WE TRIED TRANSLATIONS

Translator: Hydrogen B

Editor: Abstract

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

A KNIGHT WHO ETERNALLY REGRESSES

Chapter 166

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WE TRIED TRANSLATIONS
Translator: Hydrogen B
Editor: Abstract
Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried
A KNIGHT WHO ETERNALLY REGRESSES
Chapter 166:
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What was the Sense of Evasion?

Not a simple evasion technique. The more he thought about it, the stranger it all seemed.

Enkrid had once left a scratch on Rem's cheek. But had he ever seen his squad members get hurt like that, before that day? In sparring and on the battlefield alike, they never took wounds easily. They just didn't get hurt. Unless they were deliberately letting something land, they fought as though injury was a foreign concept.

How was that even possible?

Sense of Evasion.

Not simply a technique for dodging. He had the faint shape of something now, and it was time to pull that shape apart, piece by piece, and figure out what it was.

Against the charging Gnolls, Enkrid let his hand drift loose through the air. To anyone watching who didn't know better, Kraiss, especially, it looked like he was just waving his hand at nothing. It wasn't.

Whir.

Fingers as a bowstring, chest as the launcher, he threw daggers with the full elasticity of his body. They became streaks of light, burying themselves in the skulls of incoming Hyena Beasts, in the necks and heads of Gnolls.

The motion of drawing and throwing was terrifyingly fast. Barely visible.

His throwing had improved. Of course it had. The Isolation Technique, strength training, the gradual development of his control over every part of his body, all of it had contributed in equal measure.

Three died on the spot, still at full sprint, rolling across the ground as corpses. Other Gnolls and Hyena Beasts tripped over them. Still more trampled the pile and kept coming.

The pattering, thudding of feet grated on his ears.

"The Cult!"

Ruagarne had been swinging her whip beside him, then let out that same cry and bolted.

"What the hell is this!"

Kraiss's startled voice came from somewhere behind.

"Kyaa!", Esther, still holding at his flank.

"Wha, wh, aahhh." A laborer who'd stepped out to relieve himself joined the chorus.

The same day. But he met it differently. Enkrid's hands never stopped moving.

The second today. Slightly different from the first, with a little breathing room. He already knew the indiscriminate wave of Demon Creatures was coming. He emptied every dagger he had.

Shriek! Whistle Daggers, everything, all of it.

He killed Demon Creatures and Magic Beasts in double digits. Some things still didn't change.

Too many. The horde formed a wave again. Those that vaulted the bodies crashed into Enkrid.

"In front of the captain!" Kraiss shouted, Shortsword ringing free of its sheath.

Enkrid steadied his breathing. Everything he'd grasped in the previous today, everything only life-or-death combat could make you feel, he sharpened the edge of his senses, pushing into the realm of the sixth sense, of instinct.

He received the Gnolls' attacks in sequence, deflected them, drove his sword into the gaps. More powerfully than ever before.

Whatever else might be lacking, Enkrid had always been confident in one thing: stamina. With all his accumulated experience layered on top, he was like a press grinding through Demon Creatures and Magic Beasts alike.

Crack!

One died with its neck torn free. Another was run through. Between it all, the ring of steel and wet smack of flesh overlapped and traded.

Watching from the side, Kraiss felt his eyes go wide.

'Is he a monster?'

The same thought that had hit him looking at Rem or the other squad members. That was the caliber of movement he was seeing. Everything blocked, everything deflected. Every swing after that dropped Gnolls and Hyena Beasts without resistance.

Whether Kraiss was moved or marveling or shocked or just muttering to himself, it didn't matter. Enkrid pulled his concentration higher. No, he fell naturally into that isolated world. Everything else cut away. A world where only the sword remained. Time slowed. Enemy and self, blade and world, nothing left but razor-edged instinct.

The best a single human standing alone could do, before the crashing wave of Demon Creatures.

Enkrid swung the sword.

The outcome didn't change.

Noon came again, sunlight with it. Fewer injuries than before, but this time both thighs took deep cuts. Two damn Gladius blades he couldn't dodge. Kraiss's body was nowhere to be found this time.

Even in the repeated today, Enkrid held out for the same length of time.

'Should I call that fortunate?'

Esther had climbed to the roof of the hut at some point. Something like emotion was tangled up in those wide blue eyes, but he had no time to read it.

"Grrowk!"

The characteristic cry of a Hyena Beast, and through the gap came the colony's leader.

The Demon Creatures' leader.

Same as before. Both thighs cut and his mobility compromised, dodging was harder, not easier. If anything, this was worse than the first time. Still, Enkrid was certain he was improving, even in the span of a single day. Brutal and horrific, but the edge of his senses kept sharpening.

"See you again." Words the Gnoll couldn't understand, tossed at nothing, then the poison took him.

Blackout. The Boatman didn't appear, and a new today began.

This time he didn't ask Ruagarne anything pointless. She was going to leave no matter what. No reason to stir something up with a careless question. Asking why she'd left instead of staying would be the most useless thing he could do. Telling her to come back would mean nothing. If she was the kind to come back when asked, she wouldn't have left in the first place. The fact that she'd bolted meant that matter was more important to her.

Instead.

Clatter, clatter.

"That's a peculiar way to wake someone up," Kraiss said.

He needed to rouse them, and gathering his equipment did the job.

"It's a nice day. Thought it'd be good to rise early."

"Come on. It's the middle of the night. The moon hasn't even gone down."

Kraiss complained from beside him. Ignored.

He sweated again.

This day was short. More precisely, the time available for training was short. So what? Make the fighting itself the training ground. That was what Enkrid did.

The agony of poisoning, the horrific pain? Something to endure. What made you forget the pain? The rush of growth that followed, even when you were barely crawling forward. More than anything, it didn't feel like crawling anymore. It felt like walking, a slightly quicker pace, moving forward. How could that not be a joy?

'A little further this time.'

Challenge after challenge. Enkrid set his own goal, simple but certain: in each repeated today, push back the moment of injury as far as possible.

The first time, just a handful of exchanges in, he took a hit to the shoulder. The next today, both thighs. After that, a spear tip to the gut. His armor held, but if he'd reacted even a beat slower, it would have been fatal.

'Not enough. Still not enough.'

Clear-eyed self-assessment. Through everything he'd been through, Enkrid knew his own shortcomings.

"Brother Squad Leader, with Martial Arts, the first priority is drilling it into the body through repetition. You make the body remember, not the head. So roll."

Audin's words came back to him.

"The moment you see it, your body needs to react. Then you can dodge it. You don't need any of that lazy bum's strange concentration tricks."

Jaxon's words, too.

The training for Coordination, building immediate bodily response from Dynamic Visual Acuity and raw sensation, Enkrid was replicating through a different method entirely.

'What if I made the muscles remember every situation?'

So he did. Inside the wave of Demon Creatures, in each repeated today. Third today. Fourth. Fifth. He fought desperately in every single one, and fought desperately again.

More than twenty todays passed.

Training went without saying. But if the Boatman's wave of Demon Creatures was a wall, it was the kind you couldn't even bring yourself to look at, let alone climb. Not unless he became a Knight right this instant. Not unless he had forces to match. Even so, Enkrid didn't let himself get pulled into that line of thinking. For tomorrow's sake, stack up today. No stray thoughts. In each repeated today, do what needed to be done.

At first, under ten. After twenty days, standing in the middle of a pack of Gnolls with sword in hand, he could block and dodge everything for as long as it took to draw dozens of breaths.

"Huh." A laborer who should have been running stood there with his jaw hanging open.

But he couldn't yet reach the level of weaving through them without a scratch. So what? Repeat.

Thirty-some todays passed. Then forty-some.

Getting hit by the poison every single time had made him sick with revulsion at the mere thought of it. Tricks came with it, though. Even poisoned, hold on and keep swinging. What happened when you rushed straight into the Gnoll pack right after being hit? Blades and hammers and axes and spear tips from every direction.

Thwack. Thwack. Thwack.

Being hacked apart was several times better than drying up from the poison. He rolled through the Gnolls and Hyena Beasts with his life as the price. Rolled and rolled again.

In between those days, there were chances to ask about the Cult.

"Have you heard of the Cursed Ground Holy Sect?"

Half deliberate. Each repeated today was short on time, so he had no choice but to ask something new each day, and he made that his marker. Once every ten days, ask about the Cult. That was how he counted them. Since he was asking anyway, he made the questions worth something.

"A rotten pack of fanatics."

Ruagarne, true to her Frog nature, held nothing back. She showed her hatred plainly. Real hatred, fierce enough to turn the center of those puffed white cheeks a vivid red.

"I'll kill every last one. Whenever I see them."

So that was why she'd bolted.

"I swore it. On my heart."

When Ruagarne said those words, she was every inch the seasoned Frog she was. She hesitated a little, but she spoke all the same. That alone told Enkrid how remarkable a Frog she was.

The Cursed Ground Holy Sect. Whether that was the official name or not, they were, at the end of the day, a pack of lunatics who believed their god was imprisoned at the origin of Demon Creatures, a place no human could reach. A cult above all cults. The greatest heresy on the continent.

In practice, they used humans as sacrifices for strange summoning rituals. What came out of those summons? Demon Creatures. Occasionally evil spirits too.

Not all Demon Creatures were the same. There were Demon Creatures famous across the continent, and the claim that some were products of Cultist summoning had spread widely through mercenary circles. He'd thought it might be idle gossip, but Ruagarne confirmed otherwise.

"You know what a Salamander is?"

Not a creature anyone could be ignorant of. The one whose whole body scattered flames from its skin and breathed fire on top of that.

"That's their handiwork. Those bastards made it."

The rumor was real.

"I was there."

Ruagarne was the witness.

Did that matter? Not particularly. Just a landmark to fix in memory while the days repeated. Training and tempering, beginning again.

Around the fifty-day mark, there was time to chew over the mistakes from each previous today.

'I've been pushing too hard from the start.'

Confident in his stamina, he'd poured everything out from the opening. Stamina management. Start over.

Fighting while surrounded by sheer numbers. That was the lesson, and it sank into his body naturally.

Days passed until the stench of Gnolls made him shudder.

Enkrid repeated eighty-nine todays. Still he couldn't stand before the leader without injury. More accurately: the leader wouldn't come out unless he was already hurt. That was the right way to say it.

What had once lasted until noon now lasted until evening. Still nothing changed. Aside from the privilege of dying while watching the sunset, dying was still dying.

"You sneaky bastard."

He had to take damage. The leader only emerged when the wounds were bad enough. A hole punched through his gut. An ankle half-severed and dangling. Not a creature that could understand a word, naturally.

On the ninety-sixth today, the leader's daggers took his life. Desperation ending in death, days that felt like a fixed fate.

Somewhere in those repeated days, the Gnolls' habits sank into him naturally.

Gnolls have long torsos and short legs.

Learning through a Demon Creature's build. Slow on their feet, quick with their hands. They used human weapons but had no real form, just raw, unrefined swings. Their strength was roughly that of an adult human male, but their short legs made their charge slower than expected. They loved attacking from blind spots and didn't hesitate to bite the moment they closed in.

Getting bitten was something to avoid at all costs. The bite force was extraordinary, both Gnolls and Hyena Beasts alike. If you were bitten, you weren't getting free without activating Heart of Superhuman Strength.

There was more to learn.

Two swords.

Two swords and Heart of Superhuman Strength active, and things that defied belief became possible in those brief moments.

"We could cut through everything." Kraiss said it with a kind of ease that said everything.

The problem was endurance. No matter how well he managed his stamina, it couldn't be sustained.

Repeat again. Dodge and dodge again.

The Sense of Evasion had always, to some degree, been a matter of talent. Jaxon claimed to have replaced it with training, but naturally only those who could manage it managed it. Enkrid solved it by carving it into his body, one thing at a time.

In other words.

The muscles remember.

Everything involving eyes-to-body response, he drilled past counting until it was carved into the muscle. Evasion etched into the body rather than the mind. Through that repetition, he could now see and react immediately. The body's Coordination had taken root.

See, dodge, react.

It was possible now.

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