Chapter 641

Chapter 641

A boatman stumbling over his words and tripping on his own tongue? Initially, Enkrid wondered if he was witnessing a fresh brand of humor. Since fairy jests weren’t a thing, he surmised this was perhaps a boatman’s brand of wit. Naturally, it was no joke. His mind went into overdrive, hurtling toward a realization. The polar opposite of Walking Fire. To cut through Walking Fire, he had needed to concentrate every ounce of his power into a singular, explosive blow. Therefore, that couldn’t be the solution here. In truth, he had already attempted that approach across countless iterations of this day. Funneling his entire Will into a lone strike had proven fruitless. So, what lay at the other end of the spectrum? Enkrid’s gut feeling was more acute than it had ever been. Furthermore, by reliving the same day over and over, he had managed to categorize, process, and internalize a staggering amount of data. Consequently, Enkrid began to perceive things that sat just outside the boundaries of his current grasp. Much like one can deduce a missing word by analyzing the sentences around it, his constant repetition allowed him to trace effects back to their origins. That deduction—that flash of a final answer—was what he described as seeing the light. The boatman’s guidance remained unfinished. Particularly because he had only managed to voice the opening fragment. Was it intended to mock him? Perhaps. A small part of him dreaded that possibility. Yet, if there was a path left to explore, wasn’t it mindless to ignore it? He resolved to anchor himself strictly in the now. The boatman’s hint had been vague. Enkrid interpreted it through his own lens. “Recall the instant you went up against Walking Fire.” From that point, it was a matter of retrospection. Not the technical acquisition of the skill, but the raw essence of the encounter. He mentally revisited the days spent clashing with Walking Fire, summoning the mindset he maintained and the logic he employed. A conflict where a mere graze signaled the end. Where a tiny nick was a death sentence. The solution: simply do not be touched. He remembered a duel where he had persisted, stripping away the flames bit by bit, like peeling away layers of skin. Fortitude. Then, a specific memory surfaced—of a man who had turned that style of attrition into an art form. Rearvart. The artificial knight unveiled by Count Molsen. He had turned physical endurance into his ultimate weapon. Though he had leaned on the foul science of flesh modification, he ultimately fell short of his goal. Still, the struggle against him had been instructive. Just as enduring Walking Fire had been instructive. The archives of his memory swung open. He summoned his past lessons. He rehearsed and manifested them through his physical form, weaving abstract theory into physical action. The Concept: A blade capable of halting the very tides. The Expression: The total neutralization of every incoming strike. The Training Regimen: A multitude of variations. Once the concept, expression, and regimen were solidified, they coalesced into a true martial discipline. He had achieved enlightenment. Now, his sinews had to follow suit. He was prepared. Every strike from the Onekiller was a death blow. Every arc of its blade carried a lethality that could freeze the blood in his heart. To parry such a monster, Enkrid would need to swing his own blade not dozens, but hundreds of times with surgical precision. A single lapse in judgment meant the end. A tremor of anxiety, thrill, and pure elation shivered down his spine. In this fresh iteration of today, the Onekiller initiated the assault as if it had been anticipating the moment. The blades integrated into its arms acted with independent malice. It looked like a synchronized performance of Valen-style mercenary blade-work. Confronting those diverging tempos, Enkrid gripped only his True Silver Sword. Mental processing. He deconstructed the incoming blows, identifying them in a chronological sequence. This was the territory of pure perception. It was made possible only through his hyper-accelerated cognitive state. His pulse thundered. Blood raced through his heart. With it, the invisible tide of Will flooded his frame, bolstering his resolve. Clang! He hoisted the True Silver Sword, parrying a diagonal lunge. Without losing momentum, he transitioned into the next motion, maintaining the flow. He had to. Using that energy, he intercepted a blade darting through a narrow opening, leaving no room for a single breath or a blink. He instantly retracted his steel, snapping it up to guard his face. A blade, extending like a dagger from the Onekiller’s foot, ground to a halt inches from his throat, caught by his steel. The point that had shot from the creature’s limb stopped just before it could tear into his jaw. Skkkrkkk. The sound of metal grinding against metal echoed. Blade bit into blade, each vying for dominance. I perceive the logic. Following that strike, a relentless sequence of blows would surely follow. Enkrid decided to seize the initiative. He tapped into the sparks within to siphon away the opponent’s drive. The Onekiller’s dense musculature permitted sudden, violent bursts of movement. It could retreat just as swiftly as it attacked. Its mutating leg structures facilitated this. When under extreme pressure, its lower limbs altered themselves, taking on a predatory, animalistic shape. They were transforming even now. To a human observer, it appeared as though its joints were snapping backward. In reality, they weren’t. An understanding of predatory anatomy showed that this “inverted joint” was a misconception. What looks like a beast’s knee to a man is actually its heel. Beast legs aren’t “backward”—they are engineered for standing on the balls of the feet. It is an evolutionary gift for escaping predators or launching an ambush. Like balancing perpetually on one’s toes—primed to spring at any second. In this configuration, the power of its legs more than doubled. Boom! Boom! The masonry beneath them shattered and sprayed. Amidst the flying rock, bolts of orange light lunged forward. The thing that had just backed away now roared forward with twice the velocity. Its arms blurred, creating a terrifying visual display. From Enkrid’s perspective, it was as if a hail of shooting stars was falling from the firmament. Orange streaks tore through the air vertically, in jagged angles, and even skimmed the floor. It was said that the Shower form of the Four Seasons Sword reaches the level of a meteor shower at its zenith. This was reminiscent of Shinar’s Shower. Only it was swifter. More brutal. Deflecting every individual impact felt nearly impossible. Enkrid had to transcend his current capacity. And so, he did. His conditioned body and fire-tempered soul pushed past the threshold. There was no alternative—to be cut, pierced, or hit was to perish. His heightened vision detected the shifts in velocity. His sight had moved beyond human limitations. Will seethed inside him. First, it reinforced his muscles. Then, it circulated through his vital organs and surged into his mind. Will heightened every one of his senses, enabling him to surpass the mundane. This was the only way these miracles were achievable. The Onekiller’s form shifted once more. First the lower limbs—now the upper. Its arms elongated like the limbs of an octopus. No skeletal structure—just pure, roiling muscle, coiling to grant its blades even more speed. Enkrid spun, parried, and retaliated. Blood began to seep from the hand gripping the True Silver Sword. Even with his fabric hand-wraps, the sheer force of the impact couldn’t be nullified. Across palms that had been torn and scarred a thousand times, fresh gashes split open. It is too much. But surrender was not in his nature. He parried, and he parried again. He lost count of the exchanges. He had lost his sense of time entirely. At some point, his eyes began to sting as if boiling wax had been dripped into them. Inevitably, the sheer volume of choices led to an error. Exhaustion accumulated. Blind spots emerged from the strain of too much calculation. A blade from the Onekiller nicked his cheek. Its muscular forearm stretched out, leaving a trail of orange light. Splurt! Enkrid managed to sever both its arms—but only after the scratch had been delivered. Even a scratch is death. The law remained absolute. This was a failure. Excruciating agony ripped through his form. It felt as though a needle was being driven through the very blood in his arteries. He recalled an old woman’s warning from his childhood—that if a needle enters a vein the wrong way, it will travel to the heart and kill you. The sensation was now a reality. Crack! As he stumbled, a blade extending from the Onekiller’s foot drove deep into his cranium. Pain erupted from his head and shot through his nervous system like a bolt of lightning. It hurts. The agony came first. Then the void. Death took him. Today was over. — “Is that the best answer you can offer?” The boatman, drifting upon the dark, shimmering waters with his glowing purple lantern, questioned him with total apathy. Enkrid offered no response. The polar opposite of Walking Fire. The boatman standing there now seemed different—as if he were a different entity altogether. “I don’t have the answer either.” “How preposterous.” The boatman spoke with no trace of amusement. And so, today began once more. A beginning identical to yesterday, and every today that preceded it. He gripped his weapon, with fervor as his steel and resolve as his protection. “Today is going to be more enjoyable than yesterday.” Enkrid whispered a sentiment that no one could comprehend. “What was that?” Shinar inquired, but received no reply—because the Onekiller, sensing Enkrid’s intent to kill, launched itself forward instantly. Clang! The ring of steel sang in a perfect chord. The duel commenced again. He weighed the variables. He sought a logical solution. Enkrid could feel his own evolution within the span of a single day. So long as the Onekiller didn’t mutate its limbs, they were nearly matched—or Enkrid held a slight advantage. But when it changed its shape, he was vastly outclassed in both velocity and sheer force. But I can close the gap. And so, he persevered. He gritted his teeth and held his ground. His physical form paid the price. Initially, blood began to leak from his eyes. His overheated Will had caused the vessels to pop. Then his nose began to bleed. The more data he tried to process, the more his brain buckled under the load. Heat accumulated in his skull until blood poured from his nose. His lungs tightened. His muscles turned a deep, angry red. For a moment, his entire body was stained crimson with internal bruising. “Good grief.” That was the remark Lua Gharne made upon witnessing his state. Clang! Pell, observing Enkrid, unsheathed the Idol Slayer and stood ready for combat. I believe I’ve lasted long enough. However, the Onekiller showed no signs of fatigue. It didn’t seem capable of it. A knight, using only brief bursts of Will, could take down a thousand foes in a single day. Enkrid had been flooding his entire body with Will continuously. It was as if he had slaughtered far more than a thousand enemies—not over a day, but in a singular, hyper-compressed window of time. Thus, the torrent of blood from his nose was hardly a shock. This won’t work. He realized his approach to training was fundamentally flawed. He was performing hundreds of mental operations simultaneously through sped-up thought—convinced it was the only way to counter the Onekiller’s erratic movements. There is a hard ceiling to accelerated thinking. What then? Another dead end? No. Even as he bled out, Enkrid slammed his sword into the earth and stood firm. He watched as the Onekiller pulled back. You monster… He realized the creature was focusing on him because he posed the greatest threat. Perhaps its cognitive speed during battle is equal to mine. That seemed plausible. It targeted him because he was a danger—but also because it was the most logical tactic. Once it perceived that his efficiency had dipped, it shifted to a fresh target. It was engaging in the most calculated and efficient manner possible. If it can eliminate me, the others are trivial. Had it attacked Lua Gharne or Pell first, they would have joined forces against it. Even if it didn’t alter the end result, it never took that route. It always seized the smallest possible edge. Just as Enkrid always had. Demons are creatures of logic. It was fitting. “It isn’t finished.” Enkrid spoke. The Onekiller, ignoring his words, pointed its blade toward a different victim. Not Lua Gharne. Not Pell. It set its sights on Bran, the Woodguard. “I expected it to end this way.” And Shinar stood up. Crrrrrk. As she rose from her stone throne, dark fibers or tethers snapped away from beneath it. Blood leaked from her shoulders. That hadn’t been a simple chair. Enkrid watched a comrade fade. He watched the fairies enter the fray. He watched Shinar rise in a final act of defiance—but she could no longer fight as she once had. And he watched her perish. She bit her lip and charged, ignoring her failing muscles—but the Onekiller pierced through her heart in a heartbeat. And she was gone. Even the boatman failed to appear after that darkness. Shuddering from the phantom sensation of pain, Enkrid woke up. “If I can’t rely on speeding up my thoughts…” Pain notwithstanding, his intellect remained intact. He whispered to himself. Logic, imagination, practice, and experience fused in his mind to carve a new path. The Wave-Stopping Swordsmanship. Concept: A sword that halts the tides. Expression: The act of blocking. Training method: Condition the mind itself. How does one condition the process of thinking? Up until now, Enkrid had utilized two methods. One: accelerate the speed of thought. The other, he had acquired in the city of the fairies. Partition it. The partitioning of thought. The foe utilized both arms independently. It partitioned its mind to duel. It utilized its entire being for the fight. And its cognition wasn’t merely split in two. It had integrated the swordsmanship of fairy knights. Primal combat intuition merged with fairy-style strategic logic. Its blades were lethal with a mere touch. Its physical shape reflected that. Its mind had evolved in the same fashion. They say demons are the natural rivals of knights. And truly—it earned that title. “Then I simply need to partition it.” Enkrid’s eyes sparked. Instead of crumbling at his failure, he—like a true student of the blade—took the initial step on a fresh road. He relived the day again. He died again. Cycle after cycle. Five hundred fifty-six iterations passed. Eventually, the boatman stopped showing up. When he did manifest, he simply repeated the same dialogue like a wooden performer. “Surrender. You are a prisoner of today.” “Do you require a target for your spite? Then direct it at yourself.” In one of those recurring days, Enkrid spoke to Shinar once more—and heard the identical response. By chance, it was exactly what she had told him on the very first day. In these loops, such a thing was rare. The future is always in flux, after all. But life is a series of changes, and occasionally, a coincidence transforms into a miracle. “So, Enki, are you going to protect me?” Shinar asked. “Yes, I am.” Enkrid replied. Hadn’t that been the entire point of his quest? Even after five hundred days, his determination never faltered. His will, like a fine blade, remained honed and relentless. He had always understood his duty. From accelerated cognition to partitioned thought. He had no guarantee of success. But as he always did, Enkrid simply… faced the challenge. The Onekiller advanced. Observing it, Enkrid thought to himself: “I’ve seen your face so often, I might actually start to like you, you bastard.”