Did it change anything that today was short? No. What he had to do was clear: stop the threat coming for the city.

Encrid moved at once. Repeated movements became practiced, and even without repeating today, he had long since mastered getting his gear on.

"Is waking people with screams a custom around here?"

Rem was awake.

"Monsters. Probably a wave."

Encrid spoke calmly and went outside. The others would follow on their own. He passed a group of soldiers and headed for the wall again. Instead of climbing up to Oara, he waited briefly before the gate.

"Let me out!"

Rowena's man appeared and shouted. Encrid whacked the bastard on the back of the head.

THWACK!

"... Huh? What are you doing?"

Milio asked in surprise.

"Let him out and someone dies."

More precisely, Milio had died going out to support this bastard.

"Well, that's true, but..."

"A commander needs a cool head."

Encrid pretended to be dispassionate, but inside he was anything but.

'She mustn't die like that.'

The knight Oara's final moments would not leave his mind. There had been nothing heroic or magnificent about them. Whatever the battle before that had been, she had died without putting up a proper fight. She had said she must protect the city, but she had failed.

It had been a pointless death.

Should he let that happen?

No. He didn't want to. He mustn't let it happen.

Encrid set his goal, and the ferryman laughed as he watched.

Even if Encrid changed everything, some things would never change. The ferryman believed those things would tear him to pieces. Yet he also felt a certain anticipation.

'What will you do, then?'

What would that madman gain by repeating today? What else would change?

He didn't know. Not knowing was precisely what made it fun. That was why the ferryman laughed.

It would be a fine spectacle, too, if Encrid struggled desperately to change things only to sink into today and become trapped.

"Oa!"

The battle cry rang out. Encrid threw himself into action. Ready for the incoming arrows, he went through the gate before the hostages even appeared. He didn't stop there, but strode boldly toward the darkness beyond.

"What good is losing your mind here going to do?"

Rem followed him.

"Then what does following me make you?"

"The sick man's nurse, I suppose."

"Then do a proper job of it."

Encrid looked all around, searching for anything even slightly out of the ordinary.

Sometimes, seeing his captain like this amazed Rem. He acted as though he knew the future.

'Some kind of instinct you got instead of talent?'

He kept the question to himself. Asking aloud would only get him another bizarre answer.

Something like, "When I die, I repeat the day."

That sort of bullshit. Who would believe that?

Encrid soon found the poles and luminous stones. Spider monsters were crouched over them, hiding them beneath their bellies. The group was waiting off to one side to spring an ambush.

"Rem."

His name alone told Rem what Encrid wanted. They split the monsters' heads open at once and rescued the hostages. Encrid thought it had taken less time than yesterday.

But the outcome wasn't better.

"Where's Lady Oara?"

Back at the gate, he spotted Aesia and asked.

"She saw a pair of monstrous bastards and went into the Demonic Realm."

He was too late. His actions had changed the situation. Encrid immediately tried to race into the Demonic Realm, but he was too late for that, too.

RATATATATAT!

Just like yesterday. Arrows flew, and the wave of spiders began. Spiders as large as grown men swarmed toward them.

"Rem, Dunbachel! We're breaking through!"

"Must we?"

Luagarne questioned him, but he ignored her. He began cutting a path toward the Demonic Realm—toward where Oara had gone, to be precise. This would cost time. Even so, he had to break through and advance.

They all followed his lead without another quip.

"Good thing I sharpened my axes."

Rem let his arms hang loosely as he spoke. In his gently swaying hands were axes of Lewis steel. He used the technique he had named Feather Axe, charging forward as his axes traced indiscriminate arcs. Any spider caught within them became a corpse.

Amid the thick black blood, Luagarne held a whip in her right hand and a Loop Sword in her left.

"Stay out of my way."

She lashed with her whip and cut with her sword. Dunbachel drew both curved swords as well. Encrid did much the same, advancing as he cut, stabbed, and smashed with Aker and Spark.

They broke through into the Demonic Realm.

"Roman!"

A faint cry reached them. The trees of the Demonic Realm muffled sound, keeping it from carrying farther. Encrid ignored the unpleasant sensation that washed over him upon entering.

He saw three of the spider's arms piercing Roman's stomach. Their shafts protruded from his back, stained with his blood. The spider monster hadn't escaped unscathed either. Roman's club-like greatsword had crushed its head.

"Fuck... I'm not going alone."

Roman spoke.

"Where's Lady Oara?"

Encrid looked around as he asked.

The cry had come from the short-haired blonde proto knight. She stood to one side, clutching her stomach and gasping. Looking around, he saw dead owlbears.

'There was more than one?'

There had been two more owlbears, monsters like the first. Even if those two hadn't been knight-level, the fight must have been one crisis after another. A bloody struggle. The traces alone told him that. They, too, had risked their lives to kill them.

But the Ghoul wasn't here. Neither was the balrog fragment, or whatever it was.

"How did you know to come?"

The blonde asked. She was pale as well, plainly far from all right. Blood streamed from the stomach she clutched. Even if they stopped the bleeding immediately, there was no guarantee she would survive.

"Master couldn't fight properly because of me."

Her words were matter-of-fact, but sorrow lay beneath them.

"That's not true, you idiot."

Roman smiled as he spoke. She never took her eyes off him. After those words, he began blinking. Death hung heavy about him.

"The monsters laid a trap?"

Luagarne almost murmured it. She was right. This was what happened if they went inside.

Encrid committed the situation to memory and moved. As he stepped farther in, Rem asked,

"Going to your death?"

It sounded like he was telling him not to go. That was exactly what he meant.

"Anyone can see it's hopeless."

Dunbachel muttered.

Encrid looked back at the two of them.

"Even if this is where I end..."

He had no intention of persuading them. All that remained was what he truly felt.

The knight Oara mustn't die there. Mustn't die like that. Knowing what awaited her, he couldn't simply let her go.

"If I have to go forward, I will."

He finished.

"Did I say otherwise?"

Rem chuckled, then added that there was no point saying anything to someone whose head was broken.

"You're one to talk."

Encrid couldn't let that pass. Sometimes Rem seemed entirely unaware of his own condition.

"Who better? Now get moving."

Hadn't he said he should have gone and come back long ago?

"You're heading west once this is over?"

"That's the plan."

"Right."

Encrid nodded and pressed on.

There inside stood that bastard—the fragment, or scrap, or whatever it was of a balrog.

"A balrog? No, a fragment."

Luagarne said the same thing as before.

"A fragment?"

This time, he had time to hear her answer.

"There is a monster in the Demonic Realm regarded as a battle-crazed demon god. It holds a flaming sword in its right hand and a whip nothing can sever in its left."

"You sound like you've seen it."

"I developed my fighting style by studying it."

She had seen it herself, then.

"That seems to be a piece of it. I think I heard it splits off part of its soul to do things like this when it gets bored."

Encrid gave a brief nod and looked ahead. Merely looking at that red, muscular body made his shoulders ache. He felt a pressure bearing down on him.

Even a fragment was knight-level?

He saw Oara's body, too. She was already dead. Beside her lay a Ghoul with its head split open—the monster she had named Jerix.

He was going to die.

Did that mean he should do nothing?

Encrid gripped his sword and raised Aker upright.

"Can you talk? I hear your father's a balrog. Is your mother a Ghoul?"

He threw out a taunt. Naturally, the monster gave no answer.

Rem stayed beside him, grumbling about rotten luck—coming to ward off misfortune only to run straight into it. Dunbachel succumbed to fear again. This time, instead of attacking, she fled.

Luagarne had no attachment to her own life. Instead, she left him these words:

"A shame I won't get to see you become a knight."

* * *

"I was just going to slash my ex-husband's face before leaving. What's all this? How many lovers does he have?"

Even in a new today, the knight Oara still joked. A group of trolls had blocked their way.

"You'll die if you go alone."

He was trying to stop Oara from entering the Demonic Realm, but she shook her head.

"If I back down now, there won't be a next time."

No sooner had she finished speaking than the five trolls stirring in the darkness of the Demonic Realm began creeping toward them. These were the ones commanding the monsters.

"I'll leave those to you."

Oara still smiled. A bright little smile.

In yet another today, she said,

"Your dream is to become a knight, right? I asked you then to decide what you'd protect as a knight. And I told you what I would protect. What do I have to do to protect the city?"

The answer needed no thought.

"Destroy the Demonic Realm."

"Right. That's why my dream is to kill Jerix."

She had given the Ghoul her ex-husband's name and meant to kill it. Oara's goal was clear. She was poisoned, living on borrowed time. The wax had melted until barely an inch of candle remained.

In the time left to her, she wanted only one thing: to kill the central monster sustaining the Demonic Realm. To cut down and destroy a monster with power equal to a knight's.

But she didn't know that Jerix wasn't the core.

"What are your chances?"

Luagarne asked.

"Get me face-to-face with it, and I won't lose."

Oara of the Smile spoke. Encrid knew. She wouldn't lose. The only problem was that another monster as strong as the Ghoul—or something even more terrifying—would appear.

'What if we had one more knight-level fighter?'

Then it would be simple. No, Oara had long since known she needed that strength. She needed a knight. Eradicating a Demonic Realm was that great an undertaking. With one, she could fulfill her wish without great losses.

But if that wasn't possible?

"Even if I die, I'm killing it first."

That was the knight Oara's dream.

Encrid saw the end of that dream again and again. The Demonic Realm didn't end. Soldiers died. Roman died. The city was finished. They couldn't stop the wave. The Demonic Realm had prepared. The humans had not.

That didn't change this time, either.

The bastard called a balrog fragment approached the exhausted, wounded Oara. Naturally, Jerix lay dead off to one side.

Did that bastard even know she'd given it that name?

"Fuck. That's a monster."

Rem knew the moment he saw it.

For no good reason, Encrid wondered what the actual balrog was like. What would the whole creature be like, rather than a fragment? Wanting to know wouldn't let him see it now, of course.

All he had to do now was deal with what lay before him.

Another new today. Another encounter with the Ghoul.

"Been eating properly?"

Encrid asked for no particular reason.

"He's my ex-husband. Would you mind letting us have our reunion?"

Oara cut in with a smile.

The monster had evolved to face a knight. The Ghoul raised a sword, wearing the smile it had stolen from Oara.

GRRRRROOK.

Its cry felt like intimidation. Even so, it would die. Oara's sword would cut, tear, and split it apart.

Then Oara would die again.

She could flee if she wanted. Oara was capable of it. She only had to turn and run before the balrog fragment struck. It didn't pursue those who fled. In fact, Dunbachel had once run away in terror, and it hadn't followed her.

Yet Encrid didn't ask Oara why she went to such lengths. He understood her.

"Wait, Roman. That one's mine."

Oara spoke and killed the Ghoul.

There were times she put up a fierce fight against the balrog fragment, too. But it was difficult when she was wounded and exhausted.

Encrid observed the situation, looked back over today and reviewed it, fought, and endured.

What did they need now?

A few times, they even drove back the Ghoul and the others. He brought Aesia in as well, trying to hold out and fight. There was a today when they held out and Oara didn't die.

But what they found upon returning from their foray into the Demonic Realm was a nightmare.

The group saw an insane number of spider monsters. Even if the walls held, there were too many to withstand without the knight Oara, without even proto knights. Monsters were scaling the walls and invading the city.

The city had failed to weather the wave.

A soldier fought on regardless, only to be chewed up and eaten alive by a spider. At that moment—

"Aaaaaah!"

For the first time, Encrid saw Oara lose her smile.

As if timed to that moment, the Ghoul and the other monsters charged out of the Demonic Realm. This time, Oara couldn't even defeat the Ghoul.

What should he do?

The answer was simple.

'Just abandon the city.'

Sacrifices were unavoidable. He could persuade the knight Oara to retreat and wait for another chance. With proper preparation, they could pick off the high-tier monsters one by one. Then they could stop the Demonic Realm, win, and fulfill Oara's dream.

But the city would fall.

She would have to abandon the gates her grandfather had carved and most of the people defending this place. Worse, the monsters would spread beyond it, killing countless people in the surrounding villages.

Even if it ended in victory, that was a reality Oara could never accept.

Encrid wasn't confident he could persuade her. Above all, he had no intention of doing it himself.

His dream was to become a knight. Had the knight in the song abandoned the people behind him to win in the end?

Walking a path of thorns even knowing it was foolish—that was what a knight meant to Encrid.

He never considered fleeing.

In another repeating today, Encrid said,

"Go on ahead to the west."

"Hit your head hard, did you?"

Rem answered from right beside him. He didn't look inclined to leave. Of course not. He had never once left Encrid's side.

"Ngh... Nnnngh..."

Dunbachel groaned, consumed by fear. One of their fighters had been reduced to uselessness.

They were returning after watching Oara die. On some days, Encrid narrowly avoided death, only to lose consciousness the moment dawn broke.

Today repeated.

"Enjoy it. Just as you did before."

The ferryman spoke, and Encrid opened his eyes again.

He repeated today.

"Without this city, there is no me."

Oara spoke.

He repeated today.

"Even if the path ends in a cliff, I'll run down it if I must. That's why I became a knight."

Oara spoke with a smile.

"Oa!"

The soldiers shouted their battle cry.

"We're going out smiling!"

Roman died with a smile. The short-haired blonde threw away her life.

Spider monsters swarmed in. Arrows of bundled silk flew. When the ground before the walls was left undefended, the soldiers held it with their bodies.

The four squires died. The soldiers died. Milio died.

Abandoning Rowena changed nothing. The flower that had bloomed in the Demonic Realm withered and died.

This was when defeat and despair should seep in. When, as people always did, he should close his eyes and give up.

"I'll give you the answer. Run."

The ferryman spoke.

As always, it was the best option. Run, greet a new today, and settle for a today that was good enough. The ferryman was offering to accommodate him.

Encrid nodded at the ferryman's words. A total of one hundred and twenty-one todays had passed.

"This is what I'm planning. What do you think?"

Encrid consulted the ferryman about the ideas he had been working through.

"Indeed."

The ferryman looked into Encrid's eyes as he spoke. He saw two blue flames steeped in madness.

"You mad bastard."