Eternally Regressing Knight

“Can’t we open the door? Just enough for one person to get through?” Enkrid asked.

The soldier, startled by the question, echoed in disbelief, “Right now?”

Their eyes met, and Enkrid nodded calmly. “Yes, now.”

The soldier blinked, bewildered. Where should he even begin to respond? Should he explain that opening the door would allow the gnolls outside to flood in? Or perhaps point out that the very reason they were blocking the door was to prevent it from being opened?

As the soldier struggled for words, Enkrid offered a compromise. “Didn’t they build a side door near the main gate?”

His tone was casual, as if they were merely on a leisurely outing rather than under siege by gnolls and hyena beasts, who were getting pierced by arrows and yet relentlessly advancing.

Enkrid knew that panicking wouldn’t change a thing. He’d lived through hundreds of “todays,” and he knew exactly how these creatures would behave if left alone.

Not that he could exactly explain to the soldiers, “I’ve been surrounded by those beasts countless times, and no matter how many of them you kill, they’ll keep charging like berserkers.”

But at least they’d managed to hold the door for now, which felt like a decent start. Although it was foolish to expect that things would necessarily go well from here, a good start was still better than a bad one.

He was certain that in a fort of this size—even in a frontier settlement—they would have built a smaller side door for emergencies. Most fortifications, especially those intended for future expansion, included such features.

The quarry, the gathered workers and craftsmen, the skilled laborers—they all made it clear what this place was intended to become. Krais had figured it out first, though when he explained, Enkrid had nodded in agreement. During his intense days of training, he couldn’t spare much thought for every single detail. But with Krais’s insight and after living through two hundred repetitions of this day, even someone with a gnoll’s brain would have picked up on this much by now.

Either way, Enkrid needed to break the cycle, and for that, he had to go outside.

“There’s a side door,” the soldier said, still looking uneasy.

“Then go ahead and open it, just a crack,” Enkrid replied. “That’s an order.”

The soldier hesitated, sensing the absurdity of the command. But there was something so calm and composed about Enkrid that he couldn’t help but comply, even if he felt it was a terrible idea.

“It’s over here.” The soldier led him to a small door left of the main gate, just big enough for a couple of people to squeeze through at a time.

Guoooo! came the gnolls’ cries, just beyond the wall. The soldier, seemingly snapping back to reality, finally voiced his concern.

“If we open it now, those things will push through, and we’ll be slaughtered.”

In other words: sure, it could be opened, but doing so would get them all killed—so no, it wasn’t an option.

Enkrid, without a moment’s hesitation, called out, “Esther?”

He didn’t exactly share a telepathic bond with his companion, but some things could be understood without words. Esther, the small leopard, nodded in response. Though she’d grown a bit, she was still on the smaller side.

Enkrid’s plan hinged on Esther, and she did not disappoint.

“There’s no ordinary creature, that one. A demon, I tell you,” Rem had once muttered, as if to warn anyone who dared underestimate her.

Just then, Esther proved that once more. As a hyena beast scrambled up the wall, clawing with its short legs, Esther scaled the barricade effortlessly. Her claws gripped into the stone as if the wall were solid ground beneath her. Even knowing her capabilities, Enkrid couldn’t help but marvel at her speed.

“She’s… scaling the wall?” a soldier whispered in disbelief, his eyes wide with astonishment.

To the unknowing, it looked as though Esther was simply walking on air. It was no small feat—she climbed the wall, three times the height of a grown man, with ease. But she didn’t just stop there.

“Oh, oh no…” the soldier beside Enkrid stammered, mouth hanging open, as he saw what came next.

Esther leaped over the barricade, vanishing beyond the edge to land directly into the thick of the gnolls and hyena beasts, right in the middle of the horde.

Her job was simple: throw them into chaos, disrupt their harmony. Enkrid trusted her, and she met his expectations with precision.

Grrraahh!

A deep, rumbling snarl echoed from beyond the door. Unlike the gnolls’ high-pitched cries, it was a low, thunderous sound that shook the air and pulsed through their chests like a hammer. The power in that sound alone would make anyone’s knees weak, as if it resonated directly with their fear.

“Don’t shoot the leopard!” Deutsch Fullman’s shout followed close behind.

Between the guttural guuuuk! cries of the gnolls and the yelping of hyena beasts, a few sharp death throes from gnolls punctuated the air as well.

Guuk! Guuuuuk!

The growling calls grew more distant, a sign that the swarm blocking the side gate was finally scattering. Enkrid’s sharp hearing picked up the subtle shift immediately.

“Now,” he murmured, though the soldier beside him just looked back in confusion.

This one might need to restart training from scratch. With reaction times like that, what good was he?

“The door,” Enkrid repeated, grabbing the soldier’s wrist firmly and pulling him forward. His grip tightened, infused with a restrained aura of lethal intent that had the desired effect.

“Hiccup!” The soldier let out an involuntary gasp but began moving. His hand, shaking slightly, reached the latch on the side gate.

“Open it halfway… if anything goes wrong—”

“I’ll take the blame. I’m in charge of the defenses here,” Enkrid interrupted, his tone firm.

The soldier briefly thought, Why’s our leader risking his life like this? but nonetheless proceeded.

Click.

The lock on the side gate was released.

“Don’t close it, just brace and keep it ready. I’ll be back to signal you when to open it fully.”

“Uh… what?”

What on earth was he planning?

The side gate eased open just enough, and Enkrid could see the backs of the gnolls as they faced away, all of them turned toward the chaos that Esther was stirring up among the beasts.

No helmets on these gnolls—lucky, perhaps, since just wielding their makeshift weapons was threat enough on its own. Helmets were probably the last thing on their minds.

As he stepped fully out, Enkrid relaxed his arms and, without a second thought, sent his throwing knives hurtling toward them. Throwing a knife was nothing like firing an arrow; it required a precise feel for weight in his fingertips, an instinctive flick of the wrist. Four blades zipped forward, embedding with deadly accuracy into the backs of four gnolls’ skulls.

No gnoll could survive a handspan of steel lodged in its brain.

The four crumpled, and in the moment it took one of the beasts to turn its head, Enkrid was already upon it.

Whisk!

He swung his sword down in a tight, efficient arc, slicing cleanly from midair to the gnoll’s spine. The beast split with a sickening crunch as bone and innards parted under his blade.

Without missing a beat, he took a step left, twisting his body to drive his knee up into another gnoll’s skull. The bone cracked, sinking inward as the gnoll’s eyes bulged out, optic nerves quivering in the sudden silence of its halted life.

With two beasts dead at his feet, Enkrid was ready to carve a path through the rest, his sword moving in a blur.

Through the practice of evasion, Enkrid had honed his sense of bodily coordination to a razor’s edge. The moment he saw and sensed the danger, his body moved instinctively, a seamless blend of observation and reaction. He wove himself between the beasts, his movements as fluid as a dance.

In a brief, deadly sequence, three gnolls and two hyena-beasts lay sprawled on the ground around him. He struck with precision: head, chest, head. One gnoll even had a coin-sized hole through its torso—a result of Enkrid’s deadly rhythm of quick strikes and pinpoint thrusts.

Thud.

The door behind him finally closed. “Guess they were just watching,” he mused. The delay in shutting the door spoke volumes.

Clank, clank, clank! The sounds of the lock echoed, despite his instructions not to lock it. Enkrid shook his head. “Guess they wouldn’t just leave it open anyway,” he thought. No matter—that was something he could handle later.

For now, his focus was solely on the task at hand. Gnolls and hyena-beasts fell one by one as he moved, each blow swift and merciless. Esther, too, leapt into the fray, darting towards Enkrid to fight together. She didn’t just run to him; her movements dazzled with a lethal grace.

Tap, tap. She propelled herself off the ground, claws gleaming as she sliced through their foes. Whether gnoll or beast, anything that came within range of her claws was cleaved apart, each swipe reducing her enemies from one to two, two to three.

Whether it was a head or a chest in her path, Esther’s claws sliced through with brutal precision, a deadly combination of sheer strength and slicing accuracy.

As Esther charged forward, gnolls and hyena-beasts lunged at her and Enkrid, weapons, teeth, and claws at the ready.

“Esther, watch my back, will you?” Enkrid’s tone was casual, almost as if he was making a simple request. Esther shot him a look, her eyes questioning what he meant, but Enkrid didn’t answer. Instead, he seemed to vanish from her senses—his presence growing faint, and his stance lowering into the shadows.

“This little…!” Esther felt a flicker of anger. Just as she started drawing attention, Enkrid rolled across the blood-soaked ground, flattening himself close to the dirt.

In an instant, the foes’ focus shifted. The shock of their sudden attack, the brutal efficiency with which they had slain a dozen gnolls and beasts, and Esther’s dramatic movements had thrown the enemy into disarray. Just as quickly, Enkrid vanished from their sight.

The gnolls’ eyes glowed red, bloodlust turning them into berserkers as they locked onto Esther.

“Grrrrrrah!”

With a frenzied howl, a gnoll charged straight for her, fury blazing. Esther deftly pulled back, drawing their attacks away from Enkrid and keeping herself just out of reach. She felt a rush of annoyance toward Enkrid and wanted to demand what he was up to, but then she caught sight of him—crawling silently, nearly invisible, his body pressed close to the ground.

Jaksen had answered calmly, saying, “If you know how to spread killing intent, you must also know how to hide it.”

The intentless thrust was not just a technique but an art form of erasing one’s presence. One didn’t need to disappear completely in the enemy’s sight; they simply needed to become as forgettable as a shadow. At that moment, Enkrid grasped the full meaning of Jaksen’s response.

What he was doing right now was exactly that: hiding his killing intent.

Using the distraction Esther provided, Enkrid crept slowly forward, avoiding detection. With all of his senses locked onto the hulking leader of the gnolls, he approached, camouflaged to the fullest.

Esther’s swift, agile moves drew the monsters’ attention, making her the perfect bait. She dodged their attacks with ease, delivering fatal blows one after another. The hyenas and gnolls that clashed with her razor-sharp claws fell, their heads splitting as if made of paper, and her raw strength struck fear into her enemies.

Thud!

A gnoll tried to grab her but ended up falling lifeless to the ground, its neck sliced by her precise claws. Taking advantage of this opening, Enkrid pressed on, inching closer to the gnoll leader.

‘Finally… got him.’

In the last moment, he poured all of his accumulated experience and practice into one final motion.

He rose from his low stance behind the leader gnoll, every movement calm and steady, then in an instant drove his sword tip towards the gnoll’s neck, as if he had teleported right into position.

“There’s no need to learn it, but understanding the principle… well, it could be useful,” he had said, but his eyes told a different story. They seemed to scold Enkrid for not yet mastering the sense of evasion, as if asking how long he intended to remain sluggish.

Not that Enkrid cared; what could he do if it wasn’t coming yet? He would just keep working at it until it did.

Back then, he had simply wanted to know, so he had asked and listened. It was a thrust, devoid of killing intent, relying on motion alone. Even as you saw it coming, it made you doubt whether it was actually aimed at you. There was neither intent nor momentum behind it, only technique.

That had been the extent of the explanation.

In his more than two hundred days of honing the sense of evasion, Enkrid realized he would also need to learn to control his own killing intent. Dodging, avoiding, and evading repeatedly had built an instinctual understanding within his body—a responsiveness triggered by pure sensation, stripped of any visible killing intent. It was his raw reaction speed, trained to respond without the added force of intent.

And he had finally grasped something from it.

Enkrid used that knowledge now: hiding his presence, muting his aura. The technique was almost like that of an assassin, though not perfected. He merely simulated the effect by suppressing his breathing and calming his movements to the point of blending in.

‘This alone won’t be enough,’ he thought, rolling across the blood-soaked ground, even clutching a gnoll’s corpse for cover.

If someone were to see him at this moment, they’d be astounded. He was crawling at terrifying speed, all while carrying the weight of a fallen beast on his back.

‘Crawling… is my specialty.’

In the art of crawling stealthily, Enkrid was nothing short of a master. So he crawled and crawled again.

Sorry. I’ll give you two jerky pieces when we get back.’ he thought to himself, continuing to crawl steadily.

By the time he reached the mound, there were only a few gnolls and beastmen left around him.

He continued to climb up the mound, his body reeking of the sour, foul smell of blood and decay. The stench of monster blood was always overpowering, almost unbearable.

For Enkrid, it was a scent he had grown too familiar with.

Back when he lived as a mercenary, this was his daily routine. He had learned then that monster blood concealed far more than one might think.

Once Enkrid reached the top of the mound, he allowed himself a moment of satisfaction.

His goal was there, after all, so how could he not feel a sense of accomplishment?

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