WE TRIED TRANSLATIONS

Translator: Hydrogen B

Editor: Abstract

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

A KNIGHT WHO ETERNALLY REGRESSES

Chapter 165: Before the Wave of Demon Creatures

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Enkrid didn't count the enemies.

He just swung. And swung again.

The demon creatures came without end, and human screams tore through the air in waves.

Then, at some point, the screams stopped. Only the stench remained, and the cries of demon creatures and Magic Beasts.

The fight had started at dawn. Now it was noon. The sun had already crossed overhead.

Enkrid couldn't block everything.

A Hyena Beast's severed head was clamped to his left thigh, the rest of the body long gone. His left arm hung useless at his side.

His right hand was fine. His right foot was not.

A hammer blow had shattered every toe. His body listed side to side because of it, and his vision had gone slightly hazy.

Still the demon creatures kept coming.

"Grrrk!"

The voices begging for mercy that had filled the air around him, the screams from somewhere nearby, all of it was gone now.

Enkrid dragged his foot across the ground and kept swinging.

He'd overused Heart of Superhuman Strength, and every muscle in his body was screaming.

Nearly half a day, dawn past noon, he'd been cutting down gnolls and Hyena Beasts alone.

Well over a hundred of them.

If anyone had known.

If anyone had seen.

It would have been enough to freeze them in horror. But the only person left here was him.

"Ah, Kraiss."

He stepped back, and something caught his foot. A corpse. Belly ripped open, guts spilling out, a body that couldn't even groan at being trodden on.

He recognized the face.

Kraiss, with a Magic Beast's fang marks gouged deep into his cheek.

Ruined face.

He'd always been so loud about how his face was his greatest asset.

Finn had gone out on patrol again today. She'd left to survey the surrounding terrain, which, in hindsight, was fortunate. Seeing the state of things here, she'd run. At least Finn wouldn't die.

Were the rest all dead? Probably.

Today's loop, a wall. A premonition close enough to be certainty.

He didn't need the Boatman to tell him.

He could practically hear the Boatman already, mocking voice and all.

"You think swordsmanship alone will break the wall? Go ahead and try. You'll suffocate, surrounded by demon creatures and Magic Beasts. That's how I'll make you feel your own limits."

Enkrid let out a slow breath and tightened his grip on the sword.

'Limits, huh.'

The gnoll pack had been at him relentlessly. Only now had it stopped.

"Grrrk!"

"Grrrk!"

"Grrrrk!"

Harsh cries broke out. Then the horde split, parting left and right.

Through the gap walked a single gnoll.

It moved with the gnolls' characteristic hunched posture, spine arched, shoulders curled forward, walking unhurriedly through the parted crowd. Nothing dramatic about it.

Not some freak specimen with a head a size too large.

No impressive weapon in hand.

In some ways, perfectly ordinary-looking.

The only differences: its fur bristled more sharply than the others, and its snout was longer. In each hand it carried a dagger, blades coated with something, gleaming wetly where they caught the sun.

At its appearance, the gnolls' cries surged louder. The air vibrated with sound that hammered at eardrums until they ached.

Enkrid raised his sword and felt his arm trembling.

The cost of abusing Heart of Superhuman Strength.

'Just great.'

A stab of irritation.

What even was this.

He'd woken up wanting to train a bit, and then suddenly demon creatures had come flooding in like a tide, and now here he was.

The gnoll leader's gleaming yellow eyes fixed on Enkrid.

Enkrid's lake-blue eyes met them.

Blue and yellow. Taking stock of each other.

Colony-forming demon creatures always had a leader. You could tell from the atmosphere alone.

That one was it.

The leader raised its twin daggers and its nose twitched. Then its snout stretched sideways, splitting wide.

Was that a smile? Was the gnoll smiling?

Was it?

Enkrid turned the question over a few times, then let it go. Not a pleasant sight, but did it matter whether a gnoll smiled or not.

All that mattered was what he'd felt in the thick of this desperate, chaotic brawl.

'I've been drilling Correct Sword so hard.'

Well, all he'd wanted was to ingrain the Basics. Too much to expect something meaningful from it right away.

Especially against demon creatures. Correct Sword was hard to use against them.

A wave of demon creatures, no less.

'They're not exactly the kind of opponents you fence with.'

Ruagarne had mentioned it too: Correct Sword was the most disadvantageous style against demon creatures.

To cut through a wave like this single-handedly, you'd need to be Knight-class. Squire-class, at the very least.

So he'd gained nothing from this desperate fight?

No. He had.

Enkrid smiled too. As always when he found a new clue, a rush of something close to joy moved through him.

All those spears and blades, all those Magic Beasts and demon creatures, and what he'd felt fighting through them.

'If I can press forward even when prepared to die.'

Sense of Evasion was something no amount of ordinary training could ingrain in the body. But right now, right here, he could see the tail of it.

The countless wounds covering his body. Bitten, sliced, cut, struck. He'd felt every single one.

Each time he took a hit, he'd asked: why did that land, why couldn't I dodge it. He'd reasoned mid-fight and turned it over mid-fight.

Whether the gnoll leader had noticed his smile, or simply didn't like the mood, it closed its snout and charged.

A sharp crack as it kicked off the ground. Terrifyingly fast. No weight to it, but the speed was enough to call a certain squire to mind. Without Dynamic Visual Acuity training, you'd lose it entirely. Even now it was razor close.

Enkrid barely twisted his body, half-crouching as he dodged.

Gnolls were demon creatures. They used weapons, but they didn't fight with swordsmanship.

Its blade work was simple and direct.

If it hadn't been, dodging at all would have been out of the question.

Enkrid gripped the sword with both hands and slashed upward.

His body was a wreck, so he couldn't deliver a clean strike.

But he hadn't expected the gnoll to dodge quite so easily, either.

Whoosh. The leader retreated as fast as it had charged, almost leaving an afterimage behind.

His sword cut uselessly through the air.

Yellow fur with dark spots, blurring like a smeared painting, gone, then there, filling his vision, right in front of his face.

It had dodged the slash and charged again.

No time to dodge this one. The dagger punched into his thigh with a wet thud.

A burning sensation, like a red-hot skewer driven into flesh, blazed out from his thigh and spread through his entire body.

He tried to grab the thing the instant after it planted the dagger in him, but it slipped away, his hand sweeping helplessly through empty air. The leader retreated and stood watching him, circling in slow, leisurely steps.

Buying time? Now? Why?

What kind of demon creature was this.

"You little bastard."

Enkrid's expression shifted from a smile to something closer to genuine admiration.

The dagger stuck in his thigh. The wet gleam on the blade.

A stinging, heavy pain, and then nausea rising all at once, the kind that wasn't going to be held down.

"Hk."

He vomited, blood and whatever he'd eaten coming up together, which was only natural.

Poison.

The daggers had been coated in poison.

'Sneaky bastard.'

It knew exactly what its own strengths were. Hands, feet, reflexes twice as fast as any other gnoll. It knew that even a glancing wound was enough to win.

It knew how to fight. It knew how to win.

"Ngh."

With that, Enkrid collapsed to the ground.

'Ruagarne isn't coming back.'

He'd wondered whether holding out long enough might change that. Not a hope, not a dependency. Just a recognition of fact.

He knew now that no one was coming. That was enough. That was the end of it.

If he had to hold out alone, then that's what he'd do.

What followed? Pain unlike anything he'd experienced in his life.

The gnoll with the daggers poked and prodded his body like it was having fun, and Enkrid spent well over half an hour dying in poisoned agony.

Darkness. Blackout. The Boatman again.

"Correct Sword? You think that'll do it? You're a splinter of a boat being swallowed whole by a wave of demon creatures and Magic Beasts."

Ah, well.

Exactly what he'd expected from the Boatman.

"I see."

Recalling how he'd handled Doitchi, Enkrid tried the same trick on the Boatman.

"...You little sh--"

The Boatman read his intentions at a glance and lost his temper immediately.

Dawn again. Eyes open.

Enkrid reached for his gear first.

A clatter of metal as he gathered his second sword, various throwing weapons, and armor, the weight settling over his whole body. Steadying.

Moving around so noisily to arm up would wake the others. That was expected.

No. That was intentional. He had things to ask.

Frog, Ruagarne, spoke up.

"Full armor at this hour?"

"Do you know anything about the Cult?"

The out-of-nowhere question sent a chill through the inside of the hut.

Frog did that. This wasn't the Ruagarne who was always even-tempered.

"Where did you hear that?"

He'd heard it from Ruagarne herself, naturally, but.

"Caught wind of it back in my mercenary days."

"Hm."

"Mind talking outside?"

Ruagarne let the heavy atmosphere she'd stirred dissipate. No need to make anything of it right now.

Fine. Outside, then. She was curious enough about why Enkrid had brought up the Cult in the first place.

Outside, Enkrid ran through his equipment check.

Nothing wrong. Straight into Isolation Technique. Moving in full armor was naturally cumbersome, weight pressing into him with every step.

The discomfort forced him to adjust his posture, and adjusting his posture led him back to Audin's teachings.

"Training the body is supposed to be uncomfortable."

What an absolutely insane man. Discomfort, but Load to the muscles, not the joints.

How much time had he poured into this. How many looped days had he repeated.

Enkrid corrected his stance quickly. Today's Isolation Technique would need to be short and sharp, time being what it was.

Ruagarne had come outside to talk and found Enkrid already absorbed in training. She didn't know what to make of it. But there wasn't much to be done.

This man had always been like this.

"The Cult. Why did you bring that up out of nowhere?"

Enkrid glanced at him.

He'd seen Cultists before, and hunted them down. They had a habit of lurking in city corners, damp back alleys.

In cities, the temple's inquisitors were always on the prowl for exactly that sort of thing, so it wasn't a job for mercenaries.

Out in the countryside, when villages ran into trouble with it, the village chief or Village Headman would hire mercenaries to handle it.

Enkrid had dealt with types who crushed brain-warping herbs and smoked them like tobacco. Half-mad, the lot of them.

The Cult Ruagarne had mentioned wasn't referring to people like that.

So he needed to ask and listen.

After all, Ruagarne was the one who'd brought up the Cult and then bolted outside.

"It came to me in a dream."

Enkrid chose his words well.

Choosing words well meant being quick to read the person in front of you, catching the mood before it was spoken, turning that into a swift, fitting response.

He knew the way Ruagarne looked at him wasn't ordinary.

'She probably doesn't think I'm sane.'

Saying this much might be enough to let it pass.

If not? Then drop it. He could give up on learning more about the Cult. Half of this was curiosity anyway, and the other half was a feeling that something was connected to whatever was going on here.

This wasn't a simple colony, a straightforward gathering of demon creatures. You didn't need anyone to tell you that.

The numbers that had flooded in were not normal.

"A dream?"

Ruagarne studied the man in front of her and felt genuine interest. Part of that interest was the fact that Enkrid's head clearly wasn't quite right.

'I suppose that's possible.'

Just like that, she accepted it.

This man was moving his body even now. In full armor, no less.

How was any of this sane.

The captain of the Lunatic Squad. It fit.

"Real Cultists are dangerous. Genuinely dangerous. Even saying their name carelessly is something to think twice about."

"Yes, I see."

Not enough, Ruagarne thought. He added a few words.

"The Cult spreads its roots across the entire continent, but the truly dangerous ones are those who believe Cursed Grounds are their sacred sites. The Cursed Ground Holy Sect is the only branch that counts. They also go by the Second Coming Sect. Worshippers of the Six Demons."

That ought to be sufficient. Surface-level at best, but more than that wasn't necessary.

Ruagarne held back, and Enkrid figured he'd heard everything worth hearing.

The Cursed Ground Holy Sect, or the Second Coming Sect, or worshippers of the Six Demons.

'So something's tied to them.'

He couldn't push Ruagarne further on that. Something to piece together gradually, reading the signs.

Enkrid kept training.

Ruagarne watched him, let out a low gurgling sound, and asked, "Hey. Aren't you hot?"

A drop of sweat rolled down Enkrid's forehead.

He was hot.

Muscle training in full armor.

It probably looked a little odd.

"The weight of the armor puts Load on the muscles. Good for training."

Enkrid said whatever came to mind and smoothed it over. Even in moments like this, he managed to sound plausible.

That was quick thinking.

Ruagarne figured it made sense, in its way.

Time passed.

Enkrid scanned the perimeter, wondering if he could get Esther and Kraiss out in advance.

The thick palisade wasn't something you simply vaulted over, and there were two gates. One in front, the other connected to a rocky hillside at the back where they'd been quarrying stone.

Send them out the back?

But the back gate was sealed tight.

Never opened in ordinary times, and the area near the quarry was something they weren't willing to show anyone. Kraiss had mentioned that before.

'What are they hiding?'

Not his problem.

Enkrid didn't push his body too hard, keeping it moderate. Even so, sweat dripped steadily to the ground.

It was hot. Even at this early hour, wearing all this armor was enough to bring out a sweat, and he was swinging a sword on top of it.

He waited like that. The horde of demon creatures and Magic Beasts was coming.

The Boatman's voice seemed to pose the question.

"What can a single man do, standing alone before a wave of demon creatures?"

No. It wasn't the Boatman's question.

It was Enkrid asking himself.

A single human, standing alone. What could he do.

Plenty.

Things he'd realized, things he'd rediscovered. In the middle of a wave of demon creatures, you could sharpen your senses. Train your reactions. Train your judgment as information came flooding in too fast to process. Train the instant response of muscle to impulse. Train crisis management by surviving in a field of blades from every direction.

All of it was training.

Before this, fighting against the mage Ressa, the lycanthrope colony, and the Azpen ambush unit, hadn't he come to understand it? That in each looped day, moving toward tomorrow, he would use everything he had. Not just getting through it, but squeezing every drop from it.

He'd decided to do that. So he would.

Enkrid set a blade in his heart.

From that inward blade, the sword in his hand moved forward.

A new today, received. Enkrid turned his back to the breaking dawn.

Thud.

Grrk!

Loud, raucous gnoll cries burst out.

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