WE TRIED TRANSLATIONS
Translator: Hydrogen B
Editor: Abstract
Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried
A KNIGHT WHO ETERNALLY REGRESSES
Chapter 163: Even at the Cliff's Edge
= = =
The first evening, while he was deep in training, the village chief had dinner sent to the hut.
All kinds of things, carried over.
"Please eat."
The woman who delivered it had red hair. Maybe two years younger than Enkrid, give or take.
"He doesn't mean anything bad by it."
Defending the village chief.
"It's fine."
Enkrid answered without much weight behind it, and her expression brightened.
"I'm Shay."
"Right."
After that brief exchange, Shay's cheeks went red and she turned to leave. Kraiss watched her go.
"The Alluring Squad Leader lives up to the name. Come on, let's open a salon together."
Should he tell him that if the salon ever earned a proper knightly name, something like the Swallow Knights or the Host Knights, that would be the time to think it over?
Enkrid said nothing.
The title of Alluring Squad Leader demanded exactly that.
The spread wasn't lavish, but there was white bread, thin stew, roasted beans and corn. Enough to fill a stomach.
Wanting meat would've been greedy.
They couldn't ask for a separate portion for Frog either, so Ruagarne ate raw vegetables.
Crunch.
"Bug-eaten vegetables are the best. There's a little extra treat mixed in."
Said while chewing on a dandelion leaf riddled with holes. When bugs turned up among the greens, she helped herself to those too.
Enkrid's stomach didn't turn. Barely worth noting. Finn and Kraiss were the same way.
One was a Ranger, a scout who figured anything that grew from the earth or moved on it was fair game. Kraiss had seen hardship enough. A few bugs never hurt anyone. And Enkrid was no different.
They finished dinner, then trained until bedtime. Trained again. Then again.
"You really never get tired of this, do you."
Kraiss's voice drifted over from somewhere. More training on top of it.
No bathhouse, so they washed at the well. The temperature had risen enough that cold water felt like a relief.
After washing, he checked the equipment worn from the road. He'd been driving the sword hard, so only the blade needed tending. He wiped it down with mutton-fat oil he'd prepared in advance, worked it in with leather, then finished with a clean cloth.
A faint smell lingered. Better than a ruined blade.
He checked for chips. None.
Excellent.
He marveled at the blacksmith at Border Guard's forge. Having Valerian Steel and Nuairian Wrought Iron was one thing, but not just anyone could turn them into a sword like this. Though in truth, neither material had gone into it in great quantities.
One day passed. Then the next.
As always, he rose before dawn and ran through the Isolation Technique, again and again. Finn, too restless from an afternoon nap to sleep, had gone out to scout the surrounding area. The moon was still up when she left. Just a casual loop, she'd said.
A Ranger's habit. Mapping the terrain and filing it away in your head.
"Doitchi Fullman."
He was deep in his morning drills when, right at dawn, a man with rough, close-cropped hair walked up to him. One-eyed, a wide-bladed glaive in one hand. The eyepatch crossing his face and the scar beneath gave him a hard, weathered look.
"You're from Zaltenbuk."
Doitchi said it while watching him steadily.
Zaltenbuk. Where was that again? Somewhere in the central region, he thought.
"Squad Leader of Border Guard. Enkrid."
Short and plain. After that, he went straight back to his training. He didn't know what the man was here for, but he saw no reason to stop.
* * *
Doitchi watched him a moment longer, then spoke.
"I heard you came as the commanding officer."
"That's right."
Short answer. Given while swinging a sword.
Doitchi kept watching.
What was he doing? Waving a wooden sword through the air, slow and deliberate. One here. One there.
Was that actually useful?
"Are you busy?"
"Not particularly."
Is this bastard mocking me?
His brow furrowed. A man comes all this way to talk and gets a response like that? He'd come to gauge whether this officer meant to muscle in on his position as the frontier village's security captain. But this attitude.
He didn't want to start trouble and hand the man an opening.
Hold it together.
"The palisades here are coated in resin, good and solid. Ordinary monsters and beasts don't make a dent."
"Is that so."
"We organize strike teams regularly to deal with beasts in the area. No major difficulties so far."
"Is that so."
"I brought over thirty men myself, and we've grown the militia further through training."
"Is that so."
"The quarry is more or less under my people's management too."
"Is that so."
"We've put up watchtowers. My men stand watch in pairs, day and night."
"Is that so."
Is this bastard off in the head?
The thought had taken hold. He'd come expecting a commanding officer angling to pressure the village on Border Guard's behalf, and this man showed not a flicker of interest. Shouldn't he at least say something about the defenses? Was he writing them off as lowly mercenaries? Too indifferent even for that. He should be poking around for weaknesses, using them as leverage to lock down his command. Something.
Doitchi felt every plan he'd worked out with the village chief quietly unraveling.
This one's not right.
Come to think of it, his eyes had never been quite normal to begin with. Even now he was staring off into the air with that blank, distant look, wooden sword still moving.
What was he thinking about while swinging that thing?
He'd heard Enkrid played around with Frog and wooden swords. Apparently that was literally the case. Or what had this man actually come here to do?
A tangle of thoughts churned through his head. His mouth opened at the end of them.
"Did you come here to train?"
"Half of that, maybe."
Only then did Enkrid glance sideways and answer.
He'd just tossed it out there, and the man actually came here to train?
"The monster colony. We handled that ourselves."
"Is that so."
Leave it. This one's not normal. At least Doitchi knew the man hadn't come to take his command. Whatever else he was here for, time would tell.
"Boss. Monsters."
One of his men called over. A recent recruit, sharp and quick on his feet. The kind of reliable subordinate who noticed every little thing.
"Yeah, got it."
Doitchi turned and went about his work.
Enkrid stayed in his training. Doitchi tended to his own: keeping the village defenses tight, never letting his guard down.
The monster colony had already been dealt with before those people arrived.
Just a pack of mangy mutts. Twenty-odd hyena beasts. What was that to him?
They didn't know.
The number of monsters Enkrid had cut down on the road here. The beast carcasses strewn along the path to the village. The bandit gang called the Black Blades, camped nearby, wiped out to the last man.
None of it.
He'd expected bandits to come poking around. Every day he listened to reports, waiting. Frontier villages drew them like blood draws flies, each one convinced there had to be treasure buried somewhere, but there'd been nothing. Not a sound. Not a shadow.
Quiet. Everything moving forward without a hitch.
Good fortune smiling on them?
The goddess of fortune must have winked in his direction. He'd just missed it.
Three days since they'd arrived from Border Guard.
Clang clang clang clang!
The alarm bell. Its warning cry punched through the dawn fog.
Bandits?
Doitchi was up in an instant, weapon in hand. The One-Eyed Glaive. That was the name his skill had earned him. He'd show every bit of it tonight.
He kicked the door open.
"Everyone, get..."
The words died. He yanked his glaive up.
Clang!
Steel on steel. An axe blade caught his glaive's head, and the walnut shaft sent a rattling vibration through his hands.
"Hah!"
He drove the shaft hard into the axe-wielder.
Thud!
The creature flew sideways.
What is this?
Armor not even on, and monsters everywhere.
"Grouk!"
The fallen one let out a cry.
Long-torso'd, spotted markings running all over its body. A knoll.
One breaking in? He'd have gone and smacked whoever rang the bell on the head. Handle it, report it, done. No need for all this noise.
Five or six knolls and hyena beasts breaking in? He'd allow the bell, but he'd have words for them after. Can't even handle that? Former mercenaries?
But this was something else.
"Aaaargh!"
"Fight! Don't fall back!"
"Shoot, keep shooting!"
"Help me! Please, help..."
"Gurkh!"
"Hack!"
Screams of desperation and death rattles, braided together. He caught glimpses of his men between it all but couldn't make out their state.
So many. Hyena beasts and knolls crashing in like a wave.
With a low, rolling Grouk, the knolls in front of Doitchi swelled to five.
Knolls operated in groups. That cry had been a call for more.
"Hah!"
He fought with everything he had. Four knolls with hand axes, one with a spear.
By the time his glaive had split the skulls of two of them.
"Grooouk!"
Another cry. More came.
"What in the..."
Was this even possible?
Doitchi didn't sense death coming. He knew it. The edge of a cliff he couldn't climb back from. That was where he stood.
* * *
Rising before dawn was old habit for Enkrid.
Not enough time.
For every swing a genius, or even someone with ordinary talent, made, he had to make ten. Ten not enough, a hundred. A hundred not enough, a thousand.
And no matter how many, there was nothing to show for it. Not before.
Ah.
Small realizations, arriving one after another. Traces of care buried in Ruagarne's teachings, invisible unless you went looking. He took them in and chewed through them. The taste pulled up from the chewing, he reached for it again and gave it form.
The sword moved. Every day felt new.
It had always been that way, but lately more so. Most of all, understanding had started arriving even in the middle of the Isolation Technique itself.
Coordination.
The body responding the instant you see, the instant you feel. That was what it meant. A difference in reaction speed. The Sense of Evasion was a skill built on exactly that.
Ordinary training wouldn't get it into the body.
So what did he need?
Die if you must. Do it even if you die.
Pure resolve. The will to act even at the cost of your life. When the Heart of the Beast gave nothing but boldness and no calm.
Enkrid understood something.
A small trigger would be enough.
He'd gotten exactly that far in his thinking.
Grooouu!
Something wrong bled into the air all at once. Just as the pre-dawn blue began to fade, screaming rose from ahead.
Clang clang clang clang!
The alarm bell.
"Attack! Monsters! Monsters!"
Hm.
Enkrid had been locked in his training, but Kraiss, in his spare time, had walked the village.
"The palisades are solid enough. Whatever happens, inside the walls you could hold out for a while."
"No trebuchets or mangonels, but the palisades make up for it. Looks like the whole place was built to endure. Bottom line:"
That was Kraiss answering whether the village could be in danger.
"It'll be fine. Reinforcements from the nearest city would come right away if anything happened, and if you really dug in and held, you could last over a month here."
As if a monster colony was nothing to lose sleep over.
"You're wrong, Big Eyes."
Enkrid murmured.
Rumble!
Grooouu!
The thunder of feet on packed earth. Dust billowed as beasts and monsters stampeded down the road, a horde that didn't stop for breath. Too many to bother counting.
Grruuk!
Rawww!
Exchanging cries back and forth, they tore down the paths humans had built.
A knoll's axe came down on a market stall.
Crack. Splinters of wood scattered.
Screech!
A human scream layered over it.
Knolls and hyenas.
The danger of knolls. A few things flashed through his mind.
First: they operated in groups. Even a single knoll brought hyena beasts along. That was the problem.
Second: individually, they were not to be underestimated. Not at all.
Third: knolls tended to pair up, at least when it came to hyena beasts.
Thinking was thinking. The body was the body.
Enkrid drew his sword and stepped out.
Behind his hut, nothing but village workers. The militia was centered around where Doitchi and his men stayed, closer to the village core. Combat-capable people on this side would be few.
"Huh? Uh... uh?"
Behind him, a quarry worker who'd stepped out to relieve himself stumbled backward in shock and went down.
"Rua!"
In his urgency, Enkrid called out only half of Frog's name and swung his sword.
= = =
Join our discord at https://dsc.gg/wetried
= = =
Join our discord at https://dsc.gg/wetried