WE TRIED TRANSLATIONS
Translator: Hydrogen B
Editor: Abstract
Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried
A KNIGHT WHO ETERNALLY REGRESSES
Chapter 309: Try Cutting Down a Thousand Alone.
= = =
A full night passed, and Enkrid still did not return.
At some point, the enemy lines began to recede like an ebbing tide.
Ragna had not come back, and Jaxon was gone too.
Kraiss understood how serious this was.
No, an ominous feeling kept drilling into his head at every moment.
“Where is the highest point nearby?
Somewhere we can observe from.”
Even so, he stayed calm.
Maybe panic had a place before things blew up. Not after. Once it had already happened, there was no time to flail.
And Enkrid was missing.
‘For all I know, if the captain dies, I might die too.’
What would happen if Enkrid came back as a corpse?
He could already picture Rem hurling an axe at him.
It was a dark joke in his head, but still.
‘This is bad.’
Even if he did not die, nothing good would come of it.
If the captain vanished right now, problems would explode from every side.
If someone asked him to name each one clearly, he would need time to think. Still, he felt it anyway.
One thing was certain.
The Madman Company was finished.
Who could control Rem, Ragna, Jaxon, and Audin?
No one.
In the past, they could have put even a scarecrow in command, but time had changed them too.
Now they only moved for their captain.
Without those men, could Border Guard really stop Azpen’s next assault in spring?
Not a chance.
‘Then I leave without looking back.’
He was no patriot. Why would he stay here and die?
Kraiss stood in the shade of a tree, lost in thought.
Nurat, who had reviewed the surrounding terrain from maps and memory, spoke.
“Follow me.”
In that shade, Kraiss looked almost ghostly.
Nurat thought so, but said nothing.
Something about this felt strange.
Because Enkrid was not here?
The thought surfaced suddenly.
A woman’s instinct.
She was right.
Kraiss with Enkrid beside him and Kraiss without Enkrid looked like two different men.
“Let’s move faster.”
Kraiss urged her on.
Nurat brought two horses. They mounted and rode.
After passing several nearby mounds, the road turned rough.
They had to climb while half hanging off the slope.
No lady disliked a strong body and well-trained muscles.
Pretty ladies naturally took an interest in physical beauty, so Kraiss had never neglected his training.
That let him climb the steep mountain path quickly.
Nurat was a hardened warrior, so she climbed even more easily.
Once they reached the top, Kraiss looked far ahead.
“Crazy bastards.”
Morning sunlight lit the area, and the enemy formation came into view.
They had slipped in between the mounds.
Should they chase deeper?
Should they hit them from behind?
‘Bad move.’
What if they followed and got counterattacked?
The terrain was too perfect for ambushes and surprise raids.
Morale was high, and they had won big in the previous battle, yes, but still.
‘Our total strength still isn’t overwhelming.’
If they took one hard hit, the whole situation could reverse in an instant.
Then again, their objective from the start had been simple. Drive them out and win.
That had always been the plan.
Winter was on their side.
‘How are they going to endure this cold?
What about supplies?’
Why was Azpen so obsessed with Green Pearl?
Beyond the plains held by Naurillia lay harsh ground.
Mounds and valleys, steep mountains, and land where Demon Creatures lurked.
Enduring winter there was hard. Maintaining supply lines was hard too.
‘At most four or five days.’
That was how long the enemy could hold.
So this was a winning battle.
Now all they had to do was stay inside, keep firing arrows, and hold out.
Only one problem remained.
Enkrid was missing.
‘Did they really abandon this whole battlefield just to catch one captain?
They gave up a warfront just to kill a few men?’
Bold was one thing.
This was too bold.
You used elite small units to win on the battlefield.
If you abandoned the battlefield itself, what was left?
The future. That was what had to be seized.
Did they really go that far?
His ominous guess had an answer, but Kraiss still could not fully believe it.
The move was too extreme.
“One more day.”
Kraiss waited for his captain.
To Nurat, those words sounded ominous, but she could not challenge him.
The wide-eyed man who had lost his captain gave off a strange pressure.
* * *
Abnaier let one day pass.
There was no need to push immediately.
He needed preparation time too.
The place where he cornered Enkrid lay between three mounds, with a valley and a cliff cutting through it.
It was also ground prepared from the start, with traps laid everywhere.
An investment made purely to kill a few specific people.
‘Any variables?’
He had planted seeds and brought them to fruit.
Now only the harvest remained.
Harvesting would require a lot of blood, but Abnaier believed it was worth it.
So this could not go wrong.
He thought it through again and again.
He took sweetened black tea into his mouth.
Sugar kept his mind sharp.
What variable could still appear here?
No mistakes until the very end.
No matter how absurdly skilled the target was, if he was not a knight, escape was impossible.
Abnaier had prepared that much.
After his previous defeat, he had dissected Border Guard thoroughly.
Had he lost because the enemy pulled out the junior knight card?
No.
He replayed the battle and found the answer.
The defeat had already happened before the junior knight appeared.
He found the reason.
He dissected the engagement.
He tore through the battlefield piece by piece.
That gave him the names.
Enkrid and the Madman Company members.
Their fights on the outer flank, their attacks that smashed supplies, all of it stacked together and painted the picture of defeat.
He felt a thrill every time he later heard about their exploits.
The fine hairs on his skin stood up.
They were not quiet even inside cities.
Wherever Hurrier looked, assassins were carved apart, and before the name Enkrid, everything ended in failure.
They were ghosts that could not be caught.
So.
‘I will catch them.’
Abnaier was a strategist who prepared.
So he did exactly that.
He played to his strengths.
He prepared, thought repeatedly, and cornered his opponents.
It started with bandits and cultists.
By chance, a good card fell into his hand.
Using it was obvious.
‘Black Blade Bandits and the Cultist side are no joke either.’
There was no way that caused zero impact on Border Guard’s strength.
Abnaier deliberately avoided direct battle and waited for them to split.
It would have been even better if Black Blade Bandits or Cultists had killed a few, but luck did not go that far.
Still, they split.
Enkrid left Rem, Audin, and Teresa behind.
‘Catching them while they’re grouped is amateur work.’
More than that, Abnaier had already embedded his own “art” into this land.
For Enkrid, he created the Triangle Seal and bound him with it.
For the other Madman Company members, he sent blades fit for them.
He even pulled out the assassin-clan card.
‘With this.’
Kill them.
His mouth had gone dry, so he took another sip of tea.
He swallowed and organized his thoughts.
The losses would be severe.
If all went as planned, all he would gain was a few heads.
To others, those would look like a few elite soldiers.
To Abnaier, they were the heads of the men who would become Azpen’s greatest future threat.
Once the thinking was finished, execution came next.
The tent flap was wide open, letting in sunlight and winter wind together.
The wind was not that cold.
The weather was good today.
“Begin.”
Abnaier set down his teacup with a click and spoke.
First, Enkrid’s head.
* * *
Enkrid did not think this was a crisis.
This did not even qualify as danger.
No blade was at his throat yet.
He hid himself in the brush and focused on resting.
‘Whatever happens, body first.’
His stamina could already be called superhuman.
One night was enough to restore what he had burned.
Maybe not perfect condition, but enough to recover to a usable state.
That was the kind of body he had now.
Thanks to the Isolation Technique, thanks to Audin.
‘Should I thank him?’
The thought came to him out of nowhere.
When he got back, saying he owed him would be fair.
‘Stamina is stamina, though.’
Separate from stamina recovery, his body still carried strain.
He had swung his sword all day.
If his body were totally fine, that would have been stranger.
Tiny vessels had burst in both forearms, leaving bruises.
He had not only swung swords. He punched and kicked too.
He could not stay offense-only.
He had jumped into enemy ranks alone.
He could not block every incoming strike either.
Using Sense of Evasion, he blocked or dodged the dangerous attacks, then took the rest on his body.
More precisely, he deflected them off his pauldrons, gauntlets, and shin guards.
For most people, that was madness. Enkrid had techniques learned from Audin, so to him it was not even worth calling mad.
‘A real knight probably wouldn’t find this hard either.’
With that brief thought, replaying the battle in his head, Enkrid chewed jerky and found a stream to wet his throat.
The water was clear.
He drank without boiling it. At this clarity, if it still caused stomach pain, someone would have had to poison it.
From far away he heard heavier running water, so a valley seemed close.
‘Rest one day, get out tomorrow.’
Even with no sense of direction, there was still a way out.
Pick an arbitrary direction and go straight.
Even if it was wrong, once his directional sense came back, getting out would not be hard.
That was what Enkrid thought.
‘How did the battlefield turn out?’
It was never the kind of fight where he could look back and assess while moving.
He had done his best.
That focus on the immediate fight had produced this result.
He did not know it, but one battle had already tipped the outcome.
This warfront would end with Naurillia’s victory.
The dead in between could not be helped.
Enkrid did not know the exact battlefield situation either, but he did understand one thing.
There was no need for him to rampage further here.
Azpen had become a deer mauled by a beast.
He had not coordinated or observed the whole battlefield, yet he felt the flow.
Enkrid found a tree with a decent trunk and spread fallen leaves beneath it.
He picked a spot that blocked the wind and closed his eyes.
He needed sleep.
Sleep was essential to rest.
He opened his eyes at dawn.
A body trained over long years dropped into battle readiness the instant it woke.
Crunch.
He heard footsteps on grass.
Good thing he had not lit a fire.
If he had, he would have kindly announced his location.
No, this was better.
He could find the enemy, ask where this place was, and make them guide him out.
Enkrid held his breath and listened.
He focused on hearing.
At the same time, starting from a single finger, he slowly loosened his muscles.
He warmed his cold, stiff body and readied it.
His ears tracked their positions.
Crack.
First on the left.
Rustle.
This time on the right.
He began to feel their presence.
That meant they were close.
Enkrid, focused on listening, raised his lowered head.
‘What is this?’
Not a small recon team, but a large force.
They were raking through the brush with spearheads.
Thud, thud, thud, stabbing shrubs one after another.
Too many eyes to count.
A rough sweep of the area showed enemies everywhere.
Counting numbers was meaningless.
Getting discovered in this was only natural.
“There!”
His eyes met enemy eyes.
Sharp vision too.
Enkrid stood fully upright.
“Catch him!”
Enemy troops surged in.
Fighting was not always the best move.
Enkrid pulled away.
He was not a fool.
Kraiss often said his captain was smart.
That was not wrong.
Enkrid thought it through.
Better to move his feet and break out than engage...
Tududududung!
Before he could finish the thought, an arrow storm poured in from one side.
‘You’re insane.’
If they fired like that, they would hit their own men too.
Enkrid raised his sword and knocked aside arrows he could not dodge, then sprinted behind a large tree for cover.
Thud!
Several arrows struck the trunk.
“Argh!”
“Ugh!”
Just as expected, some arrows hit their own side.
Even then, the arrows did not stop.
“Fire!”
“More!”
Arrows kept flying.
Enkrid checked his blade with a quick glance, then swung hard at the tree.
A full-power rotational slash.
Boom!
The blast rang out.
His sword smashed into the tree, and half the trunk split as if shattered.
At the same time, a crack ran through his blade.
It had already been damaged after the battle.
On the half-cut trunk, he drew his Gladius.
Heart of Superhuman Strength pounded.
The muscles that drove the swing reacted and swelled.
Then his blunt but sturdy blade smashed through the rest of the trunk, splitting it apart.
Craaack!
The tree tilted.
“Huh?”
The enemy soldier standing right beneath it panicked and froze.
A moment later, branches snapped in a shower and the tree collapsed.
“Move!”
“Damn it!”
The enemy group shook in chaos.
Enkrid used that opening and bolted.
He ran toward what he guessed was south.
He threw away the cracked sword, kept the Gladius in hand, and shifted Spark from his left hip to his right.
“Where do you think you’re going!”
Then he saw heavy armored infantry blocking the front.
They held only thick shields and stood in his path.
There were far more than fifty.
If he tried to go around, more enemies poured in from both sides.
‘Why are there so many?’
Too many.
Were others besides him trapped in this net too?
Enkrid pulled back.
If he charged as is, he could kill half of them, but then what?
The Enkrid of today existed because he never spent a single day carelessly.
He did not walk a road where death was obvious.
He pulled away again and ran.
While running, he kicked up a stone.
With a click, he launched it into the air and struck it with the flat of his Gladius.
Ta-ang!
The stone flew faster than an arrow with a sharp ringing sound.
Smack!
It hit a soldier in the head just as he raised his crossbow.
‘I break through here.’
He saw a gap where crossbowmen were clustered.
Enkrid jumped into the enemy ranks.
He was a predator plunging into a herd of herbivores.
With the Gladius in his right hand, he cut and smashed.
With Spark, he thrust.
Spark had never been a blade meant for cutting.
After killing five or six and breaking through, he saw a path.
It looked like an artificially made route between the brush.
‘Got out.’
That was the moment he thought it.
“Fire.”
Bolts came from both left and right.
It was a trap using a crossbow unit as bait.
‘Whoever designed this.’
It was vicious.
Enkrid rolled forward.
One bolt lodged in his armor.
It did not reach flesh, but he had no time to pull it out.
He kept running.
He jumped to the side and cut down seven or eight.
He jumped back and cut down about fifteen.
He repeated cut, thrust, fight, flee, over and over.
The fight that began at sunrise lasted until sunset.
No matter where he went, he could not break out.
It felt like being trapped in a maze.
Later he even saw walls built from deliberately stacked stones.
When did they prepare that?
It was absurd.
No place there looked breakable by force.
Not while dragging a whole tail of enemy troops behind him.
“What are you people?”
He was not badly wounded, but his arms and legs trembled.
He had run and swung nonstop.
Everyone had limits.
They said a knight could cut down a thousand alone.
Then what about a junior knight?
A junior knight could not cut down a thousand alone.
That was why he was a junior knight.
As Enkrid gasped and ran, Abnaier muttered to himself.
“Try cutting down a thousand alone.
Then maybe you can walk out alive.”
If not, he would die.
The Azpen strategist was certain.
* * *
Fwubububuk!
Dozens of arrows.
After shaking them off again and again, running, fighting, then fighting more, right to the very end.
Behind him stood three swordsmen from the Hurrier Family.
In front of him, dozens of heavy shield soldiers blocked the path.
And on top of that, dozens of arrows flew in.
He had no room to dodge. One hit his belly, one hit his shoulder.
The belly shot was stopped by his bandage-wrapped Inner Armor, but he blocked the shoulder shot poorly, and his left arm would no longer lift.
His pauldron had been gone for a long time, and only the right gauntlet remained.
His boots were torn too.
A cutting wind slipped through the gaps in his ripped armor.
He was in tatters.
Until the very last second, Enkrid killed two Hurrier Family swordsmen with Spark, and cut off one arm from the third.
The one who lost his arm glared at Enkrid with bloodshot eyes.
“I thought this was overkill,” he said.
Enkrid had no time to answer.
“Kill him.”
The ending was decorated by dozens of arrows.
No, in truth, one hundred fifty arrows were fired.
One hundred fifty longbowmen shot at a single target.
Enkrid ran with a sword in each hand.
A desperate struggle.
“Where do you think you’re going!”
The one-armed Hurrier man threw himself forward.
While Enkrid split his head with the Gladius, dozens of arrows pierced his body.
Puh-buh-buh-buk!
His thigh and shoulder were hit, and the worst was one that grazed his neck and tore off a fistful of flesh.
His knee hit the ground first with a dull thud, then he toppled headfirst.
‘Crazy bastards.’
Only then did Enkrid understand.
They had made all these preparations and gathered all this force just to catch him.
It was insane.
He felt annoyed, just a little, truly just a little.
This kind of death was a first for him too.
When he closed his eyes, his body shook.
He had lost too much blood to regulate his temperature.
Death came soon.
Darkness covered his vision.
As his temperature dropped, it felt like a cold death.
He died like that, and when he opened his eyes again.
Sway.
With the sound of river water, he saw the Boatman.
He was on a rocking ferry under a violet lamp.
“Are you enjoying this?” the Boatman asked.
= = =
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