Eternally Regressing Knight - Chapter 46: After Countless Real Fights (2)
I had heard that a healer had come by, as my entire body was covered in cuts and puncture wounds.
“Fortunately, it looks like there won’t be any permanent damage. Our squad leader sure is lucky,” said Big Eyes with a smile.
“You sound like you were hoping I’d get hurt,” I retorted.
“No, it’s just concern. Be grateful. You’re the first man I’ve ever worried about.”
“Sure, sure,” I muttered.
I thought we’d withdraw soon, but our forces were still locked in a standoff with the Duchy of Azpen.
Would there be more battles to come?
Even if there were, it wouldn’t matter much to me. It was impossible for me to return to the battlefield in my current condition. Maybe if all I did was watch.
Big Eyes had left an apple, which I chewed on slowly when Rem entered. The rest of the squad was away, so the barracks were empty.
Rem sat down next to me, resting his elbows on his knees and his chin on his hands. He stared at me, lips closed in a straight line.
“If you’re thinking of confessing, let me reject you now,” I said.
“Don’t you know I like women? If you and some random girl were drowning, I’d save the girl. Of course, that’s assuming she’s pretty,” Rem replied.
“That’s fine. I’m a good swimmer. I can save myself.”
“Then maybe you can save me next time. Now that I think about it, I’m not a good swimmer.”
Then why did this idiot say he’d save the drowning woman?
That was so typical of Rem. I couldn’t help but think.
“Yeah, I’ll throw you a rock,” I joked back.
It was our usual banter. Then, Rem suddenly stopped and stared at me. His gray eyes were steady, unwavering. There was a seriousness in them I’d never seen before.
“Do you have something to say?” I asked.
“How did you know it was a spell?”
Huh? I hadn’t expected that question here.
“I saw it during a reconnaissance mission,” I replied.
“So, you guessed it was magic just from that? You seemed to know that the pole was the target.”
Yes, that had been the target. I knew all about it. But I couldn’t say I knew because I had repeated today over and over.
I needed a plausible excuse.
I started concocting a mix of lies and excuses, but Rem’s piercing gray eyes kept making me pause. Even if I told him the truth, he wouldn’t believe it. But should I just lie outright?
A sloppy lie would be easily caught. I had a feeling. I didn’t want to treat Rem like that.
So, I mixed some truth into my answer.
“I once spent time with some frontier settlers,” I said.
That was true. Rem was a settler himself.
“I learned a few things from a friend,” I continued.
This was also true. Rem had taught me about magic.
“So, I thought it through and made an educated guess,” I finished.
This wasn’t entirely true, but it was close enough. Instead of thinking it through, I had learned it by repeating today and experiencing it firsthand. You could say I used my body to think instead of my head.
At least, that’s what I believed as I spoke.
“It seemed like the pole was a conduit for the spell. I noticed the enemy formation seemed strange just before the mist appeared, so I charged in,” I explained.
“Hmm.”
Why do people fall for a mixture of truth and lies? Because the speaker believes what they’re saying. If you’re sincere, even someone with good instincts will have trouble detecting falsehoods in your words.
Except for the parts I couldn’t say, I spoke to Rem with complete sincerity.
Rem believed me.
Even if he didn’t believe everything, there was nothing he could challenge.
“Is that so? It’s still impressive you figured it out right away,” he said.
“What if it was magic?” I asked.
“I was going to tell you not to use such things carelessly,” he replied.
“Really?”
Rem nodded. I recalled that he had been absent on the day of the battle.
He had charged in with us, so I had expected him to be where I was, but he wasn’t. I hadn’t seen him since.
Then he rejoined the unit later.
“I wanted to ask where you went during the battle,” I said.
“It was nothing. I was just curious who set up the pole, so I went to take a look,” Rem answered.
“…You went to take a look?”
“I had a little chat with them using my axes,” he said with a sly grin, then left the barracks.
I recalled when I had knocked down the pole. The enemy sorcerer had been ringing some bells before disappearing from sight. I hadn’t noticed at the time, too busy destroying the pole.
It seemed they tried to flee but ran into Rem’s axes.
I brushed it off as nothing unusual. It wasn’t the first time Rem had done something unpredictable.
In a previous battle, he’d charged into the enemy ranks, claiming he was after some hawk’s talons or something like that.
The lieutenant, knowing this, neatly excluded our troublemaking squad from the count of combat strength.
Only the remaining squads were considered as part of the platoon’s strength.
It was the same this time.
However, there was one difference.
This time, I had been the one to break formation first. That was unusual.
“Hey, you okay?”
The platoon lieutenant entered the barracks.
“Are you here to check on me? Are we returning to base soon?” I asked immediately. The lieutenant shrugged.
“No orders from above yet. Everyone’s on standby.”
Winter was approaching. It was a difficult season for extended combat. While we wouldn’t leave this position entirely, our battalion had done significant work here, so we should be rotated out soon.
It was strange we hadn’t received the order to return yet.
The lieutenant scratched his head while looking at me.
“You.”
“Yes?”
At the time, he didn’t think my leaving the formation was a big deal.
He just thought I had finally lost it.
Later, he heard the shouts to get down and grab shields, barely surviving. When the fog rolled in and he thought he was done for, the mist suddenly lifted, and they counterattacked the enemy.
Later, he learned that the mist was a spell, which had a medium, and it wouldn’t dissipate unless the medium was destroyed or the spellcaster was killed. All this was explained by the company commander.
“Who could have done it?” the commander had asked, staring at him with his green eyes.
The lieutenant immediately thought of my name.
He at least figured our squad had done something.
After all, hadn’t I charged out right before the mist appeared? And the shout also sounded like my voice.
The lieutenant gathered his thoughts and spoke.
“They said that mist was a spell.”
“Ah, yes, I reported that.”
Right. I had reported that during my reconnaissance mission.
“Yes, you did.”
The lieutenant looked at me for a moment, then wished me well and stood up to leave.
‘No way,’ he thought.
He knew my skill level. I wasn’t the worst, but at best, I was village militia material.
While there were some formidable soldiers in my squad, I was not one of them.
The spell’s medium would have been deep within the enemy lines, unless the enemy was a complete fool.
Someone would have had to infiltrate that far in.
‘Through that dense fog?’
While dodging bolts and arrows?
A screw-up like me?
Not a chance.
Just to be sure, he had asked Rem, but Rem denied it.
And Ragna, of course, was right beside him when the fog lifted.
So maybe the remaining squad members had done it, but they were fighting as part of the rear platoon formation.
‘Did reinforcements come from the main unit?’ he wondered, stepping out of the barracks. The temperature had dropped sharply, and the chill was starting to bite.
“Are we really not withdrawing?” he muttered.
He missed the city air. He wanted to see his home, his wife, and his daughter.
He wanted to roast some potatoes over the hearth and sleep soundly.
* * *
After two days of lying in bed, I was finally able to move around.
“Don’t push yourself,” Big Eyes cautioned, but my condition was better than expected.
“Has that beast left?” Big Eyes asked. I nodded, glancing around.
“Looks like it. I don’t see him.”
“He seemed to follow you closely.”
“Weren’t you scared of him?”
“Of course, I was. He’s a beast, after all. A beast.”
“He still seemed like a cub, though.”
“You know Enri, the scout who used to go out with you? He was talking about you.”
Big Eyes suddenly asked. I nodded, thinking how well-connected he was. How did he even know Enri?
“He’s from the Plains, a hunter. Did you know that?”
I knew that well enough, having learned a lot from him directly.
“Enri says there are a lot of beasts on the Green Pearl Plains, but the most exceptional among them is the Black Panther with blue eyes, the Lake Panther.”
Big Eyes was getting all worked up. This story seemed to have piqued his interest.
“They say its eyes are like a lake, hence the name Lake Panther. It hunts gazelles and gnus but mostly feeds on some kind of energy in the ground. It’s a mystical creature. One of its claws is worth over ten thousand krona.”
The krona is a currency created by the Empire.
A copper coin is worth 1 krona.
A hundred copper coins equal a silver coin, and a hundred silver coins equal a gold coin.
So, ten thousand krona would be the value of a gold coin.
A single claw worth a gold coin.
That was more than my salary.
“That claw slashed a man’s throat. Do you think you could pull one out?”
“Ugh, I’m not greedy,” Big Eyes quickly waved his hands. As I moved my body lightly, sweat formed on my forehead, and a dull pain surged up. Still, at this level…
Having died so many times, gauging the state of my injuries by the level of pain was second nature to me.
“If you overdo it, you’ll make it worse,” Jaxson, who had been watching, chimed in. Everyone else was gone, leaving just Big Eyes and Jaxson behind.
“I’m taking it easy,” I replied vaguely and kept moving. It brought back the memory of dodging Mustache’s strike.
How had I done that?
Could I do it again if asked?
I wasn’t sure. Would it not work?
No, maybe I could manage if I tried a few more times.
As I was lost in thought, Rem and Ragna returned.
“Walk a bit farther away. Laziness is contagious,” Rem said, provocatively.
“Why do you always seem eager to die?” Ragna shot back twice as hard.
Before their bickering could escalate, I spoke up first.
“I have something I want to ask. About swordsmanship.”
Their gazes turned to me.
“Speak,” Rem said.
“If it’s about swordsmanship, I should answer,” Ragna added.
Seeing them glaring at each other again, I quickly explained.
It wasn’t complicated. I had seen the enemy’s moves several times, and somehow, they had become ingrained in my body without me realizing it.
That was it. I spoke as matter-of-factly as I could.
“Well, that sort of thing happens sometimes if you do it enough,” Rem replied first.
“It’s an interesting experience. I’ve thought I was special since I was a kid, but in your case, squad leader, hmm, yes. The gods must have blessed you. Maybe the goddess of fortune stumbled and dropped some coins,” Ragna added.
Neither of their answers was particularly helpful.
Then they started bickering again with me in between until a more detailed explanation came out.
“Sometimes, in battle, your vision clears. Usually, it only happens once in a while, and only after countless real battles. If you’ve achieved a singular focus, it’s more likely,” Rem explained.
“You’ve got some of the Heart of the Beast in you now, right? The ability to look straight at your opponent without blinking. If you had the chance to see your opponent’s sword moves right in front of you, you might’ve noticed their sword techniques or how they distribute their strength. Your body might react on its own. But that only happens if you have a solid foundation,” Ragna added.
“It’s not just the basics; you’d need hundreds of rough real battles,” Rem continued.
Listening to them, I came to a conclusion.
‘Ah.’
For some, today is just a single day.
For me, it had been a fierce, repeated experience of hundreds of days.
Not days spent in resignation but days spent struggling and giving it my all.
The countless hours endured and enjoyed had granted me a bit of luck.
In truth, it wasn’t even luck.
It was only natural.
It was the result of learning and surviving through countless injuries and deaths.
At its foundation was the audacity given by the Heart of the Beast and a singular focus.
‘I’m grateful,’ I thought.
In other words, it was thanks to these two. And Ragna had even completely overhauled the basics of my swordsmanship.
The battle with Mitche Huire, evading Mustache’s pursuit, today on the battlefield…
A complex mix of thoughts filled my head, sparking a single desire.
I wanted to grip a sword again. I wanted to swing it. I wanted to see how much that last evasion move had become second nature.
“I want to spar,” I muttered.
Both Rem and Ragna shook their heads.
Rem even added, “I’ve heard all my life that I’m not normal, that I’m crazy. But if you ask me, the squad leader is crazier than I am.”
Coming from Rem, that wasn’t something I wanted to hear.
He’s always causing trouble, bothering the soldiers around him, or trying to decapitate a superior.
To be told I was crazier than a man like that, worse even.
“Today, I have no choice but to agree with him. What kind of sparring are you thinking of, given your condition?” Ragna added.
They were really laying into me for just wanting to spar a bit.
I felt incredibly wronged.
“It’s too much to spar in your condition, squad leader.”
Fwoosh.
The flap that served as the barrack’s door was pushed aside, and a voice came through.
When I looked up, it was the elven company commander.
I was about to get up when the commander strode over.
“Was it you?”
Before I could even salute, the commander asked outright.
I looked at the beautiful elf, who appeared as cold and sharp as a sculpture crafted by an artist, and tried to answer. But my lips were dry, so I licked them first.
In truth, I had expected this question from the commander, not from Rem.
How did I break the spell?
That was a question for the command to ask.