WE TRIED TRANSLATIONS
Translator: Hydrogen B
Editor: Abstract
Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried
A KNIGHT WHO ETERNALLY REGRESSES
Chapter 182: Some Madman Is Chasing Me with a Sword (2)
= = =
Originally, this was not a Demon Sword used in this way.
People called it an evil spirit, but there was no real evil spirit dwelling inside it.
If anything, it was closer to a fragment of a mindscape.
Long ago, though, a genius mage used his own spellcraft to realize a brilliant idea.
“Is there a way to pass ability down to descendants through generations?”
He worried over it and thought it through. His genius soon made it possible.
The problem was that while his magical talent was extraordinary, his understanding of humans was terrible.
A spirit was sealed into the sword for a single purpose, and it existed only to teach.
So everyone who learned from it ended up bleeding from the ears.
That could never be called proper transmission of knowledge.
After that failure, the mage created a way to pass down a swordsman or warrior’s techniques, in other words, the skill of handling the body.
“I will make this swordsmanship continue through my descendants.”
The Demon Sword he made that way was Tutor.
“Dolph, was it? He must have really hated his descendants.”
Ruagarne spoke while smacking her cheek with her tongue. It was how she showed frustration.
The Demon Sword Tutor touched the realm of necromancy in practice, but it did not suck blood or turn its holder into a berserker.
What happened if you sealed a human into a sword in spirit form?
The mage did not understand humans. He truly understood them far too little. He ground down a human mind, a human soul.
That was why only a soul with a single purpose remained in Tutor.
Whether the learner died or lived, whether blood poured from their ears or not, it only did its job.
To learn even one technique, a person had to cross a mountain of death dozens of times.
Only when they surpassed their opponent using the exact same swordsmanship did the soul trapped in “Tutor” disappear.
So the treasure mentioned here was probably...
“Swordsmanship.”
Ruagarne blinked one eye.
“You only need to gain swordsmanship. But while your body does not die, you will not endure the death of the mind. So instead of dealing with that sword, it would be better to find another way to open the Veil.”
Ruagarne said that, and Enkrid looked at the sword once, calm as ever, then turned his gaze back to him and asked,
“So I have to step over death and learn swordsmanship?”
“Right. It is absurd. What human could do that?”
Ruagarne’s tongue slapped her cheek again. Was that the Frog equivalent of clicking one’s tongue?
“Ah, damn, this is my fault. I’m sorry.”
Kraiss lowered his head.
“Damn it, this is killing me. With what food we have left, we can hold out more than fifteen days, but can’t we dig a tunnel up or down?”
Finn said it. She was in trouble too, but a Ranger was a Ranger. She was already trying to think of another option.
And Esther lay down and slept.
Is she sleepy even now?
Enkrid looked at all of them and thought,
So all I have to do is risk death and learn swordsmanship?
“Hey, uh, that sounds like a scam.”
It felt like the Boatman from his dreams would appear and mutter that.
Honestly, compared to being surrounded by a Gnoll horde and dying from poison at the end...
Isn’t this easier?
Enkrid furrowed his brow. He wondered if this was really right.
It felt absurdly easy, but since when had anything in this world been that easy?
No. It could not be.
All I have to do is learn one sword skill?
No way.
“What are the odds there’s another trap?”
“Tch. If there were even a ring attached, I could try something.”
Ruagarne said, showing her smooth palm.
Enkrid thought it over once more, then spoke.
“I’ll do it.”
“Going through death several times is not easy at all. Want me to show you what happens right now?”
Ruagarne said sharply. A human mind wore down easily. Yes, she knew Enkrid was the kind of remarkable man who did not retreat and kept pushing forward.
His skill suddenly rose, and sometimes impossible unknowns flashed in him.
Still, for a mortal, death always delivered the worst possible experience, no matter the form.
Enduring that was not something anyone could even attempt without extreme discipline.
“Even among priests who serve the God of Patience and Hardship, nine out of ten failed.”
That was what Tutor was.
By now, only a few remained on the entire continent.
And one of them was here.
As an antique, collectors would probably pour out gold coins just to own it.
And yet they had woven it into a trap here.
The Veil looked impossible to open unless it was done by a mage who could properly handle the right spell.
Ruagarne was not deeply versed in magic, but she knew enough.
Just in case, she cracked her whip against the Veil, but as expected, it did not even leave a scratch.
It was clearly a difficult situation.
“I’ll try once more.”
In the middle of all that, Kraiss grabbed the sword again.
“It keeps chasing me. Feels like a berserker.”
He let go of the sword like the wind. Grabbing and releasing it was no problem at all.
That was also the core of Tutor as a Demon Sword.
If you let go of the sword, you could return.
If you chose to, you could give up at any time. Giving up was easy. Then whatever curse was tied to that Demon Sword called Tutor would probably never be broken.
To cross the hill called death, unless you were some strange freak who felt joy every time you died, you had no chance.
Of course, Enkrid was not that kind of freak.
Still...
It did not seem difficult.
He could not help thinking that. He had been through too much by now.
He wondered if this would become another wall and bring out the Boatman again, but it did not seem like that either.
“Damn it, I really thought this would be like finding a copper coin on the road.”
Kraiss, who turned into an idiot whenever Krona came up, kept venting his misery.
“Should we split the food and stretch it as long as possible? Maybe the Veil will thin out over time?”
Finn worried about what came next and brought up a practical idea.
“This is something none of us expected.”
Even Ruagarne showed clear frustration.
Scratch.
Enkrid stayed calm.
Then, still calm, he grabbed the sword again.
“Enki!”
Ruagarne raised her voice unlike herself, but that was the end of it. Soon he was in the mud field again.
Second time.
The moment Enkrid stepped on the muddy ground and recognized his surroundings, he swung at once.
Bang!
He struck horizontally and shoved away his opponent’s blade.
The enemy sword looked like it was retreating, then bent and stabbed for his side.
Enkrid reacted immediately and slammed his blade downward.
Clang.
When blades collided, a sharp, clear sound rang out.
Whoooooosh.
Wind came from somewhere, the mist cleared, and he saw it.
An armored thing with blue flame eyes in a metal lump of a head, with partial plate armor on its body.
Heart of Superhuman Strength.
It did not activate.
Even so, this not working feels a bit unfair.
It did not matter.
He only needed to recognize this as a mental world, an evil spirit’s front yard, or something close to that.
He had experienced something similar once before.
Only once, yes, but how many times had he rolled through a repeating day with his life as the price?
Because of that experience, some things only needed one try.
Recognizing a situation, for example, needed only one.
So even if this place was unfamiliar, Enkrid could stay calm.
“Ah.”
My voice works.
He opened his mouth just to test it, and sound came out fine.
“Can you talk, by any chance?”
The answer came as a sword, not words.
Thud!
Armor holding a sword kicked up wet mud and rushed him.
Whoom.
A heavy strike, a downward cut dropping from above.
Speed and force were combined, and even the descending trajectory was tricky.
Enkrid blocked it the exact same way.
Block and shove. Then the opponent stabbed at his side the same way too. Enkrid responded the same way.
They were about to keep repeating the same pattern like a staged play when the blade suddenly sprang up.
No, it had been a preset sequence from the start.
The rising edge from below looked ready to skewer his jaw. Enkrid bent his left knee and twisted his waist.
The blade grazed from the right side of his jaw across his cheek and near his forehead.
The gap created by that twist let Enkrid’s sword slash toward the enemy’s waist.
Claaang.
This gets blocked too?
As blades kept meeting and separating, Enkrid was drawn into the flow. He kept trading cuts. He opened the Gate of the Sixth Sense and tried to read the opponent’s intent, but failed.
The price came through his body.
The metal thing’s blade stabbed into Enkrid’s chest.
When he woke after being pierced in the spot that would make Ruagarne panic if he got stabbed there...
“Hoo.”
A throbbing pain spread from his heart through his whole body.
He had died again.
Second death. But his body was fine. His heart pounded and the pain remained, yet he was not truly dead.
So this was what made it hard to endure?
No, this was fairly bearable, was it not?
It felt much better than actually dying.
“Did it stab you there?”
It was Ruagarne, right beside him. Enkrid nodded and stood.
After taking a few breaths, he felt fine. He could move. He was not seriously injured anywhere.
Grab it, suffer the pain of death, the moment is brief, and what I have to do is steal and learn the swordsmanship.
This felt very familiar somehow.
“Foolish. Just trying this is foolish, unless you want to go mad...”
Was Ruagarne always this nagging?
For no reason, Enkrid remembered today in the first loop.
That stab from then had now settled into his body and become his own technique, had it not?
And in Enkrid’s eyes, he also saw a Frog absorbed in nagging.
And there was the sword he had just held, the Demon Sword Tutor, with something like an evil spirit that was incredible at swordsmanship living inside it.
“Am I doing this right?”
Enkrid calmly ignored the nagging. Instead, he swung the sword. He showed the form. He unfolded what he had seen and learned from his opponent.
His intention was clear. He would train, or temper himself.
Ruagarne, who had stopped nagging, stared at Enkrid without even blinking.
Then she spoke what she had been thinking.
“Did you hurt your head? Did you already take damage?”
He had not. Enkrid neither shook his head nor added anything. He just kept swinging on his own and muttered.
A trajectory seemed about to appear, then faded.
“No, was it like this?”
In Ruagarne’s eyes, Enkrid was slow, painfully slow. Clumsy, painfully clumsy. He was a human with glaringly poor talent for moving his body or handling a sword.
I taught him myself, with this very body, and he only improved this much?
Ruagarne called herself a scholar. That did not mean she was a Frog who only sat reading books.
She had also researched swordsmanship. Her understanding was deep enough to strongly influence the sword arts of major families on the central continent.
She was not just some old Frog for nothing.
She was recognized for things other than raw force.
Among those, what stood out most was her gift for teaching.
Even so, Enkrid improved slowly, truly slowly.
There were moments she could not understand, yes.
When impossible danger hit, he changed in an instant.
No preparation, no omen, no warning.
Without any of that, his skill suddenly jumped.
Even for Ruagarne, he was the first human like this.
A human he could not understand, could never explain, could not accept through anything he knew.
“Can’t you check this for me? We’re trapped anyway.”
At that offhand remark, Ruagarne let out what was in her again.
“I think you hurt your head.”
“Kyaa.”
Even the panther lying beside them nodded.
“Are you really okay?”
Kraiss asked too.
“What, an evil spirit didn’t get into you, right?”
Finn said with worry.
Enkrid quietly swung the sword again. He could not call it perfect. It was rough in truth.
Still, Ruagarne could see the intention in that sword.
If the opponent stood in front of him, force them left, then follow with a thrust.
Enkrid moved in a similar pattern.
Using his feet and a few other parts was still a problem, but still.
So right now, Enkrid was reproducing the form.
Ruagarne was just about to say something.
“Looks like I need to watch it again.”
Enkrid said that, then suddenly grabbed the sword once more.
“This bastard is insane. Completely insane.”
Ruagarne found herself admiring him again.
= = =
Join our discord at https://dsc.gg/wetried