WE TRIED TRANSLATIONS

Translator: Hydrogen B

Editor: Abstract

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

A KNIGHT WHO ETERNALLY REGRESSES

Chapter 183: A Mad Bastard Is Chasing Me with a Sword (3)

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Ruagarne did not show how absurd this looked.

In a situation like this, suddenly training swordsmanship, even for a madman, should have made no sense at all.

And yet it was the right answer.

"Because it's that bastard."

Because it was Enkrid, somehow it did feel possible.

Soon, Enkrid, who had been trembling while gripping the sword, let it go and stepped back.

"Did he give up?"

Giving up was easy the first time. It only got easier after that.

If he stepped back even once, the Tutor would become a wall he could never overcome.

For Enkrid, that would become a fatal weakness.

Ruagarne watched him with concern.

"It'll be a problem if it starts showing different methods."

Muttering that, Enkrid grabbed the sword again without even catching his breath.

"...?"

"Uh, well, the platoon our captain leads is called the Madmen Platoon."

Kraiss tried to put it politely. No, at this point, he had practically said it outright.

Was he not just calling Enkrid a lunatic to his face?

Call it a commotion, maybe.

While Esther went right back to sleeping face-down, Enkrid grabbed and released the sword four more times, then showed a faint smile.

"This is it."

Then he swung his sword through empty air. At that point, Ruagarne realized there was no use trying to stop him.

Then what should she do?

"You're one crazy bastard."

She gave him her admiration.

"That's not it."

Then she taught him.

Winning fights and mastering swordsmanship were different matters.

Ruagarne had deep experience and exceptional swordsmanship.

Deflecting, striking, reading intent.

A conversation told through swords, an orchestra made by swords. Enkrid memorized exactly what he had seen and suffered, and Ruagarne helped him do it.

The evil spirit living inside the Tutor also had excellent swordsmanship, but it still fell short of Ruagarne's.

If that sword had really had only one ring, if it had been something that activated with just a light touch, maybe Ruagarne could have solved it.

Kraiss tested it, and nothing happened when he touched the sword with a finger.

He had to grip it tightly, past a certain amount of force.

So this was impossible for Ruagarne.

Shhk!

She tried several more times, but it was the same.

"I can see it, but..."

The window was too short to do much with, and after that, only Enkrid could keep gripping the sword.

"Looks like things are working out."

Finn muttered as she laid out bedding. She pulled blankets from her backpack, took out hard cheese, peeled the surface with a knife, and sliced it thin.

She placed the slices on hard bread whose crust she had shaved off with the knife, and meal prep was done.

"It's my responsibility too."

Kraiss, maybe because he was thinking exactly that, stepped up and gripped the sword for no good reason.

Then he died. His body stayed intact, but his mind was left in ruins.

It happened during a moment when Enkrid was not holding the sword.

"Grrk."

Kraiss collapsed foaming at the mouth, a pointless stunt.

Esther only slept, and naturally everyone else's roles were set.

Enkrid grabbed and released the sword, then came back.

Frog taught swordsmanship based on that.

Finn and Kraiss prepared bedding and meals.

Esther ate, slept, and woke.

There was no proper place to relieve themselves, so they all handled it in a corner.

The Veil blocked even underground, but they could still dig to a certain depth.

It was roughly a hemispherical prison with a slightly bulging floor.

They relieved themselves in the spots they had dug.

"If needed, we can go over a week without relieving ourselves."

At Frog's words, Finn nodded and said she envied that.

After a full day passed,

Ruagarne felt a quiet admiration.

Originally, Ruagarne had many things she wanted to tell him, much advice to give.

Enough to feel something boiling inside her.

So much that what Ruagarne had told him while going back and forth had never felt sufficient.

Normally, these were things Ruagarne would have summarized on the way back, but now those words were becoming unnecessary for Enkrid.

What did Enkrid need for what came next?

She had planned to answer that question for him.

"He's already finding the answer."

Still, he would need at least a few words of advice.

Kraiss stayed quiet the whole time because he felt this was his fault.

It had been an easy task, like picking up a silver coin off the floor, then suddenly they were trapped, unable to see even an inch ahead.

His mind spun relentlessly, focused only on escaping this place.

Of course, no answer came easily.

"I was blinded by Krona."

This happened because he had not assumed the worst-case scenario. Through regret, Kraiss replayed his mistake.

As things turned strange, Finn gave up trying to think it through.

She simply observed Enkrid.

"Still swinging a sword in here too."

He really was consistent. Then again, if he wanted to get past the Tutor, swinging a sword was necessary.

Even so,

"You can't call him normal."

That was what she thought whenever she looked at Enkrid.

No, that outstanding skill of his had probably always included this kind of madness behind it.

Watching him, Finn felt something new fill her chest. A small realization, or maybe something larger.

At some point she had set her own limits and stopped there.

Meeting Enkrid had been shattering all of that one piece at a time, and today she finally caught the first thread of a new realization.

"Limits are not for me to decide."

Ael Karaz-style grappling, the fundamentals of being a ranger.

In all of that, had she chosen not to go further, and why had she stopped?

"Because everyone said that was right."

But not Enkrid. Even without saying it directly, through his actions, his attitude, and the way he lived, he said something else.

Finn quietly absorbed that wave of emotion.

It was unexpected, and it pressed her lips shut.

Esther was blaming herself.

"It was a pathetic hex. Something so trivial it barely deserved to be called a curse."

It was hard to even say it had reached the realm of true spellcraft.

And she had failed to notice this and gotten trapped?

If she had still been who she was before becoming a panther, this would have been the kind of failure that demanded biting her own tongue and dying on the spot.

She did have reasons.

Starting with enchanting Enkrid's sword, then constantly spending spell power to reinforce her body.

Every part of it had been overreach.

Her body was bound by a curse, and the gate to her world of spells was closed, so everything had been run through improvised methods.

All of it came back in reverse and left damage.

"Even so!"

How did she miss something this petty?

Because she had turned away from what needed to be done right now.

She thought the return trip would be easy, so she did not focus on recovery.

Esther needed time to recover the strength she had spent and the stamina she had drained.

She did not know what would happen next, but she would not just watch.

Esther lay down. She buried her face and drifted into a light sleep. At most a week, and she would recover enough mana to break this pathetic barrier.

Half-asleep, Esther kept thinking, then fell fully asleep.

As all those situations overlapped and tangled together, strange time passed.

"Knowing what you lack is important."

Even in the middle of that, Ruagarne did not hold back her teaching.

This was separate from the Tutor's swordsmanship. It was simply teaching.

Winning fights and mastering swordsmanship were different matters, and Enkrid was feeling that clearly too.

Ruagarne was an excellent teacher.

It was obvious Ruagarne was better than any instructor at the training school where Enkrid had offered up Krona.

"What happens if you sit at a card table without holding any cards?"

That was Ruagarne's question.

For Enkrid, this was a perspective he had never encountered before.

Ruagarne's next words surprised him, and once again he saw how good a teacher Ruagarne was.

She was someone who could do more than teach, she could set up signposts.

* * *

"Basics, start from basics."

"Whatever you do, build your body first."

"If you don't know how to grip a sword, you can't hold it, and if you can't hold it, you can't swing it!"

"Your eyes need to open before there is a next step, do you really need to keep gripping the sword?"

"So all that remains is thought. Think and review, and burn away the candle called life. Until it goes out, you have to keep burning your body as fuel. If you do not die, you will gain something."

"Can't you just farm? Do you really have to hold a sword?"

There had been countless instructors.

They always said the same thing.

Basics mattered.

So he did exactly that, stayed faithful to basics.

He strained his eyes, tried to move his feet faster, and never swung carelessly.

Even then, he often heard those same words.

Go farm.

Do you really have to hold a sword?

"If a man sits at a gambling table carrying a pile of silver coins, what should be in his hand?"

That was Ruagarne too.

At first Ruagarne had tried to stop him and looked stunned, but now she seemed to be enjoying this situation to some degree. Well, maybe that was only Enkrid's misconception.

Reading Frog's expression was not easy for a human.

He only felt it that way by instinct.

"You can't sit at a gambling table without cards."

"Right, cards. Right now, you're a sucker sitting there with a bag of silver."

Silver was the basics. No one sat at a gambling table without even one copper coin. At the same time, no one sat there with only a few copper coins either.

For some reason, hearing that made him feel proud.

"They told me to build my basics."

And now they were saying those basics were already built. Hating his slow growth, he had once fought desperately and sought out Vallen Style Swordsmanship.

Then could that mercenary swordsmanship become the cards in his hand?

"It can. But better than that is swordsmanship refined over long time. That Vallen Style Swordsmanship is ultimately an attack method too skewed to one side. If every card in your hand is a joker, you can't use them."

What a brilliant metaphor.

A joker only shines when linked with other cards.

That was exactly what Vallen Style Swordsmanship was.

The Five Sword Branches (Correct, Heavy, Illusion, Quick, Flowing) were defined by Leonessis Oniac.

Later generations built their own swordsmanship based on those branches.

Even Northern Heavy Sword was not just one thing.

Central-continent Correct Sword was the same.

Swordsmanship was made by mixing fitting parts from those branches, then weaving in trial and error and personal talent.

Ruagarne was talking about one of those.

More precisely, Ruagarne meant the swordsmanship learned through the Tutor.

"This is a demon sword, but what it contains is real."

In truth, Enkrid had rarely learned swordsmanship beyond basics.

Almost all of it had been surface-level.

Ruagarne stressed the need for swordsmanship once again.

"If you properly learn swordsmanship derived from Correct Sword, you'll feel like your opponent can read everything inside you."

He was already experiencing that over and over.

The evil spirit living in that sword was doing something very similar.

"I see."

Enkrid nodded, still with eyes like flames. Torchlight reflected in them, so his usual blue was mixed with red.

When it came to learning, Enkrid showed his emotions openly without hesitation. Ruagarne found that deeply fascinating.

"He really is sword-crazy."

If Ruagarne shortened it, maybe just sword-crazy.

Everything he had learned and mastered so far had been less about handling a sword itself, and more about preparing to handle one.

That was the core of what Ruagarne said.

As he learned swordsmanship through the Tutor, Enkrid realized it again.

"Hold on, I'll go grab some swordsmanship."

With a joke, he gripped the sword again. Repetition.

So instead of truly dying, he could learn swordsmanship through deaths that were much softer and more peaceful.

To be honest,

"Easy, and fun."

For Enkrid, it was exactly that.

He gripped the sword, swayed left and right for a short moment, then came back.

Blinking, he shook his head from side to side.

"Got hit again?"

"This time both legs got cut off."

He said it with excessive calm.

"The last move looked like a top-down slash, then somehow it turned into a diagonal neck slash."

He had seen the process, so he recognized it.

Then what was needed now?

Enkrid lifted the broken sword he used instead of a wooden sword, still in its scabbard.

Ruagarne's heart started pounding before she realized it.

Interest surged, and her cheeks puffed out on their own.

"You really are... an incredibly entertaining bastard."

Even the Tutor could not restrain him. No, just look at this, his mind had already surpassed the Tutor.

She kept that statement short. She could not teach new swordsmanship. She was bound by a related covenant.

But coaching him on swordsmanship he learned elsewhere was fully possible.

So they did exactly that.

He went inside, stole techniques, then came out and reproduced them exactly.

It was possible because he could control his body perfectly.

Afterward, Ruagarne refined it for him.

When that was polished enough, he gripped the sword again.

This time, he said his fingers flew off.

"After that it stabbed at my neck, and the blade bent like a snake."

"It used a wrist snap."

That was Ruagarne's answer.

Training resumed. Dark circles seemed to be forming under his eyes, yet Enkrid remained steady.

He did rest in between. If he did not eat and drink, his body would break down.

During one short break, Finn stared at the sword and muttered.

"It reminds me of an old legend. That story where if you pull out some sword, you become king."

Enkrid heard that too while resting.

Become king just by pulling one sword?

That sounded crude even for a legend.

A king was someone produced through politics and all kinds of circumstances, was he not?

Legends and stories were exaggerated by nature, so whatever.

After that, Enkrid spent most of his time absorbed in swordsmanship.

He had already grabbed and released the sword more than a hundred times.

That should have looked like self-abuse.

Enkrid stayed calm. The pain clearly remained in his body, but to someone who repeated the same day by dying, this somehow felt lighter.

"It works."

Enkrid felt joy again in learning swordsmanship.

It took exactly a day and a half.

Instead of dying to repeat a day, he could just grip the sword and immediately trade pain for high-quality swordsmanship.

That came from immersing himself without sparing time.

Short but dense time passed.

That was enough.

"It's done now."

Those words came from Ruagarne.

Was this thanks to the Tutor?

No, it was not.

Most of all, Enkrid was different from before. He was far too different from when he used to struggle and thrash around with meager talent.

Enkrid chewed over all his past todays.

In all those processes of review and reflection, how had he passed through them?

What had he gained from within them?

It was not time that could be explained simply, but if he had to say it now, Enkrid could summarize all of it in one word.

"Talent."

What he had felt among the gnoll horde had been stamped into his disciplined body.

From Heart of the Beast to Sense of Evasion.

He had trained his body, raised muscle strength, agility, and reaction speed.

He had even awakened complete control over his own body.

Boldness, concentration, and sharpened senses supported all of it.

"You, uh, what are you?"

Ruagarne was startled. To her eyes, talent had appeared where there had been none.

Then he gripped the sword once again.

Soon, with the sensation of muddy ground underfoot, a chunk of metal rushed at him.

Clang!

Sword met sword. If anything was different from before,

it was simply that Enkrid now stood there having grasped the opponent's swordsmanship.

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