“Jacksen.”
As soon as he woke up, Enkrid looked for Jacksen.
“What is it?”
“The Gate of the Sixth Sense, it allows you to instinctively sense danger, right?”
“That's how it starts.”
That was also the reason Jacksen had been recklessly unleashing his killing intent until now.
Survival instinct.
Something every living being possessed. If that's the beginning.
‘So this was it.’
The sensation that tickled his heart. Should he call it faint? He had definitely felt something similar.
Of course, he couldn't perfectly imprint it on his body with just one experience. It was thanks to his lack of talent. But he didn't lament it.
Nothing would change just by dwelling on his lack of talent, so he just had to move again. Enkrid got up. Today had begun again; it was time to move diligently.
“I'm going.”
Just like before, he accepted the request, brought a torch, and headed to the cobbler's shop. This was the fourth time now. This time, he arrived before the first hammer strike even began.
“Let's break through it together.”
“Eh? What?”
Enkrid joined forces with the bewildered craftsman to make a hole in the floor. And so, he faced the six-way fork again. It was the moment he faced the first and second passages.
He felt a tingling sensation. A feeling that could rightly be called ominous. In that moment, Enkrid smiled without realizing it.
‘This is it.’
This place, a place he entered simply because he couldn't stand by and watch the craftsman die. A place with a spell trap that he should have sealed off if he'd decided against it after a few tries. Enkrid had no intention of being tied to this 'today'.
This was an accident, and an accident that could be avoided if one had the will. He could just force the craftsman and his daughter out and request a unit of soldiers to investigate the hole. Of course, that was a last resort.
Because of the spell trap, anyone who entered without knowing anything would surely die. Even if he wasn't the one dying, he couldn't just stand by and watch. Still, he couldn't very well say, 'There's magic here, so bring a mage whose ransom is more expensive than gold.'
It's not like a mage would come traipsing over here just because a mere Squad Leader requested it. And even if he said there was a spell trap, who would believe him? Most would probably react by saying it was nonsense.
‘Though my squad members or the company commander might believe me.’
Anyway, the conclusion was this. This place was the perfect training ground for the Gate of the Sixth Sense. As he realized that, a thrilling ecstasy surged through him.
Hadn't a crack appeared in the Gate of the Sixth Sense after only four times? All that was left was to throw it wide open. And so, he stepped into the third passage.
In that instant, Enkrid experienced a different kind of pain. An invisible blade from above split his body vertically. Terrible agony, pain, the whooshing sound of the wind, a lingering chill in his body, the gushing of blood onto the floor, and a sense of enervation as if all the energy in his body was draining away.
None of it was a pain or sensation he wanted to experience a second time. It was agonizing.
Naturally.
However, the footprint of this new experience made him forget the suffering. So the repeating today was not just agonizing. He was just running and struggling for tomorrow.
On the morning of the fifth day, Enkrid set a goal for himself to not grow complacent in the present. 'Open the Gate of the Sixth Sense, and pass through this tunnel.' If anyone knew, they would call it sheer madness.
But to Enkrid, this was just another moment of training.
Moving forward. Growing.
It was different from struggling for tomorrow.
“Uh, you say there's a hole under our shop, so why are you smiling?”
The shoe craftsman asked, looking at the smiling Enkrid.
“I have a hobby of exploring the unknown.”
He spat out some random words and was about to go down, but the craftsman grabbed his arm.
“I heard something passing by below, so you have to be careful...”
“Yes, I will.”
There were many things he wanted to test. He descended and faced the passage. His sixth sense didn't immediately blare a warning, as if a sense of foreboding was piercing his entire body.
‘I'll assume the gate is only partially open.’
He intended to open it the rest of the way from now on. He abandoned the idea of foolishly throwing his body into the trap. He knew from experience.
That method wouldn't work. This was the fifth today. Even if he couldn't end it here, he still intended to struggle.
He wouldn't waste the present, this moment, just because he could easily repeat it. He had no such thought. Then what was there to do?
All day, truly all day long, Enkrid walked back and forth in front of the passage at a slow pace. From the first to the front of the second, from the second to the sixth. He repeated the cycle, returning from the sixth to the first again.
Until all five torch stands burned out. Until it was time to wonder if spending the day like this would end today as it was.
“What on earth are you doing?”
The craftsman, who was bewildered at first.
“Shouldn't you eat lunch?”
He brought him a meal.
“But why do you just keep going back and forth, like a duck crossing a river?”
Later, the daughter came and expressed her curiosity.
“Hey, that soldier said he came for a request, why is he acting like that?”
“I don't know either. He's been like that all day.”
Even the owner of the herbalist shop next door came to watch. An act that seemed meaningless from the outside. All day, Enkrid activated Single Point Focus and tried to find anything out of the ordinary.
On what principle did the sixth sense that detected danger operate? According to Jacksen's explanation, the process of seeing, hearing, smelling, and feeling was activated in the realm of instinct. The sixth sense was what first snatched up unrecognized danger.
The beginning was the task of finding that sense of incongruity. He had been watching all day, yet nothing happened. Then a thought suddenly occurred to him.
‘What would happen if I don't die and the day passes just like this?’
It was a newfound question. Since then, despite pacing back and forth in front of the passage countless times all day, he had gained nothing.
‘The height is about one and a half times my own.’
It meant the tunnel went quite deep. He hadn't been inside, so he didn't know how far the tunnel extended. It was dusty and dirt fell, but the walls and ceiling were quite sturdy.
There were no pillars, but it didn't seem like it would collapse anytime soon. What else was different? The air was damp and gloomy, but there was a draft.
The darkness deep inside was hard to see even with the light of a torch.
‘What else?’
What about the smell? There was a fishy scent, but it wasn't bothersome. Could there really be an undead monster?
A priest might be able to tell just from the surrounding air, but Enkrid, who had lived his life obsessed only with the sword, had no such talent. He searched and searched. As he observed endlessly until he felt a sense of incongruity, night had fallen before he knew it.
“Aren't you going back?”
From behind the passage, the craftsman called out. When he turned around, he saw the craftsman's face at the top of a sloping ramp. Enkrid climbed up and replied.
“I don't know what's inside, but it doesn't seem immediately dangerous. Let's block the entrance and wait until tomorrow. I'll bring reinforcements.”
“Wouldn't it have been better to call for reinforcements in the time you were just pacing around?”
Normally, that would be the right thing to say. But if he called reinforcements and one of them entered the passage and triggered an explosion, wouldn't that be the end of it? It was a path to everyone dying together.
“There was something I had to check.”
Acting like an expert, as if he were skilled in this sort of thing, the craftsman nodded, though still skeptical. Once again, he blocked the hole and headed back to the unit. He could see the moon in the sky.
It was a full moon. The weather, which had warmed up a bit during the day, became chilly again at night. Enkrid, tightening the monster hide coat, glanced back.
It seemed the shoe craftsman hadn't broken through the blocked floor and gone down. He seemed like a curious fellow.
‘If he had, there would have been an explosion.’
Here, another question arose. What happens if the night passes like this? It couldn't be called a secondary matter.
The repeating today would need a moment to end eventually.
‘I should have tested this sooner.’
Then again, the circumstances until now hadn't been suitable for testing. It was a today that repeated on a battlefield where one wrong move meant death. It was a today spent dodging an assassin's dagger.
Experiencing such todays and then facing a day like this might have felt anticlimactic, but Enkrid was unfazed. He always trained and repeated the same way. It was no different just because it was 'today'.
“Didn't you say you were going to hunt a monster? But you went to kill boots instead? Did you kill any?”
As he entered the barracks, Rem asked. He already seemed to know what request he'd gone on and where. Brushing the dirt from the seat of his pants, Enkrid replied.
“Killed about three. It was a fulfilling day.”
“... Let's not even talk about it.”
Rem didn't start an argument he was sure to lose. When it came to a battle of wits, Enkrid showed exceptional talent if he put his mind to it. After being tormented by Jacksen's killing intent until bedtime, Enkrid lay down in bed.
He worried that someone might kill him to repeat the day, but nothing happened, so he slept without incident.
When he opened his eyes the next day and saw the situation unfolding, Enkrid muttered to himself.
‘A repeat.’
A repeat of today. It seemed that waking up and dying were one and the same. And so today began again.
Enkrid once again paced in front of the fork in the path. It was a repetition of today without the pain of death, but he was unchanging. He still did his best, still struggled desperately.
Because being trapped in today was the worst possible situation for Enkrid. Then what did he have to do to escape this? He knew without the ferryman telling him.
‘I have to overcome this place.’
When the torch went out, his eyes, accustomed to the light, saw only darkness.
Fwoosh.
He struck the flint again, lit the torch, and held it up. Enkrid looked at the six-way fork.
‘In cases like this, one of the six must be the real one, right?’
The easy way was to throw his body in and check. All six of them, one by one. Instead of using that method, Enkrid chose to hone his Gate of the Sixth Sense.
And it was effective, to some extent.
‘Ominousness.’
Something stimulated by his survival instinct. He had felt it faintly on the sixth today. Enkrid once again spent a day similar to the previous ones.
“What on earth are you doing all day?”
To appease the bewildered shoe craftsman, he used the excuse he had thought of on a previous today.
“I'm checking to see what's inside. It looks like there's a trap. It seems the Thieves' Guild secretly made a hidden passage, so don't go inside.”
It wasn't like the Gilfin Guild was the only Thieves' Guild in the city, but Enkrid said it while thinking of them anyway. He was basically using their name. It was a plausible excuse.
The result of his deliberation, if not deep contemplation, while pacing in front of the passage. The craftsman nodded.
“I understand.”
Back at the barracks, Enkrid received a sharp look from Jacksen. He had to feel the killing intent that he shot out. It was a nightly routine.
Even after enduring with cold sweat on his forehead, Enkrid had no intention of sleeping. If sleeping caused the repeat, what would happen if he stayed up all night? He was curious.
And so he endured, trying to see the dawn of the next day.
“Nyaa.”
Aster came up beside him and nudged his back with her paw. It seemed like she was protesting, asking what he was doing instead of sleeping.
“You sleep first.”
Enkrid said, stroking the top of Aster's head. And so, he waited for dawn to break. Enkrid blinked for a moment.
And soon, he saw the black river.
“Meaningless.”
The ferryman was nowhere to be seen, but his words remained. He opened his eyes again.
“What are you doing?”
His head was heavy and his body was tired as if he had stayed up all night, but it was another repeat of today.
‘What if I don't blink at all?’
Then, would the day continue as it is? But how could a person endure without blinking? That was something even a knight couldn't do.
Therefore, the repetition of today was unavoidable.
‘Live only for today, is that it?’
That was fine too. In any case, he already knew the way to move on to tomorrow. Enkrid headed to the cobbler's shop again.
He endured the day, more tired than before. It wasn't a very difficult task. He had a history of fighting and fleeing for several nights without sleep.
And so he repeats today, again and again. With no pain of death, should he call it peaceful? Would he become intoxicated by the peace and grow complacent in today?
No, Enkrid did not do that. He did not change. Today after today after today after today after today of repetition.
It was the seventy-eighth repetition. After living the same day over and over. Returning to the barracks, Enkrid dodged the killing intent shot out by Jacksen.
Two steps to the side. It was a feat one could perform if they could minutely sense their opponent's killing intent. Thinking it might be a coincidence, Jacksen shot out his killing intent again.
The principle of projecting killing intent was to gaze at a localized area with the will to kill the opponent if they crossed it. That projected killing intent. Enkrid twisted his body and let it flow past him.
It was something one couldn't even imitate without opening the Gate of the Sixth Sense. And not just opening it clumsily, but throwing it wide open.
“... What is this?”
‘The efficiency of survival instinct is amazing.’
The answer in his head.
“It just suddenly worked.”
The words that came out of his mouth were different. Of course, the words in his head were the truth. A trap that led to death.
There was no better training tool. Enkrid chewed, tore, tasted, and enjoyed that tool. And that had thrown open the Gate of the Sixth Sense.
And so, he was able to make Jacksen's eyes widen like that now.
“Suddenly?”
How could this be? It was impossible. But it had actually happened right before his eyes.
Jacksen was deeply flustered, but he didn't show it on the outside. He just nodded. What could he do, he said it worked.
He had been wondering how to stimulate him, as there seemed to be no progress at all. He had thought of all sorts of methods. They had all become useless.
“Thanks to you.”
Enkrid said, and Jacksen felt good for no reason. Of course, he then immediately muttered to himself as usual.
‘As if this has any meaning.’
While thinking that inwardly, Jacksen was once again pleased. Whatever the process, Enkrid had thrown open the gate just as he had hoped. The corners of Jacksen's mouth lifted for a moment before coming back down.
It was a sign of just how happy he was.