Chapter 440

The brown-haired woman’s eyes sharpened.

“I agree.”

Ruagarne spoke from behind him. Encrid wondered what kind of nonsense she was spouting after he had gone through the trouble of bringing her here.

Encrid did not readily step in.

Experience had taught him. In situations like this, adding a few more words often made things worse.

“Do you have a girlfriend? Perhaps Aisia?”

“She can be his spiritual partner, but he already have a fiancée and a cat back at headquarters.”

The brown-haired woman and Ruagarne talked endlessly with Encrid caught between them.

“That is too much, Sir. Especially with me right beside you.”

Then the man sitting right next to them opened his mouth.

He spoke in a thick, whining voice that did not suit him at all. If blunt whining were a skill, it could almost be called talent.

The woman then burst out laughing and slapped the man on the back.

Pang, pang.

To Encrid, it looked rather awkward.

The man was smaller than Audin, but still quite large, while the woman was not even half his size.

The hand patting the man’s back looked extremely small.

But of course, that was not all.

Encrid’s gaze shifted to the woman’s palm as she slapped him.

It was as though he had cast a silent, observant glance.

He saw calluses on her palm. Calluses that would never form without years of gripping and swinging a sword.

Encrid also observed the man being patted.

A large build, a rugged impression, a whining tone, and a thoroughly trained body lined with sharply defined muscles.

Lastly, he looked at the woman with short blonde hair and sharp eyes.

Her eyes met Encrid’s.

The brown-haired woman, noticing where his gaze had gone, spoke.

“Am I your type? Do you like dangerous ones? But you really are handsome. Just looking at you is pleasant. Hey, you Border Guards are lucky!”

She was the sort who said whatever came to mind without caring about anyone else. As she spoke, she tapped her glass against the table—tang—but rather than sounding annoying, it was more like a perfectly timed sound effect.

“Encrid of the Border Guards.”

Encrid introduced himself simply.

He had long since given up on correcting every misunderstanding caused by Ruagarne’s words. It did not seem like anything he said here would be heard anyway.

And such things were not important.

The brown-haired woman—if he had seen her on the street, he would have thought she was an ordinary, common-looking person.

Knight Oara leaned her chair back so that only the rear legs touched the floor, rested her right arm diagonally across the backrest, and replied.

“Oara of the Red Cloak Order.”

Naturally, she was a Knight.

She was a little different from what Encrid had imagined, but seeing how she had not revealed a single opening since earlier, she was definitely a Knight.

“You’re a provocative one.”

The short blonde woman beside her spoke while spinning a metal tankard in her hand.

In an instant, Encrid envisioned several scenarios for how he would react if that tankard suddenly flew at him.

It had not come from deliberate thought, but had instead surfaced instinctively.

Having experienced this a few times already, Encrid quickly realized what was happening.

Why was that tankard dangerous?

Because the short blonde had shown the intent to attack while concealing her killing intent.

It was a skill Jaxson often displayed.

It was a type of cunning that could not be sensed without having gone through countless sparring sessions against him.

The tankard was not the only threatening thing.

The whining man’s right hand, which had slipped beneath the table, was the same.

‘He’s gripping a weapon.’

But Encrid did not look in that direction. His gaze remained forward, fixed on Knight Oara.

Encrid deliberately gave momentum to his instincts and mixed intention into them.

It had been the same from earlier. Those two had reacted to it.

But Knight Oara brushed all of it aside. More precisely, she ignored it.

“Unless you’re possessed by some evil spirit that died because it couldn’t fight, stop that. I know you’re skilled too, but those two are no joke either.”

Oara said.

“If it’s sparring, I welcome it any time.”

Encrid spoke calmly.

“You’re like Millio.”

The man replied, meeting his gaze.

The woman spinning the tankard subtly withdrew her momentum.

Knight Oara smiled brightly and said,

“But you really are handsome.”

It was a truly unpredictable direction for the conversation, but Encrid knew plenty of people like this.

Rem, Ragna, Jaxson, Audin, and so on.

So he was already used to it.

“I hear that often. May I request a sparring session?”

“Oho, a stubborn obsessive. There are plenty of those in the novels I’ve been reading lately.”

“I am stubborn. I would like to learn something from the Knight.”

“You have a tenacious side too. I like that.”

If Knight Oara spoke in her own way, Encrid did the same.

Aisia, watching from the side, felt as though she were seeing two parallel lines that would never meet.

“Please stop and discuss the matter at hand first, Master.”

The Knight was also the master of all the Knights. That was why they called her Master.

“Ah, the matter?”

Only then did Encrid sit down and hear what barely resembled an explanation.

The unpredictable Knight Oara abruptly started talking about the liquor ban.

“How much work do we have right now to be drinking? We don’t even have enough hands to clean up all this mess.”

“Then why are you drinking?”

A Frok, as always, unable to hide her curiosity toward the unknown, asked. Come to think of it, none of them seemed particularly surprised to see Frok standing behind Encrid either.

“I’m the one in charge of this city, and its lord as well.”

Oara was shameless about it.

Ruagarne thought about it for a moment and agreed. That could indeed be the case.

When someone rose to a high position, there were those who acted a little arbitrarily. She knew humans well.

Encrid felt as though he were seeing a free spirit who had slipped out of the mold of what a Knight should be.

Still, he was not flustered.

How could everyone in the world be the same?

Above all—

‘Doesn’t it not matter?’

That was what he thought too. What mattered was that she was a Knight and that her skill was real.

Moreover, though she did not say so openly, she was clearly doing something for this city.

Those were not things that could be known just by looking at Knight Oara, but they could be inferred from the attitudes of Aisia and the others.

Even though she was clearly exhausted, Aisia respected and revered her.

As both a Knight and a person.

A reverence that seemed to well up from the heart, the kind she rarely showed even toward Krang, was visible.

The other two were the same.

It looked as though they trusted her beyond simple respect.

Even if she drank, spoke carelessly, or flirted by calling him handsome, her eyes and attitude never changed.

What kind of bearing she usually showed could be understood just by watching those around her.

It was a lesson Encrid had learned while wandering across the continent. He was someone who internalized those lessons, so naturally he did not underestimate the person before him.

He focused only on the fact that she was a Knight.

And he had not forgotten why he had come here.

“The situation is worse than I expected, isn’t it?”

Encrid was quick to grasp the situation. If he had not been able to do even that, he could never have survived until now.

Ever since taking up the sword, he had repeatedly thrown himself into acts bordering on suicide in pursuit of his dream.

To avoid death, he had to use everything in his surroundings.

To survive, and to somehow make dangerous and difficult things work, he had lived like that.

That experience often helped Encrid too. It was that experience that gave him the sense to grasp situations.

“It’s bad.”

Aisia nodded and summarized the situation.

“The deserters are a problem, but while we’ve been holding back the monster waves, three Colonies have appeared and settled in.”

There was a reason why they had encountered that spell-casting Harpy earlier, and in a way, seeing intelligent Magical Beasts was only natural.

Colonies were what raised the level of Fiends and Magical Beasts.

Oara was chewing on a piece of nicely roasted broccoli.

She acted as if all this were nothing important.

With the broccoli still in her mouth, she mumbled and spoke again.

“This year, there are a lot of deserter bastards.”

“Quite a lot? We’re already short on hands as it is.”

Aisia replied, and Encrid pointed out what was, in truth, the most important part of the whole situation.

It was true that deserters and Colonies were problems to solve, but all of that came after surviving the waves of Fiends pouring out of the Demon Realm.

Looking at the situation, that was the most dangerous and important issue. Beyond the west lay the Demonic Borderlands, and this city existed to guard against the Demon Realm.

“How are you blocking the Fiends surging in from beyond the western gate?”

So he asked.

“I block them.”

Oara’s plain answer came right back.

Encrid genuinely wanted to see her fight.

Before him was a Knight who would single-handedly hold back the waves of the Demon Realm.

Could the Knight of Azpen, the Mercenary King of the East, Ragna, or Sinar do the same thing?

At least right now, it did not feel that way.

It sounded like something only the seemingly ordinary Knight before him could do.

“May I watch?”

“Finish all your work and come, and I’ll let you watch from the front row. But you’ll have to protect yourself, and if you die, half the women in the world might become my enemies, so that’d be a problem.”

Oara finally cracked a joke. Encrid, having already adapted, answered.

“If it’s dangerous, won’t you protect me?”

At the unexpected reply, Oara burst out laughing again.

She laughed—puhahaha—and the man beside her rounded his lips and said,

“He’s pretty sharp?”

It seemed they had some sort of standard for measuring skill through jokes.

By that standard, Encrid might well become the greatest Knight on the continent.

“Not bad.”

The short blonde Junior Knight, smaller than Oara, nodded.

“Let Aisia organize the work. I’m getting drunk today.”

Oara finished speaking, and Aisia lowered her head. Oara set her chair straight with a thud and emptied the tankard in her hand.

That was how the meeting ended. As they stepped outside, Ruagarne asked,

“How was it?”

It was a clipped question, but since he had just met the Knight, Encrid immediately understood that she was asking for his impression.

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t know?”

“I’ll have to see.”

He was curious about her fight. Even more than that, he was curious about her sword. What about her tactics? Her skill as a Knight? Not all Knights were the same. Each walked a different path. He knew that now.

So—

‘Without seeing it, I can’t even guess.’

He truly wanted to see the sword of the Knight who did not display even a trace of intimidation on the surface.

A desire began to boil up inside him.

A thirst that had not been quenched even after facing the swords of four opponents at the level of a Knight.

Yet instead of showing impatience, what bloomed inside him was pure enthusiasm.

‘If this too is talent…’

Watching Encrid, Ruagarne became deeply curious about what would happen if this man truly became a Knight, if he wielded [Will] as a Knight did.

It was something utterly impossible to predict.

Even now, it seemed as though he had already reached his limit.

And that was why it would become even more enjoyable. The act of making the impossible possible, while never being able to imagine where it would end.

Ruagarne felt a thrill that would have given a human goosebumps.

Instead of goosebumps, her skin flushed red. That was Frok’s characteristic. She was moved all by herself.

And for the sake of that, she would do her best.

Ruagarne made that resolution.

Aisia had tired eyes, but she did not offer excuses or explanations for Sir Oara.

She knew Encrid.

He was not the type to dismiss or underestimate someone over an attitude like that.

Rather, if he became curious and wanted to learn something from their side, then who knew?

As expected, even now he was showing exactly that sort of demeanor.

Dunbakel, listening from beside them, asked,

“Will you enter the Demon Realm?”

She did not look frightened, but there was a faint sense of unease in her. Still, she tried to appear even calmer than usual. It was the attitude of someone hiding fear.

“If the opportunity arises.”

Encrid answered decisively. If he had not expected that possibility, he would never have come this far.

Dunbakel silently swallowed.

She had not even done anything yet, but already she felt like running away.

“Well, you could call it a list of things that need to be dealt with. There isn’t just one or two. Even solving half of them would be a relief.”

“Tell me.”

And so Aisia explained things at Encrid’s request.

The main points of the requests were two.

One was the deserters.

They said this year, in particular, had been exceptionally bad.

To Encrid, having many deserters felt only natural. Battles where you died if things went wrong continued on and on, supplies were unstable, and salaries were poor.

Compared to the Border Guards’ soldiers, it was not even half as much.

Had she said that even this was still better than what soldiers got in other regions?

‘If that’s how it is, then they should at least lock up the soldiers so they can’t run.’

“Would the ones left behind still fight properly? That’s what Sir Oara says.”

Encrid roughly understood Sir Oara’s method.

Only those who would keep fighting were left behind. Those who truly knew how to fight and had strong hearts were filtered out through a sieve.

Otherwise, they would break down anyway and would not be able to fight properly.

The human spirit was not that resilient.

Standing too long on the edge of death had a way of wearing down the mind before the body.

The fear that you might die tomorrow, and a life where the comrade at your side kept changing.

To prevent that, proper rest was essential.

It was not for nothing that the Border Guards had once rotated two battalions while fighting Azpen.

It was to avoid continuous combat. Combat fatigue tended to eat away at the mind before the body.

He had not even heard about the second problem yet, the Fiend Colonies, but Aisia first voiced her complaint.

“Among the deserter groups, there are two particularly troublesome ones, but the worst is a bastard named Jack the Swordsman. That bastard attacked the rear supply convoy.”

Thousand Brick was a land where not a single grain of wheat grew. Getting food through hunting or anything else was difficult, so they had to depend entirely on supplies, yet a deserter had attacked the convoy sent from the capital.

There were deserters who simply ran away quietly, but seeing bastards this insane was rare, she said.

They were the type who looted something first and then ran.

And the reason was obvious. More than half of the soldiers conscripted and dragged here, not the volunteers, were criminals.

Among them, the troublemakers quickly formed groups, tried to loot everything they could, and then ran.

“It would be best to deal with that bastard first.”

Aisia explained the details about Jack the Swordsman, and Encrid replied.

“I think I killed him on the way here.”