It was a dream. Even though he was clearly aware of that, the sensation of wind brushing across his skin felt too real.
The mage Eudokia appeared, standing with an army of thousands of steel golems at his back, and asked,
"Can you really destroy this many golems all by yourself?"
He described it as thousands because that was how it felt, but honestly, it was hard to count them.
To gauge their approximate size and density, he would probably have to take some high hill and look down from above to get any sense of the scale.
So the golems blocking Enkrid's path might have numbered in the tens of thousands.
"Really? Do you think that's possible?"
The voice overlapped itself. Enkrid thought on the question, and after thinking, found an answer.
No matter how many golems there were, only one person was controlling them.
"Do I need to destroy all of them? I just need to kill you."
He said it as if it were nothing. Since he had acquired a talent for spell cutting, it was reasonable for him to have gained confidence now when facing mages.
So he could just as easily have answered that a few thousand golems meant nothing, that all he had to do was cut down every last core, but Enkrid did not say that. From the road split into left and right, he found and chose another unseen path. At the root of that judgment was one thought.
Whatever I have, I should still be careful where I need to be careful and prepare where I need to prepare.
Among Frogs, Luagarne truly must have been a genius. What she had said remained in so many places like this, lending strength to Enkrid.
"The moment you feel the most confident is the moment you're most careless. The time you think you know best is the time you know least. That doesn't mean panic for no reason. It means be careful where you need to be careful and prepare where you need to prepare."
If you go out unguarded, convinced you will win no matter what, you invite needless harm. A mere shift in mindset is enough to make that happen.
If he meant to set his Will straight, harden his resolve, and accomplish an impossible goal, then he could not afford to overlook even such tiny fragments.
'Do your best even in small things.'
That was the foundation of mindset. Rather than thinking of them as mere easy golems, he considered whether there was any need to spend strength on them in the first place.
Luagarne had been right.
At Enkrid's answer, Eudokia's face twisted. It crumpled like paper, then burst with a pop. At the same time, the golems all collapsed and vanished in a clatter.
This was the kind of opponent you just couldn't reason with.
The opponent, Eudokia—or no, more likely something presumed to be one of the Ferryman's tricks—had been speaking in concepts.
No matter what he did, there would be no end. In the end, the final stretch of his life would amount to nothing more than grappling with golems until it ran out.
The golems had no life, and even if he killed them hundreds of times, they would revive hundreds of times. In the end, that was what a wall symbolized.
Climb over one wall, and another appears.
That was what the Ferryman had said, but Enkrid answered it with his own tactical way of thinking.
And that answer had in fact been correct. It was the only way through a road blocked by a dead mage and a golem army.
The Ferryman had argued a question with no answer, but Enkrid answered by stepping beyond the contradiction built into the question itself.
How are you going to kill golems that keep reviving? Are you just going to keep cutting them down?
No. I'm going to find the reason they keep appearing and cut that down.
That was the conversation in summary.
Purple light intruded through the pitch dark darkness, the ground changed into a heaving river, and a boat rose beneath his feet.
The Ferryman, holding an oar in one hand, asked without emotion,
"You know the end has already been decided."
Enkrid recalled the Ferryman he had seen before. Excluding those who had whined and pleaded for their wishes to be granted, seven had remained.
One of them was presumed to be Zaiden the Spell Butcher, so this was probably one of the remaining six.
They were a group and one, and one while also the whole, so there was no particular need to divide them, but still.
"How has it been decided?"
Did they, like Zaiden, want something too?
Zaiden had longed for peace because he regretted the years he had spent living in madness. You have to know happiness to know unhappiness, and know unhappiness to know happiness.
Zaiden's life had been like that. That was why he had wished for an unchanging state that knew no happiness. He never wanted to become unhappy again.
Then what about them? In the span of tossing out that short question, thoughts like that crossed his mind.
"In the end, you'll remain trapped in a painful today. If that's how it's going to be, I'm telling you to stop here. It can't be done anyway. No one can do it, so what makes you think you can?"
It was pessimism layered with both unhappiness and anxiety. Enkrid looked quietly at the Ferryman. Gray skin cracked like drought stricken earth, jet black eyes, and only the violet lamp swaying and flickering dimly.
"What were you?"
Enkrid did not answer the Ferryman as he normally would. Before, he might have brushed it off with something like, "I see," or "All right, next failure," but instead of saying that this time, he asked, and the Ferryman revealed the color of those eyes inside those black sockets in the gray skin.
"What?"
The Ferryman asked back. In that moment, the eyes changed. Blue—no, sky blue. Pale blue eyes spilled light.
"What did you want?"
At that question crossing the boundary, the Ferryman's skin crumbled away and scattered, revealing pure white skin beneath.
Eyes beyond blue, closer to turquoise or sky blue, white and clear skin, a nose bridge sharp as a blade, and looks beyond merely balanced—looks as though a god had sculpted them.
A face so clear it almost seemed airy.
Enkrid had a rough idea of how his own face appeared to others. Even knowing that, he judged the face before him to be a step above his own.
"Your face..."
"Why, does being born like this seem like a blessing? You ought to know better than anyone that it can just as easily be a curse."
A beautiful common born woman's face was not a weapon but a weakness. Beauty too outstanding was bound to attract bandits or doglike noble lords.
It was not that different for men. Enkrid knew that too. When he wandered with mercenary bands, the people who came after him had not all been women.
"Still, your looks really are..."
"Yes, exceptional. Just like yours."
"No, right now you've got me beat."
Objectively, it was simply a different kind of appeal. Put simply, if Enkrid's face and presence were those of a man, then the Ferryman before him looked more like a boy. Both were striking all the same. If Rem had been beside them listening to this conversation, he would have told them to cut the crap.
Because the two of them praising each other's looks really was ridiculous.
"So what do you want?"
Enkrid asked again.
"You want to know? Even though knowing will do you no good? When it's obvious you'll meet your end in this painful, miserable today anyway, what would you even do with that knowledge?"
The Ferryman was the same as ever. That pessimism could not be driven off with a single sentence. Enkrid merely spoke part of the thoughts he had now sorted out for himself.
"I'm curious about your dreams too."
Everyone has dreams, and everyone has the right to achieve them.
Then what about those who had died and were bound to today?
A still silence fell. Even the river stopped heaving for a moment, as if it too were listening in on their conversation. It was the Ferryman who broke that not so long silence.
"In the end, you'll become like us too."
The boy handsome enough to shake an entire nation if dressed as a girl shook his head. At some point, the Ferryman's robe had shrunk to fit that body.
The build was clearly smaller than Enkrid's. The top of his head would barely have reached his chest.
"Still, if you're that curious, then yes, maybe someday there'll be a chance to tell you. But for now, this is what I'll say."
"What is it?"
"You're going to hit a wall anyway, so if that's the case, stay in a good today while you can. There's no reason to face painful things."
The Ferryman really was the Ferryman.
Rather than despair and shudder at suffering, the Ferryman urged him to remain in today. It was something he had heard often.
That was how the dream ended. It was not exactly a pleasant dream, but Enkrid shook it off easily.
It was early dawn. When he got up and went to train as usual, Riervan approached.
"You're here?"
"I'm going too, as part of the king's escort."
"Then you'll have to improve at least a little, won't you?"
Those words were always frightening, but Riervan nodded.
Enkrid put several Royal Guards besides Riervan through concentrated training, and remained diligent with his own training as well.
"Not forgetting to train every single day is a good habit."
Valphir Valmung joined them there too.
"Hey, Beast, let's have some fun too."
Rem called out to him. The two of them happily went into a spar. They were not risking their lives or anything. They were taking it easy and going easy on each other.
The axe brushed past Valmung's head, or Valmung's club slammed down right beside Rem's foot, but for those two, this counted as lightly warming up.
"Do you use sorcery? First time I've seen sorcery at this level."
"You've been hiding something interesting yourself."
Even though both were sparring while keeping a few tricks concealed, they sized each other up through sheer insight. It was an interesting sight.
Enkrid watched their spar from start to finish. Watching a match between high level fighters was helpful in itself.
Valmung fought Rem with methods not too different from the ones he used against Enkrid, and his skill with blunt weapons was truly outstanding.
That was how the morning passed, and by the time the sun stood high overhead and they sat down to lunch—
"Esther, when we get to the Empire, let's just live however you want, doing nothing but magical research."
That scheming mage was acting up again.
What the hell was that bastard's name?
Enkrid looked at him while drinking the broth of a restorative stew made with ground meat.
The rich, reddish broth was called bloody stew because it was said to look just like human blood.
Since it was actually made by mixing in sheep's blood and calf's blood, the name suited it well enough.
Enkrid spooned up several more mouthfuls of the stew, chewed the meat, crushed and swallowed even the clotted lumps of blood, then turned his gaze.
The mage with eyes drooping at an angle he found deeply unpleasant came into view. The name was Nephir Teshir. If his name were to be carved on his gravestone under Mage of Lewd Glances, then the name ought to be carved too.
That was the minimum courtesy due the dead.
"What, does he seriously piss you off that much?"
Rem snickered beside him and said it low enough for only Enkrid to hear. Instead of answering, Enkrid just kept moving his spoon. Why is this so good?
"Don't tell me you're pushing me away because of that dumb swordsman."
Nephir Teshir trailed after Esther everywhere. He was a mage, and mages were intelligent. No matter how lacking in awareness he might be, there was no way he didn't know whom Esther followed.
Even after seeing, right in front of his eyes, Esther cut the meat pie served with the stew, place it neatly on a plate, and set it in front of Enkrid, if he still didn't understand, then the problem wasn't awareness. It was that he was walking around without eyes.
"Yeah."
Esther's answer was brief. She did not even turn her gaze. She too was thoroughly absorbed in eating the bloody stew.
"Why?"
Nephir asked through clenched teeth. There was a wronged note in his voice. Like anyone faced with something they could not understand, he was the same. Enkrid briefly considered warning him that if he kept that up, his teeth might shatter, then decided not to bother.
"Your vessel is different."
That was the answer that came back.
His vessel? In what way? Nephir Teshir was a promising mage. The Empire did not raise only knights. It also had the Mage Tower.
The circle of mages who had once organized something called the Tower of Wisdom on the continent had collapsed completely, but having learned from that failure, the Empire had successfully established the institution called the Mage Tower.
In other words, the Mage Tower was a gathering of people supported by the Empire while they researched spells.
And even within that tower, Nephir Teshir himself had been counted among its finest talents. The talk of vessels wounded his pride.
He and Esther had crossed paths before. They had worked together as mages and comrades, and when she had been hunted, he had helped her.
Of course, he had received more help from her in return, but through the things they had gone through together and the time they had spent together, Nephir believed there was something special between Esther and himself.
"Vessel?"
Nephir asked again.
Because of old memories, Esther had answered him kindly a few times before, but now she was truly tired of it. For her, even this much of a reply was already showing considerable favor.
To anyone who didn't know better, it might have looked like she was simply dismissing him with curt answers.
In any case, even that vague goodwill had now been completely used up.
"You, mage, stop bothering me."
Esther said.
She could not even remember his name. Nephir Teshir's eyes filled with jealousy and sadness.
This was all because of that stupid swordsman, wasn't it?
Mage Nephir turned his gaze. Toward Enkrid, the swordsman with black hair and blue eyes.
Enkrid was looking at him while calmly moving his spoon. He said nothing in particular and made no gesture, but it looked as though he were looking down on him.
Yeah. I've put up with enough.
With resolve, Nephir opened his mouth.
"I challenge you to a duel. See me at the training grounds tonight, you swordsman."
He said it to Enkrid, and Valphir Valmung, who had been eating beside them, looked at the mage while chewing, then turned his eyes back toward Seriana.
After the meal, they were supposed to discuss the route into the Empire and make plans. He had looked over because he was wondering whether he ought to quietly suppress that hot blooded youth, but Seriana was not looking at Nephir. She was looking at Enkrid instead.
"Sir Knight, would you accept my request?"
Was she telling him to accept the duel challenge?
A trace of mischief mixed into Seriana's eyes as she spoke. It was not an expression one often saw from the woman called the Iron Blooded Executor. Normally she was cold and said only what needed to be said.
If Enkrid refused, then fine, he could step in at that point.
Valmung took it easy in his mind. He too was, by nature, not the kind of man suited to political maneuvering.
"I will."
Enkrid answered flatly.
"You truly are a charming man, Sir Knight. You're different from what I heard."
At the words Seriana added, the witch's gaze shifted to her.
Pure white skin, brown hair, red cheeks full of life even within measured movements, a human woman overflowing with charm.
"Do you know each other?"
Esther asked, swallowing a bite of pie.
"No."
Enkrid answered and chewed a bite of the roasted asparagus served on the side.
"I've only heard of you as well."
Seriana tossed that out lightly. The person she had only heard of was Enkrid. Her eyes did not leave him.
That was the end of the conversation over the meal. A strange current passed through the room, the kind anyone might have felt.
"I'm looking forward to the next part."
Rem, having picked up on that current, showed interest. It was a perspective befitting a mad barbarian.