Cypress crosses his limits through Resolve. He swears and vows, and pulls his full strength up.
And even if he steps out with that resolve—what happens if he fails and the vow breaks?
His Will gets damaged. It wasn't at the level of "a small problem."
Cypress always put everything he had on the other side of the scale.
If the oath breaks, he loses his Will. Everything he's piled up until now scatters like morning fog under sunlight. Because his resolve and determination were that kind, his oath and vow carried weight.
"Our captain's got nothing on that kind of crazy."
Rem said it while watching from a distance. Because he handled sorcery, he was more sensitive to this than anyone. He was the first to grasp what it meant that the red-cloaked knight had stepped out alone.
Resolve is a double-edged blade. You cross your limits with an oath and a vow, but if you fail, you lose everything in that moment.
It's like throwing your entire stake onto the table every single hand.
That was how he had built his Will.
Rem didn't know his past, but watching what he'd just done, he could infer the road he'd walked.
And not a single person tried to stop him or step in.
'They're already used to it.'
Rem turned his guess into certainty.
"A barbarian who lives on lies opens his mouth now?"
Ragna picked up what Rem had thrown out. It was picking a fight. Even while watching the Resolve Cypress showed, he was busy condemning Rem. At that, Dunbakel snickered.
"Hey, old stink—why do you only get quick on the uptake at times like this? And you directionless bastard. Did I tell you or didn't I? If the captain were here, that's what he'd have said, so it's the same thing."
"That's your opinion. You barbarian bastard who spits nothing but lies every time you open your mouth."
"...I'm praising myself for holding back when I almost took your head just now. Sincerely."
At Rem's words, Ragna's eyes sank cold.
It looked like it would turn into a knife fight if they let it, but neither of them was an idiot.
Burning through your full strength here just because you feel like it is something only a complete moron would do.
So the two of them acted like puppies barking at wolves beyond a wall.
Meaning, they only growled.
Luagarne had sensed defeat the moment she saw forty knights.
Meaning, she'd judged that if they fought clean and straight, they couldn't win.
'No matter how much Rem and Ragna run wild.'
She took Audin, Teresa, and Lawford out of her calculations.
Their condition was a wreck. Of course, if things didn't go their way they'd still step up and fight, but—
'You can't call it top condition.'
In her head, she lined up Naurillia's knight forces.
The remaining strength on the Madmen side was five in total: Rem, Ragna, Shinar, Dunbakel, and Pel.
Of course, they weren't "just five."
They could stop those forty. In Luagarne's judgment, that was true.
But you couldn't do it for free. They'd have to pay a price too.
'If it's Rem, he'll cut down about twenty by himself.'
But swinging an axe nicely won't be enough. He'd have to pour out a fair chunk of what he could do.
'Rem's sorcery has brutal recoil.'
If he fought seriously, he'd be bedridden for days.
That was why he'd deliberately pulled his foot back in yesterday's fight.
Despite his instinctive senses and appearance that were worse than a beast's, his head worked fine—and he would have reached the conclusion to retreat.
Luagarne had, inwardly, admired him yesterday.
'You bastard, Rem, you really are...'
He knew perfectly when to hit and when to pull out. If she'd been the enemy, she would've been furious.
He'd charged, so they'd shown a portion of their own strength—then he'd slipped away immediately.
Dunbakel's skill had been impressive too, but in that moment, it was only right to clap for Rem's judgment.
He'd rampaged just enough and crushed the momentum the enemy would gain by sending the vanguard.
Of course, yesterday, she'd been the most moved watching Lawford.
He really was yesterday's hidden man of merit on the battlefield.
At the time, even while one knight harassed him relentlessly, Lawford held his position.
If it hadn't been for him, they wouldn't have even reached this kind of standoff.
He'd stopped a drugged-up force rushing in, grabbed it by the scruff, and thrown it down.
Did the enemy gain something through that?
It looked like they did.
Yesterday's enemy had focused on assessing strength.
That intent had been thick in the air.
And now, the ripple of that intent was showing itself clearly.
'Why?'
Luagarne didn't know the exact reason the enemy insisted on measuring strength so meticulously, but to the High Pontiff, it was the natural move.
Two units that had tried to strike the enemy's heart on a misjudgment had failed.
The High Pontiff didn't repeat the same mistake.
He didn't glance at the outside and move on. He checked and measured, thoroughly.
And through that process, he didn't rush his mind.
Luagarne thought it through again and again.
'If we fight them after our stamina is completely gnawed away, can we win?'
Rihinstetten would shave down a knight's fighting strength even if it meant spending the army.
Even if they had to turn hundreds, thousands of their own soldiers into corpses and fill this land with them, they would do it.
And the start of that was the forty-knight order in front of them.
"Faceless Order of Knights!"
"Those without faces!"
A roar burst out from the southern army.
They were people who'd seen the order's might in the Demon Realm.
More than twenty knights sweeping away a monster colony was a spectacle in itself.
They were the power that symbolized the High Pontiff.
What could you possibly do against forty knights?
The enemy asked.
Naurillia's side couldn't answer.
"Temares, if they all die, Enkrid will hate you."
Luagarne tried to persuade the Dragonkin, but this time it didn't work.
"No. The calculation was wrong. I have interest in him, but I've done enough. If he wants more from me, he should be here, in this place, right now."
Would anything change by arguing that the Dragonkin's way of calculating was a mess?
Luagarne judged it wouldn't.
"Shinar, if you've got a trick you've been hiding from me, now's the time to show it."
"This isn't a forest, Lua."
If they were up against the city of Kirhais, maybe.
Her city was like a forest, and inside it she could work wonders like a magician.
But not here.
The hard ground was packed with rock, and there wasn't even a tree—no good place to hide a body, either.
And near the Demon Realm, even the spiritual energy was faint.
The sunlight above was warm, but no one had the leisure to enjoy it.
In this situation, one knight advanced as if going out to greet forty knights.
The order in black heavy armor, silently, formed a ring around the lone man as if to encircle him.
Their helmets were strange—solid, pitch-black, angular, with no openings.
Maybe they'd punched a few breathing holes, because now and then a hiss of breath slipped out.
"Should we join?"
Dunbakel asked.
She didn't need to rack her brain to know when to fight and when not to.
Now was the time to fight. That was what her beastkin instincts said.
Before Luagarne could answer, Lien and Ingis shifted to Cypress's right-rear and spoke loud enough for everyone to hear.
"No one interferes."
Their master had shown his resolve and sworn a vow, so interfering itself was an obstruction.
That was his oath.
He'd sworn to stop them alone, so he didn't even want help from allies.
No—there couldn't be help.
His vow only had meaning if it was that way.
"Oh."
Rem let out a small exclamation, and Ragna shut his mouth and turned his gaze.
"Seriously?"
Dunbakel muttered and tilted her head.
Pel was taking each of the forty in with his eyes, like he was searching for something.
Shinar watched the situation silently and only added one line.
"Fiance, come quickly. Even if misfortune finds us, if you're here, I won't be sad."
Somehow, it didn't sound like a joke.
It sounded like the truth.
With everyone watching, four of the forty stabbed their spears in.
Clang-clang-clang.
Cypress swung his sword, knocked the spearheads aside, and slipped away.
Was that some incredible feat?
It didn't look like it.
Instead, he just kept repeating the same thing.
***
'Oh, would you look at that?'
Rem watched the fight like he was watching acrobatics, but in truth, what Cypress was doing was hard to call acrobatics.
'Block and dodge.'
A chain of simple motions.
Only, the result of those motions wasn't simple.
As is typical of many versus one, generally, no matter how many enemies there are, the number of weapons that can come at you at once is four to six.
At first, it was four.
Even though Cypress had stepped out alone, the enemy didn't cling to some honorable duel founded on chivalry.
Cypress didn't demand it either.
So the opening started with four black masses blocking Cypress from every side.
'Front, back, left, right.'
There was nowhere clean to run.
And those four moved like they'd trained for this exact thing.
'The timing—every last one of them.'
The front was the fastest, then the back, then left and right simultaneously shoved their spearheads in.
'If he blocks the front and dodges the back, what about left and right?'
Cypress knocked aside the spearhead in front with his sword, used the rebound to strike the spearhead from behind, and at the same time pulled his foot back diagonally to the right-rear to avoid the remaining spearheads.
Depending on how you looked at it, it seemed like he'd survived by a hair.
Like he'd dodged because luck was with him.
'Luck, my ass.'
Rem could tell it wasn't that.
'Calculation.'
A moment ago, Cypress had walked into enemy ground.
Not fast, not slow—keeping the same direction with a steady pace.
That walk looked like it had no intent, but it carried him to exactly where he wanted to be.
He'd prepared before the enemy even set their foot down, and countered.
The spearheads chased him like snakes, bending after him.
Bang! Thunk!
'If you look at them one by one, they're half-wits.'
But there were forty of those half-wits.
Not a number you could take lightly.
Rem didn't take his eyes off the fight, placing himself in Cypress's position.
It was a spectacle.
The kind of situation that was worth watching.
After four came six.
Two more spearheads joined in.
Even then, Cypress kept dodging and batting them away.
Whether there were four or six didn't matter. He said it with his actions.
The six stabbed without rest, then swapped places with comrades waiting behind them.
'They're even running a rotating line.'
All forty knights looked accustomed to this kind of fight.
Not just against Cypress—forty gathering to take on one, they looked skilled at it.
Like they'd practiced together for a long time, over and over.
Six became eight.
Maintaining a fixed spacing in the ring, they made room for two more knights to enter the formation.
Like children sitting around a ball.
When those eight extended their spears at once, Cypress finally showed a slightly different trick.
'Oh.'
Even the directionless bastard beside him widened his eyes.
Cypress's swordwork was twice as fast as a moment ago.
Only for a single instant, he accelerated—then returned to normal.
It was a slash to knock away the threatening spearheads among the eight and make it back.
The Faceless Order didn't even have battle cries.
Instead, now and then, one of them would thrust or swing with a different speed and force than the others.
Whenever a pop-pop sound of air bursting rang out, Cypress's movement shifted little by little.
He'd break through the eight-man ring in one burst and leap out to the side.
Or he'd bat aside a spearhead stabbing in at an angle that looked impossible to block, using his vambrace to deflect it.
Watching, Rem had a strange thought.
'How should I put it.'
It felt like he smelled similar to the captain.
When he thought hard about what exactly it was, the answer came.
'Experience?'
It was odd.
One side made sense, the other didn't.
'A man like Cypress has lived his whole life on battlefields.'
Of course he fought using experience as a weapon.
He'd honed his technique on countless large-scale battles, on the sum of days spent rolling around warfields.
What was interesting was that Enkrid did something similar.
And there was one more thing.
"He's not getting tired."
That was Dunbakel.
Right. Cypress didn't tire easily.
Just like Enkrid.
He had Uske's—or something close to it.
"Hah!"
In the middle of it, he even threw out a relaxed shout.
In that shout, a strange heat glinted.
Heat you could call exhilaration.
The enemy was forty.
Only part of them fought while part rotated, and part remained spectators.
Maybe they didn't want to stay spectators—because a few of them pulled their feet out of the ring.
The purpose was obvious.
No matter how skilled Cypress was, he was still alone.
A few of them were trying to slip around him and push into our position.
Seeing it, Rem moved his foot.
A knight fighting out there deserved respect.
Especially for what he was doing right now.
So he stood behind Cypress and spoke to the one trying to peel away from the group.
"Hey. Don't do something that pathetic."
On the opposite side around Cypress, that Lien bastard spat a similar line.
"Alright. Every one of you, get your heads straight and focus. The master's intent is to face your forty alone. Anyone who breaks that won't find it fun."
As he spoke, he drove his fist forward like a third-rate mercenary showing off.
If you knew that fist could crush rock in a single hit, it didn't look like a third-rate threat at all.
The moment his words ended, Cypress's sword—which until now had only been giving ground—curved in between the enemy knights and came back out.
The blade's movement was like a nimble squirrel.
Resolve was sharp, vicious, and intense.
And that intensity was a reaper to someone.
Thud!
With a dull sound, a head in a black helmet shot up into the sky.
One of the forty died.
To Rem's side, Ragna, Dunbakel, and Pel stepped up.
They didn't need to speak—the intent was clear.
Ingis also stood beside Lien.
If anyone clumsily tried to cross over this way without respecting the master's intent, they'd all die.
The message was unmistakable.