WE TRIED TRANSLATIONS

Translator: Hydrogen B

Editor: Abstract

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

A KNIGHT WHO ETERNALLY REGRESSES

Chapter 276: The Traveling Performance

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"Hey, listen. Me, huh? I'm the one called Raban."

The grizzled middle-aged man spoke. Enkrid did not bother sorting out his thoughts.

Since when had he ever thought everything through before he moved?

He had followed his heart and chased his dream, and that was how he got here.

Enkrid swung his sword.

The blade rose from low to high, knocking torchlight aside as it surged upward.

A heavy thump rang out.

Yes, heavy. Not sharp.

Though once called Tutor, now it was simply a razor-sharp masterpiece, and its edge cut through the man's arm.

It was not fast. It was heavy and slow, so Raban had to feel his own arm being severed and watch it happen.

He could see it but could not dodge it, so all he could do was watch. Before the sense of loss could hit, scorching pain came first.

"Aaaagh!"

A hideous scream echoed through the wide cave.

What had been attached beneath his shoulder dropped to the floor.

The arm that had declared independence from the human body flopped and twitched. Blood sprayed as if to emphasize its claim.

The one who had lost it screamed as if objecting to that claim.

"Ah! Ah!"

As he thrashed and screamed, red blood splattered in every direction.

Most of it hit Enkrid's armor and face, but he did not dodge. He only watched with a blank expression.

Blood that had splashed onto his cheek ran down and dripped to the ground.

Enkrid watched Raban go mad from the pain of losing an arm, then said flatly,

"Can you stop the bleeding, Esther?"

"Not difficult."

Her method of cauterizing was a little extreme.

Esther reached out her hand, and flames rose from it, searing the wound shut.

"Kyaaaah! S-stop! P-please stop!"

Enkrid wondered how many desperate screams this crazy bastard had heard before, then dropped the thought.

"W-why, why, I j-just did what Nahan told me! I was sold for a few gold coins!"

He had already lost a lot of blood before the cauterizing. Then they burned the wound in the name of stopping blood loss, and now his voice was shredded. Enkrid raised his sword.

"Leg."

He said it without emotion and cut off a leg.

Thud. The severed leg bounced to the side. That leg too declared independence from the human body and pressed its claim without mercy.

Under countless torches lighting every corner, bright red blood painted everything again. Then Esther burned the cut again with magical fire, and another pitiful, drained scream tore through the cave.

"Kyaaaah!"

Raban had only had his limbs cut and burned, yet bloody tears streamed from his eyes. Broken teeth slipped out of his mouth mixed with blood. He kept shrieking like something from a nightmare.

"Looks like it hurts."

"They all end up like that when you burn them."

Enkrid spoke, and Jaxon answered.

This was not branding with a hot iron. They were cutting off limbs and burning the exposed cross-sections.

Jaxon was not exactly a torture master, but he knew how. He knew the structure of the human body, and he knew which areas amplified pain most.

He knew excellent torture methods too, like pulling nails and driving needles under them.

Even so, from Jaxon's view, it was a miracle this alchemist had not died yet.

The two spoke indifferently.

Like people talking while looking at something worthless, like a random rock on the roadside.

Then the man called Raban, or Rador, or whatever, finally rolled his eyes back when he could not endure it anymore.

He looked close to death.

Enkrid stepped forward and poked his forehead with the sword tip.

No matter how much pain someone was in, fresh pain sharpened their nerves.

And Enkrid did not stop at a poke. He slowly dragged the tip downward to maximize it.

"Stooop."

Raban said hoarsely. Enkrid asked,

"Is there a way to return the people trapped inside to normal?"

Jaxon thought it was the perfect moment to ask.

If someone did not open his mouth now, he was not human.

Even a specially trained assassin would usually try to kill himself before ending up like this, not endure it.

Raban blinked countless times, trembling, then rolled his eyes.

His mind was still working. Fitting for someone whose only value was his head.

Then came the answer.

"Th-th-there iiiis."

His pronunciation was mangled, but it was not hard to understand.

The second Enkrid heard that, he split the alchemist's head in half.

He swung vertically and cleaved it without hesitation.

Crack. The skull split open, and the brain that might have been valuable if it were still alive spilled out.

"Why?"

Why ask and kill him anyway? Jaxon threw out the question without meaning to.

"What kind of hobby is asking when you already know?"

After hearing Enkrid's answer, Jaxon nodded. He knew too.

That alchemist called Raban had been babbling whatever came to mind. There was no way to restore people broken like that. No such method existed.

Even if the greatest priest on the continent came, what could not be done could not be done. Those called saints might reattach a freshly torn arm, but they could not fix someone whose mind had been ruined.

That was not the domain of divinity.

A woman drugged out of her mind was biting off her own arm, and a dead boy was already dead.

And what about those who were neither ghoul nor human?

If someone could return that to normal, calling him a god would be fair.

"Wouldn't he have had value if we took him alive?"

Sinar asked. It was a rational question, and a rational answer came back.

"I didn't like his face."

"I see. Fair enough."

Sinar accepted it. Esther watched her and nodded gravely.

"He was grotesque."

Those who walked the road of magic, mystery, and spells also walked a path beyond normal humanity.

At the same time, they looked directly at the real world.

They did not forget their own body, flesh, and the fact that they were human.

A proper mage was like that.

Elf, dwarf, dragonkin. All had real physical bodies, and a mage had to remember that too.

That alchemist had gone off that path.

Signs of what he had done were everywhere, and his research journals said the same.

All of it reeked of rot.

So yes, grotesque. That was what she meant. His appearance was ugly too, but that was not all.

Esther thought Enkrid looked as if he had lost nothing at all, not even to anger.

Then what had driven his sword?

The question came to her, but she did not ask.

She would study, grasp, and observe until she found out. That revealed more than asking and receiving an answer.

Truthfully, there was no complicated reason.

Enkrid cut him down the way someone threw away filth. Like washing grime off his hand.

Punish the wielder rather than the blade?

What kind of bullshit was that?

This was not a blade acting on its own. A human had done this.

A human capable of taking ownership of his life.

He had the ability and the will.

He simply did what he wanted to do.

The one who gave the order was guilty, but the one who carried it out was guilty too.

By Enkrid's standard, a man who did this had no right to live.

What if that person were the ruler of a nation?

Even then it would not matter.

Even if he spent his whole life hunted as a fugitive, even if people treated him like a sack of bounty gold, Enkrid would still do the same.

That was how he chased his dream, and how he walked his road.

If Finn had known what was in his head, she would at least have shaken her head.

It was close to pure madness.

"There are tons of bastards like that on this continent!"

He might have shouted that.

Exactly. Enkrid wanted to cut down every one of them the moment they appeared. That was one reason he held a sword.

A true knight was not merely a knight who fought well.

Of course, Finn could not read Enkrid's thoughts.

"Well, he died nicely. There was some stupid alchemist here, and now he's dead. What can we do about someone already dead?"

She said something that sounded reasonable. It meant no one needed to take responsibility.

Enkrid had no special thoughts about it, and Jaxon quietly respected his captain's choice.

He had gotten everything he needed anyway.

And honestly.

"I might have killed him myself."

He did not want that man left alive. That was not calculation. It was feeling. Emotion.

A rare emotional response after a long time.

"Not here."

He could not spend the emotions that had been worn down and scraped away in a place like this.

His emotions were a prepared blade, and the people meant to receive it were already chosen.

"The company commander's troops have entered from outside. Let them in and have them clean this place up. Also, some of the people still alive should stay locked up for now."

They were drugged, and if released they would obviously go on a rampage.

"Do that."

Sinar said it and checked several sheets of paper in her hand. She looked over the common script written on the thin pages, then spoke.

"There are several more villages like this. Looks like it'll be a long outing. What do you think?"

The question carried many things in few words, but Enkrid understood anyway.

If Jaxon spoke, he would follow. Finn would follow Sinar's orders.

"One village was even raising Magic Beasts."

From what Sinar said, Enkrid understood.

It was not that they had failed to learn anything so far.

There were simply too many enemies. Too many to dig into every detail without spending huge amounts of time.

Enkrid's mind naturally mapped the current situation.

If they did not strike with a small elite force, all those experiments and research records would be destroyed and vanish.

Then there would be nothing to gain after the fight.

And the bastards who needed to die would get time to run.

This was an enemy that required company-level movement.

Even this village alone had a witch who called down lightning.

So they had to prepare for that too.

The Black Blade Bandits were no joke.

Enkrid had one small misunderstanding.

The dens prepared by the Black Blade Bandits came in many types.

Some sold slaves.

Some used drugs to tame Magic Beasts.

This place was simply the most important one, so it had a valuable mage stationed here.

Even for the Black Blade Bandits, mages were not common.

His thoughts settled. This was not something to agonize over.

"Let's go."

Enkrid answered.

If more places like this existed, they had to be wiped out.

A small elite squad had gathered, people whose strength was moving in secret.

They even had a mage.

Even if Esther did not step in directly again, she would warn them if she saw signs.

In many ways, this was a good chance.

Most of all, if they did not strike now, they would hide again.

"Aren't you curious who the head of the Black Blade is?"

Sinar did not comment one way or another. She only asked.

"You know?"

"We found out at least this much. It's one of the kingdom's nobles."

Jaxon heard that conversation too.

He had aimed for this.

Information he had deliberately leaked to part of the kingdom was finally paying off.

Jaxon also wanted to see the Black Blade leader very badly.

Even if he had a wife separated from him by war, he wanted to see that man more than her.

After leaving cleanup of the village to the allied troops who had entered, the group moved on.

"It's vile."

The platoon leader who came in saw the carnage inside the den and shook his head.

Some inexperienced soldiers could not hold it and vomited. The foul stench spread through the cave.

Not leaving this kind of thing alive was one reason Enkrid held his sword.

Then the group departed and took the mountain route.

Harsh paths often became shortcuts.

Finn was an excellent guide in terrain like this.

* * *

In one of the Black Blade villages, four chiefs moved like one body.

They were four men who had grown up together since childhood, and everyone called them the Bolun Four Brothers.

Bald heads, vicious faces, typical bandit-looking bastards. They were skilled enough to leave the village and raid all over.

Well, the Black Blade Bandits had always done bandit work too.

A black-haired man stood before those four.

It was broad daylight.

"How did you get in?"

The eldest asked, rubbing his closely shaved head with a hand.

The sky was cloudy, but no snow fell.

The second brother narrowed his eyes.

Why was the village so quiet? There were dozens of members here. Why had it stayed this quiet until this bastard got here?

The man silently adjusted his sword belt, placed his hand on the grip, and asked,

"If you have any grievances, you'd better say them now. I'm busy."

Busy? The third rolled his big eyes around.

The fourth was quick to read situations. He had already sensed danger, slipped back a little, and grabbed the end of a hidden net.

He planned to throw it if things went wrong.

It had weights attached at the corners, a weapon the fourth brother was proud of.

The brothers had won a lot of fights by using that net.

The third brother was a master at throwing darts. He stroked the tips of his poison-coated darts and finished preparing.

The second and first were masters of hand-to-hand combat.

No one spoke.

A staring match broke out between Enkrid and the four brothers.

Tension packed the space between the five of them.

To the bald brothers, the mansion hall they normally used like a palace suddenly felt narrow.

What is this bastard?

After only a short thought, the fourth threw the net.

Enkrid stood still and saw the falling net and the two bald men as points.

Then he drew lines connecting those points in his head, moved his feet, and swung his sword along those lines with his body and hand.

That strike hit the weight at the end of the net, tangling it in midair, then carved long marks across the necks of the fourth and third brothers.

Of course, since those marks were made by a sword, blood poured out in heavy streams.

Seeing that blood gush, the second brother's eyes flipped.

"You son of a bitch!"

The fight was not difficult.

It ended in an instant. He deflected the thick blade of the charging enemy with Flowing Sword Style and struck in the same motion.

Evasion and attack happened at once. While deflecting, his blade tip struck and dug into the enemy's forehead.

"You bastard!"

The eldest's axe came flying in at once. A thick, heavy weapon, and the man wielding it also boasted monstrous strength.

The eldest put his full power into it.

After punching a hole in the second brother's forehead, Enkrid pivoted on his left foot and collided head-on.

Boom!

A roar burst out.

Then.

"...What are you?"

The eldest, both arms broken because he could not withstand the force, spoke in a hollow tone.

Enkrid took a short breath, released Heart of Superhuman Strength, and answered,

"What will you do if you know?"

You'll be dead soon anyway.

Enkrid's sword had not even a speck of forgiveness or mercy.

That was the end.

There was no mage here, and Jaxon had thrown on some relic he picked up somewhere and run wild.

The five bandits guarding the village center were killed by Jaxon in an instant without making a sound, and that was when Enkrid stepped inside.

Still, even after searching all over the village, they could not find what had been hidden.

What is this place? Just a troop-gathering point?

While Enkrid showed that doubt, Finn stepped forward.

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