Chapter 944 - A Tribute
Dunbakel's heightened senses finally caught on to what Enkrid was doing.
'Vibration? A shockwave?'
To be precise, she felt it in the movement of the Will condensed along the edge of his blade.
The Will infused into his sword was oscillating at a speed completely invisible to the naked eye.
Enkrid was battering the enemy with that violently vibrating steel.
With a single strike, a monster's body crumbled like a bone-dry biscuit.
The disintegration spread across its flesh like black ink blooming on dry cloth.
In the blink of an eye, a colossal beast fractured into pieces and scattered across the ground.
Enkrid pivoted on his left foot, swinging his sword in a wide arc.
The three ogres caught in that slash each lost a leg.
They had been acting in perfect synchronization, thrusting their right legs forward while simultaneously swinging their massive clubs.
The moment their legs were severed, their bodies began to shatter and disintegrate from the stumps upward, collapsing into heaps of ruin.
Chunks of the black slime rained down like pulverized stone, while other globs hit the ground with the heavy, sickening thud of coagulated grease.
The moment he cut down the three ogres, Enkrid launched himself forward, punched three gaping holes into a Cyclops's torso, and slipped past.
In his wake, monsters collapsed in droves.
It looked as if a giant who had spent his entire life chopping wood had suddenly decided to clear a forest with a single, devastating swing of his axe.
Dunbakel found a wide-open path stretching out before her.
The ground was still a muddy, viscous mess, and the scattered boulders and violently leaning trees were still a nuisance.
However, compared to the impenetrable wall of flesh from moments ago, this newly cleared path of slaughtered monsters could easily be called a broad avenue.
"Well I'll be damned, he built us a grand avenue. Let's go, Smelly Carriage. The road is open," Rem quipped.
He had reached a similar conclusion to Dunbakel, expressing his sheer disbelief in his own way.
Dunbakel began walking down the path Enkrid had carved.
Enkrid swung his sword in all directions a few more times.
When a brief opening finally presented itself, he opened his mouth.
The words that spilled out were an expression of pure, unadulterated joy.
"Ah, this is so much fun."
Wave was the natural enemy of the Root—or rather, of Silence.
***
One day, a single tree had been infected by the corrupting air of a Demonic Realm.
Following that, the tree manifested a primal instinct for survival.
Eat.
Swallow.
Adapt.
Through these three core directives, the tree learned how to survive.
It survived by devouring and assimilating everything in its surroundings.
Survival became its ultimate, singular purpose.
While other Demons or Lords of Demonic Realms sought ascension, Silence valued only one thing: immortality.
Even if everything else died, vanished, and rotted away to nothing, it would endure, outlast, and remain.
That was the long-cherished ambition of Silence.
Of course, Enkrid didn't care about any of that.
In fact, he didn't even know it.
He was simply reveling in the swordsmanship he had learned from the Ferryman.
It was a technique that wouldn't easily work against opponents at the level of a true knight.
But against a colonial-type monster completely incapable of properly utilizing Will?
It was the absolute apex predator.
What can a mouse do in front of a cat?
No, that was the wrong question.
What can a mouse do in front of a tiger?
That was the reality of this slaughter.
He forced his Will to vibrate at a microscopic level and injected it directly into his opponent.
Once the Will began to oscillate, it traveled through the monster's slime-blood, violently shaking and fundamentally collapsing its structural integrity from the inside out.
If it had been a human, they would have contorted their body and resisted the moment they were struck.
Unless the strike perfectly targeted a vital organ, they might have gotten away with just a broken bone or two.
But the bodies of the monsters blocking his path right now weren't nearly that complex.
Aside from being massive and incredibly hard, their internal structure was simplistic, completely lacking a nervous system.
They were grotesque sculptures molded using slime for blood and tree roots for flesh.
Because of this overly simplistic structure, the Wave propagated through their entire bodies at an unprecedented speed.
It was impossible for them to mitigate the impact.
The swordsmanship—forged specifically to annihilate them—shone brilliantly.
'Fascinating.'
When he swung his sword infused with the Wave, everything died.
Even a grazing hit was lethal.
That was the terrifying beauty of the technique.
More than anything, the sheer mechanics of the technique were incredibly fun to execute.
The Ferryman had called it an advanced application of Nature Transformation, and she was absolutely right.
It was far more useful as a tool to train and refine one's mastery of Will than as a practical combat technique against skilled opponents.
At its core, it didn't deviate wildly from a basic Sword Echo.
The Wave adhered strictly to a three-step mastery process.
'Transform.' Change the innate nature of the Will.
'Vibrate.' Oscillate it violently.
'Inject.' Slam that perfectly formed Will directly into the opponent's body.
Enkrid had seen similar techniques several times before.
He had even heard the theoretical explanations.
Audin's Divine Penetration was similar, and the Heart Destruction demonstrated by Cypress, the Guardian Deity of the South, was an art born of the exact same lineage.
However, if Cypress's technique was a surgical needle aimed precisely at a single internal organ, this technique was the crushing grip of a giant violently shaking the opponent's entire body.
Enkrid carved a path and pushed forward.
Not a single monster survived in his wake.
It looked as if centuries of accumulated dust were being swept away.
The monster horde was pulverized and shattered into oblivion.
Enkrid understood the fundamental mechanics of the Demonic Realm Silence, and he knew exactly what he had to do.
The path opened because his rate of slaughter vastly outpaced their rate of regeneration.
As the horde thinned, the hidden dagger Silence had concealed was finally laid bare.
"The flowers that birth the Behemoths," Enkrid muttered.
It was a scene he had glimpsed in the Ferryman's memories.
Oval-shaped buds hung heavily from the gray branches.
Prominent blue veins pulsed across their surface, and a faint light flickered within.
A shadow was vaguely visible inside—a creature curled into a fetal position with two wings neatly folded against its back.
They were dragons still gestating in their floral wombs.
Those bastards hadn't even been born yet.
For them to fully emerge, Silence would have needed to devour a massive amount of human lives.
That was exactly why it had launched this assault.
Yes.
One of the main reasons Silence had made its move was right before his eyes.
It was to swallow all the surrounding Western cities, drastically increase its own mass, and breed a royal guard.
The dragons gestating in these plants were the elite vanguard of Silence.
"Dunbakel."
Enkrid called out to the beastkin.
The pulsing buds hanging from the gray trees were a terrifying sight, but they weren't the priority right now.
"It's still too faint," Dunbakel replied.
It was an answer to his earlier order to find the hidden scent.
This was the moment of choice.
Enkrid had to decide which direction to push from here.
"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."
He would move in whatever direction he chose until he found it.
The Ferryman's advice echoed in his mind.
Just as he was about to step forward, Rem's voice stopped him.
"Hold on."
Having released his Descent, Rem steadied his breathing.
Utilizing such heavy shamanic arts had drained his strength considerably, but he wasn't about to collapse.
He organized the lingering traces of his shamanic power and exhaled deeply.
Rem layered his intuition over the hyper-sensitivity left behind by the Wrathful Bird.
A shaman's sixth sense peers into the future.
It was a well-known Western proverb.
"Let's go straight ahead."
The only shaman in the group spoke, and simultaneously, Enkrid heard the whispered hallucination of the Ferryman who had briefly acted as his mentor.
"If you march blindly forward out of impatience, you will incur sacrifices too heavy to bear."
It was a fundamental truth of life.
While making a choice wasn't the end of the line, it was crucial to calmly assess and understand the situation before acting, rather than rushing blindly.
The Ferryman had failed to do that and lost everything.
Enkrid had taken that lesson to heart.
"That's the right answer."
The Ferryman's hallucination spoke one last time.
The braided blonde hair blurred, and the piercing green eyes faded into the darkness.
It was all just an illusion, but it felt as if he had shared a final farewell with her.
Enkrid stepped straight forward.
Gray trees and rocks physically moved to block their path.
The monsters weren't enough, so the very terrain itself was shifting to stop them.
Enkrid ruthlessly carved a path through it all.
If a tree blocked him, he cleaved the tree.
If a boulder blocked him, he shattered the boulder.
If he hadn't received the Ferryman's help, how many times would he have died and repeated 'today'?
Would he have lost one of his two companions?
If so, this was undeniably a gift from the Ferryman.
Or perhaps it was the price paid to finally fulfill the dying wish the female knight had never been able to achieve in her own lifetime.
At the very end of the path carved through monsters, trees, and stone, a massive flower loomed into view.
The core of the Demonic Realm had evolved from a tree into this colossal bloom.
Hadn't he heard there was something similar deep within the Gray Forest?
He remembered hearing a similar story when he met Roman.
Though that one had supposedly looked more like a pulsating mass of flesh.
Monsters spawned along their cleared path at a rate several times faster than before, but Enkrid's Night Stroll tore across the ground and reached the massive flower.
Kieeeeeeeek!
The monsters from behind shrieked in unison.
Flowers and trees cannot scream.
Therefore, the duplicates it had created screamed in its stead.
Wherever the blade of Night Stroll struck, massive petals shattered.
They disintegrated and scattered like brittle, dried autumn leaves.
Through the shattered petals, Enkrid spotted a dark brown, violently pulsating root.
He flipped his grip on his sword and drove it downward.
Thunk!
The blade buried itself deep.
Simultaneously, a thunderous Thump—! echoed outwards as a massive shockwave ripped through the area.
Even Enkrid's entire body vibrated violently from the sheer force.
The main body detonated, and a horrific screech echoed directly into their minds.
It was the dying scream of Silence.
This was truly the end.
The horde of monsters charging at their backs crumbled and scattered into dust.
The suffocating fog dissipated, and glorious sunlight poured down from above.
"Dawn broke," Rem noted.
His heart was churning with emotion, though he would never show it on his face.
The Demonic Realm Silence was the ancient, festering wound of the West.
Silence had mobilized twice before, and both times, an apocalyptic number of people had died.
Now, they had stared the main body directly in its face and utterly destroyed it.
'The Purple Demonic Human and the Tail Needle.'
The Purple Demonic Human had spread a curse resembling a plague, and the other was a bastard known as the Tail Needle.
When that second monster emerged, the greatest hero of the West had been slaughtered.
Those were just the two biggest incidents; Silence had murdered countless others besides them.
It had endlessly swallowed and digested the people of the West.
They had just delivered the final execution to that very Demonic Realm.
In reality, how many monsters on the level of the 'Tail Needle' had they fought just now?
There had to have been at least several hundred.
'The difference between then and now.'
It was himself and Enkrid.
And Dunbakel had undeniably played a massive role as well.
They had charged straight ahead, but if Dunbakel hadn't been there to guide them by scent, reaching this point would have been nearly impossible.
'A Life-Draining Core mixed with a Life-Force Core.'
Looking at the corrupted shamanic energy seeping from the shattered nucleus, it all made sense.
It coveted life, surviving by violently sucking the life force out of everything around it.
Yet, the only things born from that stolen life were rotting, diseased abominations.
'Disgusting bastard.'
That was exactly what Silence was in Rem's eyes.
"Good work, everyone," Rem said.
The gray trees didn't scatter like dust, nor did the rocks melt away.
It had started as the Root, a monster that evolved under the name Silence.
But having entrenched itself here for an eternity, it had already become the terrain itself.
This meant the corruption wouldn't just miraculously vanish overnight.
"The stench is gone, but..." Dunbakel said, her eyes narrowing.
She looked deeply displeased.
Rem felt the exact same thing.
So did Enkrid.
As time passed, monsters—though perhaps not identical to Silence—would undoubtedly spawn from this land again.
Completely eradicating the Demonic Realm Silence would require time.
The core was shattered, but the toxic remnants remained.
The air trapped within this area was still the foul breath of a Demonic Realm; it would eventually corrupt surrounding wildlife into demonic beasts.
'On rainy days, we'll probably see bloated drowners and things like that washing up.'
But that was a threat the warriors of the West were more than capable of handling.
It wouldn't endlessly vomit out apocalyptic hordes of monsters like it had today.
Its suffocating influence over the surrounding region would dissipate as well.
The Demonic Realm Silence was finished.
Enkrid, Rem, and Dunbakel turned and began walking back out.
On their way, they spotted Juol.
He was so utterly stunned he couldn't even speak.
"What? What is it?" Rem asked.
Juol simply pointed a trembling finger to the side.
The Demonic Realm Silence had spent centuries accumulating demonic energy from its surroundings.
Simultaneously, it had constantly emitted the toxic air of the Demonic Realm.
Now that the core was dead, the phenomenon of drawing in surrounding energy remained, but the emission of toxic air had ceased.
That bizarre imbalance birthed a miracle.
"The barley is growing. The crops are growing," Juol finally stammered.
He had just witnessed green shoots erupt from the earth and crops mature right before his eyes.
A process that should have taken an entire year had occurred in the span of a few breaths.
His explanation was an absolute mess because his brain was completely short-circuiting from shock.
Yeah, barley grew.
So what?
While Enkrid muttered to himself internally, Juol spoke again.
"It grew incredibly fast."
Just as he said, the surrounding area had transformed into a lush, vibrant field of green grass and crops.
It was definitely not a sight one expected to see in the dead of winter.
"Ah, it smells amazing," Dunbakel sighed happily.
After suffering through nothing but the putrid stench of rot inside the Demonic Realm, the vibrant, life-filled scent hitting her nose the moment she stepped out was overwhelming.
It was no wonder Dunbakel was thrilled.
A massive, genuine smile spread across her face.
"Yeah, this is incredible," Rem marveled as well.
From a shamanic perspective, he roughly understood what had just happened.
The West had been a barren wasteland for as long as anyone could remember.
Since when?
No one knew.
But one thing was certain.
Silence had always been with the West.
The history of the West began alongside Silence.
The moment it was destroyed, the original, suppressed life force inherent to this land had erupted to the surface.
'Even from a shamanic perspective, this is a genuine miracle.'
Rem couldn't help but be in awe.
Enkrid looked out over the newly formed grassland and thought to himself.
'All of them.'
They were the descendants of someone.
In the Ferryman's memories, he had seen several comrades with pitch-black hair.
The people who hadn't abandoned the fight against the Root even after the female knight had died.
Those who had inherited her will and her fight were the ones who eventually built the modern West.
They had held the line and fought here, ensuring that the Root—which evolved into Silence—never managed to swallow the rest of the continent.
The people of the West were the descendants of those ancient guardians.
"You fought well."
Enkrid spoke aloud, answering the heart of the female Ferryman in their stead.
They were all dead and gone now, but it was a quiet tribute to those who had inherited her unbreakable will.
***
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