A Knight Who Eternally Regresses

Why go this far?
For a moment, Enkrid didn’t understand.
Was there truly a reason to hate him this much?

He’d seen the hatred in the boy’s eyes—but he couldn’t comprehend it.
Even if one’s heart was twisted with hatred and resentment, why him?

Naturally, Enkrid had no way of knowing:
To the prodigious young shaman of the Seer Tribe, the Apostle Enkrid killed… was his father.

In the West, it was said that one must never live under the same sky as the one who killed their father.
The young genius shaman had simply done as he was taught since childhood.

Unless…maybe he just needed someone to blame after everything in his life fell apart.
If you really thought about it, it was all foolishness.

Why follow the West’s teachings after betraying the West itself?

Then again…from another angle, it made perfect sense.
The boy had been brainwashed—cornered with nowhere else to go.

He had only two options:
Die captured…
Or do something utterly insane.

And he chose insanity.

He staked everything on it.
Sold his soul to demons, cursed his own body, and made a gamble where he’d lose everything, even if it worked.
Even if his soul burned forever in hell, he didn’t care.

He laid a curse upon himself as a sacrifice—
and his gamble paid off.

Along the way, he fooled a Great Narae Tribe shaman—
luck was on his side.

That shaman had pitied his sick, crippled form.
Pretending to be a cannibal’s prey had worked.
The heavens seemed to be helping him.

So the young shaman believed what he was doing was right.
Every twist in fate had led him here.

And this was the result of that twisted belief.

Of course, Enkrid knew none of this.
So what?
Would it change the present?
No.

All he could do was accept it.

“Hmm.”

Enkrid let out a low murmur.
The world was yellow. The wind itself seemed to crackle with dryness.

The heat was one thing—but there wasn’t a single landmark in sight.

So what now?

Thankfully, Enkrid wasn’t Ragna.
Just wait until night.

He wasn’t used to reading stars, but he could manage.
At the very least, he knew the desert’s rough location, thanks to following the path of Grime.

“If I head southeast, I should be okay.”

That was his guess, and it would likely be right.

Enkrid turned his head side to side, then cast his gaze far out into the distance.

An endless river of sand.
A lake of sand.
A sea of sand.
Just… sand, sand, and more sand.

He tried to find some shade to escape the blistering sun, but gave up.
The desert was a bastard of a place.
There was nothing.

Weren’t there supposed to be cacti?
Some monsters?
Even animals that only lived in the desert?

But there was nothing.
At least, that’s what his senses were telling him.

So he had no choice but to endure the blazing sun.

Thankfully, the armor helped insulate some of the heat.
Monster-hide had that benefit—which made the heat bearable.

Enkrid didn’t know much about deserts, but he knew well that moving recklessly in unfamiliar terrain was dangerous.

So he walked a bit, scouted his surroundings, and then stopped to wait.

Patience was his specialty.

Was it carelessness?

With nothing but time, he began to reflect.
Reviewing what he’d learned, analyzing again.

Night wouldn’t come for a while.
The sun was relentless.
It wasn’t the time to be burning stamina.

Enkrid sat down, slowed his breathing, and waited.
Meditating.

***

In front of the corpse with a cleaved skull stood Gennarae.
Lua Gharne and Dunbakel were there too.

Gennarae’s brow furrowed sharply as he spoke.
“It was a spatial transference technique.”

Spellcraft worked through mediums.
It could be a totem.
It could be a talisman.
Sometimes, it was one’s own life.

If Enkrid and Rem hadn’t been here, Gennarae would’ve fought the same way—by burning his own life as fuel.

To make his life burn like a warrior’s flame.
To face the enemy just once with that kind of power.

That’s why he understood.

This wasn’t just a totem.
The caster had offered everything.

‘That bastard really went all-in.’

Gennarae could guess the rest.
There’d been one in the Seer Tribe—a shaman with talents nearly equal to Rem.

That boy had sacrificed his own soul.
Not just his lifespan—his soul.

The remnants of the corpse told the whole story:
Talent. Soul. Sacrifice. Offering.
No other method could have made this possible.

‘He must’ve cursed himself first—paid the bad luck up front.’

A ritual of misfortune, to better gamble on success.
Even then, he should’ve failed.
Should’ve died alone.

But somehow—he sent Enkrid flying.

To where?
No one knew.

They could only guess, but even guesses had limits.

“If it was a spatial transfer… where was he sent? Even the great archmages can’t send other people away like that.”

Frok spoke up.
Gennarae looked at the shattered corpse.

Even if that boy came back from the dead and tried again—he’d never succeed twice.

This time, the scales of fate had simply tilted.

As the continent would put it:
The goddess of fortune had favored the enemy.

But in the West, they said:

“The scales tilted.”

“To the wrong side,”
Gennarae added.

“Speak clearly, human,”
Frok responded.

“What about the benefactor?”

Just then, Ziba’s mother appeared, blinking.
The change in mood was clear even to her.

Word spread quickly across the tribe.
Of course it did—the honorary warrior who had saved them was gone.

Every Westerner with something to offer gathered in a frenzy.
The chieftain stood at the center, calling out:

“People of the West—hear me!”

His voice rang with resolve.
His eyes gleamed.

“Find him. No matter what it takes.”

And they did.

From the smallest traces—they combed through everything.

“I don’t care if it takes years. We will find him.”

The chieftain wasn’t one to make empty promises.
He was serious.

If a man had no honor, he wasn’t worthy of calling himself a Westerner.

***

Rem sat alone in a dark void, deep in thought.

How many days had passed?
He didn’t know.

But he knew one thing—the spell descent was complete.

During the process, all kinds of memories had passed through his mind.

Back when he was a child, the tribe’s shamans all said the same thing:

“If your body can’t handle it, it’ll pop.
So take it slow—one step at a time.”

Even back then, the eldest shaman was still the eldest.
Rem followed his advice… halfway.
On the surface, at least.

Behind the scenes, he did as he pleased.
Why?

Because it was fun.
Spellcraft was fun.
Why hold back?

And in the process, he learned about ancestral spirits, divine spellcraft—and realized he was different.

“If you use spirit descent, you might be bedridden for a week.”

Spirit descent meant calling a god to dwell in your body.

The medium could be a carved sigil, or a totem, or something etched into the flesh.
When that happened, you’d be stronger, faster—your senses would sharpen.

In the West, spellcraft was split into two main types.

One was spirit descent.
The other… divine manifestation.

Divine manifestation brought part of a god into the mortal world.

Of course, the concept of “gods” in the West was different from that of the continent.

If gods on the continent were absolute beings, in the West, divinity came from long-term devotion.

That’s why they worshiped wolves, bears, eagles.

They held rites.
They offered prayers.
They knelt with their foreheads to the ground, water at their side, showing reverence.

This might’ve been normal for others—but not for Rem.

Even when he did nothing, the spirits would approach him on their own and stay.
Even when he accepted them into his body, nothing bad happened.
To be precise—he had no side effects.

This translation is the intellectual property of Novelight.

It wasn’t until he wandered across the continent and took in other forms of spellcraft that he came to understand:
Oh? That hurts.
There are side effects.

So this is what normal is.
Then… could it be used differently?

He thought it could.
That shift in thinking—combined with experience and instinct—pushed him forward.

Taking in another person’s spellcraft into your own body was usually complete madness.
But Rem had done it—and even built a theory around it.

He’d shared it all with Ayl.
At first, Ayl had panicked.
But eventually, she came to understand.

He also knew why the Eldest Shaman and others worried.

Spellcraft was a technique that borrowed power from spirits.
And those spirits one called on—they could very well be demons.

Foreign Path.
A straying path.
A wrong path.
There were many precedents.

Cases of people being deceived by clever serpents and forging wicked spirits.
The larger the vessel of the spellcaster, the greater and more powerful the spirit that could manifest in the mortal world.

That’s why they worried.

But Rem had conviction.
“That won’t happen to me.”

So he told it not to anyone else—but to his axe.

Forged from meteor iron, his axe was Rem’s spiritual medium.

He couldn’t use spellcraft without a medium—so long ago, he’d forged his own descent weapon for that purpose.

That’s why he had no need to carve markings into his skin.

Why open holes in the body and shove in ink?
What if it faded or got scarred? It’d lose function.

Most Westerners without shamanic talent didn’t carve markings.
But those who did wield spellcraft typically relied on tattoos.

Rem simply didn’t need to.

In the dark, his spiritual medium began to respond.
The thing that had been sulking and refusing to cooperate finally began to speak.

His axe—with two blades, one larger than the other.
The blade facing outward was massive, while the one pointed inward toward himself was only about a palm’s width.

It needed to be honed with a whetstone like any other weapon, but in truth, it would never grow dull or break.
The whetstone? That was just a treat.
A snack the axe liked.

Once his thoughts were in order and his mind fully set, Rem opened his eyes.

The Eldest Shaman stood before him.

“…You startled me, you brat.”

“Why’s that?”

“It’s only been six days.”

Rem had poured everything into his descent weapon.
But while he was away from it, the spiritual power sealed within had grown even greater.

To a mediocre shaman, just approaching it would be enough to faint.
The Eldest Shaman thought it would take at least ten days just to house that kind of spiritual force in a human body—but not for Rem.

Even as a child, Rem suffered no burden from descent or possession.
Now, his body was even stronger.
His control more refined.
His vessel, larger.

He’d finished defining what it meant to be a warrior—and the difference between a knight and a hero.

Receiving spellcraft again was easy.

A knight—one who harmonizes technique and Will.
A hero—one who harmonizes technique and spellcraft.

Seen simply, that was the distinction.

The process of absorbing the spellcraft took five days.
Three of those were spent coaxing the descent weapon.

The full six days included the first day spent purifying his body and mind.

If weapons with egos were called ego weapons, then descent weapons were much the same.
They didn’t literally speak, but they felt.
And this one… was sulking.

The emotion Rem sensed when grasping it again felt like Ayl.

Why did you leave me behind?

It was still young.
So Rem soothed it gently, like a child.

And when all was complete—he felt it.

Omnipotence.

“With one more step, I feel like I °• N 𝑜 v 𝑒 l i g h t •° could walk straight up to that directionless bastard.”

He felt like he could split mountains with a single swing of his axe.
Slice through the sun, the wind, the lake, the earth. Anything.

Rem shook it off quickly.
He’d dealt with enough spirits to know—that knowing what can be done and what should be done are two very different things.

He understood that difference clearly.

That’s why he could fight on par with knights even without spellcraft.
Why he could kill one if he tried.

His now-enlarged vessel could more than contain the overwhelming spellforce.
He could’ve carried it all along.
He’d simply left it behind for a while.

Taking it back in brought omnipotence—but so what? That was all.

When Rem rose, axe in hand, the Eldest Shaman had more wrinkles on his face than ever before.

“Well done.”

Spellcraft required ritual and devotion.
Even for someone like Rem, it wasn’t something you could just waltz in and claim.

To prepare for this, the Eldest Shaman had likely performed rites for over thirty days.

He’d petitioned the heavens and soothed the earth.
He’d sought permission from every spirit dwelling in nature.

All in Rem’s stead.

Now then. Time to head back.

Time to see that so-called commander’s face twist in surprise.

“Let’s go.”

“I’ll rest a few days before heading out.”

Rem didn’t feel like waiting.
So he left the Eldest Shaman behind and moved ahead.

The first thing he heard upon returning—

“Enki is gone.”

It was Lua Gharne who spoke.

“Where’d he go? Off to hunt monsters by himself?”

“No.”

“He’s not the type to get lost.”

Then came the mention of a spatial transference technique.
Rem didn’t have a holster for his descent weapon, so he carried it in hand.
Everyone was tense.

Rem had a reputation for throwing tantrums when things didn’t go his way.
But this time, he responded coolly:

“Well… he’ll find his way back.”

No way someone like Enkrid would die just from getting lost.

So Rem simply said they’d wait.

Ayl and the others blinked.
It wasn’t the response they expected.

But Rem believed it.
That this wasn’t something that would kill a man like him.