WE TRIED TRANSLATIONS
Translator: Hydrogen B
Editor: Abstract
Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried
A KNIGHT WHO ETERNALLY REGRESSES
Chapter 275: What Was Inside the Cavern
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Esther saw Enkrid’s gaze sweep over Kaisella from head to toe.
She had been watching Enkrid for a while, so she did not miss it.
Kaisella was wearing clothes that showed her figure clearly.
Her face was not ugly either, but that was all. Maybe she would catch a Frog’s eye, but not Esther’s. She was beneath her standards.
No, that was wrong. Maelrun the Frog had simply had exceptionally low standards.
Enkrid had mentioned it in passing on the way here, so Esther also knew what Maelrun had said.
She also knew what kind of place this village was.
That was why she noticed the prepared spell in advance, and she had already finished preparing herself as well.
Esther looked at her opponent with cool detachment.
Her looks were one thing, but what was this ominous spell for?
So she had really tried to burn that man’s hair off, or whatever she could.
In truth, a lightning spell could not kill Enkrid.
The magic had been prepared, but Enkrid’s body could endure it now.
More than that, Esther herself had already laid several safeguards on the new armor he had gained.
Did that mean she should forgive someone who did this?
Esther had always been far from the word forgiveness.
Whatever her opponent tried, Esther interfered with each stage of how the World of Spells manifested it, then unraveled it and swept through it. Mana gathered, then scattered.
The woman’s insides were already twisted from having her spell reverse-summoned by Vanna’s Mirror.
As her spells failed again and again, her face turned pale.
When Esther came right up to her, Kaisella pulled a dagger from her waist and thrust.
At the same time, she shouted.
“Shoot!”
The crossbowman who had been hesitating reacted.
Without a hint of concern, Esther struck Kaisella’s dagger hand at the wrist.
She showed the most useful thing she had gained from the curse. It was a hand-blade strike backed by a panther’s strength.
The moment her straightened hand edge whipped across the wrist, a heavy, bone-cracking sound rang out.
Strength that could never come from such a slender hand snapped Kaisella’s wrist. It hung limp.
“Aaagh!”
The woman who had ruled the village through fear screamed.
The crossbow bolts fired in panic were blocked by Enkrid, who had already moved.
He knocked away two with his sword, and caught one in midair.
The moment the watching bandits saw him catch a flying bolt bare-handed, their faces drained of color.
He was far beyond anything they could rush.
“You’d better stay still while I’m still letting you live.”
Enkrid spoke quietly. Every bandit dropped their weapon with shaking hands. A few quick ones slipped away.
There were too many to chase one by one, so he let them go.
Esther snatched the dagger from Kaisella’s hand and turned it into a brooch in her heart.
The blade sank in with a wet sound, pierced her heart, and churned inside as Kaisella choked out words.
“Why, why?”
Why was a mage like you in a place like this?
“That is none of your concern.”
Esther murmured with a smile.
It was only a little, but she felt satisfied. Enkrid, who had been watching, walked over.
“You fight well.”
“I do.”
At her quiet reply, Enkrid nodded and looked around.
A mage had appeared, and just when the fight was about to begin, Esther had stepped in and handled everything herself.
That was not bad.
If she stepped in because she wanted to, what was the issue?
Enkrid considered Esther one of his own people now.
Whatever she did, she would still be better than Rem.
Some had lost the will to fight, some were stunned after being scorched by lightning, and some only stared blankly.
And farther back.
“Drop all your weapons!”
He saw the unit under the Elf Company Commander enter the village and begin surrounding the area.
How did they know and arrive at this exact moment, he wondered as he watched.
A man who looked like a squad leader hurried over.
He kept glancing around, and his panic was obvious.
“Everyone, uh, everyone, huh? W-what, you already dropped your weapons?”
He blurted nonsense in disbelief as he passed.
He was flustered. Asking the enemy was not likely to get answers.
“...They told us to drop them.”
He got an answer anyway.
One man, blackened from his right arm onward, muttered.
His eyes spun wildly, desperate to survive.
“So if someone tells you to drop them, you drop them?”
The squad leader asked again.
Enkrid wondered what kind of exchange this was. He only stared at the side of the squad leader’s closely cropped head where skin showed through.
From the squad leader’s perspective, it was absurd.
He had been watching the village from afar. Then the number of torches suddenly increased, and the atmosphere looked dangerous, so he had pushed his unit forward on his own judgment. On the way, lightning strikes, likely magic, hit inside the village several times, so they rushed in.
Then they entered and found it was over before anything even began.
A handful of people had turned the village into chaos, there seemed to have been a bandit mage, that supposed mage was dead with a dagger in her heart, the survivors had lost all fighting spirit, and everyone else was dead.
That was everything he could see.
He could not know the full chain of events, only one thing.
This was frightening.
He had once thought his own company commander was unusually terrifying.
But there were people here who were worse.
“Should I pluck your eyes out?”
One of them spoke when his gaze drifted to skin faintly visible between robe folds.
Black hair, red lips, blue eyes. A mysterious aura, moonlight falling over her, and the curves of her body.
It stole the eye in an instant. Any man would look.
Yet even that brief glance earned him a savage line.
“She is on our side. Don’t pluck them.”
“Then should I burn them?”
“Not that either.”
“Then I will blind only one eye.”
“Why not just cover yourself better?”
“Disappointing. So the problem is not that man’s eyes?”
In truth, Esther was awkward with human matters, and with almost everything else too.
As he spoke, Enkrid thought that if he was going to take her along and teach her, he was in for trouble.
Anyway.
“I looked too. Are you going to pluck my eyes out too?”
“You are an exception.”
“What?”
“No.”
Esther said it, pretended to think for a moment, then shook her head.
Then she nodded and said she would leave his eyes alone.
Enkrid let out a light sigh, gestured toward the squad leader, and spoke.
“Clean this up and tie all of them.”
“...Huh? Yes. But where are you going?”
“Inside.”
Finn, Jaxon, and Sinar had not returned.
They must have gone in there. The village chief’s house at the center was quite large.
It looked perfect for hiding things.
“I smell spells.”
Esther said it too, and Enkrid also felt there was something there.
Esther moved first, direct and confident.
Enkrid walked beside her.
“Do you know the way?”
He asked because he worried she might be like Ragna.
“Do you take me for a moron and an idiot who cannot even find a path?”
So that was how she usually thought of Ragna.
Enkrid answered while thinking that.
“No, you are not that kind of moron.”
Then the two of them headed into the village, and the squad leader, looking over the remaining enemies, shouted.
“If you act up, I’ll start by ripping out your eyes!”
Holding down the area like that, he and his men began binding the remaining bandits.
By then, Sinar, Jaxon, and Finn were already inside the tunnel dug beneath the center of the village.
The mage had left a few things prepared in there.
Ghouls and werewolves, for example.
And naturally, none of them were a match for those three, so all were cut, hacked, and killed.
When the three reached the inner area, they saw a scene too horrific to describe.
“Grrrrr... d-drug, give me the drug.”
One person, now part of that horror, muttered.
Another had scratched the wall so hard all the nails had peeled up and blood streamed down.
A child had collapsed between them, drool running down their chin.
There was nothing to call it except a catastrophe.
* * *
There were ghoul corpses, werewolves with necks and arms severed, and a couple of man-faced hounds too.
The collars around their necks suggested the people here had used them as guard dogs.
Those man-faced hounds were split cleanly in half as well.
You could call it a path marked by Demon Creature blood. The village chief’s house had an odd structure.
Inside was a slope.
A tunnel led downward.
It felt like a giant cave. No air flowed through it, but the inside seemed quite wide.
A wide cave, sealed off.
Perfect for doing twisted things inside.
Enkrid and Esther stepped in.
Torches were set along the walls, so visibility was clear.
Looking at the Demon Creature corpses, Enkrid saw traces left by Sinar and Jaxon.
Looks like they cut through well.
They arrived at a fairly large cavern.
Sinar, Finn, and Jaxon were already there.
“You came early.”
Jaxon said.
Enkrid felt a slight awkwardness in that tone.
There were several more side tunnels inside the cavern, and some were blocked by iron bars.
There were people inside them too.
They looked half out of their minds.
Enkrid moved closer.
In the middle of that, he saw an older man he had never seen before muttering.
He had a stubborn-looking face. Hooked nose, hollow cheeks, protruding cheekbones, and small eyes.
His personality did not look ordinary either.
“I told you to shut up.”
Finn said it right in front of him, holding a dagger that reflected the torchlight with a harsh glint, but the man only pursed his lips.
Light did not reach deep inside.
Enkrid took a torch from the wall.
He lit up the interior.
“Drug, drug, you got any? Huh? Give me the drug. Me, huh? I’ll be good to you.”
It was a woman so thin her chest looked caved in.
One look at her eyes was enough. She was not just high on drugs, she had no reason left at all.
If left like this, she would spend her whole life chasing drugs and die.
“Huh? You got drugs?”
That was one of the better cases.
Nearby was a man scratching the wall even though his nails were torn and broken, with dried blood caked over them.
Someone had gouged out his eyes.
Beside him lay a child drooling, and Enkrid knew the child was already dead.
There was no sign of life at all.
The chest did not rise.
No breath could be heard.
“He was alive a little while ago.”
Finn muttered from behind.
Sinar was busy checking the surroundings.
She was an elf, and whether it was horror or anything else, she did her job faithfully.
She found things hidden all over the place.
“Hey, do you even know what that is before you touch it?!”
The hooked-nose older man shouted.
Through all of that, Enkrid kept examining the tunnels.
Every one, in silence, one by one.
“Leave it!”
Sinar ignored him, and when the older man saw Finn’s eyes go cold, he did not push farther.
No matter what, if a blade might come flying, how could he charge in?
Still, he seemed to trust something. He snorted, folded his arms, and turned away sharply.
Sinar kept handling this and that.
Then Enkrid saw something strange in the next tunnel.
A person, but half of one eye was an odd color. A dull, colorless eye with no pupil.
One black eye, and thigh muscles split into clear strands.
“What is this?”
Enkrid asked without taking his eyes off it.
“Ah, that is a failed one.”
The older man answered casually.
“Failed?”
“It started to transform, then stopped.”
“And originally human?”
“What is the point of asking?”
Enkrid stared at it in silence, then swung his sword.
The blade slipped through the bars and killed the half-ghoul human who had been wheezing for breath.
There were several like that inside the tunnels.
“The werewolves we saw on the way in were similar.”
Jaxon’s voice sounded calm, and because of that, colder than usual.
Enkrid turned his head back. His feet moved too.
He showed neither rage nor sorrow.
Finn watched him.
Was he not angry because it had already happened and could not be undone?
Or was he reacting like an elf?
Did he separate what happened from himself and fail to take it as horror?
Through this incident, Finn saw something especially different from humans in Sinar.
She showed no emotion at all toward this catastrophe.
“He is the kind of bastard who deserves to be torn apart.”
After that one line, Enkrid did what he came to do. He checked one by one whether this drug operation was tied to some noble.
It would be good if they found a clue here.
Then they could decide exactly who to punish.
Though he did not know whether he could kill freely just because he found someone.
Enkrid walked over with heavy steps.
Finn watched him with sword in hand.
Jaxon stood behind, but he had no intention of killing the man.
Right after coming in, he had asked a few questions, heard the answers, then stepped back.
As if this had nothing to do with him.
Finn’s chest hurt.
It hurt when she saw the dead child, and it hurt when she saw the drugged woman. She imagined the screams and horrors that must have echoed in here, and it made her sick.
By instinct, she wanted to cut down this alchemist.
But Finn could not decide that on her own.
This man was very famous. His name was spread across the kingdom.
Alchemist Raban.
A man who could not create gold from nothing, but when it came to making reagents, almost no one could rival him.
“Hey, I was forced too. The Black Blade Bandits made me do it.”
Raban muttered.
What had he felt?
Those were the words he spoke when Enkrid came right up to his face.
Esther, who had changed from panther to human, watched Enkrid quietly.
No, not only Esther.
Everyone turned to Enkrid. Jaxon too, and Sinar as well, who had stopped what she was doing.
What would he do?
Just taking this man back to the kingdom would be a huge merit.
His value was not only his body, but what was in his head.
Could they use this chance to put him in their debt? He was an alchemist.
He might hand over healing potions that were practically spare lives.
He had experimented on humans, yes, but was that truly wrong?
Among the continent’s greatest alchemists, how many had never used human bodies as test material?
And was this not also something the Black Blade Bandits ordered him to do?
Then if someone died by a blade, was revenge aimed at the blade, or at the person holding it?
Enkrid looked into the man’s eyes.
There was not even a trace of guilt in those rotten eyes.
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