His current troop was more experienced than any of his previous groups. They had a rotating system where everyone got a chance to rare guard or advance, and a chance to rest cozily in the middle.

The soldier was in the vanguard when it happened. He was just thinking it was the safest time he'd spent upfront. The safest and most boring.

How foolish. He didn't notice the trap until their whole line was well ahead of it, and why should he have, he wasn't the scout. And his body was in pieces too. A few pieces of it were vapourised in a sickening rusty smoke.

He was dead. And then he wasn't. It was not the first time either.

“...bunch of idiots,” one of the enemy scouts was saying.

The soldier couldn't hear them well at first, because the explosion had damaged his hearing even before his death and resurrection. Still, he'd found that his resurrection healed everything, even his calluses, leaving him with depressingly soft hands.

He stayed where he was, quietly stewing while buried in his former comrades’s blood and gore. The enemies were relaxed. And as well they should be. There were hundreds of them, and only one of him.

But once, an indeterminate amount of time ago, the nameless soldier had seen a single swordsman face off against hundreds and prevail. He could down dozens with a single slash. The soldier might not be at that level yet, but he had his own advantages. His seeming immortality, for one.

He hadn't wanted to so much as think of it before, but now it was convenient. He needed to believe he could come back from any type of death, so that when he fought these assholes, he'd hold nothing back. He'd die to take them all down, because he could.

He jumped out of the gore. He did not know, nor care, what his enemies thought when they saw him. He didn't even know what this whole war was about to be honest, but he didn't even know his own name, so that was a moot point.

He crouched low, the top of his sword touching the ground, both his hands gripping the hilt, and he swung before his enemies could get their heads wrapped around the situation. He swung fast, hard, all his blows critically injuring an opponent. He did not let up, but the enemies recovered fast. Too fast.

There were so many of them, and most, if not all were stronger than the soldier. He was just more willing to die. A fire ball flew towards him, and he jumped away just in time, only to find an ice lance taking him through one thigh. Still, he lunged forward with a thrust, only for the tip of his sword to clash directly with the tip of another sword.

A thrusting technique, if ever he'd seen one. He'd been meaning to learn one, but hadn't found anyone to spar with. Suddenly, a light went off in his head. He'd been ignoring a significant advantage he had for a long time now. He was immortal, no injury to him was permanent. He didn't need to hold back. He could improve faster if he fought with stronger enemies, knowing he couldn't die no matter how much they injured him.

He could also feel free to experiment with impunity. He smiled, and iron sung as he started his battle against a hundred men.

He cut an arrow in half, then tried to deflect a fire ball, but was pushed back. He over balanced, and even though he saw it, he couldn't quite react in time to the swordman's lunging thrust. He died only a few micro seconds after he decided to fight like his life didn't matter.

A few seconds later, his eyes shot open again, and the swordsman backed up in bewilderment. That single swordsman killed the nameless soldier ten times before he was able to overcome him. The soldier cracked his neck, looked around at the open mouthed spectators. He grinned and leaped back into the fray.

****

He was there, the day the war ended. The nameless soldier had survived the gruelling, soul crushing slog that was the war he knew nothing about. As the time went, he seemed to become more and more used to the situation.

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Before, every single one of his enemies could intimidate him with no more than a look. It was like they were always passively giving off some kind of blood drenched aura. He had one too, now he'd killed thousands of people.

His sword play, while no where near what that child genius he'd seen, was no joke now. He could exchange blows with the greatest of them all. Sure, he was focusing on the basics, not trying anything more than simple swings, the simplest foot work, the simplest stances, lunges, thrusts, parries, counters, but he was still a warrior to be proud of.

It was weird though. He hadn't seen his prospective master since that first time they'd met. And the army had been cut down to only about twenty thousand men and women.

He had expected to see him in the advance squad he'd been a part of, but he hadn't. And he'd found out why a few hours ago. They hadn't been the best as he'd been led to believe. They had been the sacrifices their commanders chose to pay to conquer the final stronghold on their route.

The nameless soldier had found himself grinning wider and wider as he ran through the barrage of spells and arrows and traps to the gate, not even bothering with a shield or a mana barrier or any sort of defense. He wanted to cut them all down with his sword. It had been glorious, although he'd missed more than he'd cut down, and he'd become a charred and frozen pincushion by the time he'd reached the gates, and he'd lost another squad, or troop, or whatever. He hadn't bothered getting close to them, even that short blonde with the really inviting hips.

Too bad some of the women kept saying he was too young for them, and some was all of them. He couldn't remember the last time he'd rolled around with an older woman, it must have been in his imagination. He would have done it that day, and he was sure he could have, but he waited for that swordsman. He'd been promised training, and he was hoping he'd get it..

It wasn't until three days later that he came. In those three days, the nameless soldier had finally gotten time to try out that whole meditation thing older soldiers always told him about, to keep his mind calm and his aura serene. It wasn't for him, he'd decided.

The boy didn't look a day older than the first time they'd met. He hadn't even changed clothes. The soldier could swear that some of the blood stains were in the exact same spot as the last time.

They studied each other without saying anything for a few moments. The soldier was sure his inspection was a lot more cursory than his prospective trainer's.

“Well, this is a surprise,” the boy said with a smirk. “What should I call you then?”

“I-I..” the soldier hesitated. “I cannot remember my name.”

“But you remember enough to wait for me to pick you up,” the young boy scratched his cheek, then shrugged. “Well, not that it matters. My name is Noid, and now that you've fulfilled my condition, I have no qualms about taking you with me. What say you, want to travel with me and join my mercenary company?”

Noid was apparently once a noble, but a freak accident had left him scarred in the face. That was enough for his father to relegate him to staying in a side house on their large estate. Apparently, that was enough for his father's main wife, who wasn't his mother, to turn him into an experimental prop for her magic.

When he was nine, Noid Ellan suffered permanent soul damage. Even though he had considerable mana reservoirs, he was unable to use magic, the last straw to his father. He didn't stay down for long though, after finding his new family.

According to him, he was currently a fairly famous adventurer, and he'd only been forced to come to the war so that the chairman of the mercenary company he worked for didn't have to leave the company for years.

Sometimes the soldier wondered how long the boy had been in the war, even though he still looked no older than fourteen.

And their journey was a hard time for the soldier for reasons other than his empathy getting the better of him. The boy practiced harder than him, and seemed to have more stamina than him to boot. He found himself wishing he could put a number on the amount of stamina he had, but he couldn't.

When they sparred, he never had the slightest chance of winning.

“At least you have experience, and you can withstand battle intent well enough. You are a collection of flaws. What's with you charging like a graceless bull? You are a swordsman. Do you think you are immortal?”

The boy tilted his head to look at him quizzically.

“Then maybe I'll show you that death is not the only reason you should fear a debilitating injury.”

The day he'd learnt his strategy to improve super fast wouldn't serve him forever, he'd been tortured for hours. The smallest cuts, cuts that burned, cuts that stung, cuts he could swear were coated in magic, even though Noid could not use magic. He didn't bleed out, despite feeling enough pain he'd thought his hands had been cut clean off.

And without dying, he couldn't heal the wounds instantly. He'd had trouble doing anything except standing with his hands and legs far apart to avoid them rubbing against his body and themselves for almost two days. He'd drawn the line on direct suicide. First, he didn't want Noid to know about his immortality if possible, and he didn't want to find out that taking his own life meant he'd given up on resurrecting.

That might have been his worst habit, but he had a lot more bad habits. One time, Noid didn't even say anything, just kept tripping him up when he moved, until the soldier realised there was something wrong with his foot work. It was too stiff. He'd needed to stiffen his muscles while performing drills in order to exhaust his leg muscles as well, but it was better to be loose during combat, all the easier to react to any surprises.

He polished his basic swordsmanship over months of travel. Noid never offered to teach him any elaborate techniques, and the soldier never asked to learn. He still had yet to master the basics after all.

Like that, they arrived at their destination. They'd kept off the main roads, and that's why the soldier believed they'd never entered the cities he'd seen in the distance in passing. Their destination ended up being a village occupied by mercenaries and their families. And they, one and all knew Noid. He was a celebrity.