WE TRIED TRANSLATIONS

Translator: Hydrogen B

Editor: Abstract

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

A KNIGHT WHO ETERNALLY REGRESSES

Chapter 172: Enkrid the Madman's Wall

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Among them was the gate squad leader who had been standing watch at the entrance that morning.

He had watched everything. And he was in awe.

'That's a completely crazy bastard.'

He'd seen all of it. Enkrid, head to toe in the blood of Magic Beasts and Demon Creatures, doing what he did out there.

'Is he out of his mind?'

Covered in blood, charging into that? And what about the panther?

Using the panther as bait and running? No. That wasn't it. It couldn't be.

The direction made that clear. After the crawl, Enkrid had moved deeper into enemy lines, not away from them.

No sane man would have chosen that route.

He'd watched Enkrid press further in and kill the lone Gnoll waiting at the rear.

He'd seen all of it. How could anyone call that normal?

Only then did the words of that Big Eyes, Kraiss, finally land.

"They call him the Madman Squad Leader back at Border Guard."

A genuinely, thoroughly crazy bastard. And because it was the kind of thing only a lunatic would do, his heart had started pounding on its own. Just watching had been almost more than he could stand.

The squad leader was sharp and quick-witted.

Seeing how the situation had unfolded, he'd worked it out: something like a spy had been embedded in their mercenary band.

'What if he hadn't stepped in?'

What if he hadn't pulled off that insane stunt? What if the spy had been left in place? What then?

This village? That Gnoll horde? There were hundreds of Hyena Beasts alone. Could anyone have held out against that?

No. Not a soul. Nothing but the worst possible outcome would have waited for them, the kind where no one survived.

Because that man had gone and done something insane, the outcome had changed.

The Gnoll at the rear. Its movements had been extraordinary. Even from this far away, its motions left afterimages. The colony leader, without question.

And the madman had killed it.

'How many days would we have lasted?'

If that Gnoll leader had survived to direct the colony, to lead them, what would have become of everything?

He didn't know. What he did know was that he himself would have been a dead man.

Deutsch Fullman had thought the same. They'd watched it together. How different could their conclusions be.

The two agreed on two things, and they moved.

That Enkrid was crazy.

And that they absolutely could not let him die.

How could they? The man had saved them, their comrades, everything. Insane or not, you don't just stand there and watch your hero die.

Both Deutsch and the squad leader had arrived at the same place. That was why they'd moved.

And in the end, they'd been right.

Esther's efforts, Enkrid's desperate fight, Deutsch and his men answering the attack. All of it came together, and just barely, chased nearly to the edge, Enkrid's group made it inside. Then rocks came falling from above.

"Die, you bastards!"

Someone had been clever enough to gather stones and was dropping them from the wall. A round rock, the size of a human head, came squarely down on a Hyena Beast's spine.

Crunch.

The rock ground through bone and muscle and rolled sideways with a dull thud. The beast sprawled across the ground, ribs jutting through its entrails.

Gruk!

A Gnoll beside it took a rock to the skull and sank down clutching its own head.

There was a quarry out back, stones stockpiled and ready. That was what made it possible.

"Fire!"

The arrows that followed gave every last one of them something nice to wear.

Leaderless, the horde splintered and fled in every direction.

"We're alive."

Enkrid said it flatly once he'd made it back inside, already picking through his gear like a man returning from an errand. He set both blood-stained swords down side by side and started removing his armor.

Bruises and a few cuts showed across his body.

Trying to dodge everything would have cost him the path through. He'd taken those hits deliberately.

Intentional, as far as Enkrid was concerned. For those watching, though?

"Damn."

Deutsch stared at him and shook his head.

How was he that calm? Why was he so composed?

The man seemed to have misplaced his fear somewhere a long time ago and never bothered looking for it.

"I think we're going to need an explanation."

Still slumped where he'd landed. The tone had already softened, he'd grudgingly accepted what he owed this man. He knew how close it had been.

"Yeah, alright."

Enkrid nodded. Nothing like the manner of a man who'd just been barreling through chaos. Quiet. Unhurried.

How could anyone be that calm at a moment like this?

'Can't make heads or tails of him.'

Deutsch kept that to himself.

Either way, the man in front of him was the one who had saved him and everyone else.

Enkrid was more than an expert at finding excuses. It wasn't as if this was the first time. He'd done this more times than he could count.

"I was in the middle of my morning conditioning. Recognized the faces of two men standing watch in the lookout tower."

An excuse doesn't need to be perfect. It just needs to hold together. The thing was done. Who was going to push on it now?

"It came to me then. Those two were Cultists. I'd seen them in passing during my mercenary days, but it took too long for it to surface."

There was no soul in his voice.

Words scooped up at random and tossed out.

It felt like a lie. Chew on it twice, three times, and it still landed the same way: just roll with it. That's all it said.

Deutsch felt deeply unsatisfied, but just as Enkrid had expected, there was nothing more to push on.

The man's words had turned out to be right. And it was already over.

On top of that, they had caught Cultists.

And the man standing in front of him was unmistakably the hero who had saved his life.

"Can't see them anymore."

A voice from atop the wall. Kraiss. When had he gotten up there?

Thinking about it, it made sense.

Who else could have talked fast enough to get the stones gathered and thrown?

Not the panicked Self-Defense Force.

Kraiss's doing, without question. He'd talked the laborers and craftsmen into pelting them.

The moment Kraiss's words fell, the people gathered on the walls and towers opened up.

"They're pulling back!"

"God. We're alive."

"Ah."

"Ha."

Laborers, the Self-Defense Force, every last resident. All of them together had held back the Demon Creature horde and kept the wall.

Right on the edge of death, they'd made it through. About to go over a cliff, and someone had grabbed their sleeve.

How could they not be grateful?

Their eyes turned toward the one who had grabbed it.

A man with black hair and blue eyes.

"What? It's true."

He said it in a completely flat voice, insisting without a trace of self-consciousness that what he'd said was the truth. Not one person was paying the slightest attention to the words coming out of his mouth.

Not even Deutsch.

"Sure."

And that was that.

What mattered? Anyone who wasn't an idiot could figure out why they were still breathing.

"Who did you say he was?"

One of the craftsmen who'd come out to help build the wall. He asked it of Kraiss.

They'd gotten friendly over the past few days.

Kraiss dropped where he stood, onto the wall's walkway, the sort of place you'd call a gallery if this were a proper fortification.

His legs had given out entirely.

"Enkrid. He's a madman."

Completely out of his mind. Who just runs out into the middle of all that and starts fighting?

"Khyrr."

Esther was there suddenly, beside him, nodding. Kraiss glanced over at her. For the first time, the two of them were on the same page.

Esther found the whole thing just as baffling.

She'd been asked to cover his back, and the man had been throwing himself at death.

One wrong step and something critical to breaking her curse would have been damaged.

"Kha-kha!"

Still put out about it.

"Yeah, yeah, he's insane," said a craftsman who'd been listening nearby. He turned the name over in his mouth and murmured to himself.

"Enkrid. Enkrid. No, doesn't roll off the tongue right. Madman's Wall, yes. That's it."

"Pardon?"

Kraiss turned his head. The craftsman spoke with the certainty of a man who had already decided.

"That's what the wall's going to be called when it's built."

Could you really just name a wall like that?

Should he talk him out of it? He decided against it. Right now he couldn't feel his own legs.

"Enkrid the Madman's Wall. Maybe that one's better."

The craftsman was already privately testing a second option.

The sun was going down. The day was nearly done.

* * *

The moment Ruagarne heard Enkrid's words, she moved and went straight to the Cultist's house.

Finding it was easy.

Men who hold out against Frog's questioning are a rare breed.

The Cultist was in bed with some woman. Ruagarne ignored that and called out. He appeared at the door half-undressed, and Ruagarne took one look at his face.

The one who had been trailing Deutsch Fullman around like a shadow. The man who looked like a freshwater fish.

"That you?"

The abrupt question made the man tilt his head. He asked, awkwardly:

"Pardon? What is this about?"

He smiled a friendly smile as he said it.

Of course, to Frog's eye, a pleasant smile was out of the question. His head was shaped like a fish's.

The man's expression said: this needs an explanation, doesn't it?

'Is it him? Or not?'

Ruagarne asked herself and ran a quick test. It would serve as the answer to that expression.

She stepped forward and threw a punch. Not a killing blow. Just a test.

She'd accounted for the possibility that this was a Cultist, so there was some force behind it, but a test was all it was.

From the man's perspective, though, it was anything but.

A punch thrown by Frog, a species born for combat, with real intent behind it. Driven out with a twist of the right ankle, the fist shooting forward like a bolt of light. Land it and his skull would cave in.

The man felt it instinctively. And in that moment, the power he'd been keeping hidden responded.

When the body decides its life is in danger, the instinct is impossible to stop.

Hm.

A short vibration.

Thud!

Ruagarne's fist stopped cold. A translucent Magical Barrier. The color of curdled milk, murky and dull.

Not a spell. Ruagarne had, in her time, hunted down more Cultists than even an Inquisitor. She knew this well. It was the distinctive defensive Divine Power unique to Cultists. That settled it. That bastard Enkrid's memory had been spot on.

"There we go."

Frog's cheeks puffed out. Joy and elation, anticipation stirred in with both.

"How did you know!"

The moment his identity was exposed, the man set his feet moving. Two stamps of the left foot. The Cursed Ground Holy Sect was called a heretical cult, yet its congregation never dwindled.

Why?

Because it offered power too easily, reshaping lives in ways people couldn't find elsewhere.

From the moment this man had become a Priest, the power he had earned came into play.

Two stamps, and he vanished.

Crack!

Ruagarne's whip swept into the space where he'd been and tore into the earth.

The dirt floor gouged to the depth of a finger joint.

'Look at this bastard.'

The moment things went wrong, instead of trusting his Magical Barrier, he ran?

It wasn't a teleportation spell. A high-order spell like that couldn't activate so easily.

What the man had used was a Divine Power that accelerated his body in a short burst.

This too was familiar.

There had been a time when catching people like him was Ruagarne's work.

"Hmph. Frog of all things."

A voice reached her. About ten paces away? A little more.

"I am a Priest. Want to die? Then come. I'll put you to use as fertilizer for the faith's growth."

Grrm.

Fine then. If he charged at Ruagarne himself, the job only got simpler.

Frog, Ruagarne, answered his bold shout not with words but with her body. She kicked off the ground.

Bang!

A charge. Full speed ahead.

The Priest of the Cursed Ground Holy Sect urgently stamped the right foot twice.

This time, the floating Divine Power.

Whoosh!

Acceleration and floating, barely enough to clear it.

Her whip swept in a wide arc through the space where he'd just been. He'd already moved, so the whip carved through empty air.

"Right. First thing I'll do when I catch you is pull your tongue out."

Grrm. Cheeks puffed out as she said it.

The Priest decided it was time to run and took to the air.

Ruagarne went straight after him, and the two of them were forced into a game of chase for most of the day.

In the end, Ruagarne lost him.

Better part of a full day's pursuit, and the man had one last trick.

Summoning Sorcery. A headache of a bastard.

She'd had to abandon the chase just to deal with the things he summoned.

"We'll meet again!"

She hoped there was some sincerity in the words he threw back as he fled. Now she knew his tricks.

'Next time I see him, I'll break his legs first.'

Just a small change in plans.

Frog returned in the dead of night.

She'd been moving in a wide loop around the quarry, so Pioneer Village only came into view now, and with it the traces of battle.

What in the world. Something brutal had happened here. The evidence alone made that plain.

The marks of combat. Earth soaked in blood. The wall stained dark. The smell of humans still wound up tight, the reek of blood filling the spaces between. And the atmosphere was strange.

Grim, and somehow not grim. The only way to put it.

In the middle of all that, the man who had become her reason for not turning back sooner came into view.

The man named Enkrid.

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