Chapter 458: Twisting Today
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 458: Twisting Today
There was one thing he had learned while facing the Knight of Azpen: if you only play defense to survive, you will die without accomplishing a single thing.
It was a truth he now knew from bitter experience.
Encrid swung his sword and took a step forward. He pressed his boots, stained with black blood, into the earth as he advanced.
His blade and feet moved in perfect unison.
He had learned something from watching Oara’s strikes, and his swordsmanship was now infused with that lesson: fusing his footwork and his blade into a single, cohesive motion. It was simply a matter of bringing his sword down in sync with his advancing steps, but in practice, it was far from easy.
Even just to commit this movement to muscle memory, it had taken him more than sixty "todays."
His blue eyes sliced through the darkness, leaving long trails of light in their wake. Adding his will to the monstrous strength coursing through his body, he brought his sword down.
Zzzzzzt!
A strike charged with white lightning plunged toward the ghoul, carving a path from its head to its shoulder. It looked as though a part of the creature's body would be sheared right off.
Clank, thud.
Yet, the ghoul pushed the flat of the blade away with its palm, effortlessly parrying the Associate Knight’s strike. Their speeds were on entirely different levels; that was the only reason such a feat was possible.
Encrid did not panic. He simply drew Spark and thrust once more.
The thrust, delivered as if he had already anticipated the first strike being blocked, became a flash of light aimed directly at the ghoul’s eye.
Whoosh.
This attack missed as well. The ghoul dodged by tilting its head to the side. Encrid swept Spark horizontally, but with a quick shift of its feet, the creature took a single step, completely escaping the sword’s trajectory.
As a result, the ghoul ended up on Encrid’s flank. Having dodged the blade, the bastard thrust out its sharp claws.
Encrid tucked his chin and pulled up his left shoulder. The creature’s claws slammed into his pauldron.
Crack!
A piece of his armor shattered, sending a shard flying to strike his eyebrow. If the angle had been even slightly worse, he would have lost an eye. Yet, without so much as a blink, Encrid stepped back with his left foot to secure room to swing, then brought Aker down.
Just because the bastard could fight like a knight didn’t mean it had actually become one. One might mimic Oara’s smile, but copying her swordsmanship perfectly was another matter entirely.
Encrid’s strike this time came from an angle the opponent hadn't anticipated. Still imbued with monstrous strength, his blade aimed for the ghoul’s head. No matter how tough the creature’s hide was, a hit from this strike would hurt. It would gush blood, and at least one limb would be severed.
With a heavy thud, the ghoul bent its knees and sprang backward, kicking off the ground. It escaped the range of his sword strike with infuriating ease. Encrid noticed the deep craters left where the creature’s feet had just been.
How could it dodge like that?
It was because the ghoul’s initial swipe—the one that had shattered his pauldron—had been a light, probing attack, allowing it to retreat instantly. It had dodged because their innate physical capabilities were simply on different levels.
And yet, against such a casual attack, Encrid had lost his left pauldron.
"Whew."
Encrid sheathed Spark and gripped Aker with both hands. The tip of his blade pointed diagonally toward the sky. Holding his stance, he stared at the ghoul, meeting its pitch-black eyes, devoid of pupils.
How many of its attacks could he withstand?
He didn’t know. But Encrid intended to keep going until he won. The fire of competitive spirit flared within him. Even so, he did not lose sight of his goal.
Barely holding his ground here would only last for a brief moment. And it wasn't because he would fail to hold out—it was because Oara would only watch for so long.
The moment she stepped in, Encrid’s "today" would be a failure.
So... hurry up.
Encrid drew a picture in his mind based on his senses. In that picture were the people who needed to finish their task and rush back.
If he couldn't overwhelm the ghoul, Oara would intervene. Therefore, he had to kill the bastard before that happened. If he failed, today would be no different from all the other "todays" before it. He hated that thought.
He would not look upon an Oara who had lost her smile. He would show them what a true knight was.
Therefore, he would twist today.
"Do you truly believe you can twist causality?"
At the end of one of the countless "todays" he had lived through, the Ferryman had asked him that. Encrid, believing it wasn't a matter of faith, had replied:
"I just do it."
Keep going until it works. That was the only phrase that had kept him walking all this time. The Ferryman had looked at him and smiled. Was it too optimistic to think that smile hadn't been a sneer?
There was no way to know.
*
It was just a premonition. A feeling that something was about to happen.
"That’s why I made sure to sharpen my axe blade so well. This is what you call foresight," Rem said, showing off his razor-sharp, gleaming blue axe. Even as he spoke, his pace was incredibly fast. He wasn't running, but he was walking so quickly it might as well have been a sprint.
Dunchabel kept up with him effortlessly as she replied, "Don’t you sharpen it every day anyway?"
She was basically asking if his "foresight" was a load of horse shit. What was so special about it when he sharpened his axe every single day?
Dunchabel was sometimes—no, often—clueless. Moreover, she was currently a bit giddy from the shower of praise she had received from Encrid.
"Didn’t you say you were just excited because you found a good whetstone?"
At times like this, Dunchabel’s tongue bypassed her brain entirely. The seed of a thought from her heart directly bore the fruit of speech.
At her words, Rem curled his lip. "That’s where the foresight started."
What a stretch, Admor thought as he followed from behind.
But he didn’t say it out loud. In fact, he didn’t even have the breath to spare. Despite having a body conditioned by relentless training, keeping up with them was exhausting. It was practically a full-on sprint. It was wiser to keep his mouth shut rather than risk biting his tongue by trying to speak.
Of course, even if they weren't running like this, Admor would have kept quiet. He actually had some tact, and a murderous glint flickered in the barbarian’s eyes. It looked as though one more wrong word would prompt Rem to split the speaker’s head open before they even encountered any monsters.
Yet Dunchabel, completely unfazed by the threat of the axe, threw out another provocative remark. "It’s a stretch."
The barbarian made an appointment for after the battle, wearing a smile that feigned gentleness. "I’ll deal with you when this is over."
Dunchabel flinched slightly, but she didn’t slow down. Instead, she puffed out her chest. "Fine by me."
She had just resolved to prove herself. She would no longer back down before things even started. It wasn't as if an axe blade was flying at her face right this second. Besides, while that crazy axe-man had driven her to her absolute limits—to the point where she had nearly died a few times—his intention hadn't purely been to kill her.
Though dismissing everything as "training" made her feel resentful about the days she had endured, a fact was a fact. So she wouldn't back down. If she retreated over something like this, proving herself would remain a distant dream.
"Good. Yeah, we’ll see about that," Rem said, picking up his pace.
Admor followed behind, panting for breath. As he did, he corrected his long-held prejudice that the phrase "we’ll see about that" was usually just an empty bluff. The man named Rem was dead serious. Even Admor could feel it. He was clearly someone who held a grudge to an extreme degree.
"The smell."
Dunchabel stopped abruptly mid-stride. Her nose twitched repeatedly.
They had a toxic, poison-spewing swamp to their left and the Gray Forest directly ahead. Admor raised his right fist, back of his hand facing outward, to the squad members following behind. It was the signal to halt. Everyone stopped, their shoulders heaving as they caught their breath.
A chilling tension wrapped around his entire body. And why wouldn't it? This was the Demon Realm. Even for soldiers stationed at the borderlands to defend Thousand Bricks, venturing deep into the Demon Realm was rare. In fact, it almost never happened. Usually, even scouts only swept the perimeter; they didn't go deep inside.
But right now, they had no choice. Looking at Rem and Dunchabel, a forgotten anxiety surged within Admor. It felt as though someone were slicing his heart into thin fillets with a sharp blade.
Rowena.
Admor’s eyes scanned the surroundings. He did his best to find any traces, but he was no ranger. Nothing was easily visible.
Normally, a patrol meant just scanning the perimeter of the Demon Realm. Through those patrols, they had killed monsters right before they could become colony leaders, and they had predicted the timing of waves on more than a few occasions. Yet, a mission that should have been a routine patrol had ended in a disappearance.
Please.
His pounding heart, the damp air, the tension—everything combined to make his body stiffer than usual. Admor knew his field of vision was narrowing, but he couldn't tear his eyes away. He looked in the direction Dunchabel had stared after mentioning the smell.
Beyond his narrowing vision, he saw a monster crouching inside the forest. Its long legs shimmered like a mirage in the darkness. He saw a bizarre creature tapping and stepping along the ground. It was a massive spider—a Giant Spider. A monster that captured humans, wrapped them tightly in silk, and ate them alive.
Why is it so huge?
The creature was larger than any spider monster Admor had ever seen.
"There are a lot of them," Dunchabel said, completely ignoring the monster’s sheer size. Instead, she commented on their numbers, having roughly estimated them by scent.
Listening to Dunchabel, Admor also spotted creatures covered in feathers moving beyond the spiders. They were scattered among the arachnids. He could see Owlbears, known in these parts as the reapers of the night, standing silently.
No, they weren't just standing there. They look like they’re waiting to charge. Is that right?
Was he seeing things? Though they weren't in a formal formation, the pack of monsters looked completely ready to charge forward at any second. It didn't feel like an illusion. And to think there were Owlbears among them?
A curse nearly slipped from his lips. Anyone who had experienced a bear-sized monster silently pouncing on their back would naturally feel like pissing themselves just by looking at a dark spot. Of course, even feeling the urge to urinate was a privilege reserved for the living. Normally, encountering an Owlbear alone was synonymous with having your name carved onto a tombstone.
But if it was Rowena, she wouldn't have died so easily. The patrol would have moved with full preparations to guard against the approach of dangerous monsters.
Then where were they now? Why the fuck were there so many monsters over there? Fuck, fuck, what a goddamn mess.
"Hey, relax. I don’t know why they sent you guys along with us, but like I said, my foresight has truly shone today."
The words came from the grey-haired barbarian, of whom Admor could only see the back of his head. Realizing he had been holding his breath, Admor regulated his breathing. Looking ahead, he saw the barbarian place his hand on the axe handle at his waist. He unfastened his custom-made leather sheath and drew his weapon.
To distract himself from the suffocating tension and the horrific imagination of losing his lover, Admor asked, "Why do you just do whatever he says without asking any questions?"
Was he really that loyal? On the surface, it certainly didn't seem like it. Admor had a rough idea of what Rem would say. He was asking something he already thought he knew—a question meant to ease the tension, not out of genuine curiosity. Inwardly, he had already assumed that Rem either owed his life to Encrid or had sworn an oath of loyalty.
But the answer that came out of Rem’s mouth was so unexpected that Admor momentarily forgot his anxiety.
"He asked for help, so I’m helping."
"...Um, what? Excuse me?" Admor blurted out, sheer surprise overriding his filter.
Dunchabel, who was listening beside them, twitched her nose and chimed in. "He asked for help. Earlier."
Wait, when? Admor briefly recalled their earlier conversation. Had his ears gone bad? Had his worry for Rowena broken his hearing? Admor turned his head to look at his subordinate’s face. He saw his own confusion reflected in the man's eyes. The subordinate’s face clearly said: What kind of bullshit is that?
"He asked for help, so I’m helping. He’s not the type of guy to say things like that under normal circumstances," Rem said.
As Rem spoke, Admor achieved the effect he had wanted. He temporarily forgot his anxiety and tension. Furthermore, he gave up trying to make sense of these people. He shut his mouth and didn't bother saying anything more. They weren't people you could have a normal conversation with.
Their brief exchange ended. Looking down, Admor noticed boot prints mixed into the ground. There were also drag marks. Though he wasn't particularly skilled at tracking, the signs were too clear to miss. Broken branches and tough vines lay scattered around, as if someone had tried to construct something.
What on earth did they do here? Just as this question crossed his mind—
Rumble.
The Gray Forest trembled. He felt the vibration. His body began to shake. Right then, Rem turned his head back. A smile played on his face. It wasn't a smile that brought Oara’s to mind; it was like that of a mischievous brat who had just found a highly entertaining toy.
Right on cue, a cloud covered the moon, casting Rem’s face into shadow. For a split second, Admor felt as if Rem had vanished. Immediately after he realized he could no longer see that twisted smile—Rem truly did vanish.
With a light kick off the ground, he bolted forward at a speed Admor’s eyes couldn't track. He stayed low, using the darkness to his advantage. Although Admor didn't see Rem run, he knew the man had advanced.
Crack!
There was no way not to know, given that the head of a monster standing guard up ahead had just been split open.
What was his own duty then? He signaled with his hand.
All hands, advance at double-time. They would walk the path cleared by those two and fill in any gaps. Having practiced coordinating with the knights, the soldiers were highly adept at this.