WE TRIED TRANSLATIONS

Translator: Hydrogen B

Editor: Abstract

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

A KNIGHT WHO ETERNALLY REGRESSES

Chapter 176: That Was the Feeling

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Everything he'd learned. Everything he'd drilled.

Put it out there. Right now.

The moment that thought hardened into decision, his body moved on its own.

Everything was visible. Everything reachable.

All those countless days of tempering through the Isolation Technique held him up from beneath, feeding him strength.

It's working.

His body moved exactly as intended. He stuck to a single sword style.

Northern Heavy Sword.

Across the continent it had spread and evolved, built on five foundational forms, Correct, Heavy, Illusionary, Quick, and Flowing, each master combining them their own way. Mitch Hurrier had used a style that blended Correct and Flowing with a touch of Heavy. Ragna had taught him something anchored in Heavy with just a hint of Quick layered on top.

That was the Northern Heavy Sword.

He'd only learned the basics, of course. Simple techniques. But that was enough. With those basics as his foundation, he'd sharpened and built until they were something truly his.

I can see it.

He heard the shape of the enemy's attacks with his eyes and saw them with his ears. The senses braided together and threw the Gate of the Sixth Sense wide open, and it kept showing him everything. Blades pouring in from every direction, he classified each one by arrival order without thinking. All of them, every last one, completely within his grasp.

His reaction speed was light itself.

Left, here.

Room to think came naturally.

Right now Enkrid was faster than every Demon Creature and Magic Beast swarming around him. He saw each move before it happened, his body already moving. One step ahead. One extra swing.

The strength,

Heart of Superhuman Strength would wreck him if sustained too long. Short, then. Instantaneous.

All those repeated todays hadn't been spent only on building coordination. Through the endless cycles of dodging and dodging again, through the natural grinding hours of training and conditioning, he'd carved something else out too.

His heart thumped hard. Strength flooded into his muscles.

Three swings? No, four.

Four power-filled strikes per heartbeat.

Crack!

Not a single one met resistance. Four Gnoll skulls split open, each crown cleaved clean in half.

His body moved as he wished. The sword went where he wanted.

The body's coordination doubled every reflex speed and unraveled everything he'd learned, thread by thread.

In that moment, Enkrid thought of Rem. How could Rem charge alone through the heart of a battlefield and come out unscathed? How was that even possible?

With this kind of skill. With who he was right now.

It was.

He cut, and cut again, cleaved and cleaved again, moving through it all drunk on the rhythm.

Ah.

The squire he'd once seen came back to him too. That display of power, kicking off the ground alone, charging forward. How had the man done it?

Will was required, supposedly. Something far beyond Enkrid's reach, or so they'd said.

Was that a reason to give up?

Not a chance.

He barely had enough hours in the day to give everything he had to what was within reach. Despair didn't get a slot.

So that's what he did.

Everything within his power. With a body hardened by the Heart of Superhuman Strength and the Isolation Technique, he even tried to imitate the squire's charge.

He raged and raged, and when his limbs began to tremble and a dull ache crept through his gut, he pulled back.

"Ahhh!"

Ruagarne was making strange sounds behind him.

The strength drained out of Enkrid all at once. He called for help, and Ruagarne wrapped her whip around Enkrid's wrist and pulled him in. Enkrid was caught in her arms and blacked out on the spot.

Only natural. He'd shown power close to a squire's with not a shred of Will to back it up.

But those who had been watching.

Those who stood atop the wall.

Ruagarne, Finn, Kraiss, even Esther.

An inexplicable flame had taken root in their chests. Goosebumps crawled across their skin. A trembling ran through every inch of them.

What kind of person could do that?

The kind of moment that made you want to write a song, even if you'd never once touched a lute.

"Damn it, the wall's got a name. It's decided."

The wall-builder, who'd knocked his head bloody hauling stones, announced it. Drop the "Madman" part. Just Enkrid's Wall. That's what he'd call it.

"What the hell, why am I crying."

Some of the Self-Defense Force had tears running down their faces.

Not from the joy of surviving. It was the sight of that man standing out there and raging through everything that had gotten to them, a feeling they couldn't name and couldn't explain.

People use the word "moved" easily. It means something seen has been carved into the heart. A sensation, a deep feeling, left there permanently.

In this moment, Enkrid had been carved into all of them.

A roar went up.

Amid the shouts and cheers, the Gnolls still hadn't retreated, but the people on the wall chanted a name, still loosing arrows, still hurling stones.

"Enkrid!"

Until finally the Demon Creature horde stepped back.

"They gone?"

They'd all watched him go down and get carried away. Everyone asked in one voice. Hoped he wasn't hurt. Hoped his body was alright. Wanted to see him walk out on his own, steady and whole. Wanted to see him smile.

All of them, the same feeling.

They wanted to cheer for him. For him, they'd give anything.

That was the feeling.

Their hopes were answered.

Enkrid was up, walking steady, and asking.

Deutsch Fullman stepped down from the wall. He looked at the glaive in his hand a few times, then tossed it to the side like it had somehow let him down.

His men would have been stunned to see it. He guarded his weapon like his own life, the way a mercenary should.

Deutsch stepped forward and dropped to one knee. Head bowed, he said:

"My thanks."

Short. But everything lived in those two words from that rough-hewn man.

"...It's not over yet."

Enkrid received it without any particular weight. No smile on his face. Deutsch hadn't been looking for one, not a smile, not gratitude, not praise.

He'd simply paid respect to the man who had set something burning in him.

Everyone who saw it touched one knee to the ground. Those on the wall, those below it.

Enkrid only shrugged.

Those who'd watched him a long time knew. He was, in his own quiet way, rather pleased with how things had gone.

The battle, the kneeling, the display, all of it past him now. He washed up, returned to the hut, and went through his body.

He'd overdone it.

Muscles aching, a tightness near his heart.

At this level...

He'd controlled it. A day's rest and he'd recover. Good enough.

Strangely, he felt like he ought to thank Audin.

"The Isolation Technique is also a method for building a Renewed Body. The Renewed Body is a term from the far east or far north, and it refers to a body that always recovers, no matter how broken. This technique doesn't end with mere skeletal restructuring."

Audin had always hammered that point home. The Isolation Technique, at its core, built a foundation for the body to recover.

He was getting every bit of that benefit right now.

I'm fine.

He clenched his fist and opened it, checking his state. The stiffness was already beginning to ease from between his trembling muscles.

"So, uh... that was something."

Kraiss said it from beside him.

Everyone was looking at him. The man had done all that, then shut his eyes for a moment and walked right back out of it like nothing happened, not flat on his back for half a day, just briefly gone and back again.

"I've fallen for you all over again."

Finn said it.

Esther only watched, steady and still. What those eyes meant, there was no reading them.

Ruagarne said only what needed saying.

"When this is done, I'm heading back."

Simply time to go. A Frog bound by a vow. Nothing in her life was entirely free.

Enkrid told her to do as she needed.

"Stop speaking formally to me. Drop the honorifics."

She added that with clear insistence. Enkrid nodded.

Like that mattered right now. He was already busy preparing for tomorrow.

He'd run out of Whistle Daggers.

And the Cultist wasn't an idiot. He wouldn't just retreat and stay gone. The way he'd pulled back today, he'd be back. A clean withdrawal, no attempt to grind it out, preserving his forces.

The ladders could be rebuilt easily enough.

The Cultist had seen him push past his limits. Another assault was coming.

Bait him?

He'd shown what he had. There might be a way to use that.

"Shouldn't we take out the Cultist before you leave?"

He asked Ruagarne. A pointed way of saying: leaving now would be a problem.

"Naturally."

Good. Might just work.

Kraiss leaned in and whispered.

"They're coming back tomorrow."

Kraiss had a sharp head on his shoulders. Fast eyes too.

"I was thinking we bait them."

"Oh, nice."

Two words. Kraiss had a plan sketched already, something that cut right to the angle that would pry open the enemy's thinking and moved from there.

It could work. No, it would.

So they rested for a day. No one bothered Enkrid.

A portion of the retreated horde was still within sight, so nobody was fully at ease.

But something had changed from the day before.

"Are we going to let those Demon Creatures take our village?"

Spirit was running high.

Whatever Enkrid had shown them had set a fire in every chest.

Before that fire could die, morning came.

The Demon Creature horde brought something like ladders again. This time they'd also come with hooks tied to ropes, twisted branches, by the look of it. Not many, but dangerous enough.

"Bastards."

Deutsch ground his teeth.

Enkrid opened the gate again and did exactly what he'd done the day before.

A body that recovered. A Renewed Body, that was the term.

The Isolation Technique carried him through. No problem. Not yet.

Another bout of chaos.

The name started spreading, the Demon Creature Slayer, twin swords. After a battle short and brutal enough to deserve a name of its own.

Enkrid coughed up blood.

Ugh.

Two days in. A clear sign he was overextending.

Beside him, Ruagarne had deliberately left herself open, and her left arm was cut off. The forearm, severed clean below the elbow, was snatched up in a Gnoll's jaws and raised into the air.

Grooouk!

A victory cry, of sorts.

The horde pulled back again. Enkrid was spitting blood. Ruagarne had lost her left arm.

Third day, midday. The Demon Creatures came again.

"Don't you ever get tired of this?"

A mercenary's shout from the wall, and Enkrid stepped out once more.

He fought through it, coughed blood, held on for less time than the day before and retreated. Dark, heavy shadows were settling under his eyes with every passing hour.

The Magic Beast count had been cut in half. Dropped under five hundred in a flash.

Which meant the number cut down, sliced, and run through by Enkrid's hand was close to five hundred.

A remarkable feat for three days. But Enkrid ended up limp, carried back by the Self-Defense Force.

Around then, the arrows raining down on them had also thinned.

The log palisade held once more.

Two or three more days and they might make it through.

The next day, darker shadows under his eyes, complexion pale and drawn, Enkrid stepped out.

He looked pushed to the very edge. But like a candle burning its own life to light the dark, he blazed again. A display that made no sense.

"Woooah! Demon Creature Slayer!"

A deep-voiced shout from the Self-Defense Force.

Driven by what they'd seen, twenty of them broke out and charged into close combat, fighting in front of the wall with one eye always on the retreat.

No fatalities, thanks to that.

Still close. Damage to the wall had piled up, and by now it looked like it might not even need ladders to be breached.

That day, Enkrid truly became the Demon Creature Slayer.

He cut down a hundred Magic Beasts, just as he had on the first day.

The remaining count dropped below three hundred. No Ghouls left. Magic Beast numbers had fallen sharply, two hundred Gnolls and fewer than a hundred Hyena Beasts remained.

The fourth morning came.

* * *

The Cultist knew how to wait a man out.

When he'd first seen Enkrid's display, his instinct had been to run with his tail between his legs.

A knight. A squire at the very least.

Knights were forces beyond opposing. Running was the right call.

As he moved to pull back, though, something felt off about this one. Too lacking for a knight.

They were things that didn't seem quite human.

He'd once nearly died from over fifty paces away, struck by a single arrow hurled by hand from a squire.

The Cultist knew their power well.

But this was the frontier.

What would a squire be doing out here? Nothing worth their time.

Thirty knight orders in the kingdom, at most. Of those, the members who truly deserved to be called knights numbered one or two at best. They were strategic weapons, the kind who turned the tide of entire battles.

Knight orders were made up mostly of squires. Even they could swing a battle's outcome. On the battlefields of this continent, small elite forces were what mattered.

But this was the frontier. What would a knight order be doing out here?

They didn't have time to idle.

So the man wasn't a knight. Wasn't a squire either.

He'd shown astonishing strength but pulled back fast. The next day, same thing, though now there was something desperate about it. Like a man with nothing left to wager but his own body. A last stand with no regard for his life.

And he'd held?

He had. Grinding him down over those days had eventually squeezed blood from him. The Frog with a severed arm. Villagers who'd run out of arrows and stones.

A quiet exhale.

Satisfied, the Cultist smiled. Now he'd send the Demon Creature horde forward, scoop them up, chew through them, devour it all. Fulfill the dream of a Demon Creature swarm spreading across this land. Spread the will of his god.

Even if things eventually collapsed when a real knight arrived, what he could take from this place in the meantime was nothing small.

"Move."

The Cultist led the Demon Creatures forward.

Fourth day. Morning.

The deciding day. He hadn't pushed them to charge headlong all the way to the palisade before.

Now it was over.

He sent them ahead to hammer the wall. Above it, he spotted a panther. Somewhere around there, then. The panther had been at that madman's side all this time.

Of course it had. Repeated patterns bred assumptions.

Come out.

He was still pressing the wall when a voice came from behind him.

"Kraiss was right."

Then another.

"Is that so."

A jolt. Every hair on his body stood up. He spun around.

The man with dark circles and a pale face. The Frog beside him.

"Took a while to find you."

The pale-faced man said it and dragged a finger beneath his eye. Something black came off on it.

He should've been coughing blood and rolling around somewhere. And yet his complexion, his skin, looked strangely clear and bright.

Was that an illusion?

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