Watching Enkrid, one couldn't help but clench their fists.
Most soldiers felt the same when they looked at Enkrid.
They knew how he clawed his way up from the bottom.
They saw firsthand how effort was rewarded right before their eyes.
Looking at Enkrid, soldiers like Vengeance tightened their fists. And in those hands, they gripped spears, swords, and maces.
The soldiers banded together. They swung their weapons.
An unseasonal fervor reignited the barracks.
"These soldiers have been training harder than ever lately. What's gotten into them all of a sudden?"
The shift in atmosphere was palpable.
Enkrid, who also noticed the change, casually remarked.
Hearing this, Krais snorted.
"Are you really asking because you don't know?"
Would he ask if he already knew?
"I'm heading to the marketplace to check on the mood. I'll be back."
Without answering directly, Krais left. Whatever the reason, Enkrid liked the enthusiasm and vigor filling the barracks.
Effort never went unrewarded—it would save lives someday.
Thanks to that...
"Please spar with me!"
More soldiers started seeking him out. This had happened before, but now, Enkrid welcomed it warmly.
The only difference this time was...
Thunk. Whack.
The fights ended in one or two moves.
What was the point if the fight wasn't even competitive?
Gaps in their stances were too obvious, and Enkrid's body moved instinctively to exploit them.
A newly acquired style based on "orthodox swordsmanship" allowed him to:
Step left, pulling his body out of reach while swinging his blade to the right.
Create a blind spot in his opponent's vision.
Humans instinctively feel uneasy when something is out of sight.
They naturally adjust their position to eliminate that blind spot.
And in that moment of adjustment—strike.
It was only two movements, but it worked repeatedly, even against the border guards.
"You've changed."
Though the training sword's tip was dull, taking a direct hit to the solar plexus left Torres clutching his stomach. He muttered under his breath.
No, this wasn't just a change.
Enkrid was starting to feel like a proper knight—or close to it.
How did his skills improve so dramatically?
Even in the Border Guard, where the limits of human capability were constantly tested, this level of progress was rare.
Torres was one of the guards and had observed Enkrid's journey closely.
"This guy… he might actually become a knight."
There was a time when the idea of Enkrid becoming a knight would've been dismissed as delusional—a faded, ridiculed dream.
But now, even to others, that dream no longer seemed so impossible.
"Should I start adding 'sir' when I address you? Or do you still prefer just 'soldier'? Torres?"
"What?"
"I'm only an acting commander," Enkrid said, pointing his thumb at himself.
"…Commander, sir."
"Just kidding."
"You jerk."
Torres smirked as he spoke.
Rank was rank, but relationships were relationships.
There was no need for Enkrid to maintain a strict superior-subordinate dynamic with Torres or Venzence. They weren't his direct reports.
The chain of command in the Border Guard's standing army was relatively loose.
In the capital garrison, a mistake in recognizing rank might earn you a beating, but that was their problem. This was the Border Guard.
"You're starting to remind me of the 4th Company Commander."
Torres's comment made Enkrid pause.
The fairy's humor?
Sigh. "Anyway, I'm off."
Even after Torres left, more Border Guard soldiers approached Enkrid for sparring matches.
Enkrid found no reason to refuse.
His days followed a steady routine:
Mornings were spent practicing isolation techniques and swordsmanship.
After lunch, someone inevitably asked, "Care for a round?"
Rem would often be the first to challenge him. Still formidable as ever. When Rem activated his Heart of Strength, Enkrid felt he could keep up—barely.
"If I overdo it, I won't make it through the afternoon training."
Enkrid had already paid the price for overexerting himself a few times.
He learned to pace himself. This was training, not a life-or-death battle.
Rem adjusted his efforts, too. He wasn't looking to smash heads like he might in a real fight.
After sparring with Rem, familiar faces began to appear one by one.
"Take a look at my technique?"
Vengeance also showed up occasionally, clearly asking for formal guidance. Enkrid, believing in the philosophy of "teaching is learning," always obliged.
"But about that title..."
Enkrid couldn't resist adding a joke.
"You're starting to sound like the fairy commander," Vengeance quipped back.
Hearing the same comment Torres had made earlier, Enkrid frowned slightly.
"This is... oddly annoying."
For days on end, the weather had been perfect. Other than a brief dawn drizzle on the third day after their return, it was nothing but sunny skies.
"Beautiful weather. Perfect for training," Enkrid muttered, enjoying the morning sunlight.
Rem, overhearing him, asked from behind, "Didn't you say the same thing on a rainy day? Is there ever a bad day for training in your book, Commander?"
Enkrid thought for a moment before answering.
"Nope."
"…Maybe if you get hit on the head a few more times, you'll go back to normal. Don't give up, Commander. You can be a normal person!"
Rem declared this with exaggerated fervor.
"Wipe the crust from your eyes before you start preaching," Enkrid snapped back, carrying on with his usual day.
The next day, it rained, but the schedule didn't change.
It was as if yesterday had been copied and pasted into today.
Many eyes in the barracks watched it all unfold.
They'd grown used to it by now.
Rain or shine, this was who he was.
Enkrid had gotten stronger, had changed, and had even become a company commander, but fundamentally, he was still Enkrid.
Fifteen days had passed since their return.
On one of those sunny afternoons, after their sparring match, Rem sat on the ground, wiping sweat from his forehead with his sleeve.
"That apple cider was good," Rem said casually.
The words caught Enkrid's ear.
Why do I feel like there's more to that statement?
Enkrid's instincts—or maybe his intuition—told him Rem was hinting at something.
Rem? Being roundabout?
This was rare enough that Enkrid decided to wait silently for him to continue.
"Got any left? Sneak me some," Rem eventually asked.
"None left."
Enkrid didn't need to check; he knew only his personal stash—reserved for emergencies—remained. Rem had guzzled down his share instead of sipping it like everyone else.
Even Ragna, who rarely complimented anything, had praised that cider.
Everyone had enjoyed it. Jaxen had taken a couple of sips, and Audin had taken about five.
Still, Rem had now been indirect twice.
Something was definitely up.
"Did you kill someone?" Enkrid asked bluntly.
"What?"
"I'm asking if you killed some officer while I wasn't looking."
If that were the case, the situation might be manageable—if it hadn't been discovered yet, then it was well-hidden. Handling the aftermath would be the real challenge.
"What nonsense are you spouting?"
So… not murder.
"Did you beat someone up? Cripple them?"
That'd be bad, but not as bad as murder. Hopefully, not to the point of crippling them.
"Not the 1st Company, right?"
When Enkrid pressed further, Rem finally muttered, "…I have to ask—what exactly do you think of me?"
*A mad dog that snaps if you prod it the wrong way.
A lunatic who'll pummel anyone who pisses him off, regardless of rank.
A sadist who bullies subordinates for fun and torments those he likes twice as much.*
"That look—damn, I think you just broke me. I've never seen anyone look at me like that before," Rem grumbled, feigning a dramatic injury.
First time? That's surprising.
Enkrid had only half-suspected his words were true—it was mostly a joke.
After bantering a bit more, they went to lunch. During that brief lull, Rem finally spoke up.
"Well… as long as you didn't kill or beat anyone, it's fine," Enkrid said.
Rem sighed, looking up at the sky before speaking.
He was sitting beneath a tree about five paces away from Enkrid. The tree had been planted by Marcus, their battalion commander.
"Too bleak without some shade on the training grounds," Marcus had remarked.
From the shade of that tree, Rem began:
"When I was young, my father taught me how to use a spear. It was… fun."
Where's this going?
The words of that cursed sword's spirit came to mind—families, swordsmanship, bloodlines, unfulfilled aspirations…
Those chains that bound it to the earth.
Could Rem have his own chains?
Humans, after all, tend to be tethered to something. Dreams, status, power, or even money.
"I learned to hunt. That was fun too."
What's with this guy?
"And I learned the sword. That was fun too."
Should Enkrid teach him how to talk properly? He had no trouble taunting or teasing people, yet now he was fumbling awkwardly.
Moments like these made Rem seem more vulnerable than even Ragna.
Indeed, the remaining members of the company all acted similarly when they spoke about him. They stuttered, stumbled, and seemed unsure, except when discussing swordsmanship—then they spoke with remarkable clarity.
Enkrid didn't know everything about them, but bits and pieces of their stories had trickled through over time. For example, Rem was from the West, and Ragna was from the North.
This latest story from Rem, however, was something new.
His delivery might have been clumsy, but the content was worth listening to.
"Around that time, the Western War broke out," Rem said, his tone subdued. "It wasn't pretty, but what could you do? When someone comes at you to kill, you can't just hand them your neck."
Wars were still raging across the continent. Even now, Naurilia had escalated its conflict with Aspen to seize the Greenpearl Plains.
That would eventually go down in history as the Greenpearl Plains War or something similar.
The Western War Rem mentioned, however, had been particularly gruesome.
Dozens of pioneer villages each proclaimed their own king. Some called it the Western War, while others referred to it as the War for the Throne.
In the end, one tribe emerged victorious, but it was a pyrrhic victory that left the West desolate and ruined.
The Empire later absorbed the region, citing its devastation as justification.
"Back then, I used the sword. That was fun too," Rem added, catching Enkrid's skeptical look. "What's with that stare?"
Damn genius.
Apparently, every weapon he picked up was fun.
Piecing together what he'd heard, Enkrid surmised that Rem had been active during the Western War.
Given his current age…
"That would've been when you were around fifteen?"
"Yeah, about that."
Fifteen… and I? What was I doing then?
Enkrid tried to recall. Was that when he'd been desperately trying to leave his village?
Or still believing he had some hidden talent?
That was back when he thought time was fair, that effort alone would suffice.
Time isn't fair.
Listening to Rem now made that glaringly obvious.
For those with talent, time flows differently—it works more in their favor.
"So, there's something I want to ask," Rem began, breaking the silence.
His words were disjointed and lacked context. There was no lead-up, and though it wasn't his intention, it came across as a mix of humblebragging and rambling about war—something about killing a bear-like guy from a neighboring tribe.
How should I know who that was?
At the end of all this, however, came his question:
"Do you really think you'll become a knight?"
The question seemed to come out of nowhere. Yet, Enkrid wasn't surprised at all.
Perhaps it was because he'd asked himself the same question so many times before.
Can I? Is it possible? What does it even mean to be a knight?
These questions had plagued him constantly.
But answers never came. So, he'd simply taken one step forward at a time—because that was the only path available to him.
Rain or snow, under a blazing sun, or even while marching toward a mission that might end in death, he just kept going.
Calling him tenacious wouldn't even begin to capture it.
"Yeah."
His answer was devoid of hesitation.
Enkrid's tone was calm, as it always was. His response was as unremarkable as his demeanor.
But to Rem, it was refreshing, almost startling.
"And do you think you'll actually make it?"
"Who knows?"
It was the plain truth. No one knows the future. Even prophets were dubious at best.
"That so?"
"Yeah."
"Alright, then."
"Alright."
A few trivial words passed between them.
Life went on as usual—eating, resting, sparring.
Rem didn't bring up the question again. He seemed nonchalant, though what he truly felt inside was anyone's guess.
Deep down, though, Rem was still pondering.
If he truly becomes a knight, if it really happens...
Should I go back to retrieve what I left behind?
It was a heavy thought, weighing on Rem's mind. What he had left behind when he departed from his homeland—retrieving it might not make him a knight by the continent's standards, but it would elevate him to a knight's caliber.
The continent's sticklers narrowed the path to knighthood into a singular, rigid route, but Rem thought differently.
In the West, they didn't use the term "knight." They spoke of heroes—pioneers of the continent, a term rooted in ancient legends.
Rem had once been the foremost candidate to be the next hero.
Once.
After a brief moment of contemplation, his thoughts flitting back and forth, Rem made his decision.
Watching Enkrid tirelessly swing his sword day and night, Rem resolved.
"Then I'll become a knight too," he declared casually.
It was the kind of remark that Enkrid would normally twist and tease mercilessly.
Something along the lines of:
"Really? Why bother?"
"You can't become a knight just by knocking out your superior officers."
"Is your head alright?"
But instead:
"Really?"
Enkrid's response was calm, straightforward.
What came next was even more typical of him:
"Sparring?"
For some reason, that simplicity delighted Rem.
Truly, what an unshakable man.
Even in his demeanor and his words, there was a faint glimmer of respect. That warmed Rem more than he expected.
***
Meanwhile, outside the city walls.
A figure shrouded in a black hood gazed up at the Border Guard's fortress.
Tall.
Tall enough that even an average monster would find it hard to scale.
But.
What about a high-tier beast?
And then.
"Temporary alliance," came a raspy voice, issuing from a dark blade at his side.
The aura emanating from the weapon felt like the breath of thieves, a suffocating presence.
It was enough.
Enough to create chaos.