Should he call this a gift from the ferryman? No. The ferryman hadn't thrust him into the desert. Then was it a gift from the shaman whose head he'd split before being sent flying?

Neither was right. It had been coincidence and luck, but put another way, it had only been possible because of all the time he'd spent struggling desperately for a chance.

Encrid broke off his thoughts and rose. There was something he wanted to try with his body, but first he needed to get it back into proper shape.

A regenerative body, they'd called it. A body endlessly born anew. Moving, then, would help him recover. That wasn't based on any theory; it was what his senses told him. He was no longer suffering enough to die, after all. Once he'd started eating porridge and sipping water, he'd gradually begun to feel all right.

"You shouldn't be moving yet."

Henri tried to stop him, but Encrid shook his head.

"I think I'll be fine."

"Do you just heal quickly, or is there Frog blood somewhere in your ancestry?"

"I've always trained tirelessly."

That was the correct answer, but to Henri it sounded like a joke. Surely he couldn't be serious. What sort of human nearly died of dehydration, then got up after two days and bustled about after three? Well, it probably wouldn't do any harm.

He went outside for a light warm-up, rotating his arms and bending at the waist to stretch his muscles. Several westerners lingering nearby greeted him.

"Can you be moving around already?"

"Looks like it."

"Just as I'd expect."

All the westerners were staying here, and no one had anything to say about it. Actually, some had at first. Not anymore.

The little oasis village didn't even have a name. If he had to give it one, perhaps the Village of Low Walls? In any case, the western tribespeople had taken it over. A single fight had settled that.

The village housed a few criminals from the continent and outcasts from the West. Though it had an oasis, it was small, and the settlement was even bleaker than the West, subsisting on whatever scraps the desert yielded. Desert stretched on one side, wasteland on the other.

A few idiots in the village who hadn't shaken their old habits took an interest in some of the western women and tried their usual bullshit.

"Hey, don't you know you have to pay to stay here?"

Some men had seized the entire oasis and banded together to form a criminal guild. Their so-called deputy guildmaster was the one who stepped forward. Perhaps the assembled westerners' weapons hadn't looked particularly good, and their underfed, gaunt bodies had seemed easy prey. Or perhaps he was simply a fucking moron.

If you lived near the West, you ought to know how vicious westerners could be. In Rem's eyes, either was a capital offense: picking a fight without knowing, or doing it despite knowing. So he swung his axe without a word.

Encrid hadn't seen it, but according to Henri, it had been quite a trick: the axe flew off on its own, split the man's head, and returned. Encrid had still been unconscious then.

"You're awake?"

Encrid woke for the third time just as Rem finished bringing the village to heel. The first thing he saw upon opening his eyes was Rem's face, leaving him to wonder what sort of nightmare this was.

"Is this a nightmare?"

Speaking was much easier now, thanks to Henri's devoted care.

"Had a nightmare?"

Rem asked. He looked as though he'd never been worried in the first place.

"No."

"Then what are you talking about?"

"I'm telling you to get your face out of the way."

"Fuck, is that any way to talk to someone who came all this way to meet you?"

"Yes."

Ayul pulled Rem back from behind.

"It's not an unreasonable thing to say."

His face hadn't actually been that close. It was Encrid's way of saying he was glad to see him. In the end, Rem chuckled too.

"Enjoy your desert sightseeing?"

"It was fairly entertaining."

That wasn't a joke. He meant it. Wandering the desert had shown him a new path.

Luagarne then told him it was his irresistible appeal that had brought the westerners here. Dunbachel lounged beside him, saying she'd known he wouldn't die.

After he spent another three days doing light warm-ups and waiting out his recovery, the chieftain announced that everyone would return except Rem and Ayul.

"We must return to our own lives now, so we'll be going."

Without expecting anything or making a single demand, the chieftain led the westerners away. Though he looked as if he hadn't been eating properly, he carried himself proudly.

GRRRR.

That sound did come from the departing chieftain's stomach, but Encrid tactfully pretended not to hear.

"Come visit again."

Geomnarae stopped by before leaving.

"I'll give you a taste of my spells then."

"You could show me now."

"I'll spare you, considering your condition."

Somehow, Encrid felt that an older Rem would sound just like Geomnarae.

"Let's do that, then."

"Good."

Geomnarae gave him a light thump on the chest with his fist.

Familiar faces said their goodbyes one by one and left together. Tears streamed down Jiba's face.

"You mustn't forget me, husband."

As soon as Jiba spoke, Luagarne contradicted her from beside him.

"Who's your husband?"

"My virginity belongs to you."

Jiba went on as though she hadn't heard, and Luagarne kept answering.

"Since when?"

"I'll never forget you. I'll come find you, I promise."

"Don't run away from home. You'll only end up a monster's dinner."

With Luagarne answering every one of Jiba's remarks, the two sounded like a comedy act. Encrid watched quietly as most of the westerners departed.

He'd heard they had burned all their preserved food and everything else to find him, yet they left without boasting about it once. He wondered whether this, too, was the western way, but Rem's explanation suggested otherwise.

"They think what you did for them was greater, Captain. Westerners know how to weigh these things."

Encrid, for his part, felt he had received more. There was everything Rem had given him to begin with.

In any event, after the westerners left, he spent half each day practicing the Isolation Technique and the other half in meditation. As he meditated, he turned the today he'd repeated over in his mind. Not to relive the suffering, but to retrace what he'd done even while half out of his mind.

It hadn't been a fight or a battle, but...

'There's something to learn from everything you see.'

That was true for those who were ready to learn, someone had said. Who had told him that? He couldn't remember, but they had been right.

As he'd walked and walked through the desert, how had he managed one more step when he could no longer muster any strength? For a moment, he'd felt something akin to regret. Should he have pushed himself to go faster while he still had strength?

But he'd quickly shaken off the distracting thought. Rather than regret, he'd put strength into his legs. Then, after using up every last bit of strength, he'd taken one more step, and another, utterly exhausted. How? Through determination. Through Will.

'Refusing is Will too.'

Advancing was Will. The intent to cut when swinging a sword was Will. A proto knight used only part of it. What, then, of a knight?

He recalled the words of Lierbart, the false knight who had served Count Molsen.

["All you have to do is bring every ability up to knight-level."]

Believing that, he had modified his body. He'd become a chimera knight. Had that made him a true knight? No.

Then why had he made that choice? Probably because he'd focused on what changed when one wielded Will. Encrid didn't know Lierbart. But he felt he understood the yearning and desire the man had harbored.

He wanted to become a knight. Why wasn't he allowed to? Why couldn't he do it, when he swung his sword day and night? When that desire had led him to despair, he must have looked at the differences. To the question of what made a knight different, he'd offered strength, speed, and the like.

Will was something that allowed one to transcend human limits through intangible power. Encrid went a step beyond the premise of raising every ability to knight-level.

'What if I imbue every action with Will?'

To imitate a knight's strike, he'd imbued himself with Will from the tips of his toes to his fingertips. What was the principle behind it? Had he understood it when he did it? No. Yet he'd still imitated a knight's strike.

'Eating, sleeping, shitting.'

Could he put Will into everything from getting up to lying down? Wouldn't something change if he did? It was simply a thought that had struck him. A conclusion he'd reached while wandering the desert.

What if he started by imbuing the Isolation Technique with Will? From forming the intent and rousing his determination to the movements themselves, none of it was easy. It wasn't something he could do immediately just because he wanted to.

Still, that didn't matter. Moving forward one step at a time, whatever the task, was what Encrid did best. He could clearly see the thread now and had grasped it. Knowing he only needed to follow it onward was a relief.

Not that this was all he intended to do. Rem, for one, was waiting for him.

"Tell me when you're ready."

He'd said things would change once he recovered his spells. What human being wouldn't be curious to see how much?

"Go spend some more time with Ayul."

Once Encrid recovered, it would be time to return. Ayul would have to go back too.

"Don't worry. I'll be fine waiting. If Rem dies, please send word. I'll need to remarry."

Rem nodded at Ayul's blessing for her very much living husband.

"Yeah, if I die, go live with another man. But will you find anyone who fights better than me?"

Ayul's ideal man hadn't changed since childhood: a man who could at least beat her in a fight. Even if she combed through every westerner, men like that wouldn't be common.

"If there isn't one, I'll train one up."

She answered as though it were nothing.

Perhaps that, too, was a western trait. Or perhaps it was because they were Rem and the female Rem.

Time passed in the same repeated routine, concentrating on recovery and sinking back into meditation. Encrid didn't know whether the method he'd found was the right one. In truth, being wrong wouldn't change anything. When had he ever known the path before walking it?

He'd kept following that path even when he had to crawl. Somewhere along the way, he'd risen to his feet and walked, and now signposts were beginning to appear. It was a path he'd walked even without them.

Encrid stayed at the oasis for another week. In the meantime, Rem called some westerners over and proposed forming a trading company. That brought the twins back to the oasis.

"This oasis will dry up in no time if we draw heavily on its water. This land has no particular value."

With nothing but desert and wasteland around it, the twins saw no value in the place. Henri stepped in to explain that point.

"It does have value."

"What?"

"What kind?"

The twins turned their heads at the same time. Others would merely have found it curious, but Henri found it a little unnerving. Those two were westerners. If something rubbed them the wrong way, they looked liable to throw the spears in their hands.

Henri believed a successful trading venture from here to the trading city could earn a considerable sum of Krona. That conclusion came from the experience he'd gained running about from place to place. Of course, not everything would go as planned, but Encrid had offered to help if he needed it.

He'd even received a horn bow that looked valuable at a glance.

["You take it."]

Recalling the moment he'd been given it, Henri continued, bow in hand.

"We can sell things like desert lizard hides and obsidian."

"Where?"

"We'll make a good profit if we take them to the southern trading city."

"Where's that?"

It lay somewhere in the continent's southeast, unfamiliar territory to the twins. More precisely, he meant a trading city-state farther southeast even than Naurilia, beside the great southern nation, with a large river forming the boundary. Encrid had only heard of it, but Henri seemed to have worked there as well.

Monsters and demonic beasts made long-distance trade impossible on this continent, yet now and then someone managed it. Travel opened people's eyes, and when circumstances favored them, such things happened. That was Henri's situation now.

He'd let a jewel-eared fox go, only for an even bigger opportunity to fall into his lap. The horn bow in his hands alone was surely worth far more than the jewels on the fox's ears.

Henri explained calmly while Encrid warmed up beside him. After a week of proper rest and as much water as he wanted, strength had finally returned to his hands.

"Rem, get out here. I'll knock that arrogant nose of yours out of joint."

Encrid called to him kindly and considerately.

Rem emerged, yawning and scratching his cheek.

"Oh, today's the day? No crying about how much it hurts after I hit you."

Encrid adjusted his grip on Aker and looked ahead. He intended to fight him once, then ask just how useful those spells really were. On the surface, Rem looked the same as before.

For a moment, Encrid forgot that Rem was a sneakier bastard than he gave him credit for. That was the problem.

WHOOSH.

The axe came without so much as a ready stance. By the time it was right before his nose, Encrid realized it was at least twice as fast as Rem's old axe swings. At the same time, he swung Aker upward.

CLANG.

Instead of rebounding, the axe rattled up along Aker, then suddenly split into eight. Only then did Encrid truly see Rem. Something like a faint blue beast looming behind him was pouncing on Encrid.