A Knight Who Eternally Regresses

"Take my disciple as your adopted son."

Baron Philip was the lord ruling over this region. He wasn't particularly exceptional, but that didn't mean he lacked ambition. One day...

He would become a lord with vast lands. His ambition, however, was closer to a delusion. But ever since the appearance of Lorenzo-the so-called swordsmanship master-things changed.

Lorenzo asked him to take his disciple as his adopted son, and Philip agreed.

Outwardly, the story spread that the baron had adopted a son and then provided him with a swordsmanship master.

But the truth was this:

The disciple was a prodigy with the spear. He fought with a spear in one hand and a shield in the other, and could dispatch over a dozen ghouls in an instant.

"Impressive."

The words came out of the baron's mouth without thinking.

He had never seen someone with such skill in person before.

None of his own guards or soldiers who were good with weapons could compare.

And the master, Lorenzo, fought even better than his disciple-turned-adopted son, Caven.

These two had said they would lend him their strength.

"I have long admired the Baron's noble and upright character. Recently, I've been looking for a proper place to settle as a wanderer who has lost his path. If I am to be turned away, I shall quietly leave."

That was what Lorenzo had said when he first approached him.

Ever since the civil war had begun, all of Naurillia had been in upheaval, and there were rumors of skilled individuals searching for new lords.

It was an opportunity for him as well.

Why shouldn't I be able to do it too?

Philip didn't think himself inferior to the man called Enkrid. He wasn't even a true noble. Just a mercenary who got lucky and seized a position.

A wandering swordsman, that's all.

He was a man who built his reputation by seizing the chaos of war.

Was it jealousy? Of course it was.

Then all he had to do was steal that reputation. Quietly gather surrounding nobles, salivate over the fat prize called the Border Guard, and...

That was what Philip had done. This was the result.

"Smells like nobility. That's a noble."

Rem, once famed as a noble hunter, said with a wrinkled nose. He looked like he was mimicking Dunbakel.

There was no way he could tell by smell, but one glance was enough to say it: definitely a noble.

The feathered hat, the thick shirt puffed out at the shoulders, the leather boots covering his calves-it was obvious.

In other words, he was mocking the man while fully aware of the truth.

"Who are you? This is Baron Philip's domain."

Three of the riders among the group looked down at the two warriors. Enkrid raised his head and replied.

"Enkrid of the Border Guard."

No further words were needed for an introduction.

Baron Philip blinked several times.

Who? Like or hate him, there wasn't a single soul in the region who didn't know the name Enkrid.

Even those who downplayed his achievements still knew his name.

"An imposter?"

The baron asked in suspicion. Enkrid ignored him completely and said what he had to say.

"Did you pick a fight with me?"

"...What?"

What the hell did this bastard just say?

"I asked if you picked a fight."

There was only so much respect Enkrid would give just because someone was a noble. He was well aware of the intangible weight he carried.

Noble? Baron? Please.

He was the ender of the civil war, a general who had been granted domains across the land. If it came down to names, a single letter could resolve the matter.

Even if something did arise, Marcus would handle it.

And Crang had already written that it was fine to deal with a few of these pests-that they were practically asking for it. "You bastard!"

The baron exploded. Shouting furiously from atop his horse, he pointed at Enkrid with a trembling finger.

General or not, this man wasn't even a noble! How dare he!

"Caven!"

Lorenzo shouted. His adopted son, Caven, jumped down from his horse. He narrowed his eyes and picked up his spear and shield-his constant companions.

Caven's gaze swept over the two. They didn't look like easy opponents, but he didn't think he would lose either. At the same time, he bore clear killing intent.

That had been the plan from the start-to establish himself here for the sake of Naurillia's internal unrest.

The problem was... they had chosen the worst possible opponent.

The moment he harbored killing intent, Rem reacted.

"Tsk, the hell is this crap."

Rem mumbled as he stepped forward. His foot bent, front planting on the ground while the back lifted slightly-and then, he vanished. That's how it appeared to Caven's eyes.

It wasn't even a fight.

Before Caven could thrust his spear or do anything at all, Rem closed the distance and swung his axe.

A speed beyond Caven's perception.

He tried to raise his shield, awkwardly, but the axe came down on his crown.

Crack!

His skull shattered.

"Caven!"

His teacher, Lorenzo, shouted too late. He jumped from his horse, but Rem was already in front of him. Grabbing Lorenzo by the neck with one hand, he slammed him into the ground.

It was a show of inhuman strength, like a gust of wind tossing a doll.

There was a rock shyly poking its head through the dirt. Rem drove Lorenzo's skull straight into it.

Crunch!

The human skull doesn't win against stone. The scalp split, the skull cracked, and blood and brain matter spilled out.

Rem tossed aside the man named Lorenzo and dusted off his hands.

These weren't even worthy of using his axe. Even with a nickname like "Demon Slayer" floating around Enkrid, bugs like this still swarmed in.

Glad I brought this little axe with me.

He'd picked up a wood-chopping axe from the forge before they left.

Using his heirloom weapon on this sort of trash would've made it sulk.

He had killed two, but it wasn't anything special. Drawing a weapon in silence was a declaration of intent to kill-and a statement that one was ready to die as well.

Swordsmen were that kind of breed.

It was common. Killings between people with weapons-swords, spears, hammers, axes-was the way of the world. Baron Philip's mouth hung open.

To him, Caven and Lorenzo were experts. Short of a full knight, who could oppose them?

He didn't know.

That above the sky was another sky, that there were worlds he didn't even know existed.

His shallow fantasies, empty ambitions not even worth calling dreams-the curtain had fallen on them.

"Did you pick a fight? Sent assassins too?"

Enkrid asked again. None of the watching soldiers dared move. They were frozen solid, even though winter was still a long way off.

"...What?"

The ambition and delusions that had once filled Baron Philip's heart vanished. In their place, survival instinct awakened. The notion of how dare he speak this way to a noble disappeared entirely.

His opponent was the Demon Slayer.

"Let's just cut off his head. Faster that way."

The barbaric monster beside him said.

"Don't go for the head. I'm not a murderer. If I kill everyone who picks a fight, I'll end up with a nickname like 'Demon General."

Enkrid replied.

"Please spare me."

The baron spoke up immediately. It was all the courage he had left, squeezed out into one plea.

He didn't trust the soldiers behind him. A wise choice. They were already kneeling, armor and all.

Was it their fault?

"Starting today, you'll use your own hands to farm."

Enkrid looked over the soldiers and saw that they were well-fed. This wasn't something they'd done out of poverty.

Baron Philip's territory wasn't destitute, but it wasn't especially prosperous either.

This entire mess had started because of those two freeloaders, Lorenzo and Caven.

The baron nodded.

His domain had begun with a land grant meant to be cultivated through his own labor.

Just looking at Enkrid made his legs tremble.

It was only natural. If you became his enemy, fear was the natural outcome.

Enkrid had reined it in, but possessing Will naturally affected the air around him.

When faced with hostility, a person could feel as if they were teetering on the edge of a cliff-dizzy with dread.

"Thank you."

Baron Philip bowed his head. Becoming a subordinate vassal under a high lord was not something to be ridiculed for.

"Weren't there a few more?"

Enkrid asked casually, glancing toward Philip.

"You're going to visit them all?"

"Since I'm out here anyway."

That was the conversation between Enkrid and Rem, right in front of Philip. The baron wasn't the only noble who had picked a fight with Kraiss.

Since he was already out, Enkrid decided to make it a full tour and visit the rest like some kind of traveling performance.

Some nobles had supporters like Lorenzo, while others simply got swept up in the tide and piggybacked on whatever their close allies were doing.

No one had expected Enkrid to step in personally-but those who knew him could have predicted it.

Kraiss had at least guessed as much.

Thus, Enkrid cleaned house among the nobles. The ones who were truly beyond saving-like the trash who stole wives and daughters from their own people-Rem executed under a convenient pretext, and the rest were absorbed as vassals.

Even if the nobles had initiated the fights, even if Crang had given permission, they couldn't just go around lopping off noble

heads all the time. But excuses were plentiful.

"Are you insulting my honor?!"

Local nobles always spoke harshly the first time they met, and all of them put up some kind of desperate resistance.

Upon hearing such words, Rem would casually toss an old, worn glove into the noble's face.

Tossing a glove was an age-old symbol of a challenge to duel.

"Yeah. I insulted you."

Smack.

One got a nosebleed from the waterlogged leather. Another started spewing obscenities in a rage.

"Your mother's a ghoul!"

That sort of thing. Rem didn't take it seriously. Why talk to a corpse?

"Then fight on my behalf!"

At that, the noble would send out a champion.

"If the champion dies, you die too. In that case, I'll bet my captain's head as well."

That captain, of course, meant Enkrid.

Whether he revealed his identity or not, the situation usually played out the same.

They couldn't just go around beheading nobles without any justification.

There was still something called order within the kingdom.

What Enkrid and Rem were doing now was akin to using the legal loophole of trial-by-duel.

But to them, this was all just a stroll.

As a result of these events, the fading nickname “Noble Slayer Rem" saw a resurgence-but Rem didn't care.

Enkrid returned to the Border Guard and resumed his ordinary daily life.

One day, he played with Odd-Eye. Over the next few days, he wandered around checking in with his soldiers.

He roamed the city, and after clearing out a few nobles, the Border Guard's reputation had grown so much that others began targeting Enkrid in different ways.

Thus began a wave of attacks from the Lady Brigade against the Border Guard.

Heavily made-up women in lavish dresses-renowned local beauties-launched their fishing lines to reel in the great catch named Enkrid.

But they didn't realize that their fishing lines had been cast into dry land, not into the sea, a river, or a lake.

"One meeting and he'll fall for me."

"Is there a man alive who can resist my face?"

"Rowen, you can do it. If his heart doesn't stir when he sees you, he's not a man-he's a eunuch."

With encouragement from their parents and relatives, the lady brigade made their move... and tragically ran into two walls.

The first wall was a dark-haired beauty who, while building her new world of magic, had been observing people and studying their lives. She was in the process of gaining a new understanding of humanity.

With black hair and blue eyes, Esther made the cheeks of some ladies flush red with envy.

She was beautiful enough to enchant even women.

The Black Flower Esther.

Someone had given her that nickname, and it quickly spread.

"I give up..."

"I'm going home."

Some gave up and left. Some stayed, thinking there had to be at least one area where they had an advantage over the Black

Flower.

What they found instead was the second wall-Sinar the Fairy.

The Witch in Gold.

Her beauty was beyond human. They couldn't even bring themselves to show their faces in her presence.

Why was there a fairy here?

All of this had happened while Enkrid remained entirely uninterested. Because of this, rumors spread that the Border Guard's

master was flanked by a witch on one side and a flower on the other.

It also explained the sharp drop in love letters.

"That's what they're saying. So now they're calling Captain Sinar the Witch and Esther the Flower."

Kraiss had explained it. Enkrid simply nodded.

He couldn't have cared less.

He had more important things to ponder, to contemplate, to resolve.

He had warned the ones who'd picked fights with him-more specifically, the ones who'd targeted his people.

That was one item on his to-do list, and he had crossed it off. He had done it on impulse, and now that it was done, his mind

was at ease.

That was enough.

"I'm off."

Kraiss was a busy man. He said what he had to and left.

"Alright."

Enkrid replied without getting up, returning to his meditation. He was mulling over something a squadmate had once said.

"Hm? How do I use spells?"

The first to ask had been Rem.

"How do I use them? I just use them. If there's anything different, it's... something like this. Possession means the spirit's energy

resides in my body. Say, the spirit of a bear dwells in me, and the legs of a wolf do, too. That's what I mean. They say you

summon it only when you need it, but I've always had spirits living in me."

Enkrid remembered Rem smiling as he said that. Since returning from the West and dueling with Ragna, Rem had clearly

stepped into another realm.

Jaxon subtly avoided facing him.

Audin openly admitted defeat.

"I'd lose if we fought now, Brother. It's meaningless."

He had emphasized now, so even though it sounded like he was conceding, it came off more like a challenge for the future.

After Rem, Enkrid asked Sinar a similar question and received an answer.

"The world has a flow, and I let part of my body ride that flow."

It was in response to how she had risen to the level of a Fairy Knight.

"It just happens."

He asked Ragna too, but his explanation was a total mess.

Still, it helped Enkrid.

recognizing the similarities.

The Mercenary King of the East had spoken of gaining various experiences. That could mean understanding the differences-or

Just as knights used pressure, Rem used a similar technique-a spell called Fear Induction.

Were the two different? Yes.

But also the same. Because both overwhelmed the opponent.

Thoughts spread, scattered, then gradually condensed again.

Oara had said you didn't need any special technique-just swing the blade. How could that be?

If Will resided in intention, then simply swinging would produce an unblockable cut.

Strengthening the muscles. Honing technique. Steeling the heart. Firming the mind.

All those things passed through his head.

What was different about a knight's Will?

Enkrid sat on a tree stump, feeling the wind, hearing the birds, and listening to the shouts of soldiers rolling on the ground as he focused deeply on one idea.

Not something you summon when needed-but something that remains open at all times.

There's a door. And instead of opening it only when necessary, you leave it open permanently.

Until now, you opened it only when needed-because the wind from outside was too strong.

No, you simply couldn't keep it open unless you held it with your hand. You had no choice.

But if you can withstand the wind, that's a different story.

How do you leave the door open at all times?

One method came to mind, and Enkrid opened his eyes. Lua Gharne was quietly watching him.

His eyes, shut and then opened, were calmer than ever. As if he had completed something.

"I'm heading to the mess hall. Wanna come?"

Enkrid rose lightly and asked. Lua Gharne shook her head.

"No interest."

Enkrid headed for the mess hall. It was time to eat.