Enkrid inwardly agreed with the Balrog's words and sank into himself to pull out his Will. It was natural not to stop what he needed to do whether the other agreed or not.
He held the pulled-out Will so it wouldn't move on its own.
'Control.'
The first step was control, stopping. Next came explosion.
He mixed Point Explosion from the line with the point explosion shown by the head of the Zaun family. He digested the two Will manipulation methods in his own way and unleashed them.
He imbued the resolve to die content after a single sword strike. A knight's Will grew stronger through oaths and restrictions.
Enkrid discarded mental preparation and such and charged in. The preparation was already finished by the time he'd come this far.
The moment his stopped body moved, he entered a world without sound. It was that time when the air wrapped around him pressed down on his body as if it had become mud. And the Balrog also entered the same time frame effortlessly. It was something he'd already anticipated.
However, he hadn't fully folded his wings yet. That must have been why. Enkrid was just a bit faster.
The position of his feet, the hand gripping the sword, everything became one as he drew the sword. The motion was a simple diagonal slash, but it was before the Balrog's sword—Surt—could approach, and before the fire serpent—Salamandra—could attack.
The timing was right. The sword strike mixing Flash with Vortex grazed one of his crystals.
Bwaaang! Krrk! Thung! Chwaang!
Sounds burst out belatedly, and Enkrid's body was flung backward. While moving at high speed, the Balrog released mental waves once more.
—Endure.
Enkrid, flung backward, rolled on the ground exactly once, caught his center, and stopped. In the process, Dawnforge, which he'd planted in the ground, went crrrk and left a long scar on the earth.
"Uweck!"
As soon as he stopped, he vomited blood. It was because his intestines were damaged after getting hit in the belly by the Balrog's kick during their earlier exchange.
The moment his diagonal slash had been properly drawn, the Balrog hadn't stayed idle either. Accepting the resistance from his wings and the wind, instead of putting strength into deflecting the sword, he used his foot. His right foot struck Enkrid's abdomen as fast as the sword he'd swung.
'His body itself is a lethal weapon.'
It was a fact he already knew, but now it was a bit different. Both the force behind the kick and its speed.
Crimson blood stuck to his chin and dripped onto the ground.
Enkrid looked ahead with one knee on the ground, using Dawnforge planted in the ground as a support.
And he reacted to the last words he'd heard from the Balrog.
"What?"
Along with the words, several more droplets of blood splattered onto the black earth.
He'd said Endure. It was something any knight learned, and afterward, there was the process of learning the technique called Iron Armor.
Fundamentally, it was a technique for enduring pain.
—Splendid.
The Balrog simply said what he would say regardless of what Enkrid said.
Enkrid looked at the Balrog's chest. His sword had definitely cut one of those crystals. However, there wasn't even a scratch on the crystal. Dawnforge had cut not the crystal but the membrane wrapping it.
This sinister bastard.
The Balrog had told him his weakness in a previous today. Those were the three crystals embedded in his chest.
However, he hadn't mentioned that he'd placed a thick defensive barrier over those crystals.
'No, I expected that much.'
He just hadn't known it would be this solid.
The Will that started from Endure, the power to endure pain, was another suit of armor for the Balrog. It was wrapped around the crystals.
'This won't work easily either.'
Enkrid stared at the Balrog's black and yellow pupils. It was hot inside his belly as if his intestines were boiling.
At the last moment, the fairy cloak had stretched on its own to wrap around his abdomen, and without that, he probably wouldn't have been able to endure like this.
—To see another such human in such a short time, it was impressive.
He said.
He wondered what he meant by seeing another, but there was no opportunity to continue the conversation.
The fire serpent flew over, and the sword made of black flames stabbed and cut Enkrid. The Balrog lost interest in the broken toy.
He burned to death in pitch-black flames. Though it wasn't the first time, it was as painful as the first.
Still, there was something gained. The membrane wrapping the crystals was harder than he'd thought.
'If I put more weight into the strike, I could have cut it.'
He could tell instinctively. However, if he cut that one crystal, he himself would have to die.
—Your observation skills are good too. Very good.
The Balrog kept expressing admiration, and the scene Enkrid was viewing changed.
Splash—
The black river and ferry boat, the ferryman who was the master of the violet lamp appeared.
"You look pitiful."
The ferryman mocked him. It was also urging despair and frustration.
The moment he thought he'd risen on the ferry boat, the ferryman pushed him out. Reality again, another repeated today.
And when Enkrid awakened.
"Wait a minute."
Before the opponent could say anything about being a guest or whatever, he showed his palm while speaking—naturally accompanied by intimidation—and merely nodded his head slowly.
Good, this is it. If this method doesn't work? He'd move on to the next.
"...Am I a dog?"
The opponent threw off the intimidation and burst out angrily.
The single-edged sword wielder got angry when ignored, and this bastard Rino always opened his mouth before using his hands to try to shake the opponent's psychology. When that didn't work, he got flustered himself.
It was an obvious tactic.
He asked if he was a dog while trying to induce the opponent's carelessness. Though he didn't actually roll his eyeballs, he must be desperately thinking about what words to spit out here to make the opponent careless.
"Weren't you?"
Enkrid responded nonchalantly while devising another method.
'The Balrog enjoys fighting. Can't I induce carelessness?'
No. Enkrid, who put deception at the forefront, lost once more.
Fighting while enduring with inexhaustible Will? That had already been broken long ago.
There were things he'd noticed in the process, but the ferryman merely sneered.
"Why, would it be happier to all die together?"
If the fight dragged on, the Madman Knight Company would come from behind. Enkrid hadn't directly faced them.
He'd merely felt the voices and presences heard from far away.
"Fi-an-cée!"
The fairy shouting unsuitably loudly, and.
"They're having fun again without me!"
"If you're lost, shout. I'll come there."
Rem and Ragna.
"Lord, is the prisoner you seek inside there?"
"Standby, coming soon."
Audin and Jaxen.
That was just before dying. So while enduring with everything he had, when he couldn't avoid the Balrog's final sword strike.
And dying Enkrid saw the Balrog's eyeballs glistening. The flames swirling inside his pupils writhed. They were eyes mixed about half-and-half with killing intent and excitement.
The conclusion learned there.
When the Balrog went all out, even just enduring wasn't easy. Even when he devoted himself solely to defense, it was so.
He spent another today inside the pitch-black cave.
'If I fight with hesitation erased.'
Enkrid's next move was to fight while discarding his body. He unhesitatingly committed violence that shattered his own body. The Balrog struck back the same way.
—Good.
While doing so, he even shouted in exhilaration. Surt took his left arm, and Enkrid's Dawnforge ultimately pierced one crystal.
It was a strike made by throwing his body. And in that process, Enkrid felt his Will had changed slightly.
'It's different again.'
Each time he crossed some line until now, he'd noticed subtle changes in the Balrog's temperament. It was similar to what Ragna showed when swinging his sword with full power.
In fact, it had been glimpsed briefly in others including Rem, but when he asked, they all just tilted their heads.
'They can't observe others' things, so they don't know the difference between their own and others'.'
Enkrid could overlay the experience of observing his own and others' things through dying and dying again.
That didn't mean the company members had just let what he said pass. They did speak by adding their own experiences in their own way.
"So the captain's Will is kind of bland, but ours aren't, is that it?"
Rem's words flashed through his mind.
"I originally like to hide sharpness within simplicity. It's a preference."
Jaxen had also said.
"I'll cut it, so I add that."
This was what Ragna had said, which was supposed to be an explanation, but it was words only he understood.
Didn't he speak and nod alone? He had an expression like he'd realized something himself, which made it even more absurd.
Audin had smiled and said divinity's direction was a bit different from the start, hadn't he?
"Shall I inject you with fairy energy? If you come tonight, I'll do so."
In the midst of that, the fairy's joke came to mind and he chuckled.
Reality again.
"Laughing?"
The bastard drawing his sword from his sleeve frowned. It was an act of getting angry from being ignored.
That was this bastard's specialty. It was the seventy-sixth today. He'd broken one crystal exactly once.
Enkrid conversely used the opponent's carelessness to thrust his sword. The beam of light stretching out like a flash would look like a single point of light when faced head-on.
It was an accelerated thrust through Point Explosion.
Its foundation was the thrust he'd learned when facing the first today, but now comparing it to then was absurd.
Just before killing the opponent like that. The bastard crossed the swords in both hands and fell backward as if collapsing.
Within Enkrid's 'calculation,' the opponent should have turned his body sideways to dodge while aiming for a counterattack.
But he didn't do that and instead fell backward while extending his foot. It was a motion close to a trick. Traces of many years of training were glimpsed.
He supported his body with one left foot and extended his right foot. A thin blade protruded from the tip of his boot as if to slice his throat. Enkrid pulled back the sword he'd been thrusting.
Clang!
The blade bounced off Dawnforge, spinning whirrr as it floated above both their heads.
Enkrid could have ended the fight before that blade fell. No, he didn't have to block it just before either.
'It would have just grazed my throat.'
But he didn't do that.
Why did he do so? Just a whim? Or maybe he needed time to think again.
This time he hadn't crushed the opponent with intimidation.
'No.'
It was because the attack the opponent had just shown was unexpected and overlapped roughly with the Balrog's kick.
The opponent who'd been balancing on his left foot struck the ground with the foot he'd extended and rose, then drew out two short swords, crossed them in front of his face. He looked at the opponent between two diagonally crossed blades.
He observed the 'guest' who'd come this time. The attack just before was a truly hidden move, yet it was blocked. That bound his hands and feet.
'What is this?'
While staring blankly like that, the bastard with blue eyes just stared vacantly into space.
'Inducing carelessness?'
It was a tactic he himself used often. Those who used deceptive swords were suspicious. He was the same.
'Where did such a bastard come from?'
While inwardly surprised and watching.
The focus of those vacant eyes returned.
'He was really lost in thought?'
What kind of crazy bastard is this?
"We haven't even exchanged names all this time. Well, I guess there's no need to know names though. Did you learn the basics from Valen-style mercenary swordsmanship? Let's continue."
Enkrid's opponent, Rino, secretly swallowed while hiding his mouth and throat with both swords so the opponent couldn't see.
Somehow, the bastard who'd entered this time seemed like a crazy fucker.
"It's Rino."
"I said names aren't important."
Enkrid spoke while swinging his sword. Rino reflexively put strength into the crossed swords and pushed. It was an attack using the friction of pressing two swords together, and simultaneously sparks ignited from the blades mixed with special metal.
It wasn't sustained fire but more like sparks close to a flash that burst in an instant.
It was a method of momentarily blocking the opponent's vision. Of course, for someone at knight level with developed senses, blocking vision wasn't fatal.
But in the tense moment of exchanging sword strikes, if their view was suddenly blocked, they were bound to hesitate even a little. The two swords that created fire were a method of creating such gaps. And Enkrid was actually surprised.
'Those swords.'
So this kind of thing was possible too.
It was something he couldn't see because he'd cut quickly and passed by until now.
'That resembled the Balrog's kick.'
Such was the thought that came to him.
The situation of lying down earlier while extending his foot had felt like that. Though the power, result, and motion were different, the process was similar.
'The Balrog also uses deception.'
He'd do anything to win. Enkrid had the same mindset. Also, there was one more thing realized here.
"Even a farmer who's tilled the earth his whole life has things to teach."
Words spoken by the instructor who'd laid his foundation very long ago.
"You learned something from watching Aetri handle iron even though he can't fight, right?"
Luagarne's words overlapped and were heard on top of that.
'You're a good teacher. Lua.'
An excellent Frog.
She committed everything for her desires. That 'everything' included teaching Enkrid. Those teachings were engraved deep in his bones.
'I was complacent.'
It was a point requiring reflection. Right now, the opponent before his eyes, and Donapa, and even the single-edged sword wielder.
These were knights trapped in the Balrog's labyrinth. There was much to learn from them too. He'd ignored all of that and passed by.
'I was too intoxicated.'
Had he gotten too excited meeting an opponent who overwhelmed him for the first time in a long while?
So had he unconsciously, without realizing it, even considered the repetition of today?
While vowing not to waste any today?
Reflection upon reflection.
"Good."
He'd watch and steal the opponent's techniques with all his heart to learn. Enkrid genuinely treated the opponent as a teacher.
"That's good, don't you have more?"
Enkrid spoke, and the teacher named Rino hearing it was repeatedly dumbfounded and could only say.
"This crazy bastard?"