WE TRIED TRANSLATIONS

Translator: Hydrogen B

Editor: Abstract

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

A KNIGHT WHO ETERNALLY REGRESSES

Chapter 288: Let's Run Away

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The moment Jaxon grabbed Enkrid, an ominous sixth sense flared.

'These crazy bastards.'

As soon as that motherless bandit bastard Lykanos pulled back, the others rushed in to fill the gap.

They moved like trained men. This was a planned strike prepared for exactly this situation.

He heard blades slicing air before he saw them.

Hwooooosh!

No one knew how long they had been waiting, but black-clad men stabbed in with spike-like swords.

Every single charge ignored their own lives. Every single one was fast.

They thrust for one point and one point only.

Heavy and fast, the kind of strike that burned up a life for a single blow.

Jaxon yanked Enkrid with his left hand and swung his sword with his right.

At the same time, he made the calmest judgment he had made all day.

'I cannot block all of it.'

Jaxon's sword moved like a dance. It looked like the flutter of a light butterfly.

With his sword tip upright, a butterfly flew through the rain of long blades.

Its wings struck those long blades, jolted irregularly, bounced and bounced again, and twisted most of their paths away.

Tatatatatang!

He could not bat away everything. He missed two strikes.

One of them grazed Enkrid's left shin.

More exactly, Enkrid twisted his waist and avoided a clean hit.

The cloth and leather of the guard ripped and flapped loose.

The last one lashed at Enkrid's waist.

It made only a thud, then bounced off without piercing his body.

'Armor.'

That was the armor he had gotten earlier. Jaxon had seen the blacksmith wrap it around him like bandages.

He put more strength into his left arm. He planned to throw Enkrid backward and cut down the rest.

But the moment he flung Enkrid back, the bastards scattered.

'Damn.'

Fighting while protecting someone was not Jaxon's specialty.

He had fought with enemies behind him before, but he had almost no experience fighting while guarding an ally. It was rare enough to call it exceptional. That was why this happened.

'Mistake.'

He should have accepted a little damage and kept Enkrid directly behind him, or pulled him all the way out where no enemy hand could reach. He missed the timing.

Black-clad men leaped over his head, rushed from below, and charged from left and right too.

Their blades were blindly relentless, almost sickeningly so.

The moment he split his focus to the rear,

"I'm fine."

He heard Enkrid's voice. His right arm was hurt and he was exhausted, but not dying yet.

The problem was this.

'These lunatics are the real thing.'

The black-clad assault troops threw themselves in without caring what happened to their bodies.

He could not lightly dismiss men who wore thin, elastic leather in place of armor.

Whoever taught them had taught them well. That one-point thrust was excellent.

Jaxon kept swinging and kept stepping.

Pik, puk, puk.

Forearms were cut halfway through. Thighs were punched through. Jaxon's sword did its work like emotionless steel, but as long as they did not die, they twisted their bodies and attacked again.

They looked like an insane group stripped of all personality, living only to pierce targets with speed.

He dodged with footwork, and a blade flew into the space where he had been standing. He had sensed it one step earlier and slipped out. The blade stabbed into the cold dirt.

Thud!

The man who raised his head with his sword stuck in the ground looked like a ghost lived in his eyes.

None of that meant anything to Jaxon, so he simply planted a knife in the failed attacker's forehead.

An ordinary knife flicked through the air and became a grim reaper that took one life.

Jaxon thought open, head-on combat was not his strength, but he still thinned them one by one.

Enkrid took one look at Jaxon's fight and then tracked the men charging him.

'This is bad.'

Lykanos had already wrecked his right arm, and the recent hit had torn up his shin. It was not an injury he could dismiss as a scratch.

The leather guard was sliced cleanly, and skin and muscle were clearly marked.

The strike aimed at his torso had been stopped by armor, but the shock remained.

His organs shook. He held it together with his abs and got off this lightly. A normal man would have suffered a ruptured organ.

On top of that, Lykanos's final blow had left his right arm half-crippled.

Only his left arm could move.

So Enkrid did what he could.

He sheathed the gladius, took his original sword in his left hand, and swung.

He minimized leg movement and held the blade softly.

Flowing Sword Style.

He parried and parried again. His breathing was fine. In stamina alone, he could be called a monster against anyone alive.

Tatatatang!

He made a snap judgment and knocked away three or four blades. Right after that, another blade was suddenly right in front of his nose. It had been honed and honed until it shone icy bright.

'I cannot block this one.'

Heart of the Beast forced his eyes wide, and Focus Point set his brain on fire.

Even if he chose the best move possible, he thought he would lose an eye.

Their setup had been better.

They had failed to pin and kill the main force with Lykanos, then immediately deployed this blade unit they had prepared.

This was the result.

He could clearly see the future where he lost an eye. In that split fragment of time, he could not dodge, but he could ask himself and answer.

Lose an eye? So what if I do?

Even with one eye gone, nothing changes.

Enkrid twisted his head. He tried to turn and evade.

The option to die here and start over never existed in his mind.

If he were the kind of man who threw his life away over this, gave up, and restarted, he would have stopped in one repeated day long ago and been left behind.

The sword tip enlarged in his sight and looked as thick as a club.

Thud!

A crisp impact rang out, and the club blocking his view vanished.

The owner of the sword aimed at him flew through the air. Of course the sword flew up with him.

"Gaaaah!"

He screamed while flying. He flew well. For that instant, he would not have envied a bird.

His flight was finite, and its ending was never blessed.

He crashed down among Border Guard regulars, and a startled soldier raised his spear at the sudden incoming body, so he was skewered in midair and died.

Enkrid had been falling backward while blocking, enduring, and refusing to die. He landed hard on his backside.

Then he looked to the side and saw a wild horse that had just launched a human into the sky with a back kick.

Hihihihing!

"Odd-Eye?"

Hihihihihing!

It sounded like it was shouting that it hated that name, but at a moment like this, he could not even remember whatever forced name he had given it.

Grrrr.

And Esther was already there too.

She could not turn human, so she was in Lake Panther form.

The silky black fur wrapping her body reminded him of her hair when she was human.

And then, cutting in beside the black-clad Thrust Assault Unit, came a man who would survive anywhere as long as he had a sword, even if he got lost.

Whuk, thud, whuk, pik, whuk, pak, whuk, split.

Enkrid's eyes spun nonstop. He was trying to keep up with the chain of strikes happening in front of him.

Ragna slammed in from the side and cut down five men with five swings in one step.

'What kind of trick is that now?'

One step, five swings.

How was that even possible?

His swordplay was impossible to measure.

Speed that came before the enemy's speed, a blade of preemptive attack. Ragna's sword showed exactly that.

"I will kill all of them and catch up. Go first."

A blunt tone, bangs fallen over his eyes.

Dry red eyes looked ahead through strands of blond hair.

He batted away arrows flying over his head and killed the men closing in.

Ragna's sword started moving so fast that even Enkrid saw it as broken fragments.

When arrows rained over Enkrid's head, several shield-bearing soldiers approached from behind.

"He swings it damn well."

That came from Dunbakel, who had been watching from the side.

She said it while smashing the skull of an assassin who had rushed from behind with two daggers.

The instant she sensed his movement, she planted her right foot and dropped her left knee into his head.

Enkrid had reacted too, sword already up.

Either way, her eyes were also on Ragna.

Arrows were pouring overhead, Odd-Eye had raced in like it was flying and saved him, Esther and Dunbakel had arrived, and behind them allies had formed around him with large round shields. Once he saw all that, he figured he would not die here.

His eyes naturally turned forward.

'Lykanos.'

Ragna's sword was fast now, but Lykanos's blade at the very end had been faster.

And the blades of the men charging him just now had felt similar.

The men who had thrown themselves in pulled back after Ragna cut down some of them.

Ragna got a scrape above his thigh in that exchange.

His armor was sliced and blood stained his clothes, but he returned as if nothing had happened.

"Do not save arrows!"

"Die, you bastards!"

"Infantry are the flowers of the battlefield!"

"At the end of pain is pleasure!"

People fought from every direction, screaming curses and battle cries.

Some died with arrows through their skulls.

Some were hit by throwing axes and pitched forward mid-charge.

"Yorororororo!"

An enemy mercenary in strange fur armor beat his chest and yelled that bizarre cry.

Bell appeared out of nowhere and threw a spear, hitting him and dropping him.

"Fight if you do not want to die!"

Bell's shout rang out.

Enkrid was carried to the rear. Three soldiers supported him. The wound on his left shin looked too serious, so he gave up on walking.

"Fuck, he is filthy strong."

Graham said that while looking far across the battlefield.

Lykanos was there.

Enkrid saw him too.

He had not just taken a hit at the end.

He had landed one slash on Lykanos's face.

Blood was running down, half his face soaked red, but the man stayed calm.

Lykanos did not smile. He watched Enkrid and his group in silence, then turned away.

As he pulled back, those same black-clad quick-blade assault troops gathered around him.

"There are too many."

Graham muttered.

"Yeah."

Behind him, a pale Kraiss agreed.

A unit that bet its own life to kill with one thrust.

Even at a glance, there seemed to be over fifty left.

And that was after counting the dead and assuming they could also keep blocking hidden assassins attacking between lines.

'This is going to be a headache.'

Enkrid thought that, and Kraiss agreed completely.

The battle was short.

Audin did not step in because that man called the Wolf Bishop did not step in either, and Ragna did not push deeper.

Jaxon had returned at some point.

Neither side's commander looked like they meant to finish this in a single day.

Before they could even clean up the situation, a pale-faced Graham approached Enkrid, who was getting rough bandages wrapped for bleeding control.

Kraiss saw that and spoke.

"I knew from the start one clash would not do it. We finish this within three. We only need to break their core force. More than anything, battlefields are decided by the power of a small elite."

His voice sounded drained.

It had to. Kraiss trusted Enkrid's strength.

He had thought maybe they could not pop the enemy commander's skull in one hit, but they would still win in the end.

But no.

The first battle was no different from a defeat.

Moving their position back inside the fortress walls was the worst possible move, so they had to finish it here.

And they had to finish it as fast as possible.

Three battles in that limited time.

'If we just endure, we lose.'

Behind Border Guard, Azpen still had not even drawn his sword.

'Goddamn it.'

Kraiss kept a calm face and secretly planned escape routes in his head. He now needed to scout real ways out.

'Could we use a rat hole?'

He had prepared a few things just in case.

"Those Cultist bastards looked like they were just watching, did they not? They only sent a few wolf magic beasts."

Graham surveyed the full state of the battlefield and delayed deploying the heavy infantry.

If the enemy saved strength, they had to save strength too.

If they threw in full force too early and got pushed back, that was total annihilation.

If the elite fight stayed this close, the rest would fall to the main infantry lines.

And the heavy infantry's role there would not be small.

"Right. I am not sure they will keep just watching tomorrow."

Kraiss said it and looked at Enkrid.

As always, their captain looked calm. His face was steady.

'Ha, I am going to die, seriously.'

He could not leave him and run. Kraiss had been a merchant, a thief, even a pickpocket once.

Through all that, he had never turned away from someone who had saved his life.

That was not a profession issue, that was character.

And he could save him with a little risk. It was not even a bet-your-life situation.

"Next time, I will cut them down."

"They were fast."

Ragna spoke, and Enkrid answered in the same steady tone.

"If that is all they have, I just cut them."

At Ragna's firm words, Enkrid fell silent in thought for a moment.

Yeah, that had been pretty fast.

His right arm could not be used now, and his left shin was bad too.

The armor had stopped the torso hit, but his belly was bruised. His organs were not damaged, but they throbbed.

Isolation Technique was an art built by stacking repeated days.

He endured thanks to strength maintained, trained, and sustained over time.

So a body hit like that would heal with good food and one full day of sleep.

But his right arm would not.

"Rest first and make it through tonight. Stay alert for night raids, and keep the recon units moving without pause!"

Graham shouted.

Heavy infantry would personally handle watch duty tonight.

The battle had been short, but casualties were heavier than ever.

The dead were already in double digits.

Enkrid stayed sunk in thought.

Kraiss watched for a second, then stepped in front of him.

A torch stood behind him, so his shadow wavered and moved over Enkrid's head.

They were inside a newly pitched tent. Outside was the wild horse. Inside were Ragna, Audin, Dunbakel, Teresa, and Esther.

Wheee.

Cold wind pushed into the half-open flap and shook the torch flame.

Kraiss's unsteady shadow split into two, then merged back into one.

"Why?"

Enkrid was leaning back at an angle.

Kraiss had just replaced all his body bandages.

Kraiss swallowed and spoke.

"Let's run away."

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