WE TRIED TRANSLATIONS
Translator: Hydrogen B
Editor: Abstract
Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried
A KNIGHT WHO ETERNALLY REGRESSES
Chapter 233: Because the Weather Was Nice
= = =
“You might not believe this, but I owe you one. I am Pel of the Shepherds of the Wilderness. I hope we can meet again when the chance comes.”
Pel spoke. Enkrid, moonlight at his back, nodded.
Pel looked at him and could not hold back.
“You are the first genius like you I have ever seen.”
Enkrid did not bother denying it.
At that moment, even if Pel had asked, “Is your head broken?” he would have let it slide.
That was how much joy and exhilaration filled his whole body.
He was drunk on the fact that he had realized something new, so much that he wanted to test it again and again.
“Can you cut me one more time?”
That was why. Even after seeing Pel’s face crumple, even while knowing he had said something only a broken man would say, Enkrid could not stop himself.
“Uh, um, well... yes.”
The loser had no say. Pel did as he was told.
The man called the War-Ending Soldier took a blade to his forearm and stared at him with bright, eager eyes. Pel decided his opponent was insane.
So that old nickname, Mad Company Commander, was not an exaggeration after all.
Honestly, that fit better than War-Ending Soldier, did it not?
Or were all geniuses like this?
Come to think of it, Pel’s own group had someone similar to the man in front of him.
Did he have to go crazy too if he wanted to catch up to that kind of person?
That was the moment Enkrid pushed another man toward madness.
Of course, Enkrid did not realize it.
After getting cut again.
“Die!”
A clear command rang out between a scream and a roar. Will. Coercion. Pressure.
Enkrid gathered his mind and answered.
“No.”
He knocked it away. It was only the second time, but it already felt like he did not need more practice.
‘This is not hard.’
That made it even more fun.
Every time he had learned something, he had needed to roll in dirt and agony. He had needed to struggle and thrash.
To learn Heart of the Beast, he had not needed to cross death. He had needed to actually die.
Nothing had ever been easy.
He could not call this easy either.
There had been over four hundred versions of today.
And yet, once he understood it, this act of “refusal” felt as natural as if it had always been part of his body.
It felt like nothing in the world could be simpler.
After knocking away the second Will, his head spun.
It was what happened when he focused too hard.
Drip.
A nosebleed ran down.
“...Are you okay?”
Pel asked. Enkrid measured the time and said,
“Can we do it one more time?”
Maybe one more would be fine.
Pel’s face twisted like he had seen something he never should have seen.
In the end, Enkrid took a third slash.
Another cut scored his forearm like a diagonal line.
“Die.”
Dizziness swallowed his mind. The other man’s Will, coercion, and pressure strangled him from the inside. It tried to choke his throat and burst his heart.
Enkrid answered with perfect ease.
“No.”
Right after rejecting the coercion and pressure, Enkrid closed his eyes. Then he fainted on the spot.
“Huh? Mr. Madman?”
Right before blacking out, he thought he heard Pel calling him something strange.
“Captaaaain!”
He thought he heard Bell’s voice from far behind too.
Either way, Enkrid fell with a smile.
* * *
The rippling black river looked, in a way, like dense black mist.
A boat floating above black clouds, a Boatman on it, and a violet lamp.
It was the same view as always.
He saw it every time he spoke with the Boatman.
One thing was different from before.
“You.”
The Boatman cut himself off.
Enkrid looked at his face. Before, only one eye had been faintly visible, but now he could see the eyes, nose, mouth, and skin.
The skin was the color of gray pebbles.
He had black eyes that matched the black river, a high-bridged nose, and dull gray lips.
No matter how he looked at him, it was not the appearance of a human.
Still, he did not look like a Giant, a Frog, an elf, or Dragonkin either.
That was only natural. This being was some unknown thing outside Enkrid’s cognition.
Or maybe something like a god.
Or maybe a demon.
“Is getting stabbed your hobby?”
Why did someone with that face talk like that?
Soon enough, Enkrid decided part of the reason the Boatman spoke that way was his own fault.
“I prefer knife wounds, actually.”
Their conversations had always been like this, had they not?
The Boatman changed the topic.
“Mad, so you walk. Mad, so you can see. How is it? My face.”
The Boatman asked.
Enkrid answered honestly.
“You would not be popular with either women or men.”
Maybe demons, or those called demon bastards, would like that face.
The Boatman only snickered without replying.
His mouth stayed still, but the laughter alone echoed through the space.
Enkrid’s mind drifted away and his vision blurred.
The laughter sounded oddly dumbfounded to him, but he had no way of knowing what the other side was really thinking.
Where Enkrid vanished, over the black river, the Boatman muttered,
“So, did it feel good, getting over that wall?”
If Enkrid had been there, he would have nodded to that question hundreds of times over.
* * *
The moment he opened his eyes, he knew today had not repeated again.
“You went out in the evening and came back with stab wounds? No, I heard you got hit on purpose. Why did you not tell me? I could have drawn prettier lines with my axe.”
He heard it the instant he woke, so the words made no sense at first.
He let Rem’s words pass through one ear and lifted his head.
Pel was probably gone.
Bell had probably brought him here.
Bell had watched the fight, so he would have had plenty to say.
Even if they did not want to, once they saw him carried in after going out at night, people like Rem would not leave him alone.
With that short chain of thought, he grasped the situation.
Now he also understood what Rem had said.
“Does something dwell in your axe too?”
“Killing intent?”
Rem shot back at once. Was this bastard bored?
“Dunbakel?”
“She passed out.”
What had he done to knock a beastkin out?
Dunbakel did not seem lacking in toughness either.
Of course, she was not on the level of a Giant.
“Will you go again today, brother?”
Audin asked. Enkrid realized he had skipped morning training.
The sun was already high overhead. He had a Renewed Body, a body that recovered and regenerated, yet he had slept until noon?
‘This puts a strain on the body.’
He was starting to get a rough sense of what Will was.
He still could not define it cleanly, but showing a rejecting Will was now as easy as taking a coin from his pocket.
Doing it and enduring it were different matters.
“Hmph.”
His nose felt stuffy, so he blew it, and a blood clot came out.
“Filthy.”
Rem grumbled. The axe hung at his waist, and he was lightly sweating. Hearing that Dunbakel had passed out, it sounded like he had just beaten her down and come in.
Only Rem and Audin were watching him wake.
No, Esther was there too, napping off to one side.
Since Enkrid was no stranger to collapsing, no one panicked just because he had fainted.
They only asked who the opponent had been.
Of course, Bell the delivery boy had nothing to pass on.
“Who was it?”
Who was the one who came last night?
To Enkrid, that opponent had spent over four hundred versions of today with him, so he felt familiar.
“Pel.”
That was why he blurted out the name.
“Oh wow, Pel. Right, it was that guy.”
Rem rattled on without changing his expression.
A mistake.
“Shepherds of the Wilderness.”
Enkrid corrected himself.
A crazy group that herded sheep against Demon Creatures and Magic Beasts, that was the Shepherds of the Wilderness.
Anyone who made a living with a blade on this continent would know that name.
“Hm? Why did those guys come all the way here?”
“How would I know?”
Were they wandering as part of training, or had they stopped by on business?
Now that he thought about it, he had not asked at all.
“Looks like you had fun?”
Rem asked again. Why did he have so much to ask?
“Quite a bit.”
“You grinned and passed out, boss. I do not think I have seen that, even when you fought me till your eyes rolled back.”
Passed out smiling...
Enkrid let out a short laugh and shook his head.
“You are noisy. Move.”
He had skipped morning training, so he would finish that first.
“I will go to the market in the afternoon.”
“Is that so, brother?”
Still smiling as always, Audin nodded.
No one stopped Enkrid. Rem seemed to have asked everything he wanted, so he tossed his axe to one side and went to wash up.
After conditioning himself with the Isolation Technique, Enkrid did a quick gear check, swung his sword through the air a few times, then got ready to leave.
In the meantime, Jaxon came in and then left again.
Kraiss came in and asked if his body was okay.
“You are at an age where you should eat good food.”
Then he joked around with that line too.
Enkrid told him to hand some over if he had any and enjoyed this new today.
There had been over four hundred versions of today.
Inside those days, he had sparred and trained with them, but staying in frozen time could not be purely enjoyable forever.
Then he was given this new today.
A today only he remembered, even if it was not always the same.
Because of that, he had spoken less with them and passed by as indifferently as he could.
He had already learned clearly why a repeating today that only he remembered was a curse.
That was why he could move past it. He could quietly forget the time he had gone through alone.
More than anything, the refusal he had realized while crossing that day filled him so completely that his joy was greater.
“What are you so happy about?”
Right as he was about to leave, Ragna asked. He seemed to be planning to come along too, with a sword hanging at his waist.
It was not a good sword. He had picked up and reused the same sword he had rolled through battlefields with before.
If the chance came, it might be good to get him a decent sword.
His tone was rough, almost provocative if heard one way, but Enkrid knew that was not his intent, so he answered plainly.
“Because the weather was nice.”
At that, Ragna looked up at the sky.
Yesterday had definitely been good weather. But was it not dim today? The clouds were quietly turning a deeper gray.
They would probably become dark clouds soon, maybe even bring a shower.
Autumn rain was also a sign of changing temperatures, proof that summer was slowly leaving.
“This weather?”
Ragna asked back.
“I kept seeing only bright days.”
It was an answer no one could understand. For Enkrid, it was obvious.
He had always preferred bright days to cloudy ones, yet it had been the same weather for over four hundred days.
Even if rain poured and water filled his boots, change itself was what mattered.
After loosening up with the Isolation Technique and finishing compressed morning training, he headed to the market.
When he entered the inn, the innkeeper Allen welcomed him.
“I am glad to see you often these days, but are you really okay?”
In the Border Guard, the post of Company Commander was nearly the highest status unless you were nobility.
Allen was polite.
Enkrid found Allen’s line about seeing him often strangely awkward.
For him, this was today after nearly four hundred days had passed.
“Yeah, maybe I should stop coming before we get attached.”
Allen laughed at Enkrid’s answer. He seemed to think it was a joke.
When he entered the training ground, he saw the Rapier Swordsman standing with his back against a wall.
“Were you waiting?”
“I thought you would come today.”
“Before the others?”
“No, the other three did not want that.”
The Rapier Swordsman folded his arms and spoke again.
“This is the last day. It is pain you do not need to suffer. You do not have to challenge this.”
“That is for me to decide, and if you are scared, you are free to run.”
Enkrid’s tongue was the finest famed sword on the continent.
Even that short, simple line landed perfectly and became a lethal dagger.
“Indeed.”
The Rapier Swordsman hated the words coward and run with all his heart, so after hearing Enkrid, he steeled his resolve.
‘With Oppression.’
Breaking that dream would be good for that man too.
To aim higher, you needed talent. From what he had watched, he did not know what kind of luck had worked in Enkrid’s favor, but this was the limit. The end.
Enkrid had already drained every drop from his well of talent.
No, more than that, he had probably dragged out talent he did not even have.
So this was the end.
Enkrid walked past the Rapier Swordsman.
Watching his back, the swordsman frowned.
His gait seemed strangely different.
He could not point to one exact thing, but it had changed.
In just one day?
Even if it changed, what could have changed? Mindset, that would be all.
At his side, the barbarian soldier who came with Enkrid ran his mouth.
“Our captain sometimes gets even more broken in a single day, so do not worry too much. If it gets too extreme, my axe might start dancing, so watch yourself too.”
“Do not worry, brother. He is not someone who would die to something like Oppression.”
Then a big soldier built like a bear added that too.
The blond soldier who always passed by as if nothing mattered.
And the reddish-brown-haired soldier who had already taken a spot on one side, though no one knew when he arrived.
Everyone who should gather had gathered.
The people staying at the inn, and the people who had faced Enkrid four hundred days earlier, came out one by one.
Among them, Edin Molsen stepped forward first, with a stiffer face than usual.
“I request a spar.”
Had he still not taken enough beatings?
While everyone thought that, Enkrid fell into serious thought.
‘What was this bastard’s name again?’
It had been four hundred days. He had forgotten the name.
“Uh, what was your name again?”
In a way, that was Edin Molsen’s berserk trigger.
“What?”
For Enkrid, four hundred days. For Edin Molsen, only a few days.
Forgot his name? My name?
Edin Molsen lost his reason.
“Fine then, I will kill you!”
Clang! Edin drew his sword and charged hard.
A guard watching nearby frowned. He had fallen for such a provocation.
Enkrid thought he should not have asked the name and moved his hands and feet.
There was no need to draw his sword, so he did exactly that.
Looking at the incoming blade, he used the step he had learned through the Flowing Sword Style.
He dodged with soft footwork. It looked like a choreographed spar.
His evasion came first, then Edin Molsen’s blade split the space where Enkrid had just been.
It was a trick possible only because he had seen, judged, and predicted in advance. To someone who did not know, though, it could have looked like a stage play.
Why would a man swing his sword at empty space?
Then Enkrid’s backhand struck Edin Molsen’s wrist.
Smack!
While striking with the back of his hand, he stepped in and drove his palm into the other man’s abdomen.
Thud!
Valaf-style Grappling, Push Strike.
A blow that added rotational force from ankle to waist to shoulder and finally palm.
With Enkrid’s raw strength on top, it was never going to be a light hit.
But that was not the only surprising part here.
Before, when he had first dropped Edin Molsen in one blow, it had been half a gamble.
Now it was not. Calm confidence overflowed. He looked like a different person in just one day.
After shoving his opponent away, Enkrid looked at his own palm and thought:
‘Why is this so easy?’
Had that guy whose name he forgot gotten weaker?
That could not be it.
= = =
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