Sometimes tree trunks lunged in, aiming for his throat, so he cut those down too. Like that, for two full days he ran, and swung his sword.
Everywhere was filled with things to cut. So in his world, only enemy and him, and sword and him remained.
Enkrid was so focused on the fight that it was hard for him to even register the hallucinations.
Now and then the Ferryman's apparition appeared and he heard it muttering a few times, but it was more like he listened with one ear and let it pass.
That was how completely he forgot everything and immersed himself in fighting.
"If you fall here, you'll be bound to the Demon-lands for life."
The Ferryman said. He ignored it.
Night cut the hamstrings of a ghoul whose bulk had grown three times over and split its head. The blade flowed like a gentle river, then became faster and heavier.
A sword art where three changes happened one after another.
And into that, he mixed Oara's.
'The connecting sword.'
As he fought, Enkrid refined the techniques he had. Learning has no end, and that is why it is pleasant and fun.
Death came close and licked his neck. Even so, Enkrid focused on the moment. He did not forget enjoyment.
A smile lingered at the corners of his mouth as Night moved. He lifted his foot and moved his body. The sword became a spur, and his body became a bow. Thus he became a single arrow and pierced through the dragon's body.
Bam!
The one whose body had been torn swung its foot. Enkrid swung his sword as if pressing it to his back, received that foot, then pushed it away.
From some point on, the monsters didn't use word-command, and they didn't even leak oppression. Instead, even with their bodies crushed, they swung their feet and thrust out their fists.
If you asked why, it was because they had no choice. Using the body was more effective than oppression and word-command.
'They don't die.'
The first one had died when its neck was cut, but the ones that came after were different. You had to grind their body into powder to kill them.
Should he say they had no vital point? So you couldn't kill them in one blow?
'If you chop their whole body up, they'll die.'
He'd found the method, so he did it. Night became a hawk snatching prey. With his feet he brought out the flavor of the connecting sword and drew a huge arc across the ground, and he delivered high-speed slashes into the dragon's hunk of flesh, chopping it up and chopping it up again. This whole process happened in an instant.
So the moment Enkrid brushed past a single dragon, black slime and chunks of flesh mixed and sprayed across the ground.
Uske, the well that never runs dry, supported him.
Indules, the Will that changed without rest, heated his body.
His tempered flesh spat out the Will held inside it. Night's blade moved across the ground once more and minced a cyclops that had blocked his path.
Now and then he stopped to steady his breathing and look ahead, but the monsters' numbers did not drop easily.
"Quit messing with me. Seriously."
It was Dunbakel's voice. She smelled them before the monsters appeared. A deep, thick stench of rot—if she had to put it, it was like a stench of rot steeped out—and that was what tormented her nose first. It was an amazing sense of smell, which only made it more absurd.
She had a premonition that this situation would not end. Both a beastman's instinct and a knight's ability were telling her so.
'This is a rule and a law.'
That was what Dunbakel thought.
In the world called the Demon-lands, this is everyday life.
Waves push in without end. Before you can wipe out the first wave, the second rises, and behind the second, the third rises.
In those two days their numbers increased even more. If you excluded a certain section centered on Enkrid, Rem, and Dunbakel, everything else was nothing but monsters—things with wriggling tentacles sprouting out of where eyes should be.
"These bastards are thinking less and less."
Rem said. Enkrid agreed.
'They charge in using their bodies as weapons.'
Just like he'd felt at the start, they didn't breathe fire. There was no particularly noticeable magic. It was more like they believed in nothing but that one hunk of body as they rushed in.
The problem was that there was no end to it.
"I got tricked."
Rem said. It was the same thought he'd had. The hallucinations shown at the entrance to the Demon-lands had been aimed at his impatience. The result was that he'd ended up inside the mouth of the monster called Silence.
"I'll carve a path. Get out."
Rem said. Coldly speaking, it was an admission that this was the end, but it wasn't giving up.
The Demon-lands called Silence held many secrets. They had unraveled some of those secrets. If they prepared, a better fight would be possible.
They feared fighting not inside but outside. You don't solve it inside—you smash it outside. Rem's head was already staring at the conclusion after tomorrow.
For that, too, they couldn't all die here.
"Not me. The captain should finish it."
"If you go alone, you'll be lonely, right?"
Dunbakel stepped to Rem's side. The beastwoman had finished her resolve. They were enemies you had to break more than half the body to kill, while their side's stamina would show its limits.
"Go, captain. I really wanted that face. I should've knocked it down once."
Dunbakel said goodbye in her own words. Of course, Enkrid had no intention of turning away. He worked his head.
'The black slime was like sap.'
To kill that body, you had to grind away more than half the body, not a vital point. They didn't breathe fire, but they poured out without end. It was like they formed a colony—different in appearance, but what they did was all similar.
Even the ones that looked like ghouls, all they did was stomp with their feet and crush with their hands. Dragon, ghoul, cyclops—regardless of outward form, what they did was the same. If there was anything peculiar, it was that sometimes they used blind spots to reach out with a hand or foot.
'It's not many individuals. It's one thing with only different shapes.'
Like a swarm of bees protecting a queen?
"An exterior that's tough means there's something inside it wants to protect."
That was something Shinar had said.
Enkrid recalled it and muttered. It wasn't deep thought—more like a reflexive response. Shinar's words leapt out of memory and came out on their own.
Coupled with the hallucinations, he had the illusion that the fairy was standing right beside him, whispering.
"Things that form packs have rules."
This wasn't Shinar speaking—it was the process of pulling experience up from the unconscious and examining it.
Enkrid did not stop thinking.
"If you stop thinking, you die."
That was something Kraiss said often. Enkrid agreed with it too.
'What happens if all three of us pull out of here?'
The western city gets intercepted. Rem doesn't want that. That's why he stays. Dunbakel respects that intent.
Thought accelerated, discussing and weighing dozens of possibilities.
Even for Enkrid, who had gone into the southern Demon-lands, smashed Thorn Castle, and been through all kinds of things, this was a first.
"Quit messing with me. This won't end."
Rem spoke first, reading Enkrid's will. That bastard wasn't the type to leave just because you told him to go. But after this, tomorrow, and after Rem died as well, didn't they need someone who would guard what came after?
Now he knew the meaning of the dream his wife had seen.
Ayul had dreamed of the entire city being destroyed. His wife had watched herself die in everyone's place. Meaning, in her dream, it wasn't Ayul who died, but everyone living in the city.
Because Ayul cherished them all, she had substituted it and seen it as herself dying for all of them.
A dream might be only a dream, but right now it seemed to have enough meaning.
If they couldn't stop Silence here, all of it felt like a fixed future.
He couldn't let that happen.
Rem decided that even if he threw himself away, he would subdue the Demon-lands.
So from a while ago, he had been thinking of accepting the offer the Demon-lands had been throwing out while pretending it was auditory hallucination.
'Become one with me. Then I'll stop.'
'Fine. Let's play once.'
The moment Rem spoke and decided it in his heart, Enkrid heard the auditory hallucination too. It sounded so real and so vivid that it was hard to think of it as fake.
"Hey, want me to help?"
The voice was vaguely familiar. Meaning, it was similar to the voice of one of the Ferrymen.
It was the voice from when it had been the form of the big woman holding a spear, blond, with her hair tied up.
"If you noticed that much, then you can see a possibility. Hey, come look at me for a second."
With the voice that followed, the world turned black.
Thud—
Enkrid dropped his sword. His posture collapsed and he fell to the ground. He let go of consciousness. With one knee thudding onto the ground, his hand dangled and his head tilted to one side.
"…Passing out here?"
Dunbakel muttered as she caught his body. Rem, who had been about to let go of himself, stopped.
"What is it?"
Whatever it was, it was on hold for now. Dunbakel, too, was about to throw away reason and transform to fight, then quit.
White fur had been sprouting thickly along both her legs, then stopped. She held Enkrid in her arms and jumped back again.
There was no room to grab Night, so she left it. Rem smacked away the dragon tail that had been flying in at it.
Thwack!
Dragon scales cracked and black, slimy blood sprayed everywhere. Rem pulled back without even having time to wipe the blood on his face.
Dunbakel found an opening and slapped Enkrid's cheek.
Smack—
The sound was crisp, but Enkrid did not react, limp. Then she chopped her elbow down into his head. Boom! The sound was loud. Even so, Enkrid didn't wake. It absolutely wasn't revenge for what had happened earlier.
"Rem!"
"Hold!"
Dunbakel's shout contained a question. What now? Rem did not decide easily. If he gave up, Enkrid would die.
'That damned captain bastard.'
He ground his teeth. No matter what, he needed time to think, even if only for a moment.
'Pull back from here?'
Would they even let them go easily? Since a while ago, as if intending to block their retreat, they were packing the rear tight. If you looked from above, it would be a formation where the monster horde had them encircled in a circle.
Without even looking, Rem grasped their deployment. With the numbers so high, another deployment would be impossible.
It was a problem if this insane monster horde all went to the city, but getting out right now wasn't easy either.
It didn't feel like they would die here, but if they endured like this, the end started to feel like there was no other choice except dying.
'The hallucinations.'
The thin fog filling every direction kept forcing hallucinations. It scrambled the senses and affected judgment.
'Disgusting bastards.'
Silence—true to the name, you could say. Without a word, they became a prison squeezing in from all sides.
Rem steadied his breathing and gripped an axe in each hand. No matter what, for now getting over the incoming wave was first. You had to live to think. More than anything, he still had some leeway left.
You couldn't say he was overflowing with breathing room, but he could still buy at least enough time to postpone everything.
"Come."
Rem spoke and used descent. It was the walking turtle, Aramudung's turn.
Even when all were swept up by the wave, it alone planted its feet on the bottom and walked, connecting a path.
On the day the great flood came, it alone walked the land that had become a sea and braided a chain connecting two walls.
A divine general that endured for over thirty days holding the two ends of the chain it had made, blocking the waterway.
With the breathing of the deep sea, he connected his breath thin and long.
In Rem's eyes, a gray light rippled as if waves were breaking.
***
The moment he closed his eyes, Enkrid saw a hallucination. It hadn't happened, but it was something that could happen any time. Even though he recognized it as a hallucination, even though he knew it was part of a dream, it was hard to turn away from this moment of possibility—an "it might have happened" moment.
"Shit!"
Rem burst into rage and went berserk, and Dunbakel threw away reason and fought. The two of them surpassed their limits. He did too.
He triggered five changes in a row and mixed them into Oara's connecting sword. He stopped breathing and danced a blade dance amid the giant monsters.
He didn't spare Will. He got drunk on omnipotence. He endured like that for ten days, then was surrounded by a pack of ogres, and his ankle was caught by a gray vine.
If Uske is a well, then Silence is the sea. The limit was on their side first. It wasn't that he lost in patience, but the difference in endurance was clear.
A blow from an ogre's fist crushed his ribs. The broken bones stabbed and burst his heart.
It was a death that would make Luagarne scream if she saw it. Of course, it was only something that might have happened.
The scene tangled, and he saw himself standing on the deck. Still inside the hallucination—meaning a future that had not happened was continuing.
This time he could see only his dream-self, and the moment where he, standing on the deck, looked down at himself from just above.
"Tsk."
The Ferryman standing opposite clicked her tongue. She looked extremely displeased.
Enkrid slipped out of the hallucination in that instant. Everything around him crumpled and scattered like a sandcastle smashed by waves. And then it was shaped again. Where Enkrid stood was the middle of a clearing in the forest.
"Hey."
From a few steps away in front of him, he heard a voice calling him.
Blond hair braided back, green eyes, taller by more than a head, and big hands and big feet. Even the smile on her face had the corners of her mouth lifted high enough that you could say the expression looked hearty without issue.
"Do you think there's a right answer to every choice? You don't know, do you?"
The woman said again. No—asked. Enkrid looked at her quietly instead of answering.
He didn't ask who she was. Even without saying it, there was something that got through and was conveyed.
'Ferryman.'
More precisely, a part of the Ferryman—one of the Ferrymen.