WE TRIED TRANSLATIONS

Translator: Hydrogen B

Editor: Abstract

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

A KNIGHT WHO ETERNALLY REGRESSES

Chapter 177: I Don't Really Know Either

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"How did that fellow usually carry himself?"

To understand a person, it helps to ask around widely. Kraiss did exactly that.

He started with Deutsch Fullman.

"Friendly enough. Smooth as a tongue in the mouth. Thorough, too. Wouldn't start anything unless he was certain of it."

A waste of talent, Deutsch had thought that before he found out the man was a Cultist. He'd gotten along with everyone, left no enemies behind. Well-liked by all, with thoroughness as his standout quality.

"Sneaky. Everything he did, every trick he used."

Ruagarne's verdict.

Sneaky, and careful enough never to move without certainty.

Whether gambling, making bets, or doing anything else at all, he never stepped forward without sure footing first.

"Oh, he was competent enough at most things, but, hmm, he liked to take his time preparing. The captain seemed to appreciate that about him."

"His position in formation? The very back, wasn't it? Ah, yes. The very back. Every single time."

"Come to think of it, you're right."

After gathering the opinions of his Self-Defense Force comrades, Kraiss built a picture in his head. A petty little creature, like a goat. He had a rough sense of the man's habits by now, too.

Personality-wise, the Jaxon type. Jaxon got things done when they needed doing, but in terms of personality alone, the preparation was thorough and everything got weighed carefully. Similar enough. Though this one was far stupider. Much, much more.

Kraiss drafted a script, a scenario built to draw out a sneaky, cowardly man and make him drop his guard.

"Would you spit up some blood? You just need to use this."

A pouch cut from a pig's bladder, packed with goat's blood. The smell was foul, but nobody had to hold it in their mouth. Just spill a bit.

"It'd be better if you were actually injured, but you're Frog, so a minor wound should be fine, right?"

"Sure."

Ruagarne didn't mess around. She showed up with an arm cleanly severed.

"This will definitely be more effective, but are you alright with one arm missing?"

"I'm right-handed."

Was that an answer?

Maybe.

Either way, the enemy would see the severed arm, feel certain of victory, and let their guard drop.

Even so, their own morale hadn't crumbled. That was Enkrid's doing. What he'd shown that day, deep in the swarm of Demon Creatures and Magic Beasts, had left a deep impression, deep enough that Kraiss himself had shouted out loud. The plan had been built with all of that in mind.

Good enough.

Better to steer the enemy's thinking in one direction. Condition them, you might say.

Not the sharpest, from the look of things.

People have habits. Hiding at the rear is a habit, a reflex. Could someone just shed that in an instant?

Not a chance.

Pinpointing an enemy's position was easy work for Kraiss. He planted a preconception in the enemy's head too, by keeping Esther at Enkrid's side, so the assumption would take root: where the panther is, Enkrid is.

And so, just before dawn, before the enemy could notice, Enkrid and Ruagarne slipped out.

"Finn, put this on."

He had Finn layer the clothing, then placed her up on the walkway along the top of the wall, the kind you might call a gallery, with Esther standing right beside her.

When the Demon Creatures and Magic Beasts, sensing victory, came charging forward, the enemy's hiding spot was obvious to Kraiss. A place where you could stay concealed while watching your targets. Probably draped in some monster hide, tucked at the rear.

Reading the enemy's intentions, then using them to dig a trap. Simple work.

For Kraiss, at least.

* * *

"Big Eyes is actually useful. There's more to him than his face."

Ruagarne said it. Enkrid's jaw dipped slightly in agreement.

Big Eyes. After moving into the ambush position Kraiss had named, they'd found the man wrapped in something like Hyena Beast hide. Right where predicted.

Enkrid wiped the charcoal-and-water camouflage off his face, then swept his palm across his skin to brush away the stone powder too. Gray dust drifted from his fingers like ash. It had been dry and gritty the whole time.

"You tricked me, you bastards!"

Ah. That textbook reaction.

Moments like this, there was always something Enkrid badly wanted to say. The words sat right at the tip of his tongue.

"The fool who got tricked is the fool."

The world had grown so harsh and shrewd that nobody gave reactions that predictable anymore. It had been a long time since he'd had an exchange this textbook. He felt almost proud of it.

"You little...!"

The Cultist raged, eyes going red.

Several nearby Gnolls reacted to the cry and turned, charging forward.

Grunt!

The Cultist's brainwashing and compulsion sorcery shook the minds of Demon Creatures. The Gnoll pack was fearless. Had they been in their right minds, what Enkrid's sword had done to their kind would have sent them scattering long ago, but they came on without a shred of fear.

Enkrid didn't even need to step forward.

Whoosh. Crack! Crack! Thwack!

Ruagarne's whip moved. The metal weight at its tip smashed into Gnoll skulls and burst them open. One raised a thick wooden shield to block, the shield splintered with a crack, but the whip was stopped.

A Variant Gnoll. The creature behind the shield bared its fangs.

As three or four Variant Gnolls closed in around the Cultist and moved to block the way, Ruagarne's cheeks puffed.

"You think I'd let you slip away twice?"

"A Frog with no regard for her own heart! You didn't realize I wasn't prepared back then, did you?"

A real talker.

The thought barely registered before Enkrid's hand moved.

Snap.

A flash. Not the Whistle Dagger, so slower than that, but it was still a knife thrown behind the full force of Heart of Superhuman Strength. Fast enough.

The knife was on a line to punch straight through the Cultist's forehead.

Just before it arrived.

Thud!

One Variant Gnoll threw out its left arm and intercepted it. The knife buried itself in the thick hide. Without a flicker of expression, the creature pulled it free with its other hand and tossed it aside. Black blood ran freely, but the Gnoll only furrowed its brow once and went back to glaring at Enkrid.

The reaction speed.

Not bad. Actually, excellent.

Yellow eyes stared at Enkrid. Enkrid met them.

* * *

The Cultist was a coward, but not an idiot.

Continuing to control Demon Creatures like this was foolish, and he knew it. Why waste the power. There was an easier way: create a colony leader. If the last one had been the creature running wild with two poison-coated daggers, this time it would be the largest of the Variant Gnolls.

Add a spell on top, and.

A black haze rose from the newly appointed leader's shoulders.

"That's a Cult technique," Ruagarne said. The rough translation: be careful.

Enkrid drew his sword. One blade instead of two. Both hands on the grip, raised in front of him, he watched the enemy, keeping the black haze and the Cultist behind it both within his sight.

How bad will this be.

At some point Enkrid had started measuring opponents against Rem.

On par with Rem? Harder than Rem? Between Rem and this, which was worse?

The conclusion.

Not even close.

Comparing this to Rem was almost an insult to that brutal savage.

So.

"Rear."

He said it and charged.

The Cultist was confident. He trusted his Summoning Sorcery.

Even as the leader Gnoll charged, he trusted it. No matter how capable the opponent, the new leader had been made precisely as a variable to account for unexpected power on the other side. The sword-drawing man over there was one such variable.

Unexpected power.

Variable meets variable. In the gap between, Frog would come charging at him.

The Cultist wanted a strategy that guaranteed victory. He'd also judged that the sword-drawing man was far more dangerous than one-armed Frog.

Give up the flesh. Take the bone.

He did exactly that.

From the tips of his right-hand fingers, something like a black lump dropped free. Darker than shadow, denser. Just looking at it felt ominous.

"Warrior's Arm."

The Cultist muttered it, and the lump immediately took shape. A strange form: two thin legs, one arm, vaguely humanoid but headless. Only the right arm was thick, and in that hand it gripped something like a blunt sword.

Ruagarne had already closed the distance and swung her whip. It sailed through the air and looked ready to cave the Cultist's skull in.

"Block it!"

The Cultist screamed, eyes bloodshot.

Thud!

One Variant Gnoll threw its body in front of the whip. Ruagarne flicked her wrist without stopping. The whip rippled and curved, arcing over the dead Gnoll to target the Cultist's skull a second time. It moved like a living snake. The Cultist barely twisted away, and the whip coiled around his left arm and snapped the bone.

Damn Frog!

Instead of screaming, he bit down on his tongue. Dark blood ran down the corner of his mouth.

Blood as the price.

He muttered it inwardly, and the left arm caught in the whip dropped clean off and dissolved into black liquid.

"Hound of Hualin!"

The black liquid that had been his left arm shaped itself into a four-legged black beast, bigger than any ordinary dog.

Summoning creature after creature in rapid succession had his insides in knots. His stomach heaved, the world started to spin. Sacrificing his left arm meant blood was pouring freely on top of it all.

Damn it.

One wrong move and he was dead.

He swallowed the blood pooling in his mouth and barely managed to steady himself. Then he looked at what lay before him and laughed.

Frog was fighting the beast he'd summoned. On the other side, the Warrior's Arm had nearly reached the half-wit squire with those peculiar techniques while he fought Gnolls.

He'd won.

The Cultist was certain of it.

Ruagarne fought the summoned beast, wrapping the whip once around her wrist. The shorter it ran, the more power it carried. The enemy had hidden its real strength, the summoned creature was considerably more difficult than she'd expected. Fast on its feet, fangs sharp. Eyeless, and yet it dodged well. Not something she could finish in a single strike.

She'd seen the Cultist summon two creatures at once. A Cultist Priest of exceptional rank, then.

Just hold on. That would be enough.

Frog reached for the weapon she'd prepared. When traveling alone, the hardest things to face were Demon Creatures that took a spiritual body form: ghosts, Evil Spirits, things like that. The creatures this Cultist commanded were a similar type, the kind of trick that manifests a physical body in this world to do your bidding. There were many ways to deal with them, but she preferred the simple approach.

For instance.

"Burn."

Making use of a simple magical tool.

Whoosh.

Blue flames ran the length of her whip. A spell, naturally, the kind that dealt real damage to summoned creatures.

What she didn't know: the Cultist had burned his own lifespan to summon them. She assumed only that he'd sent a nuisance at Enkrid and the more troublesome creature at herself.

In that time, the Warrior's Arm had run on its spindly legs to just in front of Enkrid.

Right there.

Enkrid had just used his two-handed grip to deflect a Gnoll's club dropping from above, then dragged the blade forward and opened a deep gash across the creature's stomach.

Slash!

The cut was deep enough to expose its innards, but the Gnoll pulled its club back and swung again as if pain meant nothing. Enkrid bent at the knees and dropped at the waist to dodge. The club swept over his head with a dull whoosh.

Smooth as water, he drew the sword back and cut behind the Gnoll's knee. Crossing feet left and right, he stepped around behind it and left two cuts across each calf muscle.

Slice, slice.

That was enough.

With its calf muscles severed, the Gnoll couldn't hold itself upright and dropped to its knees. Enkrid turned at the waist and swung a Heavy Sword Style spinning cut.

Crack!

The Gnoll's head flew through the air. A low groan, barely started, and then it was dead.

The movements hadn't flowed seamlessly start to finish, everything had been read and adapted in the moment, but he'd been fighting with Rem in mind the whole way through. This was easier for Enkrid than dealing with numbers. Victory or defeat came in an instant here, and the gap in skill was stark.

Around the time he cut the Gnoll's calf, the black mass and its sword sent by the Cultist drew close. By the time he severed the Gnoll's neck, the summoned creature had already swung its pitch-black blade.

The Cultist's last move. A lethal one.

The Warrior's Arm was a summoning spell designed to deliver one strike and vanish, the kind you used when you absolutely needed someone dead.

Enkrid spotted the thing charging on its spindly legs and raised his sword. The black blade rushed down from above. Very fast. A sudden burst of speed. No dodging it.

He'd pictured it: kill the Gnoll, then block this. Sword already up.

Block and deflect.

Exactly as the Cultist had hoped. The Warrior's Arm, when swung, would pass through physical defenses and deal fatal damage to a human's spiritual body.

The Cultist bled from his mouth and his stump of an arm, but his eyes gleamed with anticipation.

Die.

Enkrid's sword met the blade swung by the Warrior's Arm.

* * *

Hmph.

From atop the wall, Esther watched Enkrid's fight.

The Cultist's spell was clumsy trickery. Clumsy as it was, though, it could be lethal to anyone unprepared for it. Knowing that, how could she just send that man in without anything.

She had torn apart an armor whose enchantment had long since run dry and fed it into her power. That was the exchange.

A gift, then. Man.

Esther had split off a portion of her power and placed it within his sword, so that it would react if the enemy tried anything resembling sorcery.

* * *

Enkrid saw a faint blue light pulse from his sword.

A sliver of a moment.

The glowing blade broke the black sword clean in two, then cut the black mass's body in half. Had it been a person, the cut would have landed just below the chest. The sensation of cutting stayed in his hands.

So there's something like flesh in there, even looking like that.

The bisected black mass oozed black smoke in rolling waves, then scattered and was gone.

The Cultist who saw it went wide-eyed, the corners nearly tearing.

"...What! What was that!"

Enkrid was honest.

He was puzzled too. Not deep in thought, but he paused a few seconds longer than usual before his mouth opened.

"I don't really know either."

Heat flooded the Cultist's skull at that answer. The man had parted his lips like he was about to say something meaningful, and after all that, this is what he comes out with!

The world started spinning. His breath seized.

Already pushed far past his limits, his heart simply gave out.

"Gh."

Some deaths are just like that. Hollow.

The Cultist clutched his chest, rattled out a few ragged breaths, and pitched forward, head-first into the ground with a dull thud. It looked anything but dignified.

The fog cleared from the minds of the Demon Creatures and Magic Beasts rampaging nearby.

They had instincts too.

The moment they truly saw the human who had been cutting down their kind, they scattered in every direction.

The colony had broken.

Enkrid, meanwhile, was studying his sword.

Was this a magic sword?

Does that make the blacksmith at Border Guard a mage?

Unlikely. The two didn't fit together at all.

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