A Knight who Eternally Regresses - Chapter 358

WE TRIED TRANSLATIONS

Translator: Hydrogen B

Editor: Abstract

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

A KNIGHT WHO ETERNALLY REGRESSES

Chapter 358: Wait, Stop.

= = =

Snatching a flying arrow out of the air was fair to call a stunt.

It would have been a stunt even if he had expected it. This one had come out of nowhere, and it was aimed at the back of his head.

He had not sensed it and dodged. He had caught it.

It was the result of blending Sensory Art with Focus Point.

"...Wow."

"W-What was that?!"

Two of the trainees found their voices.

The other three could not even finish a sentence.

That was understandable. Anyone would have been stunned just watching.

One was amazed he had caught the arrow. Another was shocked an arrow had suddenly flown in at all.

Enkrid looked up at the outer wall.

He spotted a man who had not even bothered to hide his presence, only his face. The guy stood on the narrow top of the wall as if it were nothing, perfectly steady. His balance was absurd.

His clothes were ordinary, a loose shirt and short-hemmed pants that fell to his ankles.

Not nighttime, so no all-black outfit?

Still wore a mask, though.

Enkrid tilted his head. The man who had thrown the arrow made no follow-up move. He looked like he was waiting for a response.

"Now..."

The man had just opened his mouth.

Enkrid hurled the arrow in his hand. It whined through the air straight back at him.

Vallen-style mercenary sword, Strike While Talking.

Ping, the arrow flew with a throwing-knife application. The masked man sprang sideways, then slipped laterally.

Light body.

Enkrid kept thinking while his hands kept moving.

He had thrown the arrow as bait, then immediately threw a dagger after it.

Fweeee!

It was a Whistle Dagger. Hard to get, only a few in his possession, and he used one here.

With a sharp whistle, the blade shot forward at terrifying speed. The man on the wall dropped backward out of sight.

Enkrid's right foot crushed into the ground. He bent his knee and took the rebound. Broken into steps, it sounded slow, but all of it happened in an instant.

Boom!

He blasted forward, punching a hole into the dirt training yard.

As if matching the size of that crater, his body shot ahead at frightening speed.

The trainees could not even catch an afterimage.

"That bastard's insane!"

The shout came from beyond the wall. Enkrid ignored it and leaped up.

Not fully armored, but he still carried three swords.

The five trainees who had only been blinking in silence opened their mouths even wider.

Three swords, leather armor too, and he still popped upward like it weighed nothing. It looked unreal.

Like mystery, like trickery, like magic, or something close to it.

Enkrid hooked his fingertips over the top edge and pulled himself up.

How do you even do that?

Magic?

By the time the five trainees' thoughts tangled up, Esther had woken and was watching with half-lidded eyes.

There was no magic involved, of course.

It was pure physical force from someone who had long since thrown limits to the dogs.

Enkrid hauled himself up, and in that moment two men waiting behind the wall drew shortswords.

They jumped in place and slashed.

Two blades rushed for Enkrid's wrist.

His body was halfway over the wall. Enkrid let go with his left hand.

Whoosh, whoosh.

The two blades cut empty air where his hand had been. In the same beat, Enkrid gripped the wall properly with his right hand and pulled again.

His body surged up in one long motion. He rose into the air, and the two waiting below visibly panicked.

Their pupils shook.

The sun was behind him as he rose, so to them it looked like a black shadow had appeared out of nowhere.

"Wait!"

One of them shouted, but Enkrid did not care.

Why would he care about people who attacked first?

In midair, he twisted his body, Gladius in his right hand, Spark in his left.

From the attackers' angle, it looked like light was spilling from Enkrid's eyes.

Backlit by the sun, he looked eerie.

He seemed to stop in the air for a split second, then both hands moved.

Black shadow, glowing eyes, and two streaks of physical threat spread viciously left and right.

Clang! Thud!

Right hand, draw and slash.

Left hand, draw and thrust.

Two different forms of swordsmanship struck two different enemies at once.

The one on the right managed to raise his blade and block. The one on the left had no chance.

The blade punched straight through his left shoulder.

He was lucky it was only that.

Enkrid had swung while applying what he had just realized.

Not enough.

His left hand needed to carry a moment of Will, and his right hand needed to carry a crushing sword.

Teaching while learning, fighting off ambushers while running it through again.

The road he needed to walk was coming into view.

Enkrid landed with a thud, one knee on the ground, then raised his head. A smile sat on his face before he even noticed it.

Was there ever a wrong time to learn?

Every moment, everything was a teacher and a lesson.

From Crang's back, he had learned something that carried momentum. From Andrew's polished technique, he had learned to mix swordsmanship with wrestling.

There was plenty to learn here too.

That alone made him satisfied he had come to the capital and escorted Crang.

He was that kind of man.

From the opposite side, from a different position, it was terrifying.

He vaulted a wall in one motion, knocked one man away with a short sword in midair, punched a hole through another man's shoulder, landed, then smiled?

The light in his eyes could easily look like madness.

"He's a crazy bastard!"

One attacker shouted.

Enkrid had no interest in why they were yelling.

Who were these people? It was almost instinct, but he was sure.

Were they any different from the ones before?

Not much.

Then cutting them down was enough. They felt no different from the assassin groups that had jumped him all the way here.

Same crowd.

He settled on that and moved.

They were assassins too, trained in technique. They were especially first-rate at reading an opponent's momentum.

As Enkrid pressed in, they hurriedly shouted.

"Stop!"

It was a sincere shout meant to calm things down. Useless, of course.

He had already marked them as enemies.

Whoosh.

He closed the distance. His steps were so fast it was hard to tell when they landed and when they ended.

At the same time, a long line drew above his head.

There were three attackers total, and only the first one, the archer from the wall, was still unhurt.

That intact one had shouted "stop," and the instant the shout ended, a blade dropped from overhead.

It almost looked like the blade had flown in while collapsing the space between them.

Fuck!

He did not even have time to curse out loud.

Faster than ever, he drew and raised his swords.

He held two curved blades, one in each hand.

Those were his signature weapons.

He was, by origin, a key figure in one branch of the assassination coalition.

Block and deflect.

The moment he decided, both curved swords rose toward the streak of light.

Blocked it!

Then something felt wrong. The moment that light met his blades, time seemed to stretch.

That gave him room for one thought after another.

But there was no time to question it. He focused harder than ever. He thought only about blocking.

Fast.

Realization hit him.

The draw angle, the grip, the way force was applied.

Right, that's how you do it.

How to swing a weapon. How to load force. Those things flashed through him.

Then why is there still no impact?

He stared at the streak. It was still coming down little by little. The blade drew a straight line without the slightest shake.

Only then did his two weapons and that blade of light truly meet.

His thoughts ended there.

Boom!

Crack-crack-crack! Crunch!

Enkrid had loaded a moment of Will into his swing.

What was speed built on?

"Explosiveness comes from contracting your muscles properly in the first place. Big slow lumps are all idiots, idiots."

Rem had said that.

"Muscles, brother."

Audin had said that.

Muscles. More precisely, muscles he knew how to control and use correctly.

Right thigh, waist, abs, shoulder, forearm, grip, everything contracted and added explosive speed.

Then he twisted ankle and waist, adding rotational centrifugal force into the sword dropping from top to bottom.

Once all of that combined, the descending sword was lightning itself.

It was Enkrid's own reinterpretation of Ragna's Lightning Drop.

A strike that took an opponent at least near knight level to block.

Not the Will of a thrust, but the Will of a downward smash.

So this result was natural.

That lightning, dropped through trained muscle, drove both curved blades downward.

The first explosive bang was metal crashing into metal.

The cracking that followed was the sound of the man's hand and arm bones breaking while gripping those blades.

The final crunch came when the unsharpened back section of the curved blade was shoved backward and slammed into his collarbone.

Enkrid crushed the enemy in a single blow.

"Hooooo..."

He let out a long breath without changing posture.

The two remaining men did not dare charge.

One of them, the one with the hole in his shoulder, had Ten Breaths poison in hand, but he could not even twitch his fingers.

Enkrid stood with the wall's shadow at his back and exhaled. His breath rose from his lips like steam.

The sudden violent movement had driven his body heat up.

"Stop? Wait? Got something to say?"

Only then did Enkrid speak.

Fuck, and now he asks.

The attacker who had blocked Gladius and broken two finger bones thought that as he pushed himself up and answered.

"We came to warn you."

"Warn me?"

Was it his imagination, or did this feel less like a warning and more like they came to get beaten?

Enkrid watched him as if to say, go on.

"Ghk... This isn't where you belong, so go back. That's why we came."

That came from the one with the hole in his left shoulder.

"You attacked first."

"It was at a level you could dodge."

"That's rich. With all the times you've rushed me, I could lop both your heads off and you'd still have no grounds to complain."

The moment he finished, the shoulder-pierced man threw a smoke bomb at the ground.

Pop, smoke surged up.

Watching it, Enkrid felt they were underestimating him badly.

They thought he would get caught just because they popped smoke and rushed in?

He recovered Spark, extended Gladius forward, turned its broad side vertical, and swung. The blade fanned up wind.

Whoosh!

Physical force that had crossed a certain line was no different from a spell.

The mass of smoke was shoved aside.

Enkrid expected them to keep charging.

That was what they had done until now.

But this time that expectation failed.

I got careless.

Enkrid admitted it. He had not expected them to run, but they all bolted.

"What happened?"

Andrew came running from the mansion a beat late.

He was armed. The five trainees ran in behind him, and Mack followed too.

Mack had switched to butler duty, but he had not slacked on training.

With the atmosphere in the capital as it was, this was no time to put down the sword and pat your belly.

Too many things here were wrong.

"They're already gone."

Andrew noticed there had been attackers. His eyes moved to the corpse.

"Who is that?"

"He rushed me, I gave him one cut, and he died."

Both arms and bones were broken, collarbone shattered, organs shocked, then the back of his own weapon hammered his heart and sent him across the river.

"This is insane, broad daylight, climbing over a noble estate wall? Not even at night?"

Andrew looked at the dead man and the smoke traces and spoke with anger in his voice.

Enkrid was piecing the situation together.

These were an assassination group.

Why jump now?

Jaxon was away. Everyone was scattered.

There could not have been better timing.

And what did that imply?

They were watching.

Andrew ground his teeth beside him.

"These bastards, seriously."

His pride had taken a hit, and he was furious too.

Enkrid roughly wiped blood off his sword, sheathed it, then ran a hand back through his hair.

Up until a moment ago, this had not been bad at all.

He had gained a realization too.

For someone like Ragna or Rem, this kind of wall might be one they broke twelve times a day. For Enkrid, without repeating days like this, he would have needed luck.

Then a thought suddenly hit him.

Could he pull that luck in on purpose?

To do that, he needed to understand the current situation first.

"What are the knights and the knight orders doing?"

That was the core. He struck the core and asked.

Andrew's lower lip twitched.

What defined a kingdom's military power?

Knights, obviously.

If there were no knights, if they could not train knights, then getting beaten to pulp by Azpen was inevitable.

It was not about local skirmishes. If Naurillia's military had fallen behind even a little, Azpen would have poured in full strength and crossed the border without mercy.

The reason they could not cross Border Guard in the end was the knight orders.

If it turned into total war, even at the cost of national decline, Azpen had judged they would be the side pushed back.

Read the situation and predict it.

That was what he needed now.

Enkrid thought as he did just that.

Big Eyes was the specialist for this kind of thing.

But he was not here, so what could he do.

If you had no teeth, you chewed with your gums.

"Do you know the country's current situation?"

Andrew thought for a moment, then asked back.

"No."

Enkrid answered cleanly.

His tone said he had no intention of pretending otherwise.

Watching that, Andrew felt he understood why Crang thought so highly of the mad captain.

How many people could say they did not know when they did not know?

Straight, proper, solid.

That was what he gave off.

And his skill level?

A monster, just a monster.

Andrew almost wanted to know what had gone through the dead man's head at the end.

Why had that bastard died looking half-smiling?

It was because realization had come with his final flash of life, but Andrew had no way to know that.

"There isn't a single knight in the capital right now. Let's go inside for details."

This was no conversation for trainees to hear.

"Mack."

Andrew turned and spoke.

"Yes, I'll get it cleaned up."

Mack looked awful.

Enkrid thought that was natural.

If your lord had bet his entire fortune on a hand that was bound to lose, your head would hurt too.

He had not heard all the details, but he could tell just from the atmosphere.

This is an uphill fight, isn't it?

He did not need deep thought to see it. From Crang's position, it was one danger after another.

At this point, it almost seemed it would have been better to build strength outside first, then return later with troops and crush everything by force.

"What? What happened?"

Rem got back before dinner.

"Couldn't find any decent goods."

Dunbakel came with him, and a little later Ragna returned.

"I thought this was your first time in the capital, so why do you keep saying you know shortcuts?"

Though it was not hot, the attendant who had gone with him was dripping sweat as he said that.

Sending an attendant along had definitely been a masterstroke.

Jaxon returned last.

"Where do you keep wandering off to?"

Rem glanced over and said it.

They were gathered in the lounge on the first floor, used like a reception room.

He had been roaming around himself, but seemed to have forgotten that completely.