After everything that had happened in this incident, Enkrid found himself thinking it would be good if the standing military forces kept in the capital grew stronger.
And he was not the sort of man who stopped at thinking.
So he acted immediately.
To summarize, the servants had been dealt with, and there was still a little time left before the Empire's envoys arrived, so Enkrid used that spare time for the sake of the people who protected the kingdom.
This was the first part of that.
"How ghastly."
That was Aisia's verdict as she watched.
"My thoughts exactly. Though the fact that he stepped up out of good intentions makes it even worse. Rem doesn't look like he's here out of good intentions, though."
Andrew replied.
"I can hear you."
Rem said flatly.
Aisia gave him a worried look.
"That was the point. He's not the kind of man who'll go harder because he heard it or go easy because he didn't."
Andrew knew Rem.
And sure enough, Rem heard every word and nodded happily.
"Exactly right. Let's see how much you've improved. Watching you fight earlier nearly made me sigh. To think this is the level of someone I once taught."
He directed that at Andrew.
To members of the Royal Guard like Riervan and the others, it was a ridiculous thing to hear.
Andrew Gardner was a nobleman, captain of the watch, and setting Aisia aside, one of the strongest people in the capital.
A member of the Royal Guard with a sense of honor spoke up.
"That's a bit much."
Another, one who liked talking strategy and tactics, said,
"Is the point to rattle him with insults?"
Riervan thought:
'No, I think he's just saying whatever he feels like.'
Out of everyone present, he had the best read on the situation.
"Next."
Enkrid said.
"Better to get hit by the cudgel sooner rather than later."
Another member of the Royal Guard muttered that and stepped forward. He was a plain faced man who had not lost his smile even after seeing his commander go down.
Thwack!
This time, one punch was enough.
The man had barely started to lift his spear before he crumpled to the spot. Enkrid closed the distance in an instant and dropped him with a single short, light punch. Another soldier rolled across the dirt.
This one lost consciousness outright.
"Not enough tension. Put him in the ambush response training course."
"Oh, that's a good one."
Rem sounded pleased.
Ambush response training meant standing still and getting beaten until you stopped passing out.
Strength training was easy enough, just crush the body off to one side with rocks piled on top of it. Rem did not need to lift a finger for that.
He preferred the kind of training where he could pummel someone and enjoy the feel of it.
Naturally, only when he was the one doing the hitting.
"It's excessive. They came to have their skills checked, and maybe even pick up a lesson, and instead you're just beating them down. Isn't this a bit too brainless, even for a knight?"
Someone might have said that.
Absurdly enough, no one did.
The Mad Order of Knights had built up too much prestige by now for anyone here to spit out nonsense like that.
And had they not, just recently, seen a battle in front of the walls where lightning seemed to fall from the sky and the ground shook as if the earth itself were quaking?
There were very few here who had not witnessed that fight.
"It's been a while."
Next came Riervan.
Enkrid remembered his name.
Once, back when he had wandered the kingdom begging for swordsmanship, Riervan had stood at his side and kept others away from him.
After that, they had crossed paths again during the civil war and through various other events, and Enkrid remembered the spirit Riervan had shown in their sparring too.
Whoosh.
Riervan barely saw the blade Enkrid swung at him.
No doubt it had been precisely adjusted to his level.
Clang!
The instant he blocked it, the tremor ran through him from wrist to elbow, shoulder, and all the way into his head.
The vibration was even worse than when he had faced Wavebreaker.
He could have vomited and collapsed on the spot and no one would have blamed him, but Riervan cut his breath short, exhaled, and tightened his wrist to sever the vibration. At the same time, he stabilized his center, braced his mind, and drew up his Will.
That Will gathered in his wrist, and the spearblade in his hands dispersed the force Enkrid had transmitted into him.
'I'll redirect it.'
He let it flow off smoothly, and whatever remained he endured with the body he had trained.
After sparring with Enkrid, he had worked for this.
He had stacked up one day on top of another.
"Pass."
The moment he finally heard that from Enkrid's mouth, joy welled up in him.
Enkrid spoke and moved his feet.
Riervan assumed it was another low kick and focused strength into his legs, but the foot flew like a swallow.
The angle changed from low to high and struck him in the head.
Tap.
The top of Enkrid's foot grazed the crown of his head.
Riervan collapsed where he stood, nearly dropping, but jammed the spearshaft into the ground and endured once more.
Overall, his conditioning's improved.
Thinking that, Enkrid said,
"Put him in technique response training."
"Oh."
Rem rounded his lips as he reacted.
After that, Enkrid kept sparring without pause and swiftly cleared through all twenty before Andrew stepped up.
"You've gotten better."
Enkrid said with Today angled in his hand.
"I'm still a long way off."
Andrew replied, quietly enduring the pressure coming at him and shaking it off.
Interesting.
Watching Andrew's method, Enkrid thought just that.
He redirected, then redirected again.
He redirected everything and waited for an opening.
He was the type who did not rely on deception, but focused wholly on his swordsmanship itself.
Men like that crossed the wall in the end.
That was what Enkrid's instincts told him, and now he could say the same thing as settled theory.
'By recognizing the wall in front of him and focusing on what he has.'
Not taking many branching paths, but committing to one.
Advancing by concentrating on his strength.
That was one of the finest dispositions a person could have before becoming a knight.
Then once skill suddenly jumped there, you matched the shape of that specialty and trained broadly again, like drawing a circle, improving overall technique and refining the body.
After tempering your art that way, you sharpened one specialty again.
After that, you repeated the cycle.
That was the path toward becoming a knight.
The reason Andrew's swordsmanship now leaned so far toward softness was mainly because Aisia was the one he sparred against most often.
Enkrid saw straight through the process and glimpsed the future.
Then he drove down on Andrew's sword with raw force.
Admiring him was no reason to go easy.
Andrew tried to redirect that crushing weight and failed, and a strange sound burst out of his mouth.
"Kwaak."
It was the inevitable noise of strength overwhelming him and the air trapped in his lungs escaping all at once.
"A duck?"
Hearing that, Rem commented.
A few members of the Royal Guard who had at least managed not to pass out let out snorts of laughter.
That laughter only came because Baron Gardner, in his usual role as captain of the watch, always wore such a prickly expression.
"They're laughing?"
Rem looked at those who laughed and lifted his axe.
Pathetic bastards. Laughing?
Last came Aisia.
The Will carried in her three slashes was sharp and heavy.
Enkrid kicked her in the shin and said,
"You have one thing to do. From now on, use Will even when you eat and drink."
"What?"
"Instead of putting Will into three slashes, start by putting it into three movements of a fork."
"You're telling me to use Will while eating salad?"
Enkrid did not even bother nodding.
His tone made it clear he thought it was obvious.
"Damn it. If you say do it, then I'll do it."
Aisia, too, was not far from becoming a knight.
Whether it would take one more step or two, whether she would reach it in the end or not, Enkrid could not say for sure.
But he believed she would become a knight eventually.
It was only after he spent three days driving all those visitors ragged that the Empire's envoy finally arrived.
***
"We didn't come here looking for a fight, but before anything else I feel like I have to ask why your side looks like this. And that's after fighting our own nasty battle on the way here."
The man standing at the front of the Imperial delegation was someone Enkrid already knew.
Valphir Valmung.
The owner of a pressure like a club bristling with spikes.
They had briefly traveled together before, when Enkrid was leaving the Zaun family, and at the time they had hunted down an Imperial deserter together.
A knight who had crossed the wall.
By Enkrid's standards, he was one of those true monsters for whom labels like beginner, intermediate, or advanced ceased to mean much.
To receive the envoys, Crang, Marcus, and the Duke of Octo had all come out together, with the Royal Guard lined up behind them.
And thanks to several days of being trained by Enkrid, there was a hard edge to all of them.
That was why Valmung had said it.
Yeah, to an outsider, it probably did look like they were the ones itching for a fight.
Enkrid thought the same.
Valphir Valmung narrowed his eyes.
He did not look like a man who would back down if they actually said yes.
Kraiss took in the fact that the delegation was not all that large, that they had not arrived with some merchant company trailing behind them, and that their clothes were torn as if they had been through battle.
Setting aside the minor details, one fact stood out.
What did the dirty clothes and the smell of burning say?
'They were attacked on the way here too.'
By whom?
What was the point of even asking? It had to be Astrail or the demons' servants.
Valphir Valmung raised his presence to the limit, then let it ease.
Then he spoke.
"If we meant to jump you, we'd have done it already and all at once. So I'll ask plainly, King of Naurillia. Are you on the side of the Demon lands?"
Enkrid did not know Valphir Valmung well, but he did know one thing.
That man was not especially good at circling around a matter.
He asked the question the way someone swung a club, and Crang answered.
"I'm on my own side."
What did that simple answer mean?
That he would not bow his head easily under pressure from the Empire, and that no matter what the Demon lands did, he would protect what was his.
That resolve burned like a rising flame.
"So your side went through a round of it too."
Duke Marcus said, and Valmung gave a shrug that said, Isn't it obvious?
The commander of the Royal Guard heard the exchange and, while keeping his tension intact, showed no particular hostility.
Just as the Imperial knight had said, their king had not declared them enemies.
They had not come here asking to fight, and Crang was not trying to start one right now either.
It was only a brief conversation.
"Another fight?"
From behind Valmung came the voice of a neatly dressed man as he revealed a head of curly blond hair.
His eyes drooped slightly, and he wore a shirt and coat, carrying a straight black staff that was glossy enough to reflect the light.
'Spellcaster.'
A mage.
Enkrid recognized him as a spellcaster at a glance.
The man looked tired as he gazed this way.
Then his eyes met Esther's.
"You."
The man's eyes widened at the sight of her.
So they knew each other.
That was what Enkrid thought as he silently watched.
"You're still alive?"
Esther asked with genuine curiosity.
The question sounded like she was asking why a bastard who obviously should have died was still breathing, so Enkrid's hand went to the grip of his sword, wondering whether this was another one of those bastards who had once come at Esther babbling about stars or whatever.
"Hey."
Valmung caught that movement and put a hand on his club.
Rem, never one to fall behind when it came to fighting spirit, added his own comment.
"If you pull that out, you die."
Right before the situation could turn into complete chaos, Crang spoke.
"Lady Esther, is he an enemy?"
First things first, shouldn't they settle the definition?
"No."
Esther answered.
Since he had no particular desire to pry into their relationship, Crang held his tongue, but the curly haired blond mage opened his mouth and said,
"Esther, we really are bound by fate. I told you we'd meet again. We're destined to be together. A pair chosen by the goddess of fortune."
Enkrid had lowered his hand from the grip of his sword, but raised it again.
That sounded like provocation no matter how you looked at it.
All that talk about fate sounded like a string of curses.
"Hey. What are you trying to do here?"
Seeing Enkrid's pressure loosen and tighten again, Valphir growled in irritation.
A great many feelings were packed into that irritation.
Originally, the reason he had joined the delegation was to tilt the atmosphere their way through naked force.
'This bastard...'
In the time since they last met, Enkrid's presence had sharpened even further.
He did not waver for anyone.
And now, all by himself, he was kneading the atmosphere flowing between the two groups however he pleased.
It was a feat accomplished by nothing more than the way he placed his hand on his sword grip, then took it off again.
At this moment, in this place, he held the greatest influence.
That had not been something Valmung expected.
When they parted at the Zaun family estate, Enkrid had not felt this clean edged and solid.
Valmung was about to glare again, but Enkrid naturally let his presence ease.
"Then let's go inside and talk."
Crang spoke at the exact same moment.
The way Enkrid had quietly shifted his presence made it look as though he had predicted what his king was about to say.