'The Empire raises knights through apprenticeship.'
The South had dreamed of raising knights through life and death, through instinct.
Before that, Count Molsen had modified people like chimeras and made them reach beyond the level of knights.
Enkrid had gone through all those methods, endured them, experienced them. Passing through the waves of those experiences, he saw a new path.
It was a process of awakening through intuition and instinct, then turning that into theory. Luagarne, a genius scholar, pulled that thing out of its vague realm and established it.
'First, make the vessel.'
The beginning was physical training. Through the isolation technique, you drove the body all the way to its limit.
You trained the muscles, the nerves, the senses. Then there was one single goal: to embody in Will the one thing you desired most.
During that process, you had to go through danger or harsh experiences. Human instinct stimulated potential.
That meant even the training method itself had become a system.
The Northern Empire would probably awaken Will this way too. The thought came to him suddenly, but he felt sure of it.
Well, if not, then not.
Whatever the case, the moment he thought of first awakening Will, Enkrid remembered that time.
'For me, it was the Will of refusal.'
Once it became one, two became possible. Once you handled your first Will, you could handle the second as well. That was what separated a squire from a junior knight.
And after that?
'To become a knight, you have to use Will unconsciously.'
A knight was someone from whom Will flowed naturally.
You had to perceive Will and use it in everyday motions. It was painful, exhausting, grueling, but you repeated it until it happened. Some people might fail for their entire lives, even until death, but at least the direction of effort had been found.
'An ordinary junior knight and a junior knight who keeps trying to use Will even in daily life are different.'
That alone created a gap in skill between the two. Therefore this was the right path.
Was that the end, once you became a knight?
Becoming a knight was not the end. After that, depending on the direction of one's training, the levels diverged sharply.
Hadn't Enkrid experienced that himself?
Luagarne had divided and organized that part.
'The density of Will.'
The method of forming Uske, the training method of Indules.
Like a snake biting its own tail, the principle from when one first became a knight repeated itself.
'Do it consciously.'
Then train until you could use it unconsciously, naturally again.
It was the essence of what he had realized before. He trained and tempered every technique contained in his body, forming a circle, then used one sharp specialty to break the circle he had made.
Then, taking that specialty as the starting point, he drew the circle again.
'Cycle.'
Put another way, a cycle was a ring. If you properly linked that together and got through one full ring of circulation, your skill leaped forward dramatically.
'My theory.'
What Enkrid had thought of had been given form.
When discussing the level of a knight, the standard should be how many times that ringed circle had been broken.
You surpassed the self of yesterday. You experienced that kind of today countless times and moved toward tomorrow.
It was a theory that seemed to condense and compress Enkrid's entire life.
"Well?"
The Frog leaned in with an oily face. Enkrid placed a hand on her forehead.
A Frog's oil was not sticky or unpleasant to the touch. If anything, it was moist and clean.
"Excellent."
Enkrid lightly hugged the Frokk and said it sincerely. At that praise and tribute, Luagarne puffed up her cheeks dramatically.
"Yes, that's exactly what I wanted to hear."
If Shinar had seen it, the upward tilt of the fairy's eyes would have set a new record.
After parting with Luagarne, Enkrid returned to his room and inspected his equipment.
He started with the armor made from Balrog's hide. He ran a hand over it to check for any problems, then put it on again.
The whisper of the demon, which made his desire for battle surge and made him crave slaughter and struggle, came to him more clearly than ever before. It was not language, but impulse rising within him. Balrog's lingering thoughts touched the desires lodged inside Enkrid.
'No problems.'
If anything, it even felt livelier than before. He checked his cloak too, and there was not a single worn spot on it.
You could say the fairy-made magic fabric was proving its worth.
'The method of using Will.'
Lately, Enkrid had been studying and using a method of pouring Will into a weapon on the foundation of Wave.
And what he was doing now, inspecting his equipment, was a habit rooted in him since his mercenary days.
'The Empire.'
In his letter, Crang had also added that an envoy from the Empire would be coming. That would be in about a month and a half.
He had also said he hoped Enkrid would be there when the time came.
'The war with the South.'
To him, it did not feel that long ago. And before that, who had he fought? Cultists, bandits, civil war, Aspen.
Now he stood at a point where he had killed one demon lord of the Demon lands. Rather than fighting people, he wanted to face a true enemy.
And he could not forget that blond swordsman either.
'Why did you go into the Demon lands?'
What were you trying to gain there? For what purpose?
"I'll stand with the side that wins and reshape the world."
The words that bastard had said remained vividly in his mind. If someone faced the Demon lands, that bastard would make a move.
'How many cycles have you broken?'
Curiosity raised its head, and desire surged up as if Balrog himself had manifested. Enkrid took out five horn-bugle daggers, maintained them, and steadied himself.
When the necessary moment came, they would meet. He could ask then. With words, or with the sword.
And for that time, what he had to do was obvious. Prepare each day, train each day, wait each day. That was all.
Enkrid fastened a dagger belt over the leather armor. Once the daggers were set into it, his basic equipment was complete.
Seeing him openly wear horn-bugle daggers like this always made Jaxon's look turn foul, but they were useful tools to Enkrid.
Lately, even Jaxon had stopped saying much about it.
"If it's going to announce itself with sound anyway, then openly wearing and using it may not be such a bad thing."
That was what he had said when he acknowledged it. Well, Rem had said that was not acknowledgment, just giving up.
"That stubbornness couldn't be broken by a demon or by Balrog. It's the kind of stubbornness that'd break Balrog's sinew. Our captain's the Knight of Stubbornness."
That was something said on the occasional times when Rem, Jaxon, and even the others happened to see eye to eye.
"Agreed."
Jaxon had answered that way, and Ragna, who had been swinging his sword alone, stopped and nodded that it was true.
"It is the heavenly punishment granted by the Lord."
Audin had added that too.
"Not a gift?"
Enkrid had muttered.
Wasn't heavenly punishment still punishment?
At their captain's timid little act of resistance, everyone uniformly took the attitude that he should stop talking nonsense.
Luagarne was no different.
'Even Shinar didn't take my side.'
Even the fairy who introduced herself as his fiancée had shown a pitying look and shaken her head.
For a fairy, a race less expressive than most others, to show such an openly pitying look—
"Hm."
A quiet laugh slipped out of Enkrid as he finished putting away the rest of his equipment.
He took Night off his belt and put it back in its sheath, and he returned Penna to the fairy city.
Several fairies came out to receive him during the return, but Brann alone spoke with him as their representative.
"Where's Shinar?"
When Enkrid asked, Woodguard, the tree giant, shook his head while holding smoke within him.
"Not out yet. Shall I tell her you miss her?"
Puffing out smoke, Brann said.
"I didn't mean it that way."
Enkrid denied it at once.
It was not something he dared say, fearing what Shinar's reaction would be. The tree giant burst into laughter. A grinding sound of bark scraping bark rang out.
It was an odd laugh, about as unusual as when a Frog puffed up their cheeks.
"Your reaction is amusing."
Fairies generally liked jokes. Maybe that was because they lived long, tedious lives.
Instead of Penna, Enkrid wore the thin quilted armor he had received back there like an outer garment.
'Better than most plate armor?'
It probably was. After all, it was armor deliberately made in the fairy city.
He reviewed what he knew and inspected his equipment. After repeating that kind of thing again and again, he never stopped training and tempering himself, and in the meantime he told everyone the story of destroying the Demon land called Silence.
"The captain really is impossible to predict. You never know what he'll do each time he goes out. That's why the Lockfried Caravan leader was smiling so broadly."
Kraiss had said the aftermath of what Enkrid had done would probably make him several times busier.
"Though Edin handles most of it."
While Enkrid was away, Kraiss and Edin had even reached the point of drinking together.
The other members of the order had simply nodded when they heard about him destroying Silence.
"So it was a single monster that had itself become a colony, rather than a Demon land?"
Only Esther asked a question and got an answer. As a mage, it was the kind of thing she would naturally be curious about—monsters, colonies, even the formation of Demon lands. She asked this and that and never left his side.
"If the Demon land in the West was a monster, then I've been wondering what the origin of the Demon lands in the South was."
No longer a mage who only studied spells alone, but one who had come out into the world and met people, she now worried about everyone and wished for the dream of the one she followed to be fulfilled.
"You intend to erase that place entirely in the end, don't you?"
She had said that, and Enkrid had nodded as if it were nothing.
"I will be beside you when that time comes."
Esther said it. And even then Enkrid only nodded.
It sounded like casual talk, but Marco, the soldier standing nearby, blinked again and again in disbelief.
How could they speak so casually about wiping out a Demon land?
Other than the day he returned, Enkrid did not use Night. And after returning Penna, he held only a training sword.
Of course, when someone reached the level of a knight, even a training sword was not just a training sword.
He had gone beyond the stage of shaping, so if he made Will remain on the blade, it would cut through something like a boulder as easily as a soft potato.
At any rate, ten days passed quickly. On the promised day, Enkrid headed for Aitri's forge.
The weather was especially clear that day. The sky was blue, with not a single cloud. The air had grown warm over the past few days. It was a truly fine day.
"Oh, Sir Enkrid."
People who recognized him greeted him as he passed. By now, there were few people in Border Guard who did not recognize Enkrid.
Even newcomers quickly learned who he was just by seeing how the people around them reacted.
Then there were the guards on watch saluting him, and the ones whose eyes drifted when they noticed Esther had somehow fallen in behind him.
Seeing that, Enkrid stopped Esther.
"Don't go blinding people for no reason. With beauty like yours, of course their eyes will drift."
"Yes, I know that now."
Reason did not exist only in spells. Esther had learned that too.
"Still, if someone's looking with lewd eyes, it's only right to blind them now and then."
Even so, in some matters she had no intention of yielding.
They walked without hurry. The weather was good, and thanks to the city construction overseen by Kraiss, there was no stench.
Hadn't he said he had dug waterways and made hidden channels of water run through the city?
And on top of that, anyone who carelessly dumped waste inside the city was dealt with harshly.
Water facilities had been built here and there throughout the city, and unlike wells, if you just turned the handle, water trickled out.
All of that was spreading to the capital and the surrounding cities as well.
The reason Kraiss had been absent when Enkrid returned this time was because he had gone to help nearby cities install those sewer systems.
As they walked through that clean city, Esther said,
"I thought my help would be needed, but he refused."
"Aitri?"
Nod.
Esther was wearing the same short black fur coat as before. On her feet were long boots, so none of her white skin showed on the outside.
With her pale skin, she looked like a black flower blooming on a stem.
No wonder everyone's eyes were drawn to her. In any case, her accompanying him reduced annoyance. Whenever he went out into the city, servants from noble houses usually rushed up from every direction trying to hand him letters, but now there was not a single person bold enough to do so.
Hadn't they said the Golden Witch and the Black Flower were this city's famous sights?
On the way, they exchanged glances with Juri, who sold marmalade, then kept walking.
The reason Aitri had refused Esther's help? There was no need to question it. He would handle it himself.
When Enkrid arrived at the forge, an unfamiliar silence greeted him. There was no hammering, no sound of metal being ground on a whetstone.
"You've come?"
Aitri, looking healthy rather than half-dead as before, greeted him wearing a thick leather work apron.
"It's finished."
As he said that, Aitri led him inside. Enkrid followed without a word.
On the way in, he noticed a softly glowing pale green mass.
"It was sent from Kirheis."
Aitri said. More exactly, it was a gift from Shinar, who had kept it in mind even while training.
Beside it sat a magical metal Esther had cast with her own hands, placed like its pair. That thing looked like a stone made of black velvet.
"That was given by the lady who came with you."
Enkrid only nodded. He did not ask why Aitri had not used them. Just as Aitri did not discuss swordsmanship with him, Enkrid did not discuss metallurgy with Aitri.
He had only waited and hoped.
Then the newly forged engraved weapon Aitri had made came into view.
It was a sword, revealing its long form atop a soft cloth.
The blade glowed with a faint blue light, while the guard, pommel, and grip seemed nothing special.
There was no reason to hesitate, so he reached out and picked up the sword. If Night was close to a demonic blade because of its inborn sharpness, then this sword in his hand felt like nothing at all.
That was not a matter of weight balance or the hardness of the blade. Naturally, it was excellent. It was a sword worthy of being called a masterpiece. But this was an engraved weapon. From that point of view, its traits did not stand out.
"'Today.'"
The moment Aitri said it, Enkrid understood the sword's value. Intent rose, and Will moved. Will flowed through Enkrid's hand and settled into the sword.
Wooooong.
The sword gave off a vibration. Just as a man and woman seeing each other for the first time look at each other and measure one another, the sword looked at Enkrid, and Enkrid looked at the sword.
The world of his mind opened, and Enkrid saw a man with the same calm face as his own, as if looking into a mirror.