WeTried Translations

Translator: Hydrogen B

Editor: Abstract

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Chapter 793: Induless and Mental Attack

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Role division.

That was the picture Enkrid had drawn. A tactic sketched out across countless repetitions of today.

He could not explain it piece by piece right now, but if he showed them, they would figure it out on their own.

He had experienced this before.

When they pushed through Count Molsen's Wraith army, they had matched each other's movements. Of course, the fight ahead would be far more complicated than that. No need to think deeply to know it. The opponent was different, and so were they. There would be errors because of that.

Whoosh.

The flame whip came without warning. The fire serpent curved through the air and reshaped itself into a lasso that tried to wrap around Audin's forearm.

Every motion was so fast it looked as though the thing was stretching out and throwing a curtain of flame across the air. An illusion made from afterimages.

Enkrid stepped into the gap. Audin reflexively raised a fist, then pulled back. Enkrid smoothly pressed his sword into the lasso and brushed it aside. Try to cut it, and it tangles around and ensnares the attacker. Experience had shown him the way.

"Brother?"

Audin called out.

"I'll handle the blocking."

When Enkrid said it once again, the Balrok bent its left wrist downward, planted its sole flat against the floor, and eased forward with a slow push. Its right index finger lifted, then gripped Urtt firmly again. All of those movements introduced errors into Enkrid's calculations. The most troublesome thing the Balrok had was not the flame whip moving on its own, nor the sword that breathed black fire, nor its horns.

It was the grappling strike.

The Balrok was masterful at the grappling strike. You could pour Will into yourself, move at speeds beyond your limits, and cleave through rock and iron, but once you entered a fight, all that remained was dodging, cutting, blocking, and cutting. The Balrok had mastered that truth. When it needed to, it thrust its sword fast, wove in small deceptive movements, and kicked its opponent in the stomach.

Enkrid had been caught by that more times than he could count. Could he predict all of it and dodge it? There was a sword art built precisely for that.

Wave-Blocking Sword.

Its meaning: a sword that blocked even waves. Its method: stopping attacks. Its training: the discipline of thought. He layered everything he had learned and mastered onto that foundation. Sword of Chance, Vortex, everything he had, all woven together into a single act of blocking.

The Balrok swayed left and right, leaving blurred afterimages. It rocked its body left, then shot right as if lunging and swung its sword.

It aimed for the side where Sinar had pulled back. Enkrid's body chased after it. He wedged himself between Sinar and the Balrok and swung. His accelerated thoughts let him read the arc of the Balrok's sword before it landed. Then the Balrok extended its leg. It was a pattern he had been caught by again and again, which meant he already knew it.

He knocked the sword aside, drew back, and struck the Balrok's sole with his pommel.

Bang!

An explosive boom erupted between them. Enkrid stepped back three paces and dispersed the residual force, while the Balrok pulled its extended leg in, used that same foot to kick off the ground, and moved at once.

Role division, he had said, but the coordination was not there yet. If the Madman Knights were a single body, they were still tripping over their own feet.

Rem could not spin his Sling freely. Ragna could not swing his sword properly. More precisely, he had not even drawn Ilchul and was simply watching impassively. Jaxon had taken a single step back, and Sinar had drawn her Leaf Blade but knew her body was not in a normal state, so she poured everything into evasion.

"Brother!"

Then the Balrok swung its left hand like a blade and cut across Enkrid's wrist. Audin cried out when he saw it.

Not a drop of blood flew.

"I'm fine."

Enkrid said it without expression. His left hand was wrapped in two layers of cloth gauntlets. At some point, he had removed the one from his right hand and wrapped it around his left as well, and that had stopped the blow. He had also imbued the cloth with Will.

The cloth gauntlets were deeply scored and torn, strips of fabric hanging loose below.

Using tools.

An application of what he had learned from his teacher Rino. Rino had shown him the knack of mixing his Will into a weapon, and Enkrid had absorbed it faithfully.

Whether Rino had meant to teach him or not was none of his concern.

If their opponent had been sloppy, the group would have found their rhythm by now. But the Balrok seemed to know that and kept disrupting them without pause.

Even this was a kind of game to it. It never imagined losing. And that certainty made its Will harder and heavier.

Enkrid felt the same way.

"Ah, what am I supposed to do?"

Rem grumbled behind him.

They were like musicians playing in discord, but if he showed them the picture, they would know what to do. That belief had not changed. No, Enkrid genuinely believed it.

And if they could not? Then everyone died. That was just how it was. The Balrok possessed power that no one present could face alone.

Was it sensing an opening, or trying to pry one open deliberately? The Balrok moved to crush everyone with Pressure Manifestation.

Burnt chains tightened around their bodies. The Balrok's manifested Pressure was not something to shake off easily.

Of course, Enkrid had shaken it off more times than he could count.

Refusal.

A fortress wall rose up and sent the chains bouncing away. Pressure was, at its root, oppression forged from fear and killing intent, the domain of Demon Creatures. That the Balrok wielded it so naturally was no surprise, but the chains flew back all the same. And Enkrid was not the only one.

Sorcery was inherently suited to rejecting this kind of force.

"Not happening."

Rem jumped back a few steps and threw off the Pressure. Pulling back did not take him outside the affected area, but the movement itself carried a sorcerous meaning that deflected the Pressure aside.

"In the Lord Father, I shall know no fear."

Audin wrapped himself in Sacred Light Armor and stood head-on, enduring it and winning through.

Ching.

Ragna drew Ilchul two finger-widths and cut the Pressure apart with his momentum alone. Jaxon moved to Audin's back before the Balrok unleashed its Pressure, and Sinar stepped in behind Enkrid at the same moment.

Every one of them had ignored the Balrok's Pressure in their own way.

-Good!

The Balrok watching them cried out in delight. Its joy was so complete that Urtt ignited in black fire. The great burning sword blazed and doubled in size, and the flame whip twisted wildly in midair and swelled enormous. At the same time, the two Wings attached to the Balrok's back spread wide. Shadow and flame poured out from the Balrok and pressed down on everything around them. A sharp, charred smell spread through the air. This was the Balrok's own scent.

And then.

Flap.

Enkrid's cloak spread wide on its own, rippling behind him like an unfurling wing. There was no wind, but it happened.

Where the Balrok bore down on its surroundings with its Wings, Enkrid wrapped his own surroundings with his cloak.

Ziiing.

As Urtt breathed fire, Duskforge sang. The sword's cry traveled through the hand gripping its hilt and spread through his whole body.

It was an Inscribed Weapon because it held its owner's Will. That Will was responding now, speaking with the blade. Duskforge's edge took on a sky-blue luminescence that spread and blended with the sacred light Audin was pouring out. Viewed from above, it would have looked as though the Balrok's shadow claimed one half of the space, and sacred light and sky-blue held the other half in check.

Chiiing.

Between them, the god who consumed night and darkness showed its face.

"I'm the one doing the cutting."

The owner of Ilchul spoke.

"Not alone, you idiot."

That came from the sharp shadow standing behind the sacred light, dawnlight, and Ilchul. At some point, unfamiliar markings had surfaced in Rem's eyes, and the shadow at his back had shifted into a shape with long arms and a small frame.

It was the appearance produced by activating the Sorcery of divine descent. On top of that came divine manifestation, layering western divine power.

"Do you think I planned to just watch?"

Sinar enveloped them in the fragrance of trees and flowers.

"Don't mind me."

Jaxon placed a foot in the darkness, belonging to no part of this cave. He could do that. Moonlight always illuminates the night.

He carried the moon inside himself, and that was why he never lost his way even in pitch black.

Full strength.

Letting his guard down would mean death. Death wandered nearby like the closest of friends, always hovering just within reach. Having repeated today so many times, Enkrid felt that more keenly than anyone. But right now, none of that occupied his mind.

Thud.

His heart hammered hard enough that the pulse reached his temples.

The Balrok was no longer smiling. It had not suddenly lost interest. It had decided to move in earnest, and that showed on its face.

It was the same expression Enkrid had seen again and again when he staked his life to shatter a crystal.

Fwoosh.

That was the sound it seemed to make. When the Balrok moved with real intent, it was like fighting inside the gaps between moments of time.

Which meant that to survive here, they too had to deliberately raise their reaction speed and Dynamic Visual Acuity above the required level. Anything less and they would miss it. The Balrok was superior in everything, raw physicality, strength, speed, all of it.

Acceleration.

He accelerated his thoughts and drove his body's reaction speed upward at the same time. Enkrid's mind narrowed to a single point. He chased only the Balrok's movements.

I can see it.

Call it an evolved form of the Wave-Blocking Sword, perhaps.

He watched the flow, sometimes dividing his thoughts to make tactical judgments, then switching to a single thought the moment he caught the enemy's movement. High and low, agitation and calm, switching without pause and without pattern. Constant adjustment of tempo. The kind of thing that could only be done by someone who knew how to sprint at full speed and then stop dead and sink into stillness.

It was also something Enkrid had done endlessly. The handling of Will that took him from a dead stop to point-burst in a single breath was one branch of what he was doing now.

I can block it.

Enkrid gave himself over to exhilaration. Like a madman, he read the rhythm and current of the Balrok's attacks, drove Duskforge in, took a fist on his elbow, and let the force slide away.

Bang! Fwoom! Clang! Ziiing!

Black light met sky-blue, and black sparks flew into the wall and punched holes in the stone.

What was the difference between his own Will and the Wills of the Knights, Balrok included?

Enkrid had searched and pondered and hired three new teachers and run himself into the ground. Even on the Boatman's ferry, the questions kept coming.

He swung his sword while hundreds of thoughts crossed each other. He dragged out time to carve out hours of training.

"Stop playing games, you little bastard."

His teachers had lost their tempers often enough. The time he had spent devoted to them had not been wasted. It was Enkrid's own way of apologizing.

He split time apart and used it. He never let a single today go to waste, always acting as though right now were his last.

"I want to crack open your skull and look inside."

He could almost hear the Boatman's admiration. Completely sincere.

They say Will that never runs dry is Ousque, and what changes the nature of what you possess is Induless.

Induless.

That meant a change in the quality of Will itself. What he had done in Zaun was a method of using Will. What he had realized now was something slightly different. All this time, Enkrid had shaped and formed his Will like an alchemist or a stonemason, refining it, breaking it, deliberately splitting it, gathering it, blending it, purifying it, letting it flow.

Through all of that, the things his Knight order had shown him had moved into the realm of understanding.

Jaxon, when the moment called for it, formed the Will he carried into a thin blade and used it that way. When that Will locked into the relic he held, it became Induless. Changing the nature of what one possessed meant a change in the quality of Will itself.

Audin raised a boulder made of light.

Rem grabbed hold of wind that moved as it pleased, compressed it in his grip, and swung it.

Ragna, with nothing but the intent to cut, transformed his Will into a blade.

Was it coincidence that all of them could do this? No.

They had spent long enough stimulating one another that they had become what Rem had once said without thinking: us. That was why they could do it.

Enkrid had formed his Will into bricks and stacked them. One brick flies apart from a single kick, but stack enough of them and it changes. He had built a fortress wall inside himself. Induless: Will of a fortress wall.

Bang!

Urtt slipped through a gap in his focus and drove straight down. Enkrid tensed his feet, his glutes, and his core all at once, raised his sword flat and level to the ground, and held.

There had been times in the past when a blow like that buckled his knees, and more times than he could count when it sent him flying. But he could hold it now.

The Balrok's burning sword had condensed its fire into the shape of a blade of flame.

Duskforge will not break.

He trusted the Inscribed Weapon. He applied what he had learned about handling a weapon and added a simple thought, focusing only on blocking. Donapha's teaching. The single-edge's long breathing method, along with the elation mingled with omnipotence, further condensed his Will. All their teachings layered on top of each other and held the blow.

Over the flat-raised edge of the blade, the corner of Enkrid's mouth turned up. He did not even know he was smiling.

The Balrok smiled back.

Held that? The smile seemed to ask. The flames standing in for its pupils spun without stopping.

Even if death came at the end of this exhilaration, it would fight on, because that was the reason it existed.

Such was the Balrok's life.

The sword it had swung with all its force had been stopped. That left a gap in the Balrok's motion, and at the same moment, a sense of unity appeared in the movement that had been grinding and catching until now.

Click.

The sound of misaligned gears finally fitting together. Not a sound anyone actually heard, but it was there.

From the stance of having brought the sword down, the Balrok pulled back only its left hand and raised it before its forehead.

Bang!

A projectile came flying in and burst against it. Something like black crystal dust scattered across the Balrok's arm and diffusely scattered the light. Naturally, it was Rem's work.

"Your Vice-captain here will shove it all in, so everyone else just move. Yeah?"

His nonsense kept going off like rounds of ammunition. A mental attack. Whether it was aimed at their own side or at the enemy, no one could say.

Footnotes:

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