WE TRIED TRANSLATIONS
Translator: Hydrogen B
Editor: Abstract
Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried
A KNIGHT WHO ETERNALLY REGRESSES
Chapter 229: Should I Fix My Broken Head First?
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"If I get hit one more time, I might really die, and you still want more?"
It was not bedtime yet, but the sun had already set and dusk had thickened when Rem asked that, scratching his toe.
His attitude was lazy as hell.
Before washing up, Enkrid was wiping down his sword and checking his gear.
Beside him, Kraiss was oiling a dagger with linseed oil.
His touch was not delicate, but it was skilled.
Big Eyes had plenty of tricks.
Enkrid answered like it was nothing.
"I won't die."
More precisely, even if he died, he came back.
He had nearly died against the Half-Giant too.
He had also walked the edge of death against Swallow Blade.
Edin Molsen's guard had not been easy either. They sparred with real blades. If things went wrong, getting stabbed somewhere deep was routine.
To normal people, it would look like he was trying to die.
That kind of sparring could turn one careless moment into death. Normally someone should have stopped him, but his commander was a true lunatic who enjoyed this kind of thing.
Still, did that make challenging Oppression the right move?
If he did not have the power to break through it and win yet, it was no different from falling off a cliff bare-handed, or jumping onto blade-sharp rocks.
"It's no different from charging armored cavalry with only a quill."
Ragna added that, now in casual clothes with water still dripping from his hair. He had already washed up.
That was how pointless he thought it was.
Would Audin and Jaxon have thought differently?
Both had said similar things while handling their own business.
"I'm fine."
Only Enkrid thought differently. Was it because he saw a path? Because he had a way to deal with it?
No.
He simply knew that no matter what appeared before him, once he stepped back, he would not be able to move forward again.
Heart of the Beast, Focus Point, Blade Sense, Isolation Technique. Even if they had given him talent, they had not turned him into some once-in-an-age genius.
So what changed?
Nothing. He could learn, master things, and gain a lot, so why avoid it?
Watching Enkrid refuse to give up stirred something in Ragna.
Will.
He could use that power, even if not perfectly.
He just could not use the technique called Oppression.
Or even if he could use it, controlling it freely would be a different matter.
Meaning there was no way to let Enkrid practice it in advance.
A sharp feeling pricked around his heart.
For the first time in his life, he felt a craving. Something like thirst, something others might call the drive to improve.
Higher.
Ragna quietly sank inward.
Everyone else was resting. It was also an evening when Esther had turned human.
She had said she now needed to stay in human form once or twice a month, even if only briefly.
Esther's eyes were on Enkrid. No, she had been watching him for a while. He was the one who had only just looked back.
Her eyes were captivating. Blue like a lake, or like a clear blue moon.
After staring at him with those eyes, Esther spoke.
"You are dull."
Enkrid was used to hearing that. In some ways he was sly and quick, but when it came to swords and his dream, he was beyond stubborn, he was dull.
He knew that himself, so he did not take it as an insult.
"Can you become human once a month?"
At his question, Esther told him it was none of his business.
To be exact, she could turn human several times a month, but for now she felt more comfortable staying a panther.
Still, she had plenty to do in human form.
She had not forgotten, only put it off. She needed to reorganize her World of Spells and tune up the Flash Golem Bonehead she had obtained earlier so it could be used.
If she did not check her World of Spells often, its power dulled like an unattended blade.
"Dull? No, I said his head's broken."
Rem laughed, tapped his own head with the hand that had been scratching his toe, and spoke.
Enkrid ignored him completely.
That was the kind of evening it was. Audin was meditating, Ragna had already gone to lie down, almost like it was a day off. Then Bell came.
"Someone came asking to spar. What should we do?"
If Bell came to call him personally in the middle of the night, it meant the opponent was no ordinary fighter.
"Guys who show up at night always have something shady going on."
From behind, Kraiss said that while rummaging through his things. He looked like he had finished with the dagger and was searching for something else.
"I'll go take a look."
Shady or not, he needed a breakthrough right now.
For Enkrid, sparring a new opponent was that breakthrough.
The rapier swordsman had not admitted it, but Enkrid felt himself improving from fighting the Half-Giant, Swallow Blade, Count Molsen's guard, and that rapier swordsman.
To others, it might have looked tiny and barely noticeable, but he had improved.
In the process of refining and reviewing his sword, they had helped.
He headed out believing this one would help too.
Bell asked if he was going alone, and Enkrid nodded like it was nothing.
Nothing would happen right away.
Rem and the others behind him showed little interest.
Fair enough. Quite a few people had come at night asking to spar.
One had come secretly because he feared losing in front of spectators would damage his reputation.
Another had said he could not show his techniques publicly.
Both reasons were valid.
Enkrid usually respected his opponents.
He liked the fact that they came at all.
That did not mean he accepted just anyone.
Of course he only met people with proven skill.
Bell was his benchmark for that.
So if Bell called him, the opponent was worth seeing.
"What did he hit you with?"
"He had a sword at his waist, but he only used his fists and hands, then went 'tak' with his palm like this. It hurt."
Bell copied the technique. It was so awkward that Enkrid could not gauge much from it.
When they reached the gate.
A man stood there whose hair looked red in torchlight, though in daylight it would clearly be closer to brown.
His face looked young, and his arms were long.
The eye Enkrid had built through the Isolation Technique sized him up.
Long arms, good center of gravity.
A balanced body and long reach were good traits for swordwork.
"I'm the War-Ending Soldier."
Enkrid stepped forward and spoke.
Whoosh.
Wind blew from behind and bent the torch flame sideways.
Because of that, the shadows between the two tangled, then split apart.
"Ah, so you're him?"
The man's eyes widened. They were not bright or clear, but they held no malice or killing intent.
He looked like someone who had killed before, yet had clear standards, someone with conviction or something close to it.
Of course that was only a guess.
You could not truly know people by appearance alone.
There was also a playful air across his face. Rem's playfulness carried the seasoned mischief of a devil. This man's felt like that of a pure child.
"I'm sorry for coming so late."
He apologized first and half bowed.
Even while doing that, he observed Enkrid with his eyes. Good posture.
"It's fine."
The man's gaze swept Enkrid from chest to toes, then from toes back to chest.
He did not hide his stare when he spoke.
"Well-trained body."
Was it an exaggeration to say Enkrid felt emotion in that voice the moment he heard it?
It did not seem like one.
"Where are you from?"
Enkrid asked, unable to hide his anticipation.
"Shepherds of the Wilderness."
It was not a long conversation. Honestly, it was trivial.
Enkrid had grown used to the cringe nickname, War-Ending Soldier.
That alone showed how many opponents had come looking for him.
Still, he had not expected someone like this.
Shepherds of the Wilderness. As the name said, people who herded sheep in the wilderness while possessing absurd combat strength.
Some said their history and tradition dated back to before the imperial calendar began, a nomadic people.
Either way, none of that changed anything. If anything, his anticipation swelled even more.
The wilderness was a land where Demon Creatures and Magic Beasts swarmed.
Herding sheep there? They could not be ordinary.
"Let's do it."
At Enkrid's words, the Shepherd moved.
His step was astonishingly fast.
Right before the opponent drew his blade, Enkrid's sword cut through the dark first.
Chiring! Whoom!
Draw and cut. A Heavy Sword Style draw, rising slash.
Through the blades splitting the wind, he saw the opponent's eyes.
He also saw a dagger in the man's hand before he even realized it had appeared.
And Enkrid felt a line drawn between them.
Ping.
A low, steep cutting sound rang out.
The dagger was extremely fast.
The moment he recognized it, it was already in front of his nose.
Enkrid braced his left foot, twisted his body, and leaned his waist back.
A reflexive response.
Sense of Evasion activated.
Then the dagger bent at a right angle, a sharp angular trajectory.
In that instant, Enkrid had already switched from a two-handed grip to a single-handed one.
With his free left hand, he swept at his waist, drew a black-bladed dagger, and blocked the opponent's dagger. It was something he had taken after killing the Black Blade Bandits.
Tang!
Dagger met dagger and sparks burst.
In that brief gap, Enkrid pulled the sword in his right hand.
Not a swing, more like setting it on and dragging it across.
Instead of retreating, the opponent secured distance, the range where short weapons like daggers showed their full value.
He blocked the pulling blade by setting his dagger at a slant.
Kagagagak!
Sparks flew at close range, but neither even blinked.
Neither had time to settle their breathing.
They had entered something violent.
As if only the two of them existed in the world, as if failing to kill meant death.
They shattered moonlight, kicked up dirt, and fought cut off from everything around them.
The opponent's hands got faster. Enkrid's hands and feet sped up on their own.
The Shepherds of the Wilderness were skilled in martial arts too.
Enkrid did not yield.
With neither side gaining the advantage, Enkrid forgot many things for a moment.
Place, weather, situation, opponent.
His heart pounded, craving short breaths. In that exchange, he sank in, focused, fell deeper.
A sensation like when he had faced Mitch Hurrier took hold of him.
In one instant, he grabbed the opponent's extended elbow and activated Heart of Superhuman Strength.
Enkrid did not consciously understand or calculate his own movement.
It happened purely in instinct and sensation.
He seized the elbow and shoved it to his own right side, stepped through to take the opponent's back, then raised his sword horizontally to the opponent's neck.
From behind, he trapped the enemy's nape between his body and blade.
He pinned the elbow behind the enemy's body, then went for the neck with Guillotine Cut.
Enkrid pulled without hesitation.
He was just short of cutting the neck and taking victory.
Tak!
He felt resistance against the pulling blade.
Enkrid knew his sword was no ordinary weapon.
Even so, it was blocked.
At some point, the sword at the opponent's waist had slipped in, still inside its scabbard, between the Shepherd's neck and Enkrid's blade.
At a glance, it looked like nothing but a black rod.
"Hah!"
The Shepherd shouted. At the same time, he rocked forward and back, then slammed his back into Enkrid's chest at point-blank range. Even with Heart of Superhuman Strength active, Enkrid was pushed back.
The opponent's strength was no joke.
The Shepherd turned.
Now killing intent burned in his eyes.
Enkrid could not give ground, so he poured out killing intent too.
From low to high, stepping his left foot outward, Heavy Sword Style rising slash again.
Power and weight, rotation and timing.
Everything aligned, and Enkrid felt pure thrill.
At the same time, his rising sword met the opponent's black staff.
Boom!
Something like an explosion burst out. Then it happened. The scabbard shattered as if it burst open, and a blade sprang out from inside.
Enkrid reacted, but he could not stop it from grazing his forehead.
Right after cutting him, the opponent suddenly muttered and quickly withdrew.
That snapped Enkrid out of his immersion.
"Ah, I wasn't supposed to use even this."
The mutter reached his ears a beat late.
"Damn it. I'm sorry."
The man said it.
"What..."
Enkrid could not finish.
What is this?
From his forehead, something seeped into his body.
Poison?
No, it was not that.
Something else.
"So, uh, is there a priest nearby? If we move fast maybe you can live, ah, though it's probably already too late."
The Shepherd seemed flustered, and his words did not line up.
A horrific pain started in his forehead and spread through his whole body. At the same time, a shriek tore out from somewhere.
"That is, this is, well... you shouldn't cut people carelessly. This sword cuts a person's soul. If you endure it at the moment you're cut, you can live, but... ha, I think it's too late."
He kept rambling, explaining more than needed.
Without fully understanding it, Enkrid felt something crushing around his heart.
The Shepherd had been right.
He could not understand everything, but he caught that last part, that it seemed too late.
Something his past learning could not overcome consumed his mind.
His vision darkened.
He had thought he had gone through countless things until now, but this kind of death was a first.
Something dug through his skull, stabbed, and split it open.
It was physical too.
On Enkrid's forehead, something like black soot was rippling.
Still, he did not feel wronged.
Immersion and concentration.
It had been deeply meaningful time.
Their skills had been hard to rank above or below.
The Shepherd had fought well.
Weapon advantage? In a fight where people kill and are killed, of course it was right to use it.
Granted, this had been sparring, and he had become too absorbed in the fight itself, which was how this happened.
The cut had not been intentional. It had been a reflexive response. Enkrid liked that too, because he had done the same.
He could not resent his opponent at all.
At that final Guillotine Cut, he had tried to cut the opponent's neck too.
If he stopped his hand there, he would lose.
How to put it.
There were moments when he hated losing even if it killed him.
He had felt something like that from the opponent in front of him.
Why?
It was not that he was free of obsession with winning, but if he could learn, on a day like this, he could put less weight on defeat.
If that were not true, he would have fought Swallow Blade or anyone else to the death long ago.
Enkrid was used to thinking and reviewing.
That made it easier to understand his own tangled feelings.
Ah.
A brief realization came.
The opponent in front of him resembled that kid he had met when he first wandered the continent, the one who had put a hole in his belly after only six months of sword training.
Of course it was not that same child grown up.
But he was the kind of opponent who brought that moment back.
Place, time, weather, all of it felt similar. Even that purity on the opponent's face.
That was why he had not wanted to lose.
Because he remembered the child who had shattered his beginning.
He had once made that child the goal he needed to chase.
"Anyway, sorry for killing you."
The attitude was similar too. The Shepherd dipped his head roughly.
This bastard.
He sounded sorry, but helpless about it. The Shepherd turned and added one line.
"If you happen to come back alive, let's call it a debt I owe you. I'm Shepherd Pel."
Then he ran off. He clearly knew staying here would become troublesome.
Enkrid fell forward as he was.
While collapsing, his head was filled with one thought. If this was not poison, then what was it?
Then blackout. He died from a mere graze across the forehead. Death.
Until the moment before he died, he heard a bizarre woman's scream, and the howling of others that sounded like it rose from the bottom of hell.
It was strange.
When he closed and opened his eyes, he saw that familiar black river.
The Boatman smiled, holding a violet lamp.
"Will knowing let you overcome it?"
the Boatman asked.
Enkrid answered calmly.
"Doesn't matter if I don't know."
If getting cut meant death, then he just needed not to get cut.
No, even if he got cut.
One more time.
He wanted to relive that immersion, that moment.
He wanted to fight that Shepherd again.
Win or lose aside, wasn't he the kind of opponent who made pure thrill flood your whole body just by fighting?
Enkrid was sincere.
"...Should I fix this broken head first?"
With that, he lost consciousness again.
Though now that he thought about it, could that Boatman hear sounds from outside too?
Rem's "broken head" comment had reached all the way there.
That bastard Rem really was the problem.
A new day began again.
"You could die if you do it again."
The same evening, once more.
"I don't care, you bastard Rem. Teach Dunbakel properly instead."
"...Why does it feel like you're treating me worse than usual?"
Rem voiced his confusion, but Enkrid did not answer him.
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