Chapter 954 - You Must Have Known the Name of The Knight Order
Is the reason his beard looks like spun silver rather than white hair because he grooms it so meticulously every day?
It certainly seemed so.
His measured steps, his sleeves tied off neatly near the wrists, his thin silver breastplate and pauldrons forged of some unidentifiable material, the scaled iron boots covering his shins, the long spear in his left hand, and the sword strapped to that same hip.
Even though he was fully armed for battle, his attire and demeanor radiated an incredibly refined elegance.
He looked like a kind-hearted, gracefully aged noble who had just strolled in for a cup of tea.
Judging solely by his appearance, he was the picture of classical dignity.
'A spear in his left hand, and a sword on his left hip.'
Out of sheer habit, Enkrid scrutinized the approaching man's armament, posture, and momentum.
He wore no helmet.
Once you reached the level of a knight, you generally avoided helmets.
They interfered with the hyper-sensitive perception required to look one step ahead in battle.
The old man approached with calm steps.
The bear insignia engraved on his breastplate caught Enkrid's eye.
It was depicted with its jaws wide open in a fierce roar.
It was so remarkably lifelike it seemed as if an actual, breathing bear had been embedded into the metal.
His quiet, composed steps—neither too fast nor too slow—came to a halt in front of the training grounds.
When the soldier acting as his guide glanced over nervously, Clemen gave a small nod.
The soldier immediately backed away, and a man wearing a modest cloak with the hood pulled up, who had been following beside the old knight, stopped quite a distance behind.
"Greetings," the silver-haired old man said as he approached.
Even compared to Paladin Overdier of the Legion, this man looked significantly older.
It wasn't just his appearance; his casual greeting made him sound like an elderly neighbor out for a leisurely afternoon stroll.
"Enkrid of the Madmen."
Enkrid introduced himself simply.
With his black hair, deep blue eyes, and strikingly handsome features that were hard to forget once seen... he was easy to pick out just from the rumors alone.
Even before the introduction, the old knight's gaze had been fixed squarely on his face.
The old man smiled warmly with his eyes and spoke.
"I serve a small kingdom."
His tone was entirely ordinary, but...
'Has he already finished preparing?'
Enkrid naturally read the opponent's momentum.
At a glance, he looked fully prepared to fight at any moment, but looking closer, it was slightly different.
'It's not that he just finished preparing to fight.'
Was he constantly maintaining this level of physical tension so he could react to absolutely anything, at any time?
When Rem fully committed to a fight, he didn't even need to look a single step ahead.
He neutralized all incoming attacks through pure, instantaneous reaction, violently tearing apart whatever future his opponent had anticipated.
He fought like a drawn bowstring, every single muscle in his body pulled taut.
He lived every moment of a fight exactly like that.
'If it's Rem, empowered by his shamanic arts...'
Then it was possible.
Because Rem fought like an anomaly, reacting with the primal instincts of a beastkin and wielding the catastrophic strength of a giant.
The opponent standing before him right now felt exactly like Rem when he was fully committed to the kill.
'But it's not exactly the same.'
He was 'looser' than Rem.
Instead, he maintained a bizarre, perpetual tension.
It was because he constantly honed and maintained his Will like this, even in times of absolute peace.
His tone, his attitude, his actions, his momentum, the flow of his Will, his underlying intentions.
The conclusion Enkrid drew after piercing through all of that was simple.
'That would make for great training.'
Learning just by observing.
The current Enkrid was fully capable of this.
His deep blue eyes sparkled.
A flicker of curiosity and bewilderment passed through the old knight's eyes before vanishing.
He wondered why Enkrid's eyes had suddenly filled with such sheer excitement, but knowing this was not the time to pry, he pushed the question down.
Regardless of what his opponent was thinking, Enkrid simply did what he always did.
He had discovered something fascinating, so he was going to ruthlessly dissect it.
Just as the Wave was an applied technique for altering the properties of Will, what the old man in front of him was doing was similar.
You could call it the art of keeping Will constantly flowing, even during the mundane aspects of daily life.
'In the end, just like Uske, it helps increase the absolute total capacity of your Will.'
Uske, the so-called 'Undrying Well', ultimately referred to the total volume of one's Will.
Layering Oaths like Cypress was one method to achieve a massive Uske, but constantly pushing Will to its limit in everyday life to permanently expand that capacity—just like this old knight was doing—was another highly valid method.
"Would you care for a bout?" the old man asked.
The butt of the spear in his left hand rested on the ground, pushing the dirt away.
Was that spear so heavy that a normal person couldn't even lift it?
No.
He was just pretending it was heavy.
'Deception.'
Enkrid saw through the trick instantly.
While walking up, speaking, and exchanging pleasant greetings, this old man had meticulously prepared for every possible scenario.
Specifically, he was fully primed to strike.
It was a fascinating stance.
It didn't lean toward any of the five major schools of swordsmanship.
"Of course."
Enkrid answered.
Moving only his right hand as if it were a completely detached tool, he rested it on the hilt of his sword.
His body, his breathing, and every other part of him remained utterly still.
This, too, was a physical feat bordering on the impossible.
The old man, who had been watching closely, didn't shift his stance either.
A single gust of wind swept through the empty space between them.
Rem, Audin, Jaxen, and the others scattered to become spectators.
Esther, who had arrived at some point, was perched on the window sill of the barracks, quietly watching the scene unfold.
"This is extraordinary," the old knight muttered.
He wasn't just talking about Enkrid, but everyone surrounding them.
Even setting aside Theresa, Dunbakel, Ropord, and Fel.
From the soldier who had guided him here to the onlookers gathered around, there wasn't a single easy opponent among them.
Of course, the absolute most formidable monster of them all was the man standing right in front of him.
Enkrid also had ears, and since he particularly enjoyed listening to various rumors and tales, he had already deduced his opponent's true identity.
In the midst of the standoff, another voice intervened.
"Why are you here?"
Edin Molsan, who had just rushed to the training grounds, recognized him immediately.
He had sprinted over the exact moment he heard a guest matching this description had arrived.
"Who is he?" Rem asked from the side.
"The Guardian Deity of Evergart," Edin Molsan continued.
If Naurillia had Cypress, and the Eastern Expedition had the Mercenary King Anu...
Then the small kingdom of Evergart, which literally translated to 'Shield of Eternity', had its Guardian Deity.
He was a knight who had been carving his legend into the continent for even longer than Cypress.
His name was Bartolo, and 'Guardian Deity' was his long-standing moniker.
"Should I say I'm honored?"
Enkrid said.
He spoke while keeping his hand on his hilt and smoothly sliding his left foot across the dirt.
"I'm just glad you aren't cursing me as some ghost of the past."
Sir Bartolo replied, lifting the spear that had been pressing into the ground just a fraction of an inch.
No more words were needed.
First-rate knights converse through momentum, not words.
The two of them were doing exactly that.
Enkrid initiated the clash.
Was it a show of respect for the old knight?
Today was drawn and fell from top to bottom.
Except for a few of the highest-level spectators, it was so absurdly slow that it made the rest wonder what he was doing.
Audin nodded with a pleased expression.
Ragna also had a satisfied look in his eyes, and Rem and Jaxen were no different.
Because Enkrid was seamlessly blending everything he had learned from them into this single strike.
The Wave rippled out, violently crushing the surrounding air.
Using his Will as a weapon, Enkrid manifested the properties of a Heavy Sword.
Simultaneously, he predicted the enemy's movements through sheer perception, acted with the boldness of the Heart of the Beast, added explosive power via the Heart of Monstrous Strength, and harmonized his Will with the physical might tempered through the Isolation Technique, loading it all heavily into the blade.
He first bound his opponent's limbs with his sheer momentum and oppressive presence, finishing with a single, devastating downward stroke.
Tap.
The old knight casually thrust the tip of his spear upward toward the descending sword.
Clang!
The moment of attack and defense was slow enough that even Edin Molsan could track it.
Of course, even to his completely untrained eye, he knew that Enkrid and the old knight—considered a living legend of the continent—had just done something terrifying.
What was visible wasn't the whole story.
The spear and sword clashed, but it only left a soft, muffled noise.
Not a single spark flew.
Enkrid stepped back half a pace and swung his sword horizontally; the old knight smoothly raised the shaft of his spear to block it.
The speed was similar to before.
It looked as if they were performing a pre-choreographed, rhythmic spar.
Clang!
Once again, spear and sword met and parted.
Then, the speed at which the two swung their weapons abruptly shifted.
It became a speed that not just Edin Molsan, but anyone below the absolute peak level of Rem, Audin, Jaxen, or Ragna would struggle to even follow.
Clang-clang-clang-clang-clang!
A rapid, deafening succession of impacts exploded, violently displacing the surrounding air and kicking up a cloud of dust that spread in all directions like a sudden gale.
It was hard to call the soldiers of Border Guard 'average' warriors, but even to the eyes of a standard Border Guard veteran, the speed was so extreme it didn't even leave afterimages.
Silver and blue light violently intertwined, morphing into a single, cohesive blur of a painting.
That was all it looked like to the soldiers.
The two men, having left only a painted blur of light in their wake, broke apart and widened the distance.
At some point, a sword had appeared in the old knight's right hand.
A spear in his left, a sword in his right.
Enkrid pushed his focus to its absolute limit.
He accelerated his thoughts, using his extreme insight to deeply scrutinize the opponent's Will.
'He wields the spear in his left hand incredibly light and fast.'
With the longsword in his right, he aimed for heavy, bone-crushing blows.
On top of that, his footwork and body language were laced with intricate feints designed to deceive the opponent at any given moment.
Which meant, the spear and sword could instantly swap properties and roles.
The Will that had reached the 'Formatting' stage emitted a shimmering, lethal light upon both the spear tip and the sword blade.
At that level of density, simply grazing an attack would effortlessly sever an entire arm.
Naturally, a profound blue light also clung tightly to Enkrid's sword.
He held the blue-glowing blade completely parallel to the ground, obscuring his lips and the lower half of his face, keeping only his eyes locked directly onto his opponent.
'He's gone beyond simply altering properties; he's using two completely different properties simultaneously.'
By holding a spear in his left hand and a sword in his right, he made it possible.
It was a total paradigm shift in combat logic.
Two weapons, two altered properties.
Rather than switching between them in an instant, it was a method of wielding them both at the exact same time.
"I have two."
His opponent, Sir Bartolo, spoke to him.
He didn't actually open his mouth to say the words, but it was the crystal-clear intent conveyed through the blinding spear thrust and the sweeping low slash aimed at Enkrid's calf just a moment ago.
'I have two as well.'
Enkrid also had two.
Because his Engraved Weapon, Today, acted as another version of himself.
The Will churning within his own body and the Will being formatted through Today operated distinctly.
That induced miscalculations and created fatal flaws in the opponent's insight.
His blade was lethally sharp, yet his footfalls were devastatingly heavy.
The two shifting properties intersected, causing the blue light coalescing on the blade to vibrate violently.
'Wave and Vibration.'
The formatted Will trembled, granting the blade a sheer cutting power that would effortlessly cleave through absolutely anything it touched.
Enkrid's sword sliced through empty air.
It was because Sir Bartolo had swiftly rotated to the side to evade.
Enkrid saw the evasion clearly, so he ruthlessly swung his elbow toward the direction Bartolo was moving.
However, the bear engraved on the old knight's breastplate suddenly stretched its head forward and bit down viciously on that very elbow.
'A spell?'
To be precise, it was a spell deeply imbued into the breastplate.
It had looked extraordinary at first glance, but to think it was capable of something like this?
Because Enkrid was not a mage, it was impossible for him to know just by looking.
Only Esther, casually perched on the window sill, would have anticipated it.
Regardless, Enkrid forcibly shook off the bear biting his elbow with brute strength and raised his sword once more.
Deep, jagged bite marks were clearly etched into the gauntlet covering his forearm, but now was not the time to care about that.
'He fights exceptionally well.'
If Cypress fully layered his Oaths and charged with intent to kill, would it feel like this?
If the Mercenary King Anu got genuinely serious, would he be at this level?
'He's a cut above them.'
Well, in a real fight to the death where Anu or Cypress deployed all their hidden trump cards, the outcome would be impossible to predict, but in terms of pure, visceral feeling right now, Bartolo felt superior.
While it didn't give him the suffocating, dizzying sense of dread he felt when facing the blonde swordsman in the Demonic Realm, one thing was absolutely certain: this man's skill was the real deal.
During a brief lull in their blinding exchange, the old knight's lips twitched as he muttered a quick chant.
Simultaneously, silver sand came swarming toward Enkrid's ankles with a soft rustle.
Enkrid glanced at the silver sand wrapping around his boots and casually swung his sword, completely severing the flow of mana feeding it.
Spells were utterly meaningless before him.
Because he knew exactly how to swing a blade that murdered spells.
"You are my natural enemy."
The old knight stepped back and spoke.
He was openly admitting defeat.
If they fought a hundred times, he would lose all a hundred times.
Even if he put his life on the line and fought like a madman, simply taking one of Enkrid's arms would be a monumental, likely impossible struggle.
"You use spells?" Enkrid asked.
Bartolo put away his spear and sword as he replied.
"It just happened over time."
The loud, chaotic bout had ended just like that.
"He's pretty damn good, isn't he?" Rem marveled.
He had recognized the opponent's skill instantly as well.
A Magic Knight who flawlessly wielded both spells and Will.
That was incredibly rare.
In terms of pure combat prowess, excluding the Madmen Knights, he was easily within the top five people Rem had ever seen in his life.
"Because he is the man known as the Guardian Deity of Evergart, brother," Audin replied.
"He is also a knight who is never supposed to leave his post until the day he dies."
Edin Molsan finished the thought.
Literally speaking, Bartolo was a knight who had sworn a sacred oath to be the eternal gatekeeper of his nation.
A knight who had vowed never to leave his country's borders.
That was what the entire continent believed.
Having heard Edin's words, Bartolo cast a brief glance at him and spoke.
"To be precise, I swore an oath to protect my nation. As long as this is also part of the act of defending the gates of my homeland, stepping away for a short while will not damage my Will, so do not worry."
Will is pure determination; it is a profound power manifested entirely through what one believes.
Exactly as the old knight Bartolo said, if he truly believed his actions protected his nation, his Will would not suffer any recoil.
And his words just now were entirely out of goodwill.
He was explaining a deeply personal truth he had absolutely no obligation to reveal.
'What is their goal?'
Just as Edin was questioning this internally, the man who had been quietly watching from behind stepped forward.
"I believe that is enough."
The man had pale skin and hair bordering on silver.
He was on the thinner side and gave off a soft, gentle impression.
He slowly pulled back his hood, stared directly into Enkrid's eyes, and asked.
"Are you planning to spill oceans of blood to unify the continent? Do you intend to slaughter everyone who refuses to listen and trample the survivors underfoot?"
The exact moment the man spoke, a horrifying vision of a city reduced to ash and ruins by war seemed to superimpose behind him.
Images of weeping people, those drowning in abject despair, and children collapsed in the dirt with soot-stained faces flashed vividly into existence.
He knew exactly how to provoke, manipulate, and dominate a room with a single question.
'How amusing.'
To be precise, he was exactly the same breed of person as Krang.
He was the type of man who packed heavy gravity into every single word, proving his own existence and right to rule through sheer eloquence and rhetoric.
Enkrid coldly took in the entirety of the man standing with his arms relaxed.
His body wasn't completely untrained, but he certainly wasn't someone who knew how to fight properly.
By comparison, he wouldn't even be able to hold his own against a single, standard-issue soldier of Border Guard.
"Who are you?"
Enkrid wasn't the type of person to obediently answer just because someone threw a grand question at him, so he immediately threw one right back.
Yeah, who exactly are you to waltz in here spouting that nonsense?
"Apologies for the late introduction. I am Luger Evergart the fourth."
The only person who uses the name of the nation as their surname is its ruler.
In other words, he was the King of Evergart.
It was a revelation that should have made anyone jump out of their skin in shock, but Enkrid remained utterly unfazed.
So, you're a king.
He just stared at him with exactly that kind of bored expression.
Rem lazily picked his ear, Ragna lost all interest and began to nod off, and Jaxen had vanished entirely at some point without anyone noticing.
Audin cheerfully announced it was time to head down to the city for volunteer work and walked away with Theresa.
Luger Evergart the fourth was visibly taken aback that revealing his royal name hadn't caused the slightest uproar or commanded any respect, but outwardly, he maintained his composure.
Realizing he was the only person present actually capable of managing this diplomatic nightmare, Edin Molsan stepped forward.
Edin looked at the legendary old knight and the King he served, meticulously choosing his words.
What could he possibly say to properly defuse this bizarre atmosphere and actually start a productive conversation?
Edin truly was an incredibly clever and brilliant man, more than enough to earn Krais's endless admiration.
"You must have known the name of this Knight Order before coming here, right?"
With those simple words, he perfectly elicited a response and smoothed over the King's bruised ego.
The King nodded his head and replied.
"Indeed."
***
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