WE TRIED TRANSLATIONS

Translator: Hydrogen B

Editor: Abstract

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

A KNIGHT WHO ETERNALLY REGRESSES

Chapter 156: To Learn, to Practice, to Teach, to Understand

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Birds sang.

The wind blew.

The summer sky blazed alongside a brilliant sun, and the heat rose fast, the way it always did.

Heat churned through Enkrid, inside and out.

For the past three months, rumors had spread wide: Azpen was keeping the surface calm while quietly stoking the fires of war again. In the end, Azpen stepped back.

No war. No battle.

So what were those left in the barracks supposed to do?

Training and rest. That was all.

Many had taken on contracts through the soldier-mercenary system, but Enkrid had no shortage of Krona. His two swords were in fine shape, and Kraiss had been faithfully handing over every coin he earned through the guild.

So Enkrid spent most of his time training.

Even so, his growth looked slow, at least to outside eyes. The word "stagnation" came up often. Stagnation, meaning a halt. Everyone assumed Enkrid had plateaued.

He thought otherwise.

How could he not?

Will.

What had Enkrid's dream been until now? An unreachable specter. An invisible darkness. Something he couldn't grasp or see, a sky far beyond reach.

Now he could see the steps leading up to that sky. He could feel them taking shape. Signposts, you might call them. For Enkrid, Will was exactly that. A step. A signpost. The instruction to break through his limits was the same.

Stagnation? No. The him of before and the him of now were worlds apart. Others' eyes told them otherwise. His own told him the truth.

What had gotten him here? Everything he had hammered into his body over time. Starting with Heart of the Beast, then Blade Sense, Focus Point, Isolation Technique.

If swordsmanship has fundamentals, could there be fundamentals for building talent too?

He didn't know. But wasn't that exactly what was happening inside him right now? Through Focus Point, through Heart of the Beast when he needed it, through sharpening his senses when nothing else would do, he turned over everything he had experienced, again and again. That was all he had done for three straight months.

And then there were the soldiers who came looking for him.

The old saying about teaching being the surest path to growth, he was starting to feel it for real.

"Let's spar."

The 1st Company and the Frontier Defense Unit. Both units drew soldiers counted among the most skilled in the entire Border Guard Standing Army. At first, ordinary soldiers had come around often too. Now only men from those two units still bothered to visit.

Sparring was always welcome.

"Fine by me."

Enkrid received them without much fuss. Two men were soon trading blows and pouring sweat. He won every time. What had changed from before: he had enough room now that he didn't need grappling. He fought on Basics alone, setting aside Vallen Style Swordsmanship entirely, and it was still enough. Against Rem and the squad he used everything he had, but not against these men. There was no need.

Through all that learning, a pattern started standing out.

Too much.

Some soldiers had that look about them. Trying to absorb too many things at once, letting their fundamentals slip in the process.

"Isn't this efficient, though?"

Point out the problem and that was what came back. A thought he had entertained himself, once. An efficient, rational approach to combat, one he still used plenty. But that was a fighting method, not a training method.

He had wanted to absorb as much as possible into his body, all for the sake of repeating today, over and over. Had any of it come easily?

Even now, Sense of Evasion wouldn't work right. Heart of Superhuman Strength needed prep time. Focus Point itself barely triggered without his life on the line. That was the understanding he had reached after months of turning the problem over.

Start with what you can do now.

Forward. Keep going forward.

With that resolve he pushed through the repetitions. The Boatman would sometimes appear in his dreams and murmur things like, "What in the world are you, anyway," but that was about all. Three months of nothing but training. As it always was with Enkrid's life, he kept at it the same way. Repeat, and repeat again. Each week the same as today. Each month the same as today.

Somewhere in all of that, something new came to him.

Rhythm.

Something needed when swinging a sword. The things that geniuses, people like Ragna, passed through without a second thought were the very footholds Enkrid had to chew through one step at a time. Realize something in the morning and the whole day felt lighter. Realize something in the evening and even going to bed felt pleasant.

Mrow.

Esther trailed after him as if cheering him on, padding close wherever he went. She had always clung to him at night, but now she wouldn't leave his side during the day either.

"You're popular even with beasts."

Frog said as much. Esther flicked out her claws in response, but the two never actually came to blows.

Every other day, the Elf Company Commander came by.

"What do you think about autumn for the engagement ceremony?"

She would throw out a joke like that, or say, "Want to spar?" and cross blades with him before leaving. An elf's sword was sharp and light, and there was something to be learned from it too.

Learn by teaching. Learn through sparring.

"Come on, block this."

Rem's axe work was still brutal and rough, but something had changed. A faint smile would sometimes play at the corner of his mouth.

"Whoa!"

And sometimes Enkrid could actually startle him. An upward slash from below, paired with an off-beat thrust from the left hand. The timing of the cut and thrust was subtly mismatched, like a dissonant note slipped into a familiar rhythm. Both hands riding separate beats at the same time.

Vallen Style Swordsmanship. The Crossed Blades. Among Vallen's mercenary sword techniques, already widely called underhanded, the Illusionary Sword was one of the rare moves that actually felt like genuine skill. Right hand and left hand moving as if they had nothing to do with each other.

"That last one was pretty good," Rem said.

Recognition. That, too, was its own kind of joy.

"Neglect Martial Arts and the Lord will be displeased."

What god would get angry over skipping Valaf-style Grappling practice? Nonsense, but Enkrid trained with Audin without complaint. Valaf-style Grappling blended strikes and joint locks. He had killed Mitch Hurrier, after all, by threading joint locks into the Vallen-style Dogfight.

Learn and absorb. The joy of learning. Receive recognition, learn, then teach in return. That was how one grew. The joy of growth drove him like a whip, so of course swinging a sword felt good.

One at a time. Half a step at a time. Crawling if it came to that.

His original intention. Exactly as he had decided at the very start.

For Enkrid, it came naturally enough. For someone watching, it was something else entirely. Especially for Frog.

Not that Enkrid had time to worry about others' gazes. Too busy examining himself, fitting dynamic visual acuity training and sensory conditioning into every gap he found, keeping himself busier than anyone around him.

Of the soldiers who had originally trained alongside him, only a few still pushed hard. Whether it was the slackening discipline after the campaign ended, or simply human will being what it was, as idling soldiers multiplied, those still committed to training dwindled. Some remained, though. A few stood out.

Setting those aside, the Frontier Defense Unit made for the best sparring partners. Sometimes Enkrid went to them himself and asked to cross swords.

"Always welcome."

The Frontier Defense Captain always received him warmly. He crossed blades with the captain and mingled with the others, but Torres, a familiar face, just shook his head.

"Not fighting you anymore."

"Why?"

"You don't pick a fight you're going to lose."

The soldier rank system. That kind of talk was going around, discussions about elite soldiers. Some among them stoked their competitive spirit again, but Enkrid had already moved a step beyond where they were.

Three months. Time was always an arrow once loosed, but to Enkrid it was a single day. Today. A process of moving toward tomorrow.

"Rhythm isn't one thing. Didn't you already know that?"

Maybe she had decided that watching alone wasn't enough. Maybe staying still had simply grown boring. Either way, Frog, Ruagarne, began teaching Enkrid.

"I was just about to say that," Ragna muttered from where he had been watching, but it was exactly the right thing to say in that moment.

Rhythm. Beat. Right, it didn't have to be one thing. Hadn't he already learned that through Vallen Style Swordsmanship? The Crossed Blades was a double attack built on offset rhythms. Long, drawn-out beats within a single breath. Short, tight beats. Beats that braced through the core and held firm. He absorbed it all.

"Break from the standard beat, do it in a single step. No, from where you are now, your left foot needs to go half a step further. Then you can land the Heavy Sword Style spinning slash from there."

Ruagarne was quite proactive about it.

Why did this Frog stay at her side? Why eat and sleep in her quarters, staying here? Why teach him at all? Every question she pushed back. No, she chose to forget them.

Teaching was learning. Always hungry for it, Enkrid took that path.

"Then what about pulling the right foot back here?"

"That makes it hard to recover the sword. In that case, do this instead."

Ragna stepped in. Hard to say how things had ended up this way, but everyone seemed more eager than before.

"No, you can do it like this too," Rem said, stepping forward as well.

Balancing on the toes, pivoting the body. Basics, plus a sword swung to fit each situation, feet that moved, eyes that reacted.

"Broaden your senses. You've already learned how." Jaxon's voice cut in.

Right, he had. Fighting Lycanthropes had pushed his sensory range outward. Not just looking forward, but taking in everything. Spreading awareness outward from himself as the center.

"Squad Leader, my brother, every movement has a center. That holds for Martial Arts and swordsmanship alike. Finding that center line and connecting it to your opponent, that's what matters," Audin added.

Everyone was more earnest than before. To Enkrid, all of it was pure joy.

"He does have an advantage."

Frog's conclusion, after watching it all.

"What advantage?" Rem asked, standing nearby.

Still the training ground. Still under a burning sun. Still a day soaked through with sweat and sour smell.

"Once he learns something, he doesn't let it go."

Rem nodded. It was true. Enkrid was slow. Late to absorb, late to learn. There was talk of him being a late-blooming genius, but that part he wasn't sure about.

One thing was certain. He didn't forget what he had learned. He pondered endlessly. He wanted to learn by any means available. How to apply what he'd learned. How to make it real. How to put it into practice. Endless thinking. That much was plain to see.

That, too, was an advantage.

Rem thought so. Frog, only now, was starting to look back at what exactly she was doing.

Was it her face that had drawn Ruagarne in? Or her disposition? Eagerly teaching someone with no visible talent, clearing the path for him to advance, what an inefficient thing to do.

But she didn't let it bother her. Frogs were creatures caught in desire and want. Ruagarne knew she was no exception. There was something that came before desire, though. She had made a covenant precisely to avoid being driven entirely by want. A covenant was a promise, an oath to be kept. That was what it meant for a Frog.

She would have to leave, eventually.

Even so, she kept teaching Enkrid.

Three months of learning and training, and still progress was slow. That was how it looked to her. Between Frog's watchful eye and the squad's teachings, Enkrid turned the rhythms over in his mind and re-rooted various techniques back into his body.

A sense of ripening, as if he had stepped one foot closer to his limit. Not that it was actually close. He couldn't even tell where his limit began. The concept itself still felt beyond grasp.

Then it happened.

"There's a summons."

The Elf Company Commander came by and called for him.

"Yes."

Drenched in sweat, Enkrid followed her. Sweat ran down her forehead too. That was how hot it was. The humidity sat thick in the air. Rain was overdue. It would come within a day or two, experience told him that much.

"You're here?"

Where she had led him was the Battalion Commander's office.

"A contract came in. What do you think?"

The soldier-mercenary system was built around volunteers taking on contracts, but orders from above sometimes came through. Rarely, when ordinary soldiers weren't enough, squads or even company-level forces were deployed.

From what Kraiss had said, demon creatures and monster packs had been causing trouble deep within the kingdom lately. Already a tendency as summer approached, but this year was said to be especially bad.

"The heat of summer makes demons and beasts flourish."

A well-known saying passed down across the continent. This was exactly that kind of situation.

"I'll grant you temporary command authority over a nearby pioneer village. Take care of the matter there."

The spring campaign had ended early, so this summer was being spent in the city, a rare thing. Throughout that time Enkrid had stayed within the training ground and his quarters. Not a single trip to the market. The joy of walking the path of the sword had taken hold of him completely.

"If you have no interest in going, that's fine. If you need time to think it over, you can come back with an answer."

The Battalion Commander looked tired. Too many things to handle, or a bad night's sleep, most likely the former given the documents stacked all around him.

"Yes, sir."

Enkrid gave a salute and turned.

Just outside, the Elf Company Commander was watching him with an odd look.

"What is it?"

Ask and it would probably be more nonsense, but he asked anyway.

"Just thinking, good thing I picked well."

Standard elf humor.

"Is that so?"

Past the pointless joke, back at the quarters, Kraiss was inside, busy as ever lately. Enkrid skimmed the order sheet and relayed what had happened.

"That, let's go, come on, we're going! It's an order!"

Kraiss said, eyes lighting up. Which meant Krona was involved. That was Kraiss for you.

The order sheet listed the village's location and the colony's approximate size. A monster pack on the move. But it wasn't the monsters that made Kraiss's eyes go wide.

It was the location.

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