The same day, yet a slightly different day.
A day when he realized that the technique he learned with his right foot didn't apply the same to his left foot, and so another day repeated.
Occasionally, the ferryman would show up, but Encrid still respected his opinion and kept his mouth shut.
The ferryman no longer got angry over such things.
This guy had always been like this. The ferryman just said what he wanted to say.
"It's already over."
As a bard who sang of despair, and as a farmer who planted the seeds of frustration.
Encrid naturally ignored the ferryman's words and focused on gathering willpower in his left foot, just as he had done with his right.
He did so regardless of whatever the ferryman said from the front.
When gathering Will in his right foot, it felt like striking down with a sword, so he tried the same with his left foot, but it didn't work.
Why?
In the end, it was a matter of control. He could move his limbs, so why not this?
It was something invisible, yet it came from his body, but he couldn't control it at will. It was just a matter of repeating over and over again.
The ferryman's expression subtly changed as he looked ahead, lost in thought.
His eyes grew a bit wider, and his chin pulled back slightly. Just that made his impression look different.
With this slightly changed expression, the ferryman's mouth opened, but the tone and content were unlike before.
"Reduce it."
It was a vague statement. Encrid blinked, wondering what the ferryman meant.
He had sometimes thought that the ferryman seemed to have more than one personality, but this was the first time he saw it shifting in front of him.
The ferryman quickly returned to his usual self. Today's ferryman enjoyed endlessly babbling nonsense.
"Go. Go and enjoy. This today, filled with nothing but pain, without even a trace of fun."
It was only after repeating this day more than fifty times that Encrid learned how to gather willpower in his left foot.
It felt like learning how to move each finger all over again.
He could clearly feel it and knew it was attached to his body, but to move it, he had to focus on every little detail and then forget about it again.
Only then could he use it naturally.
How do you move your fingers to grip the sword at your waist?
From placing the grip between the thumb and forefinger in a simple motion to learning how to apply force to the third, fourth, and fifth fingers to lock the grip in place.
He had to learn everything anew. It felt like learning how to breathe again.
The process was unfamiliar, but he figured it was easy as long as it was something he could do repeatedly.
Can he throw a giant boulder as if tossing a marble? That would be easy.
He had thoughts like that too.
While repeating today like that, Encrid saw many things.
Was it Audin's glowing light that started it all?
"Drink this."
It was when he was gasping for breath because he had misfired the willpower. Jaxon tried to give him some strange medicine, and though he didn't know what it was, he could tell it was incredibly precious.
It was a round pill, twice the size of his thumbnail. Pink, with a hard-looking exterior.
The scent was different. As soon as he smelled it, his mind cleared, and my vision sharpened.
He had a gut feeling that if he took it, he wouldn't die.
"It's a medicine that can save anyone who isn't already dead. Give up on your willpower."
Jaxon's words meant that if he took it, he'd survive, but he'd become a shell of his former self.
There was an intensity in Jaxon's eyes he hadn't seen before. The kind of intensity that suggested he wouldn't hesitate to beat him to death if he didn't take it.
This was Jaxon's last resort, his inability to watch him die. But he refused. He simply shut his mouth and endured.
Through his dying eyes, he saw Jaxon's face twist in a way he hadn't seen before. It was such a contorted expression that he doubted his own eyes. He never thought Jaxon could make such a face.
That was one of those days.
There were other days as well.
One day, as he was heading toward death and pain had bought him a brief reprieve.
"Come out!"
Rem took a rough approach. His guts were being burned by the willpower, and he was down to his last few breaths. Rem stood before him, his hair starting to flutter.
He didn't know exactly what Rem was doing, but he could sense it by instinct.
Rem was doing something similar to the light Audin had emitted or the medicine Jaxon had pulled out.
He was right.
It was a spell of life return.
A forbidden art that consumed one's lifespan, similar to the teleportation spell that had hit him.
In what way? It depended on luck.
Rem failed. Even with his extraordinary talent and lifespan, he couldn't capture the soul of the dying.
Encrid's body continued to stiffen.
"Shit!"
That was a day when he heard Rem's voice filled with frustration. Wrinkles instantly increased on Rem's face.
Those three weren't the end.
While he was learning how to send willpower to his right arm, left arm, and each part of his body and make it stay there, he died countless times.
If he had even one breath left, they all tried similar things.
"Take it, hold it in your body. You can live."
Sinar tried to pass her life essence into him. It was a green, fist-sized light that touched his back, but it was useless.
"Ugh."
As the Fairy's life essence dissipated meaninglessly, a part of Sinar's body crumbled like dust. Her arm disappeared just like that.
Yet her expression remained calm. No, she showed a faint smile.
"Go on ahead."
That was a day when he saw a forlorn smile that Sinar would never normally show.
"Father, Lord-!"
Teresa sang hymns at the top of her lungs.
"I will embrace you in my world."
Esther said, stars twinkling in her eyes. Those stars shone and began to pull his dying body into some place.
Esther was trying to temporarily trap him in her spell world to hide me from the reaper's eyes. It was a trick using a curse, but it, of course, didn't work.
"Where do you think you're going?"
Curses were the ferryman's domain.
Moreover, Esther wasn't even ready to properly cast her spell.
The spell failed, mana backfired, and in the reckless attempt to summon her world, Esther's eyes exploded with a loud pop.
There was a day when Esther appeared to cry tears of blood.
For some reason, Pel even stabbed himself with the Idol Slayer.
It was useless. Pel only coughed up blood.
All those days, like this or that, passed in front of Encrid's eyes. They flowed past, like a scrap of cloth falling into a river, soaking and sinking, vanishing from view.
In those vanished days, everyone did something. Encrid watched them and died. And died again.
"Was it amusing to watch?"
The ferryman asks. Encrid didn't answer.
"Give up. Move on. I've prepared a wall for you to overcome, one step at a time. Isn't this the path you want?"
The ferryman spoke. How many days has it been? He didn't bother to count. It was meaningless.
Today, if he wanted, he could leave at any time.
But do he persist out of stubbornness? The ferryman said he was on the wrong path, that he was foolishly stubborn without the certainty that he was on the right one.
The ferryman was probably right.
His choice could be wrong. So what?
If the only way to know is to go, then he had to go. That's what Encrid did.
"Aren't you resentful of the heavens?"
The ferryman asks.
"Do you not hate the world?"
The ferryman asks again.
"In such a world, having been born with such talent? Do you not resent the Gods who created you?"
It's easy to find something to resent. The ferryman kept urging him to do so.
Then, suddenly, as before, another personality abruptly emerged, saying this:
"Reduce it."
What should he reduce?
He tried to dig deeper.
The fleeting personality quickly disappeared.
At some point, the ferryman stopped ending it with words. The people who failed to save him appeared in his dreams.
Nightmares began. Darkness came.
"You will be left flailing alone in a land where the sun never rises."
The ferryman said, but it was a path he had already walked. It was something he had experienced in the desert.
What the ferryman was trying to take was people, value, meaning. What Encrid had lost was only comfort.
Just because you can't see something doesn't mean the value, the people, or the meaning disappear.
"You will come to wish for death."
He had a nightmare where an arrow flew and pierced a hole through his heart.
"Face the darkness within you."
Even if he became a Knight, what can one swordsman change?
Can he traverse the desert?
What's so great about saving a few people with his sword?
The ferryman kept muttering. He constantly shook Encrid.
Even if he was free of illusions, could there be no soot at all?
There was. There were scars and there were wounds and there was pain. But he knew how to move forward. So he just kept moving forward.
Encrid took another step. Toward the sun, toward the goal called a dream.
To live or to die?
Will you risk your life for something uncertain?
For what?
Encrid had seen it in his nightmares, he had seen it in the repeated today, and in the past when he couldn't protect someone, in the boy dreaming of being a herbalist whom he had once protected, he had seen something.
If it was called light, then it was light, if it was called a flower, then it became a flower, if it was called a star, then it became a star, and if it was called a dream, then it became a dream.
In the moment when he repeated the light, the star, and the dream, he whispered to himself.
Finally, his view broadened, and he could see his body objectively.
It was as if he had grasped some sort of flow.
He can't quite put it into words, but it felt like he had found a sense of it.
'I was wrong.'
Willpower wasn't something you forced to move. No, he'd say he understood how to go now precisely because he'd tried to force his way through.
The pieces he'd realized while traversing the desert connected and attached to the insights he'd gained in the past.
The complicated and the simple.
Discarding and blending.
In the end, Encrid couldn't abandon anything he'd learned, realized, or mastered.
Oara had told him to discard, but instead, he mixed it all together.
"Reduce it."
The ferryman says. Reduce what?
It didn't matter. Whether it was his Will, his dreams, his goals, his ambitions, or his desires.
The ferryman was telling him to throw them away.
But Encrid had no intention of doing so.
He wouldn't reduce or discard anything.
He had sworn to protect everything behind him when he dreamed of becoming a Knight.
Not a single one of those things would slip through his fingers.
He had once sworn under the stars, the sky, and the two moons that he would uphold that promise.
A song sung by a bard had given one boy a dream. The lyrics shot into his chest like a meteor, leaving a mark.
The one who dreams is qualified to achieve it, Encrid repeated to himself countless times.
He had that belief. Even if it was blind faith, he wouldn't let his will be broken.
No longer would he watch as the child behind him died.
"No."
Encrid answered. He would not reduce anything, it was a declaration of Will.
At that moment, a storm raged inside his body.
It wasn't forced movement. It just had to be left as it was. All he needed to do was hold onto what was necessary.
Encrid felt the wind. The wind that passed through his body.
Encrid felt the sunlight. The sunlight that entered his body and gave warmth. The sunlight and wind mingled and painted the view in front of him orange.
The number of today's repetitions exceeded five hundred.
He had been blind, and the place he was trapped in was a labyrinth, but he had touched and remembered everything one by one until he finally escaped.
"What a madman."
The ferryman's admiration faded from his ears, and his presence disappeared.
When Encrid blinked, it was his favorite time of day. The time when the sun was setting, the sky was incredibly close. The orange that filled his vision was the sunset.
If he reached out, he could grasp the clouds, and if he swung my sword like this, he could cut down any opponent. Strength overflowed throughout his entire body.
A sense of omnipotence filled every inch of his being. He could clearly see every gaze that looked at him.
Amidst the feeling that I could do anything, Encrid distinctly and accurately differentiated between what he should and shouldn't do.
Moreover, he knew how to maintain the omnipotence and Will that continually surged within him.
"I should get some sleep."
Encrid said and closed his eyes.
There were no traces of laughter on the faces of those looking at him. One of them stepped forward to catch his back.
* * *
"Is it real?"
The one supporting Encrid's back was Lawford. He was close by, so he acted.
The others didn't move at all. But that was fine. He wasn't the kind of person whose head would crack just because he fell backward.
More than that, everyone was too shocked to say anything.
During that time, Sinar's voice rang out.
Was it real? She posed a question to the air, to everyone.
"It seems so."
Rem replied.
"It's real."
Jaxon confirmed.
"Did the Father help?"
Audin muttered in disbelief while Ragna repeatedly gripped and released his sword.
Luagarne puffed her cheeks but couldn't make a sound. She was too stunned.
There were two people here who didn't understand what had happened.
Lawford and Pel.
What just happened? Lawford had no sense of it, so he had only moved because his body reacted to the comment about sleeping.
Pel, out of habit, gripped the Idol Slayer and tilted his head.
Clearly, something had happened, and something had changed, but what that was, he didn't know.
He only felt an overwhelming surge of motivation. Despite eating and sleeping excessively, Encrid had casually watched the sunset, blinked a few times, and then collapsed, and the sight had sent shivers down his spine.
He wanted to get up and swing his sword immediately. He had to do something.
Pel stood up from where he had been seated and headed for the training ground. He couldn't hold back the overwhelming motivation any longer.
It was as if someone had forcibly stuffed willpower into his body.
Lawford felt the same.
He, too, felt some sort of realization, something like an awakening.
Both of them had been naturally affected by the willpower that Encrid had emanated.
Esther, sitting down, opened one eye.
In her eye, which summoned part of her spell world, she saw a large star.
'What did he do?'
She didn't know. But one thing was certain. That man had realized the dream he had always talked about.
"What a sight."
Rem said.
Everyone else felt the same.
Jaxon, Audin, Ragna, and Luagarne, all possessing the ability to sense talent, felt as though they were dreaming.
It was that much of an unbelievable event.
Encrid had fallen unconscious, and he didn't wake up until a week later.
During that time, a few things happened, but none of them were important to anyone.
When Encrid woke up, he thought this:
Nothing had changed.
He had just taken one proper, significant step forward.
The willpower that naturally stayed within his body made him think that way.
[T/L: Please support me AND read further chapters on my Ko-Fi page.]
[T/L: Subscribe for a membership on my Ko-Fi page and receive 15 extra chapters upon joining, along with daily updates of one chapter.]
[Additional Info: If anyone is facing the issue of payment on Ko-Fi, please contact me on revengerscans1@gmail.com]