A Knight Who Eternally Regresses

Yeah, Rem wouldn’t be Rem if he just stood there getting beat up.
Who knew what would happen once he found his true spell, but even now, he could still keep up.
"Hey, Bochu. This is gonna be fun, right?"
Rem had spoken with his axe, and Enkrid had to respond.
He took up Acker and assumed his stance.

Since his fights with the Giant and the mage, Enkrid had been obsessively replaying past battles in his head. It was a habit—one he always relied on.
And this was his conclusion:
Every fight had been missing something. None of them fully satisfied him.
“It wasn’t enough.”

The Giant only had brute strength. The mage wasn’t a swordsman.
Sure, there were sparks of excitement and even some moments of ecstasy. And the insights gained along the way were exhilarating too.
But they all stemmed from things that had come before.
So if he claimed he didn’t want to cross swords with a real rival, he’d be lying.

The Giant’s power was threatening, sure, but his technique was garbage.
Even if strength gave someone an edge, that alone could never be enough.
Timing and precision were more important than raw power.
There was a huge difference between a slash delivered from a proper stance and one swung around wildly.

How to pressure an opponent with precise form—
That was Orthosword Form.
Enkrid had learned Orthosword from Tutor, the cursed blade, then layered his own experience and Lua Gharne’s insight on top of it through countless hours of effort.

It was a sword form designed to push Rem into a corner.
A strike to the crown, a wrapping slash, a diagonal cut, an overhead horizontal slash, a mid-blade spinning slash—
Each movement conveyed a single message.

He would thrust with one hand.
That would be the final and most critical move in this duel.

Rem was prepared. Of course he was. If you show your hand, why would he fall for it?
While Enkrid pressed forward with perfect posture, he wove in deception.

This was a deceptive sword.
Illusory Sword Form.
With every movement, Enkrid crafted one grand act of misdirection.

He made it look like he was about to thrust with one hand—then suddenly closed the gap.
In an instant, he kicked off the ground and closed in fast.
Seeing this, Rem swung a fist holding his axe.

Enkrid grabbed the ricasso of his blade with his left hand for half-sword fighting, pointing the blade forward.
If things continued like this, Rem would punch right into the sword’s edge.
What, break the blade by punching it at an angle? Rem probably could have, but his opponent was Enkrid—and the sword in his hand was a magic blade.

So instead of punching the blade, Rem twisted his wrist and pressed the edge of his axe against it.
Blade met blade, clashing and scraping apart again and again.

Ttidididing.
Steel against steel, flaring in delight—sparks of exhilaration burst out.

In that fleeting moment, Enkrid let go of the ricasso and raised his fingers to stab Rem in the eyes.
A Balraf-style martial move: Blinding Palm.
It targeted a momentary opening, and it was half a beat faster than before.
And yet, Rem tilted his head back and dodged.

His fingertip grazed Rem’s chin with a tick, drawing a drop of blood and flinging a few strands of grey beard into the air.
The tear was from skin getting sliced on Enkrid’s fingers.
Rem raised his leg to strike, and Enkrid countered with his knee.

Smack!
They exchanged blows and jumped apart.
Before the distance fully settled, Enkrid brought his sword down in a vertical slash.

Watching from behind Rem, Owl thought it looked like two blue streaks of starlight falling from the sky.
That was the illusion in Enkrid’s eyes.

A full-force mid-blade downward strike. A knight’s blow.
Everything had led to this single move.

Normally, their sparring was at eighty percent power.
If they used their full strength, they might both end up dead.
But this time, both had gotten too into it. Without realizing, they’d gone all in.
Just for a moment, they got serious—and poured everything they had into it.

Seeing the incoming slash, Rem raised his axe to meet it.
It looked like strength clashing against strength. But right before the weapons collided, Rem’s wrist bent smoothly.
He deflected the full-force mid-blade strike off the axe edge and sent it glancing away.

It was Flowing Sword Form.
A blade that flows.

And just like that, they stopped.
Enkrid, lowering Acker diagonally.
Rem, holding his axe around his solar plexus.

One more move, and one of them could die.
That was how brutal this sparring match had become.
Actually, could this even still be called “sparring”?

Juul unconsciously held his breath and then let out a loud puff.
Despite the ferocity of their fight, both of them smiled.

“Keh, how was that?”
Rem asked.
“I was serious, you know.”

A smile tugged at Enkrid’s usually expressionless face.
“That was fucking fun.”

Rem snickered. He didn’t need to hear it—he already knew.
The captain's face always changed when he was genuinely enjoying himself. Problem was, the guy never seemed to realize it himself.

To be able to smile like that, like a kid who’d just gotten a gift, meant there was still some innocence left in him.

“You’re both insane,”
Juul muttered as he watched.

“I almost lost the baby,”
Owl added in awe.

“That’s kinda terrifying,”
Rem quipped midway, and Dunbakel nodded in silence.
That’s just how these people were.

Lua Gharne shivered again.
Lately, it felt like she existed solely to be surprised by Enkrid.

“He’s grown terrifyingly.”
Now that Rem was fully serious and prepared, Enkrid’s current strength was more visible than ever.

“And he’ll grow even more.”
For the first time, it didn’t look like Enkrid had hit a ceiling—it looked like he was still rising.
Unless her talent-detecting instincts were totally off, that much was clear.

Why did she feel that way?
As she watched Enkrid smiling, a small insight struck her.

“Laughter.”
A smile. Enjoyment. Ecstasy.
Enkrid was chasing his dream—and he was enjoying the process. That’s why he never stopped.
The moment she saw that smile, the realization pierced her mind like lightning.

“If we fight like this again, I might not have kids left. So next time, let’s wait until I find my spell. Also, I need a new axe.”
Rem held up his weapon. He’d gone all out, and now the axe was covered in hairline cracks. One more tap and it looked like it might shatter.
Enkrid nodded.
If they fought like that again, one of them might really die.

“Yeah.”
He answered and nonchalantly set up camp. It was time to travel again.

On the road, they ran into a few monsters and got to see some strange terrain.

“This is where a black meteor fell. From here on, they call it the Land Where the Horizon Meets the Earth.”
Rem, Juul, and Owl took turns explaining things along the way.

The monsters weren’t even a challenge, so Grime’s hunting trip had turned into a leisurely tour.
With asymmetrical power like Enkrid and Rem in the mix, that much was obvious.

The Land Where the Horizon Meets the Earth was a dry, grassless plain.
Here and there were big trees, boulders, and hills, but mostly, it was just open land.
It was so vast that, with good eyesight, you might be able to tell what a tiny moving speck in the distance really was.
It looked desolate, but when the sunlight and wind came together just right, it felt peaceful.

Eventually, they reached the place they’d fought earlier.

“This is called the Sandbreak Ravine. Just like it sounds—pass through here and you’ll end up at the River of Sand, the point of no return. You know that means desert, right?”
They’d heard that a desert was a land of nothing but sand. None of them had ever seen one.

“That’s the one place Frokk need to avoid the most.”
Lua Gharne had been uncomfortable in the dryness for a while now. Even so, she endured it well.
The way she fought, responding to the rhythm of her opponent’s heart, made it clear—among the Frokk, she might have the greatest patience.

There were Frokk who’d go berserk like rabid beasts when their armor got scratched, but unless she was up against cultists, Lua Gharne was usually calm.

Juul said it was hard to explore the desert.
“Everyone who goes in gets lost and dies.”
Owl added her own commentary.
Enkrid agreed—he had no desire to enter it.

You’d think signs of battle would still be here from just a few days ago, but nothing remained.
Even the Giant’s body seemed to have been disposed of.

The ravine grew deeper as they entered.
Past the entrance, cleared of corpses, they saw countless caves dotting one cliff wall.
The cliff was so high, they had to crane their necks just to see the openings.

“A holy ground,”
Juul said.

This was a sacred place of the West.
A symbol of spellcraft, a substitute for a graveyard.

So if someone asked whether it felt sacred... the answer would probably be “not really.”
Still, it was fascinating.
All those caves—and occasionally, they saw animals climbing the cliffs.
Was that a monkey? No, it looked more like a bear...

“That’s a bearmonkey,”
Juul explained.
A creature halfway between bear and monkey.

What was something like that doing here?
“It’s a sacred animal. You can’t kill it.”
Even if you were starving, you weren’t allowed to eat one.

It had pointy ears, a round body, and moved sluggishly.
Apparently, because humans didn’t harm them, the bearmonkey approached and left something behind.

It was a red fruit. When they split it open, it was filled with tiny seeds like a pomegranate.

“Lifefruit. Tart, but sweet and tasty. Since we received a gift, we should give one in return.”
Juul laid out some Lucky Fish jerky and grain-based snacks.
The bearmonkey cautiously came over, sniffed around, and took the food.

This translation is the intellectual property of Novelight.

He kept glancing over at them with rolling eyes, so maybe he wasn’t completely without wariness.
“Those cannibal bastards even attack bearmonkeys, but judging by the bearmonkey’s reaction, they haven’t taken refuge here.”
“The ones that ran off back then?”
“Yeah. They’re probably still being hunted. The trackers gathered together—shouldn’t take long to catch them. The West is wide, but there’s nowhere to hide.”

Enkrid remembered driving a dagger into the back of the last one, the one who’d been slashing around wildly.
The hit had landed in a bad spot—he shouldn’t have been able to move properly.
Could spellcraft rival divine power in terms of healing?
If so, maybe the guy could walk.
Otherwise, that injury would’ve crippled him.

He’d stabbed the spine. Dead center.
Unless the guy had been wearing some sort of artifact like Enkrid’s own bandage armor, there was no way he’d be walking it off.
If not, it had to be a serious wound.
And yet somehow, he was still on the run.
Not caught and thrown in jail. Not dead.
That alone meant he wasn’t ordinary.
To be fair, the guy had been extremely skilled.

“Let’s go.”
Grime’s trail didn’t end here.

They continued on, talking, sparring, cooking, and even tossing Dunbakel into the lake.
Most of the time, they rode on Bellopters, and compared to the rest of the continent, the land felt much more vast.
That was because there were no mountains blocking their view.

Then, out of nowhere, a ghoul appeared.
It was after they’d been riding west for quite a while.

Krgwrooorgh.
A ghoul—a creature rarely seen in the West, a symbol of the Demon Realm.

Dunbakel stepped forward.
The curved blade on her hip flashed and sliced its neck in a single motion.

Thwack.
The severed head rolled across the ground like a bundle of dry straw, spilling black blood.

After that, a few more ghouls appeared.
Owl spoke with a grave tone.
“Rem. From this point on, it’s a no-go zone.”
“I know.”
“I’m saying we really can’t go any further.”
“I know.”

But Rem kept walking, and said,
“We said we’d follow Grime’s path to the end, didn’t we?”

The legend of the hero Grime didn’t have a happy ending.
He found the Demon Realm, fought the creatures that came from it, and died.
His end wasn’t joyful—it was tragic. But it was that tragedy that made him great.

“There’s a Demon Realm in the West too.”
Rem said.

The Demon Realm stretched across the entire continent.
The biggest one was supposedly the Southern Demon Realm, but that wasn’t the only one.
These were stories passed down, drifting from mouth to mouth.

“There are even Demon Realms with names.”
Rem knew more than Enkrid.
He’d seen one during his coming-of-age ceremony in the West.
It was a secret known only to a few.
Rem had approached the edge of the Demon Realm during the rite and seen inside.

“This one’s called Silence.”
He stopped walking and turned to smile.
“Wanna take a look?”

Nod.
Enkrid nodded without even breathing.

He dreamed of being the kind of knight who would raise his sword to protect those behind him.
And the Demon Realm was one of the obstacles to that dream.

It had been a creature from the Demon Realm, Balrog, that killed Oara.

“Owl, it’ll be fine. You know why it’s called Silence.”
Juul, after a long pause, tried to reassure her.
She reluctantly nodded.

They had been riding Bellopters for more than twenty days now.
They hadn’t been sprinting at full speed, but they’d moved quickly.
The destination was the Demon Realm.

As they pressed on, the yellow-brown soil gradually darkened.
Not just black—it was murky, and it began to reek of blood.

Gwurrooor!
Ghouls appeared occasionally. There were even mutated ratmen.
But their numbers weren’t high.
It was too few to be considered a real Demon Realm.

All the grasslands around them vanished, and low hills rose ahead.
They were short, but stretched out far to either side—and completely black.

They climbed up the slope.
By now, even Owl didn’t say much.

Some Westerners believed that just stepping into this place could kill you.
But those who knew the truth knew better.
There was no such curse.
Going deeper could affect your body, but this wasn’t even the entrance.

They were just near the Demon Realm.
The real thing lay beyond the black mist.

From the hilltop, they could see strange flickers of color through the murky black haze.

Gray trees—the sign of the Demon Realm.

Their shapes were bizarre.
The branches and leaves looked like the form of a wild-haired woman.
The rocks were shaped like human hearts—dark maroon and devoid of light.

The wind that blew here wasn’t fresh and cool.
It was heavy and tainted with gloom.

The Gray Forest of the Demon Realm—
It had cursed the city of Oara.

That curse had been sliced in two by the knight Oara.
And now, another curse of the West stood before them.

Thick black fog spread left and right, blinding their field of vision.

“Only twice have monsters come out from here. Both times, the West nearly collapsed.”
Rem said. A tale of the past.

“One of them was Boramain. From a shamanic view, they say weak names don’t hold power—so they named it something ridiculous on purpose.”

Wasn’t the Curse of Boramain the one cast by the seer tribe?

Enkrid saw something in Rem’s eyes.
A certain heat.
A resolve to end that Demon Realm.
There had to be a reason.

“Did someone you know… a family member, maybe, get caught in it?”
Maybe when Boramain emerged, that’s what happened.
Maybe his dying father had said—
Run. Don’t fight. Leave the Demon Realm alone.

The people of the Western continent wouldn’t touch the Demon Realm.
Because to provoke it meant death.

That probably didn’t sit well with Rem.
An enemy of his father? A grudge for his family?

Rem scoffed and waved it off.
“What are you talking about? I just don’t like having something like that for a neighbor.”

He acted like it was no big deal.

“That’s it?”
Enkrid asked again.

“What more do you need?”
Well, for a neighbor, it was living a little far away.
Still, that answer sounded exactly like Rem.
He didn’t like it—simple as that.

Enkrid felt the same way.

“I didn’t come here to charge in just yet, so hold your horses.”
“Hold what?”
“You weren’t planning to charge in?”
“Me?”
“Yeah.”
“Why?”
“Well, your eyes kind of glaze over whenever you see the Demon Realm or monsters. Like how Lua Gharne is when she sees cultists.”
“Me?”
“Yeah.”

Rem’s look, as if he were staring at a lunatic, really rubbed Enkrid the wrong way.

“If you charge in now, that’s suicide. Get a grip. Shit—if I have to, I’ll stop you by force. Owl, get ready.”
Rem was dead serious, and Enkrid couldn’t help cursing.
“You bastard…”
“A dead bastard! Snap out of it!”

Enkrid swung Acker without holding back.

Right there, at the edge of the Demon Realm—
The so-called no-go zone—
They scuffled for a while.

Not seriously, of course.

The duel ended when Enkrid punched Rem in the ribs.
Since Rem hadn’t used any spells, Enkrid had the upper hand.

Dripping with sweat, they both suddenly burst out laughing.
It was a joke. One they’d both committed to fully.

They were saying: we’ll wipe out the Demon Realm eventually—but we don’t have to throw our lives away just yet.

They really were a couple of lunatics.

“Anyway, we’ll come back here next time.”
“Yeah, and let’s clean it up properly then.”
“Let’s.”

They got to their feet.
Owl carefully scanned the west.
She couldn’t help wondering if they were mentally ill.
Why were they talking about “cleaning up” a Demon Realm—and even laughing about it?

Juul’s heart was pounding.
Their ambition was so utterly ridiculous—
And yet his heart raced wildly.

A surge of anticipation filled him.

Now he understood why people naturally gathered around the renowned honor-knight, Enkrid.

Was it because he was good at fighting?
Plenty of people were. Rem was, and the West had once had its share of heroes too.

Was it because he was handsome?
No. Not that either.

“Dream.”

Their ambition was different.
The way they chased their dream was different.
Their entire approach to life shone.

That kind of person naturally drew others in.
And that realization moved Juul.

Before he knew it, he was crying.

“If you’re scared, just piss yourself—it’s better than crying,”
Rem snapped.

Juul laughed through his tears.
Because somehow, what they said—
Felt like it was already coming true.

“…Maybe he caught something,”
Rem muttered, half worried.