WE TRIED TRANSLATIONS

Translator: Hydrogen B

Editor: Abstract

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

A KNIGHT WHO ETERNALLY REGRESSES

Chapter 267: You're Not the Only Ones Who Can Hit Back.

= = =

The first thing he saw when he opened his eyes was a stone ceiling thick with mold.

Maelrun recalled the moment just before he blacked out, and a Frog's tough mind remembered it all with perfect clarity.

That was how he realized he was in a completely fucked-up situation.

"Give me some water. Bring food too while you're at it. I like fruit."

Maelrun said as he pushed himself halfway up.

His arm had regenerated, but shackles were locked around both wrists and both ankles, each connected by chains to a pillar.

Even for a Frog, breaking out by force was too much.

So what was left?

Waiting. Maybe it was because of the drug he had swallowed in a last-ditch struggle, but his head felt like it was splitting and his heart ached.

'Can I get out of here?'

Like most Frogs, he regretted being cut off from his cravings and desires more than death itself.

'Weird bastard.'

Naturally, the one who had beaten him down came to mind.

'He looked easy.'

Why had he not been easy? He should have been manageable. He should have been weaker. That was what his own eyes had told him.

'Why?'

A Frog's combat sense judged advantage and disadvantage in an instant.

He had fought by that instinct.

Then at least it should have been even. So why had he gotten beaten senseless one-sidedly?

Their combat sense was an extension of the eyes that read talent.

From that angle, Enkrid was the kind of human a Frog found hardest to understand.

A man with poor talent who still crawled upward no matter what.

That was what happened when someone never gave up through endless repetitions of today.

Enkrid was a man Maelrun's combat sense could not read.

And Maelrun was never especially confident in his own talent-reading eyes to begin with.

Even among Frogs, specialties naturally split. Some were specialized in reading talent, others in fighting.

Among them, Maelrun excelled at walking.

'He kept viciously targeting the joints.'

His regenerated forearm still stung.

His arm had been cut off before, and now it had been cut off again.

No, this time his eye had even been stabbed.

'He knows how to fight.'

Being good with a sword and being good at fighting were different things.

Idiots who locked themselves inside family estates to learn swordsmanship swung elegant blades.

People across the continent looked down on them as users of noble swordsmanship.

The one who had put him down was nothing like that.

He had clearly understood the weakness of a Frog's slick skin.

He stabbed and cut at the eyes and joints.

Had he been like this before too? Had he always fought this well?

Maelrun could not remember clearly. The guy had seemed decent before, but Maelrun thought he would crush him when they met again.

'That killed my mood.'

He had no energy and he was hungry.

"Water and dried fruit. It's winter now, so fresh fruit is hard to get."

The guard obediently brought him food. Kinder than expected.

Maelrun thought that as he drank water and chewed down dried fruit. There was well-baked bread and marmalade too.

"Hey, this is good."

"Glad to hear it."

The guard answered without a smile. There was some tension in him, but his limbs were not stiff.

'Well-trained.'

As a Frog, Maelrun could tell roughly just by looking.

Though his own talent-reading eyes were not that great.

'Still, that bastard is pretty unusual.'

It was no different from what countless talent-readers had said after seeing Enkrid.

Two days passed like that.

Maelrun realized brute force would not get him out, so he tried bribing at least the guard, but that failed too.

"If I let you go, I'll die."

"I don't think they'd kill a soldier over one mistake."

As Maelrun started coaxing him, the soldier showed a self-mocking look, almost like a lament.

Of course, Maelrun did not read that expression. He only thought, what is this, when he heard what came next.

"If I lose guard duty, I'll get thrown into eternal training hell. Dying might be better."

What the hell was that supposed to mean?

Either way, the guard was not strict, but he did not look bribable either. He looked like he would refuse even a gold bar.

"If I get caught, I'll really die, and I'm not unhappy with what I make now. I don't want to get greedy trying to earn more here, leave behind my little rabbit kids, and croak."

"You're married?"

"Not yet."

"...Then what rabbit kids?"

"My future kids. Future kids."

Did this territory have sharp tongues down to every single soldier?

With that thought, another day passed, and Maelrun started wondering if they had locked him up and forgotten him.

Down in the basement, unable to tell day from night, he even felt a little miserable.

'Shouldn't have gotten mixed up in that damn mess.'

Two more days passed.

Maelrun grew impatient.

If they left him like this, he might stay locked up forever.

Should he cut off his own limbs and get out?

It felt like he could deal with the shackles by tearing his limbs free, but even for a Frog, could he really bend those iron bars while missing limbs and bleeding like mad?

'Ah, what is this?'

Anxiety wrapped around him. Day by day he burned inside. When did a Frog die, a race that lived faithful to desire and craving?

When the head was cut off? When an incurable illness struck? When an arrow pierced the heart?

If the heart burst, death was certain, but there was something crueler than that.

Frogs could not endure being dried out to death.

Were they not a race that lived swallowed by curiosity and desire?

"Hey, you didn't forget about me, did you?"

Maelrun asked the guard outside the bars after waking from what might have been a nap, day or night, he could not tell.

As he spoke and turned his gaze toward the spot with a small table and two chairs, he saw someone else instead of a guard.

More exactly, there were four people.

One was the bastard who had beaten him down, one was a human with big eyes who looked weak, and one stood half in darkness so only half his face showed in the torchlight.

The guard was gone. They had finally come. They had not forgotten him. Even if he died, he needed change at this point, so Maelrun was secretly pleased.

"Where did you get the powder drug?"

His insides still throbbed from swallowing that thing. He had nearly died.

They were not even asking his identity right away, so Maelrun answered easily. He had waited too long, and he did not want to let them leave over pointless words.

"Picked it up on the way."

"Where?"

"A small village."

The one asking was the elf. No expression, cold atmosphere. At a glance, not beneath him.

'Is this place packed with monsters?'

How were there so many like this in a frontier territory?

Maelrun continued. He had no intention of hiding anything from the start.

"Go west from here. Two days on foot at my pace, a little over a day and a half by horse. There's a fenced village on a small plateau. Don't know the name. The village head was a young, pretty woman. Her name was Kaisella."

A Frog's eye for beauty favored beautiful humans.

"Did Black Blade Bandits send you?"

"Bandits? Black Blade Bandits? No."

Maelrun had been imprisoned for days, and for a Frog that was more painful than having nails ripped out or eyes gouged.

If he stayed caged forever like this, he would wither and die while suppressing his urges until the end.

For a Frog, there was nothing more painful than that.

"So it works."

Enkrid muttered, and Kraiss spoke up from behind him.

"It worked even better than expected."

Enkrid sat in the chair and nodded.

After spending time with Ruagarne, Enkrid had gotten a rough sense of what kind of race Frogs were, but Kraiss was different.

'What a strange brain.'

He remembered what Kraiss had said.

"Frogs follow their own urges. If it's a wandering Frog like that, what would his urge be? If we keep him locked up, he might spill things more easily than expected."

Kraiss had only been half sure too, but the point was that he even thought like that in the first place.

He had said that if they let him stew for a few days, interrogation might not even be necessary.

That judgment had been right.

Still.

"You know a merchant named Fromshel? That bastard spread ears all across the continent. I got hired through that. Put simply, he runs an information guild."

No one expected him to spill this much. They could not read a Frog's expression, but it was obvious the words were true.

The other side was a Frog.

If he were going to lie over something like this, he would keep his mouth shut instead.

So this had no connection to Black Blade Bandits.

He had gotten the powder drug by chance, and some merchant was the one who hired him for this job.

Meaning a guy who ran an information guild.

It sounded plausible. That made it stick even more.

'Fromshel, Fromshel.'

Enkrid repeated the name a couple of times to memorize it.

"A noble?"

"As far as I know, no."

"That's all?"

"If I lied in what I just said, may the God of Impulse and Waves punish me."

"You can make a covenant too?"

"Of course."

To a Frog, a covenant was a promise and an oath, something that had to be kept.

"I got tricked too. By that horse bastard Fromshel."

Maelrun snorted, and Enkrid judged he had heard everything he needed.

No, more than needed.

For one thing, they had the location of the village where the powder drug came from.

"We went through all that trouble to find it, and they hid it inside the village."

The elf muttered.

"How many are combat-capable?"

The elf asked. Since he had already said everything, Maelrun answered without hesitation.

"From what I saw, at least half the village."

"All of them?"

"Should be over fifty."

The Frog said it, and Enkrid nodded.

"Now are you going to let me go?"

Enkrid nodded again, stood up from the chair, and walked toward the bars.

"We'll see."

"What?"

"I'll decide whether to release you."

"You bastard, the promise!"

He had never made one. Of course, Enkrid did plan to release him, but before coming here, Kraiss had pleaded with him.

"Could you leave him to me?"

Because of that earnest plea, Enkrid had agreed.

"Wait, wait, talk to me for a second."

The Frog was about to stick out his long tongue and curse at Enkrid, but Kraiss slipped in between them.

Those big eyes and that appearance were the kind a Frog might like. Maelrun was a man, so he was not interested.

Still, those big eyes did not look bad.

Maelrun tended to rate bigger eyes as better-looking faces.

"Now then, Maelrun?"

Kraiss smiled with pure innocence. Looking at that face, Enkrid felt sure Maelrun was about to get played.

When Kraiss smiled like that, it was always because he was about to fleece a sucker.

* * *

They left the underground prison and headed toward Marcus's office.

Enkrid wanted to handle everything in one sweep, finish the Frog interrogation and report at once.

Battalion Commander Marcus was that busy.

Seeing how the territory ran, even three or four bodies would not have been enough.

And on top of that, a Cultist had apparently gotten in and been captured.

Enkrid had heard that all kinds of things happened in the territory while he was away.

The underground prison was in a corner of the barracks, and as soon as they stepped out, Enkrid spoke.

"I'd like to hear an explanation."

The Elf Company Commander was tied to this matter. Had she not dropped enough hints all this time?

She had even talked about finding some village.

He let it pass there, but now no Frog was listening.

So he asked.

"It was a secret mission."

The elf said as she turned her head. Her green eyes looked straight at Enkrid.

Then I'd better hear from Marcus, he thought.

Just then, the elf spoke again.

"But what does secrecy even mean between us?"

"It means a lot. Let's keep it secret."

Enkrid said quickly.

"No, forget it. It's about the Black Blade Bandits and the Magic Beasts that have taken root inside the kingdom."

"Let's keep it secret."

Enkrid said it again, but the elf acted like she heard nothing.

"They kidnapped alchemists and made a drug."

"Feels like you're not hearing me."

"Naturally, it's not an ordinary drug. It's banned by the kingdom and opposed by the Alchemy Guild. Of course, they oppose it openly and might still be feeding on research results behind the scenes."

Enkrid gave up.

After hearing it, this was no ordinary drug. It drove Frogs mad.

If a normal person took it, they could fight like a berserker for a brief moment, but once the effect faded, the backlash killed them.

The elf said she had many external missions to find their base. Taking Finn recently had been for a similar reason.

Enkrid had heard there was a task that suited Finn.

Enkrid listened in silence and asked Jaxon.

That one looked like he knew something too.

"And you?"

"I needed something, and while I was getting it, it seemed connected to the Black Blade Bandits. While looking into it, I found traces of alchemy in the drug used by a Black Blade Bandits messenger I met in Martai."

Jaxon's reply matched Enkrid's expectations perfectly.

Therefore.

'He's hiding something.'

He was saying only what the listener wanted to hear. It was instinct, but Enkrid felt sure of it.

He did not press.

No point. Jaxon would not answer even if asked.

If this was meant to smack Enkrid in the back of the head later, Enkrid was willing to take one hit.

Not because trust ran that deep, but because he owed Jaxon that much.

Especially since the foundation of the newly gained Flowing Sword Style came from Sensory Art.

"Sure, let's say that's it."

"Doesn't look like you believe me."

Jaxon asked in a flat voice.

"I believe you."

Enkrid answered while thinking of Audin. In other words, he answered with faith.

"Really?"

"Yeah."

Around then, they reached Marcus's office, and the three went in. The guard outside gave a military salute.

Two company commanders. One was an elf, the other the commander of the Independent Company.

Marcus's guard stepped aside in a rigid stance.

When they entered, Marcus raised his head from piles of papers and parchment and asked,

"How does it feel to get hit with an assassination attempt right in the middle of the territory?"

Enkrid answered with full sincerity.

"Like shit."

"Same."

Hard to say what it was. They had not said much, but something passed between them.

After facing the assassins, searching their clothes, taking what they carried, and then letting the Frog stew before interrogation, Enkrid had been thinking the same thing the whole time.

'Why should we only be the ones getting hit?'

So he had asked Kraiss before.

"If you were the Black Blade Bandits' leader, where would it hurt most if we struck?"

"It would hurt if someone stole your gold pouch."

When Enkrid said that would only hurt for someone like Kraiss,

"Any group suffers to the bone when their purse is empty."

That was the answer he got.

It made sense.

Then there had to be a way to do exactly that.

Half of this visit was a report, and the other half was to discuss that with Battalion Commander Marcus.

"This is neither a request nor revenge. This is an order issued by the one responsible for this territory."

After a brief report, Marcus's eyes sharpened.

Then the order came from the territory's commander and their superior.

"Crush them."

Enkrid decided to carry out those words faithfully.

So yes, the Black Blade Bandits would be crushed.

Why should they be the only ones throwing punches?

That thought kept circling in his head.

"For now, I'll grant independent operational authority. You too, Sinar."

"Understood."

The Elf Company Commander answered in an icy tone, nothing like how she spoke to Enkrid.

To Enkrid, that side of her felt very strange.

A thought suddenly came to him.

'Why only to me?'

Who knew. Maybe he just looked easy to tease. He had heard that now and then when he ran with mercenaries.

Either way, Enkrid planned to make the Black Blade Bandits understand.

They were not the only ones who could hit back.

= = =

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