Chapter 170: The Joy of Crawling
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 170: The Joy of Crawling
"Can't you open the gate? Just a crack—enough for one person to slip through."
Encrid spoke calmly, but the flustered soldier could only stammer in response.
"Right now?"
Their eyes met. Encrid gave a firm nod.
"Yes. Right now."
The soldier blinked, his mind racing. Where do I even begin? Should I tell him that if we open the gate, the pack of gnolls outside will come flooding in? Or that opening it is physically impossible? Should I ask if he can’t see us straining to hold it shut precisely because we’re terrified it might burst open?
While the soldier struggled to find his voice, Encrid offered a compromise.
"Didn't you build a side gate next to the main one?"
His tone was casual. Even though the area outside was crawling with gnolls and hyena demonic beasts—monsters that continued to charge even when turned into pincushions by arrows—he sounded as if he were out for a picnic.
Encrid saw no point in fretting. In his experience, worrying changed nothing. After all, had he not lived through this "today" over two hundred times already? He knew all too well that if left alone, those things would simply keep doing what they were doing.
I've run wild while surrounded by them before. Even if a few of them die, the rest just charge like berserkers.
He couldn't exactly say that out loud, though. For now, they had successfully blocked the entrance, which was a good start. He knew better than to expect everything to go perfectly just because the beginning went well, but a good start was still far better than a bad one.
Regardless, they couldn't open the main gate every time someone needed to move. There had to be a smaller door for emergencies. That was standard practice for a fortress of this scale. Although this was a pioneer village, there were clear signs of intent to construct a proper castle later on. Between the quarry, the gathered laborers, the artisans, and the construction specialists, it was an easy guess.
Of course, it was Krais who had actually made that guess. Encrid had merely nodded, thinking it sounded plausible. Back when he was solely focused on training, he rarely paid attention to such details. But between Krais’s insights and repeating this day two hundred times, he now had a solid grasp of the situation. At this point, even a fool with a brain the size of a ghoul’s would have figured it out.
Encrid had to break the knot of this repetition. To do that, he had to go outside.
"There is a side gate..." the soldier admitted, still hesitant.
"Then open it a crack. That's an order."
It was an absurd demand, one the soldier knew he shouldn't comply with, but Encrid’s utterly nonchalant attitude compelled him to move.
"It's over there, but..."
He still wavered. Encrid ignored the hesitation and headed toward the side gate. Sure enough, there was a door to the left of the main gate, wide enough for two people to pass through if fully opened.
Gwoooooh!
A gnoll's howl echoed from directly outside the wall. The sound seemed to snap the soldier back to his senses.
"If we open it now, we'll all die trying to stop the ones rushing in!"
It was an indirect refusal: We can open it, but we’ll die, so I won’t.
Without a second thought, Encrid called out.
"Esther?"
They weren't close enough to communicate with just a glance, but they shared a functional understanding. Esther nodded. The young panther had grown a bit recently, but she was still on the smaller side. However, her size was deceptive.
"That thing is a sly creature, a sly creature," Rem had once said. Esther was no ordinary beast, and she was about to prove it again.
Tap.
While a hyena demonic beast struggled to scale the wall with its short legs, Esther lightly leaped—tap, tap, tap—and stood atop the defensive wall. She dug her claws into the stone, moving as if the vertical surface were flat ground. Even considering the sharpness of her claws, her agility was unbelievable. To an untrained eye, it looked as though she were simply walking on the wall. Even to Encrid, who knew better, it was a sight to behold.
"She's climbing the wall?" the soldier muttered, his eyes bulging.
To Esther, who spent her time navigating trees and rooftops, a wall of this height was child's play. But to the uninitiated, it was a shock. Despite the wall being three times the height of a man, Esther cleared it with ease. And she didn't stop there.
"Uh, she—she—!"
The soldier gaped, unable to finish his sentence. Esther had leaped straight over the wall, plunging directly into the middle of the monstrous chorus outside. Her job was to create discord—to pour oil onto the fire of their formation.
Encrid expected chaos, and Esther delivered it perfectly.
Grrrrr!
From beyond the side gate, a low, heavy growl echoed—a sound far more primal than the yaps of gnolls or hyenas. It was a roar that vibrated through the air and struck the heart, the kind of sound that made a man’s knees buckle.
"Don't shoot the panther!" Deutsch Pullman’s shout followed immediately from the ramparts.
Amidst the gnolls' howling, the frantic yelps of hyena demonic beasts joined the fray.
Gurgle!
The wet sound of a gnoll’s death rattle followed.
Gwooh! Gwoooooh!
The snarls near the side gate began to fade as the pack shifted their focus. Encrid’s sharpened hearing caught the change instantly.
"Now."
At Encrid’s murmur, the soldier froze. I need to retrain this bastard from scratch. What use is he with reactions this slow?
"The door," Encrid commanded, grabbing the soldier’s wrist. He tightened his grip and unleashed his momentum—a fighting spirit akin to killing intent that he had mastered after opening the Gate of the Sixth Sense.
Hic.
The soldier began to hiccup in terror, but Encrid didn't care. The man’s hand reluctantly reached for the latch.
"If something goes wrong when I open this..."
"I'll take responsibility. I am the military commander of this village."
Then why is the commander committing suicide? the soldier wondered, but he finally moved.
Click.
The latch of the side gate unlocked.
"Don't lock it. Just hold it shut and wait. I'll tell you when to open it again."
"What?"
The side gate creaked open. Because Esther was wreaking absolute havoc, the monsters had their backs turned. Encrid saw a sea of gnoll heads. It was a relief they didn't wear helmets, though the weapons they clutched were threat enough. Then again, even a helmet wouldn't have stopped him.
Stepping through the gap, Encrid let his arms hang loose. The moment he was clear of the gate, he relaxed his body completely and whipped his arms. He unleashed his throwing knives in every direction, keeping only his Whistle Dagger in reserve.
Throwing knives was a different art than archery. Measuring the weight with his fingertips, he snapped his wrists. Four knives embedded themselves—thud-thud-thud-thud—into the skulls of the distracted gnolls. No gnoll could survive a blade longer than a hand-span driven into its brain.
As the four fell and a demonic beast began to turn, Encrid was already upon them.
Whoosh.
A vertical slash from a mid-level stance. It was a short, concise strike, stripped of all unnecessary movement. With that single blow, a demonic beast’s back was split open.
Squelch.
Encrid’s sword sliced through spine, entrails, and bone in one fluid motion, effectively cutting the creature in half. Simultaneously, he stepped left and drove his knee into the skull of another beast. Using the rotational force of his hips, the strike crushed the bone with a sickening crack. The impact was so violent the creature's eyeballs popped from their sockets, dangling by the nerves.
Having dispatched two, Encrid began to slash without restraint. His training in the Sense of Evasion had granted him perfect physical coordination. The moment he saw and felt a threat, his body reacted automatically.
Encrid plunged into the horde and danced. In a brief, swift sword dance, three gnolls and two demonic beasts collapsed. Head, chest, then head again. One gnoll was left with a hole the size of a silver coin through its torso—the result of a snapping overhead slash transitioned into a thrust.
Thud.
Only then did the side gate close behind him. Were they just watching? The delay was irritating.
Clack, clack!
The sound of the door being locked followed immediately. I told you not to lock it. Then again, he couldn't expect them to leave it open in this madness. Getting back in was a problem for later. Right now, he had a job to do.
As the monsters fell in droves to Encrid’s blade, the rest of the pack noticed the new threat and rushed toward him and Esther. Fighting together was the only logical choice.
Esther bounded toward Encrid. Even in the heat of battle, the panther’s performance was dazzling.
Patter.
She kicked off the ground, her unsheathed claws flashing in a sharp slash. Whether it was a gnoll or a demonic beast, anything caught by her claws was instantly shredded. It was a perfect harmony of monstrous strength and lethal cutting power.
As Esther closed the distance and the gnolls thrust their weapons and claws toward them, Encrid spoke.
"Esther, I'll leave my back to you."
Esther’s eyes widened in a silent question. What?
Encrid didn't answer. Instead, he completely erased his presence. He rolled into the fresh blood and gore of the fallen enemies, pressing his belly flat against the ground and dropping low.
The shift was instantaneous. One moment, Encrid was a whirlwind of death; the next, he was gone. The gnolls, their eyes flushed crimson with berserker rage, focused all their fury on the only target left: Esther.
"Gwoooooh!"
Esther skillfully retreated, cursing him in her head. She saw him crawling through the filth in a prone position, holding his breath even as gnolls stepped on him. It was clear he was up to something.
The idiot.
That "idiot" had asked her to watch his back, then dumped the entire pack on her. Esther snorted and moved her mana-reinforced body. Her claws, infused with mana, sliced through the heads of two charging hyenas, buying time while staying just out of reach. This was the "back-watching" the madman had intended.
Encrid’s plan was working perfectly. Masked by the stench of blood and entrails, crawling while suppressing his killing intent in imitation of Sachsen, his target was clear: the gnoll leader.
*
Encrid recognized that his talent had fundamentally changed.
It was a shift so vast that he couldn't possibly miss it. If before he had struggled to learn a single technique after a thousand repetitions, this time was different. Today was a day dedicated to his Sense of Evasion.
Among the hundreds of "todays" he had repeated, many had seemed useless. Yet even on those days, he had struggled. He had crawled. He had never stopped. He had added every single one of those failed days to the single step he was taking now.
The change manifested in his swordsmanship and beyond.
"If you know how to project killing intent, you must also know how to hide it," Sachsen had told him when Encrid asked about the Mu-sal Thrust. "There's no need to learn it, but if you understand the principle, it might be useful."
Sachsen’s mouth said one thing, but his eyes said another—scolding Encrid for his slow progress with the Sense of Evasion. Encrid hadn't let it bother him. If it didn't work, he would just keep trying until it did.
The Mu-sal Thrust was a strike executed purely through movement, its killing intent completely erased. It was a thrust so devoid of momentum that even if a target saw it coming, they would doubt it was aimed at them.
During his two hundred cycles of honing his evasion, the ability to control his killing intent had become a necessity. His body had naturally sensed the requirement while learning to react purely through sensation rather than momentum.
Encrid utilized that realization now. It was a technique similar to an assassin’s—imperfect, but effective. He concealed his presence and took slow, deep breaths.
This isn't enough.
He rolled through the mud and hugged a gnoll’s corpse as he moved. If anyone had seen him, they would have been struck by the sheer absurdity and skill of it. He was crawling at a terrifying speed, even with a demonic beast’s carcass draped over his back to mask his silhouette.
Crawling is my specialty among specialties.
In this, Encrid was peerless.
He crawled and crawled. Behind him, he heard Esther let out a frustrated screech.
Sorry. I'll give you two pieces of jerky when we get back, he promised silently.
By the time he reached a small mound, the density of the pack had thinned. He crawled straight up the slope, the pungent, foul stench of monster blood clinging to him. It was a familiar, loathsome smell from his days as a mercenary. He knew better than anyone that monster blood could hide a man better than any shadow.
Upon reaching the crest of the mound, Encrid felt a surge of grim satisfaction. His target was right there. How could he not be joyful?