A Knight Who Eternally Regresses

The first thing Meelun saw when he opened his eyes was a stone ceiling covered in mold.

He recalled the last moment before losing consciousness. Thanks to Frokk’s unyielding mental fortitude, the memory was vivid and precise.

And with that clarity came the realization: he was, as they say, in deep shit.

"Can I get some water? And while you're at it, maybe something to eat? I like fruit."

Meelun propped himself halfway up and spoke.

His arms had regenerated, but shackles bound both his arms and legs, connected by chains to a sturdy pillar.@@novelbin@@

Even Frokk’s monstrous strength wasn’t enough to break free.

Which left only one option.

Waiting.

Thanks to the desperate drug he had consumed, his head throbbed as though it were splitting open, and his heart ached.

‘Can I even escape this?’

Like most Frokk, Meelun wasn’t so much afraid of death as he was bitter about being denied his desires and ambitions.

‘Damn bastard.’

Inevitably, his thoughts returned to the man who had brought him down.

‘He seemed manageable.’

But he wasn’t. He should have been. By all appearances, he was weaker. Meelun’s combat instincts had told him so.

‘Why?’

Frokk relied on an instinctual understanding of combat, a natural ability to assess the tide of battle in an instant.

His instincts were rarely wrong. So why had he been utterly crushed?

The answer lay in Enkrid’s peculiar nature.

To Frokk’s keen eyes, which judged talent at a glance, Enkrid was an enigma. A man with no remarkable natural gifts, who nonetheless had clawed his way to strength through sheer determination and relentless persistence.

He was the product of endless repetition, someone whose existence defied easy categorization.

For Frokk like Meelun, who specialized in identifying talent, Enkrid was the most baffling kind of opponent.

‘He went straight for the joints.’

Meelun’s freshly regenerated arms still ached.