WE TRIED TRANSLATIONS
Translator: Hydrogen B
Editor: Abstract
Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried
A KNIGHT WHO ETERNALLY REGRESSES
Chapter 260: On Dealing with Morons (5)
= = =
It was a conversation they had before leaving Martai.
“You trick them, then beat them.”
The Black Blade Bandits, that priest bastard, Kraiss had firm beliefs about how to handle idiots.
Enkrid agreed.
“Let’s do that.”
“Yessir!”
With that cheerful reply, Big Eyes prepared a lot.
This was the result.
“Come on, come on, kill them all!”
The pot-bellied priest who had secretly fed Enkrid’s group’s movements shouted.
Where had that pot-bellied priest gotten information on Enkrid’s group?
‘Yeah, he really was stupid.’
The priest trusted a beggar kid who sold information for a few copper coins.
He trusted him too easily, far too easily.
After that, Kraiss even predicted an attack from the Black Blade Bandits.
More precisely, he picked and claimed a spot along their route that was perfect for a sneak attack and ambush, then watched the sky and estimated when it would turn overcast.
Snow would have been nice, but heavy clouds were enough.
After thinking through a few scenarios, he guided things so the Black Blade Bandits would choose to strike.
‘They still seem stupid.’
Kraiss began to doubt whether the Black Blade Bandits were really such a great bandit group.
Those guys were doing this?
Sending a few mercenaries and hoping this party died?
Of course, that came from a lack of information.
Swallow Blade had not survived to pass anything on, and it was hard to judge Enkrid’s group’s strength from rumors alone.
Especially the strength of the people under him, that was still unknown.
Kraiss saw Rem lightly kick off the ground.
Then Rem vanished.
Boom!
The ground he kicked split apart with a cry.
At the same time, a single line remained, and that line sliced through the neck of a man holding a mace.
“Damn, this thing cuts great!”
That was Rem’s voice afterward. Kraiss could not follow all of the barbarian’s movement, but he could infer everything from the result.
His sharp mind made it possible.
‘The mace came down from above, and before it could fully fall, he split the neck with an axe.’
His hands and feet were several times faster than the mace swing, that was why.
Rem said the axe cut well because the enemy mercenary wore a full-face helmet, and he had split the whole thing in two.
Blood from the mace-wielding mercenary splattered over the thin white snow. The white snow started melting into red blood.
Fresh snow drifted down over it again.
Enkrid scanned the battlefield. Kraiss saw results and inferred process, but Enkrid saw all of it.
“Don’t surrender!”
Rem charged in, thrilled, and beside him Dunbakel and Teresa moved too.
One of the mercenaries seemed to know Dunbakel and greeted her like an old acquaintance.
“You bitch! You traitor bitch!”
Shouting that, he thrust a long spear at Dunbakel. His skill did not look bad.
At least, he was better than the old Dunbakel.
Still, that was all.
Dunbakel was no longer that foolish old Beastfolk.
Her body bent and swayed, and for a moment afterimages made it seem like she had split into three.
Only her outstanding athletic ability made that possible. She kicked off left and right in short bursts and made those afterimages.
At the same time, her scimitar came out, cut through falling snow and air, and reached the man’s skull.
Every moment looked split and sliced apart in Enkrid’s eyes.
That was thanks to his sharpened senses.
Thud!
The scimitar crushed the skull and came back out.
“Sorry, I didn’t hear that. What was it?”
Dunbakel answered only after killing him.
‘She’s starting to look more and more like Rem.’
That worried Enkrid, but he let it be.
In any case, she was still someone walking her own path, even like this. Enkrid could not condemn someone like that.
While he watched with his arms crossed, several more mercenaries rushed in, and Teresa caught two of them.
“Fuck, where the hell did a monster like this come from?!”
An enemy mercenary shouted. She was a tall female mercenary who threw daggers.
Teresa blocked every dagger with her shield.
One of them changed direction in midair, as if it were enchanted, but Teresa twisted her body and blocked even that with her shoulder guard.
Using the armor wrapped around her body as part of her defense was exactly Teresa’s specialty.
So was pressing with her shield, then beating people to death with a thick-bladed sword.
She did exactly that.
“Agh!”
The female mercenary who had survived this long on dagger-throwing skill got smashed in the head by the flat of Teresa’s blade, and blood and brain matter ran through the broken skull inside her helmet.
A crushed eyeball burst, clear fluid spilled out, and mixed with blood.
“I am Teresa the Wanderer. If you want to die, come at me.”
She spoke, and that short line froze several people in place.
No matter how experienced they were, feeling fear in the face of overwhelming violence was only natural.
The mercenaries died quickly.
By then, fighting should have started above as well, or at least something close to it, but they had just watched their own leaders get wiped out.
Of course, all their will vanished.
“Hey, surrender. We’re short on workers in the territory these days. If you prove your identity and serve faithfully, we’ll restore your status in under two years.”
Torres coaxed them. They were people who moved for gold coins anyway. Since they had already decided to clear out demon creatures and magic beasts, there was profit in taking these men prisoner and using them as meat shields if needed.
They could just filter out the decent ones and accept those.
It was an offer made because he calculated fast.
“S, surrender.”
One soldier lowered his wooden longbow and said it.
In the end, not one soldier hidden on the hill fired an arrow.
The pot-bellied priest saw the mercenaries dying and immediately ran backward.
He pumped his legs with more desperation than at any point in his life.
His body looked far too heavy to move that fast.
A thick forearm blocked his path.
“Ugh!”
Startled, the priest fell on his butt. The shock from his backside jolted all the way up to his head. He braced himself on the dirt and only lifted his face.
A soldier built like a bear stood before him.
‘This bastard.’
Zimmer claimed he was the one who beat him, but the priest had his own people in the territory.
They told him the truth.
The one who originally beat him was this guy.
But Zimmer had glared and threatened him, so he could not even throw a proper threat at these people.
That rankled him.
Afterward, men he thought were on his side egged him on.
Of course, all of that was Kraiss’s work.
Since the priest was an irredeemable idiot to begin with, they had hired a few thugs who lived off scraps around him.
It was a setup to lure the pot-bellied priest all the way here.
Why? One reason only. It was far better to remove a threat than leave it alive.
How rotten this priest was did not matter.
His status as a priest was the problem.
The best option was killing him and burying him.
That was why they intentionally let him into this area.
If the best way to deal with idiots was ignoring them, second-best was burying them.
So from the moment Audin slapped him, Kraiss had been drawing this exact situation.
Besides, the Black Blade Bandits and a greedy priest were a perfect pair.
That it went so smoothly was a little unexpected. The other side was just too moronic.
“The Master of Radiance said our duty is to reveal and reveal again. Have you done so?”
Audin asked. The pot-bellied priest answered without pause.
“O, of course I d, d, did, d, did!”
His voice shook and his tongue stumbled. He was terrified.
“You were meant to illuminate the world, not Krona.”
Audin murmured, and the priest tried to deny it, tried to say he had helped poor children and had even raised some orphaned children at the temple.
Audin already knew through Kraiss.
This priest had illuminated Krona, and women too.
He was the kind of priest who took some of those orphan girls as his lovers.
Thud.
Audin raised his palm and brought it down.
The strike to the crown of the head made the priest’s eyes and tongue bulge forward.
Blood gushed from every opening, including his ears.
Audin believed in his god, and he hated those who committed filth while using that faith as an excuse.
There had been people he could not punish before, because doubt lived in him.
He had left them behind and walked away.
‘I cannot do that now, no. I will not.’
Because someone who overcame his own limits and kept moving stood by his side.
Now Audin, too, could no longer turn away from truth, life, conviction, faith, and belief, all of it.
‘I will live, Father.’
Without abandoning the life god permitted him.
With the Lord’s permission, he would beat enemies to death and live that way.
And he would punish those who shattered his belief.
It would not be easy, and if things turned wrong, he could die a dog’s death.
Still, he would not die like that.
Every day was a day of learning.
Beyond formal teaching, Audin had learned as well.
From Enkrid, from Kraiss.
“Watching the lamp you showed, I too will kindle light.”
Even though no one heard him, Audin prayed toward his captain.
A prayer toward a human, not a god.
It felt awkward, but natural too.
As for Enkrid, he watched and lowered his arms.
‘Crazy bastards.’
He cursed inwardly.
Shouldn’t they leave at least one opponent for him?
Why were they all so fired up?
Even Audin had sprinted in, smashed the priest’s skull, then looked at him.
Longing burned in those eyes, like a hot flame.
‘That bear bastard is dying to fight.’
Because he was far away and the meaning did not come across clearly, Enkrid misunderstood.
Rem was rampaging, no need to even say it.
Ragna did not stop either.
A guy who would usually just watch suddenly stepped in and swung his sword without warning.
That strike was more impressive than usual.
From high to low, a diagonal plunge. It looked like an eagle diving at prey.
Naturally faster than any eagle, but it evoked that image.
And right after plunging down, the blade rose back up.
Where Ragna’s sword passed, the man called Prepared Blade split into three pieces and collapsed on the ground.
Right after swinging, Ragna looked at his sword and, unlike himself, let out admiration.
“Oh.”
It meant he liked the sword even more than he expected.
As expected of a dwarf’s craftsmanship.
Enkrid also wanted to use his newly made sword art in real combat, and he wanted to swing the sword he got from the dwarf too, but
“That ended fast.”
Just like Kraiss said in a flat voice, it ended quickly.
Rem split five or six men in an instant, and his fire axe did not even spark once.
That was the gap between the two groups.
In truth, Kraiss, a specialist in ominous imagination, had overprepared.
Even with the archer group present, the result of this fight had already been decided.
During all that killing, Jaxon stepped in and captured one mercenary.
A young man with a decent face.
He was one of the named ones too.
“If you spare me, I’ll do anything.”
Whatever Jaxon offered him, the man said it while bleeding heavily from a stab wound in his thigh.
“I’ll take this one.”
Jaxon rarely made demands. Enkrid had received a lot from him.
“Take him.”
He did not ask the reason, did not argue.
Honestly, no one else cared.
Dunbakel clearly felt the change in her own skill.
And Teresa
“When we get back, spar with me.”
She said it to Enkrid with hotter eyes than ever. Her blood seemed to be boiling.
“Sure.”
It was welcome, so Enkrid nodded, looked around at everyone, and thought to himself.
‘Crazy bastards.’
He was resentful toward the ones who had not left him his share.
The Black Blade Bandits’ first assault and ambush was hollow.
Kraiss thought all of it was their fault.
‘You’re all too kind.’
From here on, of course, they would do things far from kind.
If even one of those landed, someone’s life would be in danger.
Dark imagination spread on its own, and Kraiss came up with matching countermeasures.
What else could he do? As long as he stepped onto battlefields and followed Enkrid, this problem could not be avoided.
At the same time, Kraiss made a decision.
‘I can’t do business at a loss.’
His goal was still the same, a noblewomen’s salon.
Even if only on a short-term contract, he would get Enkrid to show up there at least once.
Have him receive guests.
Just thinking about it excited him.
The group cleaned up traces of battle.
Torres and Zimmer, who had come out once to meet them, exchanged farewells with the group again.
“Good work.”
Enkrid spoke, and Torres nodded.
“Travel safe.”
The snow stopped quickly, and the group walked briskly. When they stood in front of Border Guard, the wild horse nudged Enkrid’s shoulder.
“What?”
“Ah, you want to look around nearby?”
“Sure, do what you want. It’ll be dangerous if you come straight into the territory, so come when I call you later.”
“Go on. Look around and play.”
Enkrid kept muttering to the horse.
Rem watched in silence and muttered, “Still feels like that thing’s going to turn into a person. Let’s ask Esther.”
No one answered.
After entering Border Guard like that, the group headed straight to the barracks.
It was already evening.
Rather than camp one more night, they had decided to walk hard and get inside to rest, so they arrived late.
Naturally, there was no argument at the gate.
“You’re here!”
A soldier who recognized them from training opened the side gate.
They were glad to see Enkrid, but not only glad.
Training that had paused would restart, so their faces looked dark.
“I’ll check tomorrow morning whether you’ve been slacking.”
Enkrid was someone who fulfilled his duty as a member of the unit.
So he had not forgotten his work as Training Company Commander.
“…Yes, sir.”
That soldier would go spread this joyful news to everyone. His face held an almost unbearable joy.
His cheeks trembled, so maybe that joy really was too much for him.
“Ah, I’m tired! Let’s get some rest!”
Kraiss said and headed into the barracks, while Teresa kept staring with burning eyes.
“Want to spar first, then wash up?”
Enkrid asked. Teresa nodded.
The two sparred, and Teresa lost, but she was satisfied.
A man who gave her this much was worth following.
Every time she fought him, she also felt a strange kind of satisfaction.
After that, he woke in the morning and gave a brief report to the Battalion Commander, and last night Esther had climbed into his arms and slept.
Panther and human had nothing in particular to say and simply slept in silence.
“Let’s begin training.”
That was how he started the day as Training Company Commander, and it was after lunch.
“Someone named Gielpin came looking for you outside. He seemed in a hurry.”
Enkrid tilted his head. Did Gielpin have any reason to come at this hour?
Then as soon as he heard that, a past incident came back to him.
Back when a certain Frog had come to find him.
So he went out to receive Gielpin, and he also saw the Elf Company Commander standing beside him.
“Where are you going, fiancé? Not even saying hello?”
the Company Commander asked.
= = =
Join our discord at https://dsc.gg/wetried