WE TRIED TRANSLATIONS
Translator: Hydrogen B
Editor: Abstract
Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried
A KNIGHT WHO ETERNALLY REGRESSES
Chapter 308: Caught
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Caught.
When people talked about a duel between mages, they said each side opened their own World of Spells.
The spells each had stacked in that world were their weapons.
Galaf drew out the river flowing through his own world.
"Crash down and smash her."
A staff had appeared in Galaf's hand before anyone noticed.
From the shining white gem at its tip, part of the river burst out.
It quickly gathered into one massive lump, then flew forward like an artillery shell made of water droplets.
"You think you can beat me while cursed?
You stupid bitch!"
Galaf shouted as he hurled the water shell.
The moment he gave that order, Esther's hands started forming signs too.
Instead of showing emotion, she showed a spell.
Fwoosh!
As soon as her fingers stopped moving, flames flared in her eyes, and a blazing orb formed where she looked and shot out.
Two spells of different elements collided in midair.
Boom!
A thunderous blast rang out, and steam rose with a hiss.
The fire orb vanished, and the river mass veered off and slammed into the ground.
Kaboom!
The earth caved in, and steam filled the area.
It blocked the view like dense fog.
Not being able to see each other did not mean the two mages had lost each other.
They tracked each other through the flow of mana from the start, so sight did not matter.
"You stupid bitch!"
He kept calling her stupid, and that only made her dig in harder.
Esther decided what she would say when she killed him.
Now was not the time.
While talking, Galaf secretly sent two disciples behind Esther.
He had sent the rest to do "work," but kept those two.
Neither was strong in magic, but both were good with swords.
'Stupid bitch.'
Galaf repeated the same words in his head and kept chanting one spell after another.
The two disciples crept forward.
The steam happened to hide their bodies, so sensing their presence should have been near impossible.
Those two still could not even build a World of Spells, so Esther, who tracked mana, had no way to detect them.
Galaf's two disciples pushed through the misty steam and advanced.
One tightened his grip on his sword and searched for her.
He flicked his eyes around, ready to stab the moment he saw her, when something suddenly shot right in front of him.
Thunk!
The disciple who had stepped ahead first suddenly went black.
Something wrapped around his face, and pressure began crushing his skull.
"Ghk!"
"You piece of shit!"
The disciple behind him drew his blade and stabbed.
Clang!
Ting!
"Ugh!"
It felt like stabbing a boulder.
The tip bounced off, and he dropped his sword.
His grip went numb.
Grab!
A huge hand came out of the fog and seized the second disciple's throat in one motion.
By reflex, the disciple clawed at the hand on his neck and pulled.
It meant nothing.
Even sword edges bounced off this thing.
"Ghk!"
Both disciples dangled in the air without even managing a scream.
Their breath locked up, and no words came out.
One had his head gripped, the other his throat. Both thrashed, and neither could break free.
The face of the one held by the throat started turning purple.
His airway was blocked.
Between lips darker than his face, his tongue slowly slipped out and hung limp.
Through it all, Esther calmly chanted again.
"Dmueller's Scythe."
The same spell, a second time.
As the vacuum-cutting spell sliced through the air, the steam that had hidden everything cleared for a moment.
"The same trick again!"
Galaf blocked it the same way.
A blue barrier stopped the vacuum blade, then scattered.
Then he saw what stood silently in front of Esther.
"A golem?"
It looked far too human to be called an ordinary golem.
He also saw his two dead disciples.
One was dead with his tongue hanging out. The other lay collapsed with blood pouring from his ears, eyes, and nose.
His skull was shattered, and his face was twisted out of shape.
"A summon?"
"I picked it up on the way."
Esther still had no smile on her face.
Galaf ground his molars.
He could not afford to lose to some half-baked fool who could not even open half a spell world.
Esther, on the other hand, found him laughable.
Why had strife been attached to her title from the beginning?
Because she fought well.
Her World of Spells had begun in battle.
"Ah, it's been a while."
This was a decent opponent.
After this, she would have to stay a panther for over a month again.
Still, this amusement would be worth the price.
* * *
Thud!
If they came close, he hit them.
If they moved away, he closed in and smashed them.
Enkrid was a siege weapon, tearing down the wall called enemy soldiers all by himself.
And he was proving it in real time.
Some enemy troops visibly lost their nerve and stepped back.
"Don't retreat!"
Then a commander behind them drew his sword.
If they retreated, their own side would kill them.
The soldiers steeled themselves and clenched their teeth again.
Watching the enemy's reactions, Enkrid thought.
As always, he thought about swordsmanship.
How to swing a sword.
How to fight.
'Captain Sinar brought a sword meant to counter me.'
Why?
Because she had used the right means for the moment.
Then what should he do now?
Review what he had, replay it, make it part of his body.
The same process as always.
He was fully immersed and swinging again when it happened.
Whoosh.
Killing intent touched his chest before the wind did.
Enkrid pulled back the sword he had been extending.
He used a defensive form from the unnamed Correct Sword style.
He drew his right foot behind his left, twisted his body, and raised the blade to guard his centerline.
Clang!
It was the right move.
A blade struck the middle of Enkrid's steel sword.
If he had been even a little slower, that slash would have carved deep into him.
The blade that struck Enkrid's sword withdrew.
He saw the man who swung it settle into stance.
The man was short enough that his forehead would reach Enkrid's chin, wore no helmet, had a compact build, and large feet.
Enkrid read him in one glance.
'An attack style built on explosive charges.'
In sword terms, it was in the quick-sword, fast-blade family.
In the language of the far southern frontier, it was called jeongjunghwan-gwaeyu.
In the continent's tongue, that meant:
straight sword, heavy sword, deceptive sword, quick sword, flowing sword.
Swordsmanship was broadly split into those five. Mix in different footwork and other elements, and new styles were born.
His opponent's sword was one of those.
Speed of foot and speed of hand, combined.
A fast and faster sword.
The opponent bounced in place a few times, then moved again.
Lightning-fast bodywork.
Then he swung the blade in his hand, a sword like a scimitar.
If that curved edge caught you, it looked like it could cut through anything.
Enkrid worked his feet and stepped back.
Thud!
Tat-tat-tat!
Thud!
Two, three, four, five. He kept blocking strike after strike, but the opponent did not stop.
There was no audible breathing, yet the attacks kept chaining together.
They did not slow, either.
As if he could swing like this all day.
Enkrid did not care.
It was slower than Lykanos.
After blocking exactly nine strikes and retreating ten steps,
Enkrid held his sword with only his right hand and tried to redirect the next blow.
The opponent looked like he would smash down, then pulled his sword back and suddenly dropped his stance.
Enkrid kept his right hand where it was, set his left hand on the sword belt at his right hip, and drew that blade.
Its name was Spark, an extremely light sword that was harder to handle because of that.
But for a single thrust, it was the best choice.
The opponent moved so fast that the man in front of him was suddenly in the air.
No sound of feet kicking off the ground.
He seemed to appear above his head out of nowhere.
A trick close to acrobatics.
From midair, he carved downward with his sword.
Aerial strike, weight loaded on speed, timing and velocity half a beat faster than the previous nine.
A deciding blow and a killing setup.
Enkrid did not back down.
He moved his left hand instead.
The downward slash from above and the rising flash from below grazed past each other diagonally.
Pik!
The curved blade cut across Enkrid's chest.
But it did not cut flesh.
It lacked the final bit of force.
"Kh, faster than me?"
The opponent could not chain his strike properly because Enkrid's sword was buried in his chest.
So his blade only managed to rake Enkrid's chest.
It split leather armor and gambeson, but could not cut the inner armor wrapped underneath.
The armor he got while saving Odd-Eye proved useful in every way.
The man with a hole in his chest dropped and writhed on the ground.
"I've been sparring with someone really fast lately."
Enkrid said it to the dying man.
The man blinked a few times, then stopped breathing.
He was dead.
It was strange that he had managed to speak with his heart pierced.
Enkrid flicked his sword through the air to shake off blood.
His chest still throbbed from that last strike.
Clear slash marks were left on the gambeson and leather chest armor.
But the wrapped armor layer was not cut, so the blade had not opened him up.
His bones still ached, so the strike had definitely carried serious power.
Enkrid did not know who he had killed, but the Azpen commander did.
He was Quickhand Janus.
Among mercenaries active in Azpen, he was counted among the best.
His rapid slashes and light movement had been a nightmare for many.
That nightmare ended here.
"Shall we keep going?"
Enkrid spoke toward the enemy soldiers and stepped forward.
Allies watched from behind.
One soldier in particular, the one who had kept whining nonsense to the very end, could not take his eyes off him.
'I'm the idiot.'
He fought insanely well.
Seriously, disgustingly well.
He had never been at a level where he could judge a man like that.
The enemies rushing in were not straw bundles or rotten logs, yet they dropped as soon as they came near.
'Ah, against someone like him...'
It was because of Helma.
He had quietly liked her, and it bothered him that she seemed completely taken with that man.
He got jealous.
He felt ashamed.
Humiliated.
He wanted to crawl into a rat hole and hide.
What kind of crap had he been saying about a man like that?
'Stand at the front?
Do you even know how to fight?'
He had thrown plenty of backhanded insults too.
He had kept wondering why this bastard was always yapping beside him.
"Ah, fuck."
The soldier turned rage and shame into brute force.
"Kill them all!"
He went wild in a frenzy.
It was not just him.
Enkrid's performance drove all the soldiers into a kind of fevered state.
"Where do you think you're charging!"
Helma shouted too.
The enemy line buckled.
Azpen had better raw force on paper, but they were losing in morale and losing in real combat strength.
Of course, the tide had flipped because of one man named Enkrid, so the advantage was on Naurillia's side.
Still, something felt off.
The enemy's movements were strange.
They fought while moving as if they were following fixed rules.
If someone watched the whole battlefield from above, it would have looked odd.
Enkrid pushed inward, and enemy troops gave ground.
Even so, they kept retreating in loose formation, and the number of enemies between Enkrid and his allies kept growing.
Nobody felt danger yet.
That was how firmly they seemed to have the battle in hand.
The kind of fight that ends once the enemy stops resisting and pulls back.
Enkrid kept advancing.
After Quickhand Janus, two more well-known mercenaries attacked him.
"My name is Joy Hurrier."
A swordsman of House Hurrier challenged him too.
Enkrid dropped every one of them within five to seven exchanges.
"You monster bastard!"
The enemy shout sounded like an admission of defeat.
At a moment like this, no one could speak of Naurillia losing.
The Azpen unit withdrawing around Enkrid kept squirming inside its own mass.
Forcing formation and ranks, they were quietly separating Enkrid from his allies.
From a distance, Abnaier watched the flow of battle and repeated inwardly.
'Come deeper. Deeper.'
If the front was open plain, the rear was rolling knolls.
Small hills jutted up at random.
Toward the river lay a valley. To the right lay forest.
Abnaier had arrangements in every part of it.
* * *
Kraiss blocked the troops trying to swing around the back.
Saving cards like Sinar and Dunbakel had been worth it.
"We blocked them!"
Nurat ran up and shouted.
Kraiss quietly clenched his fist.
Good.
Then all they had to do was force a stalemate from here.
Even in this situation, the enemy kept fighting without end.
They looked like they had no intention of retreating.
It was foolish.
'Planning to fight all night?'
That would only cause massive losses on both sides.
More precisely, Azpen's losses would be several times worse.
This one battle alone would deal damage they could never recover from.
Even so, they were not pulling out.
Naurillia could not pull back first either.
They were winning.
Definitely winning.
'What is this, seriously.'
Kraiss could not read what the enemy was after, and it gnawed at him.
Even while winning, his face stayed dark.
* * *
"Block him with your bodies."
Some Gray Hounds members had fallen back, then latched onto Enkrid's rear.
These were men whose greatest weapon was stubborn persistence.
"Drive him to the end."
Are these bastards insane.
That was what Enkrid thought as he kept swinging.
He was falling back now.
Azpen was barely holding on by feeding deaths and numbers into the line.
If one more day passed like this, the odds would tip hard toward Naurillia.
Yet the enemy refused to give up.
Gray Hounds was not the only problem.
At some point, the eyes of nearby enemy troops changed too.
Their momentum was abnormal.
"Kill him!"
"Kill!"
Enkrid did not know.
Some of them had families held hostage, and others were criminals.
Men trading away the future for the present.
If they survived here, their crimes would be pardoned.
If they survived here, their families would receive Krona.
And if they killed one man, they would receive more Krona than they could ever dream of.
A suicide unit fighting for reward.
Of course, even these men had tried to run after facing Enkrid a few times.
Against him, it was just offering up their lives.
But they could not run.
"Shoot all who retreat."
If they stepped back, spears and arrows from their own side struck at once.
A punitive rearguard.
A unit that stabbed retreating allies in the back without mercy.
If they wanted to live, they had to move forward.
So they did.
The atmosphere kept growing stranger.
Enkrid never stopped hitting, fighting, and killing. He tried to pull out, but he could not easily return to his own line.
"I'm Dolce Hurrier."
Another Hurrier swordsman attacked, mercenaries attacked, and men who ignored their own lives blocked him with their bodies.
Enkrid's muscles began to tremble.
The human wall was too thick to force through by strength alone.
Meanwhile, Naurillia's main force also tried to shove the front forward, but Azpen resisted with desperate force.
In the end, everything tangled.
Enkrid was isolated.
There were several reasons.
First, the enemy accepted sacrifice.
"Fuck, what is this."
Kraiss realized it first.
They threw away hundreds of lives to isolate one man, Enkrid.
Some Gray Hounds members even kept charging Border Guard regulars on bad ground to the end.
All they achieved while taking those losses was splitting Enkrid from his allies.
Second, the enemy's resolve.
That was also Abnaier's resolve.
The men clinging to Enkrid reached out even while dying.
They grabbed and held on.
That made the way back far harder than expected.
They were staking their lives just to pin his feet.
Third, terrain, formation, and preparation.
Abnaier had prepared many things, including this.
Trying to shake off the enemy and return, Enkrid eventually lost his way.
Sorcery was mixed into it, but nobody could notice.
Naturally.
These were preparations laid one by one while advancing slowly.
Everything had been prepared to catch a small number of people.
Some pieces were people, and others were formation constructs called battle arrays in the far east and far south.
Even looking at the sky, Enkrid could not find his route.
The sorcery trick blocked out the starlight.
Before he knew it, the sun had set and night had come.
The moment Enkrid was trapped among knolls overgrown with thick brush,
Abnaier spoke in camp like a declaration.
"Got him."
= = =
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