Chapter 828

Chapter 828

“Damn, he’s lost his mind once more.”
Rem grumbled from behind my position.
A leader who flashed a grin like that usually possessed a streak of lunacy. To be fair, Rem wasn’t exactly the poster child for stability, but nobody present was in the mood to point that out.
The blade of Enkrid’s Dawn Tempering carved a diagonal path through the air. He stepped back into that familiar zone of absolute stillness. His adversary mirrored the movement perfectly.
However, there was a catch—
‘It’s curving.’
In a heartbeat, the pale sword bent, snaking around the edge of Dawn Tempering. It resembled a white serpent slithering up the length of his weapon. How could a blade that wasn’t forged for flexibility warp in such a manner? There was no leisure for puzzles. Hesitation would result in a lost hand. Enkrid jerked his wrist.
He channeled the power of his relentless training into his grip, flooding it with his Will.
Tatatatatang!
The second he broke free from the suffocating weight of the clash, the shrill scream of grinding steel pierced the air.
Embers flew violently. The terrain was treacherous—a steep incline where a solid stance was a luxury. Positioned halfway up the mountain ridge, the two fighters trampled over exposed roots and stones, shattering anything beneath their boots as they maneuvered.
Enkrid drew their focus with a high, horizontal sweep—then abruptly dropped the blade’s trajectory straight down.
It was a classic Enkrid feint. A maneuver designed to mask the true origin of the strike.
The vertical, amber pupils of his foe didn’t flicker. He raised his pale longsword and parried the blow aside.
Thump!
As the duel stretched through several more pulses, a crowd began to form behind Enkrid.
“What are we looking at here?”
Ragna reached the spot. Jaxon followed, arms crossed in a silent vigil. Audin arrived with a smirk on his face.
“We ran into a fair share of fire-based pests on the trek up, but it’s eerily peaceful in this clearing.”
“There might be a reason for that.”
Following Audin, Esther made her appearance. She arrived perched atop a mass of dark, beastly energy; as soon as she dismounted, the creature evaporated into mist.
The drifting dark vapor coalesced into a shawl resting on her shoulders.
Looking at her, one might think she was a sorceress from the Demon Realm who commanded monsters, yet no one dared to whisper a slight. They were far too gripped by her words.
“What do you mean by that?”
Rem called out from his perch on a tree branch, his gaze never leaving the fray. The struggle was perfectly balanced.
Of course, there are nuances you can’t grasp unless you’re the one holding the hilt, so nothing was certain. At this tier of combat, a momentary lapse or a flicker of doubt dictates the survivor. In that regard, Enkrid didn’t seem prone to failure, but the outcome remained a coin toss.
“He isn’t human or dwarf, and certainly not a fairy.”
Shinar, who had trailed behind, offered her assessment. She kept her eyes locked on the duel and continued.
“Those pupils belong to a snake, and the aura he radiates is foreign to any known race.”
There is a specific lineage known by this description.
They say fairies are the offspring of blossoms and timber, while dwarves are the progeny of forge-fire and ore.
Giants define their existence through carnage, making them children of boiling blood.
Beastmen turned to the hunt for survival, making them children of the wild plains.
Frokk are the heirs of dreams, and because humans possess the potential to be anything, the world itself is their guardian.
And then there are the dragonkin—the only race without ancestors—the ones who walk the path in solitude.
Simply put, they are not beings to be trifled with.
“Why would one of the dragonkin be lurking here?”
Audin mused, mostly to himself.
The world is full of strange coincidences. The Balrog Expedition had set out to locate a salamander—specifically, to crush the skull of that legendary beast.
Nobody anticipated stumbling upon a dragonkin in the process. Doubtless, the dragonkin had his own motivations for being present, but who could guess them?
Perhaps the celestial deities were watching?
That might be the case, but down here, we were in the dark.
Since she had experienced the Illusory Sense, Esther’s attunement to magic had become incredibly sharp. That perception allowed her to decipher the prints the dragonkin left behind.
‘A tide.’
The ambient mana surged and wavered, gravitating toward a single point. In technical terms, it was a supreme mana affinity.
It is a trait the dragonkin are rumored to possess from birth.
A sorcerer is, at their core, a seeker of knowledge. As a hobby, she had pored over archives regarding the dragonkin.
In the meantime, Enkrid’s sword transformed into a bolt of light, etching three distinct lines in the air. His sharpened mind calculated the most direct paths for the strikes.
Since one cannot foresee a lightning strike, the dragonkin stopped trying to predict the path. Instead, he leaped backward. Another burst of speed. Enkrid transitioned into a fluid motion and pursued, sticking to his retreating foe. It was a relentless cycle of attack and retaliation.
Esther had activated a physical enhancement spell just to keep pace with the duel, and even then, the full sequence remained a blur.
What she managed to witness was Enkrid’s Dawn Tempering crashing into the dragonkin’s left arm just as the man’s white blade lunged toward Enkrid’s midsection.
It happened in a flash. The outcome, however, defied expectation.
Dull gray scales erupted from the opponent’s forearm, halting the edge of Dawn Tempering, while Enkrid’s torso remained unpierced.
Their eyes locked.
‘Scales?’
‘Leather?’
One was fixated on the sudden armor; the other was hindered by the dark leather gear. Simultaneously, Enkrid launched a kick while the dragonkin threw a punch.
Crack!
With a deafening roar, a cyclone of pressure erupted between them.
Shinar moved in front of Esther, waving a hand. She channeled her essence to neutralize the shockwave generated by the collision.
“A truly powerful rival.”
She sounded genuinely moved. To be honest, they all were.
Enkrid’s current prowess was not something any of them would dare to overlook. The mere fact that the fight was a stalemate proved the caliber of the dragonkin standing on that slope.
Naturally, for a dragonkin—born with innate authorities and accustomed to looking down on others—this situation was likely even more bizarre, yet he remained stoic.
He simply executed his task.
“It seems this is ineffective. Very well. Cease.”
The surge of magical energy was palpable to everyone, not just Esther. His words were saturated with raw will—a force designed to override and crush the opponent’s resolve.
It was the hallmark authority of their kind. The Word—an external, mystical power manifested through speech.
It functioned similarly to a spell, yet it moved through a different channel of reality.
For a standard human, it was a command nearly impossible to ignore.
Esther was well aware of this.
And yet, a particular human, who by all logic should have had his spirit shattered and suppressed, replied to the order without a hint of hesitation.
“No thanks. Stop being so pushy.”
His tongue was working perfectly fine.
But why was the dragonkin speaking in such a manner?
Esther felt a mix of shock and intrigue bubbling within her.
“I’m not a fan of the overbearing types, but since you haven’t uttered a single word to me until this moment, am I to assume you’ve already decided I’m your spouse?”
Shinar remained her usual self. She had acknowledged his strength, but never labeled him a genuine threat. If that was her perspective, the rest of the group shared it.
None of them intervened. There was no requirement to.
Enkrid’s combat fervor hadn’t faltered once. If anything, it intensified as the duel progressed.
As Enkrid pressed the attack, the adversary inquired:
“Are you perhaps Balrog? Your style of combat suggests as much.”
And Enkrid replied—or rather, he countered with a question:
“Your grammar is terrible.”
Rem chimed in. For a brief moment, Rem and the rest of the observers shared a single thought. They were all in agreement.
Enkrid, translating the odd phrasing in his head, pondered the man’s words. Was he asking that because of the materials used in Enkrid’s protective gear?
He weighed the thought for a second before dismissing it.
In the dragonkin’s experience, there was only one entity that took this much pleasure in the chaos of battle, which prompted the question.
“I’m fairly certain I’m the better-looking one.”
Enkrid took the comment in stride.
Being likened to a two-horned brute with cracked skin wasn’t exactly a compliment, but it was irrelevant now.
“Let’s get back to it.”
Enkrid exhaled a sharp breath. He didn’t possess a gift like the Word, so there was no supernatural weight to his speech.
Instead, he possessed determination and spirit, belief and a code—and his own hands. More specifically, he held Dawn Tempering, his bonded weapon.
At times, his edge carried more weight than any spoken Word.
A laughing zealot lunging forward, met by a lean, golden-haired man observing with a blank stare.
The human and the dragonkin clattered their steel once more. When Enkrid leaned into the blade to force a deadlock, the dragonkin retreated.
Enkrid gave chase, pushing his mental processing to the limit. He utilized all his natural senses and his intuition to decipher the opponent’s rhythm.
That concentrated effort dilated the passing seconds and focused the present moment. In that slowed-down time, the trajectories and targets required to overmaster the enemy linked together; a single thought process branched out, centering on the foe.
‘It’s muted.’
The man’s strikes felt that way, as did his very aura.
Regardless of the opponent, a blade always transmits a certain sensation.
What about Balrog? It sounds strange to describe, but he evokes the image of a boulder that can bend and sway—solid yet incredibly fluid.
Oara is like a traveling tide, and Ragna is a bolt of lightning that shatters everything—yet it’s a bolt that lingers and sears like a flame.
A lightning strike infused with a stubborn ego, refusing to simply vanish after the flash.
Jaxon is a blade you can’t see, and Audin resembles a giant rock rolling forward, only to occasionally reveal a hidden mallet from behind it.
He looks like a simple brawler on the surface, but he’s packed with the tools for victory.
Rem moves with the ferocity of a predator while maintaining the calculated patience of a tracker.
‘A paradox.’
In that expanded mental state, he remembered the day he sampled the Founder’s Liquor. A top-shelf spirit. To truly describe its scent and complexity, you had to use conflicting terms—one of those rare drinks.
‘Two elements that shouldn’t exist together.’
Balrog, that flexible mountain, was exactly like that.
And every member of the Mad Order of Knights is, in their own fashion, learning to master something similar.
As his perception evolves and his outlook shifts, Enkrid can identify these traits.
This adversary felt like a dampened marsh. Like a bottomless, dark pit.
‘It’s like fighting a mannequin, and yet…’
There was a physical body present. This wasn’t a shadow—it was tangible. Anticipating the path of the white longsword, he caught a glimpse of the next heartbeat.
It wasn’t born of habit—it was a spark of intuition showing him an inch into the future.
Enkrid’s Dawn Tempering bypassed the longsword and sliced into the man’s left leg.
Tatatatang!
Simultaneously, the dragonkin’s edge grazed across Enkrid’s stomach.
Crkk.
The noise was foreign. The feedback in his grip felt wrong.
‘Just like before. That’s not flesh.’
It felt as if he had hit a solid object. The tattered, thin fabric—offering no protection—ripped away, and underneath it, on the man’s leg, scales were visible—jagged and precise.
Gray scales were layered tightly over his skin.
“What are you, some kind of beast?”
That was his reply to the question about Balrog. There was no verbal response. If anything, he only caught a faint whisper of emotion from the man.
Incredibly, the feeling he picked up while crossing steel was identical to his own.
‘This is enjoyable.’
Joy, anticipation, a strange sense of respect.
An adversary devoid of spite or bloodlust. Not that Enkrid believed he would give up.
“You’re just going to keep defending, then?”
Through the vibration traveling up his sword, one single purpose became crystal clear.
Dragonkin or not, he wasn’t budging. The slitted yellow eyes—now even his face was beginning to sprout scales with soft clicking noises.
Dragon Scales—the second authority of the dragonkin, following the Word.
A physique that ordinary weapons cannot even mark.
The duel was far from over. But a third party interfered.
Fwoooosh.
The sound was subtle, but the shadow falling over them was immense. A pillar of fire? A burning mist? It looked like a combination of the two.
A cloud of living flame manifested above them out of thin air.
In that instant, the dragonkin turned his back completely. He left himself wide open—entirely—to the opponent he had been trading life-threatening blows with just seconds ago.
‘What’s the play here?’
A ruse? No. Having mastered Valen-style mercenary combat before moving to Enkrid-style knightly arts, Enkrid knew the score.
When it comes to trickery, Enkrid is a professional even among his peers.
Conversely, from what he had gathered so far, this thin, impossibly powerful dragonkin was not a man of deceit. You could tell from the way their weapons met.
So, turning his back now was a genuine reaction. The motive?
As soon as he pivoted, the dragonkin hoisted his sword.
A sphere of fire descended, and just as Enkrid had severed one before, the white longsword cut it in half.
The split flames struck the earth on either side and detonated.
‘Boom!’
Fragments of stone, shattered wood, and chunks of soil fused by the heat sprayed in every direction.
A wave of heat consumed the clearing instantly, and everything in sight began to sizzle and distort, flickering like a desert mirage.
‘Wait.’
Enkrid swiped away half of the falling embers with his steel and shielded himself from the rest with his armored hand. Then he glanced upward once more—
“I wanted to survive, too.”
A child. A young boy he had never met, and yet the moment he looked at him, he understood it was a child he had failed to save.
In a crater of embers, a boy sat huddled, watching for a gap; his gaze collided with Enkrid’s.
The moment their eyes connected, a flood of emotion rose up and battered his logic into the dirt. Evidence and reality ceased to matter—only the raw sensation of the now was real.
The child’s lips moved again.
“You could have saved me, couldn’t you?”
A child who was already gone, one who had stood at his back and yet he hadn’t shielded.
Multiple faces began to blur and overlap over that single image.
There had been two kids who claimed they would grow up to be herb collectors. He had lost one and rescued the other.
The one he had failed looked at him and questioned:
“You could have kept me safe, right? Couldn’t you?”
There was no bitterness in the voice. It was pure. That purity allowed it to sink deeper into his heart, sending his emotions into a violent storm.