WE TRIED TRANSLATIONS

Translator: Hydrogen B

Editor: Abstract

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

A KNIGHT WHO ETERNALLY REGRESSES

Chapter 252: The Horse Thought.

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Torres heard a monstrous scream erupt from the forest long after Enkrid had left.

"Shouldn't we send support?"

A clueless soldier asked, and Hyoun, a guard nearby, answered instead.

"Support? Those four monsters look like they could roast an entire lordship by themselves."

Hyoun was a swordsman from the Northern Tribe, proud to the core. If even he said that, it meant something.

Torres agreed.

"Leave them. They'll come back on their own."

Who was worrying about whom, anyway.

Torres ordered his men to collect Centaur tendons and intact Magic Beast hide, then burn the rest of the corpses.

How many had died?

Dozens had died in the previous battle, and in the first battle, Torres himself had nearly died.

Zimmer had almost died too.

It had been that kind of crisis.

For Torres personally, it had gotten bad enough that he wondered if they should just run.

He had even advised exactly that.

"My lord, ah, Captain. If we stay like this, we're finished. Even locking the gates and holding out has limits."

They had watchtowers, but no moat. If those Centaur bastards came up and kept hammering the walls with clubs that looked like they were made from whole uprooted trees?

What if they waited for reinforcements and none came?

"So then. If we abandon the lordship walls, do you have an answer?"

The lord had shot back.

There was no answer. Outside was even more dangerous.

The monsters were called Centaurs, and outrunning them was harder than holding out behind walls.

Everything had been blocked, front and back.

Their only option had been to request support.

It was a Centaur Colony. On top of that, the leader, that special individual, made people's knees buckle.

When it screamed, your balls shrank.

One soldier had actually pissed himself.

And that kind of crisis had ended because fewer than ten people showed up.

Whoooosh!

Crackle, crack.

Demon Creature and Magic Beast corpses, and three dead men.

One had stepped wrong, fallen, and been crushed under a Magic Beast's hoof. Two had run out trying to show off "Eastern bravery" and died.

Only three people had died.

The number of Demon Creatures and Magic Beasts killed was impossible to estimate.

At least over two hundred, by rough count.

The Madmen Company had not killed most of them.

They had only been the blade at the front, tearing everything apart.

After that, the soldiers had killed the monster horde.

It was not a sunny day. The sky looked ready to snow.

A full day passed like that. Torres wrapped up the battlefield, grabbed short naps, woke up, and kept moving around, and then he saw a group returning through the main gate.

A light drizzle was falling.

The kind of day that would turn to sleet if it got just a little colder.

He had been running around since dawn.

It was the day after the battlefield.

A day people could smile because they had survived.

And he saw the ones who had given them that ordinary day returning.

Enkrid and the Madmen Company came in with dim sunlight at their backs.

The heat of battle had already faded, and everyone had loosened up.

Even so.

"Colony Killer."

Someone shouted first, and then the soldiers gathered by the gate shouted together.

"Colony Slayer!"

"Long live the Madmen Company!"

"Uaaaah!"

"He's handsome!"

"Take me!"

"Holy shit! Thank you so damn much!"

It was praise for those who had shown absurd force, mixed with the relief of surviving danger and the joy of victory.

The drizzle soon turned white, like frost.

The temperature had dropped sharply, so it could happen.

Snow and sleet hit his face in equal measure as Torres looked at Enkrid.

A wild horse giving off a strange aura followed behind him, the group carried something like a chest, and Rem held the glaive used by the Demon Creature leader, but none of that mattered.

Torres looked at Enkrid and stood straight.

He brought his heels together and pressed his right hand to his waist.

Then he lowered his head in respect.

It was a military salute, gratitude for saving them and saving this lordship.

Enkrid looked at Torres, gave a small nod, and passed by.

Rem, walking behind him, asked, "Any chance you know a good blacksmith?"

"There's a dwarf staying near the edge of the market."

"Oh."

Rem passed by, and the rest of the members went by without a reaction.

The cheers could not stop their steps.

* * *

"So there's a dwarf, huh?"

Metalworking, smelting, crafting, the embodiment of technique and mastery.

Of course, not every dwarf was a master of metallurgy.

Elves had elven metalwork, and even among humans there were outstanding experts.

Still, on average, dwarven smelting and metallurgy were superior and fundamentally excellent.

So if a dwarf had drifted into a human lordship, they could not help being interested.

They also happened to need someone with that kind of talent.

People said dwarves were overly obsessed with gems and payment, but no one here disliked pouring Krona into weapons.

Wouldn't it be better to spend some gold and hold a decent sword?

For people who lived by the blade, a good weapon was another arm, and good armor was another life.

Enkrid too felt the emptiness at his right waist.

It would be nice to have one more sword.

If it was a sword made by a dwarf, even better.

As for armor, he was already used to wearing whatever he could scavenge, and this time he had even gained inner armor made from Magic Beast hide wrapped around the body like bandages.

On their way in, the lord of Martai personally came to thank them.

"It's thanks to you."

"You're welcome."

Enkrid answered with proper courtesy.

The lord told them to rest and turned away.

"There are no private rooms. This place is as bleak as Border Guard itself."

Torres followed after and said that.

At any rate, they entered the lodging they had been shown, and the topic Rem brought up was the dwarf.

The lodging was one of the group rooms with eight beds packed together.

Just as Torres had said, the atmosphere was barren. Other than the eight beds, there was no furniture at all.

It was a place used for nothing but sleep.

"Since it's a wild horse, it probably won't even go to the stable. Should we drive a stake here and tie it up?"

A soldier skilled with horses approached, watching the wild horse carefully as he spoke.

Snort.

As if it understood he was talking about it, the wild horse shook its head.

"Leave it."

Enkrid said it casually.

He had asked it to come along because he felt like it, and it came.

That was all.

If it wanted to leave, he planned to let it.

Of course, the wild horse had no intention of leaving.

After Demon Creature blood mixed into it and it became half Magic Beast, its own herd could no longer come near it.

Demon Creature blood instinctively filled beasts with fear.

For the same reason, it could not go into a stable.

And for that same reason, the wild horse had to leave its habitat. Only then could the rest of the herd live normally.

As the herd leader, that was what it had to do. It had even finished off the Burning Skeleton as the final task.

More precisely, the human in front of it had killed it.

The wild horse felt an odd familiarity with Enkrid, just as strongly as Enkrid felt it. The world called that rapport.

"Good work. Get some rest."

Hiiing.

It looked like a human and a horse were talking to each other.

Rem watched for a while, then said, "Any chance that one turns into a person too?"

"It won't."

This was different from Esther. It was instinct, but certainty.

"Don't be so sure. When that panther turned human, who expected that?"

Rem tossed out something that might make a dog bark, and everyone ignored him.

They unpacked their things and sorted the chest, and then Kraiss came back.

"Uh, what is that?"

The moment he arrived, he saw the wild horse lingering in front of the lodging, circled around, and spoke with anxious eyes, unable to take his gaze off it.

Big Eyes had looked busy even after coming to Martai, and now his face was full of disbelief.

"A horse."

Enkrid answered. The untied wild horse standing blankly in front of the barracks had caught Kraiss's eye.

"Does that one turn into a person too?"

Kraiss asked. At a glance it did not look ordinary.

He asked because Esther had already set a precedent.

"It's male. I'm warning you now. If you walk up behind it to check, it'll crack your skull."

Enkrid warned him first. Esther had been wild too, but this wild horse now had Demon Creature blood mixed in.

No point risking a horse hoofprint on Kraiss's chest.

"Do I look like Rem to you?"

"Who said you were an idiot?"

"I'm saying I don't go behind horses to check their balls."

"I was worrying in advance."

He was weird enough to need the warning.

Kraiss was not exactly normal either.

"Hey, you do know I'm standing right here listening, right?"

Rem said.

"Yeah."

As soon as he answered, Rem smacked Kraiss on the head.

Smack!

"Ack!"

The conversation had earned it, so Kraiss did not pout.

He rubbed the back of his head a few times, then moved to the next topic. More precisely, to what caught his eye as soon as he stepped inside the lodging. There was a smell. The smell of gems.

"By the way, what's this chest?"

"Gems."

At Enkrid's answer, Kraiss's eyes changed.

Whenever Krona were involved, the mysterious miracle happened again, human eyes turning into gold coins.

He checked each chest one by one, then whistled.

"That's quite a lot."

"Did you see that dwarf who came into town?"

Ragna asked while watching Kraiss admire gems and gold coins.

Hm?

Ragna was interested too? Was he tired of using scavenged swords?

Enkrid thought that while watching, and Kraiss answered.

"Oh, I was going to mention that anyway. It's a real dwarf. First time I've seen one, and it looked pretty."

Pretty-looking?

They would only understand what that meant after seeing it in person.

They sorted luggage until late afternoon and lightly loosened their bodies with the Isolation Technique. They decided to go into town tomorrow.

More precisely, they were going to see the dwarf blacksmith.

Enkrid ate dinner and closed his eyes.

It was time to do what he always did.

Review.

If I hadn't missed from the beginning?

He had to chase because he had let the Demon Creature leader escape.

And while chasing, he experienced a strange concentration of senses.

He had always mixed Focus Point and Sensory Art, but in that one moment, when he threw his sword at the leader's head, it had been different.

Did Will move?

No, that was not it. He now knew what Will was.

It was willpower, and the formless power based on it.

A mystery difficult to explain in human language.

In a way, it resembled spells or sorcery, but it was different because it was power limited to the individual.

People who trained their bodies and handled weapons.

Or those who made their fists their own weapons.

It manifested in people like that.

So no, that was not it.

When he caught the Demon Creature leader, when he threw the sword at its head, what Enkrid felt was something crushed and mashed into one.

He could see what to do next, and it felt like all five senses had merged and changed into something new.

"It's called Sensory Art."

Jaxon's voice from when he taught him came back.

In truth, it had happened because everything had blended together, countless spars with Pel, the experiences he had built up, realizations from life, his mindset, and even the Refusal he had drawn out through Will.

"No need to split it into the Gate of the Sixth Sense and the Sense of Evasion. It's all Sensory Art."

Goddamn Jaxon.

That bastard explained things like Rem.

At the time, those words had made no sense at all.

Enkrid closed his eyes and crushed the five senses together. He entered the realm of the sixth sense. Without dividing the senses, he could hear, see, and feel.

When he looked ahead with his eyes half open, he saw Audin praying.

"I follow the Father's will, so please watch over this young lamb and do not let it lose its way."

Was that a prayer for Ragna?

That was probably not the important part. Enkrid felt like he had opened a third eye.

Audin wore a thick tunic with a broad cloak over it, yet Enkrid could still feel his body.

Those hard muscles, that bursting strength, and that posture that did not waver even while praying.

That man's body was something complete.

As that sensory realization came, Enkrid fell into thought without noticing, mouth half open.

He saw the direction he had to take with the Isolation Technique.

A new path opened through what he gained by crushing his senses together.

If the body is not trained, none of it matters.

The beginning of everything is the body.

It was an unexpected realization.

Yet it was also something he had already known.

He was revisiting what he already knew, but even that was still a realization.

Enkrid set the direction for training his body.

Of course, he would need Audin's help.

Rem silently watched Enkrid after that realization.

"Hey, you said Martai has a temple, right?"

Rem asked. Kraiss, sitting nearby polishing a few gems, answered.

"Uh, yeah, it does."

Smaller than a grand temple, but there should still be priests there. It had bad rumors, but it existed.

"That guy is definitely broken."

Rem muttered. Kraiss lifted his head slightly and looked at Enkrid. His mouth was half open, drool running down.

"Looks normal to me."

It was not like this was the first time they had seen that.

While no one cared, Dunbakel made a grand decision, opened Dunbakel's mouth halfway, and tried to drool the same way.

From now on, Dunbakel would learn and follow everything Enkrid did.

First step, trying it personally to find out what reason there was behind his behavior.

"Want me to crush your skull? Why are you copying that?"

Rem scolded. Dunbakel stubbornly kept drooling.

Truly a madman.

The lodging door was half open, and the wild horse looked inside and thought for a moment.

Should I go?

For a moment, it wondered if it should leave like this.

It had not moved just because it could understand Enkrid's words.

The horse had been very bright and clever even before it got Demon Creature blood.

So it could judge things for itself.

If it was going to leave, now was the time.

The horse thought that.

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