WE TRIED TRANSLATIONS

Translator: Hydrogen B

Editor: Abstract

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

A KNIGHT WHO ETERNALLY REGRESSES

Chapter 277: [Marcus, You Cowardly Bastard]

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"Someone hid something in the forest. I followed the trail, and it led there."

Finn had a knack for tracking people. Wherever people moved, traces were left behind.

The smell changed, footprints remained, and even a single broken branch snagged on clothing stood out.

Finn found all of that, and Enkrid, who had wandered the continent and seen all kinds of people, guessed Finn had once worked as a bounty hunter.

The past was none of his business anyway. He only cared that it helped.

That was how they found the hidden den the village had tucked away.

The village sat along a small forest, slightly off to the north.

Far in the distance, they could even see the Pen-Hanil River.

These people had dug burrows deep in the woods and hidden Magic Beasts there.

Every single one was drugged and reeling. There was a wolf Magic Beast with its tongue hanging out, and signs of the alchemist Enkrid had killed earlier by cutting off his arm, severing his leg, and splitting his skull.

That bastard really had his hands in everything.

It was a wolf Magic Beast, but its legs were like a deer's.

When that kind of fusion succeeded, people called the creature a chimera.

A monster made by humans, neither Demon Creature nor Magic Beast.

"Who are you?!"

There were five men, either handlers or emergency feed for the beasts.

"If you come at me, you die."

He said it first. They came anyway. Then they died.

One man had only been standing in the back, eyes darting around, but when he saw that, he released the remaining Magic Beasts.

Kyaaaargh!

A lion with a snake tail lunged at them. A half-baked chimera made to resemble a manticore rushed forward, lost its balance, and rolled across the ground.

Enkrid split the unfinished chimera lion's head.

The blade flashed and cleaved the skull in half, spilling brain matter and dark blood.

Jaxon and Sinar moved too.

Esther climbed a nearby tree and watched.

The man who released the beasts tried to run in the opening, but an arrow the length of a hand sank into his head and killed him.

That was Finn's work.

"Where do you think you're going."

The meaning was clear.

The tool that fired the arrow was one Enkrid had taken earlier from a Black Blade Bandits thief.

'He uses it twice as well as that thief did.'

Finn hid the launcher in her sleeve, waited until the target looked away, then fired at the back of his head.

Unless someone was absurdly sharp, they were not dodging an arrow-shaped ornament buried in their skull.

The unleashed Magic Beasts were vicious.

Krrrroooar!

Kyaaaak!

The Man-Faced Hounds, implanted with snake venom glands, spat poison, but they were all half-finished.

There was no reason to spend too much time killing them all.

Even so, it took more than half a day to kill everything, wipe out the village, and clean up.

"The next one is four days away on foot."

Enkrid nodded at the elf company commander's words.

After that, it was like a traveling circus.

Find a village, enter, smash, beat, kill, clean up.

Over and over.

When the village bandits saw their headman and Magic Beasts all dead, most of them ran.

That made things easier.

"If the higher-ups find out, do you think they'll spare us? Anyone would think we started a rebellion. Anyone who values his life, follow me!"

A bandit with a working brain judged the situation, gathered his own faction as he fled, and got out.

Any organization had men with ambition.

Enkrid did not bother chasing each one down.

That would have wasted too much time.

"This feels wrong. Really wrong."

Some sharp-sensed bandits said things like that and ran too.

Only a tiny number stayed. The villages Enkrid hit went quiet quickly.

Some villages that had shared information tried to prepare, but it meant nothing.

Five guards posted around one village had their carotid arteries cut without a single groan, and fear swallowed the bandits.

"Fuck! Did a ghost jump out or something?!"

The man running that village, a top-tier assassin, was consumed by terror.

Something impossible had happened.

Six bodyguards at his side vanished without a sound.

He felt nothing.

No, he did see it with his own eyes.

In the corner of his bedroom.

A hand stretched out of the darkness, grabbed a guard by the neck, and twisted with the skill of someone who had snapped hundreds, maybe thousands, of necks.

The most terrifying part was that the neck turned without a sound.

Worse than that, the dying guards looked like they did not even realize they were dying.

Their faces showed no shock. They kept scanning the room with sharp eyes, lips clenched tight, then died as their neck bones twisted.

"Over there!"

The headman, a former assassin, quickly threw a poison-coated dart.

The deadly dart, said to kill from a graze, disappeared into the dark.

Several guards stabbed with skewer-like swords where their comrades had vanished.

As they swept the area, they saw something horrifying.

No one knew when it had been made, but there was now a hole in the floor behind their comrade's corpse.

"When...?"

Those were the headman's last words.

A single line dropped from above and sliced through his neck.

It was the alchemical assassination tool, the String Knife.

A thin, sharp blade, slimmer than a little finger, cut his neck and left him hanging in the air.

"Aaaaargh!"

Taking care of the remaining guards was easy.

In panic, some of them even stabbed each other.

Jaxon watched while hanging upside down from the ceiling, then threw two Silent Knives and finished it.

After something like that, what else could they do.

Everyone in the village ran.

The place where one group had stayed turned deserted, like ghosts were about to crawl out.

A gust of wind swept through the center of the village.

"If one Wraith popped out right now, it'd be a perfect picture."

Finn said it.

Enkrid agreed, but he had no intention of slowing down.

Of course, they were not going to leave things like this forever. After killing the village's fighters and taking the headman's head, Sinar sent out a crow as soon as they finished sweeping through.

Caw!

When she raised her arm toward the treetops, a pitch-black bird flew down and perched on it.

The trained crow immediately flew to Border Guard and delivered the report.

In short, troops would move in to occupy the villages those bandits had abandoned while fleeing.

During that time, Enkrid's group kept moving. They headed for the next village.

When needed, they bought horses and rode them. When not, they let them go and crossed cliffs.

The route required them to cling halfway off sheer rock faces, but rough mountain paths were nothing to them.

Crshh.

Stone dust scattered underfoot and fell away.

All of them clung to a cliff so high that if someone fell, even with incredible luck, they would never walk again.

Even so, no one felt danger.

Finn drove a dagger into a crack, hammered it deeper with her elbow guard, grabbed it, and climbed with practiced ease. Then she looked down and said,

"If anyone falls and dies here, that'd be funny in its own way."

It was the kind of thing someone might say.

Forget the people, just look at the panther following them.

Its claws dug into the cliff like peerless swords cutting mud as it climbed.

It barely looked different from walking on flat ground.

Naturally.

Those claws and that skill could climb a wall set at a perfect right angle.

As for Enkrid, Jaxon, and Sinar, there was nothing to say.

They were all people who could take care of themselves.

Enkrid climbed steadily one step at a time, Jaxon looked like his hands were glued to the rock, and Sinar joked while moving, tapping along the cliff with expert rhythm.

"Ever kissed on a cliff, fiance?"

"...Do you really think I have?"

"Sometimes I wonder if my fiance is still a virgin."

Whether it was a cliff high enough to shatter legs on a lucky fall or a quiet sitting room for tea, she joked as if it made no difference.

Enkrid answering her at all was the strange part.

In any case, them dying from a fall there was about as likely as a crow getting bitten to death by an ant.

That was how they reached the next village.

In a place packed with slaves, Sinar found three of her own people.

She did not even frown.

"You idiots got captured."

She criticized them sharply, and the three said nothing.

The moment one male elf was freed, he picked up a dagger from the floor, rushed a smooth-faced bandit with neatly shaved stubble, and stabbed his stomach over and over.

"Gh, urk! Khk!"

The man had been whimpering for his life and was not prepared. He got six holes in his belly.

Something like deep resentment came off the elf.

"A peach not even bugs would eat."

Enkrid happened to hear the male elf mutter it and thought it over.

Thanks to the elf company commander, he was used to elf-style expressions.

It was not in the elf language. He said it in the empire's common tongue, so the meaning was clear.

If you let peaches grow, most end up with worms. So what was a peach even worms would not touch.

A phrase for a human so useless and trash-like that even vermin avoided him.

It was not hard to see where that resentment came from.

The two female elves seemed to have suffered the same abuse.

The bandit had lusted after their bodies. In that same mess, he had done it to the male elf too.

'So he didn't care about men or women.'

His tastes were broad.

It was not pleasant to see, but across the whole continent, how many cases like this existed.

Then could you cut down every one of them with a sword, one by one?

When he was young, he had believed becoming a knight would make it possible.

After leaving the village, he learned it was impossible.

Talent was not the issue.

Losing to a kid barely in his teens was not the issue either.

Enkrid had been young and short-sighted.

As the idea of village expanded into territory, and territory into continent, he changed.

Only then did he understand.

Even if he became a knight, even if he became a battlefield disaster who could cut down a thousand men with one sword, he still could not cut all this away.

So did that mean giving up and leaving it?

Did he have to remain a swordsman polished only on the surface?

When he wanted to become a knight, had he wished for nothing but shining armor and a halo-like image? Was that all?

Of course not.

Enkrid had never decided anything like that.

The knight he dreamed of was never just a killing tool skilled with a blade.

As those thoughts filled his head,

"Do you want to wipe it all out? Burn everything? You can. I'll help if needed."

Jaxon came over and said it. His eyes burned red. He did not look like he had thought it through.

He looked drunk on the moment.

That made Enkrid wonder.

'Is he in pain?'

This guy said strange things once in a while.

Enkrid gathered his thoughts and asked,

"Out of nowhere?"

"Your eyes are burning."

At Jaxon's words, Enkrid briefly closed his eyes, then opened them.

The flames from before were gone. At least the destructive fire Jaxon saw had vanished.

"Let's go."

Enkrid focused on what had to be done now.

Had other thoughts surfaced now that he could use a sword as well as a squire?

Probably not. The ember in Enkrid's chest had always been burning.

Now it was simply visible.

"Huh? There's a dwarf too?"

Was this some kind of race-collecting game.

This village had dug tunnels all over the place to hide slaves.

"Fuck, who are these bastards?!"

A few bandits resisted and died the moment they did, their throats split below the voice box, spraying blood.

Jaxon's work.

Using silent steps and a hidden presence, he also made use of items he had picked up.

"Got gifted a useful relic."

Seeing him say that so proudly while pocketing gear from dead men made it clear he was not normal either.

Not one bandit caught by Jaxon from behind managed to react.

He slit their throats one by one with a dagger.

When eight loud bandits died, the rest dropped to their knees, trembling.

The one acting as headman had already died.

This one was not a mage or an assassin. He was not even good with a sword.

He just kept trying dirty tricks whenever he saw an opening, and had packed his bedroom with traps.

But Sinar and Jaxon were right there.

'Says it all.'

Again, Enkrid did not need to step in.

No, he swung his sword once.

When two local toughs rushed him, he received them with Flowing Sword Style and struck with a snake-like blade.

Thud, thud!

Two wet impacts of split flesh made two corpses, and no one else charged Enkrid after that.

After they subdued the village with methods that brutal, they freed all remaining slaves, and still cut down every last one who resisted.

Most villages were the same. A few so-called skilled men rushed in and got cut apart, and the rest surrendered or fled.

That was how they spent two months searching out and fighting through five villages the Black Blade Bandits had hidden around the region.

You could call it only two months.

Looking at what they had done, that was fair.

The Black Blade executive only realized what was happening after half the villages he had built were already destroyed.

They were that fast.

By the time he noticed, the other half could no longer be salvaged.

'Those fucking lunatics!'

Bang!

Boiling with rage, the executive smashed his desk with a candlestick.

A groove split open in the center of the rosewood desk, and chips flew.

"Huff, huff!"

The Black Blade executive still did not calm down. No, his fury rose higher.

In the end, he hurled the silver candlestick in his hand out the window.

Crash!

An expensive stained-glass panel in red, yellow, and blue shattered into dust.

The silver candlestick fell into the garden below the third-floor mansion.

A gardener trimming shrubs with shears flinched and ducked.

He quickly picked up the fallen candlestick and went to find the butler.

Something had clearly happened.

Of course, none of them could know what.

The executive concealed his identity well.

Most of the mansion staff knew him only as a royal court noble and official.

His insides boiled, but the bandit executive could do nothing.

Some guild had risen in the royal capital, and those bastards were unifying the back alleys at terrifying speed.

'What the hell is this Language Revival Guild?'

Even the goal the guild claimed sounded idiotic.

Among the alley groups they were beating down were several criminal guilds he had personally backed.

Because of that, he could not pull out either.

'Damn it.'

He could not even deal with the ones targeting his dens right now.

In truth, even if he moved himself, nothing would change. He had no forces left and no swordsmen left to send.

The other side had prepared better too.

They were fully committed to smashing villages.

So he had no choice but to send word to the main group.

The thought that he might die like this filled his head.

'Fuck, fuck!'

His operations were being destroyed, and the village businesses he had built over a lifetime were vanishing.

The executive wanted to scream, but his attendant stopped him.

"Will you throw away your own value like this? Find out the name of the one who did this. That is your best option."

It was sound advice.

The executive pushed himself. He showered an information guild with gold coins and hired multiple mercenaries.

That was how he got the name.

"Marcus, you fucking bastard!"

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