WE TRIED TRANSLATIONS

Translator: Hydrogen B

Editor: Abstract

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

A KNIGHT WHO ETERNALLY REGRESSES

Chapter 194: Handle It Yourself (2)

= = =

"Isn't this too much, Captain? Seriously."

Kraiss spoke with both eyes swollen and bruised blue. Enkrid pulled off his boots and replied.

"Weren't your eyes blue to begin with? That brat Rem's got talent. That's disguise-level. I almost didn't recognize you."

The bruises around his eyes were so bad you could barely see his eyeballs. Whatever Rem had done, both cheeks were puffed up just right too.

He probably had not meant to beat him senseless.

Still, he'd gone a little overboard.

It looked like he had bled from the nose too. There was a red smear under his nostrils, like spilled paint.

At Enkrid's words, Kraiss snorted, swallowed, then let out a long sigh and said,

"Hasn't Rem been way too touchy lately?"

If touchy was the word, Enkrid agreed.

Rem felt sharper than usual.

Things he would have let slide before now had him reaching for an axe.

Like this.

"Keep your eyes open when you walk around. Makes me want to split your skull with an axe."

He would throw that at some soldier from another unit just for looking at him.

And sparks flew with Ragna all the time.

"Hey, picky eater, you want your skull cracked?"

When Rem opened with that,

"Come out. I'll split your skull and dip honey in it."

Ragna shot back like he was answering a call, and the two of them went straight into a vicious spar.

Enkrid's reaction had changed from before. He used to jump in and stop them first. Now he watched first.

There was a lot to see and learn in their sparring.

And if he watched long enough, they sometimes ended it on their own.

Maybe that was growth.

Maybe they were finally past being kids who picked fights every other breath.

"Hah, good sweat. You want a round too?"

After they finished, it became Enkrid's turn. He pulled out what he had learned from watching them, ran through it alone, and tested what he had trained. It was genuinely enjoyable.

Unlike before, Enkrid was fiercer now, and Rem was serious too.

"Feet!"

If his footwork lagged, Rem snapped at his feet.

"Where are you looking!"

Sometimes Rem disappeared like magic. Of course, it was not a spell, just physical ability.

Even when Enkrid lost him with his eyes, he barely caught him with his senses.

Wham.

A blade swung.

Clang!

An axe met it.

Serious sparring was a good sign, and Enkrid always felt refreshed after it ended.

But why was everyone this edgy.

Rem and Ragna sniping at each other was daily life.

The worst was Rem and Jaxon.

To Enkrid, it was endless pointless nonsense, but maybe it was different for those two.

Rem was heading out while Jaxon was coming in, and they stopped face-to-face at the doorway.

Neither moved.

Rem slowly stroked the handle of his axe, and Jaxon let his arms hang.

Even Enkrid could not just watch that.

'This is bad.'

How had he shoved himself between them before?

That murderous air, something like the "Oppression" that squire Eisia used, he had to force his body into the middle to stop them.

"Enough."

Then if he added one more word,

"Hm."

Jaxon stepped aside with a small dry cough, and Rem stomped out without a smile or a word.

Touchy. Too touchy.

Of course, it was not just Rem.

Ragna gave off the same edge sometimes.

Jaxon too.

Only Audin seemed the same as always.

Rem said he was going on patrol, rambling that he hoped to run into a passing manticore.

Audin said he was going to give evening prayers and a sermon to soldiers from another unit.

There was a deeply devout group there, and Audin was a highly revered soldier among them.

Jaxon was gone as usual, and Ragna slept in one corner of the bedding area. Same as always.

Enkrid scanned the barracks and spoke.

"Yeah, I think so."

That was his answer to Kraiss asking whether Rem had gotten touchy. The more he thought about it, the more it seemed true.

"Ow, anyway, why did the Battalion Commander call you over?"

Maybe Kraiss was satisfied just getting agreement, because he did not spend another word on Rem's temper.

What was the point, really.

That lunatic had always been like that.

Ignoring him was the answer.

"Escort duty for the Black Blade Bandits' mercenary contract delegation."

At that blunt answer, Kraiss's eyes went wide. When he opened them that much, his eyeballs peeked through the blue swelling.

Didn't it hurt? It looked like it should.

But Kraiss ignored the pain.

No, maybe he only felt it now, because he asked with a grave expression,

"You're doing it, right? Knight."

Enkrid did not know why he suddenly asked that, but he nodded.

The answer to that kind of question was always the same.

And he understood asking again.

The dream of becoming a knight sounded absurd.

Now it had tilted and been stitched back together, so it no longer felt like before, like a dream torn into scraps.

Even so, it was never an easy road.

As if Enkrid didn't know that.

Kraiss was not mocking his captain, and he was not trying to drag him back to reality either.

Enkrid was crazy.

If he said he'd do it, he did it.

If he said he'd save someone, he saved them.

If he fought, he fought.

'He's not normal.'

If you lived like that, dying young was expected. Hard to make it past twenty. Yet the captain was thirty-one this year, wasn't he?

It was enough to make you wonder how he had survived this long.

Anyway, that was the kind of man he was.

And that kind of man said he would become a knight. Since he was not one to give up, Kraiss had looked into the process of becoming a kingdom knight.

What kind of people usually entered knight orders.

What kind of people could become squires before apprentice knight rank.

Most were nobles' children. Or people tied to major merchant groups. If not power and money, then collateral royal blood.

Then what if you were neither noble nor from a respectable house?

Even then, once in a while, truly once in a great while, geniuses were born who awakened impossible talent.

Those people were recognized by the kingdom through pure ability and became knights. Of course, they still needed some luck.

'So is that common?'

Absolutely not. Never.

People called geniuses in the provinces?

Once they met kids from prestigious families who had trained properly and systematically since childhood, they usually got beaten down.

Learning swordsmanship and awakening talent both favored the center.

The center was on a different level from the frontier, so the teachers, the drive, and the sparring partners were all better.

Skilled people gathered in the center, talented people naturally gathered around the royal palace, and among that concentration, talent grew even more.

A real genius.

If you were not the kind of person who could stand on pure ability alone, this path was usually brutal.

For people not from great houses, the path to knighthood was incredibly hard. Difficult. Painful. A road of adversity.

So then, say a genius did exist, what did he need to become a knight?

Skill? Skill was obvious.

"You didn't refuse, right?"

"Hm?"

"The mission. You didn't refuse, right? Right? You wouldn't, right? You have to take it. No matter what."

Beyond skill, what he needed was merit.

Proof that he had served the nation.

Merit became honor, and honor proved the one who bore it.

For an outsider, especially one who had been a drifter mercenary, Kraiss believed the first hurdle to enter a knight order was merit before skill.

So if Enkrid really wanted to become a knight.

"Tell me. You didn't refuse, right? You didn't, right?"

The mission from the Battalion Commander might not have sounded welcome to Enkrid.

Kraiss thought so too.

Escort duty for a delegation?

And who was this delegate?

From Enkrid's plain words, Kraiss's sharp mind read the full situation.

Who would be going was obvious. That half-baked noble bastard and his weird-eyed guard.

Those two would be at the center.

Instead of assigning at least a platoon, they were substituting Enkrid's combat power.

Why? Why stick Enkrid at that noble's side?

'There's an agenda.'

And that agenda was clear. Control him. Kill him, or push him into something close to it.

The problem would be the noble noticing and backing off.

'So that's it.'

Marcus was a fox. War maniac, my ass.

To Kraiss, the Battalion Commander was the foxiest fox of them all.

Even if he looked like a mountain bandit.

There had been the Azpen front, the Green Pearl battle. After that performance, Enkrid cut down a thousand gnolls. He killed the colony leader and a cultist.

Just last night, he crushed ten experts from the Black Blades.

Audin had killed a manticore too.

And in the process, Kraiss himself had swallowed up that manticore corpse, yet higher command said nothing.

He had expected them to take a cut if they wanted compensation.

But the Battalion Commander buried everything, starting with the gnoll matter. No, he did not announce anything and let it pass quietly.

He let believers believe, and even when wild rumors spread everywhere, he let them.

Why?

Because he disliked Enkrid? No way.

'When someone bends the knee and crouches low.'

It's to jump higher.

He hid and deceived. The one thing he deceived others about was Enkrid and the Madmen Company's true strength.

What was there to gain from hiding that?

Kraiss's mind spun hard. Someone else might have smoked at the ears, but this was easy for him.

Of course it was.

To survive, he had moved while tracking far more than this.

Compared to that, this was safe. Sit still and think.

If he kept tying one thought to another, one answer came out.

What led battlefields on this continent now?

The ones who shattered strategy and tactics were the breed called knights.

And weren't mercenaries called knight-class the same?

Weren't there similar beings among other races, which was why the term knight-class existed at all?

So, a small elite force.

That had long been the core that drove strategy.

Of course, no commander in a large-scale war got cocky and relied on one knight alone.

Even in the previous Azpen war, the overall flow of battle shifted because the Border Guard standing army won what had only been an outer-front fight.

'It's war.'

All of this was preparation for war. If your side hid its strength, that became a lethal hidden card against the enemy.

'And this is the first move for that.'

To Enkrid, it looked like the swelling in Kraiss's eyes had gone down.

At least that was how it looked to him.

'Shining for no reason.'

His eyes shone even more than the Battalion Commander's had earlier.

"If you refused..."

Refused what?

"I said I'd do it."

"Wow, ah, good, that's important right now. Because."

"I know."

"No, it's not just what it looks like. This delegation escort isn't really an escort."

"They're asking me to kill that bastard."

Kraiss blinked at Enkrid's words. His swollen blue eyes said it all.

Ah, right. He wasn't an idiot.

"Your eyes look insolent."

"What?"

"Never mind."

He could not hit someone who had already been beaten like this. Enkrid let it go.

"Merit. A step toward becoming a knight. I know."

That was why it mattered.

Marcus had wider reach and higher status than he looked.

The delegation mission itself was not directly tied to merit.

But Enkrid knew this would not begin and end so simply.

Not because of logic or guesses.

It was just a feeling.

Instinct and sixth sense.

Ever since his senses sharpened and grew keener, he sometimes got an intuition that jabbed through his head.

It happened again this time.

He should not leave this alone.

So there was no reason to refuse.

"No, I got scared you'd refuse because it would get in the way of training. Exactly. Merit. Right now, that's what you should collect above anything else. More than skill, merit matters. Honestly, there are probably guys in knight orders like that too, right? The kind who keep their place on rough merit points? Even the Red Cloak Knights can't be free from power politics."

It was cynical, but Enkrid thought the same.

"So I decided to take two with me."

If he got a chance to kill, would he kill?

Or would he move with the situation?

How far ahead had Marcus thought?

Then what would Enkrid choose?

He had accepted the mission.

After that, things would change depending on his choices.

"Two? Who?"

Kraiss asked.

"Not you."

Enkrid tapped Big Eyes on the head, then turned away.

Esther would probably follow even if he said nothing.

"Ah, I can't. I'm busy."

Finn refused first.

Would they need a ranger for this?

Probably not. A good ranger was always an excellent companion, but this time they probably would not need a guide.

"I'm taking Rem and Ragna."

Their touchiness bothered him. And he wanted Rem and Jaxon apart.

If Rem and Ragna stayed at his side, there would not be a major incident.

At least Jaxon and Audin were the calm type.

Kraiss nodded at the calculated lineup and said,

"So you decided to kill them all."

"...Hm?"

That was not Enkrid's intention. A mission was a mission, and outwardly he planned to carry out escort duty properly.

"Rem, huh. Well, first you have to keep him under control until you're outside where there are no eyes on you. As for the bodies, yeah, you'll need to bury them, so I'll pack a folding shovel in the bag."

Hmm.

Enkrid was about to deny it, then remembered thinking a few days ago that Rem absolutely must not run into that noble bastard.

Well, he could stop him somehow.

It was not like Rem never listened at all.

"So when do you leave?"

"Tomorrow."

Pheeeew.

Kraiss tried to whistle and failed because his swollen lips would not shape it.

"Urgent too."

He added words in place of the whistle, then muttered that it made sense.

Enkrid, meanwhile, was thinking about taking a prisoner as a guide.

If he brought Rem and Ragna, combat power would not be a problem.

More than that.

Enkrid looked down at his palm.

He saw calluses. His palm had split and healed so many times from swinging a sword that it had turned rough and twisted.

Some fingerprints on his fingertips had worn down so far they were nearly erased.

He had used his fingertips heavily while training the Sword Flicking Technique.

Wanting a return for effort, wanting some reward.

That was only natural. After enduring and enduring, if a reward finally reached your fingertips and you seized it, then what?

'Not bad.'

Enkrid muttered out of habit.

His confidence had risen a little from everything he had built so far.

And he no longer leaned on repeating today.

There was no boatman in his head.

He was only measuring tomorrow again.

A road he walked forward.

A road where the destination looked clearer than before because there was a signpost.

Separate from training, he had no intention of ignoring merit.

He would not hesitate to stand at the front of the battlefield.

This was no longer the time when he had to drive his mind hard just to survive.

When he charged at gnolls.

When he stepped out before the Black Blades.

Thump.

It was fun. Honestly, it was so much fun.

That moment of stepping forward instead of hiding behind others.

"I want to become a knight."

When Enkrid first spoke his dream as a child, that was what he dreamed.

To stand in front of someone.

To stand at the very front of the battlefield.

To stand at the front and stand where he could prove his skill, a different proof from before.

At the root of his dream to become a knight was a village boy who imagined himself fighting on the battlefield.

That boy born in a rural village had finally touched part of that dream, and he was still moving forward.

= = =

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