Enkrid caught the little girl's forehead with his left hand and grabbed the child's arm with his right, turning the child to the side.
The child who'd been running in with both arms raised stopped without even struggling.
Both arms settled neatly against the sides. The face was familiar, but the name wouldn't come to him at all.
'A kid.'
Still, he knew who it was. A child who'd suffered because of a plague-shaped curse. After the child got better, she'd said she'd become his bride later—the kind of dream that was hard to cheer for.
The person looking on from behind with pitiful eyes was the child's mother.
While Enkrid glanced at her in passing—
"You didn't forget me, right, husband?"
the child asked. The situation came back to him, and a few words they'd exchanged came back too, but the name just wouldn't come.
Enkrid wasn't someone who discriminated, so he was the same no matter who it was. He said the first thing that came to mind.
"Ollie?"
He tossed out some name at random.
The child nodded. Like it was only natural.
"Good. It's okay. I'll forgive you."
For what?
Leona looked on with interest, and Rem let out a pfft— a laugh with all the air gone out of it.
Dunbakel just wrinkled her nose and looked around.
"It changed a bit."
Dunbakel muttered. Just like she said, the scenery of the town had changed a little from before.
'Did the tents increase?'
It was thanks to resources growing plentiful through trade. He remembered hole-ridden tents being common, but now there was none of that shabbiness.
This side was the region that benefited the most from trade with the continent. Of course it had to show this much leeway.
Tap tap.
When he turned his gaze elsewhere, the girl in front snapped her fingers.
"Come on, look. I'm definitely growing."
The child turned again and shoved the top of her head toward him as if to show it. Enkrid put a hand on the child's crown and turned her body outward.
"Yeah. You got a bit taller."
"Yes, I'm growing. I'm definitely growing, so wait."
You could infer it just from the way she lunged at him. Whether it was the giants' attack or whatever, the town was prosperous. It had become steadier than before, and more relaxed.
On the road, there were still several women twisting bark into rope, and there were still lots of kids running around playing.
Baaa.
Even the goat bleat from one side, and the moo— of a cow, the pastoral scenery itself was the same. It was just more relaxed and more abundant than before.
"Jiba, let's aim for the next chance."
the girl's mother who'd come up said.
Aim for what? Enkrid started to say something, then stopped. It was obvious it would only make things longer for nothing.
"Impressive. So it really is demonic charm."
Leona muttered. In a lot of ways, it was a whisper with plenty of room for misunderstanding.
"If it's not hole-ridden tents but even a stone house built in the center, the town changed a lot. Rem."
Even between the tents, a proper hall built of stone caught the eye. It was a surprising thing. A sight so surprising you couldn't possibly just look and pass by.
Thinking that, Enkrid dragged Rem in. It was a mistake. Rem didn't sympathize with Enkrid's thoughts.
"So since it's after the old fairy and the witch who plucks out people's eyeballs, that kid's the third one, then?"
Rem, catching a case for the first time in a while, teased with a cackling laugh.
"It's still a kid."
No matter how narrowly you counted it, the age gap was over twenty. The girl's mother was closer in age to Enkrid than that girl was.
"In front of love, age is nothing but a number."
As the caravan was being welcomed, female Rem came up and said. It was Ayul. Beside her were Gennarae and Juol.
"There's a reason he's famous as a knight of demonic charm."
"With Jiba, that's grown enough."
Gennarae and Juol added a word each. The west really was Rem's hometown. None of them had mouths he liked.
"Come at me one at a time."
Enkrid said to all of them. Of course, nobody really came at him. He'd never been an easy opponent before, but now, if you just said his name, he'd become someone the entire continent knew.
Demon Slayer, Balrog Slayer—those two titles represented him.
"I said you didn't have to come, but you came together as three, not alone."
Ayul only spoke up to there, then dropped all the mischief and bowed her head toward Enkrid.
It was a posture you only saw in western-style greetings that held respect and reverence.
It held the meaning of not forgetting the old days—pressing the forehead to the ground, treating him as a companion, and calling him a savior.
"I pray that this time, you won't lose your way."
Saying that, with a thread of respect in it.
To other people, she could be casual, but not to Enkrid. Ayul kept the proper form.
"You should welcome your husband first."
When Rem said it from the side, Ayul smiled and swung a fist at him. She spun her body and tightened her muscles in an instant, then loosened them. The fist that flew with a thump was powerful enough that if you blocked it wrong, at the very least your jawbone would break.
Thud!
It clearly showed that while he trained, Ayul had also poured effort into hardening up. The fist she threw was heavy.
Of course, Rem caught her fist with his palm in front of his face.
"Did hugging change to this while I was gone?"
When Rem mouthed off as usual, Ayul finally showed a smile and said,
"So you weren't fooling around somewhere, husband. If I couldn't even get a greeting just now, I would've cut it off."
As expected, Ayul hadn't changed. Wordplay enough to call her female Rem.
"What?"
When Rem asked back, she continued, still smiling.
"If your skill was standing still, that means you were lazing around somewhere. And that's the same as letting your eyes wander to another woman. So I should cut it off, right?"
"Does that make any sense? Absolutely not."
Listening from the side, Enkrid remembered the first time he'd met Ayul and spoke.
"If you need a testimony, I'll do it."
He put one hand on his waist, adding careful eyes and a hardened expression. You could say he wore an expression like a symbol of trust.
He didn't know whether that testimony itself was favorable to Rem or unfavorable, but.
When they'd met before, Ayul had shouted to him not to butt in, but this time, it wasn't like that.
"If you say so, I have to accept it."
Acceptance.
"Right. Right and right again."
"Yeah, exactly. If you didn't come after filling your belly, I'll prepare food."
Gennarae and Juol nodded too.
Westerners were like that as always, but they were really fun people. People who enjoyed jokes and spent time for today's happiness.
Juol still dreamed of becoming the west's best cook. Gennarae looked like he was subtly observing Enkrid.
Like he wanted to see for himself how much Enkrid's skill had grown.
Enkrid had more than enough willingness to beat Gennarae, so whenever he showed fighting spirit, Enkrid subtly accepted it.
"You said you had a weird dream."
Rem said to Ayul. She looked at her partner with clear eyes and answered.
"That's a reason to come all the way here?"
"From long ago, your dreams matched weirdly well."
Especially ominous dreams. Rem was bothered by that and came all the way here.
Even if it turned out to be nothing, they could just look around since they'd come and go back.
"On the way, we cleared out one giant bandit pack."
"You did everything you had to and came."
Only then did Ayul fall into Rem's arms. The two met eyes and used a light kiss to replace a greeting.
A pair full of trust—unlike the words coming out of their mouths, trust that even if the continent split in half, they'd each do what they had to do.
After that, Rem went to see his child. He'd said the newborn squirmed and clenched a fist and swung it around, hadn't he.
After spending a little time, Rem evolved into a fool for his kid.
"This is something—the kid clenched a fist and was swinging it around. Looks like the kind that'll be big when he grows up."
It was a baby boy, and even by ordinary standards it was true the baby was very sturdy, but a just-born kid didn't swing a fist around like Rem said. It just flailed a hand.
"It's not to that extent."
Ayul was about to scold him.
Enkrid also saw the baby himself. It was a kid raised passing through the hands of multiple women. Wasn't one of the west's cultures that they raised kids all together?
Each little element like that was one of the reasons the west showed a concentrated bond like it did now.
No matter what monsters and beast-creatures lunged in, they clumped together and fought. Why did their ancestors settle down in land this barren?
He didn't know the details, but because they were here, the west was a land where people lived.
Purely by intuition, he thought they were like a wall that held back the Demon-land called Silence.
'Bond.'
The moment his mind latched onto that one element, the realization about engraved weapons he'd been turning over earlier mixed into Enkrid's head.
'If there are stages even before engraving myself into a weapon?'
Put simply, it wasn't weapon separate and person separate—it moved as if they'd become one.
"You have to fight thinking of the sword as your hand."
The time when he'd first gripped a sword also came back with it.
Even if you went back to basics, everything applied, joined, and mixed. Proof it was the right path.
"Hoo."
Enkrid let out an even breath. It was after spending time with various thoughts after seeing Rem's child.
In front of him, the chieftain had pulled out seven bottles, saying it was precious liquor.
"It's liquor."
Dunbakel smacked her lips when she saw the bottles. Beside her, Juol showed off his cooking skill.
"It's a dish mixed with barley and Paradise Water, minced meat, a few vegetables, and a specially fermented sauce we brewed."
The dish had sourness and spiciness and sweetness mixed together, and between them, it was full of oily taste. It was a bit excessively stimulating, but the taste itself was excellent.
"I'm thinking of following the next caravan and opening a shop in the city."
Juol said. Everyone had something they wanted. A dream, a goal, a long-cherished wish—whatever you called it.
The man in front of him wasn't a warrior; he dreamed of another life. The trade route opened through the caravan had become the chance that told him what he truly wanted.
"I'll cheer you on."
Enkrid said.
He cheered on anyone's dream. As long as it wasn't something wrong.
Juol smiled. The smile on his full face made even the watcher feel good.
"Thank you, sir knight."
Juol bowed his head, keeping proper form.
It was the third day since they'd entered the city. Enkrid had nightmares the entire time.
"Come on, who should we kill? What's your choice?"
The ferryman still, on the bridge, forced a choice.
***
'Another bad dream.'
Ayul, waking from sleep, turned her head and looked at the child's face. The baby was sleeping softly. On the other side of the bed lay the husband who was scheduled to leave in a few days.
When she turned her head, Rem asked with his eyes closed.
"What?"
"You're still not sleeping?"
"I'll sleep."
"Did you wake because of me?"
Did he talk in his sleep? They said he'd muttered a few times while sleeping.
It was something a few women who sometimes came to look after the child had told her.
"Same dream?"
Rem asked, still with his eyes closed.
Ayul wasn't a prophet. But since she was young, ominous dreams matched well.
For example, after dreaming three times or more about falling and scraping a knee when she was young, she actually fell while hunting and broke a leg.
It was a minor injury considering she'd fallen off a running bellopter. Because the experience in the dream felt like she was really falling, her body reacted reflexively.
It was such a vivid memory that even now it wouldn't fade.
After that, she experienced similar things many times. It didn't come true every time, and more often than not, it passed with nothing happening, but.
'It's ominous.'
The feeling was worse than any time before. Whatever it was, this nightmare was a dream that needed interpretation.
In the dream, Ayul dies. She burns to death, and dies sitting still with her head bowed, and dies vomiting blood and struggling.
What was strange was that all of those deaths happened in one place, at once.
She saw herself dying while taking in laundry, and saw herself dying while swinging an axe.
When she died while twisting rope, it strangely felt like her forearms were thin, and when she tripped while running, it strangely felt like her legs were short.
'An ominous and strange dream.'
That was all she wrote in the letter. Rem reached out and wrapped his hand around Ayul's head.
With a baleful dream, you don't want to let it out of your mouth because it feels like it'll really come true if you say it, but if it's necessary, it's something you have to do. Ayul had already said everything about the dream before.
Rem thought in many directions, but he couldn't know the dream's meaning. Still, there was only one thing he could be sure of.
"Don't worry. Before I die, there's no way you'll die."
Hearing that, Ayul slammed the top of her head into Rem's chin. Her skull hit the chin properly with a sharp crack. Stars spun in front of her eyes.
"Ow."
"Instead of saying you'll die, why don't you just save everybody?"
"Uh, that's what that means."
"Bullshit. That's a completely different thing, you crazy bastard."
"How can your habit of speech be that to your husband?"
"You didn't forget that before we were a married couple, we were childhood friends, right?"
There was nothing to say. Since he was young, Rem had never once beaten Ayul with words. Should he use Enkrid-style provocation?
'That's something you use when you're trying to kill the other person.'
Enkrid didn't care about that kind of thing and sometimes used it in everyday life too, but that was because that human was a madman.
The morning of the fourth day broke, and Rem came to find Enkrid and said,
"I need to go take a look at Silence."
The name of the Demon-lands that had settled in the west was Silence. At the sorcerer's words that if you didn't look into it, it wouldn't even react, it was a place people rarely went to unless it was for something special.
Waking in the morning, Rem acted and moved purely following an ominous intuition.
The chieftain had already sent people a few times and said there was nothing wrong with the Demon-lands, but seeing it with his own eyes would put his mind more at ease. Even if you rode a bellopter, it was a place that took over twenty days to reach.
"Yeah."
Even so, Enkrid and Dunbakel naturally followed.
"I'll guide you."
Juol volunteered as a guide, saying he'd found a faster road.
"If we go now, it's ten days."
He said he'd fixed the road a bit so bellopters could run well, hadn't he.
Seeing the Stone Road the continent made, the westerners hadn't learned nothing.
And so, when exactly eleven days passed and the four reached Silence, they saw the black clouds hanging over their heads.
Demon-lands, clouds that Silence had made by spreading black soot.
"They said the last time they checked was a month ago."
Juol muttered.
Demon-lands, Silence opened. The reason?
"Shit."
Before, monsters had come out of Silence twice, and both times, it dealt the west a serious blow.
Now it wasn't monsters, but the Demon-lands itself expanding its territory.
"We have to go in."
No one asked Rem where they were going, there was no need to.