1087. Difference in skill, difference in experience
Encred faithfully honed everything I learned, mastered, and realized, but he devoted even more effort to close-quarters combat.
If one were to ask why, I would have to answer that it was because that is how I was taught.
“All fights end at this distance. Look. When you start a fight, you observe the movements of the feet, shoulders, and the whole body to position yourself, and you need every means possible. But the end of a fight doesn’t turn out that way. That’s not how it works.”
It was something Rem had told me. It was something he often repeated when teaching me. He had told me not to go anywhere and get killed in a single blow, but the core of it was this:
in any fight, you have to come close to kill.
When I asked if he didn’t throw an axe…
“I’ll be honest with you just this once. Even a sling or an axe won’t work against you if you’re just a lazy person. Then what do you have to do?”
“I have to get within effective range to attack,”
Encred replied. Rem chuckled at the answer that came out without pause and responded.
“Anyway, learn well with your head.”
It was a compliment. It also implied that it would be good if I fought as well physically as I understood intellectually, but a compliment is a compliment.
“To stab the neck or heart, or to inflict a fatal wound, simply thrust the knife. That is all there is to it. It is over once you reach this distance. It is fine to exceed your opponent’s expectations, to deceive them, or even to make them feel your presence.”
Saxen offered similar words. His point was that there was nothing difficult about killing an opponent.
He spoke while circling a tree, his message mainly consisting of deceiving the opponent’s perception with unexpected moves.
He instructed them to enter the sword’s range and thrust.
When asked why he was teaching such things at the time, he claimed he was just speaking his mind; however, upon reflection, he realized he had said it after seeing Enkrid constantly panic and his hands get tangled during sparring.
Saxen made him experience firsthand, time and time again, just how threatening an unexpected attack could be. Through this, Enkrid had come to realize the utility of such tactics.
Saxen was thoughtful. Although he did not outwardly reveal his reasons, consideration was embedded in his every action and attitude.
Of course, this might only apply to him. After all, he never showed such a side to Rem, Ragnar, or Audin.
When learning these things from Saxen, Enkrid learned about the sense of distance that separates the boundary between life and death, just as he had learned from Rem.
“If the knife cannot reach, naturally, I use my feet to close the distance. In such a situation, if it is difficult to pull my feet away, I use other means instead of accepting the damage.”
I learned something similar from Ragnar as well. It is a half-swording technique where one fights while holding a blade.
I learned close combat and hand-to-hand fighting, including wrestling, from Audin, but Ragnar was the best at half-swording itself.
If you can’t cut it, you will smash it.
He taught several ways to render an opponent incapacitated in a simple and clear manner.
In reality, it was not swordsmanship. He discussed only practical combat skills based on his own experience, and the reason was simple.
“If we’ve reached a point where it’s a matter of life and death, what matters more than swordsmanship is simply not panicking, striking well, and winning. If you don’t want that, then you just shouldn’t give me a distance where I don’t want to fight in the first place.”
The words Ragnar told me back then remained in my mind even after I became a knight, never fading from memory. Should I say they took root like a truth? That was correct. When it comes to fighting, his words are the truth.
Moreover, I told Luagarne about this and instructed her to record it in the swordsmanship manual. She, too, nodded in agreement.
If the purpose is to kill or be killed, it is ultimately determined by who fights better within the ‘killing distance’.
Regardless of skill, the one who survives on that street becomes the strong.
The one who ultimately dies is merely the weak, regardless of their usual ability. Is luck a skill? Of course it is. Luck is a skill.
When you die, there is nothing. Neither the time spent training, nor talent, nor goals, nor dreams remain.
Yet, if you hesitate out of fear of death, that very hesitation reveals itself as a vulnerable state; if repeated, it hardens into a habit, leading to nothing but repeated defeat after defeat.
“At short distances, the stronger one has the advantage. You know that, don’t you?”
Next was Audin. Everyone had a clear concept or personal theory regarding the killing distance, and Audin was no exception.
“We will stop at nothing to win.”
If Ragnar was a real combatist who smashed his opponent, Audin urged him to experience various methods of smashing and crushing.
Encred learned by actually being hit like that, and he laughed even in pain that would have made him scream.
“Indeed, Brother, you have gone mad.”
Audin’s admiration lingered in his memory. Enkrid smiled and nodded. After all, this was a compliment.
Thus, Enkrid absorbed the teachings of all of them with his body and heart.
That was one of his greatest assets. And now, that accumulated asset was shining.
His opponent, the demon, fired lightning from its goat horns, obscuring his vision and spewing venomous smoke. Enkrid endured it all.
He struck, pushed, and neutralized the opponent’s attacks.
Then, the creature seized an opportunity and closed the distance. It was a life-or-death distance. The demon’s body suddenly shrank, but it was fine. After all, wasn’t the distance close enough to matter anyway?
‘come.’
It was a fleeting thought, but in reality, by the time it occurred, everything was already over.
Although he hadn’t calculated everything, Enkrid established a tactical direction while fighting with a sense of pleasure.
He sliced through lightning, pushed away venomous smoke with a gust of wind, and burned some of it with the inexhaustible Will swirling within his body. He
cut through scythes and dodged glaives. Occasionally, he approached to slice through flesh and severed forearms.
If he neutralized the mid-to-long-range weapons the creature threw like this, how would the demon fight? Would it just cast spells from a distance? If the opponent had done that, Enkrid would have employed different tactics.
But the moment he saw it, he had a hunch.
Even if the provocation doesn’t work.
It is a beast that ultimately fights using its own hands. I sensed it in the enemy’s appearance and read it in its momentum.
“I will come closer and slash or stab you.”
Especially if the attacks thrown from a distance were all futile, it would become an unavoidable choice.
They fought like that, and when the man had closed in to kill, Encred let go of the dagger Saxony detested and drew the two short swords he carried at his waist as contingency weapons. He raised them side by side with their tips pointing toward the sky to block the man’s neck. The
golden blades, curved like a devil’s claws, cut through the short swords halfway as they dug in.
There was no sound. It was a world of silence. Yet, it seemed as though sounds like “clack, clack” could be heard.
Even though both short swords were made of pure steel and had been personally reinforced by Esther, they could only hold off the blade of the dagger in his hand for a brief moment.
A devil was a devil. Unless one possessed a engraved weapon, one was no match for him in the first place.
Still, he bought a very small amount of time, and in that brief moment, Encrid shifted his weight to his right foot, struck the inside of the guy’s thigh with his left knee, and then lowered his foot to step on and pin down his shin.
Will on the left foot.
He instantly shifted his weight. He transformed his Will into a rock, and the Will swirling around his center of gravity rose like a flame.
He changed his arm to a Will imbued with the nature of wind. The pure Will reacted immediately.
The Oneul released from his hand remained suspended in the air. As it slowly descended, passing his waist and reaching his thighs and knees, the enemy’s dagger shattered two short swords, but the demon also bent as if a leg had broken, his stance becoming unstable.
The enemy still pulled the dagger back to the very end, and Encred, regardless of whether the opponent had a vital spot or not, lifted his lowered knee and struck the groin.
The demon reflexively shifted his weight to his unbroken knee and held on, then slightly tucked his thighs inward to block the groin.
That was the end of the fight. Encred arched his back, using the time gained with the short sword to dodge the two daggers swung by the demon, and reached out to snatch the sword that had fallen below his knee—his imprinted weapon, Oneul. It was just about to hit the ground.
In a world that was still silent, Today soared straight up. He saw the devil holding up two daggers like obstacles, but Today dodged them like a salmon swimming against the current or a swallow riding the wind.
With the recoil of arching and straightening his back, the sword rose and severed the devil’s neck. As if resisting to the very end, the devil slashed Encred’s belly with a dagger.
Crunch!
The curved golden blade slashed across the armor gifted by the elves. Encred watched it intently and gripped the blade with his gauntlet-clad hand.
The blade, having dug halfway into the armor, stopped. There was only a brief creaking sound as it scraped against the gauntlet.
The demon’s head floated away and fell to the ground, while the body of the man holding the dagger staggered backward.
Crunch.
The blade, resembling a curved fingernail, bent under the grip and snapped.
*Tuk-clang*, a crisp sound. The broken blade fell to the floor with a thud.
Encred was quite pleased with the strength of the gauntlet Balrog had given him.
Straightening his posture, Encred shook the day into the air to drop black blood and caught his breath.
Was he winning? He didn’t know. But it was true that he fought his best.
Was it enjoyable? That was true, too. However, he hadn’t forgotten the tactical perspective.
To achieve the current result by simply getting absorbed in the fight and fighting as if for enjoyment, the goddess of fortune would have had to constantly side with him, but he couldn’t fight relying solely on such luck. After all,
the goddess who governs fortune and destiny takes sides regardless of whether the opponent is human or demon.
“Why did I lose?”
The head that had fallen to the ground opened its mouth and spoke, even though it had no lungs. If you looked closely, surrounding raindrops had seeped deep down its throat.
Because of this, a black liquid, diluted with a mixture of blood and rainwater, flowed from the corners of its mouth.
Difference in skill, difference in experience.
Encred replied in a lighthearted tone. Sometimes there was a clear reason for the outcome of a fight, but often there wasn’t.
This was the latter. Therefore, such a vague reason was all there was.
To add a few more points, the demon before him fought with his butt held back because his life was so precious to him. He had staked his life, yet was ready to retreat at any moment.
Encred was the opposite. He swung his sword, even risking his own life.
That created the current gap. Encred was slightly out of breath, but not exhausted to the point of death.
He had braced himself for death thinking it was a demon, so was it anticlimactic? No, that wasn’t the case.
Encred had certainly crossed a certain line while overcoming death. That simply brought about the current result. He
had merely unleashed everything he had realized while dying repeatedly to the Phoenix recently.
Even things he would never dare show his own comrades.
Veins bulged on the demon’s forehead. Falling raindrops struck the veins and bounced away.
“I am the Ascendant! I am the Devil! I am the Monarch who rules the Demon Realm!”
The creature’s voice echoed, layered in dozens of tiers. Along with it, lightning struck overhead again, but this time it did not strike the group.
It merely cut across the sky like a black carriage from afar.
This time, it was a lightning strike that was close to a straight line, neither winding nor zigzagging. *Rumble*.
The sound struck everyone’s ears belatedly. *Swoosh*, the rain poured down even more. The rain of the demonic realm soaked their bodies. Their wet bodies grew heavier, but no one here would voice a complaint about that.
I was supposed to become a dragon.
The fellow muttered. Was he speechless? The devil? His face turned pale; perhaps it was only natural, considering the head had been severed and lay sprawled on the ground without a body.
A blue halo had been floating above his head for who knows when. It was not the devil’s doing.
If you leave it alone, it will come back to life.
Esther spoke. I don’t know when she intervened, but light coalesced above the demon’s head as if trapping it.
Esther was attempting to sever the connection between the demon and the surrounding magic realm. However, it proved more difficult than expected, causing her brows to furrow. The process of frowning, swirling her magic, and staring directly at the situation continued.
It was akin to unraveling dozens—no, hundreds—of tangled balls of yarn one by one.
Instead of expressing her bewilderment, Esther was about to untangle them one by one when Encred stepped forward holding a sword.
He kicked the ground repeatedly and advanced, slashing his blade toward the demon’s head.
Right, tangled threads can simply be cut.
It wasn’t that Esther hadn’t considered such a method, but it was structured so that a curse would pour down on the person who was severed.
Enki.
He warned it, intending to accept at least half of the curse and slowly unravel it later, but the formless curse could not approach Encred’s body and melted away like ice in a current.
“Is there anything left?”
Encred asked. “Is this the extent of the demon’s power?”
As he asked, he became convinced. If the demon was at this level, he was truly worth fighting.
He was capable of wiping out and obliterating all those so-called Lords of the Demon Realm.
Was this just an illusion, a result of the sense of omnipotence rising through his body from Will?
No, reality lay squarely before his eyes.
There stood a demon—with a head of goat horns, a protruding snout, a beard, and square eyes—casting a vacant stare, reduced to nothing but its head.
I’m going to become a dragon.
As the creature muttered, the blue halo intensified.
Rem and Ragnar, who had been watching, met each other’s eyes. But isn’t the one beheading that head the one who contributed to the demon hunt?
So, couldn’t it be said that the one delivering the final blow killed the demon?
Just as that thought crossed their minds, the two were about to spring off the ground, but before they could, three daggers with slanted blades plunged into the demon’s head.
Suddenly, a man with reddish-brown hair stood before them, and the sound of his muttering was clearly audible to everyone.
Destroy what is evil, Travanes.
That was the name of the dagger. Travanes.
And this was one of the demon-slaying artifacts prepared by Saxony.
