WE TRIED TRANSLATIONS

Translator: Hydrogen B

Editor: Abstract

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

A KNIGHT WHO ETERNALLY REGRESSES

Chapter 283: Luckily, They Were Stupid.

= = =

"Uh, mm, nice."

Enkrid stood on the platform and declared that he would send an assassin.

Of course, that was never going to happen. More precisely, not yet. If they sent one now, it would only be a small fry.

Kraiss knew that better than anyone.

So he made full use of Enkrid's one line.

What would happen if word spread that they were about to take the enemy commander's head?

'If it were me?'

He would hesitate to move first. He would increase escorts and post more guards.

And once that happened, he would be even less likely to order an all-out attack.

'They'll move even more carefully.'

They even pretended to move troops at night. They quietly leaked it too, so those spy bastards would run and report it.

Kraiss squeezed everything he could out of Enkrid's words.

'Even better.'

This strategy had always been built on both sides watching each other and refusing to commit first.

It already had a good chance of working, but Enkrid's line made it work even better.

'His mind really is quick.'

He acted like he hated using his head, but their captain thought deeply.

He was sharp too.

And sure enough, it worked.

Those bastards were already wary of each other, and now they did not charge at all. They just tightened their defenses.

The number of torches lighting up the night increased.

Allied scouts ran in every direction, pushing so hard that both horses and riders looked ready to collapse.

Even then, Kraiss still could not shake his anxiety.

So what should he do? Seeing things with his own eyes always eased his fear, at least a little.

What he needed now was eyes.

And on a battlefield, eyes meant reconnaissance.

"The Reconnaissance Team will decide this battle."

Kraiss said it, and Vengeance nodded harder than ever.

"Damn right."

After that, he drove his Reconnaissance Team like a madman.

"Run, all of you. If you're lazy, other soldiers die. Pain is!"

"It kills me!"

The chants got stranger as they went, but the effect was obvious.

They moved.

The allied troops regrouped, reorganized, and spent the day preparing again.

Then at dawn, against a dim sky, they marched out through the gate.

"All units, forward!"

The voices of veteran core soldiers rang out from all across the lines.

Kraiss watched and still felt a bad premonition.

It was always like this. Always ominous. Always uneasy.

'It's okay.'

He said it to himself.

If things went wrong, he could run. That small comfort anchored his mind and let it keep working.

A ship with its anchor down does not get pushed around by waves so easily.

West of Border Guard, troops advanced across barren land that could not be farmed.

A little farther south, on a small hill, Kraiss watched the battlefield with two squads guarding him.

What would happen?

Would it go as planned? Or would something unexpected happen?

Or would the enemy read his intent and counter it?

'What if they squeeze from both sides and launch a full offensive right now?'

Then it was the worst case. There was no way to stop that.

Even ten Enkrids would not be enough.

"I'm bored, Big Eyes."

Rem grumbled as he stood there as escort.

He rested an axe on one shoulder, and his lowered eyes carried killing intent.

His posture and stare both said he wanted to run out and fight right now.

Kraiss was not his usual self.

He ignored it and said, "Wait. You're going to fight until you start saying you hate fighting."

Right now, his head was too busy turning.

Enemy intent, enemy commanders' thoughts, their personalities, their judgment patterns, he was cramming all of it into his mind and turning it over.

It was sharp enough to sound rude, but Rem, unusually, kept his mouth shut.

Even he could tell Kraiss was different today.

'This bastard does have some use.'

Rem only looked like an idiot on the outside. He knew how to think too.

He just forced everything into his own way of seeing.

Kraiss did not even notice that Rem was being quiet.

His mind was still spinning.

In any case, the key was elite small units.

How they used them would decide victory or defeat.

Inside all that anxiety and unease, Kraiss felt a strange thrill.

'If this works as planned.'

They might hold. He ignored minor variables. Those were things the troops had to solve on the ground.

Naturally, his thoughts moved to what came next.

How could they win more easily? What did they need?

'What if we unified troop roles and equipment here?'

One thought led to another as he pictured the future. Standardized gear, then reorganized troops trained to use the same tactics.

Strong soldiers moving like a commander's hands and feet, an army built to one standard through training.

He had heard the imperial troops fought that way.

Then couldn't the Border Guard standing army do the same?

He would keep groups of exceptional elites separate.

But every other unit should have uniform strength. Uniformity of force.

'If troop roles and gear are unified.'

Even a soldier who might lose a duel

'wins in company-scale battles and above.'

Small elite engagements mattered, but large battles mattered too.

To win large battles, uniformity was vital.

Lose one-on-one, lose ten-on-ten, fine. Win one hundred-on-one hundred.

That was a new realization he had while watching allied troops gather.

As he sorted ideas with labels like swordsmen, spearmen, and shield-bearers, Kraiss quietly organized his thoughts.

He figured this new concept would be useful one day, or at least something he could sell.

* * *

Baronet Tarnin was seized by fear the moment the Border Guard standing army came out.

"Pain to me is!"

"Joy!"

"Come at usssss!"

At a glance, they looked more numerous than his side and better equipped too.

"Do not be afraid. That is what they want."

Lykanos, a warrior from the Black Blade Bandits, said.

A weapon handle jutted up over his shoulder, and a mace hung diagonally across his back.

At the end near his hip was a round iron weight packed with sharp spikes. Just looking at it made you feel how heavy it was.

Lykanos's forearm was as thick as an average woman's thigh, and he wore gloves made of leather plated with bits of metal.

He looked like the kind of man who could crush a skull without effort.

In fact, he could do most of what Tarnin imagined.

Like crushing a head barehanded.

In short, he was one of the standout fighters in the Black Blade Bandits.

Other than the band leader, no one could give him orders.

"No, what are those Cultist bastards doing?"

"Those Cultist bastards? Just sitting back and watching."

Lykanos fought well and was an excellent warrior. But he was not smart.

Tarnin was even worse.

One noble who had been waiting for the room opened his mouth carefully.

"The rumors inside Border Guard are bad. People are lining up to run at any moment."

He was a noble who had fled from that territory.

Tarnin frowned.

If things were really that rotten and broken inside, then what was this in front of them?

"Pain!"

"Agony!"

"I want to hurt!"

"Make me hurt!"

Were they all just lunatics?

Had they all taken drugs together somewhere?

"...When I left, the army wasn't even properly under control."

The noble trailed off.

Lykanos wanted to crack the bastard's skull right there, but he held back.

It did not matter anyway.

"Just respond in moderation!"

If they committed full force now, would the Cult react?

What about Azpen beyond the territory?

Probably not. They were all filthy bastards.

If their own numbers got cut down here, there might be no next move.

They could not afford to get stabbed in the back by Cultist bastards.

"Those damn vermin, just smash the ones that charge!"

He thought it was the right level of response.

One of Baronet Tarnin's subordinates worked his lips.

'If we launch a full offensive right now, the Cult unit and Azpen will both join. Then it's over.'

He thought for a moment, then shut his mouth.

If he said that now, he would be branded a Cult-obsessed spy on the spot.

"You, you're a spy!"

Pig Baronet Tarnin was already slapping the noble who had crossed over from Border Guard.

His thick palm met the lean man's cheek and produced a crisp smack.

Smack!

"Ack! Oh god! No, no! Really, no! When I left, the army's morale was a total disaster!"

The slapped noble hit the ground and cried as he spoke.

"Stop talking bullshit!"

Tarnin's temper landed squarely on the noble.

The noble begged for his life.

Watching one man get ground down like that made everyone else swallow their words.

The people above would handle it.

He gave up on speaking.

Lykanos did exactly what he said. The battle settled into a pattern of only answering attacks in moderation.

"Let them fight each other and bleed a bit, then we go in."

The Wolf Bishop followed Lykanos's thinking.

'No need for believers' blood to spill first.'

The Cult unit stayed quiet.

The assassination unit did not come yesterday, but who said it would not come today?

A messenger from the Black Blade Bandits came and spewed nonsense about helping right away.

"We have to watch Martai's garrison too, and prepare for assassination."

Flat refusal. Lykanos heard that and veins bulged on his forehead, but he could do nothing right then, while Tarnin's throat-ripping screams kept echoing.

"If we get hit like this, we're finished!"

Lykanos was seized by the urge to rip out that noisy pig's throat first, but that pig was both the cause and the excuse for this war.

A pig he could not kill.

* * *

Azpen invested resources to track even what was happening beyond the territory.

They used everything from spies and the Reconnaissance Team to sorcery and magic.

"Do we move?"

At his subordinate's question, one man swept his hair back.

The green hair covering his forehead slid back, then fell again.

Feeling the soft slide of it, he spoke.

"It is not our turn yet."

His eyes shone coldly.

Azpen's genius strategist, a man who had been demoted for a while after losing the previous war, was named Abnaier.

He set this battle's objective clearly.

One man's head was the top priority.

Expanding territory could wait.

He had prepared mountains of things for this.

His heart even beat faster. How long would that man endure?

He was not the type to enjoy tormenting people, but as a strategist, nothing was more satisfying than seeing how far his preparations would carry him.

* * *

"You crazy bastards! What did I tell you? My words are God's words! They're light! Huh? Charge! Listen when I speak!"

At the squad leader's shout, his men shouted in unison.

"Agh!"

Every one of them was desperate. For good reason. In a short time, they had learned absolute obedience.

The newer the recruit, the harder they were pushed.

It was not done out of malice.

Veteran-level squad leaders and platoon leaders were called in. They just did what they were told.

"I'll make them fight hot but cold, so they don't get swept up in battlefield heat."

Kraiss came and barked that out, and naturally no one listened.

Then Enkrid stepped in.

Black hair, blue eyes, the madman of the battlefield spoke.

"Half-kill them if you have to, make them listen to their commanders. And you lot listen to higher command. If you don't, you die. Rem and I will take turns training you and beating you."

Whatever rank they had before, smart or not, if they had served as soldiers, simple was best.

They followed Enkrid's words.

Bell was among them too.

Bell, now a platoon leader, screamed at the top of his lungs.

"Do you all wanna diiiieeeee?!"

"Aaaagh!"

"Don't go out! I said don't go out!"

This was the edge of battle. Bell's shout exploded from the very front.

Kraiss had asked Graham and arranged it that way on purpose, but most of the deployed force this time was first-battle recruits.

One rookie could not hear the sounds around him.

All he saw was a demonlike enemy army closing in.

Spears, swords, shields, hammers, maces, flails, they filled his vision.

'Ah.'

Am I ready? Is my judgment sharp enough? Should I thrust now? Should I raise my shield and block?

The thoughts kept piling up, and just as his mind turned white,

Whack!

Someone hit the back of his head.

It was hard enough to make him see stars. Color rushed back into his bleached mind.

His surroundings snapped back into focus.

"You little shit, are you not repeating orders back?"

A curse tore through his ears. It was the platoon leader's shout.

"Yes!"

"First rank, stab!"

"First rank, stab!"

They did exactly that. Most of the recruits thrust their spears forward.

"Back! Back! Pull out, pull out, you fucks! You, we'll talk inside! I'll kill you!"

The shouts of veteran soldiers now serving as squad leaders rang everywhere.

That was how the first small battle passed.

They started at sunrise, marched slowly, met the enemy at noon, then began fighting.

Total enemy count: eighty. Infantry equal to roughly two platoons.

Allied wounded: six.

No dead.

They stabbed hard, held with shields, managed distance, and pulled back.

In truth, that was thanks to allied command, not enemy restraint.

"Why do they charge and then stop?"

One mercenary from the Black Blade Bandits asked awkwardly.

His blood had just started boiling and he was ready to rampage, then the enemy retreated.

Naturally, he could not chase alone.

Then the Black Blade Bandits also received an order to retreat.

The next day, another similar battle followed.

Only the faces changed. The lineup of soldiers was different.

In the second battle, one unlucky Black Blade Bandits soldier failed to block and got his neck grazed by a spear tip, then died.

He had been a serf from Baronet Tarnin's territory.

In other words, a hastily assembled unit.

Graham and the frontline commanders recognized the enemy's state at a glance.

Baronet Tarnin's army itself was sloppy and loosely stitched together.

Even so, they did not crash in recklessly.

In the third battle, they opened the south gate and picked a fight with the Cult instead.

"Are you short a few brain cells, boy? Charge already, or did you come to watch?"

It began with a provocation shouted in a northern dialect.

Another similar battle followed.

Sometimes three companies, sometimes two, they rotated in, fought, and then pulled back at the right point.

It happened four times, five times, six times, twelve small battles in total.

Total dead: six.

And now more than half the surviving soldiers at least roughly understood what battle was.

Most of all, these were men who had endured Enkrid's training.

Real combat filled their weak points in an instant.

And just as Kraiss wanted, it made the Border Guard standing army look much larger.

From the enemy's side, their fighting looked abnormal.

Naturally.

Who would run live combat training in the middle of a crisis like this?

"Looks like we got lucky. They're all idiots."

Kraiss let out a relieved breath and said it while looking at Sinar and Enkrid.

"Now you just need to do the real job."

Sinar turned calm eyes to Enkrid and said,

"For a pre-meal event, that felt excessive, no?"

"What meal?"

"Our engagement ceremony, obviously."

The same pointless elf joke as always.

Enkrid grabbed the torch stand in the middle of the barracks tent.

Sinar reacted. She shifted her left foot toward the outside of the tent.

This elf was strangely sensitive to fire.

"Are you all right?"

"That was quite the joke. Cruel."

The elf said it expressionlessly and stepped out of the tent.

Enkrid gave a short grin, went back in, and checked his gear.

"Uh, mm, it's a mission."

He said it, and everyone rose.

A pack of beasts was there, itching to fight after more than ten days without battle.

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