A Knight Who Eternally Regresses

"Man, it's so damn strange."

Rem said it as he retrieved his axe.

"What is?"

Enkrid rotated his ankle, which still throbbed slightly after getting caught by a subordinate. It wasn't broken, nor did it hurt much.

Not bad.

He had twisted it at an unnatural angle during a reckless move while sparring with Rem, but miraculously, it neither fractured nor got dislocated.

For an ordinary man, it would've meant a permanent limp without immediate treatment—but Enkrid wasn't an ordinary man.

He had undergone rigorous flexibility training with Audin. The knightly technique known as Endure had toughened his skin and muscles like iron. And on top of that, he'd learned to use something called Binding Will.

Binding Will was a technique he had learned from Audin. According to °• N 𝑜 v 𝑒 l i g h t •° him, paladins relentlessly trained in it.

"When you take a blow or twist a joint from overextending, you infuse it with willpower to hold it together. A paladin might protect and heal themselves with divine power, but with Will, all you can do is hold it in place."

That was Audin's explanation. Of course, it hadn't been an easy lesson to learn.

Put bluntly, it had nearly killed him. Not figuratively—literally. Actually dying mid-training and meeting the Ferryman would've made things... awkward.

"Hey, you're only supposed to die behind a wall I built. What the hell do you think you're doing dying on your own, you bastard?"

Wasn't that what the Ferryman would say?

Maybe not. The one he'd seen in dreams lately didn't seem like he'd say something like that.

"Enjoy it. When despair inevitably comes, I'll be by your side to witness it."

That kind of stuff. It didn't sound like a blessing. Nor did it feel like a curse. Just... it was what it was.

He had no more thoughts left to waste on the Ferryman.

The training Audin proposed for mastering Binding Will had been brutally simple.

"Now, I'm going to break your bone. Try to hold it together."

He said this while grabbing Enkrid's forearm with one hand and raising the other in a chopping stance with a blade-like hand.

"Alright, the bear's finally gone mad."

Rem, watching from the sidelines, commented dryly.

"If it breaks, Seiki will help with the healing. It's a good chance to teach her how to use divine power."

Naturally, Audin ignored Rem entirely. Enkrid, listening to all this, was understandably sweating cold bullets.

From Audin's tone, there was no doubt he would break it.

"If you've got nothing to do, go sleep."

Ragna also offered his commentary.

"Useful."

Lua Gharne added in her own blunt way, in the tone of someone sizing things up like Frokk often did. Rophod and Pell turned pale.

"Do we really need to go that far...?"

Pell muttered, but as things turned out, both he and Rophod ended up going through similar training.

In the end, Enkrid learned Binding Will by being hit and twisted into shape. If he ever wrote an autobiography, he figured just that chapter would span over ten thousand characters. That's how grueling it had been.

His recent spar with Rem had drawn upon every bit of inspiration he'd had since watching the unique swordsmanship of the fairyfolk.

And then, right after their match ended, Rem muttered that it was strange.

Enkrid's recollection was both long and short—just a brief flash of all those days of training passing through his mind.

That level of reflection only took a few seconds now.

The time it took to ask "What's strange?" was all he needed.

Rem responded.

"Sometimes you seem like you don't have a shred of talent—like a polite ghoul or something. Then suddenly, you're on the verge of being a genius."

He scratched his head with the haft of his axe as he spoke. Enkrid listened quietly before replying.

"It's not talent. It's accumulated experience. A few unorganized thoughts in my head finally compressed and aligned. That gave me direction."

"So... doesn't that basically mean you do have talent?"

"If you stack enough experience, that's enough."

"What? You gonna tell me if you die, you just pop back up and try again or something?"

"How did you know?"

"...Shit. I'm not even gonna talk to you."

Rem had no idea how close to the truth he'd struck.

Enkrid didn't bother convincing him. Whether Rem believed him or not didn't matter. He just went back to revisiting what he had learned during their spar.

He compiled everything he'd realized so far into a mental framework.

He did this every day now—meditation time had increased because of it.

And the biggest truth he'd uncovered?

"There's no such thing as One Point Focus."

In extreme situations, when focus peaked, time seemed to slow down. It was a kind of mental acceleration. As Enkrid reviewed this, he realized something strange—his knights could all do it.

Ragna, Rem, Audin, even Jaxon.

Yet none of them had formally learned the technique called One Point Focus.

And yet they did it.

Why? He asked them. The only answer he got was: Because we can.

He shelved their smug answers. He didn't care.

He had his hands full reviewing his own insights.

"Then why even name techniques?"

Because without formalizing and defining them, it's hard to internalize them through the body.

That realization finally hit him.

"You don't use One Point Focus, do you?"

He once asked Ragna again, just to confirm. Ragna, the one who first taught him that technique, gave a perfectly absurd answer.

"Nope. I don't."

Enkrid didn't bother asking why. There was no need.

After that, he learned that there was no need to name his techniques when swinging his sword.

It should come out naturally.

Focusing and refining Will had been about discipline. But from then on, it was about repeating the motions endlessly, until they came out reflexively—before the mind even had to think.

Yes. It was a basic truth. You could call it Swordsmanship 101.

Only now, he'd truly understood it.

At first, he knew it in his head. Then his body responded. And now, finally, it settled deep into his soul.

"How many times have I told you—make it natural, like breathing?"

Rem's irritation made perfect sense now. Saying it was easy.

But executing it with body and understanding it with heart—especially for someone without innate talent—was an entirely different matter.

That was why he hit a wall while developing a new sword technique—something he named Wavebreaker Blade.

A wave is water. The technique required a sword to become a wall that could completely block undefined, flowing attacks.

That was the idea behind the name. But how would he bring it to life?

Great swordsmanship needed three things: meaning, execution method, and training method.

Meaning. Execution. Training.

Until now, Wavebreaker Blade only had meaning.

"A blade that blocks even the waves."

Now, his thoughts reached execution. And from there, to training.

It wasn't perfectly refined, but it was as if his clogged vision had suddenly cleared.

That was the result of today's spar with Rem.

As had happened before, the process of realization and mastery naturally flowed from the experiences he'd accumulated.

Could he explain all of this in words?

No. That's why conveying realizations with words is so hard.

Still, Enkrid believed—somewhere in his gut—that he'd eventually find a way to formalize the path he had walked.

He didn't know the exact method yet, but he had a feeling it was possible.

And that brought about a certain thought.

So that's why Shinar delivered her message through the sword.

Because it was too hard to say with words.

Only then did Enkrid realize—Shinar had shown him the fairyfolk's unique sword forms as her way of saying goodbye. And that letter she'd left, the one where she said she'd wait for his proposal—he finally understood its hidden message.

She meant "don't come looking for me."

Then why mention a proposal?

Because every time he'd joked about engagement, she had always turned him down. So, saying proposal this time was her way of telling him not to come.

Of course, Enkrid couldn't claim to fully understand Shinar's heart. He just had a strong feeling.

It was a guess—but likely a correct one.

That was what she meant when she left the letter.

***

It was deep into winter, but inside Border Guard, the air was hot.

The Rem Assault Unit and standing forces had nearly cleaned up the chaos caused by the heretic sect. This was due in large part to Kraiss taking Abnaier's advice and diving headfirst into reorganizing the troops.

Reorganization meant reshuffling military structure. They had done it before, but that had just been rough sketching—this time, it was detail down to the eyes and teeth.

He started with Enkrid's unit, forming the so-called Mad Guard.

Commander? Pell, from the knight order.

"Why me?"

"I thought it was the role for the most talented. Was I wrong?"

Apparently, this was the core of the conversation between Pell and Kraiss.

There were likely more offers and longer talks involved, but that was the gist.

And so, Pell became commander of the Mad Guard.

"Anyone less talented than me, crawl."

And he was even harsher than Enkrid with his subordinates. Lua Gharne supported him in that.

There weren't many as skilled as her when it came to tactical use of environment in solo combat.

This field required experience and study, not just raw strength.

Everyone just watched Lua Gharne and learned what they needed like sponges.

Meanwhile, Rem's assault unit—the Rem Assault Unit—remained intact. And that led to Kraiss receiving a letter that threatened his life.

It demanded the immediate disbandment of the unit.

Kraiss wisely delivered the letter directly to Rem for his own safety.

Rem summoned the entire unit.

"Oh-ho, I'm not gonna waste time looking for whoever wrote that letter. You're one. If one of you screws up, you all roll."

"Isn't that unfair?"

A stubborn unit member, who'd once made a name for himself back home, stood up.

He appreciated what he'd learned here. But he hadn't sent the letter, nor even known about it. So why was he getting punished?

"That's how I run things. If you don't like it, beat me and become commander."

Ah, Rem...

Rem didn't persuade his unit with words. He didn't see the point.

He ruled with strength.

"Crazy bastard."

Still, even when they cursed him during training, he let it slide. That was normal.

Rem ran a Ten-Day Sparring to push them.

That meant they'd take turns fighting him over ten days—and Rem never went easy.

"What, you think I won't kill you all eventually? You're not the captain. I don't care if a few of you die."

Magic specialized in shaping invisible forces. The fear Rem instilled settled deep into the bones.

The only answer was to fight with everything just to stay alive. They did—and survived.

Technically, Rem held back just enough not to kill them. But they genuinely came close to death.

If they'd slipped up, they would have died.

Around this time, Rem was experimenting with a theory: "Beat someone half to death, and even the talentless start waking up."

And... it wasn't wrong. The results spoke for themselves.

Survive that, and anyone would turn into a born fighter.

Even after all that, some unit members still shot glares or shouted at Kraiss.

"Rem!"

Kraiss would shut them down with just that one word.

Looked like they had it out for him—but they were crude guys, and loud.

Still, discipline was intact.

No one dared disobey. They fulfilled duties. Followed orders.

"A unit without discipline is a rotten apple. And a rotten apple spoils the barrel."

Abnaier had been instrumental here.

Even when chaos stirred in Rem's unit, Kraiss did his job. He even gave command to Ragna.

Of course, no one really expected that lazy bastard to actually lead—but it wasn't like there weren't ways around it.