WE TRIED TRANSLATIONS

Translator: Hydrogen B

Editor: Abstract

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

A KNIGHT WHO ETERNALLY REGRESSES

Chapter 360: Stab.

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Pierce Without Killing Strike.

It was Jaxon’s specialty.

No presence. No momentum. The blade moved in silence, faithful only to the role it was born for.

It was born to stab, cut, and split flesh, and that was what it would do.

The soundless blade aimed for Enkrid’s back.

If he drove it straight in, the request would be complete.

“You want to spar?”

Jaxon stared into Enkrid’s eyes. Enkrid had already turned around before he knew it. The sword executing Pierce Without Killing Strike stopped. Jaxon froze with his right arm extended.

‘Did he sense it and react?’

That meant Pierce Without Killing Strike had failed.

Ting.

Enkrid had already drawn his silver longsword and swung it. He lightly tapped the halted blade. A formal greeting.

Jaxon pulled the knocked-aside sword back in front of him.

The vibration from the blade traveled through his body.

“I named it Silver. My sword.”

Enkrid spoke as he held the sword upright. The blade caught the moonlight at an angle.

Seeing that, Jaxon understood what had just happened.

Pierce Without Killing Strike had not been broken. He had failed to use it in the first place.

‘Didn’t want to?’

He had not put his heart into it. He had failed to erase his presence completely.

Why?

“Jaxon.”

Someone called his name. Blue light flowed from those moonlit eyes. Momentum rose from the sword in Enkrid’s hand. Enkrid’s shoulder shifted by a hair, and Jaxon reacted at once.

He read the stance, predicted the incoming attack, and stepped back.

Whoosh.

Enkrid’s longsword, Silver, cut a short arc through the spot where Jaxon had been.

His right hand held the grip, his left held the ricasso, and he swung along a short path.

An attack born from trust in the weapon’s cutting power.

Not a slash driven by centrifugal force, but one that used the blade’s sharpness itself.

“If you let your guard down, you’ll lose a body part.”

Enkrid said it. Blue eyes shone through the gap in his two-handed grip, piercing the night.

His words carried momentum. His gaze carried momentum too.

Jaxon took in that momentum, read the attack, and processed it all in an instant before speaking.

“You’ll use the weapon’s advantage?”

Normally this was when action came first, not words, but Jaxon spoke.

He knew he was unlike his usual self, but he did not bother dwelling on it.

So he simply followed where his mind led him.

Was this now for the request?

Was this for revenge?

Was stabbing him in the back really right?

‘Not my problem.’

Inwardly, Jaxon mimicked Enkrid’s usual tone. He did not even do it consciously.

Enkrid let out a long breath. In the moonlight, his breath almost looked visible. That much momentum filled him.

“I mean this. If I go easy on you, I get hurt. Jaxon.”

Enkrid was no longer the same.

He had changed.

So much that he could not be compared to the man Jaxon first met.

What had Jaxon seen in this man who once swung his sword in silence?

That man, battered everywhere, a high rank only in name, was gone.

Now his body looked twice as large as before.

Jaxon threw the sword in his hand to the ground. The blade sank into the dirt with a dull thud.

Then he drew another weapon, a stiletto.

“That?”

Enkrid recognized it.

Leona Rockfreed had put it on the line once and won it in the end.

The item Enkrid had handed over without hesitation.

A stiletto from the Carmen Collection.

Jaxon ran his eyes over the blade without expression.

Had Enkrid known this dagger’s value when he gave it away?

At the time, Jaxon had seen no selfish intent in him.

Now he pointed the tip of that gifted blade at the one who had given it.

“Please do not let your guard down.”

Please. A word that had never come from Jaxon’s mouth before.

Enkrid’s lips twisted. He smiled.

“Half a life.”

Enkrid said it, meaning he would come at him that dangerously.

It was also his way of saying this was unlike their past spars.

Enkrid’s blazing eyes fixed straight ahead.

Their gazes met, and Jaxon let his hand hang loose. In that instant, a soundless throwing knife shot at Enkrid’s brow.

Sense technique, Sense of Evasion, activated.

You could dodge what you could not see or hear. It belonged to the realm of sixth sense.

Enkrid felt it and dodged. He tilted his head and let the sharp Silent Throwing Knife pass. Then he felt another blade coming for the spot he had just vacated.

‘Time lag.’

It was part of Sword Flicking Technique, the dagger-throwing method Jaxon himself had taught him.

Still, Enkrid had not expected him to open with this immediately. No one could predict everything.

He had not predicted it, but his body reacted.

Enkrid raised the flat of his sword like a shield and blocked.

Clang!

Blade met blade, sparks burst, and moonlight split.

As those two blades came flying in, Enkrid tapped the ground with the tip of his left foot.

He drew Jaxon’s gaze to the sword, then moved in secret.

Then he kicked that lead foot forward.

Pak.

Dirt burst forward. A weed flew up with it, clouding the view.

Jaxon lowered his gaze by reflex, reversed his grip on the stiletto, and slipped sideways.

Ping.

Almost no gap after the dirt clump, Silver thrust in, but Jaxon had predicted it and dodged.

Jaxon’s specialty was Correct Sword.

Whenever he fought head-on, he enjoyed calculating his opponent and keeping them inside his intent.

It was similar now.

Of course, something else had mixed into it.

That was why Enkrid saw Jaxon like a predator hiding its claws.

Jaxon, on the other hand, felt as if he were looking at a smooth, solid flint stone when he looked at Enkrid.

No openings showed themselves easily. He had grown that much.

So.

“This should be fun.”

Jaxon muttered. Enkrid heard him and replied.

“Exactly.”

* * *

“...Damn, where have you been getting hit?”

Andrew gave them separate rooms, but there was only one staircase leading up.

At the foot of it sat Rem, tossing and catching his axe for fun.

He saw Jaxon’s slightly swollen left cheekbone and spoke with a broad grin.

“You came at him from the front instead of behind? Not like you. Why, did a woman dump you? Lose your mind over that?”

From the way he kept blurting nonsense, he was having the time of his life.

Normally Jaxon would have ignored him. In the mood from earlier, he would not even pretend to listen. But this was different now. More relaxed than when he first arrived, his mouth moved before he cared.

“Dumped? You think I’m you?”

Six words. Rem felt defeated.

Just from looks alone, Jaxon’s face was absurdly good. He could have been the star host in a salon.

“For men, it’s wildness, bastard.”

Rem answered, then thought to himself.

He came back completely loosened up.

“I do not even have the energy to stop you today. If you are going to fight, do it outside. Do not break the furniture.”

Enkrid came up behind Jaxon and said it.

Maybe Andrew was stingy, because he did not keep many candles in the mansion.

Lamps were hard to find, too.

Then again, judging by the meals and the state of the place, he did not seem wealthy.

You could tell just by the wooden practice swords the trainees used.

Because of that, the mansion was dim at night. In that darkness, Enkrid looked like he had suddenly appeared from the shadows.

Of course, Rem had sensed him already.

“You fought the captain?”

Rem glanced from the stairs and asked. As Enkrid reached the wall sconce, his condition became clear.

Jaxon had a swollen left cheekbone. Enkrid had one swollen eye and a limp.

There was also a small hole in his forearm. Blood had seeped through the wrapped cloth. A clear stab-and-pull mark from a dagger.

Damn.

Even to Rem, Enkrid’s body had gone past sturdy into truly hardened.

Skill? His skill could not be ignored anymore either.

And Jaxon had done that to him?

They had fought seriously, both of them.

“Did you hit him from behind?”

At that fresh question, Jaxon decided Rem truly was not worth dealing with.

“Move, before I remove that head from your neck, the one too busy rolling around uselessly.”

“Then try it, bastard. I will not go easy just because you got hit.”

“Rem, come over here.”

Enkrid cut in. Rem smacked his lips, pushed off the stair with his heel, and stood.

The old wooden staircase let out a creak.

He rose, sprang down, and landed with a soft tap.

He held an axe, and he was no small man, yet he made no sound when he landed. Some kind of trick.

Like a cat dropping to the ground.

“Just joking, joking. Still, we are in the same unit, right? If someone hits you, I pay it back. I am Loyal Rem, yeah? But what, was it a spar?”

Jaxon was already heading up the stairs. When it came to moving soundlessly, he was several levels above.

Rem felt it and looked up once. Jaxon was already almost at the top, only his heels visible.

Rem turned back.

“Looks like you got hurt bad.”

“It’s nothing.”

Pain rose near Enkrid’s left hip, but he judged it was not serious.

He was limping to recover faster, not because he could not walk.

Well, one injury on his body had been made on purpose anyway.

So everything stayed within expected range.

“So what happened?”

Was he asking because he did not know it was a spar?

No.

He knew everything. The question held something deeper.

He had noticed Jaxon’s condition, so he was asking why Enkrid had pushed this hard and sparred like that.

Because Jaxon had been different from usual.

Inside, Enkrid let out a quiet “ah.”

Unlike his rough appearance, Rem was sharp, quick to read situations, and knew what he had to do.

“I killed a noble brat once and got chased for it. Spent my time running.”

Something Rem had said before crossed Enkrid’s mind.

If he killed a noble’s son and ran, that meant he was capable of doing it.

If he had needed to kill quietly and leave, he would have done that.

Yet he killed openly and made sure people knew it was him, so there must have been a reason.

The things Rem had shown until now flashed through Enkrid’s head.

Out of nowhere, Enkrid finally understood why Rem had not disappeared right after killing that noble’s son.

“So you made yourself look like the source of everything.”

Enkrid murmured.

Rem blinked. What was this guy thinking about on his own now?

Now he was blurting weird things again.

“Get it together. Your screw loose again?”

Rem said, tapping his own head with his index finger.

Enkrid ignored him and kept thinking. Then Kraiss’s old comment came back too.

Kraiss often observed unit members, their personalities and behavior, and once said this.

“If the captain is lazy about using his head, Rem is different.”

“Different?”

“Rem knows everything and still lets it pass as if he does not. He only reveals himself when there is a reason.”

If Rem had quietly killed the noble brat and left, what would have happened to the commoners that brat had tormented?

Rem exposed himself so they would not become targets of revenge.

Chase me instead.

He probably left just enough traces and kept fighting them one after another.

He made sure they stayed obsessed with pursuing him.

Then once he judged he had bought enough time, he vanished and ran all the way to the frontier.

This bastard is really sly.

Rem stared at Enkrid for a while, then spoke again.

“You keep saying weird stuff, and what is with your eyes? Huh? Your eyes look weird.”

Enkrid shook his head.

It was nothing.

Then he kept thinking.

It made sense. Before Enkrid came to the unit and became its coordinator, Rem only caused manageable trouble.

The real wild trouble, the true brat behavior, started after Enkrid arrived.

‘Because he could.’

Acting that way fixed people’s sense of what kind of person he was.

So others would not mess with him carelessly, and so he could live mostly as he pleased. He had set that image in place.

A sly alley cat? Which one of them was really more sly?

“Hey, I told you, your eyes are weird right now.”

“Let’s stay and play a little longer.”

Enkrid did not bother matching Rem’s rhythm.

Since Rem was sharp and quick, he would know what Enkrid was trying to say.

Rem kept his suspicious look, but still played along.

“Because of that alley-cat bastard?”

“Well, among other things.”

Jaxon’s room was right in front of the stairs. He had not hidden it, so he had probably heard this whole conversation.

“Troublesome cat bastard, always dragging in annoying business.”

Rem grumbled as usual. Still, he did not say he was leaving.

Enkrid stepped onto the stairs and climbed.

As he did, he recalled the earlier fight, more precisely the moment right after the spar ended.

“Stab.”

That was what he told Jaxon right after it ended. Jaxon did not extend his sword.

“That is enough.”

Jaxon shook his head.

Enkrid looked at him and said it again.

“One time is fine.”

The man before him had taught him sense techniques.

Even if Enkrid asked him to stab once in return, it would have been fair.

Enkrid truly believed that.

When Jaxon first drew his sword behind his back, Enkrid felt killing intent. He also felt hesitation. Worry, concern, and anguish rested at the blade’s tip.

He felt all of it in a single motion.

After answering that worry and concern through a spar, Enkrid thought:

Whoever it is, they are using every trick in the book.

“Someone requested that I stab you.”

That was what Jaxon threw out in the middle.

Enkrid was curious about the one hidden behind the veil.

Warning, request, trickery.

The assassins and assassination attempts they had met on the way here were probably that person’s handiwork too.

Creak.

The wooden stairs screamed. Enkrid climbed toward his room and thought.

In the end, he would have to give an answer to everything that person had thrown at him.

And he would give the exact answer that person had desperately wanted.

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