WE TRIED TRANSLATIONS

Translator: Hydrogen B

Editor: Abstract

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

A KNIGHT WHO ETERNALLY REGRESSES

Chapter 379: Veeery, Soooo Much.

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“Andrew, yeah, try it like that.”

Nineteen repeats of today had passed. Enkrid told Andrew to thrust his sword at him.

Now he needed someone else’s help.

So he did exactly that.

He began training to meet the tip of Andrew’s sword with the tip of his own and block it.

“…That is a pretty brute-force training method.”

By around the thirty-sixth time he heard Andrew mutter in amazement, Enkrid finally met his tip to the other blade’s tip for the first time.

Not while standing still, but while both of them moved at a proper pace.

Of course it was not easy. It was hard. Because it was that hard, the thrill of success raced through his whole body.

Of course, that thrill was brief.

To truly make it his, he had to repeat the same thing countless times.

Even so, he could not deny he was enjoying himself.

Ting!

A crisp sound rang out, one they rarely heard.

“But is this really fun?”

Andrew asked. Even while focusing on matching blades, energy poured out of Enkrid.

He looked happy, excited, exhilarated.

Like a child proving he could play with one toy all day, then actually doing it.

It looked as if he were thrusting his sword with pure joy as his weapon.

That was how Andrew saw it.

“Yeah, veeeery.”

Enkrid answered with deliberate emphasis.

‘Why?’

Andrew could not understand, but to Enkrid, it was only natural, same as always.

“This is fun?”

“Yeah, sooooo much.”

“This?”

“Huh?”

Tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap.

Sword tip met sword tip over and over.

After hearing more than forty more rounds of Andrew’s amazement, Enkrid nodded, drenched in sweat.

“That’s enough for now.”

Then he called Rem.

“Rem, swing your axe.”

He switched opponents.

Rem snorted, grinned, and swung without hesitation.

He could not allow even the slightest error.

He could not allow even the tiniest gap an attack could slip through.

Otherwise, he could never cleanly redirect Rem’s axe. Not a partial redirect. A perfect redirect.

That was the beginning.

After tip-to-tip training came training to redirect Rem’s axe. Not simple deflection, the goal was to make sword tip and axe edge meet.

“Are you fearless, or brainless? Get over here and kneel right now!”

Whenever Enkrid sank deep into training, the Palace Security Commissioner showed up like clockwork. Every time he saw Enkrid immersed in training, he reacted almost the same way, and Enkrid replied without thinking.

“Oh, you’re here?”

Now he was almost welcome. After all that drilling, this meant it was time for live practice.

With the strange sense of familiarity built up from repeating today, Enkrid even raised a hand in greeting. The Palace Security Commissioner’s face flushed red and he huffed through his nose.

He thought Enkrid was mocking him.

He was right.

“You son of a…”

Before the Palace Security Commissioner could keep ranting, Enkrid subdued him with a kick called persuasion.

Then he had Dunbakel show the city guards the difference in strength.

Then he set Ragna and Dunbakel on Squire Ropord, sent Rem to save Marcus, and faced Jaxon and the assassins.

“Stab…”

Before the word was even finished, Enkrid moved. Jaxon responded and leaped sideways.

Quiet and hidden.

Using the magic artifact on him, Jaxon erased sound and presence and vanished.

Enkrid drew attention first, then Jaxon stole it again, tangling the assassins’ focus.

Soon the assassins judged Jaxon the bigger threat and started targeting only him.

After seeing that over and over, it looked like they had come intending to kill Jaxon from the start.

Why?

The question hit him suddenly. Several thoughts flashed through his mind.

He let them all pass.

A suspicion born from instinct surfaced, but this was not the time to dig into it.

He rode Odd-Eye, met Eisia, and repeated today again.

He managed to fully redirect Rem’s strike faster than expected.

Rem had not swung for real, after all.

It took only ninety-six tries.

Now the very concept of basics was firmly rooted in him, so this was possible.

All the training he had done with different weapons helped too.

The more experience he gained, the more he discovered even about the sword he had always used.

Rem snorted every time he saw it.

“That kind of thing usually settles in on its own. You really are built strange.”

In Rem’s words, once your level rose, some things naturally settled into your body. Enkrid did not have that.

He was like a stone tower that could only rise by stacking each piece by hand.

And not just stacking, stacking with care and prayer so it would not collapse.

It was a fitting metaphor.

Basics or not, if he did not learn each part properly, it never settled into his body.

What did people who filled a lack of talent with effort need most?

Time.

Because of the curse, he had been given that time.

“What is even stranger is how you look like a different person overnight.”

Even for Rem, this was the first time seeing someone like this. No talent, already at his limit, already at the cliff’s edge, yet somehow walking on empty air. Then, as you watched him walk, a road appeared beneath his feet.

Enkrid had just taken Rem’s axe. He had improved again, advanced again. His growth was exceptional.

No genius changed overnight. There were always signs first.

‘No, maybe those signs were already there.’

Rem scratched his head hard as he thought. The body had been prepared. The skills had been prepared. The training time had been there.

So was Enkrid the type who stacked and stacked, then exploded in a single day?

‘No way.’

He had seen so many impossible things that he tried to let it go, but it still amazed him every time. Still, nothing to argue about.

“Jaxon.”

After he got to where he could handle Rem’s axe reasonably well, Enkrid brought in Jaxon.

Only Jaxon could show precision close to Sinar’s sword.

That did not mean Rem and Ragna lacked precision.

Those two could also use fine, precise swordwork. Once your level rose high enough, you could do almost anything.

Still, everyone had strengths.

Jaxon’s precision was close to an elf’s. That was one of his strengths.

“Shake it.”

They repeated drills where Jaxon shook his sword tip and Enkrid met and covered it.

At times, he also crossed blades with Eisia.

“Unless you left a lover behind, can you go later?”

He tried to stop her, but Eisia never listened.

“There’s something I need to check.”

She said that every time and turned away.

Then darkness.

Today repeated again.

“The hell did you do?”

In a new today, Rem stared in shock.

Then Enkrid called Jaxon, whose eyes lit up at the sight, and repeated the training again.

So many events overlapped in each repeated day that he used them as anchors and counted.

Sometimes the Boatman appeared and laughed. A laugh full of anticipation, maybe.

That was how it sounded and looked to Enkrid.

Heh heh.

The laughter flowed across the black river. The lamp flame swayed with it.

Someone mocking him did not bother him.

Honestly, it did not matter whether it was the Boatman or anyone else.

Since childhood, he had swung swords, run, rolled, fought, and stood back up amid endless ridicule.

Ridicule was familiar.

That kind of mental attack meant nothing to Enkrid from the start.

He woke again and repeated today once more. He trained and trained.

Around the time he began meeting Jaxon’s sword tip with his own.

In other words, around the time he could roughly block Eisia’s Sword-Tip Aim with Blade Cover.

“…How?”

Eisia looked several times more shocked.

“I just kept doing it.”

This was not the kind of moment you could explain away as luck.

A sharp thrill shot through his whole body and drew out a smile.

Eisia saw it, pulled her sword back, and said, “Your face is a weapon too.”

She stepped back and leveled her sword again.

“Do it again.”

So he did. He met the tip and covered it.

“Trying to do it like Rem? Sloppy.”

She said it abruptly, then began shaking her sword tip.

What was this now?

He had not seen this technique in their earlier sparring. Her sword tip trembled, and soon the single point before his eyes became many.

If he wanted to block like Rem, he had to knock each one away one by one.

If he kept repeating and training, that too would settle into his body.

But that was not his path. Just as he had decided at the start.

‘I have to build the process too.’

He had already gained everything he could from imitating Rem’s method.

“You bastards keep breaking my techniques. Did I look easy to you?”

Eisia said.

Her tone was not resentful.

She was impressed by Enkrid’s technique of aiming to cover her point, but he had copied what Rem showed. She had expected him to have this kind of hidden talent.

If not, how could he polish his swordsmanship and body techniques like this?

In any case, she was a member of the knight order, above the rank of squire.

She had accepted challenges like this countless times. She was used to it.

“If you thought this would stop me, fix that mindset.”

As she spoke, she lowered her sword tip. All the wavering points vanished.

Instead, she began bouncing in place, tapping the ground with her feet to make a rhythm. Her orange hair moved with that rhythm. Naturally, Sword-Tip Aim was not her only weapon.

“Let’s keep going.”

She spoke from that stance.

“Obviously.”

Enkrid nodded.

After that brief exchange, Silver, Spark, and Dwarf’s Gift danced through the air.

Across from him, Eisia’s rapier reflected blue light as it thrust, cut, struck, and sometimes snapped in as if bending.

It was still hard to block or subdue her without taking injuries.

But now they could clash all day. Still, there was a clear time limit.

For whatever reason, this today ended when the sun dropped, not at midnight.

Then today simply repeated.

He knew that already from experience.

So he always had to do his best within the time he was given.

“Huff, huff... why did your skill jump all of a sudden?”

Hearing Eisia, Enkrid smiled and answered.

“It’s fun.”

“You lunatic.”

Seeing him say only what he wanted, Eisia laughed too.

She herself had also swung her sword in ways that did not fit the situation, fought with her life on the line, and felt exhilaration.

“See you again.”

The sun set. Then today repeated.

He was blocked. That was why this was a today he could not yet cross.

When Enkrid opened his eyes again, this time he decided to imitate Jaxon’s method.

“Next.”

Muttering to himself like that as he steeled his resolve had become a habit.

“Next what?”

Andrew asked from beside him while loosening up with the Isolation Technique.

“There’s something.”

After that rough answer, Enkrid began imitating Jaxon’s method.

Jaxon’s way of breaking Sword-Tip Aim was to strike before it started.

What did that require?

“Prediction. You have to feel the opponent’s response right before it begins.”

“How?”

“Things like a trembling eyelash, or muscles tightening under clothes.”

Easy to say. Truly.

“Why are you looking at me like that?”

“Nothing.”

“Your eyes looked kind of barbaric just now.”

“What are you talking about, you stray-cat bastard? That offends me.”

Rem cut in.

“It was a rotten stare, like stale pollock mixed with eggs.”

Ignoring Rem, Jaxon said that to Enkrid, then faced a Throwing Axe.

A Throwing Axe came whirring in. Jaxon set his longsword against it and twisted. With proper force and timing, a heavy crack rang out, and the disc-like axe bounced upward vertically.

Taaang!

A rapid exchange, with the sound arriving right after.

Technique was woven into the block. A precise Soft and Flowing Sword movement.

After blocking like that, Jaxon spoke.

“A moment ago, the barbarian’s nose-breath came faster than usual.”

Was he showing an example?

He predicted from nose-breath? More likely it was a prediction born from a sixth sense built on countless experiences.

Enkrid watched their bickering and sparring without reaction.

Jaxon was always a step faster.

Just as he said. Beyond Sense of Evasion and Sense of Attack, now all of those instincts and senses had to be tuned to one specific technique from the opponent.

Maybe it should be called Sense of Prediction.

As he began this new training and kept learning and mastering,

“This is seriously too fun.”

The mutter escaped him again. Watching that, the Boatman truly wanted to click his tongue.

That madman had no boredom, no suffering, no despair.

It was like being trapped alone in a closed space, swinging his sword, and enjoying it.

Because today repeated, no one shared memories with him, but that was fine. He did not care.

In truth, Enkrid was fine because he had something that shared everything with him.

The process of swinging his sword, the road ahead, the skill piling up, all the things changing, those were his measure. His joy.

He was sharing the sword and today, so he was fine.

Then he copied Jaxon’s technique too.

After that, he even started working on Ragna’s. He kept fighting while saying he would face Eisia with something other than Sword-Tip Aim.

That was when Enkrid’s blade grazed Eisia’s throat.

More precisely, he blocked with Silver, then drew Gladius and unleashed a hard-to-predict horizontal slash.

Pik. Part of her skin tore, and a bead of blood welled up. The whole scene looked slow.

He had room. If he pushed from here, it would end. He knew it. But his head knew while his heart refused.

‘I touched her.’

But he could not kill her.

If he had pressed right then, he might have killed her, even if he took a hit somewhere himself.

If lucky, just one hole in his shoulder. If less lucky, a fatal wound.

It was clearly a killing chance, but Enkrid stopped.

The same chance never came again.

Clang!

Their swords met, and they switched places. Eisia stood where Enkrid had been, and Enkrid stood where she had been.

Blood ran down her lowered arm.

“When a chance comes, you take it.”

Eisia said.

They both knew that. Enkrid did not answer.

Eisia withdrew her sword.

“Let’s stop here. I’ll check one thing in the back, then I’ll send you out. By then, maybe your reason for coming here won’t matter anyway.”

Enkrid did not answer again.

Eisia passed by him as if brushing his side, completely unguarded. Her sword was already put away.

After she left, he sat there blankly as time passed. A little later, today ended.

It ended the same way dozens of todays had ended.

After blackout and darkness, he opened his eyes and saw a purple lamp.

The Boatman.

On the ferry, the Boatman opened his mouth.

“That is the wall.”

Unusually kind of him. Understandably so.

“Didn’t I tell you it would be fun?”

The Boatman continued.

For Enkrid, though, this was not very fun.

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