WE TRIED TRANSLATIONS

Translator: Hydrogen B

Editor: Abstract

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

A KNIGHT WHO ETERNALLY REGRESSES

Chapter 322: How Do You Stop Lightning?

= = =

Today repeated.

Whether the Boatman watched or not, Enkrid remained steady.

As always, he did not change.

He was the same as when he first gripped a sword and set out to become a mercenary, and the same as when he got beaten senseless and swung at a tree.

Still, some things had changed.

His perspective had changed.

What he looked at had changed.

The way he thought things through had improved.

His body had changed.

The sword in his hand had changed.

His dream had drawn closer.

Even so, Enkrid was still Enkrid.

Day after day, he kept thinking.

'How do I block it?'

No answer came.

That was fine.

It had always been like this.

Problems with easy answers were rare for Enkrid.

Everything around him told him to give up.

It pushed him to settle into this day and stay there.

He even thought of ways to quit.

Was it the Boatman's trick, or just how this worked, there was never only one way to get past today.

'What if I take everyone and run?'

What if he woke in the morning, dragged up his aching body, and fled like a madman?

There were several wagons in the Green Pearl camp.

What if he grabbed one and bolted?

Would the knight come all the way to Border Guard?

That bastard only showed up in the evening, so if they ran from morning with real intent, would he chase?

Could he even chase?

No idea.

He did not need to know anyway.

Enkrid would not do that.

There were many ways to run, and all were easy.

Even if Garrett tried to stop him, what would that change, when Enkrid was in that condition and could not go far?

'I need to go to the rear and rest.'

Or,

'I need to return right away. I have urgent business.'

That was enough.

Who could touch the top contributor to this battlefield victory, the man with the greatest merit?

Inside the camp, a quiet excitement had already begun to spread.

If Azpen pulled back, they would throw a party at once.

They would tear into meat and drink.

Would they get to see that tomorrow?

"Despair."

The Boatman's muttered word kept tearing through his head.

"You cannot cross it."

The Boatman repeated it.

It was just noise in his mind.

Nothing changed because of it.

Inside his head, Enkrid kept swinging his sword without rest.

He searched and calculated.

'What if I step back and redirect it?'

How did that sword shake and bend like that?

How could he make his blade meet it?

Enkrid treated the curse of repeating today as a privilege.

The pain of death stayed the same, even after a thousand times.

He endured it for the thrill that came after.

So he met the knight's sword again and again.

Today repeated with burning concentration.

Because of that, Enkrid could see more.

"Honor."

When the knight came, talking about honor and telling him to block it once.

In that instant, every scene seemed to split apart.

The ominous chain that had gripped his body when this today began also played a part.

Sense of Evasion had activated to an extreme.

That sense drove his concentration even closer to the limit.

'The blade?'

He tried to step back and redirect it, but the blade accelerated.

Its speed changed.

Before it accelerated, Enkrid saw something.

Brrr.

It trembled.

That was what he saw, clearly.

At the same time, Enkrid met the knight's sword at an angle with his own.

It was a desperate struggle, done while every muscle in his body felt like it would tear apart.

He did not see the knight's face because all his focus was on the blade, but a trace of surprise replaced the boredom on the knight's face.

It vanished quickly.

Clang.

The instant the blades met, the shortsword split the dwarf's Gladius.

'Weapon advantage...'

did not matter.

Thud.

His heart was pierced.

Enkrid died.

He died, and today repeated again.

This time followed a similar pattern.

He added one more trick.

At the same moment he blocked with Gladius, he triggered Momentary Will with the resolve that it was fine if the muscles in his left arm burst apart.

Half of it was a gamble.

Will was force and mystery drawn through the user's own body.

It was not something to use with a body that had not fully recovered.

He felt the muscle fibers in his left arm snapping, but Enkrid still thrust Spark where he wanted it.

That was why.

The knight's sword trembled, bent, and pierced his heart, but it did not split him completely.

Only a little, but he had bought time.

Briefly, death was delayed.

"Cough!"

Enkrid staggered backward and vomited blood.

At the same time, his body dropped.

He tried to brace with his left hand, but no strength came, and his body tipped forward.

He was about to fall.

Thud.

Someone held him up.

When he looked down, he saw the top of a foot.

Sinar had supported Enkrid's body with her thigh.

Enkrid did not repeat the same mistake.

He braced himself against the ground with his right hand.

He had no strength to stand.

From the shock to his heart, blood kept pouring from his mouth.

"What is this," Sinar said.

At that moment, something shot over the knight's head.

It was Ragna.

His sword tore through the tent roof with force.

Riiip!

The tent split, and the blade in his hand shot down viciously.

Faster than an arrow, the blade drove down from above.

Had Ragna not talked about lightning?

There was a reason for that.

His blade became lightning.

He loaded it with the Will of Severance, then showed the sword art of House Zaun.

House Zaun Heavy Sword Style: Lightning Strike.

Kra-BOOM!

An actual thunderous sound came from Ragna's blade.

Then the knight thrust his sword from below to above.

What happened to Lightning Strike?

He was a knight for a reason.

He wielded Will for a reason.

He could do things impossible with mere fragments of Will.

With his left palm, he received Ragna's sword, and at the same time thrust his own.

Enkrid took all of it into his eyes.

To miss nothing, he did not loosen the string of his concentration for even a moment.

His own body dying did not matter at all.

'Ah.'

Even Enkrid could see it faintly.

For an instant, the knight's sword looked like it had multiplied into dozens.

"Guhrk."

Blood spilled from Enkrid's mouth, then foam mixed in.

Seeing that, Sinar beside him said, "An elf who loses a mate does not forget revenge."

No, since when were they mates?

What kind of relationship did they have that she was talking about revenge?

Still, it sounded solid and reassuring.

To joke at a moment like this, that elf had guts enough for anything.

Ragna was stabbed and rolled across the ground.

It was fatal.

His eyes went black and dead.

A hole had opened in his heart, as expected.

"Fuck."

Kraiss stepped in front of Enkrid the same way.

This time, Dunbakel came with him.

Grrr.

Would Esther be any different?

Ah, did none of them plan to run?

This time, Ragna really died.

Maybe because he got excited and suddenly tried a big technique?

Even so, thanks to that, there was a change in the knight's body.

Through the gap between Kraiss and Dunbakel, Enkrid's dying eyes saw the knight checking his own palm.

Blood on the tip of the shortsword dripped to the ground.

Red blood also flowed from his left hand and fell in drops.

That blood was a deep, vivid scarlet.

"I was cut?" the knight muttered.

It made sense.

No matter that Will had been loaded into it, the opponent's Will was still an unfinished fragment.

He was a knight.

And yet his palm wrapped in Will got cut?

This got cut?

"I was cut?" the knight muttered again.

That was how shocked he was.

Unlucky or lucky, Enkrid could only see that far before his eyes closed.

The time he had bought by giving up his left arm had ended.

"Kkueegh."

He tried to hold it in, but in the end Enkrid spat out a harsh, ugly scream and collapsed.

That was his limit.

"Even on your way out, you sure go out loud."

In his fading ears, Kraiss's gloomy yet chilling voice reached him.

He closed his eyes, died, woke, and today started again.

A shaking sword, a bending sword.

Most of all, the knight's form when he faced Ragna stayed vivid in his memory.

The knight changed his footing and changed his stance.

He read the opponent's level and changed the sword he sent out.

Well, if every strike had always been the same level on the same trajectory, Enkrid would have beaten it long ago.

"Good."

"What's good?"

"Good!"

"So what is?"

Was this normal, shouting that he felt good at daybreak the moment he got up like a lunatic?

Kraiss kept asking beside him, but Enkrid sank deep into his own world.

He had never immersed this hard before.

"No, did he hit his head?
This time he really looks badly hurt."

Kraiss muttered beside him.

Sinar had a similar worry.

He had already been strange, and now he had gotten even stranger.

Well, that was part of his charm.

Enkrid lived through several more todays.

After that, he sorted what he had realized one by one.

During that, in the most recent today, he saw something odd.

By chance, Ragna and Sinar attacked together, and the knight's sword rang as it met them.

Wooooong!

A sword that cried out through tremor and vibration.

Blade Echo.

Also called Blade Echo.

The blade rang, and white light flowed from the knight's eyes, visible to the naked eye.

Will had become visible.

Woooong- Jjooong!

The knight's shortsword literally drew white beams left and right.

Ragna's sword, caught in that beam's path, split in half, and Sinar's Naidhl was cut too.

Enkrid had charged first and again bought a brief delay.

He saw it clearly.

'With an old shortsword?'

At this level, it was not skill. It was mystery, a divine art.

Both the Naidhl and Ragna's sword were cut.

One was a masterpiece, and the other was so thick that splitting it looked absurd, yet both were cut.

Not even sparks flew.

'Like cutting rotten branches.'

Was that possible with Will alone?

What was Will?

What was willpower?

Enkrid thought about it, but no answer came.

His thinking shifted in a more productive and healthier direction.

Several times, the knight killed Ragna, cut off his arm, or cut off his leg, and said similar words.

"What a waste.
You should not have charged."

He coveted Ragna's talent.

Enkrid replayed how Ragna fought the knight.

He pulled out what had been carved into repeated today.

He replayed Sinar's resistance.

He replayed dead Kraiss.

He replayed Dunbakel's struggle.

Then he replayed his own death again and again while recalling the knight's sword.

Swordsmanship, sword, desperate struggle.

All of it swirled and tangled in his head.

"That place is a swamp, and whoever falls in will never come out."

In between, the Boatman still tried to push Enkrid into some pit, but of course it was useless.

"Aren't you busy?"

Sometimes Enkrid said that first.

On those days, the Boatman shut his mouth.

To Enkrid, it really looked like he was sulking.

A ridiculous thought.

Was that being not something impossible to even guess at?

That was the fifty-sixth today.

'How do you stop lightning?'

He repeated it to himself, thought it through, asked Ragna again, asked Sinar again.

Not a single today passed for nothing. He did everything he could do.

Among those tries, he saw the knight's sword bend as it came in, and died to that sword again and again.

He also died after seeing the sword tremble.

Spark got cut.

Gladius got cut too.

He could not see Blade Echo again.

That needed chance and luck.

To other people, the goddess of fortune might look like she was stalking him, but Enkrid knew better than anyone that he was not that lucky.

So he could not expect the same luck.

If not chance, then he, Ragna, and Sinar had to deliberately coordinate their timing.

'I hate that too.'

His heart did not move.

That required accepting the deaths of a lazy bastard and a joke-loving elf.

It meant he would be the one pushing them forward.

That was something he could never allow.

When he gained a delay and watched them die, he could at least console himself that it was for tomorrow.

But to push them forward himself?

'I'd rather bite the sword and charge.'

That was exactly how he felt.

So he swung alone, agonized, and thought.

Endless agony and thought, moving forward by even a quarter-step in between, and Enkrid's thinking returned to the beginning.

How do you stop lightning?

"You start by facing its true form."

Ragna had said that.

Now he could understand.

You had to see it and recognize it before you could block it.

"After that, you react to the speed."

Sinar had said that.

React first.

Then strike.

Then block.

"So you just do it well."

That was Ragna's line.

Everything was packed into that one word, well.

Still.

"Hoo."

The knight's sword.

The knight's strike.

Really, was it not thrilling?

"Again."

A mutter escaped on its own.

A smile came with it.

In this repeating today, Enkrid felt a thrill unlike anything before swelling inside him.

The dream had come as a reaper, but the sword he swung felt like it had become his milestone.

And that milestone felt like light falling between dark tunnels.

To the Boatman, it was only darkness and despair.

To Enkrid, it was light and exhilaration.

Today started again.

The seventy-second, his body was still a wreck, but as always, Enkrid moved.

Half dead, he watched the sword Ragna knocked away.

After that, he watched Sinar struggle more than ten times.

A method?

He did not know.

Tomorrow?

It would not come.

He did not care.

That was why the Boatman could not understand Enkrid.

On some repeated todays, his confidence surged for no reason.

Of course, he died.

After that, he went through twelve more todays.

A sword that looked blockable but would not be blocked, that was the knight's sword.

"You."

On the ninetieth today, the knight drew his sword and frowned.

Then he looked at Enkrid and spoke.

"What a waste."

Enkrid was not wildly happy at those words, but saying he did not feel proud would have been a lie.

At that moment, though, he felt nothing.

He was in full focus.

Always the same.

When he faced the knight, he immersed and focused.

If he broke even a little, his heart would split and he would gain nothing.

So even while feeling as if his mental strength was being ground down, he could not let that pinpoint concentration loosen.

Still, one thing would stay unforgettable. The dream that appeared as a reaper had acknowledged him.

The knight spoke again about honor, about once.

Enkrid let out a breath and prepared.

It felt like he could block it, but he could not.

Then something was wrong.

Did he need to rise to the knight's level right here and now?

No, impossible.

Having a fragment of Will did not let him advance that far.

Then what?

Wong.

The moment he heard a faint Blade Echo, Blade Echo, the knight's sword mercilessly split his heart.

Thud.

It was faster than before.

Blade Echo, here?

'Ah.'

It was truly like lightning.

At the same time, lightning struck Enkrid's head too.

The lightning that smashed his skull lit the path that would go beyond today and toward tomorrow.

= = =

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