WE TRIED TRANSLATIONS

Translator: Hydrogen B

Editor: Abstract

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A KNIGHT WHO ETERNALLY REGRESSES

Chapter 179: Enc-enc-Enkrid

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The nobles of the Naurillia Kingdom had a habit of naming their units after themselves.

And so Viscount Bantara's force arrived at the pioneer village.

A portion of the cavalry had ridden ahead on receiving the urgent message. What they found:

"They said they were under attack?"

The cavalry captain had ridden out to see for himself. He was the one asking.

What the hell are they doing?

Why are they burying corpses in the ground?

The black blood of demon creatures and Magic Beasts, contrary to appearances, actually enriched the soil. Even the poison in ghoul claws was neutralized once buried, dissolved away to nothing.

For that reason, the pioneer village residents were throwing every ounce of strength into burying the demon creature carcasses. The wilderness ground was lumpy and uneven. Shovels and pickaxes swinging. Most of the villagers were soaked with sweat.

Soldiers and villagers moving as one body.

"Yes, the message came in as an urgent dispatch," the lieutenant said.

Urgent was an understatement.

, Large colony, gnoll horde, requesting immediate support.

Written exactly that far and no further.

So rushed that not even a rough count had been included.

It really had been that way. Deutsch had been in a panic when he sent it, and in that panic he'd left the numbers out. The message only implied a large colony of at least several hundred, with a vague mention of cultists thrown in. Still, it was more than enough to get people moving.

"To my eyes it looks like they're doing slash-and-burn farming with demon creatures," the captain said.

No threat to be seen anywhere. Strip out the demon creature corpses and it was an almost pastoral scene. Most of the cleanup looked nearly finished too, so the number of creatures didn't even seem that large.

"Whoooosh, crash-bang, alone he cut five hundred."
"We shall name the wall."
"Enc-enc-Enkrid."

A nonsensical rhythm. A ridiculous labor song on top of it.

"Find out."

He'd ridden all this way covered in dust, and this was what he got. At his word, one of his men galloped off.

Clatter clatter! Clatter clatter!

The man rode out, sized up the situation, and came back to report.

"What? He cut down five hundred gnolls alone?"

The village residents had been straightforward about it.

"What is he, some legendary free knight? Or did a mercenary king show up?"

"Nothing like that. They say he's a squad leader out of Border Guard."

A single squad leader. Five hundred gnolls. Alone.

Not in a single day, apparently.

He'd also killed a cultist. Or rather, the cultist had died. Some scheming opponent who got tricked, got stabbed from behind, then grabbed his own chest and croaked? Since when were cultists like wandering bandits on a back road? Some small-gutted fool?

Give me a break.

The captain scoffed. What squad leader could pull that off?

"Yeah? Then let's go have a look at that bastard's face."

They entered the village.

"He already left."

The village headman stepped forward to say it.

"Already?"

"He said dealing with the colony was the mission."

Just up and left. Just like that.

What an utterly matter-of-fact bastard.

The cavalry captain scoffed a second time.

The only witnesses were mercenaries and villagers. Hard for all of them to be lying in unison, but hard to swallow every word as truth either.

When pushed to the edge, people exaggerate. The captain knew that principle well. Someone standing at a cliff's edge, even with five steps or more to spare, would still be seized by the terror that they were about to fall.

These people were no different.

Five hundred? Fifty at most. A hundred, if you were generous.

If a veteran mercenary admitted he couldn't handle even that scale of a creature colony, he'd only be confessing his own inadequacy.

They embellished.

That was his judgment. He had no intention of digging up the buried corpses to check.

"That'll do."

As long as the village was intact, that was enough.

Here and there he'd caught nonsense about "Enkrid's Wall" or some such, but commenting on that wasn't his place.

Whether it was fifty or five, that squad leader had saved this village. That much was probably true.

Leaving his own legend here to swell in his absence, though. That he didn't like.

If I ever run into him.

He'd knock that pride down a peg. Half that boasting tongue cut off, that'd be satisfying too.

With those thoughts, the captain turned his horse around.

* * *

"You're welcome to stay longer."

The moment they said they were leaving, the village headman was quick with his regret.

Two days after a night that had felt something close to a festival.

He was soaked in sweat and washing himself when a handful of the village women came to look at Enkrid.

"Good body too."
"Handsome."
"Fights well."
"Good character."
"Solid. I'm sure down below he's..."

The last one crossed a line, maybe, but it was close to admiration. Reverence, almost worship.

Not a bad feeling.

He let it wash over him and left it at that.

When they said they were leaving, Deutsch Fullman showed up out of nowhere, glaive in hand.

"Would you spare a round with me?"

He thrust the weapon forward without preamble, but his tone carried respect and his bearing carried deference.

A straight-backed request. A plea, really.

More than anything else.

Those eyes.

Enkrid liked eyes like that. Blazing. Burning with something.

"Sure."

A quick spar.

Clang.

One deflection vertical, one horizontal, the glaive knocked aside twice. Then he stepped inside and drove his left fist into Deutsch's chest, right where the lungs sat.

Thud. Deutsch doubled over and dropped to the ground with a retch.

Ugh. G-hrgh. Hff.

He wheezed through it, barely got his breath back, then spoke.

"What kind of strength..."

He stood and bowed his head once more, the weight of it hitting him all over again.

"Thank you."

Nod.

Enkrid nodded, nothing much behind it.

No reason to linger. He decided to move.

"I'm coming with you."

Even after being told to rest and recover at the village, Finn insisted on following.

"I'm a Ranger."

A lot was packed into that.

Rangers go first. That was the motto of the group she belonged to.

"I don't like falling behind."

It wasn't stubbornness, not exactly. And it hadn't been a fatal wound, no intestines spilling out, and the treatment had been excellent. Kraiss's handiwork, versatile guy.

Useless in a fight. Good for just about everything else. Especially anything requiring brains.

The road ahead wasn't going to be particularly dangerous either.

At most.

Just demon creatures and Magic Beasts.

When a colony formed and was then wiped out, the surrounding area was usually swept clean. Natural consequence. A colony meant congregation, and the local demon creatures had gathered to form that group, and now the group was gone. Seeing another large cluster so soon would be unlikely.

Should be fine.

"Treasure. Treasure."

Kraiss murmured it in a singsong. According to him, the place the treasure map pointed to was only a day's travel away.

"This is, you see, not a big deal at all. Back in the day you'd need to break through traps and it'd be complicated, but now? If you've read Cristlaun's Dungeon Breaker, it's nothing. That's how it is."

Confidence coming through plainly.

In practice, it really wasn't going to be complicated.

They packed some preserved rations and a few bottles of apple cider and set out.

"Come again, please. Without fail."

The village headman bowed from behind as they left. Not just the headman, either. Every last villager came out and bowed.

Enkrid dipped his head and said:

"If the chance comes."

Rough for a farewell, but it was genuine, and that sincerity showed through.

So they set out on the road back, a piece of treasure to pick up on the way. That was all there was to it.

"Let's go find treasure. Treasure!"

Kraiss chattered merrily all the way.

Enkrid gave an easy nod.

"I'll come that far with you."

Ruagarne hadn't left right away. Whether she had no reason to rush back, or whether something still held her there, Enkrid didn't press the question.

Instead.

"Spar?"

He treated Ruagarne the same as always. Ruagarne had said something about being taken with him, but that was something time would sort out.

What mattered to Enkrid more than any future day was what he was still learning from Ruagarne now.

In terms of raw combat power alone, if the goal was to kill, he was confident he could beat Ruagarne. But the experience and skill she carried were not a bluff.

Looking purely at fighting ability, Ruagarne was more manageable than he'd once thought. You can't see the surrounding landscape before you've climbed to the peak, but once you're up there, what you see and feel changes entirely. So now he could see. Knowing more meant seeing more, and now the path to taking Ruagarne down was visible too.

Are all Frogs at this level?

No. Probably not.

As she herself had said more than once, she was a scholar.

"Not a bad offer. I've grown a little rusty myself. Time to sharpen up."

She seemed to have taken something away from fighting the cultist as well.

Two wooden swords clacking as they walked.

Things gained. Things learned. Things mastered. He turned them over as he moved.

"You really are a strange human."

Right after a round of the Game of Moves, Ruagarne said it.

"No talent should be able to pull something like this off."

"Is that so?"

Enkrid let it go.

His dream was to be a knight. The mountains still to climb and roads still to walk stretched long ahead of him.

Satisfaction from a single step forward wasn't something he could afford. Wasn't even possible.

Even if that step was large, it still couldn't reach the faded, tattered dream. And even if it did, would he be satisfied then? Hard to say. Would becoming a knight end everything? No.

The dream stayed the same. The reason he'd chased it, the residue that had settled into his heart over years of wandering the continent, was still there. Some of it as bitterness. Some as longing.

"The strangest thing is your attitude right now."

Ruagarne kept at it. Enkrid was the same as ever.

Learning and mastering. That was what quenched the thirst inside him. So for now he quenched the thirst, read the next signpost, and kept walking.

"Again?"

Still the same.

They sparred again, sweated through it, then mixed the cider with water and wetted their throats.

Walking along a path with no streams in sight.

Finn out front, Kraiss babbling along beside her.

"Looking at the map, it should be right around this terrain. What do you think, Finn?"

"Looks about right."

Kraiss's talent was something else.

It shone brightest when his life and his krona were on the line together.

He'd navigated from only a section of the map. Finn helped from the side, but still.

Wasn't that the stranger thing, honestly?

Big Eyes, then Rem, then Ragna and Audin, Jaxon.

Hm.

The Lunatic Squad.

A name that fit them well. By comparison, wasn't he on the sane side of things?

Pouring everything into a big dream was normal enough, surely.

Of course, that was entirely Enkrid's own opinion.

Had only Ruagarne been surprised watching Enkrid fight the gnolls?

Esther had been surprised too.

Insane human.

Changing overnight was something she'd already seen more than once. But this time was different.

Cutting through hundreds of demon creatures with no spell behind it?

Did he have some magical weapon on him?

Did he pick up a demon sword somewhere?

No. He was exactly the same as always. Same sword. Same armor.

Just the person had changed.

Wasn't this squire-class combat power, by any standard? She couldn't be sure about raw strength, but the results spoke clearly enough.

Kraiss had been surprised too. He just didn't dwell on it.

He's the squad leader.

Naturally unhinged. Completely obsessed with the sword.

Made sense for him.

Puzzling over things you couldn't understand was pointless. Kraiss didn't waste mental energy that way. He just accepted it and moved on.

Of all of them, the most surprised was Finn.

How does he do that?

When she'd first met him, he hadn't been at this level, or so she'd thought.

She'd been surprised then too. Watching him fight through the lycanthropes was one thing. Watching him kill the sorcerer was another.

But those had still been within some range she could make sense of.

Now.

It felt like the very limit of what a human could do, or one foot over that line.

Above all, the recovery.

It'd put a Frog to shame.

Fighting as if he might die, then rising the next day and fighting again. No priest pouring divine power into him at his side. How was that even possible?

Finn tried to work it out but gave up soon enough.

Most people who spent time around Enkrid eventually gave up trying to understand him.

There was nothing to be done about it.

"Still a strange one."

Ruagarne's murmur summed up everything everyone felt.

"Is that so?"

Enkrid was the same as ever.

On the short journey, not a single demon creature or Magic Beast came into sight.

They walked at a steady pace and arrived behind a rocky mountain. They'd taken the long way around, so it had cost a full day. Rush it and the path was half a day.

They'd sparred and eaten and rested well along the way.

No hurry. As Kraiss had said, pick up a piece of treasure on the road and that would be the end of it.

Behind the rocky mountain: scattered boulders, short grass, a few trees with their heads poking up here and there.

Hard to call it a plain. Hard to call it a wilderness. Hard to call it a rocky field. Just a stretch of land that didn't quite fit any name.

"Captain, you know that thing?"

"What thing?"

Kraiss opened his mouth out of nowhere.

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