WE TRIED TRANSLATIONS

Translator: Hydrogen B

Editor: Abstract

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

A KNIGHT WHO ETERNALLY REGRESSES

Chapter 186: That Lie Is White.

= = =

After Enkrid left, Rem, no, everyone around Rem became diligent again for the first time in a long while.

Instead of harassing passing soldiers, Rem spent more time swinging his axe alone.

He did something close to real effort. He kept sweating.

Ragna did the same.

Audin was no different.

Everyone except Jaxon was like that. Jaxon spent much more time outside the barracks, so he only joined in now and then.

And so the life-on-the-line sparring continued.

It was truly brutal.

"Damn."

Every soldier watching clicked their tongue.

Watching Rem, Ragna, Audin, and even the Elf Company Commander all jump in and fight left the soldiers frustrated. Despair patted them on the shoulder.

Was there anyone who could watch them, grit their teeth, and swear they would catch up?

"Are those bastards insane?"

Even Torres of the Frontier Guard frowned hard.

"This isn't just discouraging people. It's crushing them."

His complaint quickly became the whole barracks' complaint.

Could anyone really keep going by believing that swinging a sword every day would make them like that?

The Elf Company Commander did not fall behind either.

"You're pretty good?"

Even Rem said that to her. She was far beyond just pretty good. Aside from Will, people would have believed she was at squire level.

How could someone with that kind of skill be just a company commander?

Then again, there were people with that level serving as regular squad members, so the Elf Company Commander was still in a good spot.

That chaos was exactly why the Battalion Commander gave them a separate training ground.

The Elf Company Commander had actively suggested it too.

"It seems the mood in the barracks has fallen apart a bit."

After that brief report, the new training ground was set up immediately.

It made sense. The training boom Enkrid had once sparked had gone cold before anyone noticed.

Even if someone had tried to force it, this kind of collapse would not have been easy. A few intense sparring sessions did it anyway.

Monsters like those existed in this world.

And because of those monsters, a heavy wave of gloom spread through the barracks.

He used to be a guy who loafed around on his bunk. He really did.

That guy Ragna was a genius among geniuses.

How could someone swing such a sharp sword from a posture that looked completely broken?

Torres secretly tried to copy the move and fell flat.

That was not something you could replicate just by watching.

And then there was Rem.

Not only was his personality nasty, his axe work was nasty too.

He slammed down the two axes in his hands one after the other, and the very first swing already looked hard to block.

And what about the hulking man who blocked all of it?

"Brother, please go to heaven!"

His tone was gentle, but he constantly spoke like he was about to kill someone. And it did not end there.

He did not fall behind even barehanded. Sometimes he came out with a club, but his foundation was hand-to-hand combat.

Audin was a master of martial arts.

On the previous battlefield, he had snapped enemy neck bones like corn stalks and broken them like twigs.

"May you go to the Lord's side!"

He was a terrifyingly skilled fighter.

After that came Jaxon, eyes wild, saying nothing as he swung his sword.

And finally, the Elf Company Commander closed things out.

Watching them drained the soldiers' motivation.

These were people who had not trained properly before, yet their talent was blinding. Talent so dazzling it almost hurt to look at.

Then Enkrid returned.

In the meantime, Rem had sharpened his edge through life-on-the-line sparring. For the next stage, for a better tomorrow, he had swung his axe in earnest for the first time in a long while.

Even before those life-on-the-line spars, he had been confident he could beat a squire like Eisia. No, confident he could kill one.

The technique called Will that squires used was still a way of handling the body, so at minimum he would not get knocked out for nothing.

Even if one of those rare, exceptional squires showed up, he might not win easily, but he would not drop dead from a single slash.

That Rem had truly sharpened his edge. He had actually put in effort to improve.

Ragna was the same. To the point that calling him lazy no longer fit at all.

Morning and night, he held his sword, swung it, and sank into thought. He was not dozing. He was truly meditating.

Even so.

'The rhythm still isn't breaking?'

Rem was half serious. If he crossed into full seriousness here, one of them would die before it ended. For a spar, this should have been the stopping point.

Even so.

'A little more.'

Enkrid's sword dropped straight down from above, a slash aimed at the crown of his head. Rem struck at it with his axe, and the blade curved downward.

This time it looked less like a snake and more like a bird of prey. Like a hawk gliding through the air before plunging into its target.

The sword gained sudden acceleration mid-swing and tried to slip out of Rem's sight.

He barely caught the trace and defended again.

Clang!

'Fuck.'

Rem smiled without realizing it. When had he last felt this while sparring with his own Squad Leader?

Before, sure, it had been fun. But only fun.

The kind of fun you got from an upbeat dance.

Then what about now?

Along with his fighting spirit, exhilaration rose up.

He wanted to feel more of this.

'Just a little more.'

At first, his axe had moved to gauge Enkrid's level. Then the gap kept narrowing.

By the standard Rem and Ragna had set at the start, they had moved from a warm-up spar with no lives on the line to one with half a life on the line.

Slick.

A gap opened while Rem crossed his axes. He thought he had blocked everything, but a thrust slipped through a tiny opening and grazed his cheek.

A scratch. Just a scratch.

But he had failed to block it. Rem's lips twisted strangely. He was having so much fun he felt like he might go mad.

The excitement surged too far and stirred his brain. It felt like something new was flowing out from all over his body.

Heart of Superhuman Strength activated on its own and heated his whole body.

His heart pounded, and at the same time he swung his axe violently.

From half a life on the line to all of it on the line, that jump took an instant.

At that moment, Enkrid's eyes unfocused, and his sword dropped to the floor like a cut kite.

Rem was shocked.

'Fuck!'

He had no room to pull his axe back. At this rate he was about to split his Squad Leader's skull and see his brains.

A gap between gaps, the time span of a blink.

Clang!

A sword shot in and blocked the axe's path.

Then two hands smacked in and grabbed his knotted forearm.

Last came a thick hand that snatched his left wrist, which was about to move on reflex.

Ragna, Jaxon, and Audin, in that order.

"You were going to kill him the moment you saw him?"

"...Damn it, kill who? I was going to stop on my own, clean and sharp. Why are you getting in my way and making a fuss?"

Bluster. Everyone knew it. And everyone understood it too. Ragna, Audin, and Jaxon had all seen it.

Their Squad Leader had changed.

He had returned at a level none of them had expected.

Sword strikes without hesitation, a battle of calculations, and even bodily coordination on top of that. Then there were the changes in reaction speed and movement.

Jaxon saw at a glance what made that possible.

'Sense of Evasion.'

He was deeply satisfied. Most of all, that Enkrid had mastered it properly.

Jaxon nodded.

Ragna saw something else.

'A refined sword.'

Should he call it swordsmanship? The quality of Enkrid's swordsmanship had changed. The way he swung, the shape of his thinking, this was not a minor shift.

'He fused his own strengths with swordsmanship.'

It meant he had not learned by blindly following instructions. He had understood it and learned it properly.

In just two months?

Even if Frog had poured in everything while traveling with him, could this really happen?

Ragna knew better than anyone that his Squad Leader had changed, and would keep changing.

What Enkrid needed was talent for controlling his body, and now those pieces had started to stack up.

Ragna had a good eye for this.

Still, this was different.

Among all of them, only Audin understood Enkrid's physical condition perfectly.

'This makes me smile, Squad Leader brother.'

His body was truly in a satisfying state. The degree of training, the changed athletic ability.

And what was all of that built on?

What was the foundation that let him learn that stray-cat brother's technique called Sense of Evasion?

'The Isolation Technique.'

Among priests, those who focus on physical training are called monks. The Isolation Technique was a method carved down from those kinds of bodily training disciplines.

Enkrid's body had been built that way.

'And he must have reached Renewed Body as well.'

Explosive recovery was one of the reasons to remake the body.

It was another deeply satisfying moment.

And lastly, Rem was amazed more than anyone.

'When did he get this far?'

The thought struck him all over again.

The lunatic who had demanded a spar the moment they first met had now become a skilled lunatic too.

He had evolved perfectly into a certified madman.

It was astonishing, nothing but astonishing.

Rem loved it.

Did it matter how Enkrid had improved?

'No.'

It did not.

What mattered was that this looked fun. From here on too.

Even though they had been given a separate training ground, it was not blocked off on all sides.

The fence was full of holes, and it barely reached an adult's chest. What could that hide?

At most, it marked a boundary.

Some people crossed that boundary to watch the spar.

Soldiers who had lost motivation and whose hearts had already broken.

Vengeance was among them.

'Monster bastards.'

The Madmen Platoon, Rem included, was truly a group of monsters.

Watching Enkrid at the head of that group, he could not understand how that man stood there.

That was how Enkrid returned.

And Vengeance saw it.

He saw Enkrid refusing to give Rem even a single step.

He knew where Enkrid had started. Because he had hated him, he could say he knew it even better.

Enkrid had truly been an unremarkable soldier. A low-ranking soldier. That was what people called him.

'An old man with no talent.'

So what was he now?

Vengeance could not tell what was different from the old spars. He only felt that the atmosphere itself was different with every inch of his body.

Rem and Enkrid.

The Madmen Platoon members around them.

Most of all, his own feeling.

Too different, far too different.

Even down to the way Enkrid collapsed at the end.

Vengeance realized his broken spirit had only been a campfire whose spark had briefly gone out.

'I can do it too.'

It was strange. When he looked at Rem, Ragna, or Audin, they only felt like monsters. But when he looked at Enkrid, he wanted to resemble that effort.

He wanted to stand on the same line, by his side.

Was it because he had watched Enkrid's effort all this time? Or just a difference in familiarity?

He did not know. There was no such worry inside Vengeance.

Only desire remained.

"Today's special training."

"Yes!"

Vengeance's squad, watching nearby, answered in unison.

It was not only Vengeance.

All the soldiers were the same. In the hearts of those who had watched Enkrid fight, a fire called motivation rose up.

From the very next day, a strange training fever swept through, perhaps inevitably.

On the day Enkrid returned, he sparred with Rem.

"It looks like you overdid it. You're still not fully used to it yet."

His eyes rolling back and his strength draining had happened because he overused Heart of Superhuman Strength.

Then again, Rem had come at him seriously.

"You'll get used to it if you keep using it, right?"

Rem said it, but he was unsure himself. In reality, had anyone besides him ever mastered this properly?

Seemingly no one, and Enkrid was the first to absorb it this far instead of merely imitating it.

The next day he sparred with Ragna.

"Where did you learn that sword form?"

"From a passing evil spirit."

That was not wrong.

Then even Jaxon joined the sparring, which was rare.

Audin taught him a new joint lock.

Enkrid was happy that he had people like this to train with as soon as he returned.

How enjoyable this was. To keep swinging his sword and throwing his body into motion without rest.

To move forward toward a new self.

Even without repeating today, he could still gain something.

"Fiance?"

The Elf Company Commander came too. Naturally, the sparring continued.

Only then did he realize it. When she held a sword, the company commander was no less than Rem.

"Now that our ranks are equal too, when are we holding the ceremony?"

When would those elf-style jokes stop?

Still, he had no intention of saying anything now. There was no reason to.

It was daily life now.

Esther slept for two full days straight, and after that she only came into his arms once every two days.

He had no idea what kind of change that meant.

Kraiss properly sold the few Ancient Gold Coins they got this time.

On top of that, the Pioneer Village bought the weapons and gear taken from the gnolls at generous prices.

Through this and that, they ended up fairly rich in Krona.

In the middle of all the sparring, Enkrid visited the blacksmith.

"Broken? The armor too?"

The armor was torn and gouged on the outside, and even the inner chain had many snapped links. In short, it was thoroughly wrecked.

The swords had broken. Their cores were damaged. They could not be salvaged. He had still brought them, wondering if they might at least be melted down and reused.

"Two swords?"

"It just happened."

He had cut down hundreds of gnolls. It was lucky things ended with only this much damage.

"Any spare chainmail?"

Enkrid asked. The blacksmith sighed, then nodded.

"Not now, but I'll make one. We've had quite a lot of good iron come in recently."

At those words, Enkrid nodded and held out a sword.

The item called a Demon Sword.

"Sharpen this blade for me."

The blacksmith examined it and said,

"This isn't some common piece, is it? Just the blade?"

"No. Replace the pommel and the grip too. The balance feels slightly off."

The blacksmith nodded.

The blade itself was excellent, but the fittings were a mess.

"Some good deer leather came in. I'll wrap the grip with that."

He was agreeing to do the work. Enkrid nodded. After paying a fair price, he left, then stopped by a seasoned jerky shop and picked up a few pieces. Before long, it was evening.

"Not eating more?"

"It's time to go."

He could not ask the blacksmith to make him a sword on top of everything else, so he planned to get one through merchants coming into town.

Somehow, he had ended up empty-handed.

Enkrid felt a void at his waist. Even if he still had a shortsword, a guard sword, and knives tucked there, it felt empty.

'Nice weather.'

But the atmosphere in the city was not good. He asked a few passing merchants and got an answer quickly.

"There are rumors that a bandit group is targeting the city. People also say demon creatures are swarming up from the south. On top of that, they say an envoy from the eastern city came and threw around threats."

Border Guard was a military city. More precisely, it bordered Azpen.

A bandit group targeting a place like this? At any normal level, that was impossible.

Even so, there were always mad bands of brigands. They had caused trouble when fighting Azpen too.

Demon creature trouble was always around anyway.

East from here? That meant the City of Swords. Picking fights from there was routine too.

Still, the fact that these rumors were spreading would become a problem.

There was a saying that when dark rumors spread, children increase and goods decrease.

City people stop moving around outside and stay home, while visits from outside merchants thin out.

Something similar had happened before when demon creatures grew too numerous, so Border Guard had sent troops out.

Enkrid had gone out for one of those missions.

That was when he cut down a harpy. That one had felt pretty good, crisp and satisfying in the hand.

In any case, ugly rumors were going around, but no order had come down from above yet, so whatever.

'They'll handle it.'

Commanders had a commander's share of responsibility.

He had been appointed company commander, but it was still unofficial.

Meaning it was the Battalion Commander's unilateral call.

And the nobles behind it.

How to put it, this city also had plenty of snake-like bastards who looked like blue blood really flowed through their veins.

He did not like that, but it was not as if he could stab every one of them to death on sight.

'It's not like I'm Rem.'

Naturally, that was impossible.

When he returned to the barracks, he saw Rem.

'Yeah, I can't live like that guy.'

"Your eyes look weird."

Rem was almost as perceptive as Kraiss. Especially when someone was cursing him.

"You were talking shit about me while walking through the market? No, you cursed me in your head."

Sometimes Rem's excessive sharpness made Enkrid think his instincts were no joke.

Enkrid acted according to his own belief.

If a lie could put the other person at ease, then that lie could be called white.

"No."

He shook his head.

"Then why do I feel bad?"

'Because your personality is twisted.'

"Feels like you cursed me again?"

"No."

A place where sharp instinct and pure white lies crossed constantly.

Now, Enkrid felt this place was like home.

Had the Battalion Commander said he hoped Enkrid would love this city?

It was not a desperate kind of love, but he did not dislike it. He meant that sincerely.

= = =

Join our discord at https://dsc.gg/wetried