Chapter 942 - Wave
"I came out because watching you flounder was frustrating me, kid."
The Ferryman—or rather, the woman—spoke.
"Am I dead?"
Enkrid asked back.
One moment he was fighting, the next he opened his eyes here.
His intuition told him he wasn't, but he asked to confirm.
"No."
The woman shook her head.
Her thick blonde braid swayed heavily.
Seeing it whip sideways with such weight, Enkrid reasonably suspected she might use her hair as a weapon.
"Then what is this?"
"Let's just say I stretched out time for a little chat."
If he started arguing the mechanics of it, they would be here forever.
Enkrid abandoned the attempt to understand and simply observed her.
What was her purpose for appearing like this?
The Ferryman didn't beat around the bush.
"You want me to teach you something?"
She cut straight to the chase.
Enkrid's ears twitched at the words.
He wasn't even a Fairy, yet his ear muscles moved independently.
That was how tantalizing the offer was.
"You crazy bastard. You look more excited about learning a new trick than worried about your current situation."
Her words were critical, but her expression betrayed her amusement.
This was a piece of the Ferryman.
He didn't know if she came with good intentions, but her offer certainly whetted his appetite.
Though he didn't verbally answer, Enkrid's burning desire to learn was like an anchor dropped deep into the abyss of his subconscious.
He answered with his eyes, and the female Ferryman flashed her signature, jovial smile.
"It is time to bear the consequences of your choices, mortal. You're wondering if you picked the right answer, aren't you? Sorry to break it to you, but the right answer is something you have to prove through your actions. That's my first piece of advice."
If you made a choice, take responsibility and see it through to the bitter end.
That was what she meant.
The woman raised a finger and pressed it against Enkrid's forehead.
Her touch was warm.
Even in an illusion, it felt remarkably real.
"Watch."
Memories seeped into him.
Specifically, the memories of the woman who was now a piece of the Ferryman.
Within the memory, Enkrid became her.
There was no transition of the world crumbling like sand.
The surroundings simply shifted in an instant.
He saw several figures with concealed faces.
Their clothing was difficult to identify.
He only knew that the people in front of him were comrades, and that they were currently locked in a desperate battle.
As the memories bled in, they dictated the present.
"Dammit, we took the wrong path."
"The Behemoths are swarming us."
"■■■■, what's the plan?"
Was that her name?
The moniker was drowned out in static.
Instead, Enkrid felt her state of mind.
'We're so fucked.'
Huh?
She looked calm on the outside, but inside, she was panicking.
'But what else can we do? We've already come this far.'
They just had to push forward.
This woman was far more reckless than he expected.
"Hey, this is our best option! If we had gone the other way earlier, we'd be completely surrounded by now! We fight!"
The Ferryman—no, the female knight—roared.
Enkrid finally understood what the Ferryman truly was.
They were a collective.
An amalgamation of those who had been consumed by Today's curse.
In other words, they were people who had once repeated 'today.'
They had utilized the curse to fight, surviving through their own endless cycles.
Thrust!
She leveled her spear.
Charging forward, she cleaved through a monster dubbed a 'Behemoth'—a creature more than five times her size.
"Burn them!"
Burn, shatter, cleave.
This was how they fought the entity known as the Root.
However, this method only worked up to a point.
At first, fire was highly effective, but at some point, the Root bastards developed a resistance to the flames.
That was when things became an absolute nightmare.
Enkrid gleaned a few more critical pieces of information.
'The Root's specialty is mimicry and creation.'
The bastards observed their enemies, learned, and mass-produced monsters perfectly tailored to counter them.
When the knights used fire, the Root bred monsters immune to flames.
'No, that's wrong.'
The voice in his mind split.
Instinctively, he caught the error.
'It isn't breeding or creating monsters.'
Enkrid stared directly at the true nature of the enemy within the memory.
'They are all one.'
A colony is a massive gathering of individuals following a leader.
'The Root isn't a colony.'
It was the exact opposite.
What this woman was fighting right now wasn't a swarm; it was a single monster.
One individual entity that had morphed into the shape of a colony.
In other words, it was a demon that had become the Demonic Realm itself.
You could say it possessed traits on par with the six—no, now five—Lords of the Demonic Realms.
If the Parasite of Heat demonstrated the trait of dividing itself and hopping from host to host...
'The Root is the many, yet it is one.'
The Root was a demon, a monster that had evolved into a colonial organism.
Outside the memory, the bastards Enkrid was fighting looked different from these, but their fundamental nature was identical.
They fought under a single, unified will.
They operated as if every single one of them was interconnected.
'These are just its hands and feet.'
The monster before her, sporting fin-like appendages and thrusting a massive trident, was a species he had never seen before, but...
'A wrapping kick.'
The way the monster swung its spear with one hand, twisted its pelvis at an angle, and launched a second strike aiming for her blind spot... it was eerily similar to the attack he had just faced in reality.
The physical form was different, but the intent woven into the movement was the same.
Through the blade of that monster's spear, Enkrid recognized the enemy he was currently fighting.
With that realization, the information surfacing from his subconscious rapidly synthesized a conclusion.
The Demonic Realm Silence was the future form of this monster known as the Root.
The Root had mimicked, forged a new body for itself, and established its own sovereign territory.
'That's how it survived.'
It threw Behemoths at them, sensed its own limits, and chose to die, all while preparing for its next evolution.
At this point in the memory, the Root kept its main body hidden.
Because it hadn't yet achieved the scale of a true Demonic Realm, it was merely called a 'Moving Colony.'
Time in the memory flowed relentlessly.
He didn't witness the entirety of the battle.
It was as if time paused only at the most crucial moments for him to observe.
Like a carriage speeding down a road, violently halting with impossible force at key intervals.
Then, when it moved again, everything blurred past without any sense of acceleration.
"Who are you going to save?"
Someone's question hammered into his ears.
'I couldn't answer.'
It wasn't Enkrid speaking, but the other ego.
The moment had arrived where she could only save one of two people.
It was an agonizing, horrific choice.
Even if she screamed that she made the right call, the chilling truth remained immutable.
The female Ferryman made her choice.
As a direct result, someone died.
Kukuku, the Ferryman mocked 'her'.
"Aaaaaaaah!"
A scream of sheer agony tore through the air.
A wife wept for her lost husband.
A husband wept for his lost wife.
A child cried for their parents, and parents screamed for their child.
It was devastating.
It was wretched.
Amidst that suffocating despair, the Ferryman urged her to repeat 'today'.
"Endure it again. Keep suffering through it."
She would.
She ground her teeth and forced herself to stand.
'Somehow.'
She fought tooth and nail.
She desperately clung to the realizations she had made right before giving up, but did that bring the dead back to life?
'Was my choice the right one?'
She was tormented by it.
But within the memory Enkrid perceived, the moment she finally gave up was never shown.
Instead, a vivid memory of pushing her Will-manipulation techniques to the absolute limit flooded his mind.
The blade of a spear swung at a Behemoth immune to fire.
Chopping and crushing them one by one was a losing battle.
The sheer number of Behemoths she had to butcher vastly outmatched her stamina.
'What do I do?'
She agonized, desperately searching for a method.
She stood her ground among her slaughtered comrades, gripping her spear, forcing herself to take one step at a time.
A single scene crystallized in the memory.
Kneeling on the ground, she gripped a terrifyingly thick spear in her right hand, using it as a crutch.
She slowly raised her bowed head.
A fierce, piercing light burned in her eyes.
She was the executioner who brought an end to what historians called the 'Era of Behemoths.'
"Now I understand."
Her voice murmured in the memory.
Before he realized it, he had separated from her body.
Enkrid took a step back and observed her.
The woman, the Ferryman, the knight who survived the Era of Behemoths.
She lingered in the memories of the past for a brief moment.
She had figured it out far too late, but she had finally found a way to fight the enemy.
However, her mind had already been ground to dust.
Knowing this, she merely perfected the technique and threw her life away.
More accurately, her sheer talent had forced the technique to completion on its own.
With hollow, dead eyes, she mechanically refined what she had learned and realized, perfecting the art in a single day.
Because throwing herself into the slaughter meant she didn't have to think about her lost comrades and the people she had failed, she spent her final hours as a blood-crazed berserker.
She slaughtered what she presumed to be the Root's main body and brought her life to a violent end.
She locked herself in a prison enveloped by the darkness of the abyss.
After that final moment passed, she drifted, floating aimlessly, forgetting even who she was.
She existed solely as a fragment of the Ferryman.
Then, her memories awoke.
You could say that while watching a truly amusing bastard fight, she had suddenly remembered who she originally was.
Of course, it was a meaningless tale for a mortal to know.
"I told you I figured it out, you sons of bitches."
Along with the woman's muttered curse in the memory...
Crack—
The image of the woman raising her head fractured and shattered.
Enkrid watched as the broken shards crumbled, scattered, and reformed into a single person.
He was suddenly back in the forest clearing.
"If you can change its nature, you should know how to apply it, right?"
She stepped forward and spoke.
Enkrid understood exactly what she was trying to pass on to him.
He didn't even need to strain himself; hadn't she just shown him directly through the memory?
It was the advanced application of Nature Transformation.
However, a thought crossed his mind.
Haven't I already been applying it?
As if reading his mind, the woman's lips curled up into a smirk.
It was the same jovial smile.
But now, he knew that exuding confidence through that smile was merely a desperate attempt to hide the fragile self trembling beneath the surface.
She spoke, her voice laced with amusement.
"You're sloppy, kid. This is your second lesson. Master it. It was my specialty. The Nature Transformation: Wave."
Since Enkrid had scoured her memories, he had essentially experienced it with his own body once already.
"Alright, let's see it."
A demonstration wouldn't be necessary.
The Ferryman waited in anticipation, and Enkrid promptly disappointed her.
"Hup."
It didn't work.
He lightly thrust his sword, tapping the wooden stick resembling a spear that the woman held.
The stick, which should have vibrated violently and exploded from the Wave, merely shuddered briefly before stilling.
"I said, do it."
The Ferryman repeated.
Even though this was a dream, he had plenty of experience training in this state.
The disconnect between this realm and reality wouldn't be an issue.
The core of it all was understanding the principle and executing it.
"Your talent is truly abysmal. How did a guy who reached the level of a knight and unlocked Induless end up this pathetic?"
After dozens of similar, failed attempts, the Ferryman sighed.
Enkrid ignored her insults and relentlessly repeated the motion.
He poured all his focus into digesting what she had taught him.
"This is agonizing to watch. How have you managed to survive this long? The Goddess of Fortune must be deeply in love with you."
Enduring her intermittent complaints, he slowly began to grasp the new concept.
If an absolute refusal to surrender could be considered a weapon, then Enkrid fought wielding the greatest weapon on the continent.
'It's similar to the technique Ragna hit me with.'
Enkrid recalled the spar he had with Ragna after the fight with Aspen.
Ragna had used a very similar technique, which Enkrid had barely blocked with his Wave-Breaking Sword.
"Do not compare my Wave to that clumsy parlor trick," the female Ferryman snapped.
Enkrid entirely agreed.
'A technique every knight learns to use a little bit once they reach a certain level.'
Everyone could perform a basic Sword Echo.
It was the technique of sending a shockwave through the vibration of the weapon.
Ragna had utilized vibration and shockwaves to amplify the cutting power of his blade.
'Taken a step further, you can use those vibrations to violently shake the opponent's entire body.'
By delving deep into the concept of shockwaves, a new path opened up.
What the female Ferryman demonstrated was a step far beyond even that.
'This Wave obliterates whatever it touches.'
She transformed the Will inside her body to mimic the properties of water, then violently shook it.
She transferred that destructive vibration into her opponent, detonating them from the inside out.
Unless the enemy countered with an equal or greater level of Will, they would collapse.
She was demanding he push his manipulation of Will to that terrifying extreme.
Enkrid relentlessly repeated the process of translating his mental understanding into physical execution.
'Fascinating.'
The female Ferryman watched him.
The man before her endlessly cycled through thoughts and attempts.
He never stopped thinking, and he never stopped moving, no matter the circumstance.
If his willpower ran dry, he would sink.
That would be the end.
But that simply didn't happen.
'He truly doesn't know the meaning of the word surrender.'
The Ferryman had seen this sight countless times before, yet she found herself enjoying it all over again.
The current Enkrid looked like a starving beast that had just been tossed the most exquisite piece of meat.
In short, he was a spectacular sight.
She had borrowed a mere sliver of time.
It was a meeting taking place entirely within the span of accelerated thought.
By exercising her 'right to speak' in this moment, her voice would be silenced until the collective Ferryman finally gave up its twisted game.
"Are you truly throwing away your remaining time for such a trivial amusement?" another voice of the Ferryman echoed.
To the Ferryman, there was no joy left in existence other than observing.
To sacrifice one's very ability to perceive the world, just to intervene for a fleeting second, was an act of supreme idiocy.
The purple light from the lantern illuminated her gray, pallid skin.
The woman didn't even bother looking back as she answered.
"Yeah. I believe it's worth it."
"Yet another foolish choice."
Hearing the condemnation, she closed her eyes.
Her time was rapidly running out.
The tiny pocket of space she had wedged open within the accelerated thoughts began to collapse.
"I've learned it well," Enkrid finally spoke, having grasped the rough mechanics of the technique.
"Yeah. See you around."
I will see him again.
We will cross paths eventually.
The woman truly believed it.
With those final words, Enkrid opened his eyes in reality.
The moment his eyes snapped open, Dunbakel's lips filled his vision.
He shoved her rapidly approaching face away with his hand.
"Don't you need to be a beautiful princess to wake the sleeping prince with a kiss?"
"It wasn't a kiss. I was trying to bite you awake."
"If the Lord of the Fairies saw that, she would have sentenced you to death."
Enkrid said as he pushed himself up.
How long had he been unconscious?
It couldn't have been very long.
If one asked why he thought so...
"Did you take a nap because you were sleepy?"
Rem was still tossing out jokes.
Within the dream, Enkrid had peered into the past, grasped the true nature of their enemy, and mastered the technique needed to annihilate them.
"Where is my sword?"
"Over there."
They had been pushed back by the horde of massive monsters.
Enkrid couldn't see Night Stroll anywhere.
Well, if it was lying on the ground somewhere ahead, he just had to go pick it up.
Enkrid tightened the straps of the monster-scale gauntlets he had worn instead of his usual cloth ones.
It was time to fight the Audin way.
***
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