A Knight Who Eternally Regresses Novel - Chapter 653

Chapter 653

In the tongue of the fays, Penna was a shortened title. Its complete designation was Kiis Seko Fedna—which translated to “the blade that severs all existence.”
Enkrid flourished it with just enough spiritual Will to prevent his own collapse, and a faint cerulean radiance shimmered from the metal. Simultaneously, the hilt seemed to merge more firmly with his palm.
How should he describe this sensation?
A feeling of total synchronization with the weapon?
That was the essence of it. He recalled how Rem frequently claimed his axe functioned as a literal limb—perhaps this was the reality he had described.
The elongated edge of Penna brushed across the ridge of the pugilist Molmon’s nose, immediately after carving through the vampire.
With a delicate tearing noise, crimson droplets sprayed across the man’s features. The sound was barely a whisper, yet Penna’s edge was so incredibly keen that it carved a significant furrow.
As the blood cascaded, the martial artist flexed his facial musculature to stem the flow.
It was a specific internal control method taught within Balrafian martial arts. It was evident this newcomer was no common brawler. Even so, he was within Enkrid’s ability to handle.
Enkrid found he could comfortably obstruct, evade, and retaliate.
Utilizing his heightened cognitive speed and mental partitioning, he activated the Wavebreaker Sword and parried the incoming strikes. Compared to his ordeal against the One-Killer, this encounter felt twice as manageable.
He tightened his frame, allowing his joints to cushion the force, pivoted his hips, and released his blade in a grand arc.
CLANG!
He harnessed the momentum from the impact against the weapon of the man known as Black Serpent to thrust his elbow backward.
THUD!
That elbow connected with the pugilist’s knuckles. The man whirled his frame and threw a kick.
His leg snapped out like a whip—so precise it might have been mistaken for a sharpened edge.
Even within his dilated sense of time, Enkrid tracked that swift limb and arched his back, lifting his knee and tensing his foot. The One-Killer had launched assaults from every conceivable angle.
His entire physique had been a weapon—perhaps that was why.
But then… could I not replicate that?
Thought transformed into deed. He possessed a body tempered by Balrafian martial arts. If the situation demanded, he could integrate hand-to-hand maneuvers. His stance remained unbroken.
Wavebreaker Swordsmanship was not merely about the manipulation of steel. It was a methodology for refining the spirit. By that logic, this still constituted Wavebreaker Swordsmanship.
Furthermore, Enkrid had endured over five hundred days of such combat in the recent past.
He could sustain this level of fighting for three more days. If he overextended himself, perhaps a full week. He would be drained, naturally.
As for the sporadic interruptions of magic? They were irritating, but compared to the ordeal of Walking Fire, they were within his control.
In short—the battle was entirely winnable.
Could it be… these opponents are frauds?
Enkrid pondered this as he targeted a kick at Black Serpent Ele’s ribs. However, jagged points erupted from the man’s chest plate.
Characteristic of a man who dealt in deceptive blade-work—he had outfitted his plating with a cruel mechanism.
Enkrid shifted from a flat strike to a piercing upward thrust with his toes. Ele, while retreating, was clipped by the rim of Enkrid’s helm.
Thunk.
It wasn’t a devastating blow, but it was sufficient to jar his brain.
What a bizarre freak, Ele thought as he ground his teeth. Enkrid continued to harbor doubts.
They have to be pretenders, don’t they?
If the organization had orchestrated an ambush, it wouldn’t be this meager.
Yet no—they weren’t pretenders. They were the real thing. And they weren’t mediocre combatants.
Nonetheless, this was the outcome.
Enkrid simply failed to recognize the distance he had traveled. That was why he could permit himself such reflections.
The vampire and the one called Black Serpent—those two were erratic.
The newly arrived martial artist, by comparison, banked more on raw power and velocity. A traditional path.
According to Enkrid’s newly categorized system, the vampire and the Black Serpent were Sustained-Art Types, while the pugilist was a Forged-Finisher Type.
Naturally, all three had attained the status of a knight, so perhaps they should be viewed as Versatile Types.
The further one ascended, the more their deficiencies were compensated for.
Even if one was a Finisher Type, it didn’t imply a lack of endurance or skill.
The ultimate goal is a perfect circle.
A state where prominent talents are harmonized and concealed.
In that sense, Rem, Ragna, and Audin still had paths to travel.
Past Finisher, Sustainer, and Versatile—there exists the Complete Type.
Absolute perfection is a myth. But at a certain threshold, one could be deemed complete.
The vampire collapsed in three separate segments—functionally ended.
Next was the pugilist. Catching a momentary lapse, Penna glided across his throat. His windpipe was torn open, and a geyser of blood erupted toward the sky.
What manner of life he had led, what goals he had chased or lusted after by standing here—none would ever learn now.
The fallen have no voice.
A dark ichor, appearing even deeper under the crimson moon, leaked out and coated the ground.
With a heavy sound, the man’s knees hit the earth first, followed shortly by his head.
As he collapsed in a slow arc, it seemed to the onlookers as though the flow of time had stagnated.
All things that begin must find a conclusion. His gradually tilting skull finally met the dirt.
Fluid continued to gather beneath his ruined form. When crimson darkens, does it eventually turn black? Just like their own lifeblood? Who could say?
“My desire shall be realized in the end.”
Black Serpent Ele charged, hissing something incomprehensible. While Enkrid could withstand three adversaries, he could not afford leniency against a man fighting with suicidal intent.
It was a favorable fight—but a single blunder, one second of lost focus, and he would be the one to perish.
Then again, having become accustomed to walking a knife’s edge against that monstrous One-Killer, even three foes felt trivial now.
Thus, errors were not a concern. Nor was negligence.
Knights were aberrations in their own right. To commoners, they seemed to enact miracles without fail. Yet even they were struck by Enkrid’s mechanical precision.
There were no openings. Perhaps that’s why he carried the moniker of the Ironwall Knight.
Even Ele found this realization to be logical.
CLANG! CLANG-CLANG!
Enkrid parried the flexible blade whipping at him with Penna and bounded to the flank. The weapon, twisting like a dark viper, pursued him.
The diverted sword arched its neck and lunged for the rear of Enkrid’s skull. It truly resembled a serpent striking through the air.
Enkrid fell back, dug his right thumb into the earth, and pivoted instantly. The abrupt shift in momentum created a ghost image as if he were lunging sideways.
But in reality, he had already changed his line and was charging toward the center of the extended enemy wire-blade, sliding Penna along its length.
CLACK-CLACK-CLACK-CLACK-CLACK!
Friction sparks rained down as he left a luminous path behind. Enkrid’s stride was swifter than the retracting weapon.
A pale blue streak raced up the black snake. Ultimately, the serpent missed its mark—and Enkrid’s Penna opened Ele’s throat.
Squelch!
A sharp sound tore through his neck. It happened with such velocity that only a thin line appeared across his throat—his head remained seated.
Penna’s edge was so sharp it left only a hair-thin gap before moving on.
“Rot in hell, you bastards.”
Even in his final breath, Ele spat a curse. Crimson tears leaked from the wound like slow beads.
Shortly, his head tipped—and instead of beads, blood erupted in a deluge.
If it hadn’t been a human skull being unseated, and the blood wasn’t life-fluid but water gushing from a decorative fountain, it might have been seen as beautiful.
Nobody could have guessed that a man who was widowed at nineteen and lost his child at twenty-two came to loathe all of mankind. That man had been the Apostle of Rebirth—Black Serpent Ele.
As he expired, Ele felt himself plummeting into a void.
His wife and daughter were absent. He had willingly consumed demonic blood to extract vengeance upon the world.
So he understood—his destination was among the fiends.
“…Quite remarkable.”
The man clutching the staff halted his incantation and spoke. Witnessing the carnage, the Apostle of Rebirth no longer sounded shocked, merely composed.
“Did I misjudge you? Or were my projections flawed? Or is this some celestial prank? I cannot grasp any of it, but interrogation won’t alter the facts.”
“Do you intend to fight?”
“I am the final one remaining. Therefore, I must.”
The apostle was a hoarder of incantations and physically robust as well. But as Enkrid would describe it, he was an Incomplete Circle.
A perfect circle can still be compromised by a sharp needle.
That was Enkrid’s philosophy. Whenever a system was defined, it inevitably birthed the inspiration for the next evolution of sword-work.
As he battled, Enkrid drafted a new style of combat.
He held only a shimmering concept of its significance—but this was the genesis. It might vanish without leaving a mark, yet it existed.
The apostle had yearned to be their doom, but that prayer was ignored.
Tap. Snap!
He had exhausted over half his repertoire, but not a single spell connected.
Even the obsidian sphere that disintegrated anything it touched had been sliced apart by Enkrid’s steel.
“Ultimately, we shall prevail,” the apostle declared.
Stab. Slash.
Enkrid barely processed the words. He lunged and opened the man’s windpipe.
Blood escaping from the neck mingled with the lunar glow. Deep crimson. Despite being a fanatic, the man remained human.
Venerating a deity of the Demon Realm did not transform your biology.
His head, severed with clinical precision, struck the grass with a muffled thud.
The malevolent red moon still colored the world—but no adversaries stood.
The spectral remnants the apostle had evoked dissolved the second he expired.
A few spirits attempted to seize the moment to cause chaos, but Lua Gharne’s lash and Zero’s blade quickly ended that.
“Hah, I suppose my strategy was defective.”
Then the detached head spoke, despite lacking lungs or a torso. The Apostle of Rebirth displayed another uncanny talent—attempting a dialogue with only his skull.
“…Are you some sort of undying thing?”
What if I hacked his head into eight fragments?
As Enkrid questioned him and raised his weapon once more, the head responded swiftly.
“No, my end is near. At most, I will persist until the sun rises. The red moonlight is merely fueling me with its essence.”
A deception? It didn’t ring like one.
“Mutilating my head will change nothing. If you possess a shred of pity and wish for me to survive, simply fetch five male virgins and five female virgins, drench my remains in their blood, and reattach my spine… though I suspect you won’t.”
“If I intended to do that, I wouldn’t have taken your head in the first place.”
“True, and it doesn’t really work anyway. Carnal acts don’t alter the quality of blood. Perhaps if it were a saint’s lifeblood…”
And now, he makes jests?
“Shall I pulverize him with my whip?” Lua Gharne offered with a smile.
“I can cleave him. Are you wary of a hex?” Peld moved forward as well.
“If that is the concern, I can handle it,” Zero added.
“Everyone is so keen to execute a broken vessel. Have some compassion. It is taxing enough speaking with the shred of mana I have left.”
“Do you have a final message?”
“Merely laments and a pitch. Laments are private, so we can skip those. As for the pitch—join us.”
“My whip, then—” Lua Gharne raised her weapon again.
The reality was, the apostle was barely holding on. He had only a few sentences left.
He could have unleashed one final hex—but he had already attempted that. It had failed. It would fail again. Thus, leaving a few parting words was the maximum he could achieve.
“You cannot triumph in this conflict. There is no logic in dying for the side destined to fall.”
Speaking without a frame, just a head—and yet the speech held gravity. He wasn’t quite as captivating as Crang, but he could deliver a sermon.
This apostle, too, had once ruled his period as a cunning mastermind.
He had aligned with the Demon Realm and transformed into an Apostle of Rebirth, adhering to the tenets of the Demon Sanctuary Church—but whether he was righteous or wicked, one could not deny his natural authority.
A corrupted faith does not diminish a person’s competence.
In the same vein, skill and morality are not linked. And just because a person walks the path of light, their future isn’t guaranteed to be easy.
Enkrid stood in silence, observing the severed head. The apostle went on.
“In the end, you will be halted by our steel.”
That was a possibility. Enkrid knew the man spoke his truth, without guile.
But Enkrid’s struggle hadn’t commenced with the certainty of triumph. It was a trail he had trekked and dragged himself along, despite lacking any innate genius.
He wished to construct a reality where a mother trying to shield her infant could reside in a city free of shadows.
Where even a bruised apple could be halved and shared by a grinning merchant.
Where an elderly woman who once served ale could find serenity in her twilight years.
Where a common sellsword who boasts of his child’s brilliance could sleep without being haunted.
Yes—that was the world he sought.
So he gripped the hilt.
So he chanted.
The melody of a knight who would end the war had not even reached its first chorus.
“It is irrelevant.”
Enkrid shattered the apostle’s verbal hex with his own conviction. It wasn’t difficult. He didn’t even bother to analyze the malice.
That was simply how it resolved.
“…You are saying you will wage a war you know you will lose?”
That is your perspective. Enkrid didn’t counter with a cliché like *We’ll see when the dust settles.*
Instead, he spoke from a place of profound depth.
“I will fight until I have won.”
“…I understand.”
Behind him, Peld once again found his resolve. The apostle stared at the madman and uttered his final thought.
“It is a shame I will not witness the dawn of the Demon Realm.”
A loyal Apostle of Rebirth to the very end. But now deceased, the dream was hollow. With those words, the head grew quiet.
The crimson moonlight drifted away. Obscurity followed without the lunar glow.
It was the hour before the first light—a timeframe known in the western tongue as Urquiora, the dim morning.
And after the dim morning, the day always breaks.
A blue radiance washed over the clearing, and then the dawn arrived. Light poured over the earth. The sun glowed brilliantly, as if the night’s blood had never been spilled.
“Beautiful sun,” Lua Gharne remarked.
As the group organized the remains, a few fays—detecting the lingering dark energy—approached from the front. These were individuals masterful at reading the flow of nature.
“What took place here? A raid?” one of them inquired, eyeing the field.
He had roamed the continent before and acted as the scout for this trek.