A Knight who Eternally Regresses - Chapter 386

WE TRIED TRANSLATIONS

Translator: Hydrogen B

Editor: Abstract

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

A KNIGHT WHO ETERNALLY REGRESSES

Chapter 386: [He Slacks Off Even While Fighting]

= = =

“So Georg’s Dagger was just a bunch of idiots running wild on relic power.”

The long-armed assassin spoke as he spun the dagger in his hand. One of his eyes gleamed.

An eye steeped in mystery, a Magic Prosthetic Eye.

That eye had looked strange from the start, so it was not surprising the relic had failed. Jaxon stayed calm.

He also saw the hole in his cloak. The dagger had grazed it.

An arm had stretched inhumanly long, torn through the cloak, then snapped back.

Even so, he did not waver. Outwardly and inwardly, he stayed flat.

The enemy did not see it that way.

“Looks like you’re rattled. You should’ve stabbed when we told you to.”

It was the white-haired man with the monocle, speaking in a lecturing tone.

“Why stay under that guy? Change your mind now.”

A woman said it from somewhere among the assassins, her voice disguised. More precisely, she threw her words from hiding. Careful type. Also a good liar.

Even if he changed sides here, he would gain nothing. They were all just trying to make him show an opening.

“What? Stabbed? Weren’t you embarrassed when you said that?”

The captain’s provocation must have really gotten under the monocled bastard’s skin, since he brought it up.

“So, now that you lost your relic, what are you going to do?”

That one came from behind. Jaxon turned his head. Even in broad daylight, only the place the voice came from looked stained in a dull shade. Half-hidden in the shadows between alleys, a man who specialized in hiding.

The trick was obvious.

‘Shadow Walk.’

A method of moving only through patches of different shading, and something taught as basics in Georg’s Dagger.

After learning it, Jaxon had never used it once. Against opponents with sharp focus or good instinct, it was easy to get countered.

‘A trick that might not even work on the captain right now.’

Even Enkrid would not fall for that.

Jaxon quietly took off the torn cloak and unfastened his belt.

“Giving up?” the disguised voice asked from among the assassins.

“Heh heh. Well then, will you reconsider? It’s not too late. The chance to choose again is the privilege of youth.”

The white-haired man with the monocle spoke.

“Hmph.”

The long-armed monkey-looking bastard snorted.

The one in the shadows slowly stepped back and erased his presence.

Despite their words, dank killing intent kept pricking his skin. They were ready to fight.

With his gaze lowered, Jaxon spoke.

“I wondered which lunatic sent you. So it was Viscount Mernes?”

To force multiple assassin guilds into one “alliance,” the other side had to be at least a noble.

They had to push a single request to the point that an assassin guild’s survival itself came into question, so a powerful noble had to be involved.

In the current situation, that meant someone at minimum rising in a palace faction, or someone who had consolidated power into one bloc.

If not, these people would have kept playing their own separate games.

Add in their target choice, and it became clear.

He could see the intent of the one who ordered this. He could see how that person thought.

‘Someone who finds my very existence annoying and troublesome.’

That was why they were hunting him this hard.

They blocked Enkrid from reaching the palace, did not even rush to kill Marcus, and let the people heading to block the main gate pass, while every member of this so-called Assassin Alliance came after him.

More than anything, they prioritized erasing him.

Why?

Because he was in their way.

There were two types who sold Black Lily information.

One, those who learned things by chance.

The other, people directly connected to it.

This time it was the second.

Otherwise, they would never be this serious about removing him.

Before things exploded, maybe not. But once the situation had turned this far, it became easy to infer.

And once he understood, nothing made him happier.

Was it Enkrid’s influence? Jaxon showed emotion. He smiled.

The white-haired assassin frowned when he saw that.

“What, are you going to insist you stabbed again? Or pull some other nonsense?”

He still seemed deeply bitter about getting verbally beaten by Enkrid.

Fair enough. Right before they split up, the captain had been fired up over something, his tongue moving like he was possessed.

“Didn’t you say you’d talk if I stabbed you? Now you’re changing your words?”

“That wasn’t a stab-”

“So trust means nothing to you? You bragged about your assassin guild name in the capital, what a joke!”

“No, that really was a stab-”

“Shut up! How dare you wag that tongue when you didn’t keep your promise! The scar on my arm proves all of this!”

“That’s not what I-”

“Ha, this is tragic.”

“You crazy bastard, listen for once.”

“You went ‘Ow, ow,’ so what now?”

No matter what the other side said, Enkrid kept talking. At the end, he pretended to hold out his forearm, then threw a Whistle Dagger and decorated the skull of an assassin who had been blankly watching from afar with a stuck blade.

The fight started right there, and after that the other side never got another chance to defend themselves.

Was it enough to make them burst with rage?

Maybe. Even when he tried to keep his composure, the captain always scraped people raw.

Even Jaxon himself got heated sometimes, so these people were no exception.

“You did stab,” Jaxon said.

“Fuck, kill him!”

The white-haired assassin shouted, and men charged from all sides. Jaxon already knew there were twenty-eight.

He had counted. Habit. Then he vanished.

“Huh!”

The long-armed monkey with the Magic Prosthetic Eye yelped in shock while tracking him.

Thud!

A wet flesh-piercing sound rang out. Jaxon appeared inside the alley, in thick shade.

One of the alliance executives hiding there coughed blood, dropped to his knees, and collapsed forward.

“How?”

Not picked up by the Magic Prosthetic Eye? But the relic was gone now.

Enkrid flashed through Jaxon’s mind for no reason, and he answered anyway.

“Hard work, training.”

No answer fit “How?” better than that.

After that, Jaxon kept vanishing and reappearing.

The second to die was the female assassin with the disguised voice.

She slipped quickly into her own group, but Jaxon, already disguised as one of her men, was right beside her and drove a stiletto into her belly.

Thud, thud, thud.

Three fork-like thrusts punched holes through her organs.

He had pierced lung and heart, so even a high-ranking priest could not save her.

“Ghk.”

What came out was neither scream nor groan. That was her scream and her last words.

Jaxon kept moving.

Relic? He used it because he had it. He had never depended on relics from the start.

So it did not matter whether he had one or not.

His body felt especially light today.

He knew what he had to do, and where he had to go was clear.

‘Mernes.’

He had suspected from the beginning that a noble was part of Black Lily. Even if Viscount Mernes was not the mastermind, at minimum he was connected.

That meant Jaxon’s destination after killing these people was set.

The palace, where Viscount Mernes was.

He did exactly that. He killed them one by one until no one else charged, then moved for the palace.

By then the sun had shifted overhead and stretched long shadows.

Jaxon was looking toward the setting sun when he saw something strange.

A man was running across rooftops, smashing through them as he went.

Someone he knew. He did not act familiar.

* * *

Dunbakel started the fight. At least compared to Ragna, she had more drive, so that was the right call. She dropped back, then went out through the opened gate.

Ropord was already positioning part of the force outside the wall.

‘If they take control in front of the gate, it’s over.’

The numbers gap was obvious. So they had to hold the front line.

Their archers, arrows, and siege-defense prep were lacking, so the rest had to fill in with their own strength and bodies.

Of course, all of that assumed the first ten enemies at the front were stopped first.

‘If we can just hold.’

He was not even asking them to kill every last one.

With that in mind, Ropord saw Dunbakel moving forward.

She scanned the ten men blocking the way, then smiled.

It looked innocent, like some girl fresh out of a rural village and new to the city.

Of course, she was not that, and her smile held nothing innocent.

She was simply putting into practice what she had learned from Enkrid.

Vallen-style mercenary sword, Smiling Face.

She took what Enkrid had used on her over and over, then adapted it in her own way.

That was the frightening part of talent.

No hesitation when it came to absorbing and using technique.

Rem beat her to improve her overall physical ability, and Dunbakel handled her own technical training herself.

Now it paid off.

“What is that?” one mercenary asked.

The Beastfolk kicked off the ground.

Fast feet like a leopard’s drove into the formation.

She reached the front in an instant, and the forward soldier froze without even twitching a hand.

Her curved blade dropped toward his head.

Thwack, crack!

She crushed his skull with a chopping strike, and a nearby soldier thrust a spear.

It was a reflexive move with no force behind it, so she tilted her neck and avoided it, pressed shoulder to cheek, hooked the shaft between neck and shoulder, turned her body, and stole the spear.

“…Ah.”

The soldier she disarmed let out a dumb sound. He did not die. Dunbakel dropped the stolen spear and ran forward.

“Stop her!”

Only then did the enemy commander snap out of it and shout.

Two of the ten front warriors moved. Both were men whose foot speed trailed no one.

Even so, they only barely managed to chase Dunbakel’s back.

“Outta the waaay!”

As she sprinted in Beastfolk form, soldiers opened a path.

These men were not a total mob, but they could not be called elite either.

Viscount Mernes’s army was basically a pile of mixed forces.

A unit that barely had a command structure.

Dunbakel tore through that formation, stepping on soldiers’ shoulders and heads as she ran, swinging her curved blade.

Then she hit her target and swung with no mercy. She did not cut. She twisted her grip and smashed with the flat.

Boom! Crack.

They had prepared three mangonels.

The central frame of one split with a dry snap.

Dunbakel knew her side’s advantage was the wall. How many years had she wandered the continent as a mercenary?

She was hardened by all kinds of battles. Remove the biggest threat first.

So she used a smiling face to lower their guard, then charged. Simple, but the most efficient move.

“Are you insane?”

Someone stuck close to her side at once.

One of the ten from earlier. He came in and thrust a short spear.

Fast feet, fast hands. Dunbakel struck the spearhead with her curved blade, stamped her left foot, and spun her body with a boom. She acted like she was about to commit straight in.

The man trying to close pulled back. Then the other one chasing from behind took her rear in a similar way.

“Let’s finish this.”

Dunbakel said it and threw herself the opposite way. Sudden and bizarre. Call it nonsense if you wanted.

Naturally, she learned that from Enkrid.

Vallen-style mercenary sword, Act the Opposite.

A trick that speaks with momentum, then completely shatters expectations by moving the other way.

What was the gain here?

Making her real objective easier to achieve.

The point was not fighting these two first. It was smashing the mangonels.

The two mercenaries chasing her tangled their feet for a moment.

What was that?

The Beastfolk, who already looked quite skilled, kept throwing out all kinds of feints.

Compared to tricking Enkrid or Rem, fooling these two was easy, so Dunbakel enjoyed herself.

She even got a little excited.

It had been a long time since she fought opponents weaker than herself.

As Dunbakel tore the place apart, the other side rushed in too.

“Kill them all!”

The owner of the one-horn helmet shouted.

His name was Yon, a first-rate warrior from the east.

A blond man walked up in front of him. Slow steps. Viscount forces were pressing forward with that shout, yet he looked relaxed.

Arrows started flying overhead, and he still acted as if none of it mattered.

Ragna, with a thick long sword over his shoulder, spoke.

“Come all at once. Annoying.”

“You.”

Yon of the one-horn helmet neither got worked up nor charged. He simply raised his favored weapon. A glaive. The upright blade at its tip gave off a blue sheen. Valerian Steel.

Ragna watched it and thought about stealing it and melting it down.

“We fight together.”

Yon said it. Some men frowned at his words, but no one argued.

At a glance, Ragna clearly was no easy target.

“Time is on our side. Beat him down slow.”

Yon said it, and they followed. One mercenary spun a clattering chain over his head, then whipped it forward.

A spiked weight, carried by centrifugal force, flew at Ragna’s head.

Clang.

By then Ragna had already lowered his sword diagonally and knocked it aside.

That heavy metal chunk on the chain looked more than enough to shatter and pulp a human skull.

“Crush him!”

Struggle, battle, blood, slaughter.