WE TRIED TRANSLATIONS
Translator: Hydrogen B
Editor: Abstract
Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried
A KNIGHT WHO ETERNALLY REGRESSES
Chapter 314: Stubborn as Brown Shit
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“You brown-shit bastard!”
Esther grabbed her opponent’s forearm and snapped it.
Galaf saw his barrier break and panicked.
The pain smashing into his brain came next.
“Ghk.”
That was the end.
A mage’s fight was also a contest of the World of Spells, but physical bodies still existed, so damage to the body also mattered.
Simply put, when it hurt, concentration broke.
Even with an absolute gap in how much mana he could draw from the World of Spells, the fight had still been proceeding at a similar level.
That meant his opponent knew how to cast and apply spells far more efficiently than he did.
Galaf broke into a cold sweat and endured the pain.
The attack from a moment ago was genuinely absurd.
He had cast a defensive spell, and Esther, that wicked witch, lit fire in her hand, grabbed the barrier, and ripped it apart.
That movement carried monstrous force.
Fwaaaash!
In an instant, steam covered his vision.
It was from the combination of the Blue Lake spell and the heated-hand spell.
Flustered, Galaf barely tried to unleash a few spells, but his arm was grabbed and broken.
Why is this witch so strong?
His head filled with nothing but questions.
Was she always this good at fighting?
Was the nickname Fighting Witch not about her temperament, but because she was truly this good in a fight?
Few mages had as many epithets as the witch in front of him.
Galaf had thought it was a kind of trick.
A method of spreading many epithets so opponents could not grasp her real self.
Trick or not, one thing was certain.
Among the witch’s epithets, Fighting Witch was real.
“You won’t leave here cleanly.”
The witch with black-silk hair spoke without expression.
His two disciples had been defeated by a summon, and that summon now stood still to one side.
It looked like a golem stitched together from flesh, and the craftsmanship was astonishing.
Stitch marks on one side of its face and unfocused eyes seemed to announce exactly what it was.
A golem that looked as if someone had spent a lifetime creating it.
“Graaah!”
Galaf resisted.
Of course he had considered fleeing too, but the skill gap had been obvious from the start.
Esther’s epithet Fighting Witch was not something she had deliberately tried to earn.
It had spread by word of mouth because she fought like a madwoman.
Galaf was the opposite.
His daily life had been building a base and keeping disciples under him.
The difference was huge.
Esther sensed that difference from the beginning.
This had never been an equal fight.
Density and solidity of the World of Spells?
Galaf was superior there.
But every spell only had meaning when used in the right place, at the right time.
Especially in battle.
Esther did that.
Galaf did not.
This was the result.
“Goodbye.”
She said it with a greeting almost refreshing.
Thud.
Esther drew a knife, not a spell, stabbed the mage’s heart, then pulled it back out.
With a blade through his heart, Galaf coughed blood, gasped, then dropped to his knees with a heavy thump.
“Y-you... f-fucking...”
Galaf turned his head to the side and worked his lips.
Esther pressed that mouth down with her foot.
A mage’s mouth was not something you could leave alone.
Then she crouched and drove the knife down through the back of his hand.
Thunk!
The blade pierced Galaf’s hand and lodged in the ground.
A mage’s hands were no different from his mouth. They could not be left alone either.
“Mmph!”
Galaf’s body twitched.
That was the end.
A quite remarkable mage had died.
In other words, one of Abnaier’s trusted cards had died unexpectedly.
Esther checked the corpse for a moment in case he had left behind some trick.
There was no movement of mana.
Then she swept back her long hair and gathered it with one hand.
It would have been nice to have a hair tie.
Blood had splashed through her hair.
The same on her black velvet coat, and the same on the white skin hidden under it.
Drops of blood ran down from around the curve of her chest.
It should have been disgust first, and a desire to wash.
But another thought came first.
“What’s my nest doing right now?”
The words slipped out.
She wondered what Enkrid was doing.
Who knew where he might be getting beaten up.
Galaf, who controlled the river flow.
Even Esther had heard his name before.
If a mage of this level was here, there were probably more things elsewhere too.
Esther searched Galaf’s clothes, took everything worth taking, unsummoned her summon back into her World of Spells, and moved on.
She could still run the Flesh Golem, Bonehead, but Esther’s body still could not be called normal enough for long use.
The channels that carried mana were not intact, so its operating time was short.
From the outside, it looked like an easy fight, but maintaining human form had drained the mana she had stockpiled in her World of Spells.
‘Looks like I’ll have to live as a panther for a while.’
Without hesitation, Esther transformed into a panther.
* * *
The Azpen formation saw one lunatic pushing in alone like a madman.
‘What is that?’
‘Is he crazy?’
‘Should we stab him?’
He had broken through the front line and, in an instant, taken position in the rear.
A few Azpen soldiers subtly turned their spears backward.
Formation or not, the one who got into the rear looked dangerous.
Three soldiers met eyes.
Let’s kill him fast and get back. Their squad leader gave a nod as if to permit it.
They were just about to jump him.
“Hold.”
A nearby Platoon Leader checked the man’s face and spoke.
More precisely, distinctive features jumped out immediately.
‘Blond hair, white skin, red eyes.’
One of the identifying traits Abnaier had personally gathered all commanders to relay.
“Leave him.”
The silent agreement among the three soldiers ended there.
Order from above.
They stopped.
The Platoon Leader’s gaze turned to the enemy soldier.
Without even a helmet, the man strode inward and shifted to one side like he had nothing to think about.
He was not running, but his pace was extremely fast.
He surged forward with sword in hand.
As if compressing other people’s two steps into one.
And ahead of him stood an Azpen soldier with a Shortsword.
More precisely, an ally in hardened leather armor, different from regular soldiers.
The man slipped a finger into his helmet, scratched his head, and said,
“So you followed me all the way.”
Ragna answered by taking another step.
Ping!
Seeing that, the leather-armored Azpen soldier threw a dagger.
Ragna tilted his head and dodged it.
The dagger buried itself in the ground.
Ragna kept walking without even looking back.
The thrown dagger did not slow his stride for even a moment.
‘If we exchanged greetings, we should see it through to the end.’
He chased the man’s back.
There was no chance of losing his trail.
The opponent seemed like he might pull away, but never did.
The fact that he had pushed through enemy ranks was not in Ragna’s head at all.
Long ago, Enkrid had said the Madman Company could, depending on the situation, do things worse than Rem.
Ragna was the kind of man who had once gotten lost, cut down hundreds of enemy soldiers, and come back.
This level was nothing to him.
In the first place, no one asked Ragna for strategy or tactics.
“Just fight.”
Kraiss said that.
Enkrid too.
“Fight on your own terms.”
Ragna did exactly that.
He fought on his own terms.
That was how he had fought so far, more or less.
But now it was a little different.
Something had been added on top of that.
Two words: motivation.
“Hey, you gonna keep following me?”
The enemy soldier scratched his head again as he spoke.
Even so, his pace did not slow.
Not an ordinary soldier.
Ragna saw that at a glance.
‘I’ll catch him.’
Why did he want to catch him?
If asked for an exact reason, it was vague.
But one thing was clear. If he chased that bastard, he felt he would see something he had been expecting.
That alone filled Ragna with the will to move.
Red eyes fixed on a single purpose.
The enemy soldier deliberately moved farther from the main force.
More precisely, he moved out of both Naurillia’s line of sight and Azpen’s line of sight.
Meaning they had run hard enough to be winded.
‘He really kept chasing.’
The enemy soldier thought.
He was prouder of his legs than anyone around him, yet this was the result.
Even so, that guy kept chasing steadily.
His chest rose and fell, but his breathing had not even become that rough.
‘Wow, that hits my pride.’
His original affiliation was the Azpen Grand Duke’s Knight Order.
He was a Squire.
As far as legwork went, he considered himself first among Squires.
Even if the opponent was only junior-knight level, this was still humiliating.
The opponent caught his breath faster and looked less tired.
“What the hell are you?”
The Squire asked in disbelief.
Ragna stared at him and asked,
“You’re not alone.”
The Squire did not nod.
What would change if he knew?
Ragna felt that vague will surge up.
Motivation, desire.
What should he call it.
The urge to fight pounded in his chest, and it was not because of just the one in front of him.
Absolutely not.
Ragna raised his sword.
The enemy soldier, a junior knight of the Duke of Azpen's Knight Order, stepped one pace to the side.
From between the tall grass, the one who gave Ragna that surge of motivation appeared.
“Even after all that warning, this still surprises you?”
The newcomer spoke to the Squire.
Dark skin, tall frame.
Long hair tied back, and a helmet that looked custom-made.
A strange helmet with the front guard raised.
The lower back of it was open for hair to pass through, and above that, two protrusions jutted out like beast ears.
Her way of speaking sounded different, so she was not from this continent.
Her skin tone and features said the same.
She looked Eastern.
And she was a woman.
“You really are fearless.”
She said it while extending a long arm, about the same length as Ragna’s.
Ragna, sword in hand, stayed still and settled his breathing.
His breathing was already even.
Seeing that, the Squire frowned sharply again.
What is with that stamina?
In truth, it made sense.
Ragna got lost all the time.
Because of that, wandering had become daily life.
Someone else’s one-month journey sometimes became a one-year journey for him.
It might have been better with careful map reading or a guide, but Ragna’s travels were not wealthy.
Maps were not cheap, and he never felt the need to hire a guide.
For someone with no destination in the first place, there was only living through today. The premise of getting lost did not even exist.
So Ragna believed he had never been lost.
When luck was bad, he sometimes traveled on foot for over three months without entering a village.
Running and sprinting naturally developed to extremes.
“You said he was junior-knight level, so shouldn’t he be around my level?”
The Squire said while fiddling with the grip at his waist.
“He’s above you.”
The brown-skinned woman answered immediately.
Her eyes never left Ragna.
“You sure?”
“You asking again because you don’t trust my eyes?
Or because of pointless stubbornness?
Neither is good.”
“...My mistake.
I just hated losing in legwork, and he got under my skin.”
“You could call him a junior knight, not just junior-knight level.”
Ragna listened to their exchange while searching for openings in the woman.
Not deliberately. It was natural.
In his head, four attacks had already happened.
A wide horizontal slash from left to right.
A heavy downward cut from above.
A visible thrust while pressing forward.
An upward semicircular cut from the lower right.
In Ragna’s mind, the woman knight lightly brushed all four away.
Then her blade reached his shoulder or abdomen.
‘Can I dodge?’
If he moved his feet, he could.
But that would force him onto the defensive.
Once forced defensive, it would be hard to reverse the flow.
No matter what he did, the odds were poor.
A genius eye and talent were sketching the course of the fight.
Of course, all of it could be empty imagination.
You never know victory or defeat before a fight begins.
Without any change in expression, Ragna opened his palm and rubbed it on his thigh.
He was sweating.
“Still, you’re not a real junior knight.
Looks like you can use a little Will too.
Huh. I was told to make sure you die, though.”
The woman knight said that and stepped forward a few paces.
Then she continued.
“I’m Ayada of the Azpen Grand Duke’s Knight Order.
Any chance you want to defect?”
A junior knight of the Duke of Azpen's Knight Order.
And a Squire beside her.
Aya was full of confidence.
In fact, she had been a junior knight of the order for four years.
Aya knew better than anyone that not all junior knights were equal.
A knight order was where people of similar talent and skill gathered.
a junior knight tempered there and a junior-knight-level drifter wandering the continent, the gap was clear.
The density of sparring and duels they could experience was different.
Aya had not considered defeat, so she made the offer.
Ragna wiped sweat from his right hand twice, then wiped his left too.
Then he gripped the sword with both hands and raised it in front of his face.
The cold winter wind split across the honed blade.
Sunlight split as well.
The weather was good.
His chest pounded.
The motivation that sometimes rose when he watched Enkrid now tore through his chest harder than ever.
Why?
Why was his drive surging this much?
Because he wanted to cut his opponent down?
Was it murderous impulse?
No.
Because the opponent was strong.
One glance was enough to show her movement was no joke, and her affiliation was the same.
Azpen Grand Duke’s Knight Order.
Even with the Red Cloak Knights in Naurillia, one reason Azpen could still start this war.
A symbol of military force.
And that kind of opponent had appeared now?
Of course, that was not all.
Ragna’s motivation had been provoked this whole time.
The impulse he got through Enkrid left him thirsty.
That was why, sometimes, he immersed himself in training.
But once that thirst appeared, that alone could not quench it.
Even if you walk a fixed road, you cannot know everything that will happen on it.
Only then did Ragna realize.
‘Ah.’
A small exclamation rose inside him.
He needed a trigger.
A trigger to go farther than where he was now.
Something motivation alone could not solve.
He could not kill Enkrid or the half-baked bastards around him, so he could not go all out.
But what about that woman knight right there?
An opponent he could show his best against.
An opponent he could measure himself against on the line of death. A trigger.
Defection did not even reach his ears.
He only wanted to fight right now.
So provoking her would help.
Ragna had learned something from Enkrid too, so he did what he had learned.
“What are you even saying, you brown-shit bastard.”
= = =
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