WE TRIED TRANSLATIONS
Translator: Hydrogen B
Editor: Abstract
Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried
A KNIGHT WHO ETERNALLY REGRESSES
Chapter 256: On Dealing with Morons (1)
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“The Lord who scattered Radiance and gave this land its light has spoken.”
said the balding man.
As soon as he finished, Enkrid tilted his head.
“I am a servant of Radiance.”
In other words, he was in the line of work that used temple scripture instead of greetings. A priest.
“What brings you here?”
Enkrid asked.
“I came to bestow a blessing.”
The priest smiled broadly.
‘A blessing, out of nowhere?’
Enkrid thought for a moment.
‘Shouldn’t this kind of blessing come before a war?’
The priest did not care and kept talking.
“The hand of Radiance that protects this land has touched us and sent a hero to this territory. Hahaha.”
Like that strangely overdeveloped nose for Krona.
It had all been crushed together and fused into one new sense, a sixth sense. That sense let him read the nature of the person in front of him.
No, maybe what it caught first was whether the other person had any intent to hide anything.
The man who kept blabbering about scripture eventually started claiming the territory had been protected because of prayers he had offered for three days and nights without sleep.
Rem, who had been tightening his fur coat, looked up.
His face clearly said, What did that bastard just say?
“Don’t.”
Enkrid stopped him in time. Ragna, who had been ignoring everything and heading into the lodging, also stopped.
Enkrid could see weight shift onto Ragna’s left foot.
He had already entered that familiar hyper-sensitive state.
Enkrid raised a hand and showed Ragna his palm. Don’t.
Rem at least showed signs before causing trouble, but if Ragna got annoyed, he would start beating first and think later.
Of course, the most dangerous one here was Jaxon.
That one could cut someone down before anyone noticed.
“None of you do anything.”
Enkrid said it again. He could feel anger rooted in irritation coming off all of them, and he was not much different.
Still, he was the only normal one in this group. They could not kill a priest, or even beat one bloody, in the middle of the territory, in the middle of the barracks.
Though maybe beating him a little would have been fine.
“That’s a problem.”
Even Kraiss sounded cold. The way he said it made it sound like he was wondering how to hide the body if they killed him.
It was not about Krona.
Kraiss might avoid direct frontline fighting, but he was still a man of the battlefield.
That was exactly why.
If they won because of someone’s prayer, if prayer was the only reason for victory, if they survived the battlefield only because of prayer, then what were the people who bled to win?
Enkrid came to a conclusion. This bastard was a moron.
The first rule for dealing with morons was not beating them. You avoided filth first.
So the answer was to ignore him.
But this time, the big man who usually let things pass quietly stepped forward.
That single step cast a long late-afternoon shadow and covered the potbellied priest.
“So because we won thanks to prayer, you want a victory offering?”
He had dropped the title of brother.
Enkrid knew Audin. He was deeply religious, and he used Divine Power, and those things were secret.
He also knew Audin was not someone who hit people at random.
Even when it was a corrupt priest, even when it was someone obsessed with gold coins, even when it was someone trampling women, Audin usually avoided them as long as they were priests.
So everyone just stared.
“Yes, exactly. Donate for the temple, for the territory, for the people, and I will spread your noble intent far and wide.”
Enkrid understood what he meant.
Give a few gold coins, and I will praise you louder.
But were these people the type who wanted anyone’s praise?
Ignoring him was still the best answer.
“If the will of Radiance is so lofty, what happened to the funerals for the dead?”
Audin asked abruptly.
Enkrid briefly wondered if he should stop him.
“We will handle that in due time.”
The priest answered casually. His tone alone showed what he thought of dead soldiers.
This was a world swarming with Demon Creatures and Magic Beasts.
A world where everyone lived with war at their throat.
No one knew when Demon Creatures would burst out of the Cursed Ground and trigger another Holy Demon War.
In the Holy Demon War from history, more than half of the human and allied-race forces died. They said blood ran like rivers and corpses piled like mountains.
That was the kind of world this had been, endless horrific war.
Then what about now?
No different. The continent was still drowned in conflict.
So ask this.
Just because danger and threat held a blade to your neck, just because life could vanish in an instant, did that make life cheap and worthless?
Some would agree.
A warlord ruling a nation might see troops as numbers.
Even a great general might.
But did a priest have to see them that way too?
“I heard you brought in many fine goods. Hahaha, donate with a pure heart and blessings will remain with you.”
This priest did not have even a speck of holiness. The word blessing sounded like extortion.
Audin looked at him.
This was common. There were morons in the world like grains of sand, and this territory seemed to have even more than usual.
Drugged and hypnotized thug morons.
Morons from the Black Blade group.
And morons wearing a priest’s mask.
‘Common.’
Audin knew this was nothing special. More importantly, how had he dealt with people like this until now?
Border Guard had no resident clergy, but wandering priests still passed through now and then.
Had he not watched them commit robbery under the name of donation?
He had ignored all of it.
The excommunicated cleric who had ignored every visible wrong for a long time had placed above himself a man who broke through what everyone called a limit.
He had also recently seen a beast that defied fate.
Among them, the human was named Enkrid.
And that fate-defying horse stood before the man called Enkrid.
Many thoughts flashed through his mind.
They all ended in the same place, at the end of what he had thought while watching Enkrid.
Audin faced his own change.
‘Did He ever tell me to watch what is wrong and do nothing?’
No.
His Father, his god, his lord, had never told him that.
So Audin saw what was wrong, reacted, and moved.
Now the Lord seated within him kept him centered, so he could do it.
This priest was a moron. Enkrid knew it too. He was just about to ignore him and turn away.
Whoosh.
The air shifted, and something caught Enkrid’s sixth sense. He reacted at once. If Rem lost patience and threw an axe, this would be a disaster.
He reached out, trying to block it with his body. A person moved. That person slipped under Enkrid’s outstretched arm like a snake and whipped a palm.
Smack!
No groan. No death rattle.
The one who moved was Audin.
He swung an open hand, and the priest’s cheek took it.
Enkrid turned.
Even then, Audin’s movement was so clear in his senses that he asked:
“What was that?”
“Snake Step.”
To anyone watching, it was probably a conversation between lunatics.
After satisfying his curiosity, Enkrid looked at what Audin had done.
“Think he’s dead?”
“Almost.”
Rem answered.
Ragna watched the scene, then looked at Audin and muttered:
“You’re a troublemaker.”
Then Jaxon added in a flat voice:
“You had to?”
Could have done it quietly when no one was looking.
Lastly, Rem looked at the potbellied priest sprawled on the ground and twitching, or rather thrown three or four steps from where he had stood, and said:
“People should learn to endure a little.”
Rem muttered it.
You’re the one saying that?
Thinking that, Enkrid signaled Kraiss with his eyes, and Kraiss stepped over to check the breathing.
“Luckily, no, maybe not lucky. He’s breathing.”
His cheek was already swelling red, but he was alive. At least his eyeballs had not popped or burst.
Now only the problem remained.
Enkrid was the squad leader of a troublemaker unit.
He was used to this kind of trouble.
‘Though I think this is the first time we’ve slapped a priest.’
Border Guard had no temple.
Not for any special reason. It was just a chain of coincidences.
The first commander kept religion at arm’s length, and the next followed that will. More recently, the commander before Marcus hated fat pigs who grabbed more than their share.
Meaning he hated corrupt priests.
Whether they had true sacrificial spirit or not, temples still took donations, and he hated that in itself.
The current battalion commander, Marcus, was the same.
He believed in god and donated to temples.
But he never allowed a temple to set up in his territory.
Probably because he cut out anything that did not help the territory.
It also did not help that every priest who visited seemed obsessed only with Krona.
If the main temple sent people, setting up one local temple would have been easy. But in any case, Border Guard had never had one.
So was this the first time they had seen a moron like this?
No.
Then why beat him now, of all times? Enkrid wanted to know.
Enkrid looked at Audin with that question in his eyes, and Audin clasped both hands in front of his chest like prayer and said:
“I have no regrets. I am only a servant, and I follow what my Lord commands.”
So you wanted to hit him.
Enkrid understood perfectly.
“Let’s just kill him and bury him.”
Rem said it.
Nonsense. Too many eyes had already gathered around the commotion in front of the lodging.
Instead of answering that worthless suggestion, Enkrid checked the priest again.
He was definitely not dead.
As Enkrid crouched and examined him, one of the watching soldiers spoke.
“…Why does this feel so satisfying?”
“Seriously.”
“Moron pig.”
Some thoughtless soldiers snickered, and the ones with functioning brains called their commander.
As soon as that commander heard what happened, he reported upward, and soon Zimmer appeared.
“Let’s say I hit him.”
“Hm?”
At Enkrid’s questioning look, Zimmer’s eyes shone.
“It will be easier to clean up if I did it than if your side did.”
“I appreciate it, but.”
“You are heroes who protected the territory. You think I cannot do at least this much?”
Zimmer said, chest out.
What happened when a priest got beaten?
He would report it upward immediately. Then the temple would send someone, either claiming disrespect toward their god or using it as an excuse to exert influence over the territory.
If they knew Border Guard and Martai had recently begun turning into a trade territory, the temple might try to set its own table here and skim a share of the byproducts.
Separate from that, what happened to Zimmer for beating a priest?
He would take losses in the form of fines and punishment.
If things went badly, it could become bigger than that.
If they really pressed the issue, he could even be jailed.
That was what it meant to hit a priest dispatched to a territory.
Still, Zimmer was better than Audin.
An outsider doing the beating and friction between locals were different problems.
Influence inside the territory was different too.
Enkrid scratched between his brows.
He looked at Audin, who hid his Divine Power.
More than anything, one thing bothered him.
‘Can I really tie that bear to a temple issue?’
Probably not.
He hid his Divine Power and deliberately stayed in a territory without a temple.
While belonging to a military unit, at that.
He was a fugitive. Enkrid could tell without asking.
Whether he had believed in heresy, sinned against the temple, or both.
“Everyone here will be a witness.”
Zimmer said with confidence.
He was an easterner and a commander in this territory.
Influencing the divided groups of soldiers would not be difficult for him.
And the soldiers from Border Guard were already favorable toward Enkrid, so they would not even need persuading.
“Let’s do it.”
Kraiss said, poking Enkrid’s side.
Enkrid decided to accept the goodwill.
“Thank you.”
Zimmer nodded.
He was the same man who had stepped up to fight right after defeat, bold and open.
“Then it’s settled.”
He had soldiers carry the collapsed priest inside.
The next day, the priest, with his memory gone, screamed at the top of his lungs and demanded answers.
Zimmer said a few words in front of him.
Enkrid happened to see it after sweating through morning drills around the barracks.
“How dare you lay hands on a servant of god? Do you think this will pass quietly? Radiance is watching, yes? I will report this to the temple and press this matter to the end!”
It was near the outer edge of the barracks, by thick brush.
Fortunately, from what Enkrid heard, he did not know Audin had hit him.
And afterward, Enkrid heard Zimmer had been even bolder than expected.
“Won because of prayer? Hey, you fucking pig bastard.”
The priest’s tongue, which had been denouncing others so smoothly, twisted and stalled.
“W-what? What did you just say?”
There was a faint tremor in his voice, so in technical terms, he was scared shitless.
“What, your ears got fat too? Want me to slice half one off?”
Shing.
Zimmer drew a dagger as he spoke. It was morning, bright with sunlight. The blade reflected the light beautifully.
“Or maybe the tongue that spits that nonsense?”
He poked the air near the priest’s mouth with the dagger tip.
Some people had that kind of presence. The feeling that if you crossed a line, they would really do it.
Zimmer had exactly that right now.
The priest hesitated to keep talking, then tried one last resistance.
“If the temple finds out about th...”
“If they find out, then you became food for a ghoul that suddenly broke in during dawn prayer. Or maybe you bravely joined the Centaur Colony battlefield and died in a charge. Ah, this works better. You got a massive wound around here while charging, right? Then you died because treatment failed. Since you’re a priest, everyone just assumed you’d heal yourself with Divine Power and let it slide.”
Not every priest could use Divine Power, and of course that was not something to be proud of.
The priest shut his mouth.
It was a truly hearty scene.
It stayed in Enkrid’s memory.
Though if this was just a threat, his side could have done enough too, could they not?
No. A threat from someone who lived in this territory and one from Enkrid’s side could not be the same.
Only Zimmer could do this.
Zimmer the easterner was an interesting man.
When Enkrid returned to the lodging, Kraiss rubbed sleep from his eyes and said:
“Come to think of it, those guys are pretty kind.”
“Who?”
His sweat had not even cooled. He was about to head back out and train with his sword again.
Enkrid moved as usual.
From behind him, Kraiss said:
“The Black Blades.”
“…What part of them is kind?”
“Heh, it’s getting cold now. Can’t we steal that fur Rem bought?”
“If you wore that fur, an axe blade would sink into your neck.”
“Even if the captain stopped him?”
“Without fail.”
“Ah, damn it, I should’ve bought one too.”
He talked like that, but Kraiss would never buy fur. He was stingy to the bone when it came to Krona.
“Let’s go. You’re heading out to swing your sword, right?”
Kraiss said, looking outside. The sunlight was warm, but the air was cold. Winter, with temperatures dropping.
Enkrid grabbed his sword and went out.
He had to stay here until the day the dwarf promised, so he planned to keep training like always.
And beside him, Kraiss kept voicing his thoughts.
About why those morons called the Black Blades were kind.
Listening to him, Enkrid thought that these days, more exactly since coming to Martai, he had been running into morons and moron groups more often.
It was also right when the Black Blades had truly started drawing steel.
And there was that priest bastard Audin had slapped too.
Then how should they deal with people like that?
The answer was simple.
Beat them all.
The right answer was there, but now it was Kraiss’s turn to sort out the way there. Enkrid had ordered him to do exactly that, and Kraiss obeyed.
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