Chapter 752

Chapter 752

Closing the distance rapidly, Rem delivered a sharp blow to Roman’s jaw. His hand, which had been holding the axe just moments before, moved so fast it left a lingering trail in the air as he struck and pulled back. The jaw was a critical target. Such a precise hit should have rattled Roman’s skull and sent him sprawling to the dirt, yet he remained upright. He seemed to completely disregard the trauma of the impact.

He didn’t just take the hit, either. Shifting his weight, Roman rotated his torso and drove his elbow—the one attached to the arm gripping the greatsword—toward his opponent.

The sound of the impact was heavy.

Rem remained composed. There was no cause for alarm. He simply lifted his forearm to intercept the strike before sweeping Roman’s legs. Roman lost his footing, staggered to the side, and hit the ground.

“Stubborn guy. You sure it wouldn’t be better if I just took one of his legs off?” Rem questioned once more.

“If you intend to be the one to sew it back on, be my guest,” Enkrid answered with a firm tone.

Deep down, Enkrid was puzzled. Why was Roman out here in the first place? And why was he operating without any backup? Had something gone wrong in the city of Oara? That seemed unlikely. Enkrid had been receiving consistent updates from the settlement. If Oara had been struggling to contain the threats emerging from the Gray Forest—the local demon zone—he would have personally stepped in. He had tasked Kraiss with monitoring that region so thoroughly that the man had started to grumble about it.

“I’m only one person, Enkrid,” Kraiss would often complain.

The reality was that Oara had evolved. While it wasn’t a central capital shielded by imperial trade routes, it had developed far beyond a typical border outpost. It represented the legacy of Knight Oara, a fact that ensured Crang kept a personal watch over its progress.

So what brought him here? Enkrid had his suspicions, but since the man was right in front of him, there was no point in guessing.

“He isn’t even losing consciousness,” Rem observed, his voice devoid of emotion.

Enkrid wasn’t an expert on this specific breed of parasitic creature, but the evidence before him told the story. A brown, lumpy mass was latched onto the top of Roman’s head. That had to be the primary organism. Roman’s eyes were glassy and vacant; he was clearly being piloted like a meat puppet.

“Do you think he’ll snap out of it if we rip that thing off?” Enkrid mused.

Rophod offered a grim estimate. “I’d give it a fifty-fifty chance.”

Enkrid considered the possibilities. If he had simply been told Roman had perished, would he have accepted the news with indifference or bitterness? One thing was certain: Enkrid would not let his focus waver over this. If there was a chance at salvation, he would take it. He would do everything within his power.

This was the philosophy he had forged through the trials the Ferryman had forced upon him during countless past cycles. The Ferryman had constantly pushed him into agonizing scenarios, demanding that he stay grounded in the present rather than drowning in a future of hopelessness. That entity had been a master of psychological pressure, crafting a narrative that began with loss, rose through bitterness, and peaked in total despair.

“Will you only feel the weight of regret when everyone you care for is gone? Will you beg for a second chance at the past then?”

During those trials, the Ferryman had been more relentless than ever. In response, Enkrid had poured himself into his martial arts. He trained with such intensity—even within his subconscious while asleep—that his resolve never cracked. The Ferryman’s attempts to break him only served to sharpen his edge.

An outside observer might have wondered if the Ferryman was actually testing him. Enkrid had considered the possibility, but he didn’t dwell on it. There was no reason to change his behavior or start an argument just because he suspected a deeper motive. Through his grueling training, he had simply embraced a single truth: Do the best you can.

He had a nagging feeling that he had actually adopted this mindset because of the Ferryman—as if the entity had intentionally steered him toward this clarity. He kept that thought to himself, however.

The moment of reflection passed. Enkrid called out to his companions.

“Jaxon, Audin.”

The core philosophy of Enkrid’s revived orthodox swordsmanship—derived from Lua Gharne’s tactical principles—was to always take the most effective path available in the moment. This situation was no exception. The goal was to extract the parasite. Jaxon possessed the precision required to make surgical incisions, while Audin was the solitary member of the group capable of wielding divine power.

“Rem, pin him.”

Rem, who had just been delivering bone-shattering strikes to vital points, immediately shifted his style. His movements became fluid. Instead of a crushing blow, his axe moved with the grace of a whip, hooking Roman’s massive sword and slamming it into the dirt. He then stepped on the blade, anchoring it firmly.

The rest was clinical. Jaxon moved in with practiced ease and sliced the parasite away.

“The Lord’s gaze is upon us,” Audin intoned. He placed his bare palm on Roman’s scalp. The blood that had been leaking from the punctures left by the parasite’s entry points was suddenly driven back by a flash of brilliant white light. The bleeding stopped instantly.

With the connection severed, Roman went limp, falling like a marionette with cut strings. Audin caught him by the neck with a single hand. It looked like a supportive gesture, though the grip was firm enough to break bone if necessary.

“You went through all the trouble of keeping him alive just to hold him like you’re going to kill him?” Rem joked.

Audin gave a small laugh. “It’s a specialized technique that offers both restraint and protection.”

“Sure it is. Total nonsense,” Rem muttered.

Nearby, Ragna let out a massive yawn that made his jaw pop. He showed no signs of stress.

“What about those things?” Pell asked, pointing to the side.

Objects that resembled the parasite that had taken Roman were now crawling out from the surrounding brown thicket. What they had mistaken for trees were actually the bodies of the creatures. The brown masses began to slide forward, moving like mud with a mind of its own.

“What do you think we do?” Rophod snapped at Pell. Their goal was to wipe them out. That was the whole point of being here.

“That’s my fiancé you’re talking about. I feel faint,” Shinar teased, ducking behind Enkrid’s back. Rem looked ready to snap at her, but he bit his tongue. Enkrid noticed the restraint.

“You’ve matured, Rem,” he said with genuine praise.

Rem shot him a look of pure annoyance. “Ugh, would you just shut up for five minutes? Why are you always talking?”

Rem wasn’t exactly known for his silence, but as the leader, Enkrid just gave him a knowing look that said: Look who’s talking. Rem chose to ignore him.

As they watched the wave of parasites approach, Rophod and Pell stood shoulder to shoulder to meet the threat. A single lapse in concentration could result in becoming a host; these things were lethal.

“Should we just cut through them?” “Burn them?” “Yeah, let’s go with that.”

They weren’t intimidated.

“Be careful with the flames,” Shinar cautioned. It wasn’t easy to move past traumatic memories. For her, fire still held a dark connotation. However, she wasn’t just any ordinary fairy; she was slowly moving beyond her past. “Just… use it with precision,” she added.

As the parasites surged forward in their sludge-like forms, Pell and Rophod began systematically dismantling them. Once the immediate threats were dealt with, they turned their attention to the forest that had spawned them, setting it ablaze. The grove wasn’t particularly large. After the fire took hold of a section, the entire structure began to collapse like a pile of rotting organic matter.

During the chaos, the heart of the colony—a massive worm—slithered out. Pell unleashed a strike that mirrored the circular motion of Enkrid’s Vortex. Delivering a single, devastating blow was Pell’s area of expertise, even if he hadn’t reached Enkrid’s level of mastery yet.

The worm continued to writhe even after its head was split open. Ultimately, fire was the only permanent solution.

“I’ll end this,” Lua Gharne said, stepping forward to strike the creature with a whip made of flame.

They had successfully neutralized a demon zone, and the sun hadn’t even finished its trek across the sky. This was partly due to the zone’s small scale, but mostly due to the overwhelming strength of the group.

Once the area was secure, Audin hoisted Roman onto his back. The team began the trek to their next objective—another demon zone. To the south, there were numerous “minor demon zones.” Systematically destroying them served as a direct challenge to Balrog.

They eventually found a spot to make camp. As they settled in, Roman finally regained consciousness. He blinked, trying to clear his head, and looked at Enkrid.

“Did you end up dead too?” he asked.

There was time now to explain what had happened. Roman took a moment to reflect before confessing his own recklessness. It was a classic story of frustration—a desperate bid to force his way onto the path of knighthood.

“I wasn’t getting any better. The days were passing and I was stuck in the same place. I couldn’t just sit there anymore.”

It had been a radical move. After they had cleared the majority of the threats in the Gray Forest, Roman felt like he had hit a wall. He believed the only way to break through was to seek out more danger. He set out alone, and along the way, he discovered that people were still carving out lives in the lawless territories between nations. He had reached that place largely through luck; even Enkrid had barely survived his own brush with a Cyclops in similar lands.

So, had he been fighting for the sake of those people?

“No, it was for myself. I had this delusional idea that if I just kept throwing myself into demon zones, I’d find the spark I needed.”

His experiences in the Gray Forest had given him a false sense of confidence. But moving blindly without a solid foundation is just a long walk off a cliff. The journey to becoming a knight isn’t some paved highway.

The saving grace was that Roman, after his fall, had been caught by the hands of others. It was a foolish endeavor, but there wasn’t a single person in the group who didn’t understand the motivation behind it. Enkrid, especially, knew that feeling intimately. He couldn’t bring himself to lecture the man.

Very few people in the group felt the need to be gentle about it, though.

“That was incredibly dumb,” Rem stated flatly. “Agreed,” Ragna chimed in.

Jaxon didn’t even look up; he was busy sorting through pebbles and tucking them into his gear.

“Do you have no faith? If you had turned to the Lord, He would have guided your steps,” Audin lectured.

Roman’s poor judgment was being torn apart—not by Enkrid, but by everyone else.

“Sounds like you just didn’t train hard enough,” Pell added, his own obsession with practice bleeding through.

“Being brave is one thing, but wandering into a demon zone solo is just asking for it,” Rophod noted practically.

Roman looked at the diverse group surrounding him. “Who are you people, anyway?”

“The Order of Knights,” Enkrid replied.

Roman started to recognize some of the faces. It clicked. The Mad Order of Knights. He knew he’d been an idiot, and he knew they were the reason he was still breathing. He tried to keep his mouth shut, but the words kept coming out.

“My fiancé… if I ever got stuck in a demon zone, you’d come for me, right?” “Why on earth would you go in there by yourself?” “To feel alive again, obviously. When that monster had me, I kept imagining you coming to save me.” “Didn’t I tell you to turn around the second you got there?” “You have to understand that when a woman speaks, you sometimes have to hear the opposite. Besides, I’m kidding. Do I look like a sproutless potato?”

A sproutless potato was a fairy idiom for a complete moron. Roman didn’t catch the nuance, but Rophod was quick to provide a translation.

“That’s more information than I needed,” Roman sighed. “Is it?”

Then Rem jumped back in, followed by the rest of the crew. Hearing them analyze his failure made a strange mix of emotions rise in Roman’s chest.

“The parasite only got a grip because my will was too weak.” “Your body and mind are both lacking.” “You’re big, but your technique is unrefined.” “A moron is a moron.”

The gray-haired Rem, the golden-haired swordsman, the giant priest lecturing on faith, the man obsessed with rocks—they all had something to say. Then, Teresa, the half-giant woman, walked over.

“Did you actually have a strategy?” she asked, seemingly out of pure, innocent curiosity.

“You absolute bastards…” Roman’s anger finally flared.

He knew he had been a fool, but couldn’t they show even a shred of empathy for why he did it? Didn’t they realize how desperate he had to be to strike out on his own? Even if the people out there were living like savages, they were still human beings. Why wasn’t anyone acknowledging that?

But he lacked the energy to actually fight back. He just let out a long, weary breath and whispered, “How could a pack of naturally gifted freaks like you ever understand what it’s like for someone like me…”

As he looked up, he found himself staring into Enkrid’s eyes. This was a man who had treated natural talent as something worthless and climbed to the top through sheer, bloody-minded persistence. He was a knight now; Roman had heard the stories. But Enkrid was something more than just a titled warrior.

Looking at Roman’s frustration, Enkrid realized that this struggle was likely a necessary step on the path to knighthood. Being an imperial knight didn’t automatically mean you could mentor others. Usually, that required a perfect alignment of personality and circumstance.

But Enkrid was unique. He could guide Roman. He could see the route Roman needed to take. It wouldn’t be an overnight transformation, but he could at least set the markers and clear the initial brush. It was possible.

This was what set Enkrid apart. The road he had traveled was unlike any other. He had built his own staircase where there was only a vertical wall.

Roman, unsettled by the intense look in Enkrid’s eyes, felt a wave of awkwardness and blurted out, “People actually live inside those demon zones. I bet you didn’t even realize that.”