Chapter 687

Chapter 687

Darkness descended rapidly within the mountain range. The lingering dusk was quickly overtaken, leaving the celestial glow of the moon and stars to command the heavens in the sun’s absence.

They maintained a steady, efficient clip rather than an all-out sprint. On the stretches where the ground smoothed out, their pace accelerated sharply. Their strides quickened until the celestial lights above blurred into long, luminous streaks.

Screeeech!

A beast resembling a feral boar was startled as they flew past; it tried to give chase for a heartbeat before losing heart. Had the creature been more stubborn, it would have learned the grisly sensation of its guts decorating the forest floor—but fortune favored the monster that night.

Grida’s hand hovered over the hilt of her blade before she let it drop. She reasoned in that split second that slaughtering a beast here would only paint the air with the scent of gore, summoning more predators. It was better to move on.

The rare flat sections of the trail felt like a reprieve. However, as Magrun had predicted, the path soon dissolved into treacherous terrain. Sharp rocks pierced the soil, and tangled tree roots lay scattered like natural snares, ready to catch a wandering foot. To a commoner, these would be hazards; to knights, they were nothing. None of them faltered.

Anne, the sole member unable to sustain this intensity, had already consumed two sedative pills. She was slumped in a death-like slumber against Ragna’s back, her weight a non-factor to the warrior.

Swish! Crack! Thwack!

At the vanguard, Magrun’s sword flickered, pruning away obstructing branches that hissed through the air behind him. He navigated the roots with precision, and when they met waist-high boulders, the group didn’t slow—they simply cleared them in single, fluid leaps. From the base of the mountain, the incline looked daunting, but they ascended without a pause.

In the midst of the run, Enkrid retreated into his mind. He had long mastered the art of mental division; navigating obstacles while deep in thought was as natural as breathing. His vision, honed for the shadows, utilized the meager starlight to guide his feet. Unless he pushed to a full sprint, he had plenty of focus to spare for the theory of the blade.

He pondered the nature of instinct—like the way a hand darts out to catch a falling object, or the way a street vendor flips meat over a flame without looking. If he could infuse his Will with that level of subconscious ease, his counterattacks would be devastating even when caught off guard. He had grasped this concept before, but he knew himself well: realization was a ghost; only repetitive drilling made a technique flesh and bone.

This was why he didn’t fear a sudden engagement; he invited it.

Mid-thought, his intuition shivered. Something is coming.

Simultaneously, Ragna—carrying Anne—altered his rhythm. He drove a foot sideways, pivoting with sudden violence. Thud! The earth buckled under his stomp, leaving a shallow crater. His gear held firm; the boots were custom-made by Kraiss, reinforced with steel and wrapped in hardy troll hide.

To Enkrid’s heightened senses, the scene slowed. He watched the soil spray upward as a long, dark shape lunged through the space Ragna had just occupied.

“Ambush!”

Ragna had moved first, and Grida’s cry followed instantly. Enkrid, trailing Ragna, drew Penna and lashed out in tandem with Grida’s warning.

Slice!

The fairy-crafted steel, renowned for its impossible sharpness, bit through the shadow.

An arm.

Enkrid felt the connection. His eyes, adjusted to the gloom, tracked the limb in the moonlight. It was a forearm armored in thick, obsidian scales. He felt the resistance through the hilt—it was incredibly dense. A standard blade might have struggled, but Penna sheared through it cleanly.

There was no cry of pain. Instead, the creature used the momentum of its injury to spray dark ichor directly at Enkrid’s eyes. His accelerated mind read the malice behind the move instantly. It’s using its own mutilation as a weapon. This wasn’t the behavior of a common beast; typical monsters fled or thrashed when wounded.

“Black!”

Grida’s voice rang out again. Enkrid had already drifted left to avoid the blood, while Ragna veered right. Utilizing the explosive “frog-step” technique he’d acquired from Lua Gharne, Enkrid rebounded off the earth, sending Penna on a horizontal trajectory.

The strike was a flash of perfection. Every ounce of his Will was poured into the motion, making it as efficient as a mechanism. The blade caught the moonlight, carving a brilliant arc through the dark air and the Scaler hidden within it.

Splatter!

The creature, nearly split in two, hit the ground in a heap of dark gore and organs. Enkrid held his finishing pose as the party skidded to a halt.

“Look at these pests,” Grida hissed, glaring into the trees.

There was no scent and no detectable presence, yet the darkness was suddenly full of vertical, reptilian pupils. Dozens of glowing slits flickered in the shadows.

Ssssssshhh…

Hissing sounds rose from the brush and the hollows of ancient roots. They were surrounded by another Scaler pack. Enkrid glanced between the path they’d cleared and the blockade ahead. There was no trace of magic or ancient hexes—just physical Scalers. Their numbers were fewer than their previous encounter.

“Focus on the ones with black scales,” Grida cautioned. “They possess unique traits.”

Perhaps these mutations were the enemy’s answer to sorcery. The one Enkrid had just finished was certainly more durable than average. Was that the extent of it? Likely not.

Did they deploy these in a rush because we bypassed the anticipated route? Enkrid wondered. If so, how was their position compromised? The answer was elementary: observation. On a battlefield, you track an opponent with scouts. If they used obvious spies, they’d be killed. They must have used something subtle.

The pieces fell into place. He remembered the bat-beast from their first day. Bats used sound to navigate. To a skilled tracker, the mere sound of a snapping twig or a heavy footfall in the silence of the mountains was as good as a map. They were being hunted by sound and intercepted in real-time.

They want to bog us down.

The target wasn’t just Anne anymore. While the intent to kill her remained, the primary objective had shifted to halting their progress. And time was a luxury they didn’t have.

“Go on ahead,” Enkrid stated firmly.

Grida glanced at him. “What about you?”

“I’ll catch up shortly. Just leave a trail for me to follow.”

There was no need to ask if he could handle it. If the enemy had specialized monsters, the party had a specialized knight. Grida nodded to Magrun, who took the point, while Ragna moved out without a second glance. Their confidence was absolute—there was no room for doubt.

The Scaler pack didn’t split to pursue the others. When Enkrid stood his ground, the monsters focused entirely on him. Whether the enemy commander had planned for this separation was irrelevant; for now, the priority was the immediate threat.

Enkrid faced the wall of monsters with a cold, hungry smile. “Let’s play.”

If the creatures possessed any spark of intellect, they would have felt a primal terror.

Shing, chiiing!

He returned Penna to its sheath and pulled the Three-Iron Sword. The twin spirits of True Silver and Black Gold hummed within the metal, both eager to be tasted by the air.

“Patience,” Enkrid whispered, calming the blades. The Scalers took the moment of stillness as a weakness and lunged from both sides.

Enkrid met them with a whirlwind of steel. To his right, True Silver flashed in a rising moon-cut. To his left, Black Gold descended in a crushing overhead strike.

Shnk, slice!

The Scalers were cleaved as if they were made of paper, blood erupting as their divided halves hit the dirt. Enkrid’s expression remained serene and effortless in the moonlight.

“Let’s continue.”

He felt he was on the verge of a breakthrough, a secret of the sword almost within his grasp. As he moved, two black-scaled Scalers raised their claws. He felt a sudden, invisible pressure—psychokinetic threads wrapping around his limbs like a spider’s web.

Stronger than the manticore? No, comparable.

It wasn’t enough to stop him. He didn’t even slow down. With a mental surge, he tore through the psychic bindings with raw physical power. He didn’t rush the casters; instead, he methodically dismantled the fodder surrounding him.

A heavy cleave from a mid-guard stance with his left foot leading, followed by a lunging thrust. Thunk, stab! Sensing three distinct murderous intents from his rear, he spun on his heel. His blades shattered three incoming wooden spears in a single motion.

He moved with a paradoxical rhythm—sometimes a blur of speed, other times heavy and deliberate. He was only as fast as the moment required. His defense was as relentless as the tide; his offense was as sudden as a bolt of lightning.

But why must they be separate? he questioned. Why distinguish between the shield and the sword?

At the peak of knighthood, combat becomes a singular, unbroken thread. His body began to manifest this philosophy. When another psychokinetic tried to seize his blade while a spearman thrust a poisoned tip at his flank, he didn’t panic.

He began to redefine his own understanding. He had once categorized swordsmanship into Finishing, Sustaining, and Versatile styles, or divided it by Skill and Training. Now, he saw it differently.

It is Sensation and Calculation.

The two were inseparable. If a master of calculation lacked sensation, they would be predictable. If a master of sensation lacked calculation, they would be reckless. As he refined this thought, his twin swords stopped acting as two weapons and started acting as one organism. Every strike was an improvement on the last.

What I am doing is calculating.

He was processing every variable, choosing the most lethal probability, and executing it with the simplicity of a heartbeat.

I was too proud, he realized. They said high knights used Will instinctively, and while it looked effortless, it was actually the result of infinite layers of repetition. It was the marriage of Will, technique, and muscle memory.

He could see his flaws clearly now. He was a practitioner of Calculated Swordsmanship. He could perform it now, but could he make it instinctive? The Mad Platoon had advised him to keep his true strength hidden. Enkrid decided he would simply develop a second, even more terrifying strength instead.

To an observer, his internal monologue amidst a life-or-death struggle would seem like insanity. Even Rem might have looked at him with concern. But his blades never wavered.

There was an old saying that a knight is a living disaster, capable of reaping hundreds alone. Enkrid turned that proverb into a bloody reality, carving a path through the pack. Not a single drop of monster blood touched his skin.

He didn’t bother to check for survivors. The moment the threat leveled out, he turned his back on the carnage and sprinted after the fading trail of his comrades.

The Scaler ambush had achieved nothing but a minor delay—and a perfect training session for Enkrid.