There are many people in the world who are what you'd call geniuses. Ragna had wandered the continent and seen plenty of them.
"Monster bastard."
And whenever he crushed those people, he would often hear words like that.
"Where did a guy like this come from?"
Well, there were plenty who said similar things in similar ways.
Each time, Ragna didn't take those words to heart, and he didn't even think about the other person's psychology. There was no reason to.
Ragna knew, faintly, just how tremendous the talent he had was. That was why he hadn't walked it, because it felt like an already-known road.
Even now, when he thinks about the joy of having the world he knew shatter and meeting a new world through Enkrid, it sends shivers crawling over his whole body.
After that, he was satisfied with the present, where he swung his sword to protect something.
Still, this was a moment he hadn't expected.
'Monster.'
To think those words would come out of him.
The standoff was broken by Enkrid. He extended his sword first, and Ragna responded to match.
Then, once they entered the soundless world, they repeated the motions of batting away, swinging, and knocking aside with their swords.
'The best path to win.'
Ragna doesn't calculate. His talent simply shows him the path. This time was the same.
Enkrid's left arm joint was bent and unusable.
Ragna naturally made Enkrid's left side his blind spot, circled around, and struck with his sword. For the sake of this single move, he hadn't particularly been conscious of the left; he had swung and thrust at Enkrid's right side again and again, then watched for an opening.
In an instant, he whirled to the left and swung his sword from top to bottom. He drew out even the power of Sunrise, and there was a will packed into it, the will to cut flowed over the burning-red blade.
It was a sword stroke that accelerated once more even in the soundless world. The sword in Ragna's right hand split everything in that instant.
It looked only natural that a person standing in front of it would simply be split in half.
'Even if it was that guy I met in front of the Demon-lands.'
It wouldn't be easy to stop.
But the sword stroke of certainty wasn't rewarded.
Enkrid didn't meet blades. As if he'd been waiting, he simply took a step back and avoided it. Exactly outside the range of the slash.
'I don't understand.'
Should he say it felt like facing a mystery.
How did he avoid it?
If you looked at the motion, it was easy. Before the blade fell, he stepped to the side and avoided it.
The problem was that when all of those motions started, there hadn't been even a hint of a pre-warning.
'How do you even feel a pre-warning?'
Even as he swung his sword and missed Enkrid, Ragna felt the world slow down several times more than usual.
In that slowed world, several questions and answers went back and forth.
'To feel a pre-warning,'
it's to recognize the changes in the Will the opponent has.
'If the will moves, you recognize it as a pre-warning motion.'
And with that, you predict the opponent's response.
'It's the same as that guy I met in front of the Demon-lands.'
From that guy, there was no pre-warning to see. It was only recognized after the movement happened.
'How?'
Ragna's talent was to the level of predicting the opponent's attack on its own.
Even if he didn't know the principle, he had a sense that reached for the result.
Wherever he walked became a road. It was to the point that he didn't need to find a road to go where he wanted.
Wherever he walked became the fastest shortcut, and a valid route that reached the destination.
Enkrid, avoiding, extended his sword straight out. The process of all those motions was visible. No, it only felt like he saw it.
If he had to find a reason, one was that Enkrid's motions were far too simple.
'Avoid and thrust.'
Even if you didn't know the process, when you saw the result, the process was easily drawn.
The second reason was Ragna's talent. He glimpsed what, in the motion Enkrid had shown just now, was the key.
'Within that simple motion, Will changed countless times.'
The speed of that change was so fast that he couldn't follow it. That was the reason for defeat. For now, it was only up to here. He couldn't know every process. Only the result showed.
'Indules.'
Ragna's thoughts naturally converged there.
'Real Indules.'
More precisely, it was the result obtained by peeking into Enkrid's thought process.
Enkrid stayed still in the posture of having his sword extended, caught his breath, then withdrew the sword. Ching— and Penna returned to its home.
Everyone watching held their breath. The entire order had been watching since dawn.
Hadn't Rem, since days ago, been compressing and gathering that murderous momentum?
Everyone sensed that it would be today. Instinct told them. It was, no less, a knight's prediction. They were people with insight that saw an inch ahead, so naturally their senses were sharp beyond measure.
"Now you won't die easily."
Jaxon spoke into the silence. It meant he'd become a level that was hard to kill even with Jaxon's own hands.
Now, even if he was outside Jaxon's field of view, there would be nothing to be anxious about.
Rem, Audin, Ragna, Jaxon, Shinar.
These five were people for whom it wouldn't be lacking to call them Enkrid's teachers.
In other words, it was the moment someone who had always been weaker than them, for a lifetime, surpassed them one day.
Someone would be jealous, and someone wouldn't be able to acknowledge it.
And someone might avert their eyes from reality and get angry.
But among the Mad Order of Knights, there was no one like that. Over here, it was nothing but strange people gathered together. That's why it's mad.
"…Wow, damn."
Dunbakel exclaimed.
She didn't understand everything she'd just seen, but the thrill still came. Looking at that scene right now, she didn't need understanding. Starting with Rem and all the way to Ragna, he beat them all. Enkrid, that is.
"Good?"
Rem asked, cracking his neck left and right. He'd taken one hit to the jaw and his head was still ringing hollow.
"Are you enjoying yourself?"
Audin asked, too.
"Wait a bit. I'll be there soon."
Ragna said. Shinar looked at the face of the one engaged to her and only showed the same feeling. The fairy smiled.
Jaxon, with the same face as usual, showed both palms and lifted them over the chest. If this was the moment dreamed of, it was a look that said to enjoy it.
Enkrid smiled broadly and said.
"Work hard."
The light joke seeped into everyone's chest. They knew that within that lightness, it wasn't just meant to be joke.
"It reminds me of you pissing yourself on your first expedition."
Rem took Enkrid's words.
"Me?"
Enkrid reacted to words he absolutely couldn't let pass.
"Your pants were damp."
Audin agreed, and Jaxon nodded as well.
"There were a lot of days we flailed and barely survived."
Ragna agreed, too.
"Yeah. When I think about then, honestly, it wasn't an easy thing to predict a day like this would come."
Hearing Shinar say that, Luagarne recalled the day she first met Enkrid.
'No talent.'
Luagarne is a Frog. She could tell at a glance about something like talent. And even so, he was someone who had a charm that sucked in everything around him. That was why he was bewitching.
'What made up his bewitchment wasn't something like looks.'
Now Luagarne knew what the reason was that she fell for him.
That man's effort had a different purity. That man's time looked like something different from other peoples.
All of that stimulated the instinct of a Frog, and following that stimulation was what brought her to this moment.
Who would have expected a moment like this would come?
Enkrid didn't know either. Truly, he didn't know at all.
A moment like this, where he overwhelmed all the unit members who had reached a far higher place than him?
He'd never even dreamed it. But he was as happy as when he became a knight. At some point, the fully risen sunlight brightened the surroundings. After the dawn's blue light turned into a pale yellow light like sunset, it became a bright light that pushed away the winter's warmth.
"It's circulation. Endless movement."
Enkrid naturally shared what he'd realized.
"Tell us in more detail."
There was no disdain or jealousy. The ones left here only had glittering eyes.
"My association is a stream of water that flows without stopping. I expect all of yours will be different."
Enkrid recalled, again and again, the dizzying sensation he'd felt in the other person's sword stroke when a hole had been punched into his stomach in front of the Demon-lands.
'That was more like wind than a stream of water.'
The nature-changes of Will were all different forms. Enkrid realized that and said it.
Rem tried to open his mouth to say something, then closed it.
Rem, too, had caught some kind of clue while facing Enkrid just now. Rem wasn't the West's greatest hunter and hero for nothing.
'Ayul.'
It was a story that had come up long ago while talking with Owl about this and that.
Meaning, it was one of the things Rem had let pass because Rem had no interest, but it was interesting enough that Rem didn't forget.
"Rem, with sorcery, you can use two controllable souls at the same time, right? Then can't you use divine general descent at the same time?"
Even if only one divine general soul descended, the body creaked—two at the same time?
'Does training the body make that possible?'
No, it's not that way.
Rem fell into thought in an instant. His pupils unfocused and his mouth fell open. If he was left alone, it looked like he might even drool.
Even so, there was no one who touched Rem right now.
In an instant, he repeated thoughts inside himself.
'Calling a divine general gives sorcery power as the price.'
When calling Sapsal, it converts sorcery power the way that divine general wants, and to Sky-Flyer it offers sorcery power that fits.
The basis of descent and spirit-invocation is equivalent exchange. In exchange for sorcery, you receive and use, as strength, the achievements they accomplished.
Enkrid sought endless change, but Rem approached it in a different way. There would be a form that fit Rem.
Thought continued endlessly, calling inspiration in succession, and drove toward a single conclusion.
'No one has ever succeeded at Grime's spirit-invocation.'
There are eight divine generals, but for a reason only seven are handled. It was the same for Rem.
Rem couldn't even get a sense of divine general Grime descent.
'Sorcery power that satisfies all divine beasts and divine generals.'
To begin, you have to have something that resembles Uske. If Indules is quality, then Uske is quantity.
'The core is the same.'
Based on what he had, Rem rebuilt the tower of thought.
They said Uske was the foundation, but the funny thing was that while being with Enkrid, Rem had already learned how you obtained that. If he said the conclusion only, like always, it required relentless training and practice.
'Repeat the act of using it to the limit and then building it back up.'
After that, changing the built-up form of sorcery into a form that satisfies the divine generals.
Rem found a path. It wouldn't happen overnight. But if he walked like this, he wouldn't get one-sidedly smashed like today by the boss of bed-wetters.
Shinar quietly looked at Enkrid and predicted the road he would walk going forward.
'He'll fight the Demon-lands.'
And the place called the Empire, too, he probably wouldn't be able to just let pass.
"You said your dream is an end all wars, right?"
The witch Esther asked, as if Esther had arrived at some point. The question seemed to represent Shinar's inner thoughts.
As usual, she wore a black velvet robe, and long straight hair swayed and fell down to the hips.
Was it an illusion that the hair looked longer than usual, and glossy?
Could it be that she had honed magic power and done something?
The fairy's intuition was accurate.
In the process of using and grasping a large-scale spell before, Esther repeatedly researched anew and refined the magic-power wavelength.
It wouldn't show an effect by tomorrow morning, but because she'd realized something, a path opened where she could train repeatedly.
"It's fun. Fun."
The fairy muttered.
Born and raised in Kirheis City, up to now, Shinar had never fallen behind even once.
So this kind of experience was the first. No one here intended to stop.
Even that stale-smelling beastwoman, with eyes closed, was visibly sunk into something, deep in thought.
The shepherd called Pel muttered, "Work hard."
Lawford asked, "What do I change?"
Beside that, when Teresa said, "Holiness does not change," Audin said, "We have our own road."
'Everyone has a road.'
Shinar stood up from the spot.
"Shinar?"
Enkrid called her. It was truly a fatal temptation, but she endured it.
"I'll miss you, but don't come looking for me for a while."
Enkrid wondered whether a day would come when he adapted to this fairy's jokes.
He became a knight, and within his own order he overwhelmed all these monster bastards, but the fairy's jokes still easily stepped outside expectation.
"We'll need some time."
Shinar returned to Kirheis City just like that.
Her time is different from theirs. Because a fairy lives a long time, the process of effort is different.
Shinar didn't like that. It was time for sparks, Igniculus's time, to leap and burn once more.
She would take time and, in the end, achieve what she wanted. Because she had already grabbed a thread.
'Enki, you really are an amazing man.'
It was what she got from sparring with him and hearing the explanation.
'Vital energy moves based on the four seasons, the changes of seasons.'
The foundation of the vital energy a fairy uses.
If you linked it without breaking? If spring, summer, fall, and winter were together?
Warm and hot, cool and cold.
'You don't need to put everything into a single sword stroke.'
You could store and stockpile it, then only take it out when you needed it.
After Shinar left, Enkrid spent three whole days together with them, moving his body.
The arm wasn't broken either, so it healed in two days. Then five days passed, and after finishing dawn training, he washed his body and went down into the city. The morning city was familiar and lively.
"My lord."
A border guard lowered the head, and he passed through a path where they showed military courtesy, met a merchant selling fruit. In the meantime, warming the insides with Vanessa's pumpkin soup, Allen, the innkeeper across the street, handed over an apple pie.
After filling his stomach solidly, Enkrid headed for the smithy.
"Have you come?"
What had happened?
He didn't know. Aitri greeted him with hair gone white.
"I had a lot to think about."
Aitri said on.
Dawn broke. Enkrid was surprised, but accepted it calmly.
'My lack of will.'
That was all he thought.
Aitri wasn't surprised, and thought the opposite.
'My skill, my sincerity, were lacking.'
A large scar formed on Enkrid's belly where he came back alive. Enkrid told the process of how that scar formed. Aitri heard, in detail, what had happened during that time.
"You could say you barely lived."
"Yes."
He said he held on, grabbing that moment, the moment of fainting and waking.
Aitri finished thinking last night and called Enkrid.
"I will temper the sword again."
Aitri said.
Enkrid was the same now as before. He trusted the person in front of him, and cheered for that person's dream.
"I ask you to."
That was why he only nodded without another word.
It was one-sided trust. A faith that didn't waver. That was why his worry ran deep.
"I decided the name first."
Aitri opened his mouth again.
With certainty, the old craftsman recited the sword's name.