WE TRIED TRANSLATIONS
Translator: Hydrogen B
Editor: Abstract
Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried
A KNIGHT WHO ETERNALLY REGRESSES
Chapter 255: What Does the Dwarf See?
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“So, what do you need?”
The dwarf ignored the barbarian, and Rem did not flare up. He let it slide.
Enkrid had felt it as soon as he heard her. Her words were harsh, but she did not mean them.
He stepped in at the right moment and spoke.
“If you have a good sword already made, I want to buy it.”
Enkrid did not beat around the bush. To be honest, he already found her pretty interesting.
Can she fight? Probably not.
That was his overall judgment from her posture, hand movements, position, and manner.
“Should I?”
The dwarf was not picky. She just looked Enkrid up and down.
People said dwarves did not judge human appearance.
Even so, her gaze stayed on Enkrid’s face.
Watching from behind, Kraiss thought,
‘No way, her too?’
She could not have fallen for the captain, right?
A quiet unease crept in.
As everyone knew, dwarves did not care about human looks, beauty, or ugliness. They looked at a refined inner self instead.
They judged a person’s inside through their eyes, attitude, habits, and the like.
With fewer surface-level preconceptions, they had fewer prejudices too.
This dwarf had roamed the continent for a long time. She could read a person’s nature from how they opened their eyes and how they spoke.
Not quite a spell, but with a dwarf’s natural gift mixed with long experience, she could see part of Enkrid’s inner self.
It was vast, whole, and beautiful.
Metallurgy meant extracting ore and refining it.
Blacksmithing meant heating and hammering metal into tools.
Her eyes had been shaped by endless years of making and smelting stone, iron, and countless other materials.
In her eyes, Enkrid was a stone.
Not an ordinary stone. Never.
‘What is this?’
A stone carved down again and again, yet never broken. Old and worn, yet never decayed.
To her, he was incomprehensible: both a human and an ore she had never seen before.
No wonder she found him fascinating.
At the same time, that was what moved a dwarf’s heart. Mystery, firsts, and the new always stirred dwarven curiosity.
“Hey, I won’t kill you, so tune up my axe.”
The arrogant barbarian at his side spoke too.
Swaggering, he thrust out an axe infused with something.
Did this bastard not just say he would kill her?
She judged he had not meant it. A dwarf’s insight could easily tell whether words were sincere.
So she thought he was strange.
He did not mean it, yet she also sensed he might swing that axe if things turned sour.
Her eyes swept over him too.
‘What is this one?’
He looked like a self-burning stone, a dawn fire that could scorch everything around it.
To stand beside him without burning, one had to be just as hard, or someone had to block that flame and endure it.
Who blocked it?
No need to say.
A stone that did not burn and did not rot.
That stone with black hair and blue eyes.
The dwarf’s gaze swept over all of them.
The humans beside him were all equally strange.
One looked like Truesilver infused with divinity, hammered and refined for tens of thousands of hours.
One looked like dark iron honed into a single sharp blade.
There was even gray gold, the kind people said might appear only after burning countless stones.
Ash gold, a rare metal she had only glimpsed once in her life.
No, Truesilver, dark iron, and ash gold were all extraordinarily rare metals.
How did such thoughts come to her the instant she saw them? What were these people?
A dwarf’s eyes did not waver. Their core was hard and steady, so they were not easily shaken.
They even had resistance against ordinary mental magic.
She looked over each face.
Among them, the strangest one was simply a stone.
Carved down but not decaying, aged but never breaking.
That stone blocked the flames, wrapped Truesilver, pushed back dark iron’s darkness, and even gathered gray gold in with the rest.
Each of them stood there flaunting their own nature.
It was too curious to ignore, so the dwarf asked,
“What is your name?”
Enkrid thought she was far older than she looked. He could feel it in the way she spoke.
“Enkrid.”
“Good. Hand.”
When Enkrid quietly offered his hand, the dwarf carefully checked his calluses and knuckles.
“Messy.”
Not wrong.
Enkrid thought so himself. The arts he had mastered were exactly that.
He had stuffed everything he could learn into his body.
Sensory Art, Heart of the Beast, Heart of Superhuman Strength, Isolation Technique, and even swordsmanship born from Correct Sword, Heavy Sword, Illusionary Sword, Quick Sword Style, and Flowing Sword Style.
Thinking about it, he had tasted a little of every sword art.
Lately, he had been absorbed in Flowing Sword and obsessed with training his body.
Even setting aside that he had learned Will, he had already mastered that many techniques.
“Mm, good. I happen to have a decent sword, so I’ll tune it and give it to you. And you? Looks like you just need the axe handle and balance fixed. Why are you carrying that? Good iron, I’ll melt it and remake it. Ah, uh, you probably don’t need anything. Out of the rest, uh, yeah, you. Ash-gray one, what do you need?”
Are dwarves usually this talkative?
Still, inside all that chatter, there was unmistakable dwarven insight.
If Frog devoured talent, dwarves excelled in perception.
She saw in one glance exactly what each person needed.
The nickname she used for Ragna was odd, but she was a dwarf. Nobody cared.
“A long, thick sword with balanced weight.”
Ragna answered. Whatever the dwarf said, he only said what he came to say. His goal was clear, so he did not care.
He had been the same when that Black Blade Bandits bastard showed up.
He did not care, so he ignored it.
Jaxon moved instead. Rem stayed as he always was.
Audin only smiled calmly.
The dwarf nodded.
“Got it.”
So she agreed to tune Enkrid’s sword and the fire axe, melt and remake the halberd the Centaur leader had used, and even personally make a sword for Ragna.
Enkrid had heard dwarves were fussy artisans, but she was nothing like that. Rumors really were unreliable.
“Uh, but you said even one dagger was a waste on me?”
Kraiss spoke from behind.
“That’s because you’re too low-level. Feels wasteful to give you something I made. Just strap on any random one made by those huuumans over there.”
Wow, she really discriminates.
Kraiss muttered. He looked genuinely hurt. He was never the type to care about weapons, so why was he suddenly asking for a dagger now?
“Want me to buy you one?”
Enkrid asked.
“No. It’s fine.”
Then why care this much?
“It’s just been a very long time since I got rejected.”
“Rejected?”
“Later.”
Kraiss said that, and the dwarf snorted a laugh.
Cute little guy, her expression seemed to say.
“But if I’m doing all this, you’ll need to wait about a week. Might be faster.”
The dwarf said it.
Enkrid looked around the smithy.
Everyone who had been hammering iron had stopped and was watching them.
Two craftsmen, metal tools lined along one wall, and furnace fire pushing back the cold.
They had not been inside long, but the heat was so thick it felt like sweat might break out.
“Give them at least a few silver coins. If you use a smithy, you pay for it.”
At the dwarf’s repeated words, Kraiss handed over a few silver coins.
Enkrid watched, then added a few more.
They were asking people to make things convenient for them. There was no exact right amount for that.
In this kind of thing, Enkrid did not spare silver.
Kraiss let it pass without comment.
With the krona the captain had earned on this trip, they would not be short for a while.
Well, they had not exactly been short before either.
The man who seemed to own the smithy watched their faces, then nodded.
“Use it as much as you like.”
“And for the cost, you, Big Eyes, hand over that pouch of gems in your coat.”
The dwarf once again showed her insight by instantly nailing Kraiss’s nickname.
“You want this?”
Kraiss could not leave precious gems lying around, so he had kept a few on him.
“Yeah. Hey, I’m giving you a cheap price.”
The dwarf spoke in a rough, low-market tone. Her speech jumped around all over the place. That too felt like a hint of age.
“Give it.”
At Enkrid’s words, Kraiss made a miserable face, then nodded.
He started to hand over the gem pouch, then paused and asked,
“But how did you know I had this?”
“What do you take a dwarf’s nose for? You reek of expensive stones.”
Dwarves could smell that too?
Not that it mattered.
Enkrid did not care and moved on. Which meant they had to stay here about a week.
They returned to the market. The heat from the smithy had raised their body temperature, so they had not felt the cold for a bit.
Then cold air crept back into their bodies, but Rem still wore a grin.
“I’ve decided to love this stone.”
Because of the Warmstone in his arms. Fair enough, he hated the cold more than most.
Ragna walked in silence without looking around.
“Do you need a good sword? All of a sudden?”
Enkrid asked out of curiosity.
“Yes. I do.”
Enkrid grew curious about why, but he did not ask.
Of course it was because of Enkrid.
What had the night of stimulation left them with?
Drive, and hunger to grow. They had not achieved it, but they learned they could, so exhilaration came first. Ragna enjoyed that too.
It was a feeling and an experience he had never known before.
Things used to bore him because he always knew he could achieve them. Now it was the opposite.
So he needed a good sword. One that matched his hand and body.
With dwarven skill, maybe that was possible.
They kept looking around the market.
It was smaller than Border Guard, but still lively in its own way.
This place was becoming a trade territory linking the east.
Kraiss talked to a few merchants here and there.
Some spoke comfortably, as if they had already grown familiar with him.
Among the passersby, a few recognized Enkrid and gave him military salutes.
They were soldiers who had seen the sword he swung and seen him chase the Centaur leader.
There were quite a lot of patrol soldiers.
It looked like groups of three or four were focusing hard on internal security.
They bought a few white loaves and also ate bread with raisins.
While they were circling the market, a young-faced woman blocked their way.
“They said if I just deliver the message, just the message, that’d be enough.”
Her hands trembled with tension.
“What message?”
Kraiss asked gently. He sounded like he was trying to calm her down.
“They said Black Blade won’t let this pass.”
Her anxious eyes swept over them. She finished speaking, and even her legs shook. It was obvious how terrified she was.
“It’s okay. You’re okay.”
Kraiss soothed her and asked a few questions.
Someone had come to her, tossed her two silver coins, and made her run this errand. Her little brother was sick, and she badly needed those silver coins.
Kraiss asked her name too, then pressed three more silver coins into her hand.
You saved krona when you had to, but when it was time to spend, you spent.
“If anything happens around here later, I’d appreciate it if you let me know.”
After sending her off with his usual reassuring smile, Kraiss let out a long breath, glanced into the alley where she vanished, and said,
“Doesn’t look like they plan to give up. Shouldn’t we do something?”
Kraiss asked.
Enkrid answered without missing a beat.
“Think about it.”
“...What?”
“I don’t know, so think about it.”
Enkrid said it as if it were obvious.
From one angle, Kraiss felt the captain had definitely changed.
Had he always delegated work this well?
Kraiss remembered it feeling more like a favor before.
The attitude had changed.
Since he was responsible for the unit, this was the right way.
“If they charge, we just crack all their heads.”
“They’ll only send petty assassins.”
“I ask the God of War, may we send the impure ones to your side?”
“I am Teresa the Wanderer. I’ll cut down mere bandits.”
Rem, Jaxon, Audin, and Teresa spoke in that order.
Enkrid turned to Dunbakel.
“What debt?”
“At the end, I borrowed about fifteen gold coins and spent them.”
“Why?”
Kraiss asked out of curiosity.
“To have fun.”
She spent fifteen gold coins for fun? Did she hire male escorts in the capital and enjoy herself?
And drown expensive liquor on top of that?
No, she must have eaten luxurious food too.
“All of it?”
“Ah, I used maybe two coins. Gave the rest away.”
“To who?”
Kraiss’s words got shorter at the way she used krona, but Dunbakel did not care.
To beastfolk, manners were simple. Just do not steal meat from the other person.
“To passing little brats, or places like monasteries raising kids.”
She really spent those borrowed gold coins however she felt. Dunbakel had expected to die anyway, so she just followed her impulses. She had also felt sympathy when she saw abandoned children who reminded her of herself, but she did not say all that out loud.
Kraiss was dumbfounded.
“You borrowed a bandit’s gold coins and thought this would just slide?”
Is she insane? Borrow fifteen gold coins for what? One mistake and her head could have gone first.
“No, well, uh. True.”
This woman is not normal either.
After that, Enkrid’s group headed deeper into the market.
This place had a subtly different mood from Border Guard.
In what it sold, and in its people too.
A few gazes stopped on Enkrid.
No matter where they went, these were people with looks and traits that stood out.
If they did not draw eyes, that would have been stranger.
Still, no one in Enkrid’s group cared about market merchants, patrolling soldiers, wandering peddlers, or a few thugs with the same vibe as the guy they had beaten before staring at them.
“Isn’t that fur?”
Rem’s gaze stayed on the fur.
Enkrid’s stayed on leather pants spread out on the ground by a peddler.
Audin bought a small wooden figurine from a child sculptor. It looked like a rabbit.
The reason no one could say for sure it was a rabbit was simple: the craftsmanship was not very good.
They were passing through while looking around when three thugs approached.
Going to pull the same stunt as that idiot from earlier?
Kraiss’s eyes lit with interest.
He wanted to see what those fearless idiots would do.
It did not go the way he expected.
Thud!
A thug flopped flat onto the ground in front of Enkrid. He did not care if filth got on his clothes. It was an impressively decisive move.
“That guy wasn’t one of us! We don’t know where he came from, he’d been clinging to this territory for about half a year, and he said his name was Bento.”
Enkrid looked at him like, who is that?
The thug explained.
He meant the guy who had charged at them in the tavern earlier.
“Hans didn’t know anything, uh, so if you forgive him, yes yes, I’ll punish him in that knight’s place.”
The words were disorganized, but he did seem loyal.
Enkrid nodded.
So the man drugged and hypnotized into attacking him had been Hans.
“Handle it yourself. And not yet.”
“...Huh?”
Enkrid said that and passed by him.
He was heading toward the leather pants he liked.
Rem grabbed a piece of fur too.
“Big Eyes, give me a few gold coins here!”
“Don’t buy without haggling!”
Kraiss shouted and ran over there. Audin watched, then said to the thug leader,
“He means he still isn’t a knight, brother thug.”
As he spoke, his bear-like hand patted the thug’s right shoulder.
Teresa patted the other shoulder and said,
“If you pull stupid tricks, you’ll die.”
A short warning. Who spoke the words changed how threatening they sounded, and in the thug’s eyes, Teresa looked like someone who could tear off his head and kill him without trouble.
While Kraiss haggled and the others bought what they wanted, Ragna said he would go back first. Enkrid told him to stay put because finding him again would be a pain.
Rem added one more line, Ragna answered, and a brief commotion broke out.
Dunbakel asked for pants similar to what Enkrid bought. The merchant said there was no identical pair, so she bought the closest one.
Of course, Kraiss haggled everything and got it all for fair prices.
After they tore through the market and came back, they saw a balding man standing in front of their lodging.
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