A Knight Who Eternally Regresses

The return journey was smooth.

There were, of course, no bandits, and monsters or beasts were seen only rarely.

A group of fairies migrating in the same direction trailed far behind Enkrid and his companions.

The two groups moved with half a day's distance between them, and after crossing a few ridges, they could no longer see each other.

Though Enkrid's group was a vanguard and only a small portion, it was still the migration of an entire city. Even if it was just a part of it, the scale was massive, and naturally, the distance widened as Enkrid's group walked slowly. After all, when people gather, the pace slows down.

On the second day, as they were making camp, Lua Gharne was once again able to witness Enkrid's true strength. It was during a sparring match with Pell.

"Bride thief!"

Pell attempted a clumsy provocation.

Naturally, it had no effect on Enkrid.

Rather, the moment Pell opened his mouth to provoke, Enkrid charged in—facing an opponent he could beat even without tricks—and disrupted his rhythm even more.

He's gotten cleaner with his tactics.

It was as if someone had pinned him down and trained him for years. Such moments always seemed a bit strange.

Separate from talent, sometimes skills just leap forward out of nowhere.

But this time, there was something even more surprising.

Hmm.

It was a fast-paced sparring session. Pell couldn't find a moment to speak. So naturally, all he could do was move his hands and feet in silence.

Enkrid didn't even use pressure.

Without words, the match gradually shifted to a pure contest of strength and skill. All of it was according to Enkrid's intent.

No, after the halfway point, not even skill.

Only strength and speed. He cornered his opponent with nothing else. If one possesses overwhelming power, there's no room for half-baked technique.

They say softness can deflect strength, right?

But a heavy, straightforward sword is easily thrown off course by flowing movement. A heavy sword is caught by a flowing one.

But what if the power is so superior that it can ignore that flow?

Enkrid was now showing that exact result.

Even when his blade grazed Pell's neck a moment ago, Pell had no time to say anything. A single wrong breath, and he would have died.

It wasn't the same as the threat felt from a fake strike. A new kind of fear slithered down his spine.

Like a lizard licking his skin with an icy tongue.

Pell poured all his strength into a single slash. He had no choice but to.

Every slash Enkrid made, no matter how casually it looked, carried deadly weight and trajectory.

It was a constant crisis—like a beast lunging with its jaws wide, about to rip out his throat.

He consciously clung to his Will and poured it into his sword. A single misstep would mean a fall off a cliff. He had to hold on with just the tip of his fingers. If strength left even those, he would die.

Sudden gusts of wind blew. He had to brace his core. Even the slightest imbalance would mean death.

Sunlight stabbed at his eyes. A single blink at the wrong time might break his concentration—and kill him.

I'll die.

Pell instinctively knew. And Enkrid, emotionlessly, swung his sword.

Clang!

Pell did not let go of his sword. His arm was simply pushed in the direction of Enkrid's deflection.

Enkrid closed the gap in that moment and lightly tapped Pell's chest with his free hand.

"I won," Enkrid said.

Obvious, really.

"...Phew."

Only then did Pell exhale. Enkrid had crushed him with pure strength, no technique. That a clumsy provocation hadn't worked was one thing.

This monster bastard.

Everything—from using Will to how he swung his sword—had changed since arriving here.

That's why he was a monster. A monster packed with talent.

Even without being told, it was obvious—he'd broken through another wall in such a short time.

Pell exhaled and reflected on his bruised pride. If he were the type to break from this, he wouldn't have survived until now.

I'll follow him no matter what.

And now, he had a tenacity he hadn't possessed before. Pell's eyes burned with fierce determination.

Lua Gharne, meanwhile, quietly reflected on what Enkrid had just shown.

He matched Pell.

In other words, Enkrid had held back.

What had changed from before?

Frokk's eyes could perceive talent through an opponent's movements and posture—a form of intuition. That same intuition sparked repeatedly in Lua Gharne's mind.

Each spark revealed something about what Enkrid currently possessed.

He swung a heavy and fast sword with ease.

Not just once or twice—he adjusted his strength to match Pell and regulated it mid-fight.

To put it simply, it was like a woodsman bringing every technique he'd ever learned to bear with his axe—relentlessly, without pause.

All of this happened instantly, without any process of steadying breath or focusing mind.

It was only possible because he was in a state of hyper-focus.

He elevated his concentration and funneled all his power into his sword. He must've recalled what he learned while subduing the Walking Fire.

Then what could Enkrid do if he poured out everything he currently had?

Prolonged high-speed combat.

When fighting the demon known as the First Kill, Enkrid had reconstructed his swordsmanship from scratch.

That's not the end of it.

To create swordsmanship means one has fully understood the meaning and methods embedded in it.

Naturally, that would influence the person wielding it too.

Beginner, intermediate, advanced—wasn't that the system?

According to the framework Enkrid had formed, he now stood above the intermediate level. His individuality had solidified.

Urke.

Swordsmanship built on unwithering Will.

Lua Gharne's insight was sharp. From the fairy city onward, Enkrid had known exactly what he could do.

Prolonged high-speed combat, relying on stamina.

The reason for this? His past experiences had shaped his present.

Both Rearvart and Sir Jamal had based their style on endurance battles.

He was influenced by them.

Enkrid admitted it without hesitation. There was nothing wrong with that.

And he felt that something within him had now completed itself.

With this, he felt like he could defeat anyone—an omnipotent sensation.

And naturally, with that feeling, came another—he felt as if he had hit a wall.

He had reached his limit. He could see neither upward nor forward. He could neither climb nor advance further. The end.

Yet still, something in his heart refused to accept that this was the end.

Talent always speaks of limits—but the Will one holds in their heart knows no bounds. That was the difference.

Strangely enough...

As Enkrid defeated Pell, he sorted out his thoughts.

As he recalled and organized what he had, he came to understand more. No one needed to tell him—he simply came to know.

For example:

A knight's skills and mindset are shaped by the life they've lived. And so, the Will is that very resolve.

That was why the Will of the man he met in the Holy Knights was pathetic.

One can become a knight with only 'talent'—but the sword forged from the Will held atop that hollow pedestal will be no different from a hunk of Swiss cheese.

A knight without an oath is no knight at all.

This is why oath and conviction matter so deeply to a knight. Because they are the foundation upon which Will is sustained. That's also likely why Oara's Will shines so brightly.

It doesn't need to be some grand dream. What's more important is to move forward for what one believes in.

Just as there is no "humble" dream, every oath deserves respect.

It aligned perfectly with Enkrid's usual beliefs.

It felt natural—after all, he had come to understand the nature of knighthood in a form that made the most sense to him. He had accepted it that way.

As he sorted his thoughts while walking, his surroundings brightened. It was a night illuminated by two full moons casting silver light. Two more nights like that passed. Now the moonlight had started to fade. Despite a cloudless sky, it dimmed.

A different color crept into the moonlight. The time of the Twin Crimson Moons—the Red Moon—was drawing near. No one in the party seemed to be paying it much attention. They were all busy.

Pell and Zero, after being defeated by Enkrid, had much to learn and were busy absorbing and reflecting on it. Lua Gharne was doing much the same, though she also had to relay the framework she had crafted for reading talent to Enkrid.

"Frokk believed that defining stages of talent was meaningless, because he could already see their limits. If it didn't affect life-or-death combat, then what was the point?"

In battles where people lived and died, what truly mattered?

Does better control over Will make someone fight better? Perhaps—but it doesn't directly apply in real combat. That was what Lua Gharne was saying.

Even those who've trained their Will can die if they're stabbed in their sleep. Unless you're Frokk, a man with his throat cut has no chance of survival.

Even Frokk would die if his heart was pierced. Skill influences victory—but it's not absolute. Are there other influencing factors? There are.

"Do people's talents share the same color? No. Each is different. We can see the limits of their talent, but we can't see its color. So we had to experience it ourselves. That was the real joy."

Of course, witnessing someone like Enkrid shatter their limits was even more exhilarating.

The pursuit of the unknown, the desire to discover—Lua Gharne was especially devoted to such curiosity, even among the Frokk. Naturally, she accumulated a great deal of knowledge.

The desire to understand the unknown is what makes learning enjoyable.

"Depending on the color of their talent, some people pour all their power into a single strike, like that one over there. Others—like fairies—wield bizarre sword techniques due to racial traits."

At that moment, Pell and Zero were off to one side, swinging their swords into the air, training intensely.

Their sword trajectories were visible. The result was the same: slash and stab. But the process was entirely different.

Pell cut through an imaginary enemy with a single strike, while Zero slashed six times.

Enkrid quietly mulled over Lua Gharne's words.

Thinking like this brought to mind a conversation he had with Pell a few days earlier—during the whole "bride thief" joke.

Pell's moves are easy to read.

Because he doesn't think he needs to hide anything. Why is that? That's just the kind of person Pell is.

And then, Enkrid recalled what had happened in the fairy city.

Ermen perfects deception through silence.

Enkrid had sensed something precise about it. Why was that? He had felt similar traits in other fairies, but Ermen stood out especially.

It was reminiscent of Kraiss, perhaps.

Pell liked making impulsive moves. Rem too. Ragna, despite appearances, also enjoyed tactical battles—but could end them with brute force if needed.

Each had their own temperament.

Enkrid had been rebuilding and organizing everything he had seen, felt, and experienced—not just for understanding knighthood, but everything beyond.

Each person's temperament shapes their form.

That's what Frokk meant by seeing the "color" of talent.

"There was once a Frokk who gave names to the different types of talent—things like mole cricket, mayfly, pupa, larva."

Enkrid understood Lua Gharne's words. He had just added a few conceptual layers in his mind.

Depending on the form of weapon use and temperament, the way one accepts a framework will differ.

So, the method of teaching and learning must change as well.

It would be best if each person knew their own temperament when learning and training accordingly.

Lethal strike, endurance, versatility.

Three broad categories would suffice. As he'd learned before, perfection isn't the goal—completion is what matters.

Pell is a lethal-strike type. Rophod is endurance.

They are entirely different.

There are some who have both from the start—versatile types.

It might seem more advantageous to pursue both, but in reality, it's more inefficient.

Versatility isn't always good. To chase two rabbits, you must invest twice the time and effort. And according to Frokk, drawing water from a well of limited talent and splitting it into two containers means—

The total doesn't increase, but gets divided. That alone puts you at a disadvantage compared to someone who pours everything into one path.

Even among this, there are training types who focus on strengthening their body, and technique types who dig into the intricacies of skill.

Training types suit heavy or swift swords.

Technique types match light or illusionary swords.

By compiling swordsmanship and adding your own on top, one builds up their form. That's what Enkrid had done. And he also understood how crucial it was to truly know oneself.

I'm endurance type.

At least for now.

With Urke, he could turn prolonged battles into his specialty. Coincidentally, both Rearvart and Azpen's knight had also been long-battle specialists—so he had seen and learned.

Ultimately, shouldn't lethal strike and endurance blend together?

He couldn't see it yet—but he could faintly sense the "above" and the "ahead."

And if he based it on this idea, then there ✧ NоvеIight ✧ (Original source) was someone in the knight order who undeniably stood out.

Jaxon. He was both a lethal-strike and technique type. A lethal-technique type, you might say.

Rare.

Lethal types typically matched with training types.

No—there is no "answer."

If you start with an answer, all you get are "fakes." The false products churned out by the Holy Nation probably came from that kind of thinking—deciding the path in advance and forcing people to run down it.

"Ah."

Enkrid felt something beyond learning and training—creation. And the joy of that creation washed through him, from his toes to his head, a wave of pleasure.

Then he looked up and saw the two moons had turned red. The Twin Crimson Moons.

Night had come before he realized it.

Lost in thought, he'd forgotten he was walking. He had, in fact, been aware of his surroundings and avoided rocks, but only now did he truly register it.

And as he lifted his head, he saw them—uninvited guests.

"We've been waiting, Border Guard Enkrid."

Under the red moonlight, a voice echoed without warning. No sound, no presence—only a voice.

Enkrid saw a black curtain appear and vanish before his eyes.

Perception-disruption spell.

A spell that prevents you from recognizing the barrier in front of you until it disappears.

He'd seen it enough times before to at least feel something off, however faintly.

That brief discomfort snapped him out of his thoughts and brought full awareness of his surroundings.

The group that had hidden behind the perception-disruption curtain now revealed themselves.

One clad in pitch-black armor.

Two in robes instead of armor.

And the one in the center held a long polearm of sorts.

At the end of the pole was a round iron ring with jagged, thorn-like protrusions pointing upward—clearly symbolic of something.

"We are from the Sanctuary of the Demon Realm, Rebirth Church."

Under the crimson moonlight, their faces showed they were no mere rabble.

"We've brought the remaining Apostles."

No sooner had he spoken than Enkrid's instincts flared to life.

From beneath his feet.

The dirt split—and sharp iron spikes shot upward, aimed at Enkrid's abdomen, Lua Gharne's heart, Zero's head, and Pell's neck.

Enkrid's thoughts accelerated. Everything around him seemed to freeze.

As if submerged in dense mud, time slowed under pressure. And within that moment—Enkrid did what he had to do.