WE TRIED TRANSLATIONS

Translator: Hydrogen B

Editor: Abstract

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

A KNIGHT WHO ETERNALLY REGRESSES

Chapter 310: What Did Abnaier Do?

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Abnaier had advanced slowly, but it was not a relaxed march.

In reality, he was extremely busy.

Like a swan: graceful above the surface, paddling frantically underneath.

There was a lot to prepare and build up, starting with sorcery.

It was more work than building a mountain fortress halfway up a slope.

That was the technique Abnaier had prepared.

"Nilf, go ahead and stack stones here."

"Build a wall."

He tapped the map as he spoke, and his subordinate nodded.

"That schedule is brutal."

"Move instead of running your mouth."

He sent out his most loyal commander first.

Nilf was meticulous, so he would handle it.

After that, he moved part of his forces disguised as a recon unit, though in truth they operated more like combat engineers.

They built walls between the mounds.

The very wall Enkrid had run into.

Then, while keeping the main force's pace unchanged, he drew out other units and sent them too.

Stacking stone walls, digging up ground, and laying traps could not be done in a short time.

There was no need to do it at large scale.

This was only meant to catch a few elite soldiers.

Three at most, two or even one at minimum.

He had to calculate variables, predict the situation, and proceed accordingly.

Abnaier did exactly that.

People had called him brilliant since childhood.

And what lay at the root of that brilliance?

One of the greatest strengths named by those who knew him was boldness.

Put another way, daring that struck where people least expected.

"You seem a little crazy."

"You're bold, sure, but all you do is talk about tactics no one can execute."

That came up while he was learning strategy and tactics under his teacher.

His fellow student was not wrong.

Abnaier's strategies were bold, and their practicality was low.

But what if they could be done?

That was where his second strength shone.

He was meticulous.

Even when hunting one rabbit, he prepared a second trap and a third.

He poured in excessive resources if he had to, as long as he got what he wanted.

And he always got it.

"Isn't this just a loss?"

"All we get from a rabbit is a bit of hide and meat."

"But you've spent more than you'll gain."

His fellow student rebuked him again.

It was the kind of talk from someone who only saw one move ahead.

Abnaier thought differently.

"Making thorough preparations became a habit."

He brushed it off, but he had never been looking at only one rabbit right in front of him.

The traps laid in the hunting grounds could be reused.

As long as he drove rabbits this way.

That made rabbit hunting twice as easy from the very next hunt.

So it was not waste.

If you only looked at one or two rabbits right now, it looked that way. But his preparation could catch deer too.

If maintenance stayed steady, he could get several more worthwhile catches before summer.

Meticulousness, along with building a convincing structure, that was how Abnaier's strategies were made.

Of course, he could not explain all of that.

That so-called fellow student was a noble, from a clan under Ekins, the side that stood beside the royal house.

If Hurrier was Azpen's body, Ekins was its head.

Abnaier was common-born.

He read the room quickly, and he judged situations well.

Even if things looked like this now, circumstances could change at any time.

He had ambition too.

He had been clever since childhood, and he knew how to seize what he wanted.

He was a man who had gotten everything he reached for.

It was rare for him to step forward and fail.

He had reason to be confident.

His teacher's ability was only middling, but he was a noble with a soft heart, and Abnaier chose to enter under him for that same reason.

That too was a case where meticulous calculation and boldness meshed together.

He earned the grudge of a group of drifters, then made sure his teacher saw him fighting them on the road his teacher would pass.

None of it was coincidence, but his teacher believed it was fate.

"Follow me."

"A better life than this is waiting."

"Yes."

It had been a calculated meeting.

Abnaier kept walking his own path after that.

Since childhood, he had wanted one thing.

"Why should Azpen be satisfied as a duchy?"

A stronger nation with greater national power.

It could become that.

It was a duchy, yes, but it had an order of knights and knight-class military strength.

Even if neighboring Naurillia was a problem.

Azpen had only one enemy, Naurillia, but Naurillia had more enemies than just Azpen.

He wanted to prove his own ability.

Mixed into that was the wish of the teacher who had truly cared for him and loved him since he was young.

Abnaier was human too, and he was shaped by affection.

"I love this country."

"My son."

The man who, in the end, took him as his son.

A man who knew little of politics, but had patriotism.

A man who gave love even after realizing he had been deceived.

That was his teacher, and his father.

His enterprising ambition and the influence he received from his teacher.

Abnaier balanced both and turned them into weapons.

He would prove himself on this land.

And by doing so, he would carry on part of his teacher-father's dream.

That was why Enkrid had to die.

In Azpen, no one had watched Enkrid as closely as Abnaier.

He dug into him almost obsessively.

As a result, he judged that Enkrid and his unit would become a major threat to Azpen, and to his own dream.

A future knight.

Or perhaps even more.

His method differed from Kraiss's, but the conclusion of their predictions was not very different.

Especially in how highly they valued Enkrid's future worth.

Kraiss also included bringing Enkrid into the salon he planned to build, but the overall shape was similar.

A knight, was it.

If you only looked at feasibility, there were plenty of reasons more reasonable than Kraiss's to support that.

Of course, he could not say that to the royal house.

They would call it absurd.

But what if, even at one in a thousand, one in ten thousand odds, a knight was born on Naurillia's frontier?

And what if that knight appeared right on the border with Azpen?

A single knight meant a shift in national military strength.

The appearance of an enemy nation's knight could only be bad news.

So he would kill him.

Abnaier designed a formation called Triangle Seal.

Three mounds and artificial structures.

To win a war, you had to make terrain your ally.

Abnaier did exactly that.

He used artificial force to turn terrain to his side.

He set earth and sky as powerful allies.

Then he mixed sorcery into it.

He covered the sky so the enemy could not judge direction.

It was easier than Fog of Annihilation.

Because of that, he did not need many sorcerers, though even this alone exhausted them.

This level was only possible because it had to be maintained for less than a day, only at the exact needed moment.

If not for that, he could not even have considered sorcery.

In other words, Abnaier used calculation to drive his opponents inward, then temporarily blinded them with sorcery.

Because he was certain he could trap them that way.

And that was exactly what happened.

He put prey inside a natural prison, then poured in over a thousand soldiers.

Was that an efficient fight?

Of course not.

Not even close.

But it could certainly kill that one target.

It could keep the prey from escaping, absolutely.

Use twenty traps and five hunters to catch one rabbit.

If that rabbit would one day turn into a mad Demon Creature running wild with a blade in its mouth, then what?

Was this waste, or not?

Abnaier thought it was not.

He soon sent over ten messengers in rapid succession and gave orders to the flag bearers.

"Move the white standards!"

Each rider carrying a flag was a tool for relaying his orders.

It was the method he chose because, for a true prison, not even drum signals should be heard inside.

With that, the Triangle Seal formation was complete.

One side of the triangle was handled by an artificially built wall.

Two sides were sorcery and magic.

The final third side was replaced by a thousand soldiers.

Even a knight could not easily break out.

That was the trap Abnaier had prepared.

* * *

The Boatman asked.

A purple lamp swayed above the dark river.

Through the wavering violet light, a shadow tilted, bent, and straightened.

"Was it not enjoyable?"

The Boatman asked again.

Now his face could be seen in brief flashes.

Even while looking at that face, Enkrid said nothing.

The Boatman waited for an answer.

None came.

Time passed.

In the world of the mind, time could not be felt, yet still.

The Boatman knew their meeting would soon end.

A moment later, in the Boatman's view, Enkrid's body began to break apart like grains of sand.

A return from the inner world to the outer one.

Today's repetition.

Enkrid, scattering like particles, filled the Boatman's eyes.

As he left, he opened his mouth.

"Ah."

It was strange.

As if he had only now noticed the Boatman.

Was there no answer not because he had nothing to say, but because he had ignored him?

Something stirred inside the Boatman, but he buried it.

He was not the same as the one who had once called Enkrid a bastard.

"I will ask again next time."

Only the Boatman's words remained where Enkrid disappeared.

* * *

Enkrid had no time to answer.

Until right before death, or until death itself.

On no day did he accept death as a fixed certainty.

Even so, he reflexively stuffed everything happening around him into his head.

It was a habit.

A habit for review, and preparation for tomorrow.

A lot had happened, not just one or two things.

The amount of information entering his mind, what he memorized naturally, what he retained, what he needed.

He sorted and sorted.

Still, it was a lot.

As he gathered information, questions naturally slipped in.

Had they really deployed this many troops just to catch one man?

He did not know.

Did the reason matter right now?

This was the moment to accept what had happened and break through it, not the time to dwell on it.

After tossing aside that stray question, Enkrid replayed events in reverse.

While he was reviewing his memory, he heard rustling.

He felt a presence the instant he opened his eyes, so that was only natural.

The same event repeating.

There was too little time for review.

The moment he came to, it was already time to fight.

Still, this was not a crisis.

It was thin.

Enkrid did not feel this as a wall.

If he spent one more day in a desperate struggle, he would be able to roughly grasp what happened around him.

At most two days, and the calculations would be done.

This was a day he could get past.

He had avoided danger countless times.

It was the same when he fought Retsha of the Rose Vines, the Lycanthrope, and Azpen's elite forces.

The same when he cut into a Gnoll pack.

The same when he first went after that thrust maniac.

Some things changed, and some did not.

The broad framework was the same.

So now that one experience had already shown him enemy movements.

Did he really need a second "today"?

So it was not a wall.

Compared to all the repeats up to now, this would be absurdly easy.

Enkrid stepped forward.

What if he ran in a completely different direction from yesterday?

At least one side should be open.

Surely they had not deployed battalion-level forces just to catch him alone.

To give only the conclusion, they had done exactly that.

A similar struggle repeated.

Yesterday repeated again.

"My name is Cent."

Enkrid was a little surprised.

He had run in a different direction from yesterday, but the same man blocked his path.

Why?

Today repeated.

If he did not twist events hard enough himself, repeated things did not change.

His arm throbbed, his sword was broken, and he held a Gladius instead.

The fight had not lasted long, but because that man named Cent blocked him, his path tangled.

Using Snake Sword, the first technique Enkrid had created in his own swordsmanship, he blocked and knocked aside, then cut the man's fingers.

Tak-tak-tak!

His blade struck the sword hilt, and blood and fingers flew into the air.

An opening appeared.

The moment he saw it, his body moved on instinct.

Not quite Will, but what he had learned crossing blades with Lykanos had not gone anywhere.

It was not Sense of Evasion, but intentional reflexes.

"Ghk!"

He drove Spark's tip into the throat of the man swallowing his scream.

Smashing the fingers with the Gladius, then following with Spark, was nearly a single connected action.

It was that fast and natural.

Thrust.

As he stabbed and pulled out, a single stream of blood burst from Cent's neck.

"Grrrk."

With a hole in his vocal cords, the man clutched his own throat.

Blood also poured from his severed fingers.

He fell headfirst to the ground.

"Let's not meet again."

Enkrid said it and lifted Cent's corpse.

He raised the body in his left hand like a shield, and bolts flew in, embedding in the mercenary's body.

Thud-thud-thud!

They kept coming, endlessly.

There really were a lot of them.

He truly did not know why there were this many.

After that came arrows, crossbow bolts, spears, heavy infantry, men of the Hurrier family, and mercenaries who could actually fight.

The same rush as yesterday hit him again.

He barely endured, barely endured, and ran to one side, but other men blocked the way ahead.

"Tough bastard."

"Be careful."

There were four men.

In Enkrid's eyes, they looked like mediocre fighters awkwardly bundled in cold-weather gambesons.

What he saw was correct.

They were merely passable with weapons.

But they handled something else instead.

Spells.

They were the ones who blocked his way while he fled along the stream.

Enkrid regretted not bringing his Whistle Dagger.

No, even if he had brought everything.

By now he would have used it all up.

Every place he tried to evade had enemy ambushes, and every direction he moved had enemy troops blocking his way.

It felt like ghosts were toying with him.

This was the result of all that running.

"Press in and cage him."

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