WE TRIED TRANSLATIONS

Translator: Hydrogen B

Editor: Abstract

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

A KNIGHT WHO ETERNALLY REGRESSES

Chapter 171

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"Wanted to meet you at least once with my body in one piece."

Satisfaction moved Enkrid's mouth.

Getting any closer and the Gnoll leader might notice him, or it might not. Either way, Enkrid wanted it to know he was there. Not out of competitive pride, not for the sake of any fair fight. What was fair play against a Demon Creature?

Just.

A test.

All he meant to do was confirm what he'd built up through all those repeated days.

At the sound of his voice, the leader, which had been keeping two Variant Gnolls at its sides like bodyguards, snapped its head around. Not just its head. Both daggers came up and leveled forward. All of it in the blink of an eye.

Fast as ever.

Enkrid was genuinely impressed.

"Gruk!"

The leader called out. Both Variant Gnolls standing guard reacted at once.

Gruwk!

That cry sounded almost like a ghoul's call. One of them lurched forward in a wide step, bringing a club swinging down from overhead. Enkrid raised his sword, caked thick with black blood, at a slanted diagonal.

Whoosh. The heavy club dropped.

Just before it connected with his head, the sword moved. His feet moved with it.

Crack!

He twisted the blade, caught the club roughly at its middle, and shoved straight forward. With a grinding skid the surface peeled away as if chiseled off, and Enkrid's sword rushed forward without pause and carved through the back of the Variant Gnoll's neck. A single strike that gnawed through the club and slashed through the nape in one motion. Muscle, bone, tendon, half the neck gone.

"Ghraa, ha, ghrha."

A deflating sound from the Gnoll with its throat cut. Gurgling, it dropped to its knees, yellow eyes slowly clouding over, and pitched forward.

Whether the first was dead or not, the second charged anyway. Enkrid feigned bringing his sword upright and moved his feet instead. He twisted left, slipped the club, and cut horizontal at head level. Gripping the sword overhead, he rolled his wrist and the blade traced a half-circle parallel to the ground, cutting clean through the middle of the Variant Gnoll's skull.

Strength and technique, working together. That was the result.

Crack. The Variant Gnoll's head came apart roughly in half. Like a pumpkin with its lid popped off, except inside was no flesh or seeds, only brain matter and black blood. The half-cut lid hit the ground.

"Run and you'll catch this in the back of the skull."

He said it while shaking out his hand. A sharp whistle, and the Whistle Dagger flew and buried itself in the skull of a regular Gnoll that had been wavering on whether to charge. The blade sank so deep no trace of the dagger remained visible, but blood shot upward. The Gnoll stumbled back from the impact and fell, blood seeping steadily from its skull into the ground.

Guuuuwk!

Those that sensed their leader in danger reacted, and Enkrid was hoping the leader would come at him directly.

A path he'd never walked before, up to this point. Today was something he'd never experienced. He didn't know what would happen. The leader might turn and flee.

Then what? Then nothing, he'd chase it down and decorate its skull with a Throwing Knife.

And if it came at him?

Can I survive today?

He asked himself. No answer yet. He'd hoped, prepared, and gauged his opponent, but the outcome of a fight was never guaranteed.

Above all, the leader was the type that never showed itself unless Enkrid had already taken a hole through the thigh, a deep gash to the thigh, or a wound beside the navel at minimum. A face you could only see once your mobility was compromised or you'd taken something fatal.

Magnificently underhanded little bastard.

An inward compliment. Only stepping in once victory was certain. How cunning.

The Gnoll leader didn't retreat. It moved exactly as Enkrid had hoped.

"Gruuwk!"

A sound like pat. Gone. That fast.

He'd experienced it before and prepared for it, but it was still terrifyingly fast. The instant the leader kicked off the ground, its body stretched out long like a shadow lengthened by sunlight. That stretching shape registered in his eyes. Enkrid didn't lose sight of it.

Seeing it had always been possible. The problem was that it moved fast enough to make defense nearly impossible. The gleaming daggers in its hands were not something to let even graze you.

Poison. One touch and it was over. Then today would repeat.

Scat, swish!

Of the two slashes, the first barely grazed Enkrid's shoulder. Only grazed. Didn't reach skin. His armor wasn't the kind that split open from a dagger. Only the outer leather showed a cut.

The second he dodged entirely. The creature had slashed with the right hand and thrust with the left, but he twisted his body and let the thrust punch through empty air.

A startling reaction speed.

The instant he saw it, his body moved. Similar to the Vallen-style staggered blade attack, but the rhythm was different, and still it had been really, very, extraordinarily fast.

It works.

It had gone as expected. He could dodge it. Maybe not prevent every graze, but he could keep the blade from cutting skin.

Sense of Evasion.

Not really a "sense" at all, more like training to sharpen raw reaction speed. That was how it felt. Whoever named it got it wrong. The stray thought flashed and disappeared.

All the same, if he let his body respond purely to evasion and nothing else, maybe he could prevent even a graze. Was that even necessary? No. Time to move past.

The day had come to get through today and see tomorrow's sun.

"Kruk!"

The Gnoll leader was furious. Its reddening eyes said so clearly. The yellow pupils seemed to flush with red. It blew past Enkrid, spun, and charged again. This time it dropped low and went for the thighs. A difficult angle to avoid. One dagger angled inward toward the groin, the two blades moving in staggered rhythm.

Hit wrong and he might lose something important.

Enkrid didn't wait to see, recognize, then react. The moment he saw it, the moment he perceived it, he moved.

Small difference. Enormous difference.

Using it in actual combat, this was almost the first time. What had changed, rooted in Coordination, was reaction speed. A new world. A foothold into a new world, at least that was how Enkrid felt it. The difference in reaction speed brought a difference in reflex, and his body, honed through relentless Isolation Technique, expressed the shift in perception without filter.

Which meant the moment he saw it, the sword came down.

Whoosh, crack, thwack!

The instant the Gnoll leader charged, a blade that had become a flash of light cut vertically through the air.

It wasn't only air.

Thwack!

From the top of the leader's skull down to the middle of its back. Cleaved.

Its futile gestures followed. Not knowing it was dead, it still reached with both hands. The left stabbed uselessly through air, but the right found its mark toward the hip joint as intended. Enkrid dropped to a knee and caught the dead Gnoll's thrust on the armor at his abdomen.

Thunk.

A dead hand loses its strength. The dagger slapped weakly against the leather armor and fell away.

The leader, which had kept moving even after being split in two, soon collapsed apart, left and right. Entrails and blood soaked the ground. The cut had come so fast that blood shot backward in a straight line. He'd aimed to split it from the head down, but it had flinched aside on reflex, so from the shoulder it had been split in half, at a diagonal.

A slow exhale.

Enkrid felt a rush of elation.

I'm moving forward.

The elation of growth, proven by result. Sense of Evasion had kept the poisoned daggers from touching him, Coordination with sharpened reaction speed had taken the leader down in one blow, and before all of that, his eyes had caught every movement while Heart of the Beast had given him the boldness to act.

"Guuuuwk!"

It wasn't over, of course. Gnolls and Magic Beasts still packed every direction.

The problem now was getting out.

"Ha!"

Enkrid swung his sword hard at the two Gnolls blocking the path ahead. Correct Sword? No room for that. What he'd learned was the swordsmanship best suited for taking down Demon Creatures.

Northern Heavy Sword.

The north, they said, was a frozen land crawling with Demon Creatures and Magic Beasts. Their sword arts had evolved into the form best suited for cutting through those things, and Enkrid had learned it.

Whoosh, crack! Thwack!

Ankle, knee, hip, shoulder, wrist. With a perfectly weighted centrifugal strike, the upper and lower halves of two Gnolls parted ways. They would not be reunited.

Enkrid ran.

Can I get out of here?

Evading all day? Possible. But evading with stamina already spent from fighting? Hard. Something he'd learned over and over through all this, that long fights required careful pacing.

Right now, though, he'd crawled on his belly just to reach the leader, then fought a short and brutal exchange on top of it. And now carving a path back to the village as well? A different problem entirely from simply holding ground.

"Any chance we meet again tomorrow instead?"

He threw the words out while dodging, words with no chance of working. The Gnolls didn't answer. A Hyena Beast going for his back answered for them instead, jaws stretched wide, launching itself at his lower back. Enkrid reacted in an instant and drove his elbow down into the beast's skull.

Thud.

It crashed to the ground. He followed through like water and drove the sword into its skull. The two Magic Beasts and one Gnoll that charged into the opening were met with a horizontal sweep from the sword in his left hand.

The Gnoll was wearing something like leather armor. Hit with a thud, it stumbled back a few steps. Couldn't cut it in one. His breath was short and he hadn't put proper force behind it. Partly his stance had broken, partly the toll of having activated Heart of Superhuman Strength.

Figures.

Push just a little too hard and the hands start shaking. A short rest would fix it.

Time to dance with Sense of Evasion a while longer.

"Guuuugu!"

The Gnoll cries sounded like kill him, kill that human. Enkrid retrieved his sword without expression and used his feet. Dodge what needed dodging, knock aside what needed knocking aside. To anyone watching, he looked like a master of give-and-take, though from a distance they couldn't know the truth of it.

Killing the leader had given him a measure of satisfaction. Not just elation, but the feeling of flipping a table the Boatman had carefully arranged.

How had he managed it.

To Enkrid's mind, the wall had been fighting that hyena-headed beast armed with poisoned daggers while accepting wounds. No, it was fighting and winning without even letting the poisoned daggers graze him. He had twisted that.

Was taking down the leader while accepting wounds impossible? No. That path was walkable. He just hadn't wanted to walk it, even if that was the wall that had been laid out for him.

That bastard's smile really had bothered him. Sure, he'd praised its cunning for only appearing after confirming a fatal injury, but that didn't mean he liked it.

So what could be done. He'd turned it over a bit. No need for Kraiss's help. Too simple.

Hold the gate, guard the wall, draw the leader in. All of it intentional. This was the result. The leader was dead, and no one in Pioneer Village had been killed by a Gnoll or Hyena Beast. If someone had taken a stray rock to the skull, that was out of his hands, but at least from where he stood, no one had died that way.

None of it had been about protecting Pioneer Village.

It had just worked out this way. If forced to name a reason, it was simply that the Gnoll's smile had genuinely, deeply bothered him. And above all, wasn't this more efficient than fighting through injuries?

Of course, for a clean ending, he had to finish this properly first.

Meaning, he had to make it back alive.

Breath conserved, strength conserved. After a few attempts with Heavy Sword Style to force a path through and failing each time, he'd fallen back to clean, economical strikes, but the way was still blocked.

Hold out and wait for some other variable? Or pour out what remained and blast a path open with Heart of Superhuman Strength?

Neither was a particularly promising option. Enkrid felt it instinctively. And it didn't seem like there was another way.

He was in the middle of that short deliberation.

"Make way!"

What now.

From the village entrance. Rumble, rumble. The front gate opened. A section of the thick log palisade cleared a path. The havoc Esther and Enkrid had caused in drawing the Gnoll horde away from the gate had thinned out the creatures battering it, and Deutsch Fullman, who had watched everything unfold, couldn't hold back any longer and stepped outside.

"Anyone who's coming, come out! Stay behind and you can pack your things and get lost!"

A proposition worthy of a mercenary captain. What would a man who didn't value his life be doing as a mercenary in the first place?

Deutsch's men spilled out through the gate one after another. Out in the open, Deutsch Fullman swept his Glaive in a wide, powerful arc, and behind him came ten members of the Self-Defense Force, men who had suffered alongside him since his mercenary days.

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