WE TRIED TRANSLATIONS
Translator: Hydrogen B
Editor: Abstract
Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried
A KNIGHT WHO ETERNALLY REGRESSES
Chapter 335: Training.
= = =
The same kinds of people kept coming, nobles, merchant company reps, men claiming to be mayors from this city or that one, but Enkrid no longer paid them any attention.
That was fine.
Kraiss was already blocking them in the middle.
Enkrid had told him to use his head, and he really did.
“You’re telling me I came all this way and still can’t even meet one city soldier like him?”
Even when a seasoned old noble showed up,
“Yes, you can’t meet him.”
Kraiss answered like clockwork.
Sometimes, a few tried to throw their weight around.
“You want to fight?”
Frog Maelrun stood there as Kraiss’s guard.
Very few people had the nerve to push through even after Frog’s threat.
Enkrid and the people around him were the strange ones. This was normal.
Even so, Kraiss was not forcing anything or driving people out with brute strength.
“He is preparing for an important battle.”
He had proper excuses.
“This is being handled directly by the central authority.”
And he threw out the royal palace as backing.
That was enough to stop those petty nobles, and as for merchants, he did not even need to deal with them himself.
“If you have something to say, go to the Rockfreed Trading Company.
They signed an exclusive contract with the lord.”
He just passed them along.
Leona Rockfreed was truly capable.
She handled all those small and mid-sized merchant groups on her own.
“Did you think the name Rockfreed was that light?”
Just putting the company name forward solved half the problem.
Even if a large merchant group under some noble arrived, it did not matter.
What they wanted was to secure trade routes through Enkrid and make profit.
Leona promised them exactly that.
“The trade routes will expand.
Our company alone can’t swallow all of it anyway.”
Naturally, the merchants who had been trying to get on Enkrid’s good side swarmed to Leona.
She picked and filtered the decent ones among them.
Judging value and selecting the right goods was her specialty.
Watching her work, Kraiss could not have been more satisfied with the lineup.
‘The captain showed his face once, and something that could have become messy got wrapped up this cleanly.’
If it had not been Enkrid, he might still have been coordinating small details with Leona even now.
And there was no way Enkrid had nothing to do with why she set all those small matters aside and took this on.
What a valuable face.
He truly was a man fated to become both the salon’s signboard and ace.
Even with Kraiss blocking things this well, Enkrid was not idle.
No, he was busy doing exactly what he wanted.
“Come at me!”
He was crazy about sparring to begin with, so there was no way he would not be busy.
“Be careful not to die.”
Now and then, Enkrid even sharpened Rem’s way with words while they sparred.
The sparring was brutal.
From the outside, it sometimes looked like madness, like they were staking half their lives, but it helped both Enkrid and Rem.
Naturally, Dunbakel and Teresa joined too, and Audin helped.
Only Ragna stayed out.
He sometimes swung his sword at empty air or drifted into a drowsy trance that looked like meditation.
Everyone except Ragna watched Enkrid and felt a quiet shock.
They could not help it.
‘When did he get this far?’
Dunbakel felt the gap had widened even more.
And Teresa now saw a wall she could not overcome even if she used all the strength and tricks of a half-giant.
Of course, wall or gap, neither of them gave up.
Right in front of their eyes stood someone who had crawled up from the bottom.
No one could talk about giving up in front of a person like that.
Emotionally or physically.
“Give up?
Too hard?
Ah, our beastfolk is having a hard time.
Right.
That can happen. Then should we just die?
If it’s hard, you should die.”
If Dunbakel showed even a hint of giving up, Rem would step in.
“Sister, the scripture says that sometimes a different shock makes you forget your original pain.”
Audin would step in too, and he would not hesitate to personally give Teresa that different shock through physical violence.
Of course, neither of them actually said those lines out loud.
‘Me too.’
Teresa only renewed her resolve.
Dunbakel was the same.
Those two women also got used to looking upward and pushing forward again and again.
Their mindset had clearly changed from before.
Both could hear well enough, so they heard what kind of person Enkrid was and how he had come this far.
From what Rem and the other soldiers around him said, Enkrid’s start was weak.
Truly weak.
“He used to be under me, and my face looked a little better too.”
The source of that nonsense was a man named Vengeance, and even listening to other soldiers, the story was the same.
A washed-up mercenary at the level of a low-rank soldier.
That had been Enkrid.
Now that man had become someone completely different.
A hero of the city, a hero of the battlefield, and the man who made more than half the little kids in Border Guard pick up wooden swords and play at training.
His beginning was weak, but was this what scripture meant by saying the end would be great?
Teresa even found herself thinking that.
Dunbakel, meanwhile,
‘I won’t fall behind.’
She gritted her teeth and struggled desperately.
Without realizing it, she had started moving in a direction similar to Enkrid’s own desperate drive.
Naturally, Enkrid had no interest in how a beastfolk and a half-giant viewed him.
Outside of training and sparring, he spent his time well, including visits to the forge.
No, he had to spend it that way.
He was not impatient, but he could not let time slip by.
Had he not seen a knight’s sword?
He had even shown a move where he struck the knight’s sword first and blocked from there.
It happened only once, but just crossing swords with a knight widened Enkrid’s world, and the starlight over his path grew brighter.
The dream that had come as a grim reaper receded into starlight.
The remnants of that light lit his way.
It was only natural that his drive surged higher than before.
What might look like endless cruelty and suffering to others became unmatched joy and exhilaration to Enkrid.
“What is this?”
The self-proclaimed best blacksmith in Border Guard inspected the sword gifted by the enemy junior knight again and again.
The silver blade and finish, the grip wrapped in magic beast hide, even the round pommel.
“This is no ordinary craftsmanship.”
When Enkrid showed him the gladius and Spark as well, he looked ready to lose his mind.
The blacksmith’s eyes shone.
“Even the forging method is different. This isn’t a human weapon.”
His eye for quality was good enough to recognize the value of both Spark and the gladius.
“You planning to use all three?”
They had known each other for a very long time.
The blacksmith still spoke casually.
He was a craftsman who cared more about his work than Enkrid’s rank as company commander.
There were guilds where blacksmiths banded together to protect their own interests, but Border Guard had no such guild.
Unless they made farm tools, most were practically military-affiliated.
He was someone who had chosen challenge for the sake of his craft over joining a guild and living a stable life.
Enkrid respected craftsmen.
He believed this man too was chasing something like a dream of his own.
“I do it because it’s my work.
What fancy label are you trying to stick on it?”
If asked directly, he seemed like the type who would call it nonsense and say exactly that.
Still, his pride was surely sky-high.
Even while looking at the blacksmith, Enkrid replayed his dream.
Maybe his motivation had been running too high these days.
The blacksmith kept his eyes on the three swords and asked,
“So what do you want done?”
“I used them rough, so I’d like you to touch them up.
And make fifty throwing knives that are thin but well balanced, and iron plates good for reinforcing these greaves, and my gauntlets are all wrecked so I need new armor all around...”
For a mercenary, good equipment was another life.
That was still true now, even after becoming a junior knight and using Will, even if only in fragments.
‘If what I held when I received that knight’s sword had been a cheap longsword?’
That would have bothered him in a strangely irritating way.
Most of all, an excellent weapon that fit your hand made a swordsman happy.
That too was part of skill.
In that sense, the knight who came before and failed to bring his own cherished weapon had been arrogant.
Too confident.
He escaped because of that, but should he learn that arrogance?
Or, having seen failure caused by arrogance, should he avoid becoming like that?
Enkrid chose the latter.
He put Krona into gear and equipment too.
“The payment?”
“To the castle.”
“Fine.”
The lord would handle the cost.
The craftsman adjusted all three sword edges, sharpened them on a whetstone, and checked each one carefully.
There were no issues.
Enkrid had learned a fair amount about weapon care while working as a mercenary, but a master’s touch was still different.
That did not mean he could slack off training just to learn that too.
“Ah, and I’d like to see spear-type and blunt weapons too, like maces and axes. Got anything already made?”
In the middle of all that, Enkrid ordered several more weapons.
Honestly, it was beyond several. He was asking for a whole variety.
At that, the craftsman looked at Enkrid.
He had been focused on swords and gear, but now he met his eyes directly.
It looked like he was asking what he would use them for.
“Yes, I’ll use them.”
He ordered them because he needed them, and because he ordered them, the blacksmith only nodded.
He knew what he needed to know.
How could Enkrid’s battlefield fame have missed only the blacksmith’s ears?
Even if the request had been stranger, he would likely have taken it without a word.
After briefly losing himself in the three swords, the blacksmith thought,
Could he make a better sword than these?
Someday he would challenge that, and he would show that sword to the man before him first.
He meant to do exactly that.
If that man liked his sword, then he would talk about Krona.
“I’ll send some of those weapons later with the gear.”
“Good.”
After that, he went right back to training.
“Tighten your muscles and apply force.
By doing so, you gain muscles like steel.”
It was dawn training time.
Enkrid did not tilt his head at Audin’s words, but he did ask a question.
“You mean a body that won’t get hurt even if struck by a sword?”
“That is correct, brother.
You understood well.”
It made no sense.
He did not say that out loud, though.
“It works.”
Audin spoke first.
Enkrid had not even asked how yet.
“You already know the method.
Question and answer are not bad, but at times, is it not a better path to realize it on your own?”
The answer was in that question.
Enkrid nodded.
What came after was a process that made all his prior training look gentle.
Audin gripped a hammer with thick cloth wrapped around the end.
“What are you going to do with that?”
Dunbakel asked.
Her voice carried unease.
“Training.
Sister.
If you want, line up.”
Dunbakel did not line up.
She thought this was not it.
Even if she did it someday, now was not the time.
She wanted to absorb everything from Enkrid, but this was better left for later.
But Enkrid silently followed Audin’s teaching.
The result was simple.
Thud!
He tensed his body and took the hit.
That was all.
Audin whipped Enkrid’s side with the cloth-wrapped hammer.
He had not struck that hard, but it was still a blow that would crack ribs and rattle organs in an ordinary person.
“Ohhh, very good!”
Audin struck with proper force.
Just by looking, he gauged the durability of Enkrid’s body.
And Enkrid took it.
“Isn’t that just torture?”
That was what Kraiss said when he happened to see it.
He was so busy he was practically running, yet the sight still made it impossible to look away.
“It is training that all becomes flesh and blood.
If you want, line up.
Brother.”
“If you do that to me, that is murder, Audin.”
Kraiss said it with complete seriousness, then took off.
He ran so fast his feet were almost invisible.
Yeah, go.
Watching Kraiss disappear, Enkrid drew in a breath.
“Hup.”
“Core, put strength into your center.
The moment you lose it, something gives out.
Now.”
Audin spoke, and then the cloth-wrapped hammer struck Enkrid’s side again.
Thump.
The shock raced through his whole body.
A sharp jolt hit his mind.
‘Is he enjoying this?’
Feeling the pain, Enkrid thought to himself.
Maybe Audin enjoyed hitting him.
The corners of his lips seemed raised more than usual.
His face normally held a faint smile, but now he looked like he was smiling a little more.
From the outside, that smile looked very gentle.
But appearances could not be trusted.
‘The devil comes with the face of an angel.’
Without realizing it, Enkrid repeated a line from scripture he had heard so many times that he had memorized it.
“I look forward to the day we remove the cloth, brother.”
Whipping him with bundled cloth was already over the line, and Audin spoke of what came next.
Enkrid gave a faint smile.
“So do I.”
If this were meaningless, it would be pointless, but it was not.
‘Will.’
Will, his force of intent, moved.
Something branching from the Will of Refusal settled into his body and performed a kind of refusal.
Was it refusing impact?
No.
It was different.
It was enduring.
Among the techniques knights used, there were several standardized arts.
Pressure was one of them.
That was why many junior knights treated it as their specialty.
They saw Pressure as a foundational stage.
Naturally, other arts existed too.
One of the standardized, widely known ones was Endure.
Also called the power to bear, it had originally been a holy knight technique, but it had now spread across the knightly orders.
As for what it did,
‘The instinctive reaction that appears the instant you are hit.’
It was like iron armor wrapped around the body so that reaction could be ignored.
Using this skillfully and wrapping it around the whole body formed a knight’s fundamentals.
At that point, you gained a body that even blades could not cut.
‘Ah.’
That was why the brown-haired knight had looked shocked when Ragna’s sword cut him.
And Enkrid understood.
‘Will.’
You could not build a blade-resistant body by training muscle alone.
But what if, like wrapping your body in iron armor, you wrapped it in Will?
Another milestone rose in his mind.
Had this crude training stirred him because he had seen it?
He did not know.
His sparring with Rem also took on a level of violence unlike before.
“You can’t go easy like before.
You’ve improved a lot.
Seriously.”
Rem held two axes, and after sixteen exchanges, Enkrid left a sword cut on his cheek.
So Rem said,
“Ah, did that hurt?
Should’ve gone easy on you.”
“Mm, sure.
Let’s die today.”
“I’ll burn you and scatter you in the river.”
That short line was as provocative as it got.
What would he burn and scatter?
Bones.
It meant, you die.
How did he make that sound so dramatic?
Rem felt it, only a little, but he felt impatience at Ragna’s change.
He realized he had to change too.
So his training time increased.
He started swinging axes at empty air.
His full motivation moved his body.
This kind of taunt did not feel bad.
Rem’s momentum changed.
Watching that, Enkrid finished what he had to say.
“A sling, right?”
He heard words urging him to use a new weapon, and Rem, fully immersed, forgot his surroundings and pulled out the weapon.
= = =
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