"Don't try to tempt me."
Enkrid stared straight into Cypress's eyes. The eyes of someone he had once admired, someone he'd once felt like he'd have no wish left if he could just meet.
"Are you serious?"
It was hard not to ask back.
"I'm serious. There's quite an age gap between you and me, isn't there."
Cypress was serious. How should he put it—maybe it was just what you'd expect from someone who'd played a trick on the High Pontiff with one leg.
Just looking at his face, it was hard to tell whether this was a joke or not.
"No, I mean taking her with us."
Somehow the level of the joke was about the same as Shinar's. Did everyone turn into this when they got old?
'Even so, isn't she a lot younger than Shinar?'
Not exact, but hadn't he got a rough sense of the fairy's age, staying by her side?
"Why are you looking at me like that?"
She was the fairy who was already at his side. As he instinctively let his gaze rest on her for a moment, the words came out.
Shinar continued without changing her expression.
"Are you going to say you like young, pretty human women? Rejected. I will not hear that opinion or claim."
"...Do as you please."
"Yes. That is the correct attitude."
Shinar nodded as if satisfied. Cypress watched the skit for a moment, then spoke.
"I heard there's also a witch in the city who stays by your side. Aurelia— I can't put my granddaughter third."
"Then shouldn't you keep her with you?"
"I saw how Aurelia's skills have changed. Take her with you and teach her a few more years."
What Cypress was saying right now didn't sound like something a knight commander and master knight would say. It sounded like something a grandfather with a granddaughter would say. Enkrid had no reason to refuse, and teaching Aurelia itself didn't seem bad.
Learning while teaching was one of the pieces of wisdom Enkrid had realized. He'd felt it with Pel and Lawford too, and Aurelia's path forward would help him as well.
"All right."
He nodded in acceptance, and Cypress's face turned twice as serious as before.
"If you make her your first, I'll consider it."
At that, Shinar lifted a hand to her forehead.
"A duel request? Young human?"
It was only awkward that the address "young human" was aimed at Cypress.
"I don't think that will happen."
Enkrid said. He had heard Ingis and Aurelia talking a few times. It didn't seem like there was any room to wedge himself between those two. Cypress seemed to know that too, because his eyes were full of mischief. Meaning, what he'd said just now was definitely a joke.
"I want to go along too, but I'll hold back. I've got mountains of work here, after all. I may not look it, but our master gets lonely, so if his granddaughter and his friend leave together, he might hug a bottle every night and cry."
Lien cut in from the side with a snicker. The content in his words, depending on how you looked at it, was truly rude and over the line, but Cypress nodded. Like he admitted it.
Those two were truly friends. Jokes like this were normal between them.
"Then go."
Cypress gestured. His body couldn't move as actively as before. Even so, his resolve was the same.
He was still the guardian of the Southern Front. Enkrid took Cypress's hand.
"It was an honor, sir."
"I felt the same."
Enkrid finished the short greeting and turned his body. Now it was time to leave.
It had been a war with fewer casualties than expected. Normally, when people died this much so close to the Demon-lands, wraiths were born and ghouls appeared, but not even that happened.
It was thanks to the priesthood dispatched from Legion, who had worked hard. They brought holy relics that blocked the air from the Demon lands and set them up and buried them in this land.
"Legion sent quite a few precious items."
Audin, seeing it, exclaimed.
It was something you couldn't have even imagined in the Legion of the past.
A holy relic is an artifact born when an item possessed by a martyr with holiness, or a clergyman who lived out their lifespan and died, takes in holiness. It wasn't something you could mass-produce like printing.
On top of that, it had to be an item that had been used the entire time as a medium for holiness, and it had to pass complicated conditions as well.
Enkrid passed by one of the relics that had been set up like that. It was a metal ornament made in the shape of a bunch of grapes, symbolizing abundance.
They were leaving land where the war had ended.
Hee-in.
Odd-Eye folded its wings obediently and came up alongside him.
"Yeah. You were pacing around by the tent too, weren't you?"
While Enkrid was dying and coming back, Odd-Eye hadn't left the tent Enkrid had been staying in either.
When Enkrid raised a hand to stroke its mane, Odd-Eye went thud and smacked that hand away with its forehead.
It felt like it meant: stop doing useless things and get your body together.
He wasn't planning to ride Odd-Eye's back. His body would get better if he walked a bit.
Riding Odd-Eye was something that consumed mental and physical strength, and the way back wasn't urgent.
He'd heard that one of Rihinstetten's roaming armies had happened to run into Rem's charge unit and gotten smashed and scattered, but the rest had quietly returned to Rihinstetten.
He heard the High Pontiff's son had granted them amnesty and ordered them back.
The stance the South took after the Levee Treaty was clear.
They would strengthen their insides and do their utmost to block the Demon-lands.
'Just like Crang wanted.'
He walked together with the entire knight order. His body hadn't fully recovered, but it was walkable.
"Toward the hero who saved the nation, the hero who ended the war."
A formation lined up ahead on the road and blocked the front.
No, it didn't block it. They stood in ranks to the left and right, leaving the path where they would walk.
Crang stood at the center. His voice rang out louder than ever.
"Salute."
No sooner had he finished speaking than the people who filled both sides pressed their left hands to their waists and bowed their heads. A chajajajajak- sound rang out. It was the sound that came from the entire unit moving in perfect unison. A military salute filled with respect and honor.
"At ease."
At Crang's words, everyone lifted their heads again.
"As the king of a nation, I say this. Because you fought, because you stepped forward, you protected those who stood behind you. For all of that, I express my gratitude."
Every single word Crang said stuck into Enkrid's ears.
He saw an illusion. The background behind Crang changed into a city, and people came out in between, bowed their heads, cried, and expressed their thanks.
'Jjul, Rita, Merid.'
Countless names surfaced. Among them, there were those he couldn't protect and who died, and those he saved.
The one kid who had dreamed of becoming an herbalist died, but the kid living in Border Guard lived.
The illusion blurred and vanished like morning fog. In the meantime, Crang came up, raised his fist, and thumped Enkrid in the chest.
"It's not over yet."
"I know."
Five demon lords remained, and the Demon lands still stood.
"Still, I'm delighted beyond words that we pressed down that Rihinstetten like this."
Crang laughed. Enkrid laughed too.
"I'm sure you feel the best inside, Your Highness."
Cypress cut in between them.
The unit that had shown the military salute supported them from behind. A person can't live alone, and can't fight alone either. It was something he was realizing all over again.
"For the madman!"
The cheer he heard from behind was proof of that.
"For those who stand behind us!"
Another cheer hit his heart too.
It was what happened when they left the Southern Front, with Aurelia joining them too.
And the last of the special things that couldn't be ignored was the dream he had on the way back.
Naturally, it was a dream where the Ferryman appeared.
"How many todays do you think it took for you to wake up?"
Even as he left the front line, his body hadn't recovered, so he set aside any real training and devoted himself only to recovery.
Walking helped recovery more than staying still, so the march continued at a slow pace.
On the first day, the moment he lay down, he fell into sleep, and the Ferryman suddenly popped out and asked.
At the Ferryman's words, Enkrid fell into thought.
He didn't know exactly how many todays had passed.
He simply thought that if he counted each time he woke as a death, at least several hundred must have passed.
It was simple logic. He'd judged it as dying each time he closed his eyes and opened them.
"Does the number matter?"
A faint green light could be seen within the hood. Today's Ferryman had the head tilted diagonally to the side, so he couldn't see inside the robe.
"Because you don't seem to know."
The Ferryman answered. He even set a lamp down on the side of the boat. It was the first time Enkrid had seen that. Looking at the lamp the Ferryman set down, Enkrid asked back.
"Is it something I need to know?"
"It'd be good if you knew."
The Ferryman continued explaining obediently. It was a simple, straightforward story.
"You passed out countless times and woke again. Just on the fifth day alone, you died and came back sixteen times. Each time you reached the brink of death, you barely kept your breath going."
Who?
Rem, Audin, Shinar, Crang, Teresa, Dunbakel, Pel, Lawford, Luagarne, Temares did that.
When was it.
Everything he'd seen even when he became a knight repeated.
"Don't die. It'd be a shame if you go like this."
Rem used a few secret techniques to block the wound. The rest were all similar. Shinar, in particular, poured out her vitality without holding back.
"It was an impressive scene."
The Ferryman said. Coming out of his mouth, it was so awkward you had to say it was strange.
Wasn't he the kind of being who acted like he knew everything.
'What methods exist to postpone death?'
The Ferryman recalled words like that. If those people hadn't been around Enkrid, his today would have been much shorter.
So short he might not have been able to do anything. He might have been swallowed by today.
What did his life, the time he had passed through, prove?
The past speaks of the present. That phrase came to him. Forgotten words unraveled in his head on their own and pulled out emotion.
The Ferryman tried to shake that emotion off at once, but not everything went as he wished.
'Leave it. It's been a while. Let it enjoy it.'
Another Ferryman blocked him and rose all the way to the surface. That was how he was facing Enkrid in the dream right now.
'Death postponed by the help of those around you.'
A new kind of today he had never experienced even once until now.
Enkrid struggled in that gap, but he was never alone.
"One inside the whole can't change anything, but when that one gathers and becomes many, the world changes. Change starts with me, but it doesn't end with me."
Those were the words Enkrid had said. The Ferryman heard those words too. Those words he had shouted toward the High Pontiff were proven.
The change he caused reached even the curse the Ferryman had placed.
'Acknowledged.'
While the Ferryman thought, a moment Enkrid had never perceived before seeped up, like it was surfacing.
'So that's why that bastard Rem kept asking again if it felt good to be alive.'
And Audin, watching that, smiled with satisfaction, and Dunbakel nodded too. Everyone responding with one heart to what Rem said.
It was awkward beyond words, but there was no time to pick at it, so he let it go.
The reason Temares had spoken of mystery was similar.
It wasn't that it was "mysterious" just because he'd been dying and it didn't work even when he was fed dragon blood, and yet he lived.
'He talked about mystery because he saw that no one gave up before confirming the end.'
The Dragonkin still kept words short and lacked the knack for conveying intent. If Enkrid had deliberately parsed what he said, he could have known, but he hadn't, so only now did he realize.
"This time, your today was only eleven times."
The gap from what he had perceived was huge. Enkrid now knew why.
Not that there would be any reason to bring it up.
The Ferryman took off the hood. She looked like a woman a head taller than Enkrid. Green eyes shone on white skin.
"See you again."
A clear woman, part of the Ferryman, said. Enkrid woke from the dream.
***
"Is there not a single normal person?"
Anne said. The healer who called herself an elixir. For days, she examined those who had returned.
"Knight Jaxon came back half-dead too."
Even as she spoke, she understood how harsh and violent their fight had been. Anne checked Enkrid's abdominal wound and said once more, precisely.
"Thanks to you, a lot of people lived, right."
She said it with her head lowered. The meaning in those words was clear. Gratitude and praise.
Enkrid didn't answer. About half a month passed like that, and his condition recovered enough that training was possible.
Enkrid checked what he had realized and ingrained into his body. After another ten days, his condition returned completely.
In the meantime, all kinds of talk went around outside. Nicknames like Balrog Slayer and Demon Slayer circulated one after another, and minstrels made endless new songs as if now was their chance.
Enkrid hummed through his nose a song titled Knight of the End, or Knight of the End of Wars.
It was when a month had passed since returning to the city.
"You're recovered now?"
It was winter dawn, before even the sun rose. Cold wind seeped deep into the bones.
On a day like this, Rem was the kind of guy who enjoyed rolling around wrapped in heated leather no matter what anyone said.
He came out at dawn training time and warmed up with him. He put the heated leather aside, gave off heat, and sweated.
He lifted and lowered a lump of iron, and as a finish, stretched as if loosening every single strand of muscle. The muscles that had repeated contraction and relaxation revealed a shape smoother than any artwork. He hadn't even prepared that much when fighting Rihinstetten's knight order, but now he focused without a single joke.
It was the black sky before daybreak. Separate from the cold, stars glittered in the sky. With that starlight as a backdrop, Rem had just asked.
"Completely."
Enkrid answered.
Rem nodded and walked to one side of the training ground. It was neither a fast nor slow pace.
Standing at one side of the training ground like that, Rem took out his axes and lowered his stance at an angle.
In his right hand was a chopping weapon, an axe, and in his left hand was an axe he'd pestered a dwarf craftsman into making.
Mixed true iron with true silver and black gold, made from three metals—hadn't it been called the crystallization of the dwarf's secret arts.
Rem crossed the two axes and raised them in front of his face, then spoke with his waist bent forward.
"Let's go one round."