WE TRIED TRANSLATIONS
Translator: Hydrogen B
Editor: Abstract
Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried
A KNIGHT WHO ETERNALLY REGRESSES
Chapter 313: Light in the Darkness
= = =
313.
Some things are darkness when you do not know them, but become light when you do.
He had identified it. He had understood it.
And now he had seen a road made of light.
In one previous today, he had placed intent above Sense of Evasion.
That had been the best way to save the child.
This time, he had to mix instinct and intent.
‘I have to win through force.’
Too narrow.
He discarded that thought.
Walls could take many forms.
The things that trapped today were not always spears and blades.
Of course, spears and blades were direct weapons.
They were physical things that had torn through his flesh and bone.
But was that all?
Were those the only things that were real?
What had truly trapped him was the strategist’s mind.
He had been dancing in that man’s palm.
‘Then where do I begin?’
As today repeated yet again, Enkrid opened his eyes and had only one task.
How should he struggle to break free of today?
The answer was in what he had already experienced.
Enkrid admitted that his head was not as sharp as he wished, if it had taken him this long to realize it.
It felt like repeating the same mistake.
Before, the Boatman’s words had narrowed his vision.
This time, if the Boatman had not helped him, he would not have seen the real wall behind the false one.
No, it just would have taken longer.
Was that a problem?
No.
Even without the Boatman’s help, even if this today had repeated dozens or hundreds more times.
He would have done it anyway.
He would have kept struggling forever.
He would never have learned surrender.
And in the end, he would have crossed over.
Out of nowhere, he wanted to see that little herb-gathering kid.
He had saved the child and received the mother’s gratitude, but he had not seen the child.
Had what he said back then just slipped out?
Or had he really wanted to gather herbs and live that way?
What is your dream, even the question itself was strange.
In a world like this, talking about dreams could be a luxury.
“Still fun.”
Even so, he would talk about it.
Even so, he would ask.
Muttering to himself, he got up, and immediately spotted an enemy soldier.
He had overslept, unlike any other today.
“Here-!”
The man could not finish.
Enkrid rushed him in a single stride and clamped a hand over his mouth.
Instead, the soldier beside him shouted.
“Ambush!”
Not an ambush. You came while I was sleeping.
Thinking that, Enkrid crushed the enemy’s jaw in his grip and yanked.
A pop ran through his fingers as the jawbone dislocated.
A trick that would have made Audin stare had now become natural.
After repeating this day so many times, the skills carved into his body had become cleaner and sharper than ever.
“Ngh!”
The enemy resisted.
Even with his face pinned, he threw a punch.
Enkrid caught the incoming wrist and twisted it.
At the same time, he spun and locked the man from behind.
Crunch.
The captured wrist gave a wet crack as bone shifted out of place.
“Gghghgh!”
With his jaw dislocated, the enemy could not even scream.
Drool streamed down.
His face turning blue was only natural.
Would taking a hostage work?
He had tried it already.
It did not work.
“Fire!”
As expected, it did not work.
Tudududududung!
Dozens of bolts flew in.
Enkrid hurled the soldier forward and threw himself sideways.
Pubububuk!
More than ten bolts sank into the body of the jaw-broken soldier.
The drooling enemy collapsed dead.
Enkrid drew his sword as he moved.
As he sprang to the side, he saw another enemy staring with wide eyes.
He swung at once.
A blue arc carved a short semicircle.
Whung, crack!
He struck with top-down slashes in a snapping-cut form, and helmet and skull split together.
It looked like an orange split in half with peel and flesh still attached.
Only the contents were different, brains and blood instead of fruit.
Splat. Blood sprayed across his face.
Enkrid did not care.
Instead, he sharpened Sense of Evasion, the blade of instinct and sixth sense.
He had experienced this before.
There had been a similar today.
At least that was how it felt to Enkrid.
The basement in the cobbler’s house in Border Guard’s market, where the mage had stayed.
That day.
‘Only sense.’
Back then, he had needed to feel spell traps through sense alone.
The scale was bigger now, and the situation was different.
He, too, was different from who he had been then.
Very different.
Was it thanks to the Boatman’s advice?
Or was it just luck?
Enkrid learned one thing and realized two.
There was something else that made instinct and sixth sense even better.
‘Force is needed too.’
It was not enough to simply unravel the enemy’s strategy.
Not enough to understand it and avoid it.
He had to layer force on top of that.
That was the answer.
As he honed Sense of Evasion, Enkrid accepted the ominous signs with his whole body.
He also factored in his own force by instinct.
‘Here.’
Enkrid started moving.
After that, Enkrid died six more times.
As always, he did not waste a single day.
Even then, he needed seven more todays.
That was only possible because there had already been nearly four hundred todays.
Enkrid had seen every method the enemy strategist had prepared, at least once.
He could not know how they coordinated with each other.
He did not know what style of tactics they used.
Enkrid relied only on sixth sense and instinct.
He judged by intuition.
He set his standard not on reason, but on what he felt in the moment.
He sensed ominousness and judged its degree.
Whenever he saw even the smallest gap, he punched through it.
Disguising himself as an enemy soldier meant nothing.
Hiding meant even less.
When that sorcerer showed up, he found Enkrid no matter how well he hid.
And if hostages were useless here too.
‘Like always.’
Then he just had to win with his own two arms and legs.
Burns remained on his back, and the shock from the previous battle had not fully faded.
The aftereffects from yesterday’s battle, which already felt impossibly long ago, were still in his body as well.
“This is seriously driving me insane.”
The words slipped out on their own.
Seeing a path, then walking it.
Every hair on Enkrid’s body stood on end.
It thrilled him.
He felt like he could die from joy.
He felt so excited he might go mad.
Taking one step forward did not only mean growth in force.
The ecstasy of progress itself, of growth itself, surged through his whole body.
Once he realized it, all he could do was enjoy it.
“After him!”
That was the result of everything he had thrown himself through.
With certainty at the start of today, Enkrid’s first move was set.
He moved through the trees.
He scanned every direction and searched for the point he wanted.
It was not easy to find.
“There!”
They chased him.
“Where do you think you’re going!”
He stomped an approaching soldier’s head underfoot, and split the archer beside him with his sword.
He fought without hesitation, wandered, endured, and then he saw it.
“Mm!”
A sorcerer.
The moment their eyes met, an invisible shockwave crashed over his body.
Sense of Evasion activated, and Enkrid saw the sorcery the enemy had used.
He caught it not with his eyes, but with his senses.
That was thanks to the blade-like sharpness he had honed to the verge of breaking.
How many times had he seen this by now, once or twice?
At some point, the blade of sixth sense had turned into visualization, showing him the enemy’s trick exactly.
He sensed the incoming formless pressure precisely, so dropping his waist at the very last moment was easy.
He bent low and evaded the sorcerer’s move.
The bastard did not stop, his lips still moving.
The moment Enkrid lowered his body, power was already loaded into his toes.
He compressed force into his toes.
The frozen dirt sank with a dull thud.
Instant Will exploded.
Boom!
The ground burst, and he charged.
When Enkrid kicked off, dirt shot up like a fountain.
Shattered stone fragments sprayed in every direction.
It was a charge strong enough to be called monstrous.
Now, he no longer envied that squire’s charge from before.
Whung, everything around him seemed shoved backward.
As he ran, he drew the Gladius across.
Release, contract, explode.
He kicked in, twisted his waist, drove that force into the blade, and Heavy Sword Style, Steel Cut split the sorcerer’s torso.
Boom!
The slash burst with an explosive roar.
The sorcerer’s upper body shot upward as if it had blown apart.
That was the result of savage speed followed by the cut.
It was still an unfinished strike, but the power was brutal.
‘One for now.’
This was only the beginning.
The sorcerer gave off ominousness through every stage of the fight.
He had to die first for the next step to exist.
So this part was force.
Next.
With ominous signs closing in from all sides, Enkrid stepped toward the direction that felt slightly less severe.
To enemy eyes, it looked half mad.
It looked like he was deliberately charging toward a position where heavy infantry held firm.
Running toward a denser concentration of soldiers looked insane to anyone watching.
“Block him!”
A commander’s shout split today’s sky.
For some, this today would come only once.
For others, it was a today repeated hundreds of times.
* * *
“Nilf, status!”
Abnaier had driven Enkrid fully into a corner.
In truth, he had.
He had killed him hundreds of times.
But for someone who repeated today, death was only a postponed chance.
Of course, Enkrid had nearly been trapped.
Abnaier’s prepared snare was that vicious.
A dagger unseen, then suddenly buried in the heart.
Even so, there were always people who tore it out and kept moving.
“It’s bad.
Not even a loach could slip out like this, but he’s moving as if he knows everything we prepared.”
They were receiving real-time reports of Enkrid’s position.
That was how serious they were about killing him.
Abnaier’s brow twitched.
It was his habit when things did not go as planned.
His fingers tapped his thigh.
Was that anxiety?
No.
It was a movement born of concentration.
Abnaier had no intention of letting this prey escape.
“Push harder. Do not let him break out.
What about the Gray Hounds?”
“They’re in pursuit.
He keeps tearing through areas packed with soldiers, almost unbelievably, and we lost time tracking him.”
‘Is he moving because he knows?’
Could that be possible?
Countless troops were chasing him.
Then naturally, he should move through gaps.
Feet moved toward openings.
That was human instinct.
Abnaier had commanded based on that.
He opened tiny gaps, placed the Gray Hounds there, and set mages and sorcerers as well.
Pieces were scattered across the command platform.
Abnaier quickly shifted their positions.
‘What if he is reading our tactics in reverse?’
Then they would move in reverse too.
Originally, he had stationed Hurrier Family swordsmen and others in low-density areas.
Now it was the opposite.
He moved all of them.
He made them chase Enkrid.
‘You are not a knight.’
So you cannot break through a wall made by a thousand soldiers alone.
What about the stone walls built by organized engineers?
What about the cliffs?
What about the hidden traps between them?
There were more than eighty dug pits alone.
They had not advanced slowly for nothing.
Bang!
Abnaier’s hand slammed the platform.
“We did all this and still lose him? That makes no sense.”
Ominousness was an ability everyone had.
Enkrid’s sixth sense and instinct were closer to premonition than reason.
He had not read Abnaier’s intent.
‘If I go there, something bad will probably happen.’
He moved on simple, brutish thoughts like that.
And that confused Abnaier.
Time passed, and reports kept coming.
“He’s pulling back again.”
What was he doing now?
They had prepared this trap for when the bastard reached the outer edge, and now he was suddenly turning back to the center?
He had already moved beyond sorcery range, so he should have gotten his direction.
Yet he was heading back toward the original encirclement zone.
Of course, that was also a trap.
They were ready to catch him if he charged in.
So how did he know and pull away?
“Injuries?”
“Two Quarrel Bolts in his back.”
“Poison?”
“None.”
They had handpicked excellent marksmen and given them poisoned arrows, but not every marksman got them.
‘Did he choose what to get hit by?’
Did he intentionally avoid the dangerous arrows?
‘That’s paranoia.’
An exaggerated guess.
A useless delusion.
No human could grasp all of that.
‘Or did he really become a knight?’
No, not that either.
From the reports alone, his skill had clearly improved again from yesterday.
But he was not a knight.
And still they could not catch him.
They had him in their palm, they closed their hand, and still he slipped out.
As if coated in oil, he slid right through their fingers.
How was this possible?
The next report left Abnaier even more dumbfounded.
“Commander.”
Nilf’s voice was urgent.
“Speak.”
After hearing it, Abnaier lost his smile.
That bastard Enkrid had been trapped in the palm, yet he pried through that palm and leaped out.
Still, this was not the end.
They still had more prepared.
“What about Galaf and the squire?”
“Messengers were sent.”
“Tell them to come at once!”
Galaf was a mage summoned with a flood of gold coins.
Not just coins, either.
They had promised more than one thing for this operation.
They had even borrowed him with the king’s permission.
Still, command here belonged to Abnaier. If he called, Galaf would come.
That was the agreement.
Galaf could not just send his disciples and wash his hands of it.
Galaf, and the squire too.
If Enkrid escaped this place, they were the second wall waiting for him.
Of course, before that, each had their own role.
Abnaier had an outstanding mind.
He was clever and quick-thinking.
He never left his forces idle.
And that was not all. He had already looked beyond killing Enkrid and his small elite.
‘I will overturn all of it.’
Change the flow of the battlefield.
Turn it the other way.
Reverse victory and defeat.
If each person did their part, it would happen.
That was Abnaier’s intent.
“Call in the assassination unit too!”
After Galaf and the squire, he would use everything he had prepared.
Abnaier’s resolve was firm.
But nothing in this world ever moved exactly as one wished.
* * *
‘It is all ominous.’
Still, there was a path.
Maybe it was too small to call a gap, so what.
If the gap was small, he could force it wider.
As he sensed ominousness, he also mobilized force.
Enkrid deliberately targeted the stone wall.
He swung the Gladius at the artificial wall the enemy had built.
‘This much won’t break it, right?’
The dwarf who gave him this sword had not sounded very confident, but Enkrid was half certain.
At least in hardness, the Gladius in his hand was the best sword he had ever used.
Bang!
He struck with the flat of the blade, not the edge.
Part of the wall cracked.
He kicked it, then tore pieces free with his hands.
While doing that, he dodged some incoming arrows and endured others with his body.
He followed instinct alone.
This was better than dodging everything.
Had he not learned that from a week of failures?
He had.
Turning his head, he saw several longbow elves carrying poisoned arrows.
He dodged at once.
If he had dodged blindly, he would have picked up a few more arrows as decoration.
They were fast enough to be a pain to chase.
And that area had felt deeply ominous from the start.
Hundreds of todays, hundreds of deaths. The materials and data from all of it helped produce intuitive answers.
A tower built from experience.
The source of the intuition that sensed ominousness.
Enkrid slammed the wall again.
Bang!
A second blast rang out.
Crack.
Enkrid opened a gap barely wide enough to crawl through on his back, then kept hammering the artificial wall over and over.
Enemies swarmed him in the process, but in the end, Enkrid found an opening.
At the outer edge of the sloppily built wall, where it met the cliff, the wall collapsed with a roar.
That was what made Abnaier think Enkrid had pried through his palm and escaped.
The wall collapsed, and dust billowed up.
The northern winter was dry, with warm weather continuing day after day.
The dust soon blocked everyone’s vision.
“Mage!”
LeBlanc Hurrier shouted.
They had just lost two comrades.
Of the four mages, only two remained alive.
That fight had been strange too.
Enkrid could have killed the remaining two mages if he had pushed just a little harder, yet he had pulled back.
Of course, if he had hesitated then, they would have pinned him from behind.
How could someone make that call in that moment and pull back?
Through the dust raised by the collapsing wall, Enkrid’s eyes shone bright blue.
As his senses linked together, Sense of Evasion opened a new path for him.
So.
‘I can see the path.’
The five senses blended, blurred, fused, and emerged as visualization.
Then another virtual line appeared clearly before his eyes.
A path made of blue light.
A path to end this very long today.
= = =
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