WE TRIED TRANSLATIONS
Translator: Hydrogen B
Editor: Abstract
Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried
A KNIGHT WHO ETERNALLY REGRESSES
Chapter 164: Swinging the Sword
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The moment a Gnoll wielding a crude spear lunged forward, Enkrid's sword swept wide and split both the spear shaft and the creature's chest in one motion.
Crack! Thud!
Two sounds rang out at once. The Gnoll's chest split wide open.
Blood seeped through the yellow fur. Thick and black, the way monster blood always was.
Enkrid flicked his sword across the spotted hide and scattered the blood from the blade.
The Gnoll, chest cleaved open, gurgled black froth from its mouth.
Slash!
A whip cracked right after. A Hyena Beast charging at a fallen laborer was caught mid-lunge, its neck snapped free and sent flying.
Up into the sky.
It sailed far and tumbled down among the others. One landed on a rooftop somewhere with a yelp, rolled, and dropped off the side.
"Rua is a name for lovers to use?"
Frog said it at the mention of the name. She'd put on her Heart Armor without Enkrid noticing. Her eyes brushed over the Gnoll's corpse.
She hadn't intended it, but the heart had been split clean.
She looked away without a second thought.
Her depth of experience showed even here.
That was who she was. Master of the Correct Sword Style. A veteran through and through.
"Hey, I've gotta go."
"...Where?"
Now? In the middle of this? Just like that?
"The Cult."
The Cult? There was no time to ask what she meant.
Rumble.
Ruagarne's cheeks swelled wide. It was an expression that resembled fury, grief, something between the two, but Enkrid had no way of reading it.
She bolted. Slammed her foot into the ground and vanished forward like a shot.
Dirt exploded upward like a fountain where she'd stood.
Frog cut through the air with afterimages trailing behind her. Several Hyena Beasts tried to block the way. Pointless.
She became a green streak.
Crash!
The cluster of Hyena Beasts at the end of that streak scattered in every direction.
Watching them sail through the air made the whole thing feel unreal.
Only someone with monstrous strength could pull that off. Only Frog, who shrugged off minor wounds without blinking.
Enkrid fixed his gaze on where she was headed.
Something was there. No, something familiar. He'd seen it over the past three days.
The one who'd been trailing that Deutsch captain like a shadow.
"Hiss!"
Esther stepped in front of a worker who'd stumbled and fallen in shock.
Enkrid pulled his gaze away. Gnolls and Hyena Beasts packed the space ahead. No time to watch something off in the distance, no time to ask what the Cult was.
"What is this?"
Kraiss muttered from behind him.
No time to answer.
Gnolls were already flooding in.
"Hh."
He exhaled. Left foot down, ankle and knee and hip rolling in sequence, the sword whipping out.
A Heavy Sword Style spinning cut swept through the incoming Gnolls.
Thwack!
The blade cut clean through torso and waist. Black blood and viscera scattered as the halved corpse tumbled to his left, making the Gnolls' charge falter for a moment.
Just a moment.
One Gnoll vaulted the body and swung a battle hammer. More lunged behind it, tongues lolling, spraying drool.
No armor. Just a sword.
The situation was about as bad as it could get.
"More coming!"
Kraiss shouted. Enkrid split his breath again and raised the sword.
The melee had begun. No room to open his mouth.
* * *
Some things in this world can't be surrendered. Some things can't be walked past.
And some things can't be forgiven.
For Ruagarne, the Cult was all three.
A fanatical group of lunatics who believed their god lived in the Demon Realm.
The ones she couldn't afford to let escape. A vendetta that had to be settled.
So the moment she saw them, her vision went red.
She was experienced enough to say the word heart out loud with her own mouth. But she was Frog.
A race that poured out every desire and longing burning inside them, without filter.
The one who had killed her second love.
She had sworn to her heart then. Kill every cultist she ever laid eyes on.
Nothing mattered more to Ruagarne than that.
Cut them down and come back. That was the plan.
But her feet were pinned.
The cultist bastard had more tricks than she'd expected.
"Crazy Frog bastard."
The cornered cultist curled his lip into a thin, bitter smile.
Had she walked into his lure?
No. Time to break their arrogance.
She couldn't go back to Enkrid yet, though.
Don't die.
That was all she could do. Hope.
* * *
The moment Ruagarne left, the monsters poured in like water through a burst dam.
Enkrid stepped forward to buy time. Nowhere near enough. There were simply too many.
"Guurk!"
A strange cry, and a squat battle hammer swung at his head. Tipped with an iron ball. Getting hit by that wouldn't just hurt.
He stepped back and swept the sword from low to high.
A reverse vertical cut.
Thud!
The blade split the Gnoll's jaw and half its skull lengthwise.
On his left, a Hyena Beast charged. Enkrid turned the sword and drove the pommel into its skull like a bludgeon.
Crack!
It had leapt in for an opening and dropped straight down.
The sensation in his palm was like cracking a walnut. Skull caved, no question.
No time to check.
Right side now. Three flashing blades, all aimed to find flesh.
Gnoll bastards. Annoyingly well coordinated.
In a flash of instinct he swung the sword three times.
Can't block? Knock them away.
Concentration sharp. Eyes lit.
Two strikes he knocked aside.
Clang!
The third left no opening, so he twisted to dodge, and a spear tip slid in and stabbed toward his stomach. He brought the sword down and struck the shaft mid-length.
Thwack.
The stab was stopped.
But then,
Thud!
A hammer came down on his shoulder. Different Gnoll entirely.
That one he couldn't block. Even with every sense sharpened, you can't track every attack in chaos like this. It had come from a blind spot at the rear.
Getting hit and stopping meant dying.
Instinct said so. Sixth sense said so.
He let his weight fall back as if toppling, flipped his grip to a reverse hold, and drove the pommel down into the Gnoll behind him.
Thud!
The heavy strike drew a grinding cry from it, something between a groan and a howl.
He kept falling back, then sprang upright and swung right.
A Hyena Beast was charging in.
The first one to go for his throat had been bold. The ones after were relentless.
This one was going for his wrist.
He split its skull.
Right then, a jolt of alarm seized his heart.
Composure. Boldness.
Heart of the Beast gripped his mind and held it steady.
The moment his awareness expanded, Blade Sense reached past the five senses and into the sixth.
Time slowed.
The Gnolls' weapons came for him in sequence.
A spear, a Gladius, a battle axe, a hammer.
Points connected by lines.
Lines between life and death.
Enkrid swung his sword along those lines.
Thud! Shink! Crack! Thud!
The first Gnoll: top-down slashes, cut and break.
The second: the sword rising from that cut swept smoothly back down and drew across the back of the neck.
The third: snapped up and came back down through the collarbone, slicing clean to the heart.
The fourth: the sword withdrawn from the heart pulled free and swung diagonal, carving through ribs and across the belly in a wide gash.
A wound deep enough for entrails to crawl out. Dead either way.
Same for the others. All fatal.
Four kills in a single breath.
The ground soaked black with monster blood.
Gnolls were synonymous with persistence.
They used their dead to their advantage, thrusting spears from behind the fallen. Hyena Beasts layered on the pressure between them.
When the wrist attacks failed, they went for the thigh. When the sword cut those down, they went for the shin.
Not one or two. Far too many to count.
No attention to spare for anyone else.
Enkrid poured everything into the only thing available.
Cut. Cut again. Thrust. Thrust again.
The techniques of the Heavy Sword Style flowed freely, splitting skulls and torsos.
And yet, after fighting through a dozen or more in the thick of that melee, the Gnolls and Hyena Beasts surrounding him hadn't thinned at all.
No matter how steady his composure, his lungs burned and his heart pounded. Nothing he could do about that.
Worse, something new had appeared among the Gnolls.
Ones that stood a full head taller than the rest. Stronger, naturally. Harder to deal with.
Most Gnolls ran smaller than Enkrid. These variants were bigger.
One stepped forward and swung a nail-studded wooden club from overhead.
"Guuuu!"
Can't dodge.
Instant judgment. Best option available.
Jump.
Thud!
He'd been holding it back, unwilling to spend it carelessly. Now he drew it out.
He called on Heart of Superhuman Strength and drove the sword straight up without hesitation.
Bang!
The force hit like an explosion. The variant Gnoll's club launched skyward.
The Gnoll had lost its weapon. Enkrid launched his whole body forward, arm reaching out.
A single-hand thrust, quick as a beam of light, punched a hole through the variant's throat.
Stab and withdraw in one motion. It had to be. Losing the sword meant losing his only weapon.
Two more variants charged from the side.
No, all the Gnolls were glowing yellow-eyed now.
Eyes full of killing intent. Malice. Hunger.
What could be done against those eyes?
What was even possible?
He didn't know. All he could do right now was swing the sword. That was it. That was everything.
* * *
Esther knew something had gone wrong.
Too many. Large-scale swarming.
Colony-level numbers, a different magnitude entirely.
Too late to run.
The panther's eyes swept the scene.
Humans dying. A monster massacre unfolding right in front of her.
"P, please..."
A man who couldn't even finish the words, throat run through by a Gladius.
"Aaagh!"
Someone bitten apart alive by Hyena Beast teeth.
Stab. Stab.
A Gnoll driving its spear into a body already on the ground, over and over.
"Gurk! Gurk!"
Monsters reveling in low, vile pleasure.
All of it in an instant.
The humans had nowhere to run. The palisade walls were high. The moment the monsters came inside, this stopped being a human village and became a platter. No escape.
A handful sprinted for the watchtower, apparently trying to reach higher ground and buy some time.
A doomed plan.
It wasn't just the monsters.
Esther's eyes narrowed.
Up on the watchtower, some self-styled ex-mercenary was smiling lazily and loosing arrows. Aiming at the humans trying to climb up. Twang. Thud.
One struck by the arrow crashed to the ground, skull cracked open, and became Hyena Beast fodder. Everyone who tried to reach the watchtower met the same end.
An ominous sensation threaded through her mind.
"Hissss!"
She let a part of her true ability show.
A powerful kick caved in a Gnoll's skull. She leapt forward and raked her claws across several Hyena Beasts, slashing, driving through them.
Thud! Stab! Crack!
Claws that split skulls. Esther ran wild. She killed over a dozen, and still the wave didn't end.
Not a colony a small group could handle. This was disaster-level.
An abnormal monster colony, the kind that could bring serious trouble to an entire kingdom.
Someone engineered this.
Esther was a mage with a World of Spells. Her gut told her this was someone's doing.
Not that there was anything she could do about it right now.
She thought as she moved without pause, and soon she hit her limit.
Far too many.
Hold on and she'd die. She had to run. That was her judgment.
The way out?
"Forward, we have to break forward! Captain!"
Kraiss. Big Eyes. Somehow he'd drawn a short sword.
Resourceful.
She'd wondered how he'd survived this long with just a short sword, until she saw it: he was staying right at the edge of the storm Enkrid was cutting through. Hanging on at the exact borderline.
The surrounding Gnolls went for the most threatening target first.
Enkrid.
The one Esther needed right now.
He fought like something out of a legend. Against the incoming Gnolls, with one sword, he cut and thrust and killed in a frenzy. Gripping near the ricasso, fighting half-swording style, smashing a Gnoll's skull through sheer force. It was a sight to behold.
No clean way to explain what she was watching.
Under different circumstances, with less danger bearing down on her, she might have stopped to stare.
Not good.
That was Esther as a human, with her World of Spells.
As a panther's body, what could she do?
Fight alongside him? That was just dying alongside him.
Esther climbed onto the roof of a nearby shack.
She killed her presence and watched him.
She had decided to watch now.
I'll avenge you.
And something else came with it, almost before she knew.
She had never felt this for anyone in her life.
Esther didn't even realize it as she made the vow.
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