What is the reason for longing?
What is the reason you go forward even if you have to be ready for it not to matter if you die, even if you have to crawl?
'What are you doing that much for?'
The question stirred up the past.
"Save me."
The child who shouted for someone to save them dies. The farmer who looked at him with desperate eyes dies. A woman dies, and the father dies too. There weren't just a few people who died like that. Because he couldn't protect them, the ones who stood behind him died one after another.
"Actions come with responsibility, you idiot."
Whose words were those? He remembered it as words that blamed him for only letting his actions go first.
It wasn't a mistake, but there were many he couldn't save because he lacked the ability. There were far too many.
The one he shared friendship with dies, and the one he shared affection with dies too. The world wasn't warm spring sunlight, it was full of a ruthless, cutting wind. Someone even died in his place.
"Why?"
Enkrid threw out the question, but he couldn't hear an answer. The dead couldn't speak, so that was only natural.
This wasn't the only pure reason, but it was certainly one of the reasons Enkrid kept going forward.
He had never forgotten his own punishment and resolve. Instead of excuses and pretexts, he steels his resolve. He lives today for tomorrow, not for yesterday. A life where he does his best in everything.
Instead of regretting the time that had passed, he focuses on the present and lives. That was how Enkrid lived.
"What is the reason for that longing?"
The High Pontiff asked again, and Enkrid's gaze turned to the High Pontiff. Silence wrapped the two of them. Everyone looked like they were anticipating what answer would come out. Even the fighting had briefly settled down.
In that situation, Enkrid opened his mouth.
"So what if you know?"
It was an answer nobody expected. The High Pontiff's expression hardened. He couldn't find anything to say back. Who would have known that kind of line would come out at a time like this?
From far away, a fairy's laughter could be heard.
"Indeed."
That fairy's name was Shinar Kirheis. She agreed with what her captain, and scheduled lover, had said.
What's the point of asking, and what's the point of knowing?
Rem, too, nodded while swinging his axe, and Ragna, too, muttered from far away that there was no need to tell him anything and agreed.
To the High Pontiff, all of this was a fresh shock. What was contained in his words was "domination." The Will contained in his voice was a power that shook and strangled the other side. But it didn't work.
'Does he refuse domination?'
He didn't know it, but after Enkrid built up the Will of refusal, Enkrid had collided with and fought and experienced countless things.
And lately, Enkrid had even overcome the Dragonkin's words of command. To someone like that, the High Pontiff's words of command were "only" that.
"Interesting."
Even so, the High Pontiff didn't show panic. He wasn't a fool who simply pressed everyone down with strength. The High Pontiff steadied his mind and spoke again. The other side hadn't revealed what was inside, but reading what the other side wanted by looking at behavior and attitude up to now wasn't difficult.
If someone is an outstanding ruler, that person has to have the talent to read the hearts of vassals and subordinates, and the High Pontiff was someone with outstanding talent in that regard.
"If you look at the world as a great flow, you are a small one. Do you think someone's effort, or actions, can change the world? It can't."
The High Pontiff spoke. The tone filled with certainty sounded like truth. Like a priest delivering a god's words. He showed devout faith. That faith was only toward his own conviction and the values with which he looked at the world.
And so his tone was like something that couldn't be changed no matter what you did, like the sun rising in the east and setting in the west.
Enkrid had heard those words elsewhere too.
"That's why a peacetime knight is a dream."
More precisely, it was what everyone who had mocked his dream up to now said, all mixed together. Like the Ferryman, some of what made up his past became one and scolded him. They pressed him like that, saying what could you do on your own.
"Reality is different. What moves the world isn't someone's effort or resolve."
Again, the High Pontiff spoke. His words had enough persuasive power. But just because it's enough doesn't mean it always works every single time. That was how the world worked.
In that sense, Enkrid was stubborn, but also a person who had established a clear standard inside himself for how to look at the world.
Enkrid opened his mouth, but it wasn't because he wanted to refute the High Pontiff's theory. It was only the dregs that had followed him as he recalled the past, meaning words to his past self, and in the end, words that proved the self who had come to the present through action.
"One within the whole can't change anything, but if that one gathers and becomes many, the world changes. Change starts with me, but it doesn't end with me."
He was the beginning. Now, the ones tangled up with that beginning were at his side.
He met the Mad Order of Knights and Crang, and all kinds of people up to now. That Jaxon threw efficiency aside and showed spirit, saying he would protect the ones behind him, and the witch named Esther risked her life and worked a miracle, saying she would protect people.
Besides that, so many people stood at his side. Kraiss and everyone of the Border Guard.
Even as roaring sounds and explosions rang out in succession from all directions, the High Pontiff and Enkrid maintained quiet. Breaking the brief silence, the High Pontiff spoke.
"Only advancing and proving it is right."
It carried the same meaning as the words that history is on the winner's side.
Enkrid answered his words.
"By the continent's way."
If each side insists it is right, what divides that right?
Swords and spears, hammers and arrows, shields and armor divide it.
The side that wins is right. The continent's truth and way were a ruthless, cutting wind. Enkrid acknowledged the continent's way, and he crawled, walked, and ran as he cut through that cutting wind.
Between the two, what's right is the side that wins. The agreement was over.
In the middle of that, Cypress crossed the battlefield and approached Enkrid's side.
"Is the talk over?"
The one who came close asked.
"It just ended."
"Then I'll lend a hand."
Whose side was time on? At least right now, it was on the High Pontiff's side. The young demon shape behind his back had created an order of knights that didn't die even if it died.
The final order of knights became an immortal order of knights.
-"If I eat all those humans, my belly'll burst."
The demon displayed joy and tried to raise ominousness, but there was no one here who would be taken down by mere words. Everyone was firm.
Ragna heard the words to resume the fight that had stopped during Enkrid and the High Pontiff's talk.
"Hey, is your belly okay? I don't want to do this either. If you can, kill the High Pontiff and end it. From now on I'm not getting involved in the fight."
Caelo, Ragna's opponent, revised the strategy and mixed in a trick. While saying that, Caelo suddenly swung the club. Even after dying and coming back to life, the engraved weapon was the same. It was hard to block.
Ragna let the club falling on a diagonal slide past and cut Caelo's body apart again. A straight cut, level with the ground, split the owner's body in two before the club could reach.
The bastard died with the upper body rolling backward while the lower body moved forward, and blood vessels rose up in streams from the cross-section of the cut body, wove together again, and it stood up again.
'The revival is getting faster.'
It was a visible change.
Ragna had applied and drunk Anne's medicine long ago, but a lover's medicine wasn't synonymous with a miracle. Meaning stamina was being consumed and Will was being shaved down.
"I can still do more, but the High Pontiff is calling. See you later."
Caelo, who had gotten up, withdrew backward. Ragna didn't bother to chase. More precisely, Ragna thought it was right to save even the strength to chase.
The stabbed wound in the belly wasn't shallow, and a cut that held Will didn't heal easily.
'I can't fight long.'
Ragna coolly evaluated the condition. Even so, there was no need to let go right now.
Rem was in a similar condition. If Rem poured out strength and fought right now, it felt like the road would open, but.
'If we can't catch that bastard High Pontiff, it won't end.'
What should he do.
Rem's head spun tight. It wasn't a problem to agonize over for long.
'Break through and kill him.'
Simple and clear, so it was certain.
Could Enkrid not have seen what Rem saw.
The High Pontiff, as if sensing that kind of flow, gathered all the fighting bastards in front of himself.
Cypress braced on the ground with the weapon and caught breath. Just looking at that, Cypress looked like someone who would die soon. Then Cypress looked at Enkrid and spoke.
"I kept watching you fight. Listen to what your body is telling you."
Would Enkrid listen? If Enkrid was stubborn, Enkrid wouldn't, but.
"Is there no easier explanation?"
This amusing friend showed a desire to improve even in a situation like this.
"It's exactly what it sounds like."
Cypress scratched the chin. Thinking that, no matter what, teaching wasn't something Cypress had a knack for.
Enkrid understood what the other side meant. It wasn't that Enkrid learned something from those words just now; Enkrid acknowledged that this was what a knight's explanation was like to begin with. And since it wasn't a situation overflowing with leeway, there was no need to cling to Cypress's words either.
Krrrroooom!
The mage who handled lightning truly became lightning under the High Pontiff's domination.
Lightning struck and gathered in a mass overhead, and below it a faceless crowd of knights wearing heated plate armor lined up.
The minotaur that had lost its screams held an axe with only the handle left, and between them Enkrid could see a knight who had died and died again to Lien, who had been peeking into the future, and one black fairy stood barehanded after having the bow and all weapons taken away. It was half-naked, with only the lower body barely covered.
"Who is that?"
As Enkrid spoke while looking at the fairy, Shinar's answer came from right behind, as if Shinar had come close without anyone noticing.
"It keeps living no matter how many times it's killed, so I took the weapons."
It was quite an ingenious and clever thing to do. Killing an opponent without a weapon would be far easier than killing an opponent with a weapon.
With a similar thought, Enkrid split and smashed the minotaur's axe as if dismantling it.
"So our hearts really do match."
Even while the eyes were furious at the demon's appearance, words like that came out of the mouth on their own. It was truly a strange fairy.
"Joking in a situation like this?"
"I'm always serious."
Enkrid let the fairy's words go in one ear and looked ahead. Things that spewed black soot and heat all over the body blocked the way, and the wall that couldn't be crossed, shown in the Ferryman's dream, came to mind.
"Save me, madman's Ragna."
From between the walls blocking the High Pontiff's front, Caelo's cry, with obsession grown too strong, could be heard.
"Did you make another friend again?"
Rem spoke. It was naturally words toward Ragna, but Ragna acted like he didn't hear. Ragna would answer words, but this wasn't words, it was something similar to excrement.
"That bastard really."
Rem ended up grumbling.
"Break through."
Enkrid spoke, and Ragna and Rem stood side by side. Behind them, Dunbakel slipped closer.
"Where'd you go?"
Rem asked.
"The giant keeps coming back to life and keeps chasing, you know."
"So?"
"I ran pretty far and then buried it."
Sounds like a decent method? For a moment, Enkrid thought about whether burying all of them would work, but Enkrid stopped. The High Pontiff moves the ground with the iron plate. If they can't do something about that trick, it'll all be pointless.
"Impressive. How'd you dig the ground?"
Cypress asked too, like Cypress was impressed.
"A beastman's claws are a weapon in and of themselves."
Dunbakel said, raising chin and nose.
"And also a shovel."
"If we ever have to dig, you do it all from now on."
Ragna and Rem took turns showing respect to her. Dunbakel, of course, didn't accept the respect as respect.
"You're not thinking of me as some kind of laborer, are you?"
Dunbakel muttered.
"Break through and kill the High Pontiff."
Enkrid briefly stated the operation once more.
"If we fail."
"We die."
"Hoo. If it feels wrong in the middle, I can run away, right?"
"Master, I'm going to throw strength around without thinking about what comes after, so you have to handle it yourself."
Those were said in order: Ragna, Rem, Dunbakel, Lien.
Cypress laughed out loud and raised his head. The iron plate the High Pontiff swung was formidable. And that probably wasn't all.
The demon wavering behind was a problem too.
Cypress judged that there was one way to end the fight.
Swear, raise resolve, and put determination in front.
Throw away any thought of meeting the tomorrow that would come. Like that, Cypress had to stake everything and become an arrow that pierced the High Pontiff's heart.
Just as Cypress steadied Will and was about to open the mouth.
"I sw—"
"Wait."
Enkrid cut in. Enkrid grabbed the shoulder of the one who had once been an idol.
"What are you doing?"
Cypress, who had cooled the Will that had just boiled up by a breath, asked back.
"…Do I have to explain?"
"You looked like someone going to die."
That was right. If Enkrid sensed that by instinct, it meant Enkrid had really good instincts.
"It looks like you're thinking of facing it alone, but the other side is two."
"So?"
"Then we go as two, too."
Enkrid decided. The rest would open the way.
"Opening the way itself will be work, won't it?"
Cypress asked, and Enkrid said flatly. Like the High Pontiff's words had sounded like a law earlier, what Enkrid said now was similar.
"They'll handle it."
Would the trust in those words be a burden to them? It wasn't. They were the ones who ignored that kind of talk.
They naturally do what should be done. This was only the same kind of thing, even now.
"You lost bastard, don't lose the way and stick close. We're going to do something like when we pushed through the Lord of Ten Thousand Wraiths before."
Rem said, hating it like it was truly something Rem didn't want to do. Of course, even if Rem talked like that, Rem does what needs to be done. Because Rem is Rem of the Mad Order of Knights.
"You're the one who should come trailing after me. I'm the front."
Ragna was the same.
"What are you going to do?"
Dunbakel tilted the head.
"If my fiancé wants it, then wherever that place is, my sword will personally be with you."
Shinar, the fairy who raises harmony as the key banner, mixed in on her own.
"You have to explain, right? You're not thinking of doing it without me, are you?"
Lien of the Red Cloak shamelessly cut in between them.
"Really?"
Cypress, who watched all of it, asked back like a whisper. Enkrid looked around at the five and said.
"If it doesn't work, then it doesn't. So what."
It was a joke. Of course it would work. Belief was firm, and trust was solid.