Chapter 358
Catching a flying arrow could be called a feat.
It’s impressive even when you know it’s coming, but this one came suddenly, and from behind.
He didn’t just sense it and dodge—he caught it.
It was an act pulled off through a combination of Sensory Art and a sharp point of focus.
“……Wow.”
“W-What was that!”
Two of the trainees gaped with their mouths open.
The other three were struck speechless.
They had every reason to be shocked just from watching.
One was impressed by the arrow being caught, the other was startled by the sudden attack itself.
Encrid raised his eyes to the outer wall.
There, he saw a man who made no effort to hide his presence, his face the only part covered.
He stood comfortably on the narrow width of the wall without a hint of unease. He never wavered. That alone proved he had an excellent sense of balance.
His clothes were plain—a loose shirt and pants that came down to his ankles.
Maybe he wasn’t in black because it wasn’t nighttime.
Even so, he wore a mask.
Encrid tilted his head. The attacker didn’t follow up after the first arrow. He looked like he was waiting for a response.
“Well…”
That was the moment the man opened his mouth.
Encrid immediately threw the arrow in his hand. Ping—the arrow shot back at the attacker in reverse.
Valen-Style mercenary swordsmanship, Talking Strike.
Ping— The man kicked off to the side, sliding horizontally along the wall to avoid the arrow, moving with a Throwing Sword Style sidestep.
‘He’s light on his feet.’
While his thoughts moved as they wished, Encrid’s hands moved as they pleased.
The arrow had only been bait. The next instant, he threw a dagger.
Peeeeee!
It was even a Whistle Dagger. They were hard to come by, but he used one of his precious few here.
With a cheerful whistle, the dagger hurtled forward at terrifying speed, and the man on the wall toppled backward.
Encrid drove his right foot into the ground, bending his knee to load spring into the leg. It sounded drawn out in explanation, but of course, all of this happened in an instant.
Bang!
Encrid punched a crater into the dirt training ground and surged forward.
His body shot ahead at a speed that matched the hole he’d left behind.
Even afterimages couldn’t properly form in the trainees’ eyes.
“That crazy bastard!”
A voice rose from beyond the wall. Encrid ignored it and sprang up.
Even without being fully armed, he still had three swords on him.
The five trainees, who had been standing there blinking, now stared, mouths hanging open.
He wore three swords and leather armor, and yet he vaulted up with a single thud. The way he moved looked weightless, like some kind of cheat.
Mystery, scam, magic, or something close to it.
Encrid hooked his fingertips on the top of the wall and hauled himself up.
How is he doing that?
Is it magic?
By now, the trainees’ heads were spinning.
Esther, who had woken up at some point, watched with bleary eyes.
Naturally, there was no magic involved.
It was something purely physical—just him breaking past his body’s limits.
Encrid hauled himself up, and in that moment, the two men waiting behind the wall drew their short swords.
They leapt in place and swung.
Two blades tore toward Encrid’s wrist.
Just as his body was halfway over the wall, Encrid simply let go with his left hand.
Whoong, whoong.
The two blades, aimed at the hand that had been on the wall, cut through empty air, and in that gap, Encrid grabbed the top of the wall properly with his right hand and pulled again.
His body shot upward with a whoosh. As he rose into the air, he saw the two waiting below panic.
Their eyes, their pupils, trembled.
With the sunlight at his back, it must have looked like a black shadow suddenly ballooned in their vision.
“Wait!”
One of them shouted, but Encrid didn’t care.
Why should he be considerate of someone who attacked first?
He twisted his body midair, gladius in his right hand and Blazeblade in his left.
From the attackers’ perspective, it looked like light surged out of Encrid’s eyes.
Facing the sun made it even more grotesque.
The moment his hands, which seemed almost frozen in the air, began to move was instantaneous.
A black shadow, eyes that seemed to be glowing, and two streaks of light with real weight and danger flared left and right.
Clang! Thud!
With his right hand, he drew and slashed in one motion.
With his left, he drew and stabbed in a single flow.
Two different sword techniques struck the two enemies at the same time.
The one on the right at least managed to raise his sword to block, but the one on the left had no such luck.
The blade punched straight through his left shoulder.
And even that was thanks to luck.
It was something Encrid had realized not long ago and folded into that swing.
‘It’s not enough.’
He needed to put a moment of [Will] into his left hand and use Pressing Blade in his right.
Learning while teaching, and reflecting while handling a real attacker.
He could see the path he needed to walk next.
Encrid landed with a thud, one knee down, then lifted his head. A smile tugged at his lips without him realizing it.
Is there a set time to learn?
Every moment. Everything is a teacher and a lesson.
He’d caught a sense of momentum from watching Krang’s back, and he’d also learned ways to blend swordsmanship and grappling from the skills Andrew had honed.
There was still plenty more to learn here.
To Encrid, just coming to the capital and escorting Krang already felt more than worthwhile.
He was that kind of person.
But from the opposite point of view, from the attackers’ side, it was terrifying.
He vaulted the wall in an instant, knocked one of them unconscious midair with a short sword, punched a hole in another’s shoulder, then dropped down and smiled?
The light in his eyes could easily look like madness.
“He’s a crazy bastard!”
One of the attackers shouted.
Encrid had no interest in why they were talking.
Who were these people? He was going mostly on intuition, but he was sure.
‘Are they really that different from the ones before?’
Not much.
Then the answer was simple. Cut them down. He felt no difference from the assassins who had attacked him on the road.
They were the same group.
He was about to move with that in mind.
They were assassins and trained killers. In particular, they were top-class when it came to reading an opponent’s presence.
As Encrid charged in, they quickly opened their mouths.
“Stop!”
The shout was soaked with sincerity, but it was useless, of course.
He had already defined them as enemies.
Whoong.
He closed the gap. His steps blurred, making it impossible to tell when they began and when they ended.
At the same time, a long line drew itself over his head.
There were three of them in total, and only the one who had fired the arrow from the wall was still unharmed.
That one shouted, “Stop!” but right after his shout ended, a blade fell from above his head.
From his point of view, it must have looked like a sword just dropped into the space between them.
‘Shit!’
There was no time to voice the curse out loud.
He drew his swords faster than ever and raised them.
He held two curved scimitars, one in each hand.
Those were the weapons that symbolized him.
He used to be one of the pillars of the assassination union.
‘Block it and knock it away.’
The moment he resolved himself, the twin scimitars sprang up to meet the falling streak of light.
‘I blocked it!’
But strangely, the instant when that light and his blades met seemed to stretch.
His thoughts continued to loop.
Even so, there was no room for doubt. He focused like never before. All he thought about was the act of blocking.
‘That was fast.’
Realization sparked.
The angle of the draw, the way he held the swords, even how he applied strength—
‘Yes. That’s how you do it.’
The correct way to swing a weapon, to apply power, all of it flashed through his mind.
So why hadn’t there been an impact yet?
When he glared at the streak of light, he saw it inching down little by little. The blade drew a perfectly straight line, without a quiver.
Only then did his two weapons and that straight, falling light meet.
His thoughts ended there.
Bang!
Thud, thud, thud! Crack!
Encrid poured the [Will] of a single moment into the falling strike.
What is speed built on?
– “Agility is just the power you get from contracting your muscles properly. The ones who only bulk up like lumps and move slow? All idiots. Idiots.”
Rem had said.
– “It’s the muscles, brother.”
Audin had said.
Muscles—or rather, muscles you know how to use and control.
The muscles in his right thigh, waist, abs, shoulders, forearms, and even his fingers all contracted, adding explosive speed.
On top of that, he twisted his ankle and waist, adding the pendulum-like centrifugal force to the descending blade.
The sword that fell with all of that combined was like lightning.
It was a strike only someone at least on the level of a Junior Knight could hope to block.
It carried the [Will] of a downward slash, not the [Will] of a thrust.
So this result was natural.
The lightning born from trained muscle crashed into the opponent’s twin scimitars and drove them down.
The first explosion was the sound of metal clashing.
The thud, thud, thud afterward was the sound of bones in his hands and arms shattering as he gripped the swords.
The final crack was the sound of the unsharpened back of the curved scimitar being driven into his collarbone.
Encrid crushed him with a single blow.
“Hoo-oo-oo.”
He let out a long breath in that posture.
The remaining two didn’t even dare to attack.
The man with the hole in his shoulder clutched the poison Ten Breaths in his hand, but couldn’t move a finger.
As Encrid exhaled, the shadow of the wall cast behind him, his breath rose from his lips like steam and drifted upward.
It was just heat venting off his body from the rapid exertion.
“Stop? Wait? You got something to say?”
Only then did Encrid speak.
‘Shit, he’s asking too late.’
The attacker whose fingers had been broken blocking the gladius got to his feet and answered.
“I came to give you a warning.”
“A warning?”
It felt less like they’d come to deliver a warning and more like they’d come to get themselves beaten.
Encrid stared, silently telling him to keep talking.
“Kuh, I came to tell you to go back. This isn’t a place for you to be.”
The man with the hole in his left shoulder spoke up.
“You attacked me out of nowhere.”
“It was at a level you could dodge.”
“You’re joking. Just going off everything you’ve done so far, I’d be within my rights to take both your heads off, you know.”
The moment those words left his mouth, the man with the hole in his shoulder threw a smoke bomb at the ground.
With a bang, smoke billowed up.
Encrid watched and decided they were looking down on him quite a bit.
Did they think he’d go down just because they popped a smoke bomb and attacked?
He retrieved Blazeblade, thrust the gladius forward, and swept it wide-side up like a fan. The blade whipped up a gust.
Whoong!
Physical force that crosses a certain threshold is no different from a spell.
The cloud of smoke was blown to the side.
Encrid expected them to keep attacking.
That was their pattern so far.
But that expectation shattered.
‘I was careless.’
He admitted it. He hadn’t expected them to run. They all ran.
“What the…?”
Andrew rushed out from the mansion, arriving late.
He was armed. The five trainees ran at his heels, and Mac followed behind.
He might have become a butler, but he clearly hadn’t let his training go.
Looking at the state of the capital, this was no time to sheath your sword and sit back patting your stomach.
There were too many things here that felt wrong.
“They’re gone.”
Andrew sensed an attacker by intuition and turned his eyes to the corpse.
“Who’s that?”
“He attacked me, so I gave him a cut and he died.”
His arms and bones were shattered, his collarbone crushed. His internal organs had taken the shock, and he’d crossed the river with his heart pierced by the blunt back of the blade.
“It’s insane. They’re scaling a noble’s wall in broad daylight now? Not even at night?”
Andrew looked over the corpse and the traces of smoke, anger in his voice.
Encrid had already grasped the outline of the situation.
An assassination group.
Why did they attack now?
‘Jaxson is gone. Everyone’s scattered.’
They couldn’t have picked better timing.
Which meant—
‘They’re watching us.’
Andrew ground his teeth beside him.
“Those bastards, seriously.”
His pride had taken a hit, and his anger was real.
Encrid wiped the blood from his sword and sheathed it, then ran a hand through his hair.
Up until a little while ago, things hadn’t been bad.
He’d even had some breakthroughs.
People like Ragna or Rem would blow holes in a wall a dozen times a day, but for Encrid, that kind of thing always needed a bit of luck if he wanted to repeat it.
Suddenly, a thought came to him.
Could he drag that “luck” to his side at will?
To do that, he needed to know where they stood first.
“What are the knights or the Royal Guard doing?”
That was the core. He drove straight into it.
Andrew’s lower lip twitched as if he had a tremor.
What did the kingdom’s military might hinge on?
Of course, on the knights.
If they had no knights, if they couldn’t train them, Azpen would have already come crashing in.
Local skirmishes didn’t matter. If Naurilia’s full strength slipped even slightly, Azpen would pour in their entire force and cross the border without mercy.
The reason they never crossed the Border Guard was because the royal guard existed.
Azpen had decided they’d be the ones pushed back if it turned into a fight to the bitter end, even at the cost of the country’s ruin.
Understanding and reading the situation.
That was what mattered now.
As he thought that, another thought followed.
‘Big Eyes is the specialist in this kind of thing.’
But he wasn’t here.
If you didn’t have teeth, you chewed with your gums.
“Do you know the current state of the country?”
Andrew thought for a moment, then asked back,
“You don’t know?”
“No.”
Encrid answered without an ounce of shame.
As if he truly didn’t care.
Seeing that, Andrew finally understood why Krang valued this insane captain so highly.
How many people could so bluntly admit they didn’t know what they didn’t know?
He was upright, honest, solid.
That was the impression he gave.
And his skill?
‘He’s a monster. A real monster.’
Andrew also found himself wondering about the last moments of the dead assassin.
Why did that bastard look like he was faintly smiling?
It was because enlightenment had come to him in that final flicker of thought at the moment of death.
But Andrew had no way of knowing that.
“There isn’t a single knight in the capital right now. Let’s go inside. I’ll explain in detail.”
From here on out, it wasn’t something the trainees needed to hear.
“Mac.”
Andrew turned.
“Yes, I’ll take care of the cleanup.”
Mac’s face was ashen.
Encrid thought that was only natural.
If it were him, his head would hurt too, watching his lord stake everything on a losing hand.
He didn’t know the details, but he could feel it.
‘This is a bad fight.’
He could see it clearly without much thought. From Krang’s point of view, it was danger after danger.
If that was the case, wouldn’t it have been better to build up strength outside and later bring in troops to seize the capital by force?
“What’s going on? What happened?”
Rem returned before evening.
“Nothing good.”
Dunbakel was with him. Ragna came back a little after her.
“He said it was his first time in the capital, so why does he keep saying he knows shortcuts?”
The servant who had escorted Ragna dripped sweat despite the mild weather.
Sending the servant along had been a godsend.
Finally, Jaxson returned.
“Why are you always wandering around?”
Rem shot at him.
He’d been out wandering himself, but he conveniently forgot that part.
Very Rem-like.
Jaxson completely ignored him. He didn’t even look his way, didn’t so much as pretend to hear.
He often brushed him off like that, but this time, he seemed utterly uninterested.
Then his gaze turned to Encrid. When Encrid saw Jaxson, he spoke.
“You’re back.”
Jaxson nodded.
To Encrid, Jaxson’s nod looked like something was weighing on him.
Subtle and faint. You wouldn’t notice it without a sixth sense.
“Something happen?”
“No.”
The answer came the moment Encrid asked. That, too, was strange.
That wasn’t how Jaxson should be reacting.
Shouldn’t it be something like—
‘Should something have happened?’
Or,
‘Seems like something’s wrong here, not with me.’
But no.
Why?
He was curious, but Jaxson was not the kind of man to answer just because you asked. If he were, they wouldn’t have been called the Madman Company.
Right now—
“Andrew, go on.”
It was more important to hear the rest of the explanation. Whether they did anything about it or not, they needed to know what was happening.