"Man, he's gone mad again."
Rem muttered behind me.
A captain who smiled like that always did look a little insane. Of course, Rem wasn't exactly the one who should be saying it, but nobody here cared.
Enkrid's Dawn Tempering sliced the air on a diagonal. He stepped once more into the realm of silence. The opponent reacted the same way.
The difference was—
'It bends.'
In a split instant, the white blade curved and wrapped around the edge of Dawn Tempering. It looked like a white snake climbing up the sword. How could a sword that wasn't a whippy, flexible blade bend like that? No time to wonder. Thinking about it would cost him a wrist. Enkrid twisted his wrist.
He poured strength into the wrist he'd trained countless times and infused it with Will.
Tatatatatang!
The moment he slipped free of the crushing pressure, the rasp of metal-on-metal filled his ears.
Sparks spat wildly. The footing here wasn't much to speak of—an uphill slope with barely a place to plant your feet. The two of them, halfway up the ridge, stepped on tree roots and rocks, crushed and broke whatever they needed, and moved again.
Enkrid drew the eye with a high, horizontal cut—then let the blade drop straight down.
One of Enkrid's orthodox sword tricks. A technique that deceives the starting point of the blade.
The split, yellow eyes didn't waver. He lifted the white longsword and beat the strike aside.
Thump!
As several exchanges passed, people gathered behind Enkrid.
"What is that?"
Ragna arrived. Jaxon came, arms folded, saying nothing. Audin arrived with a smile.
"On the way here we ran into more than a few flame monsters, but it's oddly quiet here."
"Maybe that's only natural."
Behind Audin, Esther approached. She'd come riding something like a lump of black beast, and when her feet touched ground, the mount dispersed like smoke.
The scattered black smoke turned into a shawl draped over her shoulders.
Seen like this, she could be mistaken for a witch who lives in the Demon Realm and handles beasts, but no one made a single snide remark. They were all more focused on what she said.
"What do you mean by that?"
Rem asked from a tree, eyes still locked forward. The fight was dead even.
Well, there are things you can't know without fighting yourself, so you can't be sure. At this level, a tiny mistake or a little mental pressure decides victory and defeat. In that sense Enkrid didn't look like he'd lose, but you never know.
"Neither human nor dwarf, and not a fairy either."
Shinar, who had followed, spoke. She kept her eyes forward and went on.
"Those eyes are like a serpent's, and the feel he gives off is unlike any other race."
There's a race called by this name.
They say fairies are children of flowers and trees, dwarves are children of iron and flame.
Giants prove themselves through blood and slaughter, so they are children of hot blood.
Beastmen began to hunt to survive, so they are children of the mountains and fields.
Frog are children of dreams, and humans can become anything, so the world is their parent.
And dragonkin, among all races, are the ones without parents—those who walk alone.
In other words, they are not to be handled lightly.
"Why would a dragonkin show up here?"
Audin asked, half to himself.
Coincidences can stack up in this world. The Balrog Expedition party had come to meet a salamander—more precisely, to crack the skull of that vaunted monster.
No one expected to run into a dragonkin along the way. Of course, the dragonkin must have his reasons to be here, but who could know them?
If the gods of heaven were watching, maybe?
Maybe so, but in reality we had no way to know.
Since tasting the Illusory Sense, Esther's perception for magic had grown razor-sharp. That sensitivity read the traces the dragonkin had left.
'A wave.'
The mana in the air heaved and trembled, leaning to one side. Put into words, you'd call it mana affinity.
It's one of the things dragonkin are said to be born with.
A mage is, by nature, closer to a researcher. As a side branch, she'd collected and read sources and materials about dragonkin.
Meanwhile, Enkrid's sword turned into lightning and drew three lines. Optimized cognition drew the shortest routes for those strikes.
You can't predict a lightning bolt, so the dragonkin gave up on prediction. Instead, he sprang back. Another acceleration. Enkrid flowed into a line of motion and chased, covering the retreating opponent. It was a continuous process of bite and counter-bite.
Esther had just cast a bodily acceleration spell to watch the fight, and even then she couldn't properly see the whole sequence.
What her eyes caught was Enkrid's Dawn Tempering smashing into the dragonkin's left arm at the same time the man's white longsword stabbed for Enkrid's belly.
It all happened in an instant. And the results were nothing like predicted.
Gray scales burst from the opponent's arm and stopped Dawn Tempering's edge, and Enkrid's belly wasn't pierced by the longsword, either.
Their gazes crossed.
'Scales?'
'Leather?'
One of them fixed on the scales; the other got snagged by the black leather armor. At the same time, Enkrid kicked and the dragonkin punched.
Crack!
With a boom, a whirlwind blasted out around them.
Shinar stepped in front of Esther and swept a hand. She gathered essence and dispersed the force whipped up by their clash.
"A formidable opponent."
She sounded impressed. In truth, they all were.
Enkrid's current level is not something any of them would dare belittle. The simple fact the fight was even proved how formidable the dragonkin standing up there was.
Of course, to a dragonkin—born with authorities and used to always standing on higher ground—this might be even stranger, but he showed no emotion.
He simply did what needed doing.
"So it really doesn't work. Fine. Stop."
Everyone could feel the surge of magic, not just Esther. What rode his words was pure will. A power that overlays the opponent's will and suppresses it.
A signature authority of the dragonkin. The Word—an outward, inexplicable force spoken into being.
It's similar to a magic incantation, but runs on a different track.
To an ordinary human, it's a compulsion hard to refuse.
That much Esther knew.
And yet a certain human, who under normal rules should have had his will suppressed and shaken, answered that command without a flinch.
"I refuse. Quit clinging."
Mouth still running, just fine.
But why does the dragonkin talk like that?
Esther felt surprise and curiosity rise together inside her.
"I hate clingy types, but since you've never said a word to me till now, I'm guessing you're already thinking of me as your fiancé?"
Shinar was herself as always. She'd said he was formidable, but not that he was a threat. If that was how it looked to her eyes, it was the same for the others.
None of them stepped in. They didn't need to.
Enkrid's fighting spirit hadn't dipped once. If anything, it seemed to grow as he fought.
Driving the other man hard, the opponent asked:
"You are Balrog, maybe? The way you fight, is like so."
And Enkrid answered—no, he questioned back:
"Your way of speaking is crap."
Rem spoke. For a heartbeat, Rem and everyone else became of one mind. They all thought the same thing.
Enkrid, parsing and understanding the words in real time, replayed what the man had said. Was he saying that because of the material of the armor wrapped around Enkrid's body?
He considered it for a moment, then decided no.
Within the dragonkin's knowledge, there was only one being who enjoyed fighting to this degree, so he'd asked.
"I think I'm better looking."
Enkrid took it in stride.
Being compared in looks to a two-horned brute with skin splitting all over wasn't pleasant, but what did it matter now?
"Let's keep fighting."
Enkrid breathed out a gust. Naturally, he didn't have a talent like the Word, so there was no compulsion in his words.
What he had instead were resolve and will, conviction and creed—and his fists. More precisely, Dawn Tempering, his engraved weapon, was in his hand.
Sometimes his blade shows more compulsion than any Word.
A grinning madman charging in, and a slim, blond man watching without expression.
Human and dragonkin crossed their weapons. When Enkrid pressed blades to force a bind, the dragonkin backed off.
Enkrid chased and accelerated his thinking. He also threw all five senses and his sixth into reading the opponent's means.
All that effort stretched the instant of thought and tightened the present. In that constricted time, the lines and points needed to subdue the enemy strung together; one chain of thought split off, grasping the opponent.
'It's muffled.'
The man's cuts felt that way, and his presence too.
No matter who you fight, a sword gives off a feel.
What about Balrog? It sounds ridiculous put in words, but he brings to mind a rock that bends and flexes, both solid and supple.
Oara is a flowing wave, and Ragna is a thunderbolt that breaks anything—yet a thunderbolt that burns and stays, like flame.
A thunderbolt stuffed with willful insistence, not satisfied with a single flash.
Jaxon is an invisible edge, and Audin looks like a boulder rolling straight on, except sometimes he pulls a hidden bludgeon from behind that rock.
Outwardly a blunt brawler, but inside he's stocked with tools to win.
Rem moves like a fierce beast while showing a hunter's traits at the same time.
'A contradiction.'
In that stretched-out thought, he recalled the day he drank Founder's Liquor. A fine spirit. To convey its bouquet and flavor you needed contradictory words—one of those drinks.
'Two things that shouldn't coexist.'
Balrog, that bending rock, was like that.
And everyone in the Mad Order of Knights is, in their own way, learning to acquire something similar.
As his eye for things changes and his perspective shifts, Enkrid can see them.
This opponent felt like a muffled bog. Like a pitch-black pit.
'It feels like fighting a puppet, but…'
There's a real body there. Not an illusion—reality. Reading the white longsword's arc, for an instant he saw the next move.
Not by experience—by a flash of inspiration showing an inch ahead.
Enkrid's Dawn Tempering slipped past the longsword and cut the man's left thigh.
Tatatatang!
At the same time, the opponent's blade skimmed across Enkrid's abdomen.
Crkk.
The sound was unfamiliar. So was the feel in his hand.
'Same as before. Not skin.'
It felt like he'd struck something hard. The loose, worn cloth—no armor at all—tore, and beneath it, on the man's thigh, scales showed—ridged like a dental scaler.
Gray scales packed tight across the skin.
"Are you a monster?"
His answer to that question about Balrog. No reply. If anything, he only sensed a faint texture of feeling from the man.
Absurdly, the emotion he felt, crossing blades, was similar to his own.
'This is fun.'
Delight, expectation, goodwill.
An opponent with no malice and no killing intent. Not that Enkrid thought he would back down.
"You're going to keep blocking, aren't you?"
Through the numbness he felt from the sword, a single intent came through clearly.
Dragonkin or whatever, he wasn't going anywhere. The split, yellow pupils—now even his face sprouted scales with soft tuk-tuk sounds.
Dragon Scales—the dragonkin's second authority, after the Word.
A body that common sword cuts can't even scratch.
The fight wasn't over. But something else intruded.
Fwoooosh.
The sound was small, but the shadow spilling over their heads was huge. A mass of flame? A cloud? It looked like something like that.
A cloud of fire appeared above their heads out of nowhere.
In that moment, the dragonkin turned fully around. He showed his back—perfectly—to the opponent he'd been trading blades with seconds ago.
'What's this now?'
A trap? No. After Valen-style mercenary swordsmanship, now Enkrid-style orthodox swordsmanship.
When it comes to deception, Enkrid is a master even among knights.
Conversely, from what he'd seen so far, this scrawny, absurdly strong dragonkin wasn't skilled at deception. You could tell just from a few traded blows.
Therefore, turning his body now was sincere. The reason?
As soon as he turned, the dragonkin raised his sword.
A fireball came down, and, like Enkrid had cut one earlier, his white longsword split it.
The divided fireballs slammed into the ground left and right and exploded.
'Boom!'
Shattered rocks, broken branches, clods of dirt baked together by heat—everything flew in all directions.
Heat wrapped the area at once, and everything the eye could see sizzled and shimmered, wavering like a mirage.
'Hm?'
Enkrid batted away half the incoming debris with his blade and blocked the rest with his gauntlet. Then he looked up again—
"I wanted to live, too."
A child. A child he'd never seen before, and yet the instant he saw him, he knew it was a child he'd failed to protect.
In a pit of fire, a child crouched and watched for an opening; his eyes met Enkrid's.
The moment their eyes met, emotion surged and clubbed reason to the floor. Facts and reality didn't matter—only the feeling of the present became truth.
The child's mouth opened again.
"You could have saved me, right?"
A child already dead, one who had stood behind him and still he hadn't protected.
Several faces overlapped over that one.
There had been two brats who said they'd become herb gatherers. He lost one and saved one.
The one he'd lost looked at him and asked:
"You could have protected me, couldn't you? Right?"
There was no resentment in the tone. It was guileless. That made it dig deeper into his chest and set his emotions heaving even more.