WE TRIED TRANSLATIONS

Translator: Hydrogen B

Editor: Abstract

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

A KNIGHT WHO ETERNALLY REGRESSES

Chapter 352: Felt at Peace

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Crang thought this was a new kind of experience.

‘Is this what it feels like to travel under a knight’s protection?’

There was a calm here he had never felt once while wandering the continent.

That stayed true despite the fact that he had faced more assassination attempts than ever before.

The attack by men disguised as merchants had been crushed before it even started, but that was not the end.

After that, they entered the city of Midpool.

“Thank you. Thank you so much!”

The son of a great landowner cried with joy.

His ankle had been mangled by a trap and still throbbed with pain, yet he looked ready to kiss the ground.

Of course, he did not actually shove his face into the filthy dirt. It just showed how overjoyed he was.

He had survived a brush with death and then followed them in constant tension, so it was a natural reaction.

“Even if that man had been an assassin, nobody would have been taken in.”

Watching him, Crang’s escort spoke.

“I think so too.”

Crang nodded and murmured.

They had said that if they harmed the landowner’s son, or ignored him and moved on, the assassination guild would frame them for murder.

So the landowner’s son was probably unrelated to the assassins.

Even so, nobody let their guard down.

That was the point of what Crang’s escort had said.

All the way there, the landowner’s son stayed in the center of the group.

It was a position where he could not pull anything even if he tried.

At the same time, they kept a clear distance between him and Crang, and Enkrid treated his injury while searching his clothes.

Enkrid’s hands were meticulous, but the man being searched could barely process it.

His ankle had almost been severed, and the pain was blinding. How could he think straight?

If he could endure that and stay clear-headed, that would have been stranger.

Ordinary people could not stay composed after an injury like this.

If someone weak-willed burst into tears, snot, and desperate pleading, nobody could blame him.

Even if someone had grit and held on, for a person facing this for the first time in life, staying calm was a distant hope.

Enkrid’s party kept watching him and finally entered Midpool.

Midpool’s signature was its odd-shaped walls, built from many different colors of stone after repeated remodeling and repairs.

Cities in Naurillia generally saw it as a virtue to copy the capital’s walls, so maybe this was only natural.

The capital’s walls truly were imposing.

On this continent, Demon Creatures and Magic Beasts roamed everywhere, so even bandits could not travel in tiny groups.

That was why there were no isolated farmhouses or little villages.

Humans had to build large cities to survive. That was how civilization had advanced.

As a side effect, construction techniques had progressed by leaps, and Midpool clearly showed traces of that progress.

Even now, they were linking and stacking stone in front of one wall and raising a new outer wall.

“Thank you, truly!”

Because this city had grown from the surrounding farmland, the city ruler had traditionally been a great landowner.

At the same time, the lord governing this region owned the most land in the kingdom and was called the Marquis of Fertile Lands.

A great landowner under that marquis thanked them and kept insisting they accept an invitation.

Then Enkrid cut in with one line.

“What if we were the ones who lured your son into that trap and staged all this?”

That single sentence made the landowner step back.

A man at that level was far from naive.

He understood that these people were not the type to accept his favor.

Maybe, quietly, he even agreed with Enkrid.

“I will repay this debt later.”

The landowner withdrew.

He would hunt down the group that had targeted his son, and anyone connected to them.

If needed, he would even borrow the marquis’s power.

That was not Enkrid’s concern.

Afterward, the party took rooms at an inn, and poisoned food was served.

“It’s poison.”

The man called Jaxon identified it instantly, so the assassins failed again.

Later, in an alley while they were heading to another restaurant, someone threw a dagger.

It was, naturally, coated in poison, but Enkrid caught it with a gloved hand and sent it back, twice as fast as it came.

“Ghk.”

A dying sound leaked from deep in the alley.

“If he can’t even dodge the dagger he threw, what was the point?”

Rem grumbled. He looked thoroughly annoyed with people jumping them from every direction.

Whenever foot traffic thinned out, they struck again.

Rem assembled his modular short spear, rested it on his shoulder, and draped an arm over it.

The posture looked sloppy, but it was anything but.

A poisoned dart came for him too, and without changing that posture, he only bent his waist to the side and knocked it away with the butt of the spear.

The ratlike assassins kept throwing and hiding.

Rem could not be bothered to chase every one of them.

Understandably so.

The assassins kept harassing them after that.

Whenever they started to forget, another poisoned dagger came flying. Not just daggers, but bolts and darts too.

They did not only target Crang. They went after the whole party from all sides, but it was pointless.

It had no effect.

Now and then, attackers rushed in directly too.

They were not skilled assassins, just bands of drifters.

If there were no scattered homesteads, people had to gather in cities to live.

Large drifter populations were a problem in every major city.

Some of those people joined the attacks. Naturally, that failed too.

Thud, crack, smack.

Ragna stepped in and neatly sent the drifters packing with fists and feet.

“He’s a monster!”

One drifter shouted that and ran, but nobody in the party gave chase.

“They were probably paid a few Krona coins. The poison attempt was likely done the same way.”

Jaxon said the one who had mixed in the poison was an inn maid, but Enkrid did not interrogate her. Jaxon advised there was no need.

“It’s a common trick. They lie and say it’s medicine, not poison, and tell people to sprinkle it.”

Crang listened closely to Jaxon. It was the first time he had heard of such a method. He remembered a time he had nearly died from a vicious poison.

Back then, he had not even known when he had been poisoned.

There had been no suspicious person.

Was that why? It seemed likely.

“They claim to be a fiance or family member of someone in your group and say they are secretly following from behind. People usually believe it. Since they can’t fool us, they fool a third party, someone who won’t be suspected. Usually they say, ‘They’re exhausted from travel. This is a good medicine, so please sprinkle it for them. But do it in secret, they must not know we’re following them.’ That was probably the approach.”

It was a cheap trick, but it worked well.

What if an inn worker or innkeeper secretly stole some of the powder and used it themselves?

Would the assassination guild care?

Instead of poison that worked immediately, they would probably give poison that caused convulsions a day later.

Fortunately, if that was the right word, the innkeeper and inn maid had been honest.

They had not stolen any powder and had sprinkled all of it onto the food.

The maid who served them had kept sneaking glances at the party for exactly that reason.

Of course, Enkrid and the others also drew attention just by their faces.

Keeping their hoods up inside an inn would only draw more eyes, so they showed their faces openly.

Naturally, that pulled attention from everyone around them.

They also carried themselves like they did not care about watchers at all, and that seems to have pricked a few assassins’ pride.

As a result.

“Above.”

That came with Jaxon’s warning.

In a dim stretch, more precisely on the way to another restaurant after eating at the inn became impossible, an ambusher dropped from overhead.

By then, enough daggers had been thrown at them to set up a street stall.

Rem, Enkrid, and Ragna moved at the same time.

Their three weapons split the air above them.

The elf assassin who dropped from above was cut into six pieces.

Blood rained down and spread across the ground.

Entrails, flesh, severed arms, and legs thudded onto the alley floor.

If they had swung weapons like this in the middle of a main road, guards would have rushed over at once.

“Ugh.”

That dying gasp was his last word.

His face was so pale it seemed to reflect moonlight, and it ended up buried in filth.

A few more sneak attacks came after that, but still.

Something felt strange.

“They all go down before they can even start.”

Just as the escort said.

Crang saw it the same way.

And that was not all.

“Hold on.”

When Jaxon stepped away for a short while, the attacks dropped sharply.

During that time, Enkrid found a restaurant.

“They say the roast chicken here is excellent.”

“Hm?”

Crang tilted his head. Was this really the time to look for good food?

“Do you dislike chicken?”

Enkrid asked.

Of course not.

It had simply been a long time since he had eaten a proper meal.

He had dealt with so much poisoned food that he ate to survive, not for taste.

With that thought, Crang entered the restaurant.

“Please be careful.”

His escort said it, but did not stop his master. In his view too, things seemed safe enough now that they could eat.

So they did.

Crang ate enough to loosen his belt, the first time in a long while.

The place sold only roast chicken, but the method was excellent.

A whole chicken was skewered on a long spit and roasted over burning logs. The skewers were stood around the fire and turned slowly, then roasted for at least half a day. It was a dish that took a long time.

“This recipe has come down since my grandfather’s day. It’s my pride.”

The cook, who was also the owner, said with pride.

He had reason to. The roasted chicken melted in the mouth.

A thin layer of seasoning over salt, pepper, and spices matched the crisped skin perfectly, better than many lords’ meals.

When Crang drove in his fork and cut, springy yet tender meat came away cleanly.

He kept putting it into his mouth.

“Have you been starving for days? You eat well.”

Saying that, the owner brought out a juice made from a fruit he said he had developed.

That was excellent too. Sweet and tart flavors mixed together and cleared the grease from the mouth.

When people were densely packed into a city, cuisine was often what advanced the fastest.

By nature, a city was where surrounding logistics gathered, so many different ingredients flowed in.

A city like Midpool, where agriculture thrived, was also good for raising livestock.

That was likely why the city walls kept expanding and the city’s area kept growing.

There were village facilities outside the walls, guarded by stationed soldiers, but livestock could not be raised properly that way.

Not everyone could become a fighter in the wilderness and kill Demon Creatures and Magic Beasts.

So naturally, they raised cows, horses, chickens, and sheep inside the walls.

In drifter districts, some people even lived pressed up against a few animals.

Livestock helped with warmth in winter too.

For reasons like that, chicken was supplied smoothly inside the city.

Which meant they raised a lot of it.

If farming was the main industry and the people at the top ran the city properly, raising livestock with leftover grain was only natural.

That was probably why a restaurant like this existed.

“Let’s kidnap that cook.”

Rem offered his highest praise, and the cook, who had just brought roast potatoes, looked horrified.

“What? This restaurant is backed by a great landowner, so don’t even think about nonsense.”

In this city, the highest authority was the landowner class.

Enkrid calmed him, saying it was a joke.

At some point, Jaxon had returned too and was tearing into a chicken leg.

“You alley cat, are you going to keep sneaking around?”

“You’re just slow.”

Those two always bickered.

Outside, the wild horse, despite being a horse, was tearing into chicken.

“That’s not a Magic Beast, right?”

A freckled boy working at the restaurant asked. He looked frightened.

“It doesn’t bite.”

Enkrid said that to reassure him, but of course the boy still did not go near the wild horse.

Who would want to approach a horse that crunched even chicken bones?

“Let’s have a drink.”

Rem said.

“Drink now and take some with us.”

Enkrid agreed.

At a glance, they looked like a complete mess, scattered across separate tables with no sign of discipline.

On the surface, yes. But not one of them relaxed.

Crang saw and heard all of it, lived through it, and felt at peace.

Their calm attitude gave him that feeling.

So he tore into chicken and drank a glass of cherry liquor.

It carried a distinctive aroma.

If he had not been with them, he might have suspected it was poisoned.

It was not.

“Boss, can I buy a few bottles?”

Enkrid bought several bottles, the party finished eating, and they returned to the inn.

“Sleep well.”

They exchanged brief greetings, washed up, cleaned meat from between their teeth with a thin brush, and rinsed with saltwater made from cheap salt.

The bed was stuffed with cotton, not straw, and that alone showed the city’s wealth.

A day when he could lie on a bed that was neither rough nor hard.

If that was not precious, what was?

“Unbelievable.”

The escort said it. Crang agreed.

They spent a whole night, and strangely, no more ambushers came.

‘That red-haired one disappearing earlier was the reason.’

Crang’s insight let him see the situation clearly.

The attacks had stopped after the man called Jaxon disappeared.

What had he done?

Crang was suddenly curious, but he would not ask.

You could tell just by looking. He was not the kind to answer even if asked.

They left the city, and the assassin group kept flailing afterward. Yes, it was flailing.

“You can’t pass through here!”

A man claiming to be a former arena champion charged at them.

“I’ll do it.”

The Beastfolk called Dunbakel stepped in and crushed the man’s face with a knee.

Dunbakel smacked away his spear with a scimitar, then charged and finished him that way.

Dunbakel kicked off the ground with the left foot and drove up the right knee. Excellent body technique.

The champion, face caved in, collapsed to the ground.

“Which arena was that? Do they only train chicks there?”

The Beastfolk said it and swept the gathered men with a sharp glance.

The group scattered and fled.

The sky was clear, as if the storm had been a lie.

Everyone in the party mounted up and rode at a measured pace.

Managing a horse’s stamina actually got you there faster.

Keeping the horse from tiring out and riding steadily was basic mounted travel.

Then, suddenly, an arrow sliced in.

It aimed straight at Crang, and naturally Enkrid snatched it.

Tak, brrrr.

Crang saw the trembling shaft stop right in front of him, but he was not very shaken.

It had been blocked, so it was fine.

Enkrid gripped the shaft, looked into the distance, and spoke.

“This one’s the real thing.”

That was the end of clumsy tricks. The enemy’s final move was long-range sniping.

And it was no amateur. This looked like a real archer.

Crang could not see him, but Enkrid saw a mounted archer in the distance, shooting and fleeing.

Could they catch him by chasing on horseback?

No, that would be difficult.

Then what?

All they could do was knock down incoming arrows one after another.

Now the assassins had vanished, and a mounted archer had appeared.

That was how troublesome the enemy’s new move was. Even so, it was not a true threat.

That was Crang’s conclusion.

Even if dozens or hundreds of arrows flew in, he would not die.

If Enkrid guarded him at his side, that was what would happen.

That was why he felt calm.

So the mounted archer far away did not seem threatening.

And then.

Hiiiing.

The wild horse neighed and moved toward Enkrid.

“Want to go catch him?”

Hearing Enkrid answer like that, Crang figured they had no intention of letting the archer go either.

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