The fierce fire serpent severed his ankle, and the sword imbued with black flames split his body in half from the shoulder.
—It was fun. See you again.
The Balrog offered the same greeting as any other today. Though its words "see you again" meant it would trap him in the labyrinth rather than another repeated today.
Even if the implied meaning was different, their intentions had gotten through to each other. Enkrid nodded his head as he died. It was an answer to the words "see you again." And just like that, it was time to welcome the nineteenth today.
The moon holding flames lost its light and fell, and the ferryman on the ferry boat greeted him.
"Khekhekhe."
The ferryman opened his mouth while conveying his laughter. It was a mouth no different from a pitch-black hole without even a tongue. The laughter just struck out short and thick.
Following that, each moment the pitch-black darkness appeared and disappeared, the ferryman conveyed meaning through will.
"You are trapped in this today."
"Is it painful? You brought this upon yourself."
"You'll struggle like this anyway and then fizzle out."
"There is no flame that burns eternally."
Creak, the ferry boat swayed on the river water, letting out a groan. That sound brushed past his ears.
"You can never escape from this place."
The ferryman had appeared several times, and each time he appeared, he spoke of a predetermined future. Unlike usual, Enkrid read the meaning permeated in the ferryman's will. It wasn't precise. Only a feeling. Could the sixth sense and intuition honed in reality exert influence in this place? Or perhaps he'd just seen him so often it was simply visible.
The reason wasn't particularly important.
"Do you wish for me to overcome it?"
Between the ferryman's black eyes, ash-gray eyeballs rolled several times. No, pupils of a color that couldn't be defined as ash-gray.
They became golden, then turned red, then blue, and tried to take on a green hue before all those colors mixed together and changed to black.
Monster eyeballs were also black, and the ferryman's eyeballs were also black. The difference between the two was that if monster eyeballs seemed dyed black, the ferryman's eyes appeared blackish because many things were tangled, intertwined, and clumped together.
"Can you overcome it?"
The ferryman asked, and Enkrid didn't answer. The ferryman conveyed his will again without even opening his mouth.
"There is a way to overcome today. When you want to know, ask me then."
Coercion, oppression, threat, compulsion, suppression.
There was no such meaning at all.
Green light arose in the two pupils set in the ferryman's face, and it seemed as if green permeated the black. A dark green like that. Compared to Shinar's light green eyes, that light was far too murky, but the will contained in those eyes was something he was seeing from the ferryman for the first time.
It meant pitifulness, compassion, pity and such were glimpsed.
Enkrid's mind and will were always firm and straight. He knew how to compose his heart even in moments like this. Otherwise, he would have long ago fallen for Shinar's jokes.
"...Almost fell for it."
Enkrid muttered and cleanly brushed off the ferryman's intention. The murky green tinting the ferryman's eyes seemed about to disappear immediately, then wriggled before settling heavily in place.
"You really are a madman."
It was slightly different speech from a moment ago. The initial ferryman had been like an emotionless inanimate object showing nothing as usual, and the ferryman recommending a method had revealed a fragment of the emotion called compassion.
Having seen Shinar's emotional states so often, he'd noticed without realizing it himself, but the emotional fragment flowing from the ferryman's words had been far too small and insignificant. But now, anger was clearly visible. To be precise, should it be called irritation and absurdity?
He didn't know why that memory came to mind now.
During the time when he'd been gathering Krona here and there, there was a moment when he'd luckily made a big score. Though he hadn't earned it by selling his sword skills, anyway, he'd obtained a pouch of gold coins.
At that time, Enkrid had sought out a fairly famous training hall. The continent was filled with monsters and demon beasts, and with such an environment, it was natural to learn to handle at least one weapon from childhood.
That was why there were many training halls and drill grounds scattered throughout cities. Enkrid had taken the pouch of gold coins to seek out a renowned instructor among them.
That instructor too had initially recommended in gentle tones that he quit the life of making a living by the sword.
Enkrid had listened with one ear and let it out the other while obsessing over techniques and such.
"It would be better to quit. Even someone like me who teaches here as an instructor is insufficient to count as a city-level expert on the entire continent. I make a living thanks to my teaching talent."
Though she'd spoken modestly, she was a woman who had once been part of the Rengadis Company's rear guard. Her skills were real. Enkrid had wanted to learn that real thing.
"So what should I do next?"
Enkrid's questions hadn't strayed far from that content.
At some point, the eyebrows of the woman who'd been speaking gently began trembling.
"I told you it would be better to quit."
Her words became a bit shorter too.
"Sir Enkrid only picks out the words you need to hear. You truly have convenient ears."
Some criticism mixed in.
"Don't you understand when I say to quit?"
She got irritated.
He'd just remembered that time. It seemed to overlap with the current ferryman.
Pitying him before getting angry, the appearance briefly knocked on memories from the past. Enkrid just shrugged his shoulders while letting the brief thought pass. It was an answer to the ferryman's words calling him a madman.
Enkrid's gesture seemed to mean both "you just realized that now?" and "what does that matter?" Both were expressions that he wouldn't listen to the other's words even with the edge of his ear.
"Very well, then playing around in this prison called today won't be so bad either."
Along with those words, the dark green eyes blurred and grew distant. Enkrid felt his body floating in midair. And though he didn't even blink, his surroundings distorted, and just like that, while passing through darkness with eyes open, a process like opening his eyes once more ended.
It was today again.
While conversing with the ferryman, the afterimage of pain had blurred. Thanks to exchanging various conversation, the current Enkrid lacked time to think. Matching and responding to the unexpected appearance the ferryman had shown, the fight review had been delayed.
The tactics he'd believed would succeed at least roughly if not perfectly had been shattered.
'It wasn't that the calculation went wrong either.'
Enkrid had found the optimal line of attack in all calculations, and the Balrog had not. Therefore, he was ahead in insight.
"A guest has come?"
The opponent had just been speaking to him. Enkrid was about to cut him down in one stroke, then believing he wasn't much of a threat anyway, casually looked at the opponent and said.
"Wait a moment. Let me think."
"...What?"
The absurdity the opponent showed wasn't his concern.
"If you come closer, I'll cut you, so wait."
Intimidation, he emitted formless pressure given shape. He'd fought as many as eighteen times with the demon of battle that even the Demonic Realm avoided.
Moreover, that demon, the Balrog, had tried to crush Enkrid with its intimidation every time they fought. Only after enduring that would the actual sword-swinging fight begin.
It was a kind of test the Balrog had set. Enkrid had overcome it every single time.
In that process, the rejection that had wriggled and reacted within him gradually changed. The Will utilization method he'd first learned existed in the realm of the unconscious rather than consciousness, but that alone made it difficult to easily shake off the Balrog's intimidation.
'If the process from quasi-knight to knight is unconsciously using Will.'
Upon becoming a knight again, one must consciously train Will. It was one of the theories gradually being established under the name Will Training Method. He'd repeatedly shaken off intimidation consciously like that.
The Balrog's form of intimidation was chains of blazing flames. From the moment of facing it, it felt like the heat would cook and burn his flesh, and if he became even slightly disorganized, it felt like he'd be crushed to death by the intimidation. Enkrid had shaken off those chains while emitting his own intimidation, and now he showed that.
The form of his intimidation was a wall, a very thick wall whose depth couldn't be gauged. A castle wall that blocked ordinary intimidation, a wall that couldn't be dealt with by something like an iron skewer in hand.
The opponent ignored Enkrid's words and tried to step forward before stopping. Just not flinching with his body proved his courage and skill.
Instead, he couldn't come closer. Facing the wall Enkrid had created, he saw the Balrog's shadow and recalled the principle that resisting the fear engraved in one's soul was no different from the destiny of beings with intelligence.
To not submit and bow his head, he had to do so.
But was now the time to submit? He'd bowed his head and submitted to the Balrog countless times, but not now. He began fighting against Enkrid's intimidation.
In that time he'd bought, Enkrid reviewed the fight.
Repeatedly reviewing the fighting process itself many times wasn't important. Instead, he dug deep. Rather than repeating the review, he thoroughly examined everything from the before and after of movements to psychological states in one fight.
But this was like some kind of lingering regret. There wasn't even much to thoroughly examine.
The reality was simple and clear. Enkrid grasped the thoughts rolling around arbitrarily and organized them lucidly.
'I was ahead in the number of possibilities.'
Counting, gauging, and striking the number of possibilities. That entire process seemed like a system established by someone who'd handled numbers all their life.
There was no waste. The blade moving along set lines was fluid, the movements for that were clear, and the swordsmanship mixed with such principles seemed beautiful.
The blade holding light moment by moment seemed as if it could immediately split one of the crystals.
'I can't get further ahead than that.'
What mainly attacked to match Enkrid's calculation was the flame whip called Salamandra. That whip enjoyed number fights as if flaunting that it had self-awareness. Following that, the Balrog swung its wings, fists, feet, and sword, moving arbitrarily within the predicted picture.
Enkrid mixed in the Sword of Chance at that moment. It was a process of binding the demon that had escaped calculation with webs again. And he couldn't block the Balrog moving within the realm of calculation.
'It was different.'
The Balrog's swordwork was different. In one moment, it was fast, heavy, and intense enough to escape calculation and prediction.
—Behold.
In the midst of battle, the Balrog conveyed meaning through mental resonance.
Its right hand naturally entered his view. The sword with black flames blazing fiercely, a demon sword called Surt.
That demon sword's flames repeatedly flared up as if spewing fire. Since he already knew that once the flame caught it wouldn't go out, Enkrid dodged all those attacks.
His bangs got singed, and he had to tear off and throw away the cloth gauntlet he'd been wearing on his left hand, but somehow he endured. Reviewing that fighting process would take quite a while.
'An unnecessary task.'
Placing meaning on the process was meaningless. The victory or defeat of the battle wasn't decided by calculation.
Instead of raising flames, the Balrog's Surt sank inward. Then it took shape over the crimson blade.
'A blade.'
Instead of burning and blazing, it had been sculpted into the form of a blade. He couldn't block that sword. It was something calculation couldn't handle.
That was what was different.
And Enkrid had seen something there.
'Different.'
That difference he'd seen not only in the Balrog but in others as well. Ragna's blade, Audin's holy armor, Rem's axe, Jaxen's thrust—the difference he'd felt from them as well.
What's different? What was different?
Now that he'd achieved part of his past dream, at the present he'd reached, he recalled those who'd led him here. He kept doing so countless times like a madman.
He retraced his memories, reviewing and replaying what they'd shown him one by one.
"Hwa!"
The opponent had just managed to overcome Enkrid's intimidation. He took out swords from his sleeves and divided them between both hands.
"Where did you roll in from, bastard!"
Shouting while pretending to charge, he threw two daggers. It was skillful. The technique of throwing daggers while holding swords in both hands was impressive to the point of being mysterious.
Ttadang!
Dawnforge in his right hand, Penna in his left.
Enkrid faced the opponent while holding swords in both hands. The fight wasn't long. He subdued the opponent before he could display his specialty. Over ten repetitions had made the opponent's weaknesses stand out more prominently. Strengths blurred and weaknesses became clear.
He advanced forward again. His thoughts had never reached conclusion even once. The review was still in progress.
Enkrid welcomed another today and died again.
The crimson sword with flames clumped together didn't cut everything. The Will blade Enkrid had shown could also block it.
'But.'
He was pushed back in strength. In the end, he was slashed.
What was different?
Twenty times, thirty times, forty times, over fifty todays passed.
Amidst days of pain and suffering, Enkrid had the freedom of time that allowed countless reviews.