A Knight who Eternally Regresses - Chapter 338

WE TRIED TRANSLATIONS

Translator: Hydrogen B

Editor: Abstract

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

A KNIGHT WHO ETERNALLY REGRESSES

Chapter 338: What Is the Fourth Sword, Rapid Cognition?

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Rapid Cognition, the fourth sword, was another name for accelerated thought.

Take in the information scattered around you, then choose the most efficient and rational action.

To do that, you needed thinking power, the ability to ignore what was unnecessary and judge what actually mattered.

As that speed increased, his ability to map out the shape of a fight became exceptional too.

Enkrid found even greater joy in this than when he learned other sword arts.

The essence of that snake-like, bending parry was simple: even if struck softly, a blade was still a blade.

Soft and Flowing Sword, the sword that let attacks slide away.

Its charm was in parrying, and that was what gave it meaning.

Learning it had been just as enjoyable.

And Lightning Thrust?

How could the process of gaining the accelerating Will of an "instant" not be thrilling?

The process of learning was always enjoyable.

The Crushing Sword was the same.

It began as a way to endure a knight's blade, and it was born from Ragna's question.

How do you split lightning?

He started from that question, and in searching for the answer, he learned this: face the lightning head-on and evade before it falls.

In other words, extend your sword before your opponent swings.

Then the sword you extended became a lightning rod.

You could not cut lightning, but you could deflect it.

He had proven that himself.

A knight's sword was no different from a natural disaster like lightning.

Snake, lightning, and crushing.

He learned those three forms through completely different paths, but the exhilaration they brought was similar.

Were they not all techniques he had carved into his body for one purpose?

In that sense, the Ensnaring Sword from the Correct Sword was a little different.

'I can graft techniques into it.'

Calculation, thinking power, and concentration all flared hotter than ever.

If the previous three sword arts were like dots stamped in place, this new sword born from the Correct Sword was like an unbroken line.

He could glimpse hidden intent threaded between the charging ghouls.

As extreme concentration settled into the Correct Sword, it felt like he could see a sliver of the future right in front of him.

To parry what he saw, he could use Snake Sword.

If he wanted them to move as he intended, he could crush them with pressure.

If he wanted to shatter their intent from the very start, he could thrust first.

'Ah.'

Enkrid marveled inwardly.

The Ensnaring Sword was a sword followed by precise calculation.

Then you layered techniques inside it.

Even after creating the Ensnaring Sword, he had felt it was lacking.

Now he understood what that missing piece was.

"You only improve when you recognize what you're lacking."

He recalled a mercenary's advice.

Enkrid did exactly that.

He recognized it.

He faced it directly.

What was he lacking?

He had built the form, so now it needed substance.

Snake Sword had the substance of bending and parrying.

Lightning Thrust had the substance of preparing the whole body, starting from the feet, to pierce a single point.

Crushing Sword had been filled by adding "pressure."

So the Correct Sword's Ensnaring Sword needed that too.

That substance did not have to be another sword art.

It did not even have to be a newly created style.

The point was simply that it needed substance.

'That's it.'

The realization made him happy.

That happiness filled him with exhilaration.

If this was not joy, what was?

Under a black night sky without a single star, he swung his sword to see starlight.

It was a light he had never seen, even after countless todays had passed.

And still, Enkrid did not know fatigue.

He simply swung his sword.

Even when he walked where he could not see ahead, where there was no path at all, he did not stop.

He walked, then walked again.

He walked as if he had forgotten exhaustion.

And he swung his sword like that.

What had it been like when the curse called today was forced upon him?

He had not needed to rebel with words against the Boatman who sang despair.

He had not feared living today again.

So he swung his sword again.

How could this not be exciting?

Now he could see starlight, a path had opened, and even without repeating today, a moment of realization had come.

He was so, so happy.

"Oh wow, he's really fired up."

"Good thing you're not drooling, Brother-nim."

"Wandering Teresa will lend a hand."

"Lend a hand with what? Doesn't look like there's any room to cut in."

Starting with Rem, they each tossed in a comment from behind.

Only Sinar stayed silent, completely absorbed in watching.

That man's sword was changing in real time.

An elf's sensitive senses picked up every shift.

No, the moment she sensed change, Sinar sharpened her senses even further.

Of course, no one at her side could tell.

To them, it only looked like she was watching.

Sinar was fully using the elven sense that learned through feeling and absorption.

Among all the information reaching him, Enkrid discarded what he did not need.

Listening to them was unnecessary right now.

It was not part of what he needed to select.

What mattered, here and now, was things like the sound of ghouls stepping on the ground.

So Enkrid did exactly that.

He sorted what he heard and selected only what he needed to register.

Pak!

Thud, thump!

The sound of feet slamming into the earth as they ran.

Crack, crunch, snap.

The sound of branches breaking.

Guuoooorgh!

The ghoul's unique roar, like something being vomited up from its gut.

Scholars who studied demon creatures said ghouls made that cry because stomach acid burned their insides.

And only human flesh soothed that acid.

That was why ghouls ate people.

Some demon creatures attacked humans because they liked human flesh, but some were simply born that way from the beginning, or so they said.

Not important right now.

He let it pass and discarded it.

His accelerated framework of thought accepted something new.

A damp, sinister killing intent was mixed in with the loud ghouls blocking the way ahead.

That killing intent alone made no sound.

The opposite of the other ghouls.

It moved in stealth and took position on a thick branch above Enkrid's head.

The branch dipped lightly with a small creak, but anyone focused on the charging ghouls in front should have had no room to spare attention upward.

Enkrid gripped the silver longsword in his right hand and Spark in his left.

Then he filled the Ensnaring Sword with substance.

Swish, thud, shhk, stab, boom, crack, slice, sink.

Rhythm.

The blades danced to an exact rhythm.

The silver longsword cut, severed, and split.

Spark thrust and withdrew.

The two swords sang a single beat.

The Ensnaring Sword used rhythm as its core and trapped the enemy inside its frame.

Inside that frame, the ghoul pack was nothing but moths rushing toward death.

"Oh."

Rem let out a small exclamation.

Dunbakel lifted her head slightly at that moment.

Something was sounding an alarm in her instincts.

Audin and Rem did not even look up, but Dunbakel started it, and Teresa raised her head halfway too.

Something was there.

Teresa felt the same unpleasant sensation.

Enkrid looked fully absorbed in swinging both swords.

The wet sounds of flesh being torn and harsh noise kept coming in a rhythm that was strangely hypnotic.

"Above...!"

Teresa's shout burst out by reflex, then stopped.

Something dropped from overhead with a sharp swoosh.

It was about half the size of a normal ghoul.

Its body was the same gray, but its right arm was abnormally long, and the claws on that hand were twice as long and sharp as other ghouls'.

It looked as if four awl-like blades had grown from it.

The moment all of that entered view, it vanished.

The instant it appeared, it drove those awl-like claws down and left an afterimage as it flashed in.

It lunged from the branch, and Enkrid, who had been swinging his silver longsword in perfect rhythm, swung it once vertically at half a beat faster.

Using his own head as the axis, his sword drew a vertical circle.

Pukwak!

The blade split the rushing mutant ghoul diagonally.

A silver line passed from its head through its torso and between its legs.

At the same time Enkrid swung, he slipped his body to the side.

Even kicking off the ground to move stayed within the framework of rhythm.

Even the sound of his foot striking and landing was perfectly on beat.

'He already knew.'

Teresa closed her mouth.

He was ahead of her.

Come to think of it, Rem and Audin had already known too, and they seemed to know that the captain knew as well.

So she stayed quiet.

Enkrid was not mindlessly swinging with drool running down his chin.

He kept calculating and calculating, while adding another realization: he did not need to be bound to calculation alone.

'What if calculation fails?'

Then he could entrust his body to instinct.

He had a weapon for that too.

Sense of Evasion, with intent layered over it.

More than twenty ghouls had charged in, and the strike from above had been a deadly dagger.

For an ordinary soldier, it would have meant certain death.

Ghouls using a feint like this, ordinary people might well have fallen for it. But Enkrid and those with him were already far from the two words "ordinary."

As they watched Enkrid fight,

"I can't hold back!"

Dunbakel was the first to burst out.

A beastfolk's keen sense of smell caught the scent of ghouls hidden in the forest.

She shot out to Enkrid's left at once.

"You're not stopping her?"

Seeing that, Teresa asked.

Her tone was calm, yet somehow urgent.

Enkrid answered as he split the final ghoul's skull with a sword swing two beats slower.

Puck, the top of the skull flew into the air.

"What?"

Enkrid's voice came back.

"Dunbakel is jumping in."

"So, were you planning to just watch?"

It was a misunderstanding.

She had thought Enkrid was saying he would cut them all down himself, that they were all his prey, but that was not it.

Enkrid had simply been going wild because he was excited.

Now satisfaction was rising in him.

And Dunbakel going wild in the middle of that?

Beyond expectations, it did not matter to him either way.

"More are coming."

Sinar said.

Even in a poison-soaked forest, an elf's senses stayed sharp.

She detected enemies before Enkrid did.

In tracking ability alone, she was beyond comparison with Rem or anyone else.

"Then."

Teresa stepped in too.

Watching this made her blood boil too fiercely to endure.

Was this the blood of a half-giant, or proof of the identity called Teresa?

She could not find that answer now.

So she ignored it.

When a giant tree blocked her view, she swung her sword straight at it.

Whung.

Thud!

The sword buried itself in the middle of the trunk.

Teresa felt the tree was harder than she had expected.

Not like solid steel with an iron core, but a dense, compressed hardness.

So she put in more strength.

"Hup."

With a short shout, she drove in the rest of her force, and the muscles in her arm swelled with a creak as she split the trunk open.

As the tree tilted and started to fall forward, Teresa slammed it with her shield.

Boom!

With that roar, the tree, three times her size, changed its falling direction and tipped forward.

Toward the charging ghoul pack.

"Since God watches over you."

Looking at the collapsing tree, Teresa recited a prayer.

"You are granted a chance to repent beneath Him."

Audin picked up the rest.

He quite liked Teresa's prayer.

Teresa looked at Enkrid and did not hide her boiling blood.

Her fangs showed with her smile.

That physical change had appeared after she trained her half-giant blood.

Her fangs were sharp.

Then she swung her arms like windmills.

The sword and shield in Teresa's hands struck, crushed, cut, and split the charging ghouls.

"Hahaha!"

Teresa's laughter rang loud through the forest.

"Weren't we supposed to be on an infiltration mission?"

"If that Gray Ghoul bastard hears that laugh and charges us, great. If it runs, even better."

Enkrid answered Rem.

He was right.

If it came out and attacked, they would spend less time searching.

If it ran, they would not need to fight in the environment it had prepared.

Either way was good.

"Yeah, that's true."

Rem nodded.

Being lazy about thinking and being stupid were two different things.

Rem understood Enkrid's point quickly enough.

"It will not go as Company Commander Brother-nim intends."

Audin said from behind with his usual chuckle.

That was true too.

Where Dunbakel had rushed in, there were many things like the long-clawed assassin ghoul from before.

On the side Teresa was facing, there were ghouls half again larger than the others.

Their gray flesh was harder than that of ordinary ghouls.

'Normally, one standard ghoul takes two or three spearmen.'

The ones living in this forest were even trickier than that.

Considering the feint operation from earlier, even a fairly well-trained unit would have had to accept severe losses.

Enkrid and his group were not a knight order, but they had comparable combat strength, which was why they could fight like this.

"Good thing it's not boring."

At Enkrid's words, Rem nodded again.

"That is also true."

Rem stepped in too, his hands itching for action.

Wheeeeing!

He pulled out a sling and spun it over his head.

Soon, ghouls hidden in different places waiting for openings, ghouls that could be called commander class, and even unusual yellow-eyed ghouls jumped out, but it was pointless.

Thud!

Stones on the ground became both Rem's weapon and his wonder.

About three slings broke, and the scattered stone shots smashed ghoul skulls without mercy.

Enkrid did not stop walking.

Then he felt a subtle, unpleasant sensation.

'A trap?'

It was instinct, but it felt right.

At that moment, Sinar approached from beside him.

"I have a bad feeling, fiance."

Why did she never forget that title?

Enkrid thought, then answered.

"This way."

The elf's sense and his own instinct pointed to the same place.

The ugly ghoul said to rule this region as king should be there.

Enkrid turned his steps that way.

He could almost make out the enemy's intent.

'They're opening a path.'

The intent was subtle, but what they wanted was obvious.

When he looked with sharpened focus, it became clear.

Instead of high-risk ghouls, there were ones you could call ordinary ghouls. Even those had hides so tough and movements so quick that it would take five or six normal spearmen per one, but still, they were relatively weaker, and a cluster of them was plainly visible.

It felt as if the entire ghoul pack was driving them that way.

Deliberately opening a path.

As if quietly urging them forward.

"Pathetic. Really."

From Rem muttering behind him, he had read it too.

"Brother Ghoul must truly wish to see the Lord Father."

Audin said quietly, as if pronouncing a death sentence.

Without answering, Enkrid kept moving.

Soon they arrived at the place they were meant to reach.

A clearing where the enemy's intent was laid bare.

More than a hundred pairs of yellow eyes surrounding them were proof enough.

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