WE TRIED TRANSLATIONS

Translator: Hydrogen B

Editor: Abstract

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

A KNIGHT WHO ETERNALLY REGRESSES

Chapter 242: Daily Life Stayed the Same, but What It Held Changed

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"Why isn't he leaving?"

Edin Molsen did not feel like a burden. At first, Enkrid had wondered whether it was really fine to beat him up like this, but repetition dulled things, did it not?

So instead of treating him as Count Molsen's son, he treated him as an opponent who kept charging in, and decided to respect that spirit that refused to give up.

Which meant he threw himself into beating him senseless.

"Take it easy. At least a little."

Kraiss had to step in and say that much.

"He keeps coming at me."

Enkrid was not beating him for no reason. This was someone who challenged him endlessly and kept throwing himself in.

How could he treat someone like that halfheartedly?

He could never do that. The road he had walked taught him that if someone noticed they were being treated carelessly, it became poison instead. That was far more insulting.

For Enkrid, respecting his opponent was the easier path. Of course, that was his own perspective and method.

"Come on."

Again. Edin Molsen came in with a wooden sword. He was not charging in like this because he was stupid.

At least now he no longer drew a real blade. At first, Enkrid had knocked him down without even drawing his own sword, but not anymore.

Now he swung, cut, and thrust properly.

Enkrid never lost his manners.

To him, manners meant never ignoring the sincerity the other side showed.

His manners were these.

Smack!

He cracked the other man on the head without a hint of mercy.

"Ghk!"

Or he drove a strike near the solar plexus hard enough to knock him out with a short scream.

"Brother!"

Edin Molsen's younger brother, who had been watching, used to panic. Only at first.

To say it again, repetition dulled things.

"Are you all right?"

Now even when Edin dropped, his brother stayed calm.

If Enkrid had wanted him dead, he would have died long ago. And if Enkrid had wanted to cripple him, that would have happened long ago too.

Had they not already passed twenty sparring matches?

"Huh, he came again? Tough body on him."

In one sense, Rem should have been Edin's enemy. Was he not the man who had killed his brother?

Yet Rem acted like he did not care at all.

His face really was made of steel. Were all barbarians like this?

A pointless question. Not important. Thick-skinned or not, Rem was Rem.

A monster who handled two axes absurdly well.

And Enkrid was simply deeply satisfied with that monster's skill.

"I'm warmed up."

A smile spread across Rem's face at Enkrid's words.

"I'll say it again..."

"I might die?"

Even with his words cut off, Rem kept smiling. Enkrid answered that wide grin.

"You could too."

"Fuck, I don't usually curse, you know that? Nothing gets me more excited than punching the captain in the mouth."

Enkrid agreed with that, mentally and physically.

He truly related to it.

"Same here."

"...You got a habit of punching your own face?"

Enkrid stared straight at Rem.

Those gray eyes met Enkrid's blue ones head-on.

Rem had not spent all that time fooling around either.

If Enkrid had learned Heart of the Beast from him, Rem had learned something too.

Now that he looked, Rem's skill had leaped forward. Not with weapons, but with his tongue, the kind that twisted people's moods and made their blood boil.

"That's right. I do have that habit."

Enkrid admitted it at once, and Rem frowned.

"You're admitting it?"

There was always someone above the one who thought he was ahead.

Ignoring mental blows and throwing out a response the other side never expected, that was the core of verbal sparring.

"You just gonna flap your tongue?"

That question ended the word fight. Rem's axes whooshed through empty air. Two of them again.

The Madmen Company had done enough work by now that requesting one extra axe from supply and the forge was easy.

Something had changed. Before, Rem did not care what weapon he used, but this time he asked while checking center of gravity, balance, everything.

"I can't make it that precisely."

"Then it can't be helped."

Seeing him not argue much with the blacksmith's answer, he did not seem to care that deeply anyway.

In the end, what mattered was what he could do with those changed axes.

Ting.

Enkrid extended his sword and lightly tapped an axe edge.

"Stop breaking my axes already."

Rem muttered and rushed in. In one burst, his body seemed to swell larger. He was that fast and that bold.

It made Enkrid realize again.

Who had Heart of the Beast first?

If it was about boldness and daring, Rem stood at the top.

Enkrid drew a vertical line with his sword.

That slash was lightning-fast too.

Shhk.

But it only cut air.

Rem's body blurred. The speeding axes shot in like rays, one from above, one from below.

At first, Enkrid had been caught by axe paths that bent like whips.

After enduring that, he got caught by slashes that streaked like beams.

Then what now?

Clang-clang!

Enkrid shook his sword up and down. The blade rippled like a wave and knocked away both slashes.

Flowing Sword Style, Wave Crossing.

He saw the base in the Rapier Swordsman's technique, refined it through Pel of the Shepherds of the Wilderness, and completed it while fighting Rem.

Rem did not care that it had been blocked. The instant it was blocked, he tossed one axe into the air. Then he charged with just one in hand.

Irregular and bold.

Strange and fearless.

That was Rem. To get to the point, Enkrid lost.

"That was close."

"Was it?"

"Even match."

Should he be satisfied with those words? Was that what he should do?

No need. Enkrid learned something new again today.

More exactly, he realized what he lacked.

From Blade Sense to the Gate of the Sixth Sense to the Sense of Evasion.

Jaxon called those "sense techniques."

Enkrid had never been lazy in sharpening them, yet those very things became the reason he lost.

Too sensitive.

He had paid too much attention to the axe Rem threw upward. Should he have ignored it?

Even though, in the end, Rem kicked that falling axe with his foot, accelerated it, and smashed Enkrid's shoulder with it?

Choice and focus.

He reviewed. Replayed. Realized.

A familiar process.

It was Enkrid's daily life. The difference from before was that his learning speed had changed.

It felt similar to when he first awakened what people called talent. Heart of the Beast, sense techniques, Focus Point, Isolation Technique, all had been like that.

This time was the same.

Refusal.

It was only Refusal, but he had experienced Will. That experience gave him a different view.

What was genius? He could not explain it. For them, everything was natural. It felt like he had gained a piece of that naturalness.

It was the same now.

The speed at which he moved from defeat into review, understood his own mistakes, and found what he needed was unlike before.

Enkrid did not even notice that.

He was only doing what he always did.

Of course, everyone else saw it, Rem included.

Will.

That troublemaking captain had touched Will.

Damn, seriously.

The chick that used to wonder when it would die on the battlefield had become a chicken with a steel beak.

No, he could not even be called a chicken now.

It made more sense to call him a beast.

Rem hid that admiration and said,

"That bastard count's son has something in mind. He keeps this up for a reason."

"Probably."

Enkrid had already sunk inward into his own thoughts and did not care.

No, he would have ignored it even if he had heard it.

Had not everyone been saying the same thing?

"That pair of brothers is hiding something."

Audin said that too.

Jaxon signaled that he found it unsettling, and Kraiss even formed a few hypotheses.

"Why is he here? Broadly, two reasons. First, the Count might covet the captain. Second, they're probably trying to find the captain's weakness."

Kraiss said he had felt that kind of thing from Edin Molsen's gaze too. A look like surveillance or probing.

Enkrid partly agreed.

Edin Molsen's bodyguard had shown similar signs, but his eyes were not what mattered to Enkrid.

Should he drag it out of him?

The bodyguard never showed his full skill even once. Sometimes his eyes flashed viciously, and that made Enkrid expect something.

Still, he always held back. He never stepped all the way in. He never showed everything. He never raised his momentum to dangerous levels.

"That bastard knows how to fight."

Rem said the bodyguard had one foot in Will too.

So at minimum, he should have been around Rem's level.

Anyway, after that, the bodyguard refused even sparring requests.

"I'm only Lord Edin Molsen's bodyguard."

Then why had he come at him before?

A test, a check, an estimate.

For what?

Enkrid briefly wondered whether he needed to know that.

He decided he did not.

So he ignored it. He ignored Edin Molsen's strange looks.

He ignored the younger brother staring at his face with odd eyes.

He ignored the bodyguard pacing around now and then.

Jaxon had subtly recommended giving an order to remove him if he kept bothering them, but Enkrid ignored that too.

Still, when Edin asked to spar, Enkrid faced him properly.

Months passed with Edin Molsen still staying in the territory, and now it was the season when "it's cold" came out on its own.

Snow seemed close.

In that time, several things changed.

"I am Teresa the Wanderer."

The half-giant muttered that to herself whenever the mood took her.

During the day, it was fine.

It looked like resolve, or repetition to steady herself.

But when she said it in her sleep, it came out as sleep talk soaked in cold sweat.

Whenever he heard that muttering, Audin quietly laid a hand on her forehead.

"Sleep like settled ash."

The God of War was the incarnation of burned ash, and Audin was one who spoke for him.

So the prayer continued.

A follower of the God of War praying with his hand on a cultist's forehead.

It looked deeply mismatched, but even when she woke, Teresa showed no complaint.

After waking, she only blinked, then always looked once at Enkrid before falling asleep again.

By now, it was routine.

Many other parts of daily life had changed too.

Dunbakel stopped getting hit by Rem and took on other work instead, because Rem forced it.

"You should pay tuition."

Rem argued that he had taught Dunbakel, so now she should pay the price.

Dunbakel did not say that she had never wanted any part of that process.

What she actually said to Enkrid was,

"What is that barbarian?"

A hard question to answer.

A lunatic? A broken-headed bastard? A noble killer? An axe murderer? A crazy axe freak?

Too many options came to mind.

Thankfully, Dunbakel did not wait for an answer.

"I got stronger."

When Enkrid personally fought her, he found she was right. She was not cursing Rem. She was genuinely baffled and asking.

"You did get stronger."

Whenever she got smacked hard on the thigh with the flat of his blade and whimpered, Dunbakel nodded with tears pricking her eyes.

"Yeah."

She had improved. To a shocking degree. Were all beastkin like this?

Or was it because of some legend about golden eyes?

No way to know. He did not care either.

He felt Dunbakel's gaze and looked her way. Golden eyes met him.

At that moment, she was thinking Enkrid was a monster.

After enduring Rem's violence, she felt sure she could beat two of her old selves at once.

Yet Enkrid had gone even farther in that same time.

A genius.

She misunderstood, but that was not her fault. Anyone would have seen it that way.

Most of all, Will. Even if only part of it, it was Will.

He had reached that.

Willpower, once seen as the domain of knights, the domain of those with knight-level force.

That change had settled onto Enkrid.

Watching him, Ragna realized the time had come to fill in his own shortcomings.

He had noticed before too, but lacked the drive to act.

This time he acted.

"Kraiss, I want a double-layered sword like this."

"Do I look like someone who brings things when asked? If so, you judged correctly."

Midway through, Kraiss weighed the Krona pouch Ragna handed over and counted the silver coins inside, then showed his usual loyalty to Krona.

A sword landed in Ragna's hand.

It had no sharp edge. Its size and shape were close to a bastard sword, but its weight was several times that of a normal sword.

Ragna gripped it and began swinging slowly.

No speed at all. Dumb and faithful, he performed each motion slowly, one by one. He spent more than half his waking hours like that.

Huge progress. Anyone who knew Ragna would have been stunned.

Enkrid spent most of his own waking hours training, but this was Ragna.

The living embodiment of laziness.

It had not even been half a day, yet seeing him train like that was strange enough on its own.

Back to the present, Rem demanded Krona from Dunbakel.

And Dunbakel accepted without complaint.

"Go earn some Krona."

Lately, groups of Magic Beasts and Demon Creatures had been swarming nearby more than ever.

Winter. Natural enough.

When food grew scarce, they always got worse.

"Feels like snow's coming."

Kraiss said that while cutting Ragna's hair.

Enkrid silently looked up. Thick dark clouds had quietly risen and covered the sky.

A little colder, and demon secretions would start falling.

Around this same time last year, they had struggled plenty just clearing snow.

Now?

"Training Company, assemble!"

That one line would be enough.

Anyway, life kept moving even after the Rapier Swordsman left.

Daily life stayed the same, but what it held kept changing.

Edin Molsen became a long-term guest, and in the meantime his bodyguard left first, saying he had business.

It was a farewell without even a proper goodbye.

Early winter, with first snow feeling near.

Dunbakel went out on a Magic Beast extermination commission.

At some point, Finn had started roaming outside, then transferred from the Independent Company to the Elf Company Commander's command.

"Can I go?"

He looked livelier leaving than when he came in. Maybe that was for the best.

"Do it."

Enkrid answered like it was nothing.

No reason to stop him, no need.

Teresa came in, Finn went out.

Still, it was one of those days when daily life did not really change.

"Independent Company Commander, summons!"

Late afternoon. Even in winter, Enkrid was drenched in sweat, swinging his sword, when a messenger arrived.

"They said it's urgent."

At those words, Enkrid headed straight for the Battalion Commander's office.

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