WE TRIED TRANSLATIONS

Translator: Hydrogen B

Editor: Abstract

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

A KNIGHT WHO ETERNALLY REGRESSES

Chapter 369: No King Without the People

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It was so chaotic he could not even tell how many were coming. The Owlbear turned his gaze to the one who had just spoken.

"Enkrid?"

The Demon Creature saw a familiar face again and called his name without thinking.

Enkrid swept his eyes over the area once. Only after checking the people who had arrived and the man in the feathered hat did he look straight at him.

Their eyes met. In that instant, Enkrid sorted several facts in his head.

The opponent knew him.

There was a high chance this man was a noble.

He was connected to the Black Blade.

He was in a state of Demonization.

He knew how to use it.

Those brown eyes looked like someone Enkrid knew.

A name rose in his mind. A well-trained body, a rank smell, a man obsessed with manners.

He had been hard to spot after that. But was he not under Count Molsen?

If so, were Count Molsen and the Black Blade on the same side?

A few new questions came up, but Enkrid felt he knew who this was, so he said,

"Viscount Bantara?"

He recognized him just by looking. His sharpened sixth sense told him so.

Only then did Bantara realize why those faces looked familiar.

They were the men he had brushed past once when entering the royal palace.

The moment he realized it, he kicked off the ground.

He meant to run.

He already knew what those Madmen Company bastards had done.

But he never got the chance.

Whoosh!

The moment he moved, a spinning axe flew over his head.

As soon as he heard it, instinct reacted. If he jumped up, he would die.

It was a throwing axe so fast it was absurd. Even with a Demon Creature body, he could feel he could not take that force, so he dodged.

Instead of springing upward, the Owlbear lowered his head. He crouched down. He stopped dead in place mid-escape.

"Yeah, I'll cut you down."

The blond swordsman said it as he approached from behind.

He was the one who had been spewing that ominous aura this whole time.

No sooner had he spoken than he was already there.

A blade dropped from above like lightning in a vertical strike.

Bantara, Demonized, puffed up the feathers across his body and crossed both arms over his head to block.

Clang! Crunch, rip!

It looked blocked, but the sword still cut halfway through his arms.

"Kraaagh!"

A scream burst out, mixed with a Demon Creature's howl and a human voice, full of pain.

"Hey, this is revenge for a comrade."

At the same time, Eisia, who had come with Enkrid, drove her thin blade at his heart.

She had stood behind Enkrid as if she were not there, then burst forward with a thrust.

'Fuck!'

The Owlbear tightened his chest muscles and jumped back, barely stopping the strike from punching through his heart.

With a wet stab, the thin blade slipped between feathers, muscle, and flesh, then pulled back out.

A dark red line of blood followed the withdrawing blade.

His opponent was a junior knight from the knight order.

No, that was not the problem.

Including Junior Knight Eisia, there were at least five more here with skill close to hers.

Whether he turned into an Owlbear or the Owlbear's grandfather, it would not matter.

This was a fight that ended the moment they met. Their job had been finding targets, not fighting. In other words, it should have ended once the moon rose.

If the knights had not stepped in, maybe it would have been different. Once they stepped in, this outcome was only natural.

If anything was unexpected, it was that Crang had sent an escort and that the guard captain had stepped in himself.

Put differently, at least a few people still cared about city safety and order, which was not bad.

Roooar!

Bantara cried out several more times.

"Fuck!"

He cursed while enduring it.

"Spare me!"

At the end, he begged for life.

Watching this, the feather-hatted southern guard captain briefly blamed himself for failing to recognize who he was facing.

'They are all monsters.'

What else could he call people skilled enough to toy with a real monster like the Owlbear?

Only then did he realize the Border Guard rumors were true.

Inside the capital, people still called it nonsense and wild talk.

'What a load of crap.'

The guard captain, who had survived by a hair, wanted to rip open the mouths of those bastards who talked that crap.

The Owlbear held on and held on, then a hole was punched through his thigh, his skull cracked, and finally his neck was half-severed by an axe blade.

Spurt!

Rem, who had been watching, made his move. Bantara spilled dark red blood in torrents and collapsed to the ground.

He pitched forward face-first.

As Demon Creature blood drained out from his fatal wounds, the transformation broke. He returned to human form.

Feathers fell away, and his whole body trembled. The amount of blood pouring out dropped sharply.

Turning human did not change the fact that he had taken mortal wounds.

"Cough."

Bantara coughed up blood as he lay there, and Enkrid came over and crouched in front of him.

"Why are you here?"

That was what he asked.

Of course, Bantara had no desire to answer.

But as he was dying, regret surged up, and with resentment he said,

"It's unfair."

That resentment was not aimed at Enkrid.

It was aimed at the one who had made him like this.

Being drunk on desire and pleasure was a side effect, not what he had truly wanted. He had become a Demon Creature and lost his human identity, but before death he recovered a piece of his humanity. That was why it felt unfair.

"How did you undergo Demonization?"

Enkrid asked.

"Drug... drug."

Bantara muttered as he died.

The light in his eyes slowly faded. He would die soon.

Enkrid could not ask more. Bantara squeezed out every last bit of strength.

He could not close his eyes, even in death, without saying this.

"I'm not the last."

* * *

Count Molsen heard the report and nodded.

"He was discovered and killed earlier than expected."

A subordinate spoke from the center of the study, and the count leaned back in his chair and answered without emotion.

"It's fine. He was a disposable piece anyway."

Those Enkrid bastards again.

They really knew how to be a headache.

Still, when he said it was fine, he meant it.

"The preparations?"

"Less than fifteen days remain."

"Good."

It was a full-moon night. The count, sipping wine with the night for company, set his glass down and said,

"Let us meet in fifteen days, Your Majesty."

Whether he would be the one on the throne, or the queen, would be clear by then.

* * *

In front of the Owlbear's corpse, or more precisely the corpse of Viscount Bantara now, the feather-hatted guard captain gave Enkrid a military salute.

"Please forgive my rudeness earlier."

"It was not that rude."

Guarding the gate had been his duty.

"Thank you for your assistance."

That was what he said.

Enkrid brushed it aside. In his view, it was something that had to be done no matter who did it.

What bothered him more was what Viscount Bantara had said before crossing over.

"But was it fine for your side to leave your post?"

Enkrid asked Matthew. He did not know exactly what was happening inside the palace, but he knew it was no ordinary ugly situation.

So Crang's escort came here?

"If there are no people, there is no nation. If there are no subjects, there is no king."

Matthew said it. Enkrid understood at once. Those had to be Crang's words.

If he became king while turning away as people died to that Moonlight Beast bastard, it would mean nothing to him.

Enkrid liked that very much.

Crang was that kind of man, the kind that made others want to help him on their own.

"Either way, looks like we cleaned it up well."

Enkrid said it, Rem said the mood was dead and suggested sparring, and Ragna wiped blood and grease off his sword.

Off to one side, Dunbakel lifted her curved blade and nodded.

"Good. I like this."

Enkrid had picked it up from an assassin and handed it to her, and Dunbakel looked completely satisfied.

"By the way, were there more guys that smelled foul like that?"

Enkrid asked. Dunbakel shook her head.

"I did not see anyone with a similar smell."

Then where was this "more" supposed to be?

And if there had been more, would they have stayed this quiet?

Was there more than one Moonlight Beast?

No, the target had gotten drunk on Demon Creature blood. He surrendered to instinct and chased pleasure through slaughter.

That was his conclusion from their inquiries too, not just the southern gate captain's words.

Enkrid wondered if Bantara had spat nonsense while dying, but at that moment the man had been sincere.

Enkrid was not dull enough to miss that.

Then where and what was there?

Not in the capital.

Then what, what else was there?

His thinking was brief.

"Count Molsen made a Chimera."

By speaking that single sentence aloud, Enkrid reached his conclusion.

"Hey, we need to report this to the palace right away."

Eisia said it and left. Midnight or not, this was urgent.

"Uh..."

Before leaving, Matthew approached. In the end, Enkrid never even got to see this man use his whip.

Only Rem, Ragna, Dunbakel, and Eisia had stepped in to take down the Owlbear.

"Something to say?"

Matthew came close, chose his words several times, then bit down once like he had made up his mind and opened his mouth.

"Please help my lord."

"Sure."

"When danger comes, just once..."

"Yeah."

"...Hm?"

"I said I'll help."

What did he think Enkrid had been doing here instead of going home?

He stayed because he wanted to swing his sword by Crang's side after seeing what Crang had done.

Crang would become a king for Naurillia.

More than anything, he sent a whip-bearing escort here and proved his words with action.

He said he would stand for the nation, for the people, for the subjects.

He said he would become that kind of king.

At the same time, he said they would become friends.

For a man like that, even if Enkrid did not become his knight right now, he was still more than worth swinging a sword for.

He had already thought it through, so the answer came at once.

That was why Matthew was so startled by how fast he answered.

"He is not the kind of man who will stop beside me. So he will not even ask for help."

Crang had said that himself.

He said he would handle this one with his own power. He said it was a gamble, but without gambling he could not win.

"Then."

Matthew turned away too.

When night passed and morning came, one piece of news reached Andrew's mansion.

It was not news about the late-night incident.

Even the story of Viscount Bantara's death was buried at once. Everyone kept quiet.

The credit and talk about catching the Moonlight Beast had already been smothered too.

The news that spread was the Grand Duke investiture ceremony.

It was the signal Crang had fired.

Maybe because of that, Eisia stopped showing her face too.

After seeing her every day and spending time together, her absence left a hole.

"What, that junior knight is not coming?"

Even Rem asked.

"The investiture ceremony is being held. She will be busy."

Enkrid answered while sweat poured down his whole body. He was disappointed too.

'If only we could have gone a hundred more times, no, two hundred.'

Then he might have broken through her sword-point pressure too.

Even so, to truly overwhelm Eisia and win, he would have needed much more time.

He regretted all of it.

She was an opponent he wanted to face dozens, hundreds more times.

"Since I'm disappointed, I might as well beat up the captain. Come out."

Rem smacked his lips and scratched exactly where it itched. Enkrid felt the same.

* * *

Inside the royal palace, things changed day by day. Every bit of it moved according to Crang's intent.

Then Crang threw on more fuel.

"Are we really just going to watch this? A Grand Duke?"

"Is he digging his own grave?"

It was enough to make the whole noble bloc rise up.

The queen had declared she would grant Crang the rank of Grand Duke, in a palace where marquis had been the highest title.

"Where did Viscount Bantara go?"

Viscount Mernes asked.

He was now the one who had unified every faction in the palace.

One reason those scattered factions became one was the existence of Crang on the opposite side.

Crang had brought Marcus Baisar and several nobles under his sway, then immediately leaned on the queen and moved to receive the rank of Grand Duke.

Everything he did threatened the noble bloc.

From institutional reforms meant to strengthen royal authority onward, they naturally could not just sit and watch.

One thing was clear, he had to be removed. The way he moved threatened the entire nobility.

It seemed the queen was backing him from behind, but the usual rule was to remove the loud one who stepped out first.

'Is he acting arrogant because he has the queen behind him?'

Viscount Mernes judged that what Crang was doing was, in the end, the queen's will.

'Why did you do this, Your Majesty.'

This would bring ruin in the end.

Of course it would. The factions had gathered and united. If that united force was not vented outward, internal trouble was guaranteed.

The queen had dug her own grave.

The investiture ceremony was one week away.

Viscount Mernes mobilized the assassination alliance.

He also used the force that had been backing him.

The remaining military strength of the Black Blade Bandits entered the palace.

He used those in the Royal Guard who were on his side.

He also notified those who had crossed over from parts of the knight order about the uprising.

'This is loyalty.'

The tide had already turned.

Civil war would only eat away at the nation.

Then everything should be suppressed before it even began.

If the queen meant to use her younger brother, who had suddenly appeared from nowhere, as a shield,

'Then that younger brother will die.'

Then the queen would never try this again. She would become a doll on the throne.

After that, the true king could be allowed to enter.

'My work ends there.'

The viscount murmured quietly.

Everything would be over on the day before the investiture ceremony.

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