A Knight Who Eternally Regresses

Viscount Harrison raised his hand and rubbed his eyes.

What in the hell am I looking at?

Rrrrummmmbllle.

A sound like thunder rattled his ears, and the ground shook as if an earthquake had struck.

It sounded like a cavalry charge—thousands strong—and the reason became clear:

Across the fields he ★ 𝐍𝐨𝐯𝐞𝐥𝐢𝐠𝐡𝐭 ★ had cultivated, a massive horde of boar beasts had gathered, kicking up a blinding cloud of dust.

To see monsters swarm like that... It felt like a colony had formed.

It wasn't magic, and yet the dust shrouded them like a concealment spell. He couldn't even tell how many there were.

The only fortunate thing was that they had charged across open plains, giving the defenders time to prepare.

But then—those reinforcements—they stepped forward on foot to meet that storm head-on.

They told everyone else to stand down. They would handle it alone.

They couldn't even see how many boar beasts were charging through that rolling cloud, and yet they marched toward it like it was a friendly greeting.

If this wasn't madness, what was?

Even after rubbing his eyes, the scene didn't change. Harrison could only watch as the newcomers vaulted over or rounded past the angled spike barriers and advanced.

At first glance, they seemed disorganized.

But the lack of formation didn't mean they were chaotic. Each person moved into position with calculated spacing.

Not that it mattered to the viscount at that moment. He couldn't see any of that.

"All I can say is..."

He muttered, clenching his fist until the veins showed. The rumbling earth made his body tense on instinct.

"THESE LUNATICS!"

He finally screamed it.

What made boar beasts so terrifying?

They charged at ridiculous speeds—enough that even knights rarely engaged them head-on.

To face them without even using the wooden palisades?

"What the hell are they doing!?"

The former mercenary turned militia captain gaped with his mouth hanging open.

He knew his liege had sent pleas for help all over.

He'd even heard that the letter had reached the royal palace.

But no one really expected reinforcements to come.

And now that they had?

They weren't many in number. Enough to help, maybe. But what were they doing?

No spears—just axes hanging at their sides. And yet they stepped out like they meant to fight alone.

Their leather armor and matching cloaks were uniform—cohesive in look and function.

There's an old mercenary saying: your gear is your skill.

Put another way—if you see a unit with matching, high-grade equipment, back off.

That meant they trained constantly, and likely fought with brutal cohesion.

That kind of wisdom came from being sold to battlefields for cronas over the years. So sure—these guys might not be weak.

But charging into this swarm of monsters?

That felt like a new kind of madness.

Of course, if the viscount or his captain had a bit more time and clarity, they might've guessed why these men stepped forward.

But neither of them were quick thinkers—and even if they were, there was no time to think.

The reinforcements had arrived, and before they could even finish an introduction—or get a bite to eat—the enemy charged.

When a militia guard near the palisade asked who they were, they didn't answer.

They just kept walking.

They vaulted the barriers and formed a loose front, right as the boar beasts barreled in.

Everything had happened so fast—it was overwhelming just to watch.

The boars outnumbered them at least two to one.

Viscount Harrison's eyes twitched. The pressure was unbearable.

He hadn't slept in days, and the fatigue had pushed him to his limits.

If he saw those reinforcements torn open and disemboweled right now, he might faint on the spot.

"DO IT WELL!"

Someone shouted from among the reinforcements.

A commander?

He had wondered earlier—when the soldier who delivered the message strolled in casually—Where is their commanding officer?

Now he caught a flash of grey hair.

No helmet. Arms crossed. Watching calmly.

The figure felt oddly familiar, but Harrison couldn't quite place it.

Time passed, and like the rising sun, or the falling rain, the two sides finally clashed:

The monstrous boars and the Border Guard unit met.

He should've stopped them, Harrison realized too late. That thought came now, useless and heavy.

Everyone had expected a massacre.

SPLAT—CRACK—THUD!

A cacophony of bursting flesh and pounding hooves filled the plains.

Black blood sprayed into the air—splattering across the field like a rainstorm of pitch.

"If anyone dies, they die by my hand!"

The commander's voice rang out again in the chaos.

The boar beasts lunged with razor-sharp tusks. If those teeth clamped down, you wouldn't just get a wound—you'd be shredded.

But the Border Guard standing army troops—all of them—drew their axes and swung.

WHAM!

Heads split open. Skulls cracked and burst.

From the moment of the charge to the first clash—everything happened in an instant.

What... what was this?

The twitching in Harrison's eye faded.

"What... is this?"

He muttered the question. Half to the militia captain, half to himself.

But the captain had no answers.

All he could think was: those bastards are fighting like maniacs.

They weren't even fifty in number.

But they fought insanely well. Every last one of them.

***

Rem had once lazily called the unit he'd trained the "Assault Squad."

Before long, everyone just started calling them the Remgak Unit.

It was a miracle they weren't dubbed The Maniac Axe Squad—though honestly, they wouldn't have cared either way.

Every soldier had been personally trained by Rem.

Lately, they'd even been learning basic spellcraft from the twins.

"If only there were a spell that let you die and come back," Rem liked to grumble.

"Then I could just kill everyone and get it over with."

No further comment was needed about the intensity of their training.

And it wasn't like Rem let just anyone into his unit.

As before, he only took those who passed his eye test.

Some quit halfway. The ones who remained—about fifty in total—formed the core of the assault squad.

Among them, three had shown glimpses of real talent.

One of them was good at nothing except fighting, so Rem left him alone.

The other two—he made them lieutenants.

Those two were now leading the charge, forming the spearhead of the assault.

Rem didn't care for traditional formations. He preferred raw force.

But if he let that go unchecked, a lot of people would just die needlessly.

He wasn't a tactician—but he'd seen, heard, and fought enough to know what worked.

He even factored in tips he'd gotten from twisting Kraiss's leg during training.

Now, finally, he thought: These guys are starting to be useful.

"Way better than those monkey beasts in the trees!"

One of the lieutenants shouted. He had a cropped haircut and a loud voice.

Everyone agreed with him.

Boar beasts that charged in broad daylight were ten times better than those brain-eating tree monkeys who attacked at night.

They were right.

The Pen-Hanil mountains had been both their training ground and battleground.

Compared to the beasts there, this was much easier.

All they had to do was charge, slash, and crush.

And that's exactly what they did.

They leapt over the thorn barricades and swung their axes.

The beasts were terrifying in their charge—but their movement was straight.

That made it easy to predict and dodge if you had the nerve to face them.

Every soldier in the Remgak Unit fought with the same boldness—the kind Rem called Heart of the Beast.

And of course, it was all Rem's doing.

The Heart of the Beast was a technique he had refined while training Enkrid. Over time, Rem had improved it so much that teaching it had become significantly easier.

It didn't make you flinchless, but it gave enough composure to move in the heat of battle without panic.

Since Rem only recruited people who were already reckless enough, even that much refinement made them deadly.

The Remgak Assault Squad, battered by training, now had their moment to show off.

"Woohoo!"

One soldier shouted, tracking a charging boar beast's path. He calculated the angle, pivoted his body, and swung his axe diagonally.

The beast, unable to change direction mid-charge, barreled straight into the blade.

THUNK!

Still in his swing, the soldier twisted the angle of the axe with all his strength.

No matter how strong he was, he couldn't stop a beast many times his weight by brute force.

So he went for the neck—sliding the axe blade beneath its hide and flesh, then lifting it upward.

Shrrip—SPAT!

The boar beast's skin, meat, and blood sprayed into the air in a thick, black mist.

It was a deflection technique—a skilled and precise maneuver that still required tremendous power.

Even with training, pulling it off in real combat wasn't easy. But the Remgak squad had made it look like routine.

The boar beasts were falling rapidly.

Some were killed outright by lucky skull strikes. Others had their legs cut, sending them tumbling into the dirt where they were quickly finished.

Black blood soaked the earth. The air was thick with the iron stench of gore.

Those watching—Viscount Harrison, the militia captain, and the rest of the garrison—were all dumbstruck.

Mouths hung open. Words failed.

It was that kind of sight.

And yet, it still didn't fully satisfy Rem.

"If you guys do well, I'll just head back. But if I hear anything stupid—or someone screws up—I'll come back."

His version of encouragement was, as usual, unique.

All the soldiers turned to him at once. Their eyes and expressions filled with desperate resolve.

Even while they split boar heads open, they kept one ear on his words.

Especially the two lieutenants—currently commanding the front line. They were the most desperate to prove themselves.

"Understood, sir! We'll do our best!"

Rem gave a nod. He had planned to clean up a bit and leave anyway.

Bandits had been stirring up trouble in the area lately, hadn't they?

Without a word of goodbye, Rem turned and slipped away while the rest were still too busy watching the carnage.

He scanned the area as he walked, looking for signs of the new bandit group's presence.

Tracking people, reading their movements, and hunting them down was one of Rem's specialties.

The bandits' hideout was about two days from the viscount's city.

It was surrounded by crude wooden palisades and made up of huts barely fit for animals.

Sloppy. Undisciplined. If someone weren't deliberately supporting them, they wouldn't survive a week.

Rem understood that immediately—but he didn't care.

These guys were done for.

Whether they had support, talent, or tricks didn't matter anymore.

There weren't even any watchtowers.

An archer behind the palisade looked out and froze.

What... was that?

He had fired an arrow—he swore he had. But before the string finished vibrating, the target had vanished.

In the blink of an eye, without so much as a blur, the man he had aimed for was suddenly right at the wall.

Rem was using a spell called Leopard's Feet—there was no way a regular human eye could track his movement.

BAM!

He kicked the palisade hard enough to crack it, then shouted:

"Hey! You lot are done. If you wanna live—run. Got it?"

As splinters flew and the wall shattered, Rem was already slashing down the two archers who had loosed arrows.

Bandits came flooding out of the camp, weapons drawn.

"What the hell's wrong with this lunatic!? We're the Blood Brotherhood! We don't back down!"

Their leaders—five self-proclaimed blood brothers—stood at the front, shouting about loyalty.

"We die together!"

"We live together!"

Fine, Rem thought.

"Then today, you all die together."

One strange thing was how they used enchanted flutes to command beasts.

With a whistle, they summoned a special boar beast—twice the size of the others, with two horns beside its snout.

Its eyes glowed red. It looked starved and rabid.

FWEEEEET!

As the flute pierced the air, the massive boar leapt from a pit in the middle of the camp—exploding upward into the air—and charged Rem instantly.

He lazily tapped his axe's handle, half mumbling to himself.

Then, with one sudden pull, he swung it straight down.

For an instant, it looked like the world had split in two.

CRACK!

The monster was cleaved vertically, its body splitting down the middle and falling in two wet, steaming halves.

Entrails and blood gushed onto the dirt.

Even as he finished the swing, Rem resumed fingering the axe's grip, murmuring to himself.

"Oh? Not in the mood today? Yeah, I get that."

To the bandit leaders, this man was unmistakably insane.

Who was he talking to? Himself? A second self? A spirit?

The tales were true. Maniac Knight. Knight of Madness.

Some had even heard the name Rem—but very few knew the face.

After watching that axe swing, though, no one doubted something had gone very wrong.

"I said—run. If you wanna live."

Rem slung the axe over his shoulder like it weighed nothing.

At his relaxed stance, four of the five "brothers" turned and fled.

The last one—the slow-witted one—charged, seeing his comrades desert him.

He swung a spiked club but his arms trembled—he couldn't even manage a clean attack.

Rem casually cleaved the club in two, followed by the man's arm.

"GAHHH!"

Then he went after the other four.

Split their skulls. Cracked their jaws. Smashed them down.

"Thought you were brothers, huh?"

There had been over a hundred bandits in total, and several were skilled archers.

But Rem casually caught arrows out of the air and hurled them back—killing the shooters with their own bolts.

And just like that, a major threat to the south—a bandit group that controlled a horde of beasts—was erased.

No one could've predicted that a knight's squad would storm the hideout and annihilate them.

No one saw it coming.