WE TRIED TRANSLATIONS
Translator: Hydrogen B
Editor: Abstract
Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried
A KNIGHT WHO ETERNALLY REGRESSES
Chapter 247: By Overwhelming Force
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The more Enkrid learned Will, understood it, and dug into it, the more fun and fascinating it became.
With the sword, he needed to swing a hundred times to feel that thrill. With Will, one touch was enough to feel change.
It was different from the sword.
This is insane.
He looked calm on the outside, but inside he was happier than ever. It was enough to drive him mad. Not just happy enough to die, he even hated the time he spent sleeping.
Even in his sleep, he studied it and reveled in it.
He was the kind of man who had enjoyed that brutal path of sword and training.
So training Will was nothing but pure happiness for him.
What if the Rapier Swordsman used pressure on him one more time?
What if he saw Enkrid now?
He would be shocked again, just as before. No, he would be even more shocked, then go beyond that into outright terror.
It was common knowledge that even if someone awakened a fragment of Will, it usually took years before it settled into the body as something natural.
His hunger for achievement lashed him forward. No, it gently pushed him on. It wrapped around him and whispered warm words.
After learning and mastering it like this, wanting to test it was only natural.
More than anything, he was curious.
How far would it work?
How far would his Refusal work?
He had heard that among the Demon Creatures of the Cursed Ground, general-class leaders would occasionally appear, crushing human bodies with killing intent alone.
One stood right in front of him.
Is this luck?
Did the goddess really smear spit on his cheek before leaving?
A peck on the lips alone could not explain this.
"Kiyooooo!"
Killing intent touched his body, and he refused it. There was not the slightest difficulty in that process.
Enkrid drew his sword.
Chiring.
The Centaur leader had already closed to within ten steps.
Demon creatures that seemed to be its subordinates rushed past on both sides.
Enkrid ignored them. One swung a wooden club at his head.
He bent at the waist halfway to dodge, then rose again in one smooth motion.
It felt as if his body had always been meant to move that way. The club passed over his head.
Whooom!
The pressure of the wind pushed down his hair, and the gust brushed his cheek.
Ragna was already nowhere in sight.
He would not freeze from this level of killing intent and get taken down, so he was probably fighting on his own already.
Enkrid kept his eyes only on the monster leader before him.
"What, surprised?" he asked softly.
He was that happy right now.
Refusal was cleanly driving away the enemy's killing intent.
No, there was no difficulty at all. He was walking right, advancing right, and ecstasy surged through him.
The Centaur leader, intelligent even for a monster, hesitated.
What was this human? Was he not supposed to be prey? How was he enduring killing intent?
It had been chased all the way here from the Cursed Ground.
It had been a long journey. Everything it had met since arriving here had failed to endure its presence.
Bright blue eyes stared straight at the monster.
"Let's go to heaven."
Thinking of Audin, Enkrid said it and swung his sword. He stepped his left foot forward and shifted his center of gravity, and in that instant his forearm muscles swelled.
The sword dropped with his waist as the axis, starting from the ankle.
Top to bottom, a Heavy Sword Style downward slash.
The blade shot down like a beam of light, just like Rem's.
"Kkiat!"
The leader reflexively shoved out its glaive. Its reaction was excellent. It flinched, then immediately thrust its weapon forward.
The glaive cut into the sword's path.
Boom!
Metal struck metal with a sound like a fire spell exploding.
It sounded like a lightning strike.
After one exchange, Enkrid knew the leader had more than killing intent.
Strength.
Monstrous strength.
He let the impact flow through his knees and stepped back once.
In the meantime, the rebounding glaive sprang straight into the sky.
Enkrid's senses spread wide. Built on countless battles, he predicted the enemy's next move.
His sharpened senses peered into the future.
The glaive came slashing down diagonally.
A strike designed to leave no escape.
He had to block.
For a monster, it was clever.
The glaive's trajectory drove the enemy's intent straight at him. It looked like Correct Sword.
Enkrid raised his sword.
He focused at the same time.
He loosened his wrist just enough, then at the moment of impact, he shook and let it flow away.
Flowing Sword Style.
Ttaang! Tiririring!
The glaive slid along the blade in Enkrid's hand, and in that opening he stepped forward.
He had used the sword in his right hand for defense, but his left hand was free.
Before anyone noticed, Enkrid had drawn and thrown a Guard Sword with his left hand.
It was Sword Flicking Technique. He used Flowing Sword Style to deflect the glaive, twisted his waist, and sent that force straight into his left arm.
Then, using his elbow as an axis, he flicked the broad-bladed dagger in his left hand with a springing motion.
Ping, thud!
The thick blade buried itself in the leader's side up to the hilt.
He had even used Heart of Superhuman Strength in the throw.
It was almost shocking that it had not punched all the way through.
That only meant the enemy's body was that tough.
"Kkiaaaat!"
Maybe from fury, the creature's momentum grew even fiercer.
Its killing intent thickened again.
Die, die, you are my prey.
It almost sounded like those words. Enkrid did not bother speaking. Something rose from deep in his lower abdomen like heat.
That heat shook off whatever the enemy was spreading.
Refusal.
"Hup!"
He inhaled, stepped again, straightened his knee, then kept his elbow straight and swung with his waist as the axis.
A horizontal slash.
Whoong!
It did not block and stepped back.
Exactly what he wanted.
After that, Enkrid advanced as if dancing. His feet tapped and pushed off the ground, and the sword moved with them. Thrust, cut, split.
If it dodged, he followed the dodge. If it blocked, he followed the block. He kept his sword moving without pause.
He spun the blade over his head and brought it down, pulled it back and thrust, feigned retrieving the thrust and drew left, then swung wide again.
Thang! Thud, riiiip! Thang!
Some strikes were blocked, some landed.
The glaive's paths were tightly restricted.
The Correct Sword from that nameless Demon Sword hammered the enemy without rest.
A monster was a monster. It did not even realize it had stepped into a trap.
The leader could not properly use its strength.
Muscle power comes from movement. Before it could fully apply that power, Enkrid's sword kept restricting and sealing its motion.
The Centaur leader, a mass of muscle several times larger and harder than a human body, was forced backward in a way that did not suit its size.
Once it started retreating again and again, defeat naturally closed in.
Enkrid overwhelmed his opponent.
"Kkiat! Kkiaat!"
The leader sprayed killing intent as if in desperate struggle.
Enkrid ignored it with ease. Refusal rose on its own and knocked it away.
When he first handled Will, it had felt like suddenly growing a new tail.
Now it felt more familiar than his own body.
It even felt like he had a deep, sturdy well inside him.
A well that never ran dry no matter how much he drew from it.
Power rose from that well, power that formed the foundation of Refusal.
This was nothing.
So he cut, thrust, slammed, pulled, and drew, driving the enemy harder and harder, and at last Enkrid's blade bit deep into the creature's right foreleg.
The edge split horse-leg muscle. It sank in about half a finger joint, cut muscle and nerves, then came back out.
Pwak.
Black blood burst from the wound. Maybe he had nicked a vessel, blood poured out in heavy pulses.
A monster's regeneration was terrifying. Especially one at colony-leader level, it might as well be a cousin of a troll.
This ends here.
Enkrid saw the end, and the leader felt fear.
It had led monster packs with its own special ability, but the moment it met a stronger predator, it remembered why it had been chased all the way here.
Back then too, it had been because of a human.
"Kkiaaaaak!"
The leader sent a signal and turned to flee.
Even with its foreleg cut, it hammered the ground with its front hooves, then pivoted on its rear legs.
Its athletic ability was absurd.
Of course, Enkrid had no intention of standing around watching.
The moment he moved to cut it down, interference came.
Kyaaaak!
Two harpies suddenly dove in and drove their claws at him. If they caught him, his gambeson and leather would be shredded and torn apart.
Was it sudden?
No. Even while focused on his enemy, his senses had stayed open.
Enkrid did not panic at the ambush.
Instead, he drew his sword diagonally from upper left to lower belly, then lifted it in the opposite diagonal.
Sskuk! Kwaduk! Thud! Thud!
With two swings, two harpies became four pieces.
They dropped as chunks of meat across the ground.
By the time he cut through the winged monsters and pushed forward, the leader was already running.
If I lose it, this gets troublesome.
It would. You could tell just from the way it had already formed a pack here.
What if it built another huge herd of Horse Magic Beasts and nested in that forest?
And a colony-leader class individual had a high chance of growing even stronger over time.
Enkrid kicked off the ground.
He remembered the squire he had first seen on the battlefield.
That impossible charge was still vivid in his mind.
Like the squire's charge?
Could it work? Putting Refusal Will into his legs too?
Naturally, it was not easy.
Since learning Refusal, using it had been easy and fun, but learning something new was still hard, as hard as ever.
There was no way to force what simply did not work.
Enkrid recalled the sprinting squire from the war against Azpen and detonated Heart of Superhuman Strength.
Explosive muscle power pooled in his thighs.
He loaded his body onto the force in his legs and kicked off.
Boom!
The sound of that kick was a huge roar, as loud as a battering ram smashing a fortress gate.
Kkiyot!
A subordinate monster rushed in from the side and swung a club. Enkrid dashed and cut.
Skeok!
The approaching Centaur had its nape sliced open.
He ducked to avoid the club and swung through the gap. In the past, he could never have chained movements like that.
His body, driving hard off the ground, shot forward in a single line.
He was chasing straight toward where the fleeing Centaur had gone.
And there were people watching all of it.
* * *
Just as it seemed most of the soldiers had frozen under the killing intent and turned into dead weight again.
"Get cut."
One man muttered that and slashed empty air. It was Ragna.
He moved at once through the people whose bodies had locked up.
Charging Centaurs could not withstand even two exchanges with Ragna's sword.
Ragna knocked away clubs and split skulls.
He also split charging horse bodies vertically.
All of it looked easy, simple, and straightforward.
It did not even feel dynamic.
It looked like cutting dry hay with a sharp sickle.
Like routine labor. Sword work that looked almost mechanical.
What is that?
Anyone would have been shocked.
But Enkrid shocked them even more.
How are you moving?
Killing intent darkened his vision for a moment, then his sight cleared right away.
Torres watched Enkrid fight in front of him.
Why is he fighting this well?
No, he had always been good, but still.
Even without eyes that could instantly read skill.
Even without the talent to judge talent.
This was far too different.
On top of that, Enkrid easily ignored the leader's killing intent and kept swinging. He threw out thrusts and slashes, a storm of sword strikes.
He overwhelmed it completely.
Damn.
Torres's body, frozen by killing intent, soon loosened up.
Even then, he did not move.
Ragna was cutting down the charging monster pack one by one.
Jaxon, who had appeared before anyone noticed, was also chasing and killing them one by one.
Then Enkrid chased the leader when it fled.
"Hey! If you go in there!"
Torres shouted, then cut himself off.
He thought chasing that deep was a bad move.
Even so, he also knew they had to chase it.
If they let it go, it would become an even bigger headache.
"Rem! Your captain's heading into the forest!"
Torres chose the next best option.
"What a damn mess!"
Rem answered. It did not sound like he was answering Torres directly, but he moved exactly as Torres wanted.
Rem hurled both axes left and right, and in an instant butchered five or six Man-Faced Hounds. The axes became streaks of light and tore through the monsters. Then Rem lunged forward.
His body brushed through the monsters as if it were his own front yard.
Where he passed, only corpses of Demon Creatures and Magic Beasts were left behind.
"Now that your body's loosened up, fight on your own."
After muttering that, Ragna moved too.
He spun his sword, cut whatever blocked him, cut again, then chased after Enkrid into the forest.
Two burly men who had split a herd of Magic Beasts at the side also started running.
"Let's go!"
That was the religious fanatic Audin, saying it while smashing a ghoul's skull with his fist.
Before anyone noticed, it had become a melee, but the battlefield had turned overwhelmingly favorable for humans.
The Demon Creatures and Magic Beasts were doing nothing but getting beaten down.
Insane.
Torres could only stare in awe from where he stood.
A ghoul's eyeball rolled to Torres's feet.
Torres crushed it under his boot.
Kwaduk, the eyeball burst and flattened on the ground.
The battle was still ongoing. There was no time to admire anything.
"Kill them all!"
Torres shouted after stepping on the eyeball. It was time to kill the remaining Demon Creatures and Magic Beasts.
* * *
Too fast.
Enkrid ran at full speed, but chasing a creature born for running was difficult.
He was barely keeping up with its trail.
The forest was not ideal terrain for running.
That was the only reason he had not lost it yet.
If they reached open ground like this?
I might lose it.
A cold assessment. Should he try throwing a dagger?
Even with a slashed foreleg and a sword lodged in its abdomen, it was still running. A few knives decorating its back would not stop it.
Instead of stopping to do that, he was better off taking one more step forward.
Even knowing he might lose it, Enkrid did not give up.
Just because the outcome looked obvious did not mean he would quit halfway. Enkrid was not that kind of man.
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