WE TRIED TRANSLATIONS

Translator: Hydrogen B

Editor: Abstract

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

A KNIGHT WHO ETERNALLY REGRESSES

Chapter 279: The Black Blade Excels at Intrigue (1)

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"Throw it."

The instant Enkrid spoke, Jaxon’s hand moved.

There was no time to care about the whistle through the air.

Seven steps ahead, the sly wildcat with reddish-brown hair hurled a stone. What had looked like a tiny dot suddenly swelled before his eyes.

As his focus sharpened, he caught the stone’s trajectory.

He twisted to dodge, and in the very spot he moved out of, another stone appeared.

It was a throwing technique that occupied space with a time gap.

Enkrid’s body warped on instinct.

He pivoted on his left foot, pulled his body back to the right, and twisted his waist the opposite way.

The movement looked truly bizarre.

Using the snap of his waist for momentum, he ducked and rolled forward, avoiding every stone.

"Weren’t you supposed to dodge in place?"

That flat voice reached his ears.

"I’ll get there."

Maybe not right now, but with repetition, he would. He did not need to glimpse the future to know that.

If you kept walking, you passed the markers and reached your destination. He had proven that with his body and learned it through his life.

Enkrid answered calmly. He stood and brushed the dust off himself.

Blue dawn light crumbled under the rising sun and turned orange and yellow.

It was early morning, when everyone woke.

As if by prior agreement, every company member came out to watch Enkrid and Jaxon.

Every gaze was different.

Rem was bundled in heated fur, looking like he wanted to ask what kind of hometown custom this dawn insanity in freezing weather was.

Audin wore a pleased smile.

Ragna watched expressionlessly, slowly rolling his wrist.

Teresa was absent on duty, and Dunbakel looked at Rem once, then Enkrid once, then shook her head.

She wanted to copy what Enkrid was doing, but if she asked Rem to do it, Rem looked like the type to throw a rock and crack her skull. That was the attitude she showed.

Enkrid ignored all of it and sank into his thoughts.

He had been thinking about this for two full months while walking, running, and fighting.

'Sense of Evasion is a reflex that happens in the unconscious.'

Seeing, hearing, feeling, tasting, smelling. Those were the five senses.

The sixth sense crushed all five together and reached a conclusion before the process could be tracked.

Intuition was understanding without passing through sensation, experience, association, judgment, or deduction.

Sense of Evasion was a technique built from intuition in the realm of the sixth sense.

Until now, he had thought that was enough.

'No.'

Pondering was Enkrid’s habit, and his everything.

He thought, and he saw the road he had to take.

As always, it was a thorny road. Rough and dangerous. A road like climbing a sheer cliff.

Even so, he would enjoy every step.

'In the realm of consciousness.'

Read every incoming stone trajectory, dodge, and add deliberate movement.

That became preparation for the next move.

What he had learned from Nameless Correct Sword Style, what he had gained through experience, what he had realized by watching Jaxon prepare.

That was the conclusion he reached by combining it all.

"Again."

The goal was to dodge every close-range stone in place and draw out the intended reaction speed.

Of course, that was not all he did.

After this came Audin.

"Brother, you really enjoy suffering."

"Why are you saying that with such a big smile?"

"Because the Lord said you cannot speak of hardship unless you have walked that path yourself."

Enkrid interpreted the hulking religious fanatic in his own way.

To him, it sounded like this: I’m so happy I get to beat you half to death in training.

Enkrid smiled back.

If he walked the path of hardship and found fruit at the end, he would be satisfied whether it was sweet or rotten.

For a man who kept walking in place without stopping, even the smallest result had value.

Sweet fruit, sour fruit, fruit was fruit.

That pleased Audin quite a lot too.

He had phrased it indirectly, yet even hearing that half-death talk, Enkrid was still smiling.

"Let’s begin."

Audin taught Enkrid partial reinforcement training.

It was an advanced method within the Isolation Technique, truly a path of ascetic hardship.

Before this, he had split and stretched his body joint by joint to build flexibility.

This time, he learned to divide and train separate parts of the body.

He split the day in three: upper body in the morning, lower body at noon, and hidden muscles in the evening, tormenting each part.

"There are muscles you can feel and see easily, but there are muscles you cannot see. In the Isolation Technique, we call those inner muscles. For example, right here."

As he spoke, Audin jabbed a finger hard into the area around Enkrid’s waist.

Horrific pain, like being stabbed all over with blades, started at his waist and spread through his whole body.

"Hk."

It hurt enough for a groan to slip out.

"Exactly. We will train those muscles."

After Renewed Body came the next stage.

"Steel Body."

From inner muscles to outer muscles, he trained at a level close to abuse. Roll and roll again.

"Normally, you would need years for this, but Company Commander Brother might truly be a genius at body-building. Physical training is also a domain of talent, though many people do not know that. And this is fascinating. Your physical talent was clearly unimpressive before, and yet you became this. I would call it a talent invisible even to my eyes."

Audin kept talking in a stream, and not even half of it got through.

When you were repeating one-legged sit-stands with three stones tied together and loaded on your back, outside noise naturally disappeared.

Sweat poured down.

Winter weather was no match for training fever.

"Excellent."

Audin smiled. Enkrid smiled too. Just because something was insane did not make it bad.

This had its own joy.

Every training method was intense.

For example, walking in a beast gait while carrying rocks, or even Audin, on his back.

To train ankle flexibility, he stood on one foot with stones strapped behind him and picked up copper coins off the floor.

He repeated all of it dozens, then hundreds of times.

It was painful, exhausting, and hard. His focus could not break. None of it gave overnight results, so it could easily have been boring.

He still did it. If you took consistency away from Enkrid, what would even be left?

And for him, this was not boring at all.

"I’m doing it too!"

Dunbakel jumped in beside him, then after fifty round trips of beast gait, the Isolation Technique where the hands were used like feet to walk and train muscles, her face turned pale blue.

Still, even while dripping sweat onto the floor, Dunbakel endured and finished.

Whenever it got hard, she kept staring at Enkrid with a very strange look, but that was not worth worrying about.

Enkrid was too busy reviewing and refining his own training.

Rolling and grinding his body was daily life.

And while doing that, he could not neglect the sword.

First principle of Flowing Sword Style: A Soft Strike Does Not Blunt the Blade.

In the end, he kept polishing the swordplay he had roughly named Snake Sword.

After that came Nameless Correct Sword Style.

Then he returned to Heavy Sword Style, and finally pondered speed and technical blade work.

He polished what he had, searched, craved, and repeated it all without end.

"Rem!"

He also never skipped putting what he had learned into practice through Rem.

"Damn it, what am I, some combat puppet that fights whenever you call? You’re treating me like a human golem."

Enkrid was startled. He had half been thinking that himself.

Mind reading?

"If you don’t want to, then step in."

Ragna, who had been quietly watching, said it while sharpening his sword on a whetstone.

Shrring, ting!

Seeing him maintain his blade now, unlike before, felt like watching a kid finally grow up.

"Get lost, you lazy weasel bastard, before I split your skull with my axe."

Rem snapped his head around and glared at once. Just another day.

"Right, now that the blade is sharp, it’s a fine day to stain it with barbarian blood."

Ragna grabbed his sword and looked ready to stand. Watching them, it felt like a full clash was about to start.

"Both of you can come at me together."

Enkrid provoked them both.

At that, Rem and Ragna turned back to him.

Rem blinked. Ragna sat back down.

Shrring, he started sharpening again.

It was only one line, but it stopped the fight perfectly.

"You’d lose."

Ragna said it from where he sat.

"Fine."

Rem slapped the back of his axe against his palm and walked over.

Ragna stood with his sword anyway, took a spot at one side of the training ground, and began swinging.

Sometimes slow, sometimes fast.

Enkrid gave him one glance, then silently raised his sword. He gripped it with both hands and focused, trying to read Rem’s center.

Sword and sword, blade and blade.

Cold air split between them. Long ago, their first spar had been one of Rem’s whims, not even worth calling a pastime.

After that came axes still laced with playfulness.

But now?

Even Rem could not treat Enkrid lightly anymore.

'He’s a monster. A monster.'

Rem thought to himself. If talent meant someone who broke through limits with effort, then monster was the perfect word.

That made it even more fun.

At first, he had planned to watch and see when this man would break. Somewhere along the way, he became this man’s company member, and now he felt like a true subordinate.

'My people back home would lose their minds if they saw this.'

Rem briefly remembered what he had left behind, in his homeland. Then he threw it out of his head.

What did that matter.

Soon he moved both hands and crossed his axes.

The blades met and traded a light greeting.

Thunk.

At the sound of the crossed axes, Enkrid moved.

He lowered his upper body and kicked forward. He rushed in at once. Rem saw all of it. Boldness rose around his heart and made him face his opponent head-on. His dynamic visual acuity ran on a completely different level from ordinary people.

Rem twisted his left foot and drove an axe forward.

Whoom!

Normally, it was a beam-like slash that cut through sword, forearm, and torso even if blocked.

A heavy beam with speed added to weight, and Enkrid received and redirected it with his sword.

But he could not push even half a step farther, so even after flowing the axe away, he could not drive his sword forward.

Snake Sword was stopped.

Rem swung the second axe.

Two cuts.

It was a technique Rem trusted.

And Enkrid blocked the second one too.

The instant he realized that, Rem was deeply thrilled.

"Good!"

The heated leather still draped over his back flew off behind him.

Rem bared both arms and showed his fangs.

A full grin.

After redirecting both slashes, Enkrid raised his sword and faced him.

Naturally, he was smiling too.

From the side, they looked like complete lunatics.

Why smile while fighting as if to kill each other?

Anyway, this was Enkrid’s routine these days.

After returning, he focused only on training, sparring, and conditioning.

He had not even fully carried out his duties as training company commander.

Before he could make excuses about being busy, the recon unit had to be reorganized, and the troops assigned to duty were doubled.

The regional situation was that brutal.

He could not run outside for training, or go kill magic beasts and demon creatures.

Naturally, commissions were halted too.

Still, he could not stop peddlers or large merchant caravans.

The territory was still becoming a trade hub. That was the issue.

All of it looked ready to burn away in a single blaze, but for now this was the best they could do.

So while Marcus was scrambling everywhere to clean up the mess that had exploded, this was where Enkrid stood.

Enkrid did not care about Baronet Tarnin or the Black Blade.

He decided what he should do, then did it. He moved and acted. When the time came to step in, he would step in. He felt that time was not now.

Marcus would have been dumbfounded if he knew, but in truth, nothing would change even if Enkrid interfered, so this really was the right path.

About fifteen days passed like that.

"Still the same as ever."

Marcus came looking for Enkrid.

It was in front of the independent company barracks, inside their private training ground.

Snow poured down overhead, the kind of weather that made soldiers swear.

If left alone, it would turn the ground into ice and make clearing it even harder, so all they could do was watch the falling snow and sigh.

At one side of the training ground, they had built something like a roof with pillars.

Marcus leaned half his body against the center pillar and spoke with a bitter smile.

"I got hit hard."

"By what, sir?"

"I’m going back."

Enkrid stared, unsure what he meant, and Marcus let out a breath and continued.

"To the center. The capital."

Suddenly? Enkrid had ears too. He knew the surrounding situation had become a complete mess.

Without reinforcements, they were becoming a thin lamp flame before the wind.

Of course, that thin flame would not go out easily.

But Marcus was pulling out here? No, he had said he got hit, so that was not it. He was not stepping back by choice. Someone had pressured him.

"I’m handing the next castellan position to the 1st Company Commander."

Enkrid blew out a breath, then set down an iron club he had gotten by coaxing the blacksmith, a thing that weighed as much as ten swords.

A fine training tool that naturally built forearms, upper arms, and even waist strength as you swung it.

It also helped with sword training, a method for carving more precise swordsmanship into the body.

A heavy thud rang out, and Marcus’s gaze dropped for a moment.

The blunt sword tip was lodged at an angle in the frozen dirt.

What is that thing? Marcus reminded himself how monstrous this man was.

As that happened, Kraiss poked his head out from inside the lodging.

"Oh, Battalion Commander, you’re here?"

Kraiss opened the door and gave something like a military salute.

No matter how you looked at it, it was not a sharp movement, so it only looked salute-like.

"Cut it out."

Marcus waved him off.

Enkrid placed both hands over the grip.

"Tobacco?"

Marcus asked.

"I don’t smoke."

Marcus put a tobacco roll in his mouth. He looked about to strike flint, then Kraiss hurried over and offered a small flame.

Marcus lit it, took a deep drag, and exhaled.

White smoke mixed with his breath and spread through the air, the acrid scent stinging the nose.

It was tobacco made by rolling dried leaves, and it did not smell good at all.

What came next was simple and clear.

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