WE TRIED TRANSLATIONS

Translator: Hydrogen B

Editor: Abstract

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A KNIGHT WHO ETERNALLY REGRESSES

Chapter 385: Esther and Rem

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"Step back. If you do only that, I will give you everything."

Esther looked at the figure before her, projected as an illusion.

She had come out to see what kind of trick this was. If they tried to force a fight, she meant to show them the gap between their levels.

Their response was unexpected. They did not challenge her.

Instead, they worked a spell on a prepared magic circle, and the result showed someone far away.

It was an illusion.

'Not a bad trick.'

The thought crossed her mind. A spell that called up an illusion here would not come cheap.

It was like leaping across long-distance space with magic.

Showing an illusion and projecting reality were different things.

People said there were mages who could do that with things like scrying mirrors, but they were rare.

It was not Esther's specialty, and she had never seen it done in person.

Despite what she was thinking, Esther stood there calmly without even blinking.

The wind blew. She had left the capital and come to a nearby forest.

The two mages who created the illusion circle stood beside her with polite, clasped hands.

In that setting, the other party appeared through the illusion.

Count Molsen, a man she had seen at Enkrid's side.

"What matters most to a mage is her world, and a world where her will can be realized. What I offer is clear. What do you say?"

Confidence overflowed from him. His tone said there was no reason to refuse.

He was not asking her to help him. Not asking her to betray anyone. Not telling her to scheme against Enkrid.

He wanted one thing.

Take one step back and watch.

There was no need to weigh both sides. The man in front of her handled high-level magic. The relics and research materials he offered were precious.

On the other hand, what he wanted was not much at all.

That man understood exactly what mattered to a mage.

The two mages beside her thought Esther would naturally nod.

Count Molsen had calculated that too.

Esther had stayed by Enkrid to remove her curse, but now Enkrid himself was no longer absolutely necessary.

She had opened a new path by using part of the curse.

That was the situation now.

So yes, his offer was tempting. It would become fuel to expand her world and move further.

There was no reason to refuse.

It annoyed her that Count Molsen seemed to know that too, but that did not matter.

Even if he had played games, she had more than enough power to ignore them.

While suffering through this curse, every bit of that experience had settled intact inside her world.

Without answering, Esther simply met the eyes staring at her.

It was an illusion, so there was no color.

She held the gaze of those achromatic eyes. Looking at them made her laugh.

When she let out a soft laugh, both mages beside her turned to look at her.

They flinched. If things went wrong, they were ready to make a move.

Esther lifted an arm. Her coat parted, revealing the tight clothes clinging to her body.

Lust flickered in the two mages' eyes.

Looking at the illusion, and at those two mages who listened to others and moved like obedient limbs, Esther reminded herself who she was.

She was a witch who wielded the flames of the black world.

A witch who fought, struggled, and carved out her world.

A witch born to seek truth through fire.

So she would never do something as foolish as bending to another's will. This had absolutely nothing to do with Enkrid.

"Oh dear."

The Count spoke first. Something like flame rose in Esther's eyes.

"I'll burn you all the same."

Esther spoke, and for the first time since she had been cursed, she drew fire from within her own world.

By now, after coming this far out, the sun was close to setting.

"What a pity."

The Count said it just before the illusion vanished. His tone was so flat it was hard to tell whether he meant it.

"Do you think that man is still alive?"

He asked.

Who else could "that man" mean?

Esther sneered at him.

"If he were the kind to die from something like this, he'd have died long ago."

Would he really die just because one mage was missing?

'Just one?'

Then was it right for her to call herself "just one"?

Esther thought for a moment, but her body moved on its own. Flames surged. The two mages cast spells and tried to resist. It was useless. Meaningless resistance.

Their rank was different from hers. What they had was different. The paths they had walked were different.

* * *

Rem ran and thought, that bastard is hiding something.

Should he just meet it head-on?

That would be fun too, but turning the other side upside down sounded even better.

So he chose both.

Running, he pulled out a sling. He set a rounded stone in the leather pouch, raised the cord overhead, and spun it.

Whip-whip-whip.

The light spin quickly turned into a sharp tearing whistle.

It looked like he was running with a spinning disc above his head.

The Undying Madman did not even look back and dashed into an alley.

Rem did not follow directly. He stepped on a jutting eave in front of a nearby shop and jumped upward.

His body shot up. He climbed onto a roof and ran. The disc above his head tracked with him like a spear line. The moment he secured his view, he fired.

It was hard enough to hit while standing still and spinning. He did it while running anyway, because Rem was Rem.

The stone shot out with a snap. Its path was barely visible as it struck the back of the man's thigh.

Bang!

But it was not the sound Rem expected.

Why did it sound like something bursting open?

He saw one spear shaft snap behind the man's back.

'Sorcery?'

And high-level sorcery at that. Where had he picked that up?

By killing his own kind, most likely.

"You are dead for real."

Rem muttered the vow to himself.

The other man could not hear him, and he still said it. That was how hard he had committed.

He fired several more stone rounds. The four spears trailing behind the opponent all burst apart.

Splinters scattered through the air.

The Undying Madman kept running, twisting through alleys before entering a wider space. The back-alley crowd called it the plaza.

It was not very big. About a quarter of the central plaza in the capital.

There was a fountain plaza in central Nauril, and this empty lot felt like its complete opposite.

Still, it was wide enough for about twenty grown men to brawl.

Thud!

This shot hit the ground. Stone dust rose and fragments scattered everywhere.

Having lost his spears, the Undying Madman rolled to dodge.

Even so, the next stone round still caught the back of his thigh.

Without the layered custom leather guard, his leg would have been punctured or torn open. It did not happen.

Instead, he swallowed a groan, limped for a moment, and stood.

Rem tossed aside the sling with the snapped cord and looked at the cluster of men gathered below.

From the roof, he looked down. Naturally, they looked up.

"Wow, so this is some hometown club, huh?"

Rem said with a note of admiration.

He scanned them one by one. Every one of them was from the west.

He did not know their faces, but he could tell from the atmosphere. They were all men on the run.

The Undying Madman clutched his thigh for a while, then stood. It seemed to hurt badly.

"You bastard, you're not leaving here alive."

To the Undying Madman, Rem's very existence was a threat. If left alone, Rem would keep coming to kill him.

That was why he had involved himself and stepped into this.

His goal was only one thing.

Kill Rem.

For that, he gathered fugitives hunted in the west. Some were disciples he had taken. Some were mercenary types who came only for payment.

Their common trait was simple. All twenty were hero candidates from the west.

"That was him?"

"You gathered all of us to catch one guy?"

"Feels like I've seen him before."

"That guy's Immortal Rem. He's famous around Border Guard."

"Famous? What a joke. If he's some bastard hiding out in the frontier, you know exactly what he is. Immortal? That's as absurd as saying a Bellopter is shedding scales."

A Bellopter was a western mount, a type of reptile. Its scales almost never came off, so that phrase meant complete nonsense.

The gathered men each threw out a comment. Their voices overlapped, but hearing them was easy.

Several kept their mouths shut and only sharpened their eyes.

Those ones were all ready.

Ready to fire things like blowguns from their waists.

"Runaways always bark the loudest."

Rem muttered, bent his knees, and crouched on the roof. From that crouch, he swept his gaze over them all.

Nothing but trash.

After watching them, Rem pulled out one sling and loaded a round firmly. Then he reached in again, took out a second sling, and pinned it between his thighs. Using his legs in place of an extra hand, he loaded another round.

As he moved, the rounded stone rounds in the pouches tied to both sides of his waist clinked together.

Now he had two slings in both hands. He rose and spun them at once.

Wheeeeeee!

With the sun at his back, two circular discs formed at his hands.

Two discs spread diagonally left and right like wings.

Rem kicked off the roof and leaped. For a moment, it looked as if those discs held him in the air like wings.

Of course, that was not true. Just an illusion of motion.

Rem snapped both hands forward, and rounds too fast for the eye began doing their work with heavy impacts.

Whoom!

Half the western fugitives raised shields.

Some carried thick leather-reinforced shields. Some had smaller shields mounted near the wrist.

The ones with small shields trusted their own skill. They were good at deflecting impact points, so they carried shields barely large enough to cover the face.

The heads of two men with small shields burst like smashed pumpkins.

Bang! Bang!

The sound was crisp. Blood and brain matter sprayed into the air.

On the ground, a canvas darkened gray with filth, blood spread like paint.

The rounds were much faster than expected, roughly twice as fast as those that had hit the Undying Madman earlier, so the force was that much greater.

Two western fugitives died before they could resist.

Thud, thud.

Both dropped backward.

Rem landed and spun his slings again.

Whup-whup, wheeeeeee!

"Block!" the Undying Madman shouted.

'Yeah, right.'

From the beginning, Rem had drawn out the whole fight. Start with slings, finish with an axe.

The Undying Madman was dying here, no matter what.

It was obvious.

Time had passed since Rem first met him. In that time, Rem had lost to that crazy bastard Ragna.

Even Enkrid did not know how deeply that loss had hit him.

That shock made Rem diligent. He swung axes and trained. He even stole glances at parts of Enkrid's Isolation Technique, learned what suited him, and added it to his training.

This was no time to pick between cold stew and hot stew.

Right now, filling his stomach came first, not asking whether what went into his mouth was made by a ghoul or a human.

'Damn bastard Ragna.'

Even now, just thinking of Ragna made power surge through him.

He poured that anger-fed strength onto his enemies.

He threw two more stone rounds at the men charging in, and the ones with large shields closed the distance.

Bang! Bang!

Those shields were made from dozens of leather layers with processed tough rubberwood inside. They endured the rounds.

The rounds did not pierce through. They lodged in the shields.

"You crazy bastard."

One shield-bearer said it with a pale face.

Those stones were far more dangerous than he had imagined. Even so, could they lose momentum now?

No.

Once your spirit broke, neither sorcery nor body techniques worked properly.

Whether they steeled themselves or not made no difference to Rem.

Watching the men close in, he released both unbroken slings from his hands and dropped his hands to his waist.

Then he gripped an axe handle.

One man saw the long-handled axe and lunged forward in an instant.

The speed was impossible to ignore. In a blink, he was right in front of him.

Lightning Step sorcery.

As if he had expected it, Rem drew the axe from his waist and drove it straight forward.

It was not as fast as Lightning Step, but the timing was exact.

It looked as if the attacker had rushed in just to be hit.

The man who accelerated in became the first sacrifice to the axe blade.

Thud.

The upright blade split his head in two.

No one survives that.

Still, not even knowing he was dead, his body continued toward Rem.

His hand grabbed Rem's thigh. He had been the type who excelled at latching on and breaking limbs.

He died exactly like that, gripping Rem's thigh.

With that corpse hanging off him, Rem began swinging his axe.

Whoom, crack, boom, smack!

Every one of them was weaker than Enkrid.

The only one with any real threat was the Undying Madman.

He threw spears that mimicked descending attacks, then charged with one spear in hand.

Threatening, yes.

'Still far below that damn Ragna.'

After dancing under that bastard's sword, this level was laughable. Rem's axe split five heads in moments, then severed the sixth and seventh men's limbs, and the mood turned at once.

They had never been ready to risk their lives in the first place. That was why they had become fugitives.

"He's a monster bastard!"

One of them shouted. The Undying Madman had just realized the same thing.

The moment he thought of running, he threw every spare spear he had prepared, grabbed the arm of one man he had called his disciple, and hurled him.

He did it with sorcery that surged with a bear's strength.

"Masterrrr!"

The thrown disciple cried out, heartbroken.

Rem swung his axe at the flying human projectile.

Whoaang! Smack!

As his Heart of Superhuman Strength pounded, the force in his arms became giant-like.

He held his breath, braced, and swung diagonally.

A clean slash line cut across the incoming human projectile. Through the axe, he felt flesh, muscle, and bone parting.

The weight of that body came through his arms as pressure. He endured it, overcame it, and then release came all at once.

The axe blade had passed through a human body.

With a wet split, one human became two. Both halves fell past Rem, grazing his shoulders.

The blood that burst out drenched him from head to toe.

Rem's gray eyes, stained red, shone. In them, he caught the back of the fleeing man.

If someone asked what he had trained most since meeting the Undying Madman, he was ready to answer with confidence.

Leg strength.

That was why he had stolen even parts of the Isolation Technique.

"If I lose him again, my mother is a ghoul."

Rem muttered the phrase he had picked up from Enkrid and kicked off the ground.

The Undying Madman bolted, and Rem chased without hesitation.

Not all of them had died, but the survivors only blinked.

They had lived by luck, nothing else.

Their eyes followed Rem and the Undying Madman.

It had been a chase before too, but then one side had set a trap and the other had knowingly taken it.

This time was different.

There was no trap, and the one chasing was fully committed.

At most, he would be caught and killed within half a day. They saw the Undying Madman's future and began to move.

If they stayed, it would only be a worthless death.

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