A Knight Who Eternally Regresses Novel - Chapter 785

Chapter 785

A savage serpent of flame tore through his lower leg, and a sword saturated in ebony fire cleaved downward from his collarbone, splitting his torso in two.
—That was a good bout. Let us cross blades once more.
Balrog offered his customary parting. This promise of a future meeting wasn’t a reference to the inevitable loop of the day—it was a declaration of his intent to keep Enkrid imprisoned within the labyrinth forever.
Though their perspectives on the phrase differed, their resolve was the same. Enkrid gave a single nod and perished. That small gesture served as his final answer to the goodbye.
Thus began the nineteenth recurrence of this day.
The celestial sphere that carried the fire lost its radiance and plunged, and the oarsman upon the vessel stood ready to receive him.
“Klik-klek-klek.”
The ferryman emitted a dry, rattling chuckle. His maw was a featureless, dark pit, lacking even a tongue, appearing no different from any other hollow void. The laughter was brief and resonant, fading quickly into the air.
Then, amidst the shifting curtains of absolute shadow, the ferryman communicated his intent through pure willpower.
“You are a prisoner of this single day.”
“Does it bring you suffering? This is a fate of your own making.”
“Ultimately, you will merely struggle pointlessly until you vanish.”
“No fire possesses the power to burn eternally.”
Creak. The wood of the boat groaned as it bobbed upon the current. The vibration of that sound brushed against Enkrid’s senses.
“You shall never find a path out of this realm.”
The ferryman manifested time and again, and with every appearance, he spoke of an immutable destiny. For the first time, Enkrid deciphered the intent buried within the ferryman’s mental projection. It wasn’t a perfect understanding—it was hazy. Perhaps his instincts, sharpened by the brutal reality of combat, were beginning to permeate this transitional space. Or perhaps the sheer frequency of these encounters allowed him to perceive more than he once could.
The specific reason was irrelevant.
“Is it your wish that I overcome this?”
Within the ferryman’s dark sockets, a pair of pupils swirled with a muddy gray light. No—the hues were impossible to categorize. They shifted from gold to crimson, then to azure and emerald, before coalescing back into a dense black.
The eyes of predatory beasts were black. So were those of the ferryman. However, while a beast’s eyes seemed stained with darkness, the ferryman’s eyes appeared as though countless layers of existence had been woven and crushed together into a singular black point.
“Do you possess the strength to overcome it?”
The ferryman questioned him. Enkrid offered no verbal reply. Without moving his lips, the ferryman continued to project his thoughts.
“A path exists to move beyond this day. If you truly desire to find it—you need only ask.”
There was no attempt at manipulation. No intimidation. No weight of authority.
His words carried no hint of underlying force.
A faint emerald tint shimmered within the ferryman’s gaze—a darkness infused with green. It was a murky, somber shade of olive. It lacked the vibrant, youthful brilliance of Shinar’s spring-green eyes. Yet, within that gaze lay a flicker of intent never seen before.
Pity. Empathy. A trace of profound grief.
Enkrid’s internal compass and resolve were unyielding and straight. Even in such a surreal moment, he maintained his center. Had he lacked that stability, he would have succumbed to Shinar’s mocking words long ago.
“…You nearly had me there.”
He whispered, casually brushing aside the ferryman’s offer. The clouded green light in the ferryman’s eyes seemed to dissipate, only to churn and solidify once more.
“You truly are a madman.”
The ferryman’s inflection shifted slightly. The initial entity he had encountered was a hollow thing, devoid of essence. This version, who now proposed a solution, had displayed a minute fragment of feeling—sympathy.
It was possible Enkrid only recognized it because he had spent so much time analyzing Shinar’s emotional fluctuations. The sliver of emotion the ferryman had allowed to surface was minuscule, almost beneath notice—but now, a palpable anger had taken its place. Or more accurately: a sense of profound annoyance and frustration.
Why did that specific memory choose to surface at this moment?
There had been a period—during a run of incredible fortune where he had accumulated a significant sum of krona—not through the commerce of his sword but through sheer happenstance—that he found himself in possession of a heavy bag of gold.
He utilized those funds to enroll in a prestigious martial academy. On this landmass, where monsters and predatory creatures were a constant threat, it was customary for people to train with steel from childhood.
Consequently, the urban centers were teeming with training halls and combat schools. Armed with his gold, Enkrid tracked down a highly regarded tutor.
Initially, the instructor—a woman—had spoken with a gentle tone, attempting to steer him away from the path of the blade.
Enkrid listened with complete indifference. He was fixated on the acquisition of form—obsessed with it.
“It would be wiser to stop. Though I serve as a teacher here, on the scale of the entire continent, I would not even rank as a defender of a single city. I only manage because I possess a slight talent for instruction.”
She had spoken with genuine modesty. However, she had once been a member of the Lengaedis caravan’s rear guard. Her capabilities were legitimate. Enkrid craved the wisdom of that legitimacy.
“So, what is the subsequent step?”
His inquiry never wavered from that singular goal.
Eventually, her soft demeanor began to crack. Her eyebrows twitched with irritation.
“I told you that walking away is your best option.”
Her politeness vanished.
“Enkrid-nim, you truly only process the sounds you wish to hear. What a remarkably selective set of ears you have.”
Then came the blunt disapproval.
“Do you fail to grasp the concept of ‘surrendering’?”
Then, pure exasperation.
That memory flooded back. It felt as though the ferryman standing before him was an echo of that long-ago instructor.
The same cocktail of sorrow and mounting anger. The parallel triggered a spark in his mind. Enkrid simply gave a casual shrug. It was his response to being labeled a lunatic.
The motion suggested: Are you only just realizing this? Or perhaps: What of it?
Either way, it signaled his complete refusal to entertain anything the ferryman had to offer.
“Very well. Then continue to languish in the cell of this day. It is a suitable enough arena for you.”
As those words were projected, the emerald-black eyes faded and pulled away. Enkrid felt the sensation of his physical form beginning to drift.
He hadn’t closed his eyes, yet the environment distorted around him. He moved through the void—and materialized, as if waking for the first time.
Today commenced once again.
His dialogue with the ferryman had numbed the phantom pains of his previous death. Due to the length of that conversation, Enkrid had less time for quiet contemplation. His post-battle critique was delayed because of the ferryman’s erratic conduct.
A plan he assumed would bear fruit—perhaps not perfectly, but sufficiently—had crumbled.
‘It was not a failure of logic.’
Enkrid had mapped out the most efficient line of engagement. Balrog had not. Therefore, his tactical perception had been superior.
“A visitor has arrived?”
The adversary had only just begun to speak.
Enkrid had intended to execute him immediately, but since he didn’t perceive the man as a genuine peril, he simply looked at him with a detached expression and answered:
“One moment. I need to process this.”
“…What?”
He was indifferent to the opponent’s confusion.
“If more of you appear, I will begin the slaughter. Just stay where you are.”
A tangible pressure—a formless, heavy weight—emanated from his person. He had engaged the sovereign of conflict in the Demon Realm eighteen times.
Even that entity, Balrog, always sought to overwhelm Enkrid with sheer spiritual pressure before a single sword was swung. Only by enduring that weight could the actual duel commence.
It was Balrog’s personal crucible. Enkrid had cleared it every single time.
Through those countless cycles, the resistance that had once boiled inside Enkrid began to evolve. The primitive Will techniques he had first mastered functioned on a subconscious level—but that was insufficient to parry Balrog’s aura.
‘If the transition from a quasi-knight to a true knight involves using Will instinctively…’
Then reclaiming the status of a knight meant discovering how to forge Will with conscious intent. This was one of the pillars of the theory he was constructing—“Will Discipline.”
He relentlessly drilled himself to consciously deflect mental pressure.
Balrog’s aura manifested as incandescent chains. From the second they collided, the heat caused his skin to crack and sizzle. A single moment of weakness, and it felt as though he would be pulverized.
Enkrid had shattered those bonds and projected his own aura. He did so now.
His pressure manifested as a bulwark—a massive wall of unknowable thickness. A barrier that no common strength, or even a hardened spike, could hope to breach.
The man across from him halted in his tracks. The fact that he did not collapse showed he possessed significant spirit and prowess.
However, he dared not advance. Confronted by the wall Enkrid had raised, he glimpsed the shadow of Balrog. He remembered a fundamental law: to resist the terror carved into one’s very essence is the defining trait of sentient beings.
To refuse to crawl, to keep one’s chin up—one had to fight back.
Yet, was this the appropriate moment for such defiance? He had bowed a thousand times to Balrog—yet here, he chose to stand firm against Enkrid’s weight.
In the window of time he had secured, Enkrid contemplated the previous encounter.
He didn’t just replay the fight in his mind. He delved into its depths. Instead of merely running a simulation, he scrutinized the lead-up and the aftermath of every swing, every shift in mental state.
But there was no requirement for complex deduction. The reality was transparent.
He gathered his wandering thoughts and filed them into a neat structure.
‘In terms of sequence and strategy—I was superior.’
He had calculated, weighed, and executed—like a mathematician dealing with cold integers.
No wasted energy. Every action adhered to a strict, optimal path. The steel moved with fluid elegance. The footwork required to anchor it was flawless. His martial art was fused with cold logic—it was nearly an art form.
In specific frames of time, his sword radiated a light that suggested it might actually shatter one of the jewels in that very instant.
‘I cannot push my tactical advantage any further than that.’
And then Salamandra, the whip of flame, had lashed out.
As if it possessed its own malicious intellect, it reveled in the martial choreography. Balrog followed its lead with his wings, his strikes, his kicks, and his sword—navigating with total freedom within the very trap Enkrid had set.
In that instant, Enkrid had introduced an element of chaos—a strike born of pure chance. He attempted to entangle the demon once more in a net of probability. Yet, even with that, he could not pin Balrog within those constraints.
‘It was a different nature.’
Balrog’s mastery of the sword was of a different sort. At a certain threshold, it transcended all logic—becoming swifter, more devastating, and more powerful than any calculation allowed.
—Observe.
Balrog had projected that thought in the heat of the clash.
Enkrid’s focus was pulled toward the demon’s right hand. The blade of black fire—Surtr.
Its embers pulsed like a rhythmic breath, over and over. Enkrid was well aware—it was a blaze that could never be extinguished. He had evaded every strike.
The heat had scorched his hair. He had been forced to tear away and discard the fabric protector from his left hand—but he had held his ground.
To deconstruct the mechanics of the duel now would require an immense amount of time.
‘It is futile.’
There was no value in searching for meaning in the process. The final result had not been determined by numbers or paths.
Surtr’s flames stopped radiating outward and instead collapsed inward. Then, they solidified into a physical edge along the metal.
‘A physical edge.’
Instead of an amorphous burn, it became a defined shape—refined into a killing edge. That blade could not be parried. It could not be dismantled by logic.
That was the point of divergence.
And within that divergence—Enkrid perceived a truth.
‘The difference.’
He had encountered this sensation before—and not solely with Balrog.
He had seen it in the arc of Ragna’s sword. In the divine protection of Audin’s armor. In the swing of Rem’s heavy axe. In the precision of Jaxon’s lunge.
He had sensed that fundamental difference in all of them.
What set them apart? What was the source of that distinction?
He envisioned the figures who had carried him to this point in time—those who had contributed pieces to his ambition. Time after time, like a man possessed, he retraced the path of those memories.
He revisited every second, every lesson they had inadvertently provided.
“Huah!”
His current foe had finally managed to crack through Enkrid’s aura. He drew blades from his sleeves, clutching one in each fist.
“Where the hell did a bastard like you come from?!”
Bellowing, he charged—launching two throwing knives while executing a feint. It was a skillful maneuver. To hurl daggers while maintaining a grip on two primary swords was a feat of coordination worth noting.
Tadang!
In his right hand—Dawn Tempering. In his left—Penna.
Enkrid engaged the dual-wielder with his own two blades. The skirmish was brief.
Before the man could unleash his true technique, Enkrid had already dismantled him. Reliving this moment more than ten times had made the man’s flaws glaringly obvious. His strengths had withered, and his weaknesses had been sharpened to a point.
He resumed his forward march. His mind never slowed. The deconstruction of his failure against the demon continued.
Enkrid endured yet another cycle—and met his end once more.
The scarlet edge tempered in fire did not sever everything.
The blade of Will that Enkrid brandished—was capable of stopping it.
‘And yet…’
He lacked the necessary magnitude of power. He was cut down once more.
What was the missing piece?
Twenty cycles. Thirty. Forty. More than fifty deaths occurred.
In days saturated with agony and suffering, Enkrid held the one advantage no other soul possessed—infinite time to look within.