Chapter 969 - Zaiden
"Explode, crush, and tear."
At Eudokia's command, an explosion violently detonated directly above Enkrid's head, an invisible hand brutally pressed down on his shoulders, and simultaneously, three blades of razor-sharp wind slashed at his body.
It was a terrifying banquet of spells.
A relentless storm of magic poured down, entirely focused on annihilating a single swordsman.
The target of that onslaught, Enkrid, half-closed his eyes, gripped his hilt with both hands, and swung his sword with an air of absolute calm.
He wasn't rushing, yet his movements didn't lack speed in the slightest; there was simply no other way to describe it but perfectly calm.
First, a horizontal slash from a high stance cleanly erased the roaring flames of the explosion above him as if they were nothing more than a crumbling illusion.
Next, he perfectly caught the crushing force bearing down on his shoulders on the flat of his blade and smoothly parried it away, violently slamming the force into the ground instead.
BOOM!
A massive crater, easily large enough to swallow an entire house and exactly one knuckle deep, violently gouged into the earth exactly where Enkrid had been standing just a moment prior.
Following the horizontal slash, he executed three short, snapping vertical strikes, cleanly shattering the incoming wind blades.
It was difficult to tell whether he had precisely caught and severed the flow of mana, or simply overpowered the spells using pure, brute force.
It almost looked as if he were boldly declaring that absolutely any spell cast against him was entirely useless.
Eudokia was absolutely certain that if he allowed even a fraction of a second's opening, that swordsman would completely disregard the space between them and lunge at his throat.
And that assumption was hardly an exaggeration.
I cannot afford to give him a single opening.
He thought to himself.
"Impressive!"
Eudokia roared out loud, genuinely exhilarated as he presented the bastard with an absolute tidal wave of spells.
His hands frantically wove intricate hand signs while his lips continuously fired off incantations; from the very beginning of the fight until now, the blinding speed at which he cast spells hadn't slowed down in the slightest.
"Fire Bird of Maerak, ride the violent currents of Guhinna and soar!"
He seamlessly wove borrowed elemental concepts into his spells.
"Bind him."
He also materialized spells utilizing nothing more than a single activation word.
Roaring flames morphed into a hail of arrows, condensed into spearheads, transformed into birds of fire that shot forward, and when the swordsman ruthlessly cleaved his way through all of it, a massive sheet of slick ice greeted his feet.
From that ice, pitch-black hands violently erupted, aiming to brutally snap the ankles of anyone daring to walk upon it, yet it was all completely useless.
With a single, heavy downward strike that dug into the earth with a dull thud, the frozen ground violently shattered.
A few casual kicks completely dissolved the pitch-black hands desperately grasping at his ankles into harmless smoke.
Did he only sever the connection of mana using his sword?
No.
He could do it with his feet, too.
Enkrid had just physically proven that exact fact.
The intricate process of manipulating mana to perform miracles in reality was being brutally severed mid-execution.
Even for Eudokia, this was an entirely unprecedented situation, but he was a Mage renowned for holding his ground even when facing a Lord of the Demonic Realms.
He poured out absolutely everything he had, and the swordsman met that apocalyptic tidal wave of spells head-on, brutally butchering every single one of them with a single sword.
— Are you going to keep repeating a 'today' like this?
Who the hell are you?
— Is this what you truly desired?
Do you know how to wield a sword?
If so, bring it.
— It is different from my own path, but it seems you will reach the exact same conclusion.
I have no idea what kind of bullshit you're spouting right now, but I would really appreciate it if you just let me focus on swinging my sword.
Enkrid's desires were crystal clear, and the sheer Will imbued within those desires illuminated the world with blinding clarity.
'Bring it on.'
Let us speak through our swords.
Was anything else necessary right now?
Absolutely not.
The only things remaining in the entire world were swords and the people wielding them.
"Probably not."
Suddenly, an entirely different voice violently intruded.
Now what?
The simple, perfectly clear world abruptly became complicated.
"You should have quit before things ended up like this."
"Oh, so you're joining in too?"
"Was this truly what you desired?"
They were all completely different voices.
Yet, even while listening to those voices, Enkrid relentlessly clashed with the manifesting swords and won.
He won, and he won again.
He brutally severed absolutely everything he saw.
Sword hilts abruptly materialized out of thin air, endlessly spewing forth a relentless barrage of swordsmanship.
As his mind became highly elevated by the sheer ecstasy of the repetitive combat, a profound sense of distance washed over him.
That sensation gently guided Enkrid's mind and memories to an entirely different place.
***
"...Wake up, Zaiden."
"Is it morning already?"
"Do you honestly think it's night?"
Zaiden stared blankly at the friend who had just woken him up.
His friend grumbled.
"Goddamn it, you aren't even my woman, so why the hell do I have to wake up a lazy bum like you every morning?"
"Because I'm the Captain?"
At Zaiden's completely unapologetic response, his friend's face violently contorted.
"Fuck off."
Wait... what was this bastard's name again?
Zaiden simply couldn't remember the name of the man standing right in front of him.
The only thing he could clearly recall was...
'A bastard who's been traveling with me ever since we left our hometown.'
While Zaiden possessed a terrifying talent for the sword, this bastard was an exceptional archer.
He was damn good at throwing daggers, too.
And so, he and this friend of his aimlessly wandered the continent.
They didn't exactly have any grand, overarching goals in life.
In a harsh, brutal world, possessing martial prowess was an absolute necessity.
Since they were highly talented in that area, they figured making a living through violence was a pretty good deal.
It was an incredibly naive, soft mindset.
"Leave me behind, you idiot."
His friend died.
The bastard he had grown up with since birth, a man he could comfortably call a brother in all but blood, was killed.
They had gotten into a dispute with a bandit group, and while they absolutely dominated the physical skirmish, the spell cast by a witch secretly hiding among the bandits proved fatal.
Endlessly repeating a desperate cycle of fleeing and fighting, Zaiden ultimately massacred the entire bandit group.
He managed to kill the witch as well.
Only then was he finally able to return and retrieve his friend's corpse.
But because he had spent over half a month desperately running for his life, his friend's chest was already heavily infested with maggots.
Thousands of writhing insects crawled endlessly across his dead friend's rotting skin.
He vomited, he sobbed, and he screamed curses at the sky.
But eventually, he stood back up and kept living.
Even after that, because wielding a sword was the only thing he knew how to do and the only thing he was actually good at, he kept his grip on the hilt.
He slaughtered bandits and butchered demonic beasts.
"Why do you always walk around with such a depressing look on your face?"
It was a city that constantly reeked of rot and the foul stench of blood.
A massive slum entirely populated by criminals who had banded together behind a makeshift palisade.
She was a woman he met in that very place while tracking a bounty.
"You don't exactly have the kind of face one expects to see in a shithole like this," she casually remarked.
Is she saying she actually likes my face?
Yeah, right.
Zaiden knew better than anyone that his features were incredibly harsh and unapproachable due to the brutal life he had lived.
She was a member of some local syndicate, and the adopted daughter of the Guildmaster himself.
"Please, you have to help me."
Was this what they called fate?
They hadn't even crossed paths three times before they grew incredibly close, and she finally revealed her true intentions.
She desperately wanted to avenge her murdered mother.
And the target of her vengeance was the Guildmaster himself.
He helped her.
And once again, they were relentlessly hunted.
And once again, his luck was absolute garbage.
A Mage secretly hidden within the syndicate's ranks stepped forward.
He had heard that even a lucky man might go his entire life without ever crossing paths with a fully-fledged Mage.
So why the hell did he keep running into them so often?
Was his luck just phenomenally terrible?
He had no idea.
Zaiden managed to survive this time as well.
In the process, he completely annihilated an entire syndicate, and his infamy began to spread.
He formed a mercenary company with the woman who had become his lover.
Good people flocked to them, and he finally dared to dream of a stable life.
They had children.
A son and a daughter.
The two of them grew up wonderfully.
"I will gladly become the godfather to your children."
Countless good people had gathered around him.
"I think you're a bit too old to be a godfather; you should probably just be their grandfather," Zaiden replied to an elderly mercenary who had joined the company from the very beginning, taking him in as his adoptive father.
The old man wept, confessing he had never known what it felt like to have a real family in his entire life.
Zaiden had felt exactly the same.
His daughter reached out her tiny hand and gently wiped the tears from the old man's weathered face.
When summer arrived, they found a clear stream to splash around in, and when winter came, they gathered around roaring campfires to roast meat.
The world was undeniably harsh, but because Zaiden's skills were at a level where even highly seasoned veterans had to politely yield, their group never had to worry about starving.
Once he finally had some breathing room in his life, he couldn't help but notice the innocent and the weak being crushed underfoot.
He naturally began reaching out to those desperately begging for help.
"Please, help us."
He never turned a blind eye to those pleas.
Where exactly did it all start to go wrong?
They say no matter how long a period of true happiness lasts, it always feels far too short.
Zaiden had settled down and enjoyed eight peaceful years of pure happiness, but in the grand scheme of his life, it was painfully short.
It was nothing more than a fleeting moment.
That was exactly how he felt.
"Please, help me."
Those in desperate situations somehow always managed to track him down, and Zaiden found himself completely incapable of turning them away.
"I have a very bad feeling about this. It might just be an old man's paranoia, but the number of people seeking you out has increased strangely lately."
His adoptive father had warned him.
He hadn't realized it at the time.
He truly hadn't realized that someone's sheer, concentrated malice was currently aiming directly at them.
The memories following that point were heavily fragmented and disjointed.
Someone had approached him, offering a horrifying deal: Sacrifice one of your two children, and we will spare the other.
He had violently told them to fuck off, but one of the very people he had previously helped ultimately betrayed him and kidnapped his daughter.
His son was brutally stabbed in the stomach while desperately trying to stop them, suffered in absolute agony for three days, and then died.
"It's not my fault! I had to do it if I wanted to live!"
Another betrayal immediately followed.
Ah, you absolute sons of bitches.
How incredibly trivial and worthless is human goodwill?
And why the hell is human malice so vividly clear and overwhelmingly potent?
No matter how deep the shadows cast over this city were...
"If we had just fought together, we might have actually won!"
His adoptive father had screamed in furious rage, but it was completely useless.
Tears of literal blood streamed from the old man's eyes.
Because his eyeballs had been violently gouged out, he could no longer shed tears, so blood fell in their place.
***
"If everyone just fights to the death, this city is completely finished anyway! Even if the city falls, I was simply securing my own survival!"
The traitor screamed.
The utterly despicable bastard just kept furiously wagging his tongue.
This was the exact same bastard who had previously claimed this was a free city, urging them to settle down and build a new life together.
Zaiden didn't smile.
A father who has lost both his children and his parents permanently loses the ability to smile.
It was an absolute law of nature.
He decapitated the mayor of the city.
A massive internal conflict erupted, plunging the city into civil war.
Those fiercely loyal to him clashed violently with those claiming to protect the city, soaking the streets in blood.
Right around the time the battle finally ended, a syndicate of Mages descended upon them.
They were the bastards known as the 'Masters of the Golden Thread', a group fanatically obsessed with reshaping the entire world through magic.
These were the exact same bastards who had demanded his child as a sacrifice.
Naturally, every single one of them was a true Mage fully capable of casting lethal spells.
"So it's you. You're the bastard who murdered one of our order's Mages?" one of them asked haughtily.
Zaiden deeply regretted absolutely everything.
I never should have picked up a sword.
I never should have stepped out into the world.
I never should have met anyone.
I never should have given my heart to anyone.
I never should have killed that Mage.
I never should have accepted anyone's pleas for help.
His wife was dead.
His adoptive father and his children were dead.
His comrades, his friends—every single one of them had been slaughtered without a single survivor.
In that utterly broken state, Zaiden desperately held out for three days and nights before finally fleeing deep into the mountains, surviving by gnawing on the raw flesh of demonic beasts and drinking their foul blood.
A massive magical society like the Masters of the Golden Thread wasn't going to obsess endlessly over a single, lowly swordsman.
They were individuals destined for far greater ambitions.
Zaiden stubbornly, pitifully clung to life.
Eventually, he sneaked back into a city and hid.
As he finally found a moment of reprieve to catch his breath, the overwhelming lamentation, sorrow, regret, and agonizing remorse violently fused together, culminating into a single, blinding emotion.
Hatred violently blossomed within him.
He hated absolutely everything in this world with a passion that pierced straight to the bone.
He hated the world that had brutally stolen everything he loved, he hated every single God in existence, and the thing he hated most of all...
'Magic.'
The city itself was merely a spoil of war claimed by the Masters of the Golden Thread.
His daughter and son had simply been innocent sacrifices brutally consumed by their grand machinations.
Mages.
I will slaughter every single one of them.
Ironically, even the small city he had briefly sought refuge in was half-annihilated by deranged lunatics who had shown up just to test the destructive power of their spells on the populace.
The exact moment the absolute final thread of his sanity violently snapped, Zaiden's world fundamentally changed.
"Please... avenge us."
A dying woman pressed a small talisman firmly into his hand.
He had no idea when or how it happened, but the talisman seemingly melted directly into his flesh and vanished.
From that moment forward, Zaiden lived in an entirely different reality.
However, his physical body was far too mangled and broken to stand against the fully-trained Mages who had come there specifically to practice.
And so, he experienced his first death, and subsequently, the agonizing repetition of 'today'.
Within that continuously resetting 'today', his entire world violently shifted.
It wasn't just a figure of speech; everything he looked at fundamentally changed.
To his eyes, the world now consisted of only two colors.
White, or black.
And his sole objective was to relentlessly sever, pierce, and completely delete anything colored black.
And he did exactly that.
He had absolutely no idea how many 'todays' he repeated, nor how much total time had passed.
The moment he opened his eyes, he hunted the black, and by continuously observing it, he meticulously polished and refined his swordsmanship to absolute perfection.
'I can feel the spells.'
Because he had been brutally killed by them so many times, the ability to physically perceive spells naturally became ingrained into his very flesh.
The white entities were those completely ignorant of spells, while the black entities were those who actively wielded them.
That was the only distinction that mattered; reason no longer existed.
He had completely discarded it.
He eventually earned the terrifying moniker of the 'Spell Butcher'.
Naturally, even ordinary people were utterly terrified of him.
While he was known as the 'Spell Butcher' among Mages, to the rest of the world, he was simply known as the 'Lord of Wrath', or the 'Berserker'.
He was the very first being to walk this earth who completely surrendered everything to the Will born of pure wrath.
He existed in an era long before the very concept of a 'Knight' had even been established.
A man who attempted to completely annihilate every single Mage on the continent, yet ultimately failed.
"I merely desire peace."
Because he had lived his entire life utterly consumed by blinding hatred, he now desperately wished for nothing to happen.
He didn't desire happiness, nor did he desire misfortune; he simply wished to remain trapped in a 'today' where he had to do absolutely nothing.
"A peaceful 'today'. That is the only thing I truly desire."
***
Enkrid stared blankly at the Ferryman with the profoundly gloomy expression.
His original name was Zaiden.
He had finally revealed his true form within the mental landscape.
He possessed a remarkably neat appearance with pitch-black hair reaching his shoulders.
His eyes were equally pitch-black.
His overall aura and appearance were undeniably bleak.
Unlike as his memories suggested his wife had fallen for him, his facial features were certainly handsome enough.
He asked.
"While my world was violently reduced to black and white, you have placed far more weight entirely on your swordsmanship. However, that does not change the ultimate outcome. If you choose to remain there, you will inevitably become exactly like me."
Was this a threat?
Or was he simply stating that everything was already over?
It was neither.
"I desire peace."
He muttered the phrase out of sheer habit before opening his mouth once more.
"Wake up, Enki. Because if you remain here, you will simply fight and fight endlessly until there is nothing left."
The Ferryman violently yanked Enkrid awake.
He actively prevented Enkrid from fully succumbing to the intoxicating high of endless combat, violently reminding him of what he still needed to accomplish in reality.
"Protect those standing behind you, exactly as you wished and desired."
The exact moment those words reached his ears, Enkrid made direct contact with the absolute deepest layer of Zaiden's memories.
***
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