Originally, the warriors of Zaun would have been scattered and taken down one by one, but they managed to form something resembling a formation.
It started with the family head, Alexandra, and Lynox taking the front, forming an invisible wall to block the enemy.
Because the enemy had to go around those three, the lizard cavalry couldn’t build enough momentum to charge and had to expose their every move.
What’s more, before some of the cavalry could even charge, Encrid sent out Anahera to strike first, breaking their formation and inducing chaos.
Even so, Hescal showed no signs of panic.
‘It would’ve been better to send Ragna charging instead of Anahera.’
That would’ve made things truly absurd, but he was too valuable to use like that.
If the family head was the fortress wall, then Ragna was the catapult. He had to fly in and cause destruction.
No one was expecting a catapult, so there was no reason not to use him.
More than anything, there was no time to go and give Ragna instructions.
Encrid could only trust he would act on his own.
Encrid’s gaze shifted to the side. It wasn’t that he heard anything. His senses spread out wide and thin, picking up on an unusual sign.
It was just a subtle disturbance, like someone lightly waving a hand behind his back, but in this moment, even something like that could be felt from ten steps away.
Even in the storm, his senses were sharply attuned to everything around him.
Encrid rolled his eyes in the direction his intuition guided and spotted the enemy.
Among the lizard cavalry charging toward Riley, a few reached out their hands.
He saw the form of a monster with a sharp snout and black scales tinged with red.
‘A special type.’
If it survived long enough, it could earn a name.
Among them hid a group of monsters with paranormal abilities that made the Scalors look like cute children.
At the same time, Anahera responded to their attack and shouted,
“Someone’s holding me!”
Even though nothing had actually grabbed her arms or legs, the words burst out. Encrid interpreted the meaning behind her brief cry.
‘Telekinesis.’
Encrid stabbed his sword into the ground and expanded both his vision and his senses. Several monsters moving abnormally showed up in his detection.
He began processing the incoming information more sensitively. He saw, heard, smelled, tasted, and felt it all.
The data rearranged itself in his mind, aligning exactly as Encrid wanted.
Clear as a black dot on a white canvas, he sensed every monster within his range possessing a paranormal ability.
Even as he opened his senses to detect the enemy, Encrid’s hands didn’t rest.
He drew two horn-bladed daggers from the sheath on his chest and gripped them in both hands.
Jaxon had once said it was the most hated weapon on the continent.
“It doesn’t mute the sound, it makes it louder? That’s the worst.”
It wasn’t a weapon that suited Jaxon’s technique or aesthetics.
His thoughts were brief; his movements never ceased. He locked eyes on the enemies he sensed. Everything, including the Scalors reaching out their hands, looked slow to him.
A Knight’s thought process is several times faster than that of an ordinary person. It felt like slipping through the cracks of time to observe things in secret.
That might be why stray thoughts crept into his head.
‘Focus Point.’
Perceiving slowed time came with a pressure, like being buried in mud, but the Will flowing through his body lent him strength.
With that strength, he could move as he wished even within the mud.
What was needed right now? To hit the target by throwing.
He focused. He mixed what he learned from Riley’s style into Jaxon’s technique. He swung both arms back at once. After condensing power enough to hit, he filled his arms with Will and swung.
His arms crossed like whips in front of his chest, and the horn-bladed daggers tore through the air.
Bang! Bang! Pwoo!
The daggers sliced through the air with a short trumpet-like sound and pierced through the heads of the two Scalors reaching into the air.
The booming sound rang out clearly even in the middle of the storm.
The daggers didn’t just get stuck—they pierced through. Meaning, there were holes in their heads bigger than fists.
With a hole in the head, not even a troll could survive, let alone a Scalor.
The one that tried to use telekinesis with its hand raised crumbled and splashed into the mud.
Encrid pulled his sword from the ground and said,
“Leave the special ones alone.”
He couldn’t just spectate any longer.
It seemed there was more than one monster with paranormal abilities.
In that case, it couldn’t be helped. He had to throw himself into that entertaining battlefield.
Moreover, this monster with paranormal abilities was just the first of what they had prepared.
Craack—
With a bolt of lightning, an ominous presence was felt from above. When he looked up, he saw the rain forming a massive shape beneath the dark clouds overhead.
It looked like a giant snake had appeared in the sky. It wasn’t a dragon. A long-bodied snake hovered above them, siding with the monsters.
The ominous sensation that struck the back of his neck confirmed it was sorcery.
“I was wondering when you’d show yourself.”
Encrid muttered.
The effect of the sorcery was clear. From the moment the snake floated in the air, the monsters grew fiercer.
Ssssssshhhhh!
The hissing noise from the Scalors echoed sharply in his ears, and his senses flared an alarm.
“Hold your ground.”
Encrid said, passing by Riley.
“I’m already doing that without you telling me!”
As Encrid passed Riley, he smoothly swung his sword. The Three-Iron curved from below upward and grazed the neck of a lizard that had crept up from the ground.
Splurt, crunch!
It was as if he’d wrapped its neck with a blade-tipped whip and yanked it off.
The blade circled the monster’s neck and cut it clean off.
It was a creature with exceptional stealth, but the sound of rain hitting the ground had changed, and its form had been caught in the falling rain—so he killed it.
‘Hescal.’
Encrid thought he understood what Hescal was aiming for.
If Krais or Avnair could see the battlefield now, they would say this:
“So it’s all about ending it in one decisive strike, huh?”
To add on, that decisive strike would come only after exhausting all their forces. Both physically and emotionally.
He sent monsters to wear down knight-level combatants and, if needed, would charge Zaun’s remaining forces to kill their families—thus shaking their hearts.
Knights are an asymmetric force. If they could be killed, it was worth throwing thousands of monsters at them.
‘Brilliant.’
Hescal was outstanding even as a tactician.
Encrid had no choice but to go along with Hescal’s plan to some extent.
He had wanted to fight while conserving energy, but he couldn’t ignore it. At least, he stopped them from shaking their hearts by killing Riley and the others.
If they broke through here, the road to Zaun would open. Then, they wouldn’t even be able to protect their rear.
Encrid followed his sharpened intuition, throwing his gaze into the distance, and suddenly shouted.
“Duck!”
This was getting to be too much.
The thought briefly flashed through his head.
The snake shape summoned by sorcery raised the monsters’ physical capabilities beyond normal.
Amid that, a special type emerged. A monster with paranormal ability.
Even more, a colossal monster—something rarely seen even in the Demon Realm—raised its head in the back.
Shhhaaah—
The hundreds of snakes attached to its head were its signature. That signature dominated the battlefield. A monster whose gaze cursed all it touched with petrification—Medusa.
Its size looked five times that of a Scalor. It was a monster larger than a giant.
Medusa’s petrification curse likely didn’t work universally. With Will, one could endure it to an extent. But the fact that you had to endure it was a problem.
It meant running short on Will for battle.
While enduring the curse that mixed stone dust into your blood, they had to hold off a monster horde that included beings with paranormal abilities.
In a normal fight, the allies had the advantage; with paranormal types, it was even; with the sorcery snake in the sky, they were at a disadvantage; and with Medusa’s appearance, it was practically defeat confirmed.
And yet, Hescal had calculated even this.
‘He used Medusa as a tactical tool.’
Instead of charging her in, he made her impose force over the entire battlefield.
Now, Encrid could also sense the source of the sorcery’s power.
Medusa was both a tactical device and a conduit for sorcery, a symbol.
The enemy forces were clearly superior to the allies. On top of that, they had a sorcerer and a legendary alchemist.
If that ghost called Drmule really became a god like he wanted, they’d probably start calling him Drmule of Plague or something.
Encrid believed that it was better to fight without looking, rather than waste Will.
Even if Will overflowed within the body, the portion temporarily available would be collateralized by the curse.
He also knew that the swordsmen of Zaun could fight without looking. They were trained to spar blindfolded since the age of ten. In fact, such training existed in Zaun’s swordsmanship.
“Keep your heads down and fight! You don’t need to look!”
Encrid shouted again. But even as he did, he kept his head held high.
It was a final sweep with his eyes, to check if anything still needed to be seen.
Medusa’s curse was tied to the act of seeing.
Overhead, the sound of wings flapping echoed in the sky.
Hescal had deliberately held back the winged creatures until now. He paired them with Medusa.
‘He’s aiming for the synergy between a tactical tool and airborne units.’
Or perhaps those winged creatures needed the sorcery’s field to be active in order to fly through the storm.
Encrid ignored Medusa’s curse and kept his eyes forward. He trusted the constantly flowing Will within him, and also his Will of Rejection.
And indeed, that trust proved true. Medusa’s curse had no effect on his body.
A normal person would’ve started turning to stone from the blood and spread to the whole body by now.
“Guess we’ll be calling those flying units.”
As he swept back his wet hair, one thought came to mind—it was going to be dangerous.
If they couldn’t pull out some hidden card to reverse this, they’d lose for sure.
He knew it by instinct, and also calculated it logically.
Well, in that case, they simply needed to do it.
A Luagarne-style tactical sword couldn’t be completed just by watching. Instinct drew forth what was buried in the subconscious and combined it to produce an answer.
And that included his own martial strength.
Encrid relied on instinct and intuition to sketch a path in his mind.
His burning focus and overheated mind revealed the path he needed to walk. It was also connected to a recent realization.
Encrid lowered his head.
‘Lynox manipulates waves through controlled Will.’
He applied what he had learned from Lynox’s swordsmanship. Encrid wasn’t a genius, but when it came to manipulating Will, it was fair to say he had talent.
Strictly speaking, it wasn’t talent as much as having so much Will that he could train infinitely without limit.
That’s why learning advanced techniques came easier to him than even the basics of Zaun.
‘Control.’
He avoided looking at Medusa. Then he hid his Will. At the same time, he matched his wave to the environment and himself—this was Assimilation.
Ironically, it was only here that he finally understood the Assimilation that Jamal, the Knight of Aspen, had shown him before.
If Rem saw this now, he’d probably say—
“What the hell, seriously? Why the hell can you only do that now?”
It felt like he could already hear Rem’s voice angrily complaining about why he didn’t get it sooner.
Encrid melted into the battlefield.
He then began to distribute his breath slowly, evenly, and finely, sticking out his tongue slightly to taste the air and the falling rain.
A faint sweetness touched his tongue, conveying information through his sense of taste—distance, direction, position. Not perfectly. He could only feel their presence.
It felt like he could fight with his eyes closed. So he closed them.
In exchange for sight, he opened his ears. Hearing would now replace vision.
He didn’t need to use echo-location. The sound of the rain would do it for him.
Ssshhhhhhh.
The sound of the rain faded, and Encrid’s world turned black and white. Only then did he see everything.
The positions and stances of the enemy, and even what they were doing.
Following the path drawn by the Luagarne-style tactical sword within his mind, Encrid dashed forward.
None of the warriors of Zaun, including Riley, could detect his movement. Naturally, the enemy couldn’t either.
Moving in his assimilated state, he only released his hidden Will right before striking his target.
The first was another Scalor who had just raised his hand to use telekinesis.
Encrid drew Penna and stabbed upward from beneath its jaw.
Thunk!
The blade pierced through its skull, sending black blood, brain matter, and fragments of brain splashing out.
Before the stab even ended, Encrid pulled Penna out, flicked the blood off, and sheathed it again before moving eighteen steps sideways. It looked like walking, but the speed was equivalent to sprinting.
As he moved sideways, an Owlbear—specialized in hiding its presence—was about to unleash its poison-laced feathers.
Crk-crk-crk.
The feathers, sharp enough to cut through storms, raised like a furious beast’s hackles.
Every feather on its body was a poisoned dart. Left alone, someone might have been hit. But the Owlbear failed to achieve its purpose.
The precision of the Three-Iron sliced through the Owlbear’s steel-tough feathers and neck.
Black blood spurted like a fountain from the severed neck, but the downpour diluted it as it mixed mid-air.
To Encrid’s auditory perception, it simply looked like two different textures of liquid mixing.
Encrid continued to move. He detected enemies with his sense of hearing and waves, using his controlled Will only when necessary.
Thuk!
The next Scalor had a particularly hard body, but Penna pierced through its eye socket and split its head open.
It didn’t die instantly, but there was no need to strike again.
Next target.
There were three main types of paranormal abilities.
One that used telekinesis, another with a specially hardened body, and the last—those adept at hiding their presence.
Encrid focused mainly on eliminating the third type: the ones who concealed themselves.
The black-and-white world was like a personal training ground granted to him alone.
It felt like he alone could move freely on a spiderweb.
Aker’s Web—it set everything in order, assigning sequence to each strike. He combined the Correct Sword Technique he had learned with the Luagarne-style tactical sword. From that point on, it was no longer difficult.
It was simply something he could do.
And with only that ability, Encrid ensured that not a single person near him who bore the name Zaun would die.
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