WE TRIED TRANSLATIONS

Translator: Hydrogen B

Editor: Abstract

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

A KNIGHT WHO ETERNALLY REGRESSES

Chapter 180: The Eyes of Dream Chasers Always Burn

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Kraiss crossed his arms, eyes shining, and continued.

"The days when that guy Dolph, the owner of the treasure map, built dungeons are long past."

Enkrid looked at him, wondering what nonsense he was on about now, and Kraiss flashed a confident grin.

It looked annoyingly smug, but there was nothing to say, so Enkrid just stared.

"So this kind of method didn't exist back then."

Times had changed, and as the years passed, treasure hunters got crafty.

Instead of risking their lives to disarm traps and enter dungeons the hard way for the reward,

they skipped the painful process and focused on the result.

Wasn't that what had been distilled into Cristlaun's Dungeon Breaker?

"It's called the back-skip technique."

A shortcut, yes, but if it worked, it was an excellent method, and Enkrid had already proven that himself.

If taking down the gnoll leader was the wall in front of them, hadn't he found a way past it without waiting for the bastard, without sacrificing the village, and without choosing a bad battlefield?

"This is it."

Kraiss found a boulder about the size of a grown man and spoke.

"Ruagarne, please."

At those words, the Frog stepped up without complaint.

She pushed the rock aside, and it toppled over with a heavy thud.

Underneath, something like an old hole appeared.

Kraiss pulled a shovel from his backpack, dug a few times, then said,

"This is the entrance, so roughly..."

Then he strode off. He wandered around for about as long as it took a candle the length of one finger joint to burn, then came back grinning from ear to ear again.

"Should be around here."

Kraiss raised the shovel and started digging. Real shovel work. Of course, there was no way he could do it alone.

"Out of the way."

This time it was Enkrid. He took the shovel and dug into the ground.

After hearing him out, the plan was simple: avoid all the traps, dig straight into where the treasure was hidden, and enter through that hole.

It was hard to call it a fresh idea, but maybe back in Dolph's era, when the dungeon was built, nobody had imagined a method like this.

It was a shortcut, but compared to disarming traps and gambling with their lives, this was far more efficient.

Enkrid agreed and helped.

Esther prowled around nearby and flexed her claws, so Enkrid shook his head.

"Get some rest."

The panther clearly looked exhausted.

"Kyarrr."

She sounded almost delighted to hear that, settled down to one side, and lay down.

Then she curled up and closed her eyes. Looking at her now, she really did seem drained.

On the way here, aside from sparring, Enkrid had carried her in his arms most of the time.

She looked completely worn out.

In any case, Kraiss had been right.

"We can just pick up a few treasures on the way and be done. Are we really going to leave this behind? Ah, maybe there's nothing left. Someone might've cleaned it out without a map, but that's unlikely."

Was this the third time he'd said it was no big deal?

As they kept digging, the soil crumbled and softly collapsed inward, revealing an artificial passage.

"See?"

Kraiss spoke. It was the result of taking turns digging with Enkrid.

Inside the hole, a few gold coins rolled around and reflected the light.

Deeper in, it didn't look dark, and there was no way a few gold coins were all there was.

Just as Kraiss said, it was easy.

"Wow."

Finn's eyes lit up too. Kraiss promised her a share of the Krona. It meant Finn could walk away with a few coin pouches herself.

Ruagarne and Esther had no interest, and Enkrid thought Krona would be useful because of his damaged swords.

Go down, pick up the treasure, come back. It was still supposed to be easy.

It had to be. It absolutely should have been easy.

The sun sank low, then the moon rose before they knew it. Kraiss glanced at the moon and spoke.

"Let's all go together. Doesn't seem bad to spend one night there. Might be a lot to carry out too."

There probably wouldn't be any danger.

There were no magic beasts around, and they wouldn't stay down there for more than a day anyway.

The sun was already setting.

They needed to camp soon, so if there was no real danger below, spending the night down there and moving tomorrow made sense.

Kraiss said it after running through all those calculations.

Everyone agreed. Better to spend a night below than get chewed up by pointless bugs outside.

"Sounds good."

Enkrid agreed too. As he did, he wondered if there was anything there besides a few gold coins.

'Will there be anything worthwhile?'

It wasn't that he lacked Krona, but this last battle had wrecked his swords badly, far too badly.

The sword made from Valerian steel and Nuairian wrought iron was especially chipped.

Setting a new edge aside, even the core had taken damage.

'I can't use this.'

For a mercenary, a weapon was life. Any swordsman who didn't understand that value was wrong from the start.

Enkrid naturally knew how to judge the state of his own weapons.

He had cut down hundreds of magic beasts and demon creatures. If his swords came out fine, that would have been the strange part.

Both blades were damaged at the core.

His armor was torn in several places too. The leather parts were ripped, and even sections of the chain beneath had holes.

As he thought that and glanced over, he saw Ruagarne moving casually.

"We're going to be late getting back, aren't we?"

Enkrid said it, and Ruagarne puffed her cheeks and answered.

"That's fine. I'm just enjoying this."

The mood was warm. Enkrid fed Esther some seasoned jerky.

In the meantime, Finn tied a rope to a thick, sturdy tree.

Her ranger knotwork shone.

"It won't come loose unless someone cuts it with a blade. And it's not too hard to climb either."

Preparation, just in case. Very ranger-like.

After dropping the prepared rope down into the hole,

Enkrid went first. Finn followed, then Kraiss. After that, Esther hopped down, digging her claws into the wall as she descended.

Ruagarne came last, twisted the rope between both feet, and dropped down in quick steps.

After everyone was down,

the moon was already up.

'Must be around midnight?'

Enkrid ran through the time in his head.

"We camp below and climb back up tomorrow, perfect."

Kraiss said it from behind him.

Enkrid nodded. There could still be danger, so he lit a torch and checked the area.

Behind them, toward the dungeon entrance Kraiss had found, a long passage stretched out, but it was so narrow you had to bend at the waist to get through.

'If I go through there, my back will snap.'

That wouldn't really happen, but it was that narrow. Fighting in a place like that would make proper responses difficult.

'A bad place to use a sword.'

That was Enkrid's judgment.

No other danger stood out. Everyone thought the same.

There wasn't as much dust as expected, and there were no pressure traps that triggered when stepped on.

Esther let out a lazy kyarrr and yawned. She still looked worn down, so Enkrid picked her up and handed the torch to Kraiss.

Ruagarne looked around and muttered,

"Old traces."

What did she look like as a scholar?

Enkrid drifted into idle thought too.

'She knows the ancient language, and she's also a kingdom-affiliated Talent-Reader.'

Separate from combat power, she was a versatile Frog. Her value could never be low.

Finn found no danger in the passages stretching ahead and behind.

Ranger Finn wasn't a treasure hunter, but she could read traps.

'Looks clean.'

If there was a trap she couldn't detect, it was either spell-related or a high-level mechanism.

Not simple things like tripwire or pressure-fired arrows, but the kind that triggered from the slightest brush.

The type that was hard to notice unless you were a professional treasure hunter.

'A bit excessive for one rich man's setup.'

Traps like that belonged in ancient tombs. At minimum, they'd need spells woven into them.

Finn's eyes caught Kraiss walking beside her.

He picked up three or four gold coins from the floor and examined the surroundings by torchlight.

Until that moment, nothing had happened.

No danger, no unusual event.

The passage was short, and soon a circular chamber appeared. It had an altar fitting for the end of a dungeon, and an old, worn chest.

On the altar, covered in dust, a single sword was stuck upright.

Put kindly, it was antique. Put bluntly, it was just endlessly old.

"We came to the right place."

Kraiss couldn't hide his excitement. They had dug correctly and found the right route.

At this point, didn't that basically make him a treasure hunter?

Good thing he had read Cristlaun's Dungeon Breaker.

Since childhood, after learning his letters, Kraiss had hunted down all kinds of books and read them.

He had believed they'd become the hand that pulled him out of the swamp of poverty.

He had been right.

Wasn't he finding treasure like this right now?

"Do you really need that much Krona just to open one salon?"

It was one of Enkrid's pointless questions.

"Yes, absolutely."

Kraiss answered without even taking a breath.

Really? Enkrid asked with his eyes. For the first time in a while, Kraiss spoke his dream out loud.

"I'll build the most luxurious, most glamorous place in the capital, the kind that makes everyone lose their minds wanting to get in. I'll issue membership passes too. And that's not the end. I'll open branches. All over the continent."

The eyes of someone chasing a dream always burned.

Enkrid had no right to mock someone else's dream, and Kraiss's shining eyes looked good to him, so he just cheered him on.

"Sure. Do it."

Other than the old sword stuck at the center altar, the place held only two plain chests.

Gold coins had been scattered in the passage, so there had to be something here too.

Filled with anticipation, Kraiss examined the chest.

If he opened it, maybe poison darts would fire out. He moved carefully.

Behind Kraiss, Ruagarne gave Enkrid advice worth more than gold coins.

"It won't be enough to learn only the basics. Learn proper swordsmanship and make it part of your body, then you can go further."

"For example?"

"Northern swordsmanship. You learned from him, right?"

The Frog's eye for detail was sharp.

She looked at Ragna, then Enkrid, and traced the origin.

Nod.

Enkrid nodded, and the Frog spoke again.

"It would be good if you could properly learn Northern swordsmanship from that blond, red-eyed friend."

"You can't teach me?"

"I'm bound by covenant. Even this was an exceptional vacation. I have to return."

Ruagarne's voice carried genuine regret.

Covenant. Frogs were easily swayed by urges and desires. That was why they made the Heart Oath.

She kept avoiding the word heart itself and replaced it with the two-word term covenant.

Because of that, a Frog's covenant was never light.

It was like an absolute rule they had to keep before any desire or impulse.

Frogs who lived without keeping it were very rare. You could say almost none existed.

That was how the saying "the naive Frog's swordplay" came to be.

It meant an ignorant Frog could be deceived by humans or other races, sell away their covenant, and end up causing an unwanted massacre with a blade they never wished to swing.

'That really is...'

Enkrid felt again that Ruagarne saying she would fall for him had not been a light thing at all.

Did she really need to go that far?

Swear on her heart just to say she'd fall for him?

Why? Why bother?

Enkrid couldn't tell her to cancel it.

No idiot was ignorant of how heavy a Frog's oath was.

He also knew very well that Frogs enjoyed taking the heads of those who insulted that oath.

Not losing a fight and insulting the other person were different matters, so Enkrid kept his mouth shut.

Then it happened.

"Kyaa!"

Esther, who had been curled up to one side in exhaustion, suddenly let out a savage cry.

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