"Why?"

The eyes beneath the hood darted wildly as the sick man spoke. He was so shocked that even his breathing had grown ragged. The hand Encrid held kept trembling. He must be very ill indeed.

"The clinic is that way."

The man looked unmistakably elderly, so Encrid treated him politely. His illness had affected his mind as well. At least, that was how it looked to Encrid.

The cobbler beside them glared fiercely at him, but the Apostle of Curses failed even to notice. Something utterly unimaginable had happened, shocking him enough to forget to breathe.

"Why?"

He repeated the question without realizing it. Encrid had no idea what he meant. He thought he might sense some strange energy coming from the man, but it was hardly threatening.

The Apostle of Curses felt as though he had thrown a handful of salt into the sea. His curse simply dispersed into thin air and vanished.

What was this? A dream? It made no sense.

"Are you sure you're all right?"

Encrid asked kindly once more. The man really did seem mentally unwell.

At Encrid's unruffled manner, Redit felt his breath catch. With his curse failing to work, the affliction upon his own body flared into a seizure. His shock had shattered his concentration, too. He had panicked.

"Urk, urk!"

Redit collapsed, foaming at the mouth.

"A healer!"

Encrid shouted. Almost before the cry ended, a huge figure came flying up from behind. It was Audin. With each light push off the ground, his approaching figure loomed larger. He was closing so fast that, had he been an enemy, the sight alone would have made one's knees shake.

"Brother General."

Reaching them, he frowned down at the fallen Redit. It was a rare expression on his face.

"Ah, he's dead."

Encrid stopped calling for a healer when he confirmed that the man had ceased breathing.

And so Redit died. For over twenty years, he had served as an apostle of the Cult of the Sacred Demonic Realm, cursing to death one obstacle after another. He had been the evil cult's finest assassin.

But only two of those present had so much as an inkling of that. One, naturally, was Audin.

'My Lord?'

Startled himself, Audin silently questioned his god. The man was clearly a wielder of fearsome curses, yet his intended victim was utterly unscathed. Plainly, nothing at all had happened to Brother General.

There was also a black panther watching from a few paces away. Esther had followed the dreadful malice the instant she sensed it, and had found its source.

'A born curse wielder.'

Esther recognized what he was, but knew his curse would not work on Encrid. She was the Witch of Fire, a mage of exceptional talent. She did not know what was entwined around Encrid's body, but it had shaken even the curse upon her own. Naturally, then, he would not fall victim to this one. Before a greater curse, a lesser one would fade into nothing.

"Grr."

Esther snorted once and turned toward the barracks. She had lately been working harder than ever to restore her spell world, and she was very tired.

* * *

The ferryman clicked his tongue at the inevitable result.

"Tsk!"

Some things in this world could not be handled without preparation. Others could be dealt with easily even without preparing for them. The latter was possible only through constant study and training.

To dodge an arrow that came flying out of nowhere, for instance, one had to remain ready for such a thing at all times.

["Isn't that obvious, if you don't want a stray arrow killing you?"]

So Rem had said. Hadn't Encrid also trained to dodge Jaxon's daggers from a mere ten paces or so for that very purpose? He did not always include it in his routine, but he had made those preparations nonetheless.

Was this curse another such case, then?

No. It fell into neither category.

One thing the ferryman knew and Encrid did not was that curses were meaningless before a greater mass of the same. The curse that made today repeat, encompassing even the ferryman's existence, was more vicious than any other curse.

Furthermore, curses fundamentally worked by exploiting the vulnerabilities of weak-willed beings. A straw-doll curse that inflicted pain from afar worked on some people and not others because each possessed a different measure of nerve.

In other words:

'A difference in willpower.'

The resolve the ferryman saw in Encrid went beyond sheer tenacity into outright madness. This was not merely tremendous determination, but willpower bordering on insanity. Ordinary curses would never take hold of someone like him.

That was also why curses rarely worked on knights in the first place. They wielded the mystic art called Will, a power founded on willpower.

Of course, the ferryman knew that the curse of the bastard who had died with his eyes wide in shock had been formidable.

'He couldn't have picked a worse opponent.'

It was a matter of compatibility.

To this Encrid fellow, a curse was less than a mosquito. It would not even feel as bothersome as a fly. Thus he would have felt no danger, nor would his Sixth Sense or intuition have stirred. He would have known instinctively that the man posed no threat.

"Did you kill him with just a look?"

A passing citizen voiced a thoroughly mistaken impression.

"How could anyone kill a man with a look?"

Someone beside him scolded him for talking nonsense.

No one knew that an apostle of the evil cult who had routinely killed with a look—or, more precisely, with curses—had just met such a wretched end. It was a truly futile death.

Had he poured curses over the entire city instead, or targeted anyone other than Encrid, he would have accomplished more. But it was too late now.

A healer came to check whether he had carried a contagious disease, and citizens shied away at the sight of the dead man's raw, festering skin.

Without realizing it, Encrid had become the cultists' greatest enemy.

* * *

"Come at me."

At Rem's words, Encrid prepared to show him something he had worked on constantly since returning to Border Guard. He raised Aker, its tip pointing diagonally into the sky.

Rem steadied his breathing.

'If I go easy, I'll die.'

When had he caught up this far? Rem ran his tongue over his parched lips.

The weather had gone mad. One good downpour would have helped, but instead of rain, only humid, blazing sunshine poured down. Sweat streamed off a man even standing still. Hot, muggy, miserable weather.

For a moment, Rem forgot that discomfort. The pressure Encrid exerted raised gooseflesh all over his body.

Not a breath of wind stirred. Even the dust held its breath, belly pressed flat against the training ground.

Every company member nearby naturally became a spectator. They watched without so much as breathing loudly.

Encrid moved first. His shoulders seemed to lift from his ready stance, and then his sword moved.

'Fast.'

Watching, Ragna glimpsed elements of his own swift, heavy swordsmanship in the strike. Sinar, who had come to watch, saw a stroke governed by minute control. Audin glimpsed traces of the point-blank strike he had taught.

Encrid simply swung, wholly focused.

What was Will? Willpower.

What was willpower? The desire to accomplish something.

'An instant's explosive power.'

He compressed his muscles, then released them in an explosion, adding the Instant's acceleration for more force. Into this he mixed the pressure of the Heavy Sword Technique learned through the Crushing Sword.

To Rem, fighting spirit seemed to boil over from Encrid's entire body. The power behind that blow could not be ignored.

Rem activated his own Heart of the Superhuman. With enough muscular strength to face an actual Giant, he swung his axes.

As Encrid stepped forward and slashed down, Rem swept both axes upward in crossing arcs. Light weapons were generally said to lack destructive power, but that did not apply to Rem. The weapons he had originally used had been just this light.

The weapons collided.

CLAAANG!

With a deafening crash, a shock wave spread in concentric circles. It was such a brutally forceful collision that one had to wonder who would do such a thing in a spar. Startled by the shock wave, the dust lying flat on its belly scattered in every direction.

After that single exchange, they stopped with their weapons locked together. Rem asked,

"What was that?"

"Giant's Strike."

"Boring name. Wouldn't 'Giant's Every Last Ounce of Strength' be better?"

Encrid was not the sort to bark back at a barking dog, so he said only what he had intended to say. Rem might reasonably have felt wronged. Even an ordinary Giant would have had to swing with every last ounce of strength to deliver a blow like that.

"What did you do?"

"It's called Feather Axe."

Encrid had never heard the name. Naturally: Rem had translated a western technique into the language of this continent.

Rem was astonished by the technique Encrid's growth had produced, while Encrid was astonished by Rem's axework. Rem had blocked even the Giant's Strike by bringing his axe blades into contact and pulling them away two or three times. What had looked like a full-force collision had actually involved yielding and bracing with his wrists, redirecting the power Encrid had put into the blow.

It was so difficult a technique that Encrid could scarcely imagine imitating it. More importantly, Rem had never shown it before.

"Did you invent it?"

"Refined something I already had. Haven't had a weapon like this until now, have I?"

Rem spun the axe in his hand as he spoke. He meant his weapon: light yet strong, responding perfectly to his hand.

Encrid looked at the axe that had withstood Aker. The mere fact that its edge was undamaged made it an excellent weapon. The craftsman Krang had sent had done his work well.

In fact, the craftsman had been so proud of the two weapons he had made that he had even named them. The men who took those weapons, however, never used those names.

["Will it answer if I call its name?"]

Rem had blithely refused the craftsman's request. His precise reason was that it was not an ancestral weapon and therefore could do no such thing, but he had no reason to explain in that much detail.

Ragna called his sword Blackie. Had the craftsman heard, he would have wanted to smash Ragna's head with a hammer on the spot. Caring about nothing but swordsmanship was very like Ragna.

The moment Rem withdrew, Ragna stepped forward.

"My Blackie's turn."

Their furious exchange differed from the bout with Rem. The difference from before was that Encrid was no longer being driven back without recourse. Seeing him withstand even the Will of Scission, Ragna shouted,

"Good!"

He was so excited that he deliberately unleashed his talent.

"Let me borrow that!"

Ragna imitated the sword technique Encrid had just shown. More precisely, he reproduced it through his own interpretation. His talent was insane.

Encrid countered with Giant Cleaver, the technique he had learned from Rem. It used the Heart of the Superhuman as a foundation for deflecting an opponent's monstrously powerful blow. They repeated this three times.

"Once more."

To be precise, Encrid had asked for two more attempts. He had felt a stiffness in the motion of receiving and redirecting the blow, and sensed that his desire to resolve it would help his training.

"You've improved a great deal."

Ragna spoke after the spar. Rem nodded in agreement. Encrid answered them both calmly.

"I've still got a long way to go."

His goal was that lofty. Neither was surprised; they knew he was not a man to be satisfied.

* * *

That evening, Rem remained alone on the training ground.

'He's right on my heels.'

The Captain who had struggled even with the heart of the beast was gone.

Then should he retrieve what he had left in the West to meet that challenge?

No. He would not. Hadn't he made up his mind and sworn it when he left?

["I'll never come looking for this again."]

He had said that and departed. Those had been his own words.

'Well, I'll make do with what I've got.'

To wield his spells in earnest, he would need to retrieve what he had left behind. But that did not mean he had no other way to improve. Frankly, his current approach was slow despite being a shortcut. Still, it was not without results. His Lewis-steel axes would help in that regard, too.

While he was lost in thought, a faint passing presence drew his gaze upward. The Sneaky alley cat was on his way back. Since the training ground adjoined the entrance path, it was only natural to see people coming and going.

"Why don't you move out and set up house, then, you cat in heat?"

Rem's tongue moved reflexively, like a man who had wandered the desert for three days gulping down water the moment he found it. Wasn't this a bastard who had to be insulted on sight?

Jaxon was returning from yet another attempt to persuade the disobedient guild members. One especially stubborn holdout had left him rather irritated. Surely surviving three brushes with death should have been enough to persuade him?

On edge, Jaxon responded to Rem's provocation at once.

"That's rich coming from a barbarian who'll never so much as hold a woman's wrist."

"I'm already married."

"I'll stake that thing between your legs on that being a lie."

Encrid's way with words had rubbed off on them both.

"Fine. I'll kill you. Come on."

Rem rose. Half of this was simply venting. Memories of the past had left a bitter taste in his mouth, and at such times, one needed to beat up a Sneaky alley cat, if nothing else.

Jaxon did not refuse. They fought fiercely, and unlike before, he brought out everything he had. In other words, he used Will, though in a form entirely different from the way knights used it.

Rem knew he had been pushed back. How could Jaxon fail to notice? Once he had gained a clear enough advantage, Jaxon withdrew his hands and said,

"Go hang yourself."

"What, you bastard?"

With those words, Rem made up his mind. He would have to make a trip to the West.

His resolve? What did that matter?

Ragna acting up was maddening enough, but now this Sneaky alley cat bastard too?

This was absolutely intolerable. He resolved to go to the West soon, without fail.