Chapter 423: Rem's Resolve
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 423: Rem's Resolve
“Why?”
The word spilled from the man, his eyes trembling wildly beneath his hood, his breathing ragged from sheer shock. The hand he held shook incessantly.
He appeared to be in immense pain.
“The infirmary is that way.”
Since the man looked like an elder at a glance, Encrid treated him politely. To Encrid’s eyes, he seemed like someone whose mind had been addled by agony.
The shoemaker standing beside them glared fiercely at the stranger, but the Apostle of Curses didn't even register the gaze. He was so paralyzed by the unimaginable turn of events that he had forgotten how to breathe.
“Why?” he asked once more, almost unconsciously.
To Encrid, it was an incomprehensible question. He felt a strange energy emanating from the man's body, but it didn't seem particularly threatening.
The Apostle of Curses felt as if he had thrown a handful of salt into the ocean. The curse simply scattered into the air and vanished.
What is this? Is it a dream? This makes no sense.
“Are you truly alright?” Encrid asked kindly once more. After all, the man seemed to be suffering from some mental affliction.
Seeing Encrid's nonchalant attitude, Redit felt his breath catch in his throat. Because the curse had failed, the Heavenly Punishment bound to his own body flared up. His concentration shattered from the sheer shock, and panic set in.
“Ack, ack!”
Redit collapsed, foaming at the mouth.
“Healer!” Encrid shouted.
Before his cry could even fade, a massive figure practically flew toward them from behind. It was Audin. His body seemed to expand with every heavy step, kicking up clouds of dirt. Had he been an enemy, his rapid approach would have made anyone's knees buckle from sheer terror.
“Brother General.”
Approaching, Audin frowned as he looked down at the fallen Redit. It was a rare expression for him.
“Ah, he's dead.”
Encrid stopped calling for a healer once he confirmed the man's breathing had stopped.
And so, Redit died. He was the cult's greatest assassin, a man who had spent over twenty years as an Apostle of the Demon Realm Holy Land Cult, murdering anyone who stood in his way with his curses. Yet, only two people in this place could even guess at that truth.
One, of course, was Audin.
Lord? Audin questioned inwardly, utterly bewildered. The man had undoubtedly wielded a terrifying curse, yet the target of that curse remained completely unscathed. It was obvious that absolutely nothing had happened to Brother General.
The other was the black panther watching the situation from a few paces away. Esther had pursued the scent of horrific malice the moment she sensed it, and she had seen the man.
A born curse-user.
Esther recognized what he was, but she also knew it wouldn't work on Encrid. She was the Witch of Fire and a highly talented mage. She didn't know exactly what was bound to Encrid's body, but it was powerful enough to shake even the curse laid upon her own.
Thus, it was only natural that he remained unaffected. For a curse would always crumble into insignificance when faced with an even greater curse.
“Grr.”
Esther snorted once and turned back toward her tent. She had been working harder than ever lately to restore the Spell World, and she was thoroughly exhausted.
*
The Ferryman clicked his tongue at the predictable outcome.
“Tsk!”
In this world, there are things one cannot handle without preparation, and there are things one can easily brush off even without it. The latter was only possible through constant study and training in one's daily life. For instance, to dodge a sudden stray arrow, one had to always be prepared for such an eventuality.
“Isn't it only natural if you don't want to get killed by a stray arrow?” Rem would say.
Hadn't Encrid trained alongside Sachsen for that very reason, practicing dodging daggers from barely ten paces away? Though he did it on and off depending on the circumstances, he had nonetheless kept up that preparation.
Was this curse one of those cases, then? No, it was neither.
One of the things the Ferryman knew but Encrid did not was that a curse held no meaning when faced with a far greater mass. The curse of repeating today was more wretched than any other curse in existence, including the very presence of the Ferryman.
Furthermore, a curse was fundamentally structured to exploit the gaps in a weak-willed being. The reason a straw doll curse—which inflicted pain on a target from afar—worked on one person but failed on another was because of the difference in their sheer grit.
To put it another way: it was a difference in willpower.
The resolve the Ferryman saw in Encrid went beyond mere stubbornness; it was at a level that felt like pure madness. It wasn't just great willpower; it was a willpower born of insanity. Against such a monster, ordinary curses stood no chance of taking hold.
This was also the reason why curses rarely worked on knights in the first place. For they wielded a mystery based on willpower, known as Will.
Of course, the Ferryman knew that the curse of the dead bastard—who had died with his eyes wide in shock—was of a formidable level.
But his opponent was simply the worst possible match.
It was a matter of compatibility. To a bastard like Encrid, a curse was less than a mosquito. It would feel like nothing more than a bothersome fly. Thus, he wouldn't have felt any sense of danger, and his sixth sense or intuition wouldn't have even triggered. He would have known instinctively that the opponent posed no threat.
“Did he just kill a man with a single glance?” a passing citizen muttered, completely misunderstanding the situation.
“Does it make any sense to kill someone with just a look?” another person right beside him scolded.
No one knew that an Apostle of the cult, who had routinely committed murder with just a glance—or more accurately, with curses—had just died such a pathetic death. It was a truly hollow demise. Had he targeted the entire city with his curse, or aimed at someone other than Encrid, it would have been far more effective.
But that was now in the past.
A healer came to check if the man had died of some contagious plague, and the citizens shrank away upon seeing the dead man's festering skin. Thus, Encrid had unwittingly become the cult's greatest archenemy.
*
“Come at me,” Rem said.
Having returned to the Border Guard, Encrid was about to show him what he had been working tirelessly on. Encrid raised Aker. Its tip pointed diagonally toward the sky.
Rem steadied his breathing.
If I hold back, I'm the one who's going to die.
Wondering when the boy had caught up to him this much, Rem licked his dry lips. The weather was maddening; a cool downpour would have been nice, but instead, only a humid, scorching sun beat down. It was the kind of weather where sweat poured even if one stood perfectly still. Muggy and sticky.
Rem forgot his discomfort for a moment. The pressure radiating from Encrid sent goosebumps all over his body. Not a single breath of wind stirred. Even the dust seemed to hold its breath, clinging flat to the floor of the training ground.
All the squad members nearby naturally gathered to watch. Not a single soul dared to breathe heavily.
Encrid was the first to move. Just as his shoulders rose slightly from his stance, his sword moved.
Fast.
Watching, Ragna caught a glimpse of his own fast and heavy swordsmanship in that single strike. Sinar, who had come to watch, saw it as a strike of meticulous control. Audin caught traces of the ultra-close-range strike he had taught.
Encrid simply swung his sword with absolute focus.
What was Will? It was willpower. What was willpower? It was the desire to achieve a certain goal.
An instantaneous explosion.
He compressed his muscles, let them explode, and added a burst of acceleration to bolster the force. To this, he blended the pressure of the Heavy Sword Style he had learned from the Crushing Sword.
To Rem's eyes, it seemed as if a boiling battle spirit was overflowing from Encrid's entire body. The power packed into that single strike was impossible to ignore.
Rem also unleashed his Heart of Monstrous Strength. Drawing upon a physical strength capable of rivaling an actual giant, Rem swung his axes. While Encrid stepped forward and brought his sword down, Rem swung his twin axes upward from below in a cross.
They said light weapons lacked destructive power, but that did not apply to Rem. The weapons he originally used had been just as light.
The moment the two weapons clashed:
Clang!
A shockwave rippled outward in concentric circles along with a deafening roar. It was a clash so brutally simple and violent that one had to wonder who on earth would do such a thing in a mere spar. Startled by the shockwave, the dust that had been clinging to the ground scattered in all directions.
Having exchanged just that single blow, the two came to a halt, their weapons locked against each other.
Locked in that position, Rem asked, “What was that?”
“Giant's Strike.”
“That's a cliché name. Wouldn't 'A Giant's Last Ounce of Strength' be better?”
Encrid wasn't the type to bark back just because a dog was yapping, so he simply said what he needed to say. From Rem's perspective, it was almost unfair. Even an ordinary giant would have to swing with every ounce of their life to produce such a strike.
“What about what you did?”
“It's called the Feather Axe.”
It was a name Encrid had never heard before. Naturally so, as Rem had translated a western technique into the language of this continent.
Rem was surprised by the technique Encrid displayed through his growth, and Encrid was amazed by Rem's skill in handling his axes. Rem had blocked the Giant's Strike by repeatedly tapping and releasing his axe blades against the sword two or three times. It had looked like a head-on collision of pure force, but Rem had deflected and absorbed the power Encrid put into the strike using the strength of his wrists.
It was a technique so difficult that imitating it was almost unimaginable. Above all, it was a technique Rem had never shown until now.
“Did you make a new one?”
“I refined an existing one. Since I never had a weapon like this before,” Rem said, spinning one of the axes in his hand.
He was referring to his weapon, which was light yet sturdy, dancing perfectly to his whim. Encrid stared at the axe that had withstood Aker. The fact that its edge wasn't even chipped was impressive enough. The artisan sent by Krang had truly crafted a proper weapon.
In truth, the artisan had taken great pride in crafting the two weapons and had even named them, but the bastards who received them didn't bother using those names.
“Is it going to answer me if I call its name?” Rem had easily dismissed the artisan's request.
The exact reason was that it wasn't a descent weapon, so it couldn't possibly do such a thing, but there was no need to explain it in such detail. Ragna, on the other hand, called his own sword Blackie. Had the artisan heard this, he would have felt an immediate urge to smash Ragna's head with a hammer. Caring for absolutely nothing other than swordsmanship was indeed very typical of Ragna.
Right after Rem stepped back, Ragna stepped forward. “My Blackie's turn.”
It was a fierce exchange of blows, different from the spar with Rem. The difference from before was that Encrid was no longer being one-sidedly pushed back.
Ragna shouted as he watched Encrid withstand even his Will of Severing. “Excellent!”
He was so thrilled that he deliberately let his talent explode. “I'm borrowing this!”
Ragna perfectly replicated the swordsmanship Encrid had shown moments ago. To be precise, he executed it interpreted in his own style. It was a terrifying, monstrous talent.
Encrid countered it with Giant Cleaving, a technique he had learned from Rem. It was a method of parrying the opponent's monstrous strike using the Heart of Monstrous Strength. They repeated this three times.
“Once more.”
To be exact, it was because Encrid requested it twice more. He had felt a certain stiffness in the motion of blocking and deflecting, and he knew that his desire to resolve this stiffness would soon aid his training.
“You've improved a lot,” Ragna said after the spar ended.
Rem also nodded as he watched.
Encrid calmly replied to the two of them, “I still have a long way to go.”
It was because his goal was set so high. Knowing he was not a man to be easily satisfied, neither of them minded his response.
*
That evening, Rem remained alone in the training ground.
He's snapping right at my heels.
The captain who used to struggle because he couldn't even form a Beast's Heart was no more. In that case, should he also go retrieve what he had left behind in the West for this?
No, he wouldn't. Hadn't he steeled his resolve and made a vow when he left?
“I will never seek this out again,” he had said as he departed. They were spoken by his own mouth.
Well, I'll just do what I can.
If he intended to use sorcery properly, he would have to retrieve what he had left behind, but that didn't mean there was no other way to grow stronger. To be honest, it was a shortcut, and a slow one at that. Yet, it wasn't without results. The axes made of Mount Lewis steel would also help in that regard.
Lost in thought, Rem sensed a subtle presence passing by and looked up. The sly wildcat was on his way back. Since the training ground was connected to the entrance path, it was only natural to see people coming and going.
“Why don't you just go move in together? You cat in heat.”
Rem's tongue moved reflexively. It was like a man who had wandered the desert for three days gulping down water upon seeing it. Wasn't that a bastard you just had to curse at the moment you saw him?
Sachsen was on his way back after repeatedly trying to persuade a stubborn guild member. He was already slightly irritated because of one particularly stubborn bastard who refused to be swayed. Shouldn't a man be persuaded after escaping death about three times?
Already on edge, Sachsen immediately snapped at Rem's provocation. “Are those words coming from the mouth of a barbarian who won't even hold a woman's wrist in his entire lifetime?”
“I'm already married.”
“I'll bet that thing between your legs that you're lying.”
The verbal sparring of Encrid's circle continued.
“Fine, I'll kill you. Come on.”
Rem stood up. This was half venting. A bitter taste lingered in his mouth from his memories, and at times like this, beating up a sly wildcat was the best remedy. Sachsen didn't back down either.
The two fought fiercely, and unlike before, Sachsen unleashed everything he had. That is, he used Will. Of course, it was in a form completely different from how a knight would use it.
Rem knew he had been pushed back. And there was no way Sachsen didn't know it. Having secured the upper hand to some extent, Sachsen withdrew his hand and said, “Go hang yourself.”
“What did you say, you bastard?” Rem muttered.
He made his decision. He had to make a trip to the West. Resolve? What did that matter? It was maddening enough with that brat Ragna acting up, but now even this sly wildcat bastard?
This was absolutely intolerable. He resolved that he would definitely head to the West in the near future.