Something blacker than a night where dark clouds covered the moon came flying in. In that instant, Enkrid felt it was something alive.
Whether it was alive or dead did not change how he would respond, but the feeling came naturally all the same.
The black mass lengthened and flew at him like the tip of a blade, and Enkrid recognized it as a one-point thrust.
An application of what he had just learned through his engraved weapon.
'Make the sword a part of my body.'
Once he recognized and accepted it that way, responding became all the easier.
Enkrid also gripped his sword with one hand and thrust it out. Two thrusts met. It was a point-to-point clash of blade tips. Acrobatics among acrobatics.
Dooong.
The instant the sword and the black mass locked together. The air rang, and the black mass revealed its form and snatched at the blade. His sense that it was alive had been right. It resembled a bat, but its claws were longer, and its feet had blue veins bulging across them.
Those feet grabbed Today's blade. In that instant, a heavy weight loaded onto the sword.
The moment the bat with the misshapen claws seized the blade, Enkrid pulled back with his right hand, braced power into his right foot, twisted his left ankle back, and drove out a punch. A superb striking technique smashed into the bat's torso. Naturally, he loaded Will into it.
Thwack!
The bat went boing as it flew off, then bounced across the alley floor like a skipping stone.
Blood poured from the bat's body. In the darkness, even to Enkrid's eyes, it looked only pitch-black.
Was that black blood? Or red blood?
He did not particularly care what color it really was.
"Ta murses henya."
A language he had never heard before came from the mage's mouth.
For a moment, Enkrid regretted not having the horn-bugle dagger. If he had had something to throw, he could have stuck something into that mouth while it was chanting.
Of course, he did not stand still just because he lacked a dagger. Still gripping the sword, he charged straight for where the mage was.
It was a knight's charge. Its speed was different from the dash of Andrew, who was only at the level of a junior knight.
Without any grand roar, he simply narrowed the space. In a way, it was speed comparable to a teleportation spell. No one had even blinked, yet he had vanished and appeared right in front of him.
He had intended to ignore whatever spell the bastard was using and cut him down, but his thoughts changed in an instant.
'Not here.'
Before battle, Enkrid sharpened every sense to an edge. His intuition and instinct told him so, and he stopped just before swinging the sword.
'Afterimage.'
He felt he understood what the mage's spell meant. The bastard had left an illusion in that spot and moved away.
Then he appeared on another rooftop.
"Henya, henya, henya."
He recited the spell three times in a row.
He had to.
Because Enkrid had sprinted to where the mage had been three times in succession.
'He knows how to fight.'
It came to him instinctively like a sea pressing in. This mage was skilled in battle.
Before he knew it, they had come down from the rooftops to the ground below. They stood on the outer road leading toward the royal castle. Their feet touched the grass growing here and there beside the neatly laid paving stones.
It was not a place patrol soldiers passed often, and there was no sign of people nearby either. Houses were not built close to the castle walls in the first place.
"Waver."
The mage kept muttering something even as he dodged, and in the end cast a spell on Enkrid. In an instant, Enkrid's vision went black, and his ears went muffled as though he had been plunged underwater.
He could not see, and he could not hear. For a spell used to buy time, it was high-level, but Enkrid's sixth sense and instinct had reached the point of tracking the trajectory of all such spells, so it was useless.
He thrust straight with Today and twisted it.
Ting—
It was not a sound he truly heard, but inside him, something rang like a harp string snapping.
That broke the spell.
"...What?"
The mage showed bewilderment. No matter how skilled someone was in combat, was this not too absurd?
Even so, both his hands did what they had to. He formed seals again, poured mana into them, and completed the spell.
'He's got a lot of tricks.'
Thinking that, Enkrid chased him again.
Above the bastard's two hands, those bats appeared again.
Two of them this time.
The black bats changed into elongated spears and rushed at Enkrid.
He had seen this once already. Enkrid swung his sword left and right toward the two incoming spear-blades.
When he swung left, he loaded strength into his right foot, and when he swung right, he loaded strength into his left foot.
A sequence of simple motions, backed by monstrous power and speed, became swordsmanship on the level of a miracle.
Jjeojeong!
The two bat spear-blades snapped in half and fell to either side. In that instant, Enkrid sensed that the same fight as before would repeat itself.
'If I let him go here, is he just going to keep running around and spamming spells?'
Or else he would try to slip away here. Enkrid gave up any thought of taking him alive. He also gave up any thought of dealing with him quietly.
Enkrid's thigh swelled. The stitching of the clothes patched together with black cloth could not withstand the expansion of his muscles and split.
Tudududuk.
Together with that sound, Enkrid, still in the world of silence, accelerated once more.
It was difficult to execute the true subtleties of swordsmanship or fully structured movements with power behind them, so he did nothing but swing the sword recklessly, but the force loaded into that blade was enough to cleave even a stone golem apart.
"Drmui—"
The mage could not even finish the spell. Even the spell objects engraved onto his body with thirty-four defensive spells could not help him.
Half of the thirty-four could only react if their owner perceived the attack, so they failed to respond. Of the remaining half, ten manifested their spells too late, after the incoming blade. And of the eight objects that were constantly active, they did trigger, but they were useless.
One of those constant protective spells gathered wind to block him, another used invisible pressure to shove Enkrid back, and another turned the mage's body metallic, but Enkrid could ignore all of it.
Thwack! Kwoooom.
The sound of a neck being cut burst together with the sound of a storm kicking up.
Enkrid, who had taken a stance with one knee bent and his sword extended to the side, drew the sword back and turned around.
Outside a certain radius from the mage's body, whose neck had been ripped apart as it was severed, a sphere of lightning sprang into being with a jjjjjzt sound.
'A defensive spell or something?'
It was a spell that had activated too late.
"What are you?"
Enkrid opened his mouth.
Asking after cutting off the man's neck was just the kind of thing Rem would do, but it was also not the sort of moment where he could simply not ask.
Even with his neck cut, the mage lived for a moment longer. He put a hand to his throat and was trying some sort of trick.
Enkrid simply watched him.
'As if that would work.'
Never mind spell cutting or anything else, Enkrid had poured Will into that last slash. He had cut through the neck with a blade of Will at the stage of shaping.
Shaping was not simply sharpening the blade with Will. It contained the three stages of transfer, penetration, and injection.
Put simply, Will was intent, and Enkrid's intent now dwelled in that severed neck.
So if the bastard wanted to reattach it, he would have to overcome the intent Enkrid had injected. It was not something a spell could solve.
"What... this makes no sense."
Of course, the mage also tried to use his own intent and desire as a weapon to undo his death. His intent had simply not been enough.
Had Esther not admired something similar once before?
This time, it was the mage who had suddenly appeared to guard the path home who got to be the one amazed.
And so he was.
"How?"
He let out an exclamation of astonishment.
"I get taken down here?"
He denied the present.
"Astrail's will shall—"
He recited revenge like some third-rate villain, then died.
The mouth of the bastard, who had been forcing air through mana to speak even with his neck cut, finally stopped.
"What, me?"
Enkrid asked the air and flicked the sword. The blood on the blade pattered down onto the ground.
Naturally, there was no such thing as the blade being damaged.
Even a fairly famous sword would have been allowed to break from that last slash. That was how brutally stupid a slash it had been.
'Come to think of it.'
That blond swordsman bastard swung a sword at this speed while also mixing in the workings of force and the subtleties of swordsmanship.
And of course he mixed transfer, penetration, and injection into every single strike.
Enkrid sorted through a few thoughts and left the place.
"What happened?"
"What was that?"
"Nobody drop your guard!"
The noise must have been loud. After what had happened last night too, all the public order soldiers on patrol would have been on edge.
Those who had heard the commotion were already rushing over.
Enkrid slipped back into the city through the darkness again. As he went in, he looked back and saw the mage's corpse melting away.
The clothes and tools the bastard had been wearing all scattered like powder. Soon, nothing remained but the traces of a fight.
He ran through the city's alleys and darkness. At the same time, he took care of the next target—today's quota.
The number he had to deal with today was three.
The remaining two were lower nobles, and both worked administrative posts in the royal palace.
"I've got a hostage."
The first minion tried a cheap trick.
"Save my son."
He was a bastard who had offered up his own son to a demon as a sacrifice. Ten years ago, he had been the owner of a failing merchant company, but after everything he touched suddenly began going well and several trading runs he took without guards succeeded, he bought himself a title.
That noble had sold his son to a demon back then.
For his own safety and future.
If asked whether all people were good and righteous, Enkrid would say no.
Had he not seen too many bastards like this while wandering the continent?
In that sense, there were definitely parts of the blond swordsman's feelings that Enkrid could understand at a glance.
'Evildoers.'
If you had seen countless people living on into tomorrow by selling off their own flesh and blood, would it not be natural to resent the world?
Because of bastards like these, the world was dark.
Enkrid cut off the minion's head. The servant's blood was red. He had not accepted demonic energy, only acted for demons and earned krona from it.
That was how he had gained six new wives and offered up five sacrifices, including his son.
The next servant was simple. An administrative noble who had taken medicine containing demonic energy.
"They should've brought a knight if they wanted a chance, and instead they sent an assassin? Has the king guessed what I am? Or is this some trick by the others? Or maybe one of my political enemies pulling dogshit like this? Either way, rotten luck."
The administrative noble had dreamed of power. On the day he got beaten senseless by a colleague after some petty argument, he sold his soul and bought strength.
After that, he gained bulging muscles just from breathing, and strength enough to crush a bronze cup just from waking up after sleep.
In exchange, he became unable to father children for the rest of his life, lost all his hair, and black blood flowed through his veins.
"So you liked strength more than hair?"
Enkrid asked out of pure curiosity.
"I'm not bald! I shaved it!"
The bastard roared in fury and charged. His whole body turned gray and grew huge like a giant. The moment that fist came crashing down, Enkrid's sword moved too.
In a single strike, the bastard's body was cut in half. The enlarged heart vomited up black blood in thick gushes.
From that heart, flesh began to stretch and connect, attempting some kind of rebirth into a new form.
Enkrid's boot lightly put an end to the attempt. Thump—he stepped on the remaining heart and crushed it.
Black blood splattered everywhere from the burst heart. Because he had fought in a cramped room, the blood splashed onto Enkrid's clothes and face as well, and his pants had already torn while fighting the mage.
And so, with one leg fully exposed, he returned to the royal palace.
"Looks like I wasn't the only one something happened to."
Rem's mask, cloak, and upper clothes were all half torn.
"Yeah, there was a mage blocking the way."
Enkrid answered. Esther came back a little later than the two of them.
"It's Astrail."
She too had encountered a witch blocking her path. At those first words, Enkrid and Rem looked at her. That alone was not enough of an explanation.
Esther had no talent for telling a story with flair, but she knew how to hit the core of it.
"A magic society called Astrail has gotten in bed with the demons."
It was a simple and clear conclusion. Kraiss had used his head and aimed for a gap in the enemy, but the other side had not simply sat there and taken it.
Which meant that among the demons' minions, there were those who could respond immediately and use their heads. And not only that—fast responses and solid countermeasures.
"Astrail has three masters, and one of them moved in this matter."
Esther said flatly. If asked whether this was a crisis—
They had been through too much by now. Astrail was certainly a threatening enemy, but—
She too had overwhelmingly crushed the witch she had just faced and killed her with ease. Had the witch not widened her eyes in shock and asked right before dying,
"How are you at this level?"
What she had meant was, why was there such a difference between them? She had been one of the disciples raised by one of Astrail's masters, and a master of battle magic called a warlock.
Against such a witch, Esther had not received even a scratch. The shape of the fight had been simple. She broke the female witch's various spells one by one, closed the distance, and smashed her in the head with a punch.
The mage, whose skull shattered and whose brain matter sprayed across the floor, did not last long before dying.
It was one of a mage's weaknesses. If you smashed the head that was chanting the spells, proper spellcasting became impossible.
Naturally, the witch had wrapped herself in spell objects engraved with defensive spells, but breaking through that level of magic was no great task.
The dead mage melted away under the curse one of Astrail's masters had placed on her.
It was a shame there was nothing to be gained from the mage's body, but what could you do?
For now, this was a moment to be satisfied with having lightly crushed the trick they had brought out.
"Let's talk again in the morning."
Enkrid said. In any case, they were going to carry this through to the end. Their goal was to wipe out every last minion inside the capital.
Maybe an even better chance had opened up. It seemed they were not merely pulling up a few minions, but drawing up the branches the bastards had spread one after another.
Enkrid washed up just like that and piled his clothes together in one spot. It looked like they would have to be burned.
When morning came and he spoke to Kraiss, the conclusion Kraiss reached was much the same as Enkrid's.
"This actually looks like an opportunity instead."