, Krys knew how to summarize the core well.
In short:
Around the Border Guards, there were three locations acting like small demon realms threatening the region.
One of them needed to be dealt with.
It was a place called the land of the gray ghoul, southwest of the Border Guards, forcing trade routes with the western territory to detour.
“That’s the situation.”
He also knew the political reasons—why they hadn’t handled it until now—but…
‘Would saying it matter?’
Encrid already looked uninterested.
“Ghouls?”
See—Encrid only cared about the monsters he would be cutting down.
To everyone who had come seeking Encrid, Krys had always given the same answer.
“We’re preparing for an important battle next spring.
There will be changes, so you would do well to prepare.”
“What kind of change?”
The man asking had been a noble under Count Molsen.
Naturally it wasn’t Viscount Ventra, who bore a grudge from their duel.
He hadn’t reached out to Encrid again.
Seeing that, Krys once again felt Count Molsen’s audacity.
‘After doing all that, he still asks them to work under him.’
There had been plenty of issues caused by the count’s indifference.
He had even covertly sent men to threaten the Border Guards.
There was no evidence, but the suspicion was solid.
If they wanted evidence, they could easily dig it up.
But denying it would render it meaningless, so finding it was pointless.
“The Border Guards will grow in scale.”
Beyond a fortress—to a territory.
Hinting it was preparation for that was enough.
Encrid was the sword for that goal.
Were the Border Guards acting on their own?
Hadn’t they even discussed rebellion when calling former lord Markus?
To grow, they needed approval from the central authority.
Meaning the royal palace was directly involved.
“Ha.”
If some petty noble spirited Encrid away, it would disgrace the royal palace.
Since Krys had said all this, he needed to follow through with action.
The first step was clearing the gray ghouls.
He had woven political nuance into his explanation, but Encrid had no interest.
Krys finished speaking.
There was nothing more to say.
Encrid was already thinking only about going out to fight.
He wouldn’t throw himself into danger needlessly.
He was that kind of captain.
‘He’ll handle it.’
The captain would do the captain’s work.
Krys only needed to do his own.
And he already was.