Chapter 46 - Countless Real Battles (2)

He heard that a healer had come by since he had sustained stab and puncture wounds all over his body.

"Fortunately, they said there won't be any permanent disability. You have good luck, our Squad Leader."

Big-eyes said with a smile.

"You sound like you wanted me to get hurt."

"No, I'm worrying about you. Worrying. You should consider it an honor. You're the first man I've ever worried about, Squad Leader."

"Right."

He thought they would withdraw soon, but the allied forces were still locked in a standoff with the Principality of Aspen.

Would there be another battle?

Even if there were, it would be a story that had nothing to do with Encrid.

It was impossible to stand on the battlefield again with a body like this.

Unless he was just watching.

Big-eyes left an apple behind, and as Encrid was crunching into it, Rem soon walked in.

The entire squad was absent, leaving the barracks empty.

Rem sat next to Encrid, resting his elbows on his knees and his chin on the back of his hands.

With his lips pressed firmly together, Rem stared intently at Encrid.

"If you're planning to confess your love, I'll reject you right now."

"Don't you know I like women? If you and a woman I've never seen before fell into the water, I'd save the woman, Squad Leader. Provided she's pretty, of course."

"It's fine. I'm a good swimmer. I'll survive just fine even if you don't save me."

"Then save me later. Come to think of it, I'm not a good swimmer."

'Then what the hell was this bastard thinking when he said he'd save a drowning woman?'

Encrid thought that was very much like Rem.

"Yeah. I'll throw you a rock."

It was their usual banter. Then Rem stopped talking and stared straight at Encrid.

His gray eyes locked onto Encrid without a single waver. An unprecedented seriousness could be felt in those eyes.

"Do you have something to say?"

"How did you know it was a spell?"

*'Hm?' * Encrid hadn't expected to be asked that question here.

"Because I saw it during the reconnaissance mission."

"You guessed it was a spell just from seeing that? You seemed to be running like you knew the flagpole was the target."

He was right. That was the target. He had known everything. But he couldn't say he knew it because of the repeating today.

He needed a suitable excuse.

So he was about to make up various lies and excuses, but those gray eyes staring intently at him kept tugging at his conscience.

Even if he told the truth, Rem wouldn't believe him. But did he have to gloss over this with a complete lie?

Rem would catch onto a clumsy lie immediately. He had that intuition. Encrid didn't want to treat Rem that way.

So he mixed in some truth as he spoke.

"I used to spend time with someone from a pioneer background."

It was the truth. After all, Rem was from a pioneer background.

"I heard a few things from that friend."

This was also the truth. Because Rem had told him about spells.

"So I thought it over and made a guess."

This wasn't exactly the truth, but in a way, it was close to it.

Because instead of thinking and guessing, he had repeated today and figured it out by rolling around physically.

You could say he thought with his body instead of his head.

At least, that was what Encrid believed as he spoke.

"It seemed like the flagpole was the medium for the spell. I saw that the enemy's formation was strange before the fog rolled in, and well, after that I just charged."

"Hmm."

Why are people so easily fooled when truth is mixed with lies?

It was because the speaker was speaking with sincerity. Because it was sincere, even someone with good intuition would have a hard time finding signs of deceit in the other person's words.

Except for what he couldn't say, Encrid spoke with absolute sincerity.

Rem believed those words.

Even if he hadn't fully believed them, it wasn't something he could argue against either.

"So that was it? It was amazing that you figured it out the moment you saw it."

"What does it matter if it's a spell?"

"I was going to let you know that you shouldn't mess with stuff like that so recklessly."

"Is that so?"

Rem nodded. Encrid recalled that Rem had been absent during the battle.

They had definitely charged together, so he thought Rem would come to where he was, but that hadn't been the case. Rem had been nowhere to be seen after that.

Then he had returned to the unit.

"I'd like to ask where you went on the battlefield."

"It was nothing much. I was just so curious about the guy who set up that flagpole that I went to take a quick look."

"... You went to take a look?"

"I even had a chat with him using my axe."

Rem grinned and stepped out of the barracks.

Encrid thought back to when he had knocked down the flagpole.

That spellcaster bastard had been shaking some tinkling bell or something before quickly disappearing from sight.

He had been too busy destroying the flag to pay him any mind at the time.

It seemed the guy had been fleeing toward the rear alone after that, only to get caught by Rem's axe.

Encrid thought nothing of it and let it go.

It wasn't the first or second time Rem had acted so impulsively.

In the previous battle, he had even plunged into the enemy camp saying he was going to catch a guy called The Claw of the Hawk or whatever.

Knowing that, the Platoon Commander had cleanly excluded the troublemaker squad from their combat power.

He had only counted the remaining squads as the platoon's forces.

It was the same this time around.

However, there was something different from usual.

This time, Encrid was the one who broke formation first.

That was what made it unusual.

"Hey, you alright?"

That Platoon Commander visited the barracks.

"Did you come to visit the sick? Aren't we returning?"

Encrid asked abruptly. The Platoon Commander shrugged.

"Orders haven't come down from above yet. Everyone is on standby."

Winter was approaching soon. It was a season where it was difficult for battles to continue. Even so, they wouldn't leave this position completely empty, but since their battalion had pulled a lot of weight on this battlefield, they would probably be rotated out.

So it was strange that the order to return hadn't been issued yet.

The Platoon Commander scratched his head as he looked at Encrid.

"You."

"Yes."

Encrid breaking formation—at the time, the Platoon Commander hadn't thought it was a big deal.

He only thought that Encrid had finally gone crazy.

After that, he had barely survived thanks to the shouts to get down and raise their shields.

Just when he thought he was going to die in the fog, the fog suddenly cleared.

They turned the tables and fought the enemy.

He heard later that the fog was a spell, and that spells had a medium, and unless that medium was destroyed or the spellcaster was killed, the spell wouldn't be broken. He heard all of this from the mouth of the Company Commander.

["Who could have done it?"]

The Company Commander had asked him while staring intently with those green eyes.

At that moment, Encrid's name had come to the Platoon Commander's mind.

He judged that at the very least, that squad had done something.

After all, hadn't Encrid dashed out before the fog rolled in?

And that shout had sounded like Encrid's voice too.

The Platoon Commander organized his thoughts and opened his mouth.

"They say that fog was a spell."

"Ah, yes, that's right. I reported it."

That's right. It was what Encrid had reported when he was dispatched on a reconnaissance mission.

"Mm. You did."

The Platoon Commander looked at Encrid for a moment before telling him to take care of himself and standing up.

'That makes no sense.'

He knew Encrid's skills. He wasn't the lowest-grade soldier. At best, he might be fit to be the Town's Watch leader of some village.

There were many terrifying guys among the squad members under his command, but Encrid wasn't one of them.

Unless the enemy were absolute idiots and morons, the medium for the spell would have been deep inside the enemy lines.

Which meant someone would have had to infiltrate that far.

'Through that thick fog?'

While facing a rain of quarrels and arrows?

The troublemaker Squad Leader?

Not a chance.

He had asked Rem just in case he had done it, but Rem said no.

Ragna went without saying. After the fog cleared, he was suddenly fighting right beside him.

Then he wondered if it was the rest of the squad members, but they had also fought as part of the platoon's formation in the rear.

'Did support come from the main force by any chance?'

Thinking that, the Platoon Commander stepped out of the barracks. The sudden drop in temperature had brought on a chill.

"Are we really not withdrawing?"

He also missed the air of the city. He missed his house, his wife, and his daughter.

He wanted to roast potatoes in the fire and get a good night's sleep.

* * *

After lying in bed for two days, Encrid was well enough to get up and move around.

"You shouldn't overdo it, right?"

Big-eyes worried, but his physical condition was better than expected.

"That wild beast left, right?"

Big-eyes asked. Encrid, who was sitting at an angle on the bed, nodded and looked around.

"Yeah. I don't see it."

"It seemed to follow you well, Squad Leader."

"Weren't you scared of it?"

"Of course I'm scared. It's a wild beast. A wild beast."

"It still looked like a cub to me?"

"You know Henri, the hunter you went reconning with? I heard he went out with you, Squad Leader."

Big-eyes asked abruptly. Encrid nodded and thought to himself. This Big-eyes bastard really had a wide network.

How did he even know Henri?

"He's originally a Plains Hunter, you see."

Encrid knew that better than anyone. He had learned a lot from him directly.

"Henri said that a lot of wild beasts live in the Green Pearl plains, but there's one that stands above the rest. Do you know what it is?"

"What is it?"

"A black panther with blue eyes, the Blue-eyed Panther. He said it's also called a Lake Panther."

Big-eyes made a huge fuss. The story seemed to have really piqued his interest.

"They call it a Lake Panther because its eyes are like lakes, but anyway, while they do hunt gazelles or wildebeests, they usually live by swallowing some kind of energy from the earth. They're sacred beasts. I heard just one of its claws is worth over ten thousand Krona."

Krona was a currency unit created by the Empire.

One copper coin was counted as one Krona.

One hundred copper coins made one silver coin, and one hundred silver coins made one gold coin.

Ten thousand Krona was worth one gold coin.

One gold coin for a single claw.

It was more than Encrid's salary.

"That claw was slitting people's throats, do you think you could pull it out?"

"... Ah, I'm not greedy."

Big-eyes waved his hands in denial. As Encrid moved his body moderately, sweat formed on his forehead. A stinging pain also flared up. Still, if it was only this much.

Having died so many times, roughly estimating the state of his wounds from the level of pain was nothing to him.

"It will worsen if you overdo it."

Jaxon said as he watched him. Wondering where everyone else had gone, only Big-eyes and Jaxon were left.

"I'm pacing myself."

Replying roughly, he moved his body again, bringing to mind the moment he deflected the mustached man's strike.

How had that been possible?

Could he do it again if asked to?

He wasn't sure. Would it not work?

No, he felt like he could pull it off if he tried a few more times.

As he was deep in thought, Rem and Ragna returned.

"Walk a little further away. Your laziness is contagious."

Rem provoked him casually.

"Why are you always so eager to die every day?"

Ragna countered the provocation with twice the force. Before the fight could escalate, Encrid spoke up first.

"I have a question. About swordsmanship."

Both of their gazes turned to him.

"Speak."

"If it's about swordsmanship, I should be the one to answer."

Seeing them glaring at each other again, Encrid hurriedly continued his explanation.

It wasn't a difficult story. He had seen what the enemy was doing a few times, and it had ingrained itself into his body, coming out unconsciously.

That was the gist of it. When he spoke as calmly as possible about what he had felt,

"Isn't that just something that happens as you do it?"

Rem answered first.

"That's an interesting experience. I've been like that since I was young, so I don't think it's special, but in your case, Squad Leader... well, yes. The gods have bestowed a blessing upon you. The Goddess of Luck tripped and spilled her gold coins."

Ragna added next.

Neither of them said anything particularly helpful.

Then, after the two bickered back and forth with Encrid caught in the middle, a more detailed explanation popped out.

"There are times when your field of vision opens up while fighting. Usually, they say such a thing might happen once after repeating countless, truly countless real battles. If you possess Concentrate on a Single Point, the probability of that happening would be even higher."

"You've got the Heart of a Beast ingrained in your body a bit now, haven't you? You've gained the ability to stare straight at your opponent without closing your eyes. If you had such an opportunity—meaning, if you were able to clearly watch the opponent use their sword right in front of you—there must have been times when you could see how they wielded the sword or distributed their strength. Then your body might just react on its own sometimes, but that's strictly assuming your fundamentals are established."

"Fundamentals are fundamentals, but you'd have to go through hundreds of rough real battles."

Hearing their words, Encrid was able to come to a conclusion.

'Ah.'

Today, which was merely a single day to someone else.

To Encrid, it was a today he had fiercely repeated over hundreds of times.

And not a today spent just giving up either.

It was a today spent struggling and doing his absolute best in every single moment.

The countless hours he had spent enduring and enjoying it all had granted him luck.

In truth, it wasn't even luck.

It was only natural.

It was the price paid for studying to overcome it even while getting cut, stabbed, scratched, and killed.

And at the foundation of that, naturally, were the Heart of a Beast that gave him boldness and his Concentrate on a Single Point.

'I'm grateful all over again.'

Therefore, it was all thanks to these two. Not to mention, hadn't Ragna completely rebuilt the foundation of his swordsmanship?

The battle with Mitch Hurrier, the pursuit of the mustached man, the today spent on the battlefield.

Complex thoughts filled his head, bringing about a single desire.

He wanted to grip his sword again. He wanted to swing it. He wanted to demonstrate just how much that final deflection technique had stuck to his body.

"I want to spar."

When Encrid muttered that, both Rem and Ragna shook their heads.

Among them, Rem even added a comment.

"Since I was young, I've lived hearing people ask if I'm crazy or telling me I'm far from normal, but from what I see, you're an even crazier bastard than me, Squad Leader."

Encrid really didn't want to hear that from Rem, of all people.

He constantly harassed the surrounding soldiers at the drop of a hat.

And even tried to blow off his superior's head.

To be on the same level as a crazy bastard like this, no, an even crazier bastard.

"I have no choice but to agree with him today. What kind of sparring are you going to do with that body?"

Seriously, were they really ganging up on him like this just because he wanted to spar a bit?

Encrid felt extremely wronged.

"Sparring is impossible with that body. Squad Leader."

FLUTTER.

A voice was heard as the flap acting as the tent's door was pushed aside.

Looking up, it was the Fairy Company Commander.

As Encrid tried to sit up, the Company Commander strode closer.

"Was it you."

Before he could even offer a military salute, the Company Commander asked abruptly.

Looking at the beautiful fairy, who was as cold and sharp as a sculpture made by an artist, Encrid wet his parched lips with saliva before trying to open his mouth.

In truth, he had expected this side to ask him, not Rem.

How he had broken the spell.

Because that was a question the command would ask.