"That thing isn't like those half-baked ones we fought before. You knew that when you took it on?"

Rem wasn't scolding him.

Jerix stopped attacking, seemingly wary of the newly arrived Rem. If it had even been given a name, it couldn't be an ordinary monster. Perhaps it could think, too. Everyone knew that the thing atop a Ghoul's neck was just for decoration, but the Demonic Realm was not a land governed by common sense.

Encrid took advantage of the lull—or, more precisely, the heightened wariness that had put both sides on guard—to study the Ghoul named Jerix anew. Whatever else might be true, one thing was certain: the monster was ridiculously strong. Stronger than those fake knights the wraith-wielding Count had made.

"So I've noticed," Encrid answered.

He had already felt it firsthand. This Ghoul knew how to fight. The half-baked things Rem meant were those fake knights, broken toys stitched together from flesh and muscle.

"And you took it on anyway?" Rem asked.

"I could handle it."

He meant exactly that. Once, he wouldn't even have been able to hold out, but now he could more or less manage. The Ghoul bastard was keeping an eye on Oara, too. His muscles were straining and his joints creaking for various reasons, but its nails hadn't pierced him, had they? His ribs ached where its foot had struck him twice, but this much was bearable.

'Should I thank Audin?'

Without the conditioning from the striking method, his ribs would have broken. And all the countless blows he'd taken had taught him something else: he had felt Will moving at the very instant he was struck.

What mattered was that he'd held out. Come to think of it, he now had some confidence that he could endure the sword strokes of that knight from Aspen if he faced them again.

"Learn that bluster from the bastard who can't find his way anywhere?"

Rem chuckled, but inwardly he thought otherwise. Ah, that thing really was no joke.

It was different from the half-baked creations of that wraith-wielding Count. Those things had acquired a knight's power, but their technique was abysmal. What good was strength when the one using it was a fucking idiot? That was why they'd been easy.

But the monster before him was different. These creatures fought even among themselves to survive. What did it mean for a Ghoul to have survived and developed instincts of that caliber? It proved that it had fought and fought, right to death's door. Those abilities had been won through struggle.

There was nothing half-baked about it. Rem assessed the situation coldly.

'I can't kill it.'

Not as he was now. He needed spells. His improved prowess alone wasn't enough. Besides, he had only just finished killing five trolls hidden among the monsters. Those bastards hadn't been ordinary, either.

His left forearm hurt, and something around his hip joint creaked. When he killed the third troll, he'd blocked a stone axe with his left arm and taken a blow to the waist at the same time. Minor injuries sustained while fighting five trolls, but they had left his balance subtly off.

They wouldn't kill him. A few days' rest would fix him right up. Seven days at most would suffice. Traveling on foot would be fine. So would dealing with stupid bandits. He simply had to avoid any intense fighting for now. As long as he didn't face some monster beyond the norm, he'd be all right.

The problem was that precisely such a monster stood before him. And the bastard he called Captain showed no intention whatsoever of backing down. No, he actually seemed to be stopping the knight Oara from stepping in.

'This is a bit much just to get the bad luck out of the way.'

Rem scratched his head with his axe handle. Having decided to go west, he'd been prepared to weather a little ill fortune first, but this really was excessive.

"What do you want?" he asked all the same.

"To land one strike."

The answer came immediately. His mind was already made up. Of course. He wasn't the sort to agonize over things. Encrid was a madman who would act first and make his chosen path the right one, rather than stop to deliberate.

Rem found that rather entertaining himself. Wasn't that why he'd stayed here? Wasn't it what he'd learned from watching this man that had finally made him decide to return west?

The Ghoul twitched its fingers. It looked as though it were calculating something. A monster wielding a knight's power on the strength of its innate combat instincts. Rem thought he might die.

"Let's do it."

That didn't mean he had any intention of retreating.

There was no time to work out proper tactics, but Encrid had been waiting for Rem from the moment he envisioned this plan. All he needed was a momentary opening. Rem would create it. Encrid believed that.

* * *

Ghouls did not normally think. What sat atop their necks truly was ornamental. But the Ghoul named Jerix was capable of simple thought. More than anything else, that was what had made it the monster it was today.

With that capacity for thought, Jerix assessed the situation and reached a judgment. Whether two or three opponents barred its way made no difference. The one before it was weaker and slower. But if it killed him, the other blade waiting behind him would come flying at it. A blade it had faced time and again.

The Ghoul thought it need only hold out and let time pass. Then the being that had driven it here would step in. That was the conclusion its reasoning produced.

The bothersome blade approached again. Jerix casually kicked the axe aimed at its ankle aside with the top of its foot, while carefully blocking the sword. That blade contained a troublesome metal.

Monsters were naturally weak to silver, a metal that held divine power. But silver was also soft, making silver swords exceedingly difficult for anyone but a skilled craftsman to forge. Above all, a mere silver sword that hadn't been consecrated could do nothing to its body.

Yet the steel its opponent wielded felt deeply ominous. Naturally so: Aker contained a metal called Truesilver.

As it dodged, Jerix reasoned that all it had to do was avoid deep cuts or stabs. That made the weapon no threat. Whether a sword containing Truesilver or a consecrated club, it meant nothing if it couldn't land a blow.

Jerix was confident it could do that. Such paltry swordplay would never catch it. As a Ghoul that had lived a long time, it knew that instinctively. It had already finished gauging its opponent's ability.

The axe swept toward it again. Faster than the incoming blade, Jerix brought up a knife-hand to block.

CLACK!

Its hardened skin stopped the axe blade. Then its opponent dragged the axe across it.

GRRRRK!

Steel scraped over skin, and hard chips of flesh flew from beneath the grinding axe. It hadn't been cut or slashed, though some of its thick skin had been torn away. It could do this because its hide itself was like armor. The block had worked.

Having blocked with its left hand, Jerix thrust out its right.

CLACK!

Another axe blade stopped that hand. Several exchanges followed as it thrust out and drew back its hands. Jerix gauged and confirmed its opponent's skill. Now it was certain these two could never kill it.

Time was on its side. There was no rush. It need only press them slowly.

Even now, the Ghoul was learning. Just as it had learned while fleeing the human with the terrifying sword, it learned now. This time, it learned how to stall and keep an opponent under pressure. It suppressed its urge to slaughter and waited. Time was on its side.

Of course, every being in the world was capable of being mistaken.

"Aagh!"

A scream rang out. A human's.

The Ghoul's borderless pupils contracted. It turned its gaze toward the scream. A small female human was rolling on the ground, clutching her shoulder. Blood ran down from it.

Fragrant blood. Tender flesh.

The urge to slaughter rose. Hunger seethed. By suppressing both and watching, Jerix advanced another step. It evolved. Its exterior remained the same, but something inside changed.

In what could be called a crisis, the Ghoul's thinking developed as though accelerating. It advanced further. At this rate, it might even come to be called a God of the Demonic Realm.

And then—

"Now."

It had looked away for only a moment. A blade shot toward it as a long streak, so fast that even its shadow looked like a line. A slashing blow aimed at its wrist. Impossible to dodge. In the brief instant it had looked away, axe blades had come for both its hands.

Why had it looked away? Not because of the wounded human. Because it had seen the terrifying sword move right beside it. The human who had driven it into corners took a step. That blade cut behind the human giving off the fragrant scent of blood. More precisely, it cut the owlbear targeting her.

WHOOSH! THUD! CRACK!

Everything happened in an instant. Oara hurled herself forward and swung her sword. The owlbear split vertically, spraying black blood.

Watching, the Ghoul thrust out its hands, turned its wrists palms-up, and caught the axe blades. There was no longer any need to hide its strength. It dug in its nails and gripped the blades.

CRUNCH! CRACK!

Holes punched through the axe blades, and they crumpled. As it crushed them, Jerix kicked forward with its left foot. That straight kick was its hidden trump card. Its foot shot out three times faster than its hands.

BOOM!

A deafening impact rang out.

The kick sent the axes' owner flying backward. Everything lay within the Ghoul's reasoning. Everything had gone as calculated.

But in that brief span while it dealt with the axes, Jerix saw a light beyond its comprehension. Something outside its calculations. Before it knew it, the light was right before its eyes.

That pinpoint of light vanished as quickly as it had appeared. It had entered between its eyes and pierced its head, so naturally it could no longer see it. For a moment, the Ghoul couldn't understand what had happened, but one thing came to mind: the terrifying blade that had hunted it. This light was like that blade.

With its skull pierced, Jerix spent the last of its strength raising its nails and stabbing. It felt no particular emotion. That final act was driven by instinct alone. The tips of its nails sank into flesh.

* * *

If Encrid's methods until now had involved wringing his muscles to their limit, Roman's strike was a little different.

'Will in every movement.'

From taking a step to drawing a breath.

Unable to become a knight just yet, Roman put Will into everything to imitate a knight's strike. Encrid had watched, learned, and made that method his own.

He could feel the force called Will—willpower—but that didn't mean he could use it as he pleased. Then how had he used the swift stab or Giant's Strike?

'It's all inside me.'

He could use it if he put his resolve into it. So he would walk as if his life depended on every step, and do the same when gripping his sword.

Understanding came in an instant, but advancing through it took a long time. He repeated the process until his body caught up with that understanding. Just as he unleashed the swift stab or Giant's Strike, he put Will into his steps and the movements of his hands.

Breaking movements down and putting determination into each one naturally made them simpler. Three hundred todays wouldn't have sufficed to put Will into every complex movement, but—

'Stab.'

He reached the point of thrusting his sword with that resolve. At last, he arrived. After dozens of failures, he had put it into one single movement.

The foot he planted felt awkward. So did the hand holding his sword. As he put Will into everything from the ankle of his planted foot to his fingertips, his surroundings blurred. It was difficult to perceive anything. He could only move as he had decided at the outset.

He focused solely on imbuing himself with Will, with willpower. Encrid thrust his sword. More precisely, he broke the act of stabbing down again and again into its smallest components, perceived each movement through his sensory arts, and executed it through Concentrate on a Single Point.

Asked how this differed from what he normally did, he would have said he didn't know. Yet the Will filling his body gave him a brief taste of omnipotence.

'Stab.'

His opponent could not dodge. That was how it would be. It was only natural. That was how it felt. And that was what happened.

Aker's point pierced straight through Jerix's forehead.

Roman had said that even one use would leave him feeling hollow, with no strength left anywhere in his body. But not Encrid. He knew, having already experienced it several times. He felt no emptiness from a loss of willpower. Instead, every muscle in his body hurt as though it were about to tear.

As Jerix died, it thrust out its hand with its nails raised. A white shadow slipped in front of Encrid. Dunbachel.

The moment she saw the monster, her body began trembling. She wanted to flee. But she didn't.

Run away. Make a break for it. Bolt.

All those words could only come after facing something.

Dunbachel faced it and threw herself forward. She hadn't thought it through before acting. Her body had moved first.

'Why am I doing this?'

The question came afterward, along with the sound of flesh being pierced.

"Nngh!"

Dunbachel imagined pain piercing her abdomen. She waited for the agony of her innards tearing apart, but all she felt was soreness in abdominal muscles clenched tight with tension. There was no pain.

She saw the muscles of an arm trembling violently. A dented vambrace came into view, along with part of a monster's corpse held in that hand.

"What are you doing?" Encrid asked. The moment Dunbachel had blocked his way, he'd lifted a monster's corpse.

"You going to move?"

Encrid felt utterly exhausted. It wasn't just the stab; even lifting a monster's corpse to block the attack had required Will. That had sent fatigue surging through every muscle in his body.

There was no emptiness, so his eyes were clearer than ever. The untalented man who had glimpsed omnipotence gave no thought to the magnitude of his accomplishment. That wasn't what mattered now. Instead, his gaze turned aside.

Jerix was dead. In the meantime, Roman had killed the spider swordsman with a knight's strike. Oara had cut down the owlbear.

He saw the short-haired blonde lying wounded after forcing an opening. Oara stood beside her.

"What are you?"

She stared at him in astonishment. Encrid answered her question.

"It's your turn."

Despite the seemingly irrelevant reply, Oara turned forward without challenging it. There stood the true lord ruling this part of the Demonic Realm.

The balrog fragment.

Because of the poison, Oara couldn't fight for long. Even then, overexerting herself meant having to rest for some time, so she rarely left the city unattended. She stepped in only when she had no choice.

Had she faced that thing after fighting Jerix and the others, she would have had little choice but to bare her neck and wait. Encrid knew those todays. He had watched them unfold.

* * *

"Show us. Show us what the knight Oara protects."

The visitor to the city spoke from behind her.

He was an exceptionally handsome and unusual man. He seemed to have acted knowing things would turn out this way. Was that a problem?

No.

Oara smiled because she knew what she had to do. Oara of the Smile raised her sword and spoke.

"I'll be counting on you for cheering and dancing."

Returning Encrid's own words to him, Oara brought her sword down. Her feet moved with the stroke. The blade traced a gentle curve toward the balrog's skull.

CLANG!

The fragment raised a red-stained hunk of metal and blocked Oara's sword. One knight and one monster halted, their weapons locked.

Encrid had wished to see Oara fight as she should. That was why he had repeated today.

He had already cheered her on by killing the Ghoul Jerix. Creating this stage was the highest praise and encouragement Encrid could offer.

He only wanted to see. What a knight did. What a knight could do.

Through repeating today, Encrid had said what he wanted to say. And Oara showed him what he had hoped and wished to see.