WE TRIED TRANSLATIONS

Translator: Hydrogen B

Editor: Abstract

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

A KNIGHT WHO ETERNALLY REGRESSES

Chapter 291: Duty and Responsibility (3)

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"It doesn't look like you came at us because you wanted to die."

The boss said that. In the middle of all this, what was he even talking about? Enkrid listened, and it was persuasion.

He told him to work under him and rob people together.

Ah, and had he also said he should serve them at night?

He could not remember. Enkrid's memory came in broken fragments. The memories from that time were even worse.

All he saw was dog heads on the bandit bastards in front of him.

They looked like dogs in heat.

They snickered among themselves. Their mouths split and stretched long enough to reach their ears.

His vision blurred.

Among them, the boss with the dog head came closer, licking his lips.

Everyone had already been subdued. Normally, until now, he should have endured and waited for next time.

As long as he did not die, tomorrow would come. Another chance could come too.

That was the moment he thought of tomorrow instead of today. He saw the child's corpse and heard the boss speak.

After that, the boss probably said more, but Enkrid did not listen.

The last thing he remembered was that dog head stripping the dead child.

Why was that thing taking the kid's clothes off?

Whoosh.

Vallen-style Mercenary Sword. A blade with no handle.

Enkrid was gripping only the blade of a knife with its handle removed. His palm split open and blood poured down, but no one guessed the blood came from the blade in his hand.

Then he stabbed.

Thud.

He drove it in deep.

Crunch.

And twisted.

Wham!

The boss swung his fist. Enkrid's body lifted into the air and was thrown sideways.

He landed on his shoulder, and the joint twisted. His left arm hung loose.

In that state, he raised his head.

The boss was there, clutching his stomach with one hand.

All the dog heads were gone. It was his real face now.

"You little bastard, if you want to die that bad, fine. Die."

"Ger, now."

Enkrid's tongue worked magic. He spoke as if he could see Ger alive behind the boss, swinging an axe.

The boss flinched, hunched up, and rolled forward.

Of course Ger was not there. He was already dead. If the dead came back and swung blades, that was undead.

That only happened with zombies or skeleton soldiers.

Seeing that, Enkrid gave a short laugh. A savage killing intent rose in the boss's eyes.

He had moved in a hurry, so the wound in his stomach split wider and blood streamed down.

"You won't die clean."

It did not look like he had lived clean in the first place.

So it fit him.

Enkrid stayed indifferent. He had done everything he could. If someone came close, all he had left was to bite.

He meant to do that too.

What a feeling.

It felt like shit. Like dogshit. Like a goddamn curse.

He lacked the skill and failed to protect the kid whose dream was not to die on the road. Two comrades died. Villagers died too. He would die as well.

"What the hell is that bastard so confident about?"

One of the bandits said it.

"I have no faith."

Enkrid answered as usual, and after hearing that, the boss and his men said Enkrid had definitely gone insane.

Talking like that in this situation?

He must have smashed his head hard when he was young.

Thud.

Then, out of nowhere, a noise.

A flying head, spraying blood, and a headless body collapsing came into view.

It was the one who had been pulling down the kid's pants.

Shhk, thud, whoosh, crack.

The two standing beside him, as if waiting their turn, also lost their heads.

No one saw anything. Not one of them.

"What the fuck is this!"

The mercenary company? No, even if they came back, this still made no sense. Impossible.

It was as if wind blew through and sent a few heads flying.

That fast. Too fast to see. The owner of that wind spoke. At some point, she was standing blankly among the bandits.

A hood covered her whole face, with only her eyes barely visible, but Enkrid knew that person was a woman dressed as a man.

Of course, that did not matter at all.

"You are the ones who touched my camp, right?"

The cross-dressed woman spoke with a longsword resting on her shoulder.

She wore black leather armor, and overall she looked slim.

Unlike her build, her swordsmanship was brutal.

Cutting off a human head was not easy. Even now, only a few people died with a neck severed in one stroke.

Yet she sliced through three strong bandits one after another, even if she had caught them from behind.

"So it was you."

The sword moved with words no one could understand, and each time it moved, another corpse appeared.

Enkrid swallowed the blood flowing from his split lips and pulled ragged breaths.

He had been hit wrong in the fight and damaged his insides.

Still, it was not enough to kill him.

He had taken enough beatings to know which wounds threatened his life. This, he could endure. He would not die.

Ignoring the pain, Enkrid watched the swordswoman rampage.

"Kill her! Arrows!"

Ping!

Several arrows flew toward her. Useless, of course.

No one could properly see her movement. Through the falling rain, only those who had been death to the villagers and death to Enkrid started dropping.

"We only lost one little rabbit we were roasting!"

The boss shouted.

The swordswoman answered with her sword. In other words, she butchered them.

"You worm bastards. You should've looked at who you were charging before you did it."

There was no hesitation and no mercy in her hand. She cut, severed, stabbed, and killed in one breath.

Enkrid watched all the way until the remaining bandits ran, then he blacked out.

He had already lost a lot of blood, and the injuries were severe.

"Do you happen to know a guy with blond hair, red eyes, about this tall, with a lazy look to him?"

He was unconscious, but he came to in flashes, and he heard that line then.

The swordswoman looked at him for a moment while he was out.

When their eyes met, she said:

"If you don't know, then forget it."

Later, he heard she took a few gold coins from the villagers and left.

It was not payment for saving them. They offered, so she took it, and she gave no meaning to what she did.

Meaning, she had not acted to save anyone.

She did not rescue and protect them. She was passing by, got annoyed, and cut them down.

That was all.

After waking up, Enkrid buried the dead with the villagers.

He buried Ger and Pete, and he buried the child.

"Why did you do that?"

It felt like the dead child asked him.

Left alone among the graves, Enkrid answered without emotion.

After he recovered and came back, people even started calling him "the one who gets his comrades killed."

It was a fight where he gained nothing and protected nothing.

Still, it was a fight he could not retreat from.

* * *

"Because it pisses me off."

"Huh?"

"What they do gets under my skin. Makes you want to beat them. If I run here, it feels like I lose. Ah, I can't stand that."

There was not one drop of emotion in his words. Same speed, same tone, no rise or fall, indifference at its peak.

"Seriously?"

"Yeah, seriously."

"You say that in that flat voice?"

"I'm a man like a cold flame by nature."

"Ah, yes, of course you are."

Kraiss gave up.

If he were the kind of man you could persuade in the first place, he would never have come this far.

Enkrid stood up. For the first time in a while, he remembered that day.

"I won't tell you to run, so just say it. Why, really?"

It sounded exactly like the question that kid had asked him as a hallucination from the grave.

"Because I want to."

Same answer as back then.

What was a knight?

People said a knight was one who kept oaths.

Enkrid grew up listening to poems and dreaming of stories.

That dream from then had become the dream of now.

To Enkrid, a knight was someone who kept oaths and did not betray his own heart.

After that, he often faced situations like that.

Whether the goddess of fortune truly blessed him or not, he did not know.

He still barely survived each time.

Then, in a slash-and-burn village, he got the talisman that made him repeat today.

You never know how things will turn out.

So he would do what he had to do. As his heart wanted, as his oath demanded.

"Ah, so in the end you're saying you'll hold the rear, right? If we pull out here, half the people in Border Guard will suffer. Some will die, and there are Cultists too, so it'll become chaos. You're saying you'll protect that, right now."

"No, I told you, I just don't like how those bastards look."

"Ah, come on, seriously. That's not it. You're doing this to protect people."

"You're still talking casually."

"Fine. Fine. Ah, I lose. Let's say that's what it is."

Kraiss gave up for real. Enkrid gave a short laugh.

Yeah, he wanted to protect them.

Was that not his duty and responsibility?

If he could not even protect those standing behind him, then what was this sword for?

What could he protect in the future, and whom?

If he could not even take responsibility for his own back, he could do nothing. That was Enkrid's oath.

"May the Lord's blessing be with you."

Audin prayed without a smile.

Ragna silently wiped down his sword and oiled it.

Before anyone noticed, Jaxon had already left his spot.

Teresa and Dunbakel said nothing in particular.

No need to mention Esther.

The panther looked like it did not care what any of them were saying.

"Ah, are all of you insane?"

Only Kraiss grumbled, but including him, no one looked like they planned to leave.

Night passed, and Enkrid judged he could not use his right arm right away.

Well, if it became urgent, he would use it, but for now he held back.

The shin injury was better than expected.

As long as he did not move too much.

In the middle of the night, Audin asked:

"Shall I heal you?"

Enkrid was quick to read people. Luck followed him often too, but he had survived many times because he could read a situation.

So he roughly knew what happened when Audin used divine power.

More than anything, should he force a man to do something he did not want?

Just so his own arm healed a little faster, should he make that faithful, bear-like soldier sacrifice something?

"No."

He pushed him away. Audin smiled again at that answer.

A strategy meeting was held that night. Too many urgent matters.

"We have to hit back. We need to force the enemy to show their hand first.

We hold one more day, then decide it on the third day."

Graham nodded. He thought about when to commit the heavy infantry. Kraiss, taking every variable into account, imagined every bad thing that could happen across the battlefield and dug through each one.

They worked almost through the whole night, and dark circles formed under Kraiss's eyes.

"Staying up all night is the enemy of skin."

Kraiss complained, but he kept grinding his brain.

At early dawn the next day, battle resumed.

"Kill them all!"

Lykanos shouted instead of stepping to the front.

"We have to endure. In one piece."

Kraiss said that, and Enkrid went where his instinct led him, the very front line.

Enkrid held his sword with only his left hand.

"Hold!"

"Pain that cannot kill me!"

"Makes tomorrow's me stronger!"

The twisted slogan returned to its proper place.

The moment battle began, the thrust unit that threw their bodies forward without hesitation targeted Enkrid.

Lykanos only watched. The one remaining eye on that one-eyed bastard glinted, but Enkrid did not even notice it.

That day too, Enkrid barely endured.

He did not die, but he could not force a push either.

Because Enkrid held, allied morale soared.

Injuries like these could not stop the Madmen Company.

More than that, the men under Enkrid had not even truly stepped in yet.

Both sides fought while hiding their final card.

"Kill them allllll!"

"Fuck!"

Between curses and battle cries, the soldiers fought desperately.

Enkrid did not die this time either, but he allowed three sword strikes to his abdomen.

It was intentional.

Fighting with only his left hand tangled his movement, so he forced it.

The armor he got from the explorer's tomb was treasure. He trusted it.

Tap tap.

Enkrid slapped his own stomach, grinned, and said:

"Solid."

There were all kinds of crazy things to say. Really.

Kraiss said it with his face, then let out a deep sigh and made it through day two.

Next morning.

"Do we really need to go this far? Really?"

His face, forearms, and body were a mess with small cuts all over.

Scars from yesterday.

These would heal with spit, so he did not care.

Still, they looked rough, and Kraiss started in from early morning.

"They keep hitting and running. Just blocking them pissed me off."

In exchange for exposing his stomach, he cut two throats.

One with a snake-sword strike, one with a heavy sword-style smash.

"...Let's not talk."

When battle started again, Enkrid saw something he had never expected.

"Uuuuuugh!"

A child who could not even scream properly stood at the front of the battlefield, at the enemy vanguard.

Not just near the front. The kid stood deep inside arrow range, like begging to be skewered.

Not a bandit. Not Baronet Tarnin's army. Not a Cultist.

It was a face he knew. A child he had vaguely seen in passing.

A kid from inside Border Guard. A child protected inside the territory, a face he was supposed to protect, stood there.

"It's a gift, you bastard!"

Lykanos shouted from far behind. Even as he spoke, there was no real excitement in him.

It was exactly what it looked like, a filthy trick to break morale.

"Vengeance."

The moment Enkrid said it, Vengeance understood at once.

"Don't shoot!"

Vengeance shouted, and the archers let up. The enemy also did not fire.

The child ran. Those shaking legs somehow kept moving.

Enkrid stepped forward a few paces.

If an arrow flew from behind, he planned to knock it away and block it. A round shield was in his left hand.

The child ran steadily and reached him.

Flash!

Light burst out from the child's abdomen.

And then.

"Do we really need to go this far? Really?"

Kraiss's nagging made him open his eyes.

Today began.

It was today, the one he had lived yesterday.

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